question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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how do we know ancient civilisations/events existed? | Carbon dating is a chemistry-based method for determining how old organic matter (wood, preserved food) is. There's no disguising a 200 year old tomb as a 4000 year old tomb; the carbon dating is completely different.
Also, we have records from long ago (like the Roman Empire) of people *already* knowing about things like the Egyptian Pyramids, which were already old at the time.
Also, some civilizations (like China) have existed continuously for thousands of years, with continuous written records updated every year, and consistent with the archaeological records. It's just too much to fake; you might as well give up on reality entirely. | [
"With philology, archaeology, and art history, scholars seek understanding of the history and culture of a civilisation, through critical study of the extant literary and physical artefacts, in order to compose and establish a continual historic narrative of the Ancient World and its peoples. The task is difficult ... |
what are volts? amps? watts? which one(s) can kill you versus just shock/hurt you? | The water pipe analogy is a famous way to understand electricity.
Volts are like water pressure (high voltage would be like a pressure washer, low voltage would be like a babbling brook)
Amps are like the amount of water flow (high amperage would be like the Mississippi river, low amperage would be like a kitchen faucet)
Watts are the ability of the water to do work. Watts, conveniently, are equal to Amps * Volts.
What kills you is current (amperage) running through your body in the wrong way. However, current can't run through your body without a voltage (pressure) to drive it. So both are what kills you, really. | [
"Voltages over approximately 50 volts can usually cause dangerous amounts of current to flow through a human being who touches two points of a circuit—so safety standards, in general, are more restrictive around such circuits. The definition of \"extrahigh voltage\" (EHV) again depends on context. In electric power... |
each of the 5 positions in basketball and their responsibilities. | Point guard, or the "1": Primary ball handler on offense. Brings the ball up the court, generally starts plays and creates opportunities for others. On defense, defends the perimeter.
Shooting guard, or the "2" or the "2 guard": perimeter scorer that plays off the ball. Needs to be a good ball handler as well. They can drive to the basket to create opportunities for themselves or others, just as the point guard does. Defends the perimeter.
Small forward, or the "3": nowadays, these are some of the most impactful players. Sometimes called a "wing player." They need to be versatile in their ability to score from various places and defend various types of players. See LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, and to some extent Draymond Green.
Power Forward, or the "4": traditionally a post (post means underneath the basket, in a basic sense) player, nowadays many of them have the skills to step outside the basket and hit longer shots. Having a fourth player that can do this helps to stretch the defense. They also need to be able to rebound and defend the post.
Center, or the "5": This position is seemingly less important than ever in the modern game, but they are further specialized in playing the "post" than the power forward. They need to protect the basket on defense and rebound. On offense they can be used to take close shots, rebound, or step out to the perimeter and set "picks" (a pick is when one player blocks a defender so his teammate can create space from that defender, or "get open"). The modern game is fast and heavily focused on perimeter play so this position has become more about utility players that can rebound and set picks than about dominant players that can take over a game with scoring. Less about Shaq, Wilt Chamberlain, etc. Traditional type of "big men" such as Dwight Howard struggle to fill a dominant role right now. | [
"Basketball position – general location on the court which each player is responsible for. A player is generally described by the position (or positions) he or she plays, though the rules do not specify any positions. Positions are part of the strategy that has evolved for playing the game, and terminology for desc... |
TIL about the Phaistos Disk and Linear A and I'm curious, what other languages are still undeciphered? What are the chances that they will be deciphered? | Indus script, inscriptions left by the Indus Valley Civilization, has yet to be deciphered. The language appears to use short strings of symbols. For the past few years, researchers have attempted to decipher the language but the chances of Indus script being deciphered is very low. A big reason is that inscriptions of Indus script are short (Average length: 5. Longest on a single surface: 17). We also have no idea what language the Indus Valley people spoke and there is no artifact like the Rosetta Stone that we can refer to.
[Most of these numbers were pulled from this paper on page 796](_URL_1_)
EDIT: I did some more searching and found a [TED Talk](_URL_0_) by one of the guys who contributed to the paper I listed above | [
"The Phoenician text has long been known to be in a Semitic, more specifically Canaanite language (very closely related to Hebrew, and also relatively close to Aramaic and Ugaritic); hence there was no need for it to be \"deciphered.\" And while the inscription can certainly be read, certain passages are philologic... |
why does japanese use 3 different alphabets/sillabaries? | In the beginning, what would later become "Japan" adopted Chinese characters for their writing. Note that they only adopted the script, the spoken language is still Japanese, they just hammered that into Chinese characters
Later, during the middle Heian period (~1000 AD), a combination of a movement to detach from the mainland and develop a "native" culture, along with much of literature being written by women in courtly cultural salons lead to "women's hand" being developed and the de facto language. Women were traditionally not allowed to learn Chinese script, which is why what would later become Hiragana developed.
A number of important works, like the kokinshu, were written in hiragana.
Later, the Heian period collapsed, and the era of warrior rule started. With the end of cultural salons as the center of literature, works once again were written by men, for a predominantly male audience. The language became a mixed script of Chinese characters and onnade.
Katakana was parallel to all of this. It was used primarily for foreign loan-words. At first, Chinese of course.
---
tl;dr let's copy china, let's try to stop copying china (women make their own script), rip women, now we do both | [
"In modern Japanese, the hiragana and katakana syllabaries each contain 46 basic characters, or 71 including diacritics. With one or two minor exceptions, each different sound in the Japanese language (that is, each different syllable, strictly each mora) corresponds to one character in each syllabary. Unlike kanji... |
When did the notion of American exceptionalism first take root? | An early advocacy of American exceptionalism came with the Puritan colonizers of Massachusetts. Here is some of the text of John Winthrop's sermon to the Puritan colonists while still on the ship "Arabella" as they were about to land in the New World. It is known as the "City on a Hill" sermon, referencing Jesus in Matthew 5.14, in the sermon on the mount, when he tells the audience, "You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden."
Part of Winthrop's sermon:
"The God of Israel is among us, when tenn of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies, when hee shall make us a prayse and a glory, that men shall say of succeeding plantacions: The Lord make it like that of New England: for wee must Consider that wee shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eies of all people are uppon us."
(Source: _URL_2_)
The "City on a Hill", has been referenced many times by American politicians, perhaps most famously by Ronald Reagan in his 1989 farewell speech:
"I've spoken of the shining city all my political life....in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it and see it still..."
(Source: _URL_1_)
Reagan was referencing an earlier famous speech of his in 1974. In that speech he quoted John Winthrop, and closed with:
"We cannot escape our destiny, nor should we try to do so. The leadership of the free world was thrust upon us two centuries ago in that little hall in Philadelphia. In the days following World War II, when the economic strength and power of the United States was all that stood between the world and the return to the dark ages, Pope Pius XII said, "The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into the hands of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind.
We are indeed, and we are today, the last best hope of man on earth."
(Source: _URL_0_)
American exceptionalism - there at the beginning - still there today. | [
"The theory of the exceptionalism of the U.S. has developed over time and can be traced to many sources. French political scientist and historian Alexis de Tocqueville was the first writer to describe the country as \"exceptional\" in 1831 and 1840. The actual phrase \"American exceptionalism\" was originally coine... |
How did the US Government get all of the Native Americans to Oklahoma during the Trail of Tears? What happened to the people who refused to leave? | Basically the tribes were coerced by violence to relocate to Indian Territory. Some tribes were able to hide out and they later became their own tribes in their original homelands. Famous examples include the Poarch Band of Creek Indians of Alabama, Seminole Tribe of Florida (who were never militarily defeated by the United States), Sac & Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa, and Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.
A band of [Nez Perce](_URL_2_) were forced from Washington to Indian Territory in 1878. Basically they said hell no and returned back to the NW in 1884. Same with the Northern Cheyenne, who returned to Montana on foot in the winter of 1878.
The Dawes Commission, led by Senator Henry L. Dawes (still hated today by most Oklahoma Indians), oversaw destroying tribal governments and landholdings in Indian Territory. The Curtis Act of 1898 dismantled tribal governments, courts, and school systems (many of these buildings were stolen from the tribes). The Dawes Severalty Act called for lands collectively owned by the tribes to be broken up into small individual allotments to individual Indians and Freedmen/Freedwomen. Then the so-called "Surplus" land was opened up to non-Native settlements in lotteries and [land runs](_URL_1_).
When the idea of combining Oklahoma Territory, Indian Territory, and the "unassigned lands" was proposed, traditionalists fought it legally and even by force (see the Four Mother's Society, the Green Peach War). Politicians from the NE tribes tried to promise a separate [State of Sequoyah](_URL_0_) to be separate from Oklahoma (it breaks my heart that this didn't happen).
Some tribes have recovered stolen public buildings from the state of Oklahoma in recent years. The tribes had to reorganized their governments under the [Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act of 1936](_URL_3_) and rebuild their infrastructure in ensuing decades. Some have repurchased important lands, but compensation, no. | [
"By the 1830s, the U.S. had drafted the Indian Removal Act, which was used to facilitate the Trail of Tears. Fearing retribution of other native peoples, Indian Agents all over the eastern U.S. began desperately trying to convince all their native peoples to uproot and move west. This included the Caddoans of Louis... |
how film negatives work the difference between them and digital | Think of a film negative as a cardboard with a cutout of something on it. When you shine a flashlight through the cardboard, it will cast a shadow of whatever's in it.
In an actual photo, you cast the "shadow" from the film negative on a paper that has light sensitive chemicals. The darkest part of the film negative will therefore block most of the light (cast the darkest shadow) on the paper, so that part will appear bright. Same thing applies to the lightest part of the film negative. The colors appear from the color of the shadow. That paper will be the actual photo. The film negative acts as your "memory card" so you can reprint photos as much as you like.
Most digital cameras work with something called a charge coupled device(CCD) behind the lens, instead of a film. Basically what a CCD does is to manipulate charges/signals according to a certain stimulus, in this case light.
CCD's are composed of tiny pixels, each recording the light it receives. Every four of those pixels, each in a square formation, contain one color filter each(red, blue and two green), so the colors are slightly lower res than the actual image resolution.
So in short a digital camera works by having very small squares record what kind of light they see, and save it on memory.
| [
"Digital negatives offer many advantages, such as the ability to shoot with a digital camera and edit digitally while still working with alternative or traditional photographic processes. Small, analog negatives can be scanned and enlarged digitally to create new negatives instead of using the traditional enlarging... |
Was 200,000 Jews really conscripted into the German Wehrmacht during WWII? | It did happen however the number is closer to 150,000. It should also be noted that they were not outright "Jews" but rather "Mischling" by German Law.
Here it how it works. In Nazi Germany the Nuremberg Laws (1935) defined "Jew" as someone who, regardless of religious affiliation had 3 Jewish grandparents. You were also considered a Jew if you were a "Geltungsjude" or "Jew of Legal Validity." This was determined if you met any one of the following:
- You were enrolled as member of a Jewish congregation when the Nuremberg Laws were passed, or after they were passed
- You were married to a Jew
- You were the offspring of a Jewish parent
So what is a Mischling? A Mischling is a "mixed breed." If you had two Jewish grandparents you were a Mischling of the first degree, and if you had one you were a Mischling of the second degree. You were then put through the Mischling test who's second part had the above standards (religion, marriage, etc). If you met any of those you were no longer a Mischling but rather a Geltungsjude.
Mischlings, though no preferable to Aryans *could* live and work in German culture and according to [this source from the University of Kansas](_URL_0_) about 150,000 of these Mischlings actually fought in the Wehrmacht.
I would compare life as Mischling to the life as a half-white/half-black individual in the American South. Sure you could own property and hold a job but the jobs you could work would be very limited because people wouldn't hire you, police would discriminate against you, etc. | [
"OKW and OKH secret reports show that half-Jews could only serve in \"Ersatzreserve II\" or \"Landwehr II\", while quarter-Jews remained in the Wehrmacht and were eligible for promotion. Employment or promotion of quarter-Jews required Hitler's approval. Cambridge University researcher Bryan Rigg noted that there w... |
is there any benefit to turning my phone off at night? does it need to "rest"? | No. Modern smartphones are designed to only need to be rebooted for major upgrades. Turning it off at other times makes absolutely no difference other than battery consumption when not plugged in. | [
"More recent research suggests that strobe lights are not effective at waking sleeping adults with hearing loss and suggest that a different alarm tone is much more effective. Individuals in the hearing loss community are seeking changes to improved awakening methods.\n",
"The energy-saving sleep state powers off... |
how do you make a car more "reliable" | In general reliable cars come from years of iterative design and improvement. For example, you might design a car that ends up having 10 common faults. You fix these faults in the next redesign of the car and release it to the market. Consumers then discover another 5 faults and you fix those for the next redesign and so on. This is how companies like Honda work, they also (in general) only make small changes between models to make sure reliability doesn't suffer hugely.
You also tend to find that reliability falls when a car company makes a huge overhaul to a car with many changes at once.
Car companies also go through absolutely huge amounts of testing on all components - they put all of them through rigorous stress testing, testing in all climates, drive them for miles over rattle strips to make bits of the dash come loose, soak them in gallons of water to check leaks, leave parts in the desert to check UV degradation etc...
| [
"Reliability is a major contributor to brand or company image, and is considered a fundamental dimension of quality by most end-users. For example, recent market research shows that, especially for women, reliability has become an automobile's most desired attribute.\n",
"The engine and the car levels determine h... |
why does the body need to be trained for cardio? what does your body do when at first u can’t run 1 mile but after a while u can run 10? | None of the three answers yet actually address the question, IMHO. I’ll take a stab at it:
Your body’s constantly trying balance a bunch of finite resources. If your heart doesn’t need to pump much blood all the time, the energy to maintain the heart muscle to do that would be better spent somewhere else. Cardio training (and all other muscle training) is just telling the body that it needs to start devoting some of its resources to those muscle groups now. | [
"Bradycardia is not necessarily problematic. People who regularly practice sports may have sinus bradycardia, because their trained hearts can pump enough blood in each contraction to allow a low resting heart rate. Sinus bradycardia can also be an adaptive advantage; for example, diving seals may have a heart rate... |
If I blow my nose with a piece of toilet paper, would it be more environmentally friendly to put that paper in the toilet (to be flushed later) or in the garbage to be hauled away by a truck? | I have the same question regarding vegetable matter in the garbage disposal vs. garbage bin (ignoring composting). | [
"From an environmental standpoint, bidets can reduce the need for toilet paper. Considering that an average person uses only of water for cleansing once using a bidet, much less water is used than for making toilet paper. An article in \"Scientific American\" concluded that using a bidet is \"much less stressful on... |
Slavery seems to have a very prominent role in the popular conception of the Roman Empire, then sort of seems to fade away and become relevant again during the 17th-19th centuries. To what extent and how was slavery practiced in Western Europe following the collapse of the Western Roman State? | Hello, [here](_URL_0_) is a post I wrote a little while ago about post-Roman slavery in the British Isles. I hope it's useful and I'm happy to answer further questions :) | [
"Slavery was common in Classical Greece and in the earlier Roman Empire. It was legal in the Byzantine Empire but became rare after the first half of 7th century. From 11th century, semi-feudal relations largely replaced slavery. Under the influence of Christianity, a shift in the view of slavery is noticed, which ... |
what are the rules for fan made merchandise? if it is illegal like i think it is, how do companies like etsy and redbubble get away with it? | This would fall under copyright, and the gray area of copyright is confusing and hard to navigate. However, here is some basic information on this kind of scenario. Before going further: I'm not a lawyer, so please don't take my word as gospel.
What this boils down to is that you're going to be at the mercy of the copyright holder of whatever product you're making unlicensed merchandise of. Meaning that if they catch wind of your product and don't like you doing it, they can shut you down. Thankfully, with copyright, this isn't always going to happen. They are not legally compelled to enforce their copyright on all cases.
That said, avoid using any form of trademark. Unlike copyrights, trademarks MUST be protected in order to remain trademarks, and must be done universally. Meaning that if the trademark holder in question finds your works, they are legally obligated to get you to stop producing those works.
Though if experience tells me anything, most companies will send out C & Ds if they've got problems with your works, rather than take you to court to start. Litigation is costly for both sides, and stamps are cheap, emails cheaper. If you wind up getting a C & D, I'd urge complying to save you the hassle of a legal battle. | [
"Most fan labor products are derivative works, in that they are creative additions or modifications to an existing copyrighted work, or they are original creations which are inspired by a specific copyrighted work. Some or all of these works may fall into the legal category of transformative works (such as a parody... |
I've read that nazis' hate for jews derived of the fact that they were a race without a nation, and as a result were considered "parasites"[sic] of other nations. Would nazis then have approved of the construction of a jewish state like Israel? | Not really, no.
What is important to understand regarding the Nazi world view is that not only were Jews regarded as an existential thread due to their "international character" but also that Nazi policy did undergo an evolution during the Nazis' tenure in power.
As for the first factor: Rather than thinking of the Jews as "parasites" and dangerous because they didn't have a state/homeland, the lack of a Jewish state/homeland was seen as an expression of their "parasitic" and dangerous character. Within the formation of modern anti-Semitism in the 19th century, the fact that Jews were regarded as different because they had no nation/homeland quickly was turned upside down and what had been one of the initial causes for the construction of difference quickly became a viewed as a symptom of an alleged "racial character".
In the tradition of völkisch thought as formulated by thinkers such as Gobineau and Houston Steward Chamberlain races as the main historical actors were seen as acting through the nation, the latter being basically their tool or outlet to compete in Social Darwinist competition between them. The Jews thought of as a race had no nation - seen as their own race, which dates back to them being imperial subject and older stereotypes of them as "the other" - but were a "race" that acted internationally rather than nationally – the absence of a nation both evidence and symptom of this. In order to be able to compete within the racial conflict them having no nation were seen as acting in a conspiratorial manner. Chamberlain e.g. made them out to be the controlling parasites behind political action and order that was seen as anti-national such as the Catholic Church or the Habsburg Empire. The anti-Semitism that formed here in the later stages of the 19th century is in effect a ideology of conspiracy, alleging a Jewish conspiracy in order to weaken their racial competitors.
The clearest example of such a way of thinking can be found in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a political treatise produced by the Tsarist Secret Police at some point in 1904/05 that alleges to be the minutes of a meeting of the leaders of the Jewish world conspiracy where they discuss their plans to get rid of all the world's nations and take over the world. Despite these protocols being debunked as a forgery really quick, they had a huge impact on many anti-Semitic and völkisch thinkers in Europe, not at least for some in the Habsburg empire such as Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels and others which were most likely read by the young Hitler.
The whole trope of the Jewish conspiracy as formulated by völkisch thought took on a whole new importance with the end of WWI, the Bolshevik revolution, and the subsequent attempts at revolution in Germany and elsewhere.
The defeat of the Central powers were seen by many of its soldiers and ardent supporters not as a military defeat but as a "stab in the back". The way the war ended in Germany with revolts of soldiers and the deposition of the monarchy by Social Democrats was the foundation for this myth that in essence revolved around Germany not being defeated by the Entente but by the enemies within. The trope of the enemy within being Jews and leftists had been brewing for a long time (see the Jew count of the German army in 1916/17) but really came to the forefront with the defeat. What follwed compounded this further. The violence of revolution and counter-revolution as well as the treaty of Versaille lead to many völkisch inclined thinkers and political actors believing that Germany's defeat and the subsequent peace terms could only be explained by a concerted act of the jewish conspiracy leading to internal enemies stabbing Germany in the back, threatening the very German way of life through Bolshevism and preparing the Jewish-Bolshevik takeover of Germany by making it defenseless through the Versaille treaty.
Democracy seen as faulty and antithetical to the German racial character and communism as an essential anti-national movement were both shunned by these völkisch ideologues and explained through a concerted effort by a conspiracy of the anti-national "race", the Jews. This was the very core idea of völkisch thought and of Nazi Weltanschauung. In the end, for Hitler and many of his followers it was the only way to explain the state of the world because it hinged on this Social Darwinist, ultra-nationalist view of history being a history of races competing for power and supremacy.
Within this matrix of ideological delusion, the effort of the Zionist movement to establish a Jewish national homeland in Palestine were not seen as an attempt to overcome this assumed "international character" of Judaism but rather as a further ploy in its international machinations to fight the "Aryan race". Rather than being welcomed by völkisch ideologues, Zionism was condemned as "unnatural" for there was no traditional, bllod-and-soil homeland of the Jews and "artificially" creating rather than having one through racial tradition was seen as dangerous rather than welcomed. Thus, the Nazis very explicitly did not approve of any such initiatives to create a state like Israel or the Zionist project as a whole, because no matter where they were, the Jews were always regarded as a danger and a mortal enemy.
But the Nazis once in power were also following a path of what was possible and thus an internal, ideologically constraint pragmatism. Once in power, what seemed possible was to rid Germany of the Jews. Not having had concrete plans of physical annihilation, the program that seemed viable was to rid all of their controlled territory of Jews. Thus, the frequently cited Haavara agreement between Zionist organizations and the Third Reich represents an outcome of this ideological pragmatism in the sense that while for the Zionists it was a way to save Jews from German discrimination, for the Germans it was a way to reach their intermediate goal – ridding Germany of Jews – and profiting economically from it. Rather than an endorsement of Zionism, it represented a policy of what was possible at the time.
The same applies to the Madagascar Plan, meaning the plan to deport the Jews in Europe under German rule to Madagascar after the capitulation of France. I've written about this before [here](_URL_0_) but it is imperative to recognize the plan for what it was: A proposal that already contained elements of genocide.
Rather than envisioning a Jewish state on the Island, the proposal for the plan made it out to become what was basically a large scale concentration camp: Deporting 5 million people toparts of the island that could only support – according to their own estimates – 7000 families. They designed the whole thing basically like a ghetto and assumed the Jews would succumb to the harsh conditions as they were already in other German Ghettos.
So, in short, the creation of a Jewish homeland was never planned nor welcomed by the Nazis. Rather, it was regarded as dangerous and any plans made by the Nazis themselves such as the Madagascar Plan did not want to establish a Jewish state, rather planning a huge ghetto/concentration camp where the Jews would die slowly under German supervision.
Sources:
* Chrisoph Dieckmann: Jüdischer Bolschewismus 1917 bis 1921. In: Fritz Bauer Jahrbuch 2012.
* Robert Gerwarth: The Central European Counter-Revolutionary: Paramilitary Violence in Germany, Austria, and Hungary after the Great War.
* Andre Gerrits: Anti-Semitism and Anti-Communism in Easter Europe.
* Peter Pulzer: The rise of political anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria. | [
"The mainstream Nazi anti-Semitism considered the Jewry being a group of people bound by close, so-called blood (genetic) ties, to form a unit, which one could not join or secede from. The influence of Jews was declared to have detrimental impact on Germany, to rectify their discriminations and persecutions. To be ... |
why does chronic sleep deprivation cause erectile dysfunction? | Sleep deprivation is a huge stress for your body. Evolution has built us that way - if you are that much stressed, the last thing you need at that moment is having sex | [
"Sleep disturbance is not only associated with the onset of manic or hypomanic episodes but also displays a residual symptom of manic and depressive episodes. They are associated with residual depressive symptoms and perceived cognitive performance and can thereby negatively influence the functioning and recovery o... |
why isn't worshipping jesus considered idol worship in the christian faith? | In catholicism jesus is part of the Holy trinity. Father, son and holy spirit...all 1 God, same person, just different forms. Weird, I admit, but that's my explanation. | [
"Christian deists consider themselves to be disciples, or students, of Jesus because Jesus taught the natural laws of God. But Christian deists believe that Jesus was only human. Jesus had to struggle with his own times of disappointment, sorrow, anger, prejudice, impatience, and despair, just as other human beings... |
neurologically speaking, why do people learn in different ways (ie kinesthetic, visual, etc)? | Some scientists say the whole concept is bogus. NPR recently did a [story](_URL_0_) on this topic that you might like. | [
"All healthy, normally developing human beings learn to use language. Children acquire the language or languages used around them: whichever languages they receive sufficient exposure to during childhood. The development is essentially the same for children acquiring sign or oral languages. This learning process is... |
What does it actually mean to “die peacefully” in your sleep? Is this even possible? | During REM sleep the body is paralyzed ti prevent movement during dream state.
When you are having trouble breathing due ti oak if oxygen, the body can jerk you awake using a body reflex.
If you combine poor breathing with rem state paralysis the body may not be able to rake you from your dream, thus passing while asleep. Keep in mind this is only one possibility. No blood flow eg heart attack means brain damage. Hypoxia. | [
"In this context, sleep may also be considered a metaphor for death, both as an eventual equalizer of all things, and for the allusion to a \"crossing over,\" as in a river, a prevalent theme in Western spiritual beliefs.\n",
"\"Sleepless\" was written by Hannah Barker and Liam Jarvis, and was performed in Shored... |
how are some cars so much more expensive than other cars. eg. 1,000,000$ car vs. 20,000$ car. | It's not just the style; it's the material they use, the speeds they can reach (for sports cars), the size of the vehicle, the rarity, etc.
It's like saying why they can't just kill more snakes to make snake-skinned boots so they aren't $4,000 dollars. Snakes are rare and so is carbon fiber. Snake skinned boots are hard to make and so is carbon fiber. Thus, a vehicle with a full carbon fiber chassis is worth much more than your standard metal chassis honda and the same reason why snake skinned boots cost more than your vans. | [
"The increasing popularity of these commercial vehicles in the late 1990s and early 2000s, however, pushed their average price to nearly double the average passenger car cost. In response, the 2002 Tax Act increased this \"Section 179 depreciation deduction\" to US$75,000, and it rose again to US$102,000 for the 20... |
How do things like Bop It manage to generate pseudorandom numbers? | A very common way to generate random numbers in a small embedded device like that is to have a fairly fast free-running counter. When the device receives some input (like the player pressing the start button) the counter is read and that can provide a dozen or so bits of entropy, which is plenty to make a game like Bop It random. (If it needed more, it could read the counter every time you activate one of the thingies on the game, and accumulate entropy.) It probably uses this entropy to seed a simple PRNG like a LFSR.
Building a reasonably-good hardware random number source is not hard, but it would add a few cents or tens of cents to the toy's cost, and at the volumes those things are made that's a significant price. The free-running-counter approach can usually be implemented very cheaply. | [
"A pseudorandom number generator (PRNG), also known as a deterministic random bit generator (DRBG), is an algorithm for generating a sequence of numbers whose properties approximate the properties of sequences of random numbers. The PRNG-generated sequence is not truly random, because it is completely determined by... |
how did the first land bound life forms know we needed water to survive? | How did you know to suck your mothers teat? How is it that all puppies, kittens and even little babies know to flee from pain?
It's instinct. Evolution has brought us certain tendencies born right into us. If we never felt like drinking water when we needed it we'd die. If we couldn't distinguish salt water from fresh and we couldn't handle one or the other? We'd die. | [
"Major human settlements could initially develop only where fresh surface water was plentiful, such as near rivers or natural springs. Throughout history, people have devised systems to make getting water into their communities and households and disposing (and later also treating) wastewater more conveniently.\n",... |
is the ability to sing a natural or acquired talent? | Check out this interesting [story](_URL_0_) from Radiolab. | [
"Musical ability is inherent in almost all people, to a greater or lesser extent. However, those who develop it to a high level are generally encouraged to play an instrument or to sing at an early age. Late bloomers in music are generally composers or artists who became prominent later in life, but had displayed m... |
Can anyone explain the Mouse Utopia experiments in a less tinfoil-hatty way? | To start out, [The Smithsonian](_URL_3_) has a simple but brief overview of the experiments. On the opposite extreme, [Population density, social pathology, and behavioral ecology](_URL_0_) by Jim Moore (unfortunately, behind a paywall) discusses Calhoun's and similar experiments in a fair amount of detail. In particular, it argues that the supposed degradation and "maladaptive" behaviors identified by Calhoun could in fact be explained by simple (but non-linear) behavioral models (basically, he just points out that different strategies are viable at different population densities).
As with many experiments that gain widespread notoriety, the conclusions drawn from Calhoun's experiments among researchers differ somewhat from those drawn by the general public. At the time the experiments were publicized (1960s) overpopulation was a major concern, as was the possibility of "moral decay," and overpopulation remained a major political topic until the 80s. The bleak results of the experiments played into public fears about overpopulation. These days overpopulation is less discussed because of declining birth rates in developed countries, as well as greater focus on other concerns such as global warming and pollution.
In scientific fields the link between population density and social problems, especially crime, had already been under investigation for a while ([example](_URL_5_)). However, greater public interest did lead to more experimentation. Your video seems to mention this briefly, but Calhoun's experiments did not generalize to humans. In fact, the effect of overpopulation on different animals remains a popular topic of study and the results tend to vary quite a bit between species.
To start off with a couple simple examples: clearly bees and ants can live in dense hive structures without great difficulty while animals like lions and whales react very poorly to even modestly small enclosures (much to the dismay of zoos). So the idea that different species react differently shouldn't come as too big of a shock.
To link you a couple studies, overpopulation in [guppies](_URL_2_) leads to more male-male competition (similar to Calhoun's experiments) but not to less copulation (not similar). In chimps higher density was found to [decrease](_URL_1_) aggressive behavior.
Modern researchers have also found results similar to Calhoun's when they study mice while providing more insight into related questions, such as [this study](_URL_4_) which also finds that overpopulation produces particular stress on male mice.
It is worth noting that all of these experiments had slightly different goals and none of them pursued the same "wait until extreme overpopulation is reached" methodology that Calhoun did. Calhoun himself encouraged much of the apocalyptic interpretations, by giving his own experiments evocative names like "Utopia" and "Behavioral Sink." This kind of fanciful description is typically avoided today, because it tends to influence interpretations (see how Jim Moore reinterpreted Calhoun's results above). | [
"Mouse Trap is a 1981 arcade maze game developed by Exidy. The game design is similar to \"Pac-Man\", replacing Pac-Man with a mouse, the dots with cheese, the ghosts with cats, and the power pills with bones. The unique element of \"Mouse Trap\" is that color-coded doors in the maze can be toggled by pressing a bu... |
What makes an atomic bomb/explosion stop expanding? Why don't atoms continue to split more atoms etc? | The short answer is they blow up. Which is to say the stuff needed for the reaction is violently pushed apart. As a result there is only a very narrow time window for the reaction to occur.
There are two types of nuclear weapons:
- Fission (Uranium/Plutonium bombs)
- Fusion (Hydrogen bombs)
It is worth noting that a hydrogen bomb has a fission bomb wrapped around the outside.
In both cases the trick is to mash things together at really high densities to make things work. In the case of a fusion bomb the densities and energies needed are so high that you need a fission bomb around the outside to compress and heat the hydrogen enough to fuse.
Problem is when the reactions occur the forces start pushing out (that is the bomb's "*boom*"). As a result there is only a very small slice of time where the stuff going "*boom*" is in the right conditions to go "*boom*".
I forget the number but the amount of material in a nuclear bomb that actually undergoes fission/fusion is something like a few percent (2-4% of the material). I am probably wrong on that number but it's close. | [
"Ordinarily, atoms are mostly electron clouds by volume, with very compact nuclei at the center (proportionally, if atoms were the size of a football stadium, their nuclei would be the size of dust mites). When a stellar core collapses, the pressure causes electrons and protons to fuse by electron capture. Without ... |
why was cloning such a big deal in the 90's but now is rarely spoken about? | There were a lot of breakthroughs in the '90s, and that made it new and exciting and a big deal. And naturally also very blown out of proportion.
There are still advances being made, but nothing huge.
Cloning would not make a species viable, either. You need genetic diversity, which is the exact *opposite* of cloning. | [
"President George W. Bush said that human cloning was \"deeply troubling\" to most Americans. Kansas Republican Sam Brownback said that Congress should ban all human cloning, while some Democrats were worried that Clonaid announcement would lead to the banning of therapeutic cloning. FDA biotechnology chief Dr. Phi... |
Does the confirmation of the Higgs Boson have any implications for String Theory? Does it strengthen it, weaken it, or have no effect? | Little effect, there are some theories with large extra dimensions that would require no Higgs (they have their own mechanism producing the same end effect without adding a boson), so those theories are probably feeling it a bit, but otherwise it sheds little light on the landscape.
| [
"An initial focus of research was to investigate the possible existence of the Higgs boson, a key part of the Standard Model of physics which is predicted by theory but had not yet been observed before due to its high mass and elusive nature. CERN scientists estimated that, if the Standard Model were correct, the L... |
Why was Pilot Wave Theory / de Broglie-Bohm theory considered controversial and ultimately discarded by most physicists? What does it mean for a theory to be nonlocal? What paradoxes would be created by combining relativity and de Broglie-Bohm? | As a general rue any "interpretation" of quantum mechanics better be *especially* compelling in order to gain significant traction with physicists, because interpretations of quantum mechanics are a branch of philosophy, not science. One of the main reasons de Broglie-Bohm theory isn't *especially* compelling is its non-locality. What this means is that the pilot wave in the theory (the wave that guides the particle) can send signals to itself faster than the speed of light. Now due to the way the theory is constructed, this can never be used to actually send information faster than light in practice. You don't ever see the pilot wave (it is a "hidden variable"); only the particle. Nevertheless if you take the theory seriously, you must contend with the fact that the theory includes as "real" objects that travel faster than light, and therefore violate special relativity. Why is this a problem? Well again it's not a problem *scientifically*, since you don't ever see the pilot wave. But it is a problem philosophically if you take it seriously, because faster-than-light motion results in causal paradoxes. The reason is that if A follows B in one reference frame, and the distance between A and B is farther than light could have traveled in the time between A and B, then when viewed in another reference frame moving at a different velocity, B will follow A. See the wikipedia article about the [tachyonic antitelephone](_URL_0_) for more discussion. More generally, violation of relativity just seems *wrong* to most physicists; it is a simple and beautiful symmetry of nature that has an impeccable record of not only passing every experimental test, but of making surprising predictions (like antiparticles) that have turned out to be correct. Sure it's *possible* that relativity is violated in some *hidden variable* but remains true experimentally, but such baggage seems unnecessary given some of the other compelling interpretations of QM that have gained traction with physicists. | [
"Pilot-wave theory is explicitly nonlocal, which is in ostensible conflict with special relativity. Various extensions of \"Bohm-like\" mechanics exist that attempt to resolve this problem. Bohm himself in 1953 presented an extension of the theory satisfying the Dirac equation for a single particle. However, this w... |
How did the Bismarck compare technologically to the allied fleet? | It was essentially a 1915 design copy pasted to the 1930s. With a newer model of gun, and some new engines.
What that meant was she was still hindered by the expectation of a short range brawl in the North Sea. Where stopping shells coming horizontally was the key. But even during WW1 increasing ranges meant that fire would be coming down at a very steep plunging direction.
But her double armoured deck and turtle back scheme was problematic. It meant that while certain key areas were protected, the top armor might deflect a shell into other key areas which would then be penetrated and destroyed. There was also the problem that a small volume was protected this way than peer ships. Meaning that she had less reserve buoyancy. In general German heavy ships were hard to sink by gunfire, but could be made impotent quickly. And as soon as they started to flood it was all over.
There were also serious issues with her ability to handle after a problem to a propeller or rudder that were demonstrated on her final voyage. And concerns about the placement and forget if her armour belt on the sides. And her fire control scheme, and poorly placed radar position.
And finally her armament didn't help her. While all ships in 1941 were light on AA, Bismarck's reliance on a mixed battery of single purpose guns meant she was getting less bang for her buck and thus less protection.
/u/fourthmaninaboat and /u/jschooltiger actually had a wonderful conversation on this topic in a thread last week. | [
"Despite the fact that Raeder and other senior naval officers envisioned using \"Bismarck\" and \"Tirpitz\" as commerce raiders against first French and later British shipping in the Atlantic, and in fact used them in that role during World War II, the ships were not designed for that mission. Their steam turbines ... |
What would happen if you swallowed gasoline? Say maybe 8 oz and no vomiting. | First off, it would be best to call poison control immediately and follow their instructions, but since that's not what you're asking, I'll give it a go: 8oz is not enough to kill (depending on the size of the person). If you ingest the gasoline, you will vomit as it is recognized as a poison by the body and will likely make you very sick for several hours. Water and milk are good to coat the stomach and flush out the poison.
That all being said, if you were to develop cold or flu like symptoms or if you drank twelve or more ounces, it's time to go to the hospital.
Hope that helps. | [
"Contrary to common misconception, swallowing gasoline does not generally require special emergency treatment, and inducing vomiting does not help, and can make it worse. According to poison specialist Brad Dahl, \"even two mouthfuls wouldn't be that dangerous as long as it goes down to your stomach and stays there... |
why do i physically feel horrible immediately when seeing gory photos? | This is an evolutionary "trait" of sorts. Similar to how some people faint after seeing blood.
My guess would be that humans subconsciously see blood and gore as 'something that's gone terribly wrong' and should be heeded as a warning. After all, if you saw someone suddenly shot and bleeding, wouldn't you be somewhat shocked? | [
"\"When I saw these pictures, it really freaked me out,\" said Jalil Hasan. His mother said: \"Right now I feel very violated ... When I'm looking at these pictures, and I'm looking at these snapshots, I'm feeling, 'Where did I send my child?'\"\n",
"it's ... the spectacle of the thing, right? You really want to ... |
Question about concave mirrors, projectors, and real images. | [This is in fact almost exactly how flight simulators work.](_URL_0_) The key to it is a collimating lens that means the user doesn't have to sit in a precise spot and the image truly feels 3 dimensional. Check out the linked wikipedia article for a good diagram (that, good for you, looks almost exactly like your diagram).
All you would need to do is add the touch/motion sensing. | [
"Parabolic reflectors are popular for use in creating optical illusions. These consist of two opposing parabolic mirrors, with an opening in the center of the top mirror. When an object is placed on the bottom mirror, the mirrors create a real image, which is a virtually identical copy of the original that appears ... |
I'm a king in an average sized European castle in the Middle Ages. How do I get candles? Surely my candle use would be enormous. Do I have a guy whose sole job is candle maker, or do I have to import them from somewhere else? | I completely love this question.
The courts of the late Middle Ages used an absolutely *mind-blowing* amount of lighting--individual tapers, full candelabras and chandeliers, larger torches when brighter light was culturally significant. (For example, on either side of the altar at Mass, or using twice as many to light the duke of Burgundy's dining table as the table of his relatives/rivals.) To give just one example, when Edward I lay in state following his death in 1307, the royal household purchased *843 pounds* of wax for candles to surround his body. A *minor* court official under him would still receive a candlelit wake of 300 candles. Yes, supplied by the royal family--in fact, distribution of candles as gifts/livery to court members was a *major* drain on medieval royal wax resources.
When it came to acquisition of necessary goods in late medieval royal courts, Malcolm Vale argues that it was almost always the case that the king relied upon a group of outside merchants for the supply, rather than having designated "court artists" to provide e.g. furniture or tapestries. (Often, though, the same names appear in records at numerous points in a king's reign, suggesting the existence of favorites/known reliable workers to turn to). It was little different with candles.
Responsibility for the acquisition of candles and related goods in the court culture orbit of late medieval Burgunday-France-England generally lay with a designated official of the king's household. Often candles, specifically, were the responsibility of someone with another central task--but not always the same task. French king Philip the Fair, for example, had a specific staff dedicated to making sure fruit, dates, and nuts appeared on all tables at meals. One or more of these *fruitiers* was responsible for the acquisition of "candles and wax" and "great torches." And not just for meals, either. Household accounts often add "for the chapel" or "for the Mass-altar" or some such.
Meanwhile, under Henry III of England, a *goldsmith* actually seems to have been in charge of candle selection! Edward Fitz Odo was an "ascended craftsman" of sorts--he was actually responsible for overseeing a *lot* of the artistic-type needs of the court. He would find and hire painters for ever-more elaborate decoration of the royal chamber (four Gospel authors for four walls, amirite?)--and sometimes, it seems, for new *construction* on the castle. Among Odo's responsibilities was, you guessed it, acquiring the candles needed to put on the proper show.
One thing I'm really intrigued by is the way many of the primary sources (quoted by Vale, and then a few I found via typing phrases in Google because *that is how I roll*) distinguish between "candles" and "wax." I'm not sure if this means that lump beeswax was acquired, at which point the household organizer would also have to have hired chandlers to finish the job; or if we are to make a distinction between *wax* candles and *tallow* candles. I would honestly assume the latter, except tallow candles are generally associated with middle/lower classes, being cheaper but less user-friendly. And if we're dealing with people who can burn down *843 pounds of wax* for a *dead body*, cost is probably not the first factor on their minds. | [
"During the Middle Ages, tallow candles were most commonly used. By the 13th century, candle making had become a guild craft in England and France. The candle makers (chandlers) went from house to house making candles from the kitchen fats saved for that purpose, or made and sold their own candles from small candle... |
How do scientist know (what evidence is there) to show the decay rates of isotopes, such as carbon 14? | Radioactive decay is probabilisitc. What that means is that, in a given time period there is a 50% chance a particular nucleus will undergo spontaneous decay. So if you take a large number of them, half of them will have decayed in that time frame. That is why it's called a half life. If you wait a further half life, half of what you had remaining will now also have decayed. And so on
Now, the great thing with this is that there are many, many different isotopes, all of different stability. So they each have different half lives.
Now, if the half lives did not remain constant through time, it would be impossible to draw any comparisons between these different systems. However, what we see is that each isotope system is consistent with the others. So if I get a date using, say K-Ar dating, I will find the same date using U-Pb or Sm-Nd dating etc^* .
So, if I take isotope X which has a half life of 5 years, and isotope Y with a half life of 20 years, put a known volume of each in a box, and come back and measure them in 20 years, I'll have have half of my original Y isotope, and 1/16th of my original X isotope.
Even better than that, we can calibrate back into the geological record (at least some way) using stuff like ice cores, tree rings, varved sediments and fission track analysis to double check our maths (at least on the younger samples).
^* this is of course an oversimplification, as many isotopic systems can only be used in certain circumstances (i.e. when the parent, stable and daughter isotopes are in high enough concentrations to measure which will depend on rock type) and we have to be aware of potential complications such as metamorphic history, weathering etc which will can introduce inaccuracies. But careful sample collection and preparation does allow us to check these clocks against each other, and we get stunningly good agreement. | [
"By measuring the amount of radioactive decay of a radioactive isotope with a known half-life, geologists can establish the absolute age of the parent material. A number of radioactive isotopes are used for this purpose, and depending on the rate of decay, are used for dating different geological periods. More slow... |
what is frequency modulation and how are it's uses different from amplitude modulation? | FM would be like sending a signal by changing the color of the light or pitch of the sound, while AM is like changing the brightness of the light or the loudness of the sound. | [
"Frequency modulation and phase modulation are the two complementary principal methods of angle modulation; phase modulation is often used as an intermediate step to achieve frequency modulation. These methods contrast with amplitude modulation, in which the amplitude of the carrier wave varies, while the frequency... |
When did China start having conceptions of race? What is the history of race in China? | This doesn't answer your historical question, but it might be worth clearing up what people mean today by saying that race is a social construct.
There are different ethnicities in the world, but our decision to group different ethnicities together into large umbrellas of "race" is the social construct that most people are talking about.
We put Ashkenazi Jews, Greeks, Germans, Basques, and Slavs in the same "white" category. Are they so similar to each other, and so different from Arabs, Persians, and Kurds, that the categorization makes sense? Or does it all descend from somewhat arbitrary line drawing?
Does the U.S. Census Bureau's categorization of South Asians, East Asians, and Pacific Islanders as a single category of "Asian/Pacific Islander" follow some kind of principled system, or is it an arbitrary categorization that makes sense only in the context of American society?
It's also worth noting that we tend to account for shared culture and language when drawing the lines of ethnicity in the first place. So meaningfully separating culture from race is difficult to begin with, and I'm not sure what you'd be able to do with the isolated variables. | [
"Historian Frank Dikötter (1990:420) says the Chinese \"idea of 'race' (\"zhong\" [種], \"seed\", \"species\", \"race\") started to dominate the intellectual scene\" in the late 19th-century Qing dynasty and completed the \"transition from cultural exclusiveness to racial exclusiveness in modern China\" in the 1920s... |
What period in human history have literacy rates been the highest as a percentage of the worlds population? | It may safely be assumed that today's literacy rates are unprecedented: Unesco reports that "Since 1950, the adult literacy rate at the world level has increased by 5 percentage points every decade on average, from 55.7% in 1950 to 86.2% in 2015" (*Reading the past, writing the future*, Paris 2016) - and most of the 1950 total represents European and north American countries with rates in excess of 90-95% (Unesco, *World literacy at mid-century*, Paris 1957), a condition that certainly doesn't apply in earlier centuries.
There's really no reliable way to measure global rates before the 20th century, except to say they were lower than today's or even the 1950 level - inevitably given the spread of education in the 19th and 20th centuries. Even in Europe, barely half of the population seems to have enjoyed functional literacy as late as 1850, and fewer still could read earlier in the century. The US seems to have been a 19th-century leader with extensive schoolong, but even there a fifth were illiterate in 1870, more than a tenth in 1900.
Rates doubtless had their downs as well as their ups, as conditions for written communication became less or more favourable in particular periods, as reflected in the varying availability of written sources over time. But the long-run trend has certainly been upward with the spread of writing itself and later of general basic schooling and printing. | [
"Literacy data published by UNESCO displays that since 1950, the adult literacy rate at the world level has increased by 5 percentage points every decade on average, from 55.7 per cent in 1950 to 86.2 per cent in 2015. However, for four decades, the population growth was so rapid that the number of illiterate adult... |
what are mac adresses for computers and how are they different from ip adresses? | MAC adresses are hard-coded into physical hardware devices (and cannot be changed) - sort of like the street address for your house. IP address are set in software and can be moved/changed - sort of like your phone number.
When you call 911, the operator can tell what your address is because your physical address has been mapped to a particular phone number. You can change your phone number or move it to another house, but the street address for your house will never change (realistically). | [
"Apple Developer, formerly Apple Developer Connection or ADC, is Apple Inc.'s developer network. It is designed to make available resources to help software developers write software for the macOS, tvOS, watchOS, and iOS platforms. Those applications are created in Xcode or other programs that are not created by Ap... |
A simple F=MA problem that frustrates my brain. | If your car is coasting along (ie engine not actively powering wheels) and you include friction, then your car will be slowing down gradually. Friction between the wheels and the ground (rolling friction) would manifest as a force in the direction opposite of the car's movement, resulting in a small acceleration in the same direction.
If you want a car to travel at a constant speed while considering rolling friction, you must be applying energy to the wheels by some mechanism to oppose the losses due to friction. You'll still have the rolling friction force going in the opposite direction, but you'd have an equal and opposite force driving the wheels forward to get you a net force of 0.
> Would you or would you not need another force to overcome the friction and therefore make the car's acceleration equal to zero? More fundamentally, what would the net force on the car be?
You would indeed need some other force to cancel out the friction to result in zero acceleration. And if you have zero acceleration, the net force will be zero. | [
"Practitioners and researchers have suggested many ways of solving the A*P = F equation. It transpires that the most natural method – that of minimizing formula_9 by least squares regression – leads to unsatisfactory results. The large number of zeroes in the matrix \"A\" mean that function \"P\" turns out to be \"... |
What is the probable true extent of Koko the gorilla's intelligence? (Additional question for anyone fluent in ASL) | Intelligence and the ability to communicate are not really the same thing. If by intelligence you mean the ability to communicate higher order cognitive functions such as emotions, deception etc I think you're not going to find an answer. People associate intelligence with language, but who says they must both exist in tandem? We may not understand the bounds of intelligence. We see squid seeing with their tentacles with no eyes. The animal kingdom continually amazes us. Depending on who you ask Koko, Kanzi, Panbanisha, Alex the African grey could all be considered "exceptions". Just as extraordinary human individuals exist, extraordinary animals are likely to exist.
My thoughts from my research are that Apes, Parrots and possibly other animals are more intelligent than we give them credit for. They have the ability to possess language it just is poorly understood by us. We place language in this tiny box reserved for humans because the components of religion etc have not came about in other animals.
We have to question whether the language of other animals is as complex as ours. What if we do not understand it? If we start with the hypothesis that animals do not have language because of the particular results of it we're examining a hero story. We know the ending and we're just searching for facts to prove ourselves right. We've spent so long placing ourselves above animals due to our cultural biases that we lack the objective scientific approach to animal language studies. Nonsense research like [Project Nim](_URL_0_) plague the scientific field because it seems like the obvious answer. African grey's exhibit convergence evolutionary aspects of language and their environment is quite similar as our hominin ancestors. I believe there is something we are missing in our studies of animal language and intelligence.
Many studies of ape language focus on gestural communication as a precursor for language as their brocas areas activate when they communicate manually. (This is the area that activates when we speak.) There was some type of switch between using our bodies and relying more on vocalizations and calls. I have my own theories about how music was a precursor to language and there recently there have been some research done into this idea, so obviously I'm not alone in this idea.
I would say though that most anthropologists feel one way, linguists another, psychologists another and it is really best to evaluate the facts yourself. | [
"Although many people who encounter Ahn-Kha dismiss his intelligence due to his resemblance to the Gray Ones, his own species of Grog is generally as intelligent (if not more so) than humans. Ahn-Kha is a great source of wisdom, something Valentine relies on almost as much as he relies on Ahn-Kha's strength.\n",
... |
why do professional singers, such as elvis presley and andrea bocelli, have a vibrato on every note? is it learned/does it make singing easier in some way? | Vibrato might make the sound a little more pleasant, and it also covers up tiny imperfections or discrepancies in pitch. | [
"Prior to the advent of the charismatic Rubini, every well-schooled opera singer had avoided using a conspicuous and continuous vibrato because, according to Scott, it varied the pitch of the note being sung to an unacceptable degree and it was considered to be an artificial contrivance arising from inadequate brea... |
Is there more evidence of observable black holes now? | Yes, one of the most striking examples is that the stars right at the centre of the galaxy are all [orbiting something massive and invisible](_URL_0_) over like a 20 year period.
And just this year, LIGO detected gravitational radiation from two colliding black holes. | [
"Such research has attracted much media attention, as black holes have long captured the imagination of both scientists and the public for both their innate simplicity and mysteriousness. The recent theoretical results have therefore undergone much scrutiny and most of them are now ruled out by theoretical studies.... |
How much of a concrete operations plan was "the Schlieffen Plan"? | I'm not an expert, I only know what I had to do on a bit of work over a year ago, but I remember getting a good mark on it:
Well the Schlieffen Plan relied on 5 *huge* assumptions in order to be successful:
Invading Belgium would cause no issue with the UK, or France.
Belgium would not resist, or be unable to delay, German invasion
Paris would be captured in a matter of days
Without France, the UK would sue for peace, if they even got involved
Russia would take at least 6 weeks to mobilise troops en masse, and could not stand against Germany
Basically the entire thing just seemed like it would be more accurate if it were a tactic of pre-Industrial Revolution era (though Germany was a relatively recently industrialised nation). Germany had great military minds in command, so the idea they'd rely on such a plan seems disingenuous, there were probably *similar* plans, and that a best case scenario would play out similar to the Schlieffen Plan, but I doubt this was what they were expecting.
Bear in mind, the Schlieffen Plan is not the plan that was shown in WWI anyway. The Schlieffen Plan is actually a collection separate war plans. One for a simple Franco-German war, one for Entente v Germany focused in the West, one Russo-German war, and another Entente-German war. Then both of the Entente plans were plans within plans, based on the participation (or lack thereof) of the UK and other European nations. So your reading of a "Schlieffen Plan" not truly existing are pretty accurate. The final war plans were a bit of a combination of plans, also from what I understand, the plans were not all that detailed.
Ignoring the practical limitations of getting the German forces through to Paris, which could be possible, just not in the timeframe dictated, but the plan failed on a political level with the invasion of Belgium, which is typical of Wilhelm's Germany and his fundamental misunderstanding of the Great Powers and their interactions.
Here's a couple readings:
Inventing the Schlieffen Plan: German War Planning, 1871–1914 (Zuber)
1914-1918: the History of the First World War (Stevenson)
Also, my favourite Reddit post, a huge repository of free ebooks:
_URL_0_ | [
"The Morgenthau Plan ( ) by the Allied occupation of Germany following World War II was a proposal to eliminate Germany's ability to wage war by eliminating its arms industry, and the removal or destruction of other key industries basic to military strength. This included the removal or destruction of all industria... |
complete quantum teleportation of photonic quantum bits | A bit is the basic unit of information. It's a logical question with either a yes or a no answer. Quantum teleportation of information has to do with a phenomenon known as "Quantum Entanglement" which means that particles are connected sort of like twins are connected in horror films. What one particle knows, the other inevitably knows no matter how far away they are.
Our method of sending and receiving information is limited by the speed of light. For example, we send out phone calls in radio waves which move at the speed of light, this is what photonic (photons are the particles that make up not only visible light, but radio/infared/ultraviolet etc) quantum bits are. Quantum teleportation, in theory, would work because the twin particles seem to "learn together" without having to send data to the other one.
Say we have a few sets of 'twin particles' here on Earth and in a lab on the face of the sun. On Earth we have all the 'older twins' and in our lab on the sun we have all the 'second born twins.' We have this lab stationed on the sun to alert us of when the sun explodes. Now imagine that the sun exploded; it would take 8 minutes for us on Earth to see the explosion happen, and we would have no time to react. The lab, being on the surface of the sun, gets this information the instant it happens. Because our particles here on Earth are entangled with the ones in that lab, we now know on Earth that the sun has just exploded and we have about 8 minutes to prepare our defenses against our impending death.
TL;DR - Conventional sending/receiving of bits of information are limited by the speed of light. Quantum Entanglement suggests that pairs of particles are connected in a special way such that if one particle 'learns' something, its partner instantly learns it as well, regardless of the distance between them. | [
"Quantum teleportation provides a mechanism of moving a qubit from one location to another, without having to physically transport the underlying particle to which that qubit is normally attached. Much like the invention of the telegraph allowed classical bits to be transported at high speed across continents, quan... |
What about deep breathing makes us lightheaded? | Hyperventilation removes more CO2 from the blood than is being released into the blood via cell respiration. This increases the pH of the blood, a condition called alkalosis, which in turn causes blood vessels to constrict, reducing blood flow. Alkalosis also reduces the amount of freely ionized calcium in the blood, which is essential for proper nerve functioning, and which also causes blood vessels to constrict, reducing blood flow to the brain further, which makes you feel lightheaded. | [
"Overly shallow breathing, also known medically as hypopnea, may result in hypoventilation, which could cause a build up of carbon dioxide in an individual's body, a symptom known as hypercapnia. It's a condition related to neuro-muscular disorders (NMDs) that include Lou Gehrig's Disease, Muscular Dystrophy, Polio... |
would the mass of a helium balloon be positive or negative and is there such a negative mass | The mass of a helium balloon is positive. The weight is negative. There might be such a thing as negative mass, but we haven't encountered such a thing yet. | [
"Negative mass is any region of space in which for some observers the mass density is measured to be negative. This could occur due to a region of space in which the stress component of the Einstein stress–energy tensor is larger in magnitude than the mass density. All of these are violations of one or another vari... |
why does the grocery store carry fully cooked frozen chicken and turkey, but not beef? | Not certain but perhaps its because there's a lot of different degrees at which different people like their meet cooked. | [
"Intensive farming of turkeys from the late 1940s dramatically cut the price, making it more affordable for the working classes. With the availability of refrigeration, whole turkeys could be shipped frozen to distant markets. Later advances in disease control increased production even more. Advances in shipping, c... |
why can't we just transfer antibodies from immune people to sick people to cure them easily? | Give a man antibodies and he's immune for however long they last. Teach a man's B-cells to make antibodies and they are immune for life (unless they stop making them in immune-compromised situations).
Antibodies are single use. They bind to something determined bad to mark it disposal and are removed with the bad thing. If there are not enough antibodies, you can't get rid of the bad things before the bad things make more of themselves. Certain treatments do harvest antibodies made from chemical reactions or manufactured cells to be put in humans.
Meanwhile, if you can train your body's immune B-cells to make antibodies, you will be immune as long as those cells produce antibodies. Vaccines give your body a taste of the bad things so you can produce your own immunity. This may be needed a few times to build up immunity (chicken pox) or repeatedly if the bad thing changes quickly (flu virus). | [
"Different antigens are able to escape through a variety of mechanisms. For example, the African trypanosome parasites are able to clear the host's antibodies, as well as resist lysis and inhibit parts of the innate immune response. Another bacteria, \"Bordetella pertussis\", is able to escape the immune response b... |
how does dental uv lights work on fillings? what makes it cures so fast? | Actually it is intense blue visible light, not UV light that they use for curing. As for how it works:
The material that is used for fillings is a resin based composite that is specially designed for that exact purpose. Resin is a polymer that looks similar in color to teeth and has physical properties that are desirable to be a replacement for a gap in a tooth, like its strength, durability, heat resistance, etc. Different polymers had been used in the past but they were much more difficult because polymerization (the polymer hardening from liquid to solid) would begin about 30 seconds after the components were mixed together, leaving dentists with very little room for error.
This led to the use of photoinitiators for resin fillings. By using a photoinitiator, polymerization would not begin until a specific wavelength of light (visible blue in this case) introduced its energy to the mix. The actual science behind photoinitiators is a little beyond what I'm comfortable explaining so I'll leave you to research them yourself. But them being in the resin allows the dentist all the time they could want because the liquid won't polymerize until the light is introduced, and once the light energy is given the reaction occurs quickly and irreversibly. This gives them more control and precision. | [
"Some task lights also come with built in magnifying glasses for detailed tasks. It is hard to overstate the benefits of having focused light alongside magnification for small, precise operations such as model building, sewing, or other high-detail activities. Dentists often use a task light with magnification to p... |
how redbull can afford to sponsor so many different (and expensive) sports, yet their product is only a drink? | Food technology business guy here.
Keep in mind that the operating and manufacturing costs for soft drinks are *ridiculously* low.
Food technology is pretty much just a basic set of chemicals that are essentially commodities (i.e., all products are nearly identical, so they all have an insanely low price). Because of the lengthy FDA GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) approval cycle, the majority of breakthroughs in food science today are just better ways to combine these different chemicals to get a certain recipe/application functionality, flavor, umami, or mouthfeel. It's not rocket surgery.
Of the ingredients that go into a soft drink, the highest cost will invariably be the packaging (the can) and the packaging coating (e.g., the chemical coating on the inside to make it food-safe). Everything else (phosphates, water, sugar, caffeine and its derivatives, dyes, flavoring...) is an industrial chemical that can be bought for a few hundred bucks a ton. Even carbonation is a technology that has been around since the 19th century. It's a well-perfected process.
The real money is in the marketing. Sustain a decade-long "Red Bull gives you wings" campaign and Red Bull's name becomes permanently beamed into people's minds when they think of energy drinks. So Red Bull can absolutely ask ~~$2.00~~ ~~$4.00~~ a brazillian dollars for a can that really only costs them a few cents to make. More for sugarfree or zero-calorie versions that takes virtually no extra effort to manufacture. Marketing is where the whole becomes worth more than the sum of its parts.
~~Sponsorship is equivalent to marketing, since they get to plaster their logo all over something that people actually *choose to watch* (as opposed to commercials). So this is accounted for in their budget and chalked up to the cost of increasing sales.~~ Someone pointed out to me that Red Bull actually *owns* their racing team, rather than just being the sponsor, so they gain income from the team. Doing stuff like the Baumgartner jump and sponsoring other teams, however, is part of the marketing.
Edit: Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick. I really did not expect this to blow up the way it did.
Edit edit: Thank you, kind /u/zTroII for the reddit gold! | [
"Consisting of a variety of different flavors such as fruit punch, green apple, and lemonade, the company also offers other flavors made for sponsorships with YouTubers, Twitch.tv streamers, and Esports gamers.\n",
"The sponsorship of sporting events and sportspeople is banned in many countries. For example, the ... |
Global Warming: Truth | This question has been discussed on /r/askscience several times before.
The most recent article I remember is:
[How solid is the scientific backing for anthropogenic global warming?](_URL_1_)
The top comment from that thread [can be found here](_URL_1_c1tfsky).
Other recent discussions:
* [I'm skeptical of Human Caused Global Warming, but I'm open minded! Can you convince me?](_URL_0_)
* [I remember the global warming scandal a few years back...What's up with that?](_URL_3_)
* [How do I explain global warming is really happening, in the simpliest and understandable way?](_URL_2_) | [
"After reading a 2007 speech by US Senator James Inhofe, who maintains that global warming is a hoax, John Cook created Skeptical Science as an internet resource to counter common arguments by climate change deniers. The site hosts various articles addressing the merit of common criticisms of the scientific consens... |
What did people in your focus culture make of dreams? | This is a topic of particular interest to me! I do Viking-age Scandinavia, and dreams were a big deal to this particular culture, if the sagas are anything to go by. I wrote a paper on this subject, the general conclusion of which was that dreams represent a kind of liminal meeting-place between the human and supernatural realms. People are frequently visited by ethereal figures in their dreams, who may be able to share knowledge with the dreamer; this pops up in Gisli Sursson's saga, for example. Interestingly, the supernatural prophetic figures in dreams are very often female, which has led some scholars to attempt to draw some link between them and valkyries. Of particular interest to my paper was the idea of dream as a more literal neutral ground - there's one fascinating little "thaettur," or short story, called "The Mound-Dweller," about a farmer who stumbles across a burial cairn. He finds a sword underneath it and takes it home with him. In the sagas, this kind of thing often serves as the set-up for a conflict between humans and the dead; there are lots of stories of heroes going down into burial mounds to steal treasure and fight the undead inhabitants. In this story, though, the farmer is visited in his dreams by a strange man, the inhabitant of the mound. The mound-dweller tells the farmer, in verse, that he will be his ruin, to which the farmer replies that he will repay any injury the mound-dweller does him "blow for blow." Impressed by his poetry and bravery, the mound-dweller tells the farmer that "no other answer would have been appropriate" and vanishes. So, what we have is the dream as a meeting-place to resolve conflicts between the supernatural and physical worlds. The sagas are fascinating stuff. | [
"Many different researchers have tried to understand the purpose behind dreaming and state their most apprehensive work behind understanding early childhood dreams. Sigmund Freud (1900/1965) claimed that dreams from childhood were illustrations of wish-fulfillment dreams that begin in naivety during childhood and e... |
what constitutes a roman numeral in a chemical formula? | You have to look at the oxidation state of the metal in the compound (a number like +1, +2, etc.). If it's always a certain value, like sodium for example, then you don't need a Roman numeral. Otherwise, the numeral just corresponds to the oxidation number, so in your example manganese would have an oxidation number of +4.
P.S. I think you meant MnS. Mg = magnesium. ;) | [
"Roman numerals are essentially a decimal or \"base 10\" number system. Powers of ten – thousands, hundreds, tens and units – are written separately, from left to right, in that order. Different symbols are used for each power of ten, but a common pattern is used for each of them.\n",
"Though the Romans used a de... |
how does medicine like asprin work? | Aspirin reduces pain and inflammation because it blocks the activity of a protein (called cyclooxegenase, or COX) which helps produce molecules that promote inflammation (called prostaglandins).
It helps thin blood in the prevention of strokes and heart attacks because blocking COX also prevents the production of a molecule that that promotes clotting, called thromboxane A2. | [
"Atropine is a medication used to treat certain types of nerve agent and pesticide poisonings as well as some types of slow heart rate and to decrease saliva production during surgery. It is typically given intravenously or by injection into a muscle. Eye drops are also available which are used to treat uveitis and... |
Is it true that the Soviet Union gave food aid to Americans during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl? | I'm searching around, and I can't find *any* sources that make the claim that the Soviet Union provided food aid to Americans either in the Dust Bowl, or the Great Depression more generally. I would actually be curious where and who is making this claim.
I can provide a little context for where Soviet - US relations were in this period. The United States had withheld official diplomatic recognition of the USSR from its founding until 1933. While much of this was due to the bad blood around US and foreign [intervention](_URL_2_) in the Russian Civil War and the 1919 Red Scare in the US, a major stumbling block was the [issue](_URL_0_) of unpaid tsarist-era debts - the Soviets refused to honor them, and the US insisted on repayment to bondholders.
The new Roosevelt administration was open to re-establishing diplomatic relations, however, and did so after a series of negotiations with Soviet Foreign Minister Maksim Litvinov in November 1933 (the issue of debt repayments was pushed off to be settled at a later time). William Bullitt, who had led a negotiating team to talk to Lenin on Wilson's behalf in 1919, assumed the post of US ambassador in December.
So right off the bat, I can't imagine that there would be *any* sort of aid traveling from the USSR to the US before December 1933, and thus not for the worst parts of the Great Depression.
But in addition, Soviet foodstuffs were not something that would be easily parted with. In no small part this is because the USSR had its own issues with food supplies, especially in 1930-1934, when famine conditions killed something like 5 to 7 million people across the USSR (especially in Ukraine, where it is known as the Holodomor). Much of the grain that the state did collect was for use as exports, as the Soviet government relied on selling grain on the international market in order to earn the foreign currency it needed to pay for imports of industrial materials and to pay for contracts with Western firms for the development of industrial facilities. Indeed, starting in 1929 the Soviet government had already signed agreements with such companies as Ford Motor Company, Caterpillar and DuPont for the construction of industrial production facilities in the USSR.
While Russia had been the largest single exporter of wheat until 1914, during World War I, the Revolution and Civil War, wheat production had collapsed - the American Relief Administration was in fact allowed by Lenin's government to provide aid in the country from 1921 to 1922. Soviet wheat exports began to recover on the international market after 1926, and rose from 1.3% of total exports to 7% by 1931, but collectivization, famine and political crisis largely halted this growth. In the meantime, the major international wheat producers of the Interwar period - the United States, Canada, Argentina and Australia - accounted for some 90% of total exports. With the economic downturn, there was, if anything, a world glut in wheat and prices fell (this was particularly hard on the Soviets, as they continuously needed to sell more wheat to earn a steady amount of foreign currency).
Now, US production of wheat in particular was hard hit during the Dust Bowl and associated drought conditions on the Great Plains - the Department of Agriculture provides the following data for winter wheat:
Year|Production (1000s of bushels)|Price per bushel ($)
:--|:--:|--:
1915 | 640,565 | na
1916 | 456,118 | na
1917 | 389,956 | na
1918 | 556,506 | na
1919 | 748,460 | 2.10
1920 | 613,227 | 1.48
1921 | 602,793 | 0.945
1922 | 571,459 | 1.04
1923 | 555,299 | 0.945
1924 | 573,563 | 1.32
1925 | 400,619 | 1.48
1926 | 631,607 | 1.21
1927 | 548,188 | 1.16
1928 | 579,066 | 1.03
1929 | 587,057 | 1.04
1930 | 633,809 | 0.694
1931 | 825,315 | 0.382
1932 | 491,511 | 0.391
1933 | 378,283 | 0.777
1934 | 438,683 | 0.844
1935 | 469,412 | 0.827
1936 | 523,603 | 1.02
1937 | 688,574 | 0.977
1938 | 685,178 | 0.574
1939 | 565,672 | 0.694
1940 | 592,809 | 0.69
1941 | 673,727 | 0.957
1942 | 702,159 | 1.11
1943 | 537,476 | 1.39
1944 | 751,901 | 1.43
1945 | 816,989 | 1.50
You'll have to excuse this data dump - I mostly just want to show where wheat production hit its low in the mid-1930s, and show how prices collapsed with the onset of the world Depression. The Dust Bowl is connected with these events, but for what its worth that is more specific to droughts in 1934 and 1936, and major dust storms in 1935. It's worth noting that the US went from making up a quarter of world wheat exports in 1930 to a tenth of exports during the 1930s, and during the worst of the Dust Bowl years was a net importer, importing some 3.9 million bushels of wheat during 1934-1935 - but was able to import wheat nonetheless. In fact, attempts by a 22 countries to stabilize wheat exports and prices through price stabilization measures and export quotas under a Wheat Advisory Committee (formed in 1933) had largely come to nought, and the market mostly stabilized from the US needing to import wheat during the Dust Bowl (and the major wheat producers obliging in providing exports).
So in summation - it seems very unlikely to me that the USSR provided any substantial food aid to the United States during the Great Depression. Perhaps some nominal amount would have been provided for propaganda purposes, but even in the 1930s, the Soviet embassy in the United States was more interested in attracting skilled American workers to move to the USSR, and was more interested in attracting US corporate investment, than in providing something for free to people in the United States. What foodstuffs the USSR did put on the international market faced strong price and production competition from other countries, and also were meant to be sold for desperately needed foreign currency.
**Sources**
Kotkin, Stepthen. *Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941*
US Department of Agriculture. "Crop Production Historical Track Records", April 2018. Available as pdf [here](_URL_1_).
Way, Wendy. "The Wheat Crisis of the 1930s" in *A New Idea Each Morning: How Food and Agriculture Came Together in One International Organisation* | [
"After the war, the American Relief Administration, directed by Herbert Hoover who had also been prominent in the CRB, continued food distribution to war-devastated European countries. It also distributed food and combated typhus in Russia during 1921-23. The U.S. Congress appropriated $20 million for the ARA under... |
how is food waste bad for the economy? | Consider that you also created an artificial scarcity of $40 worth of food that could have gone to something else. This is similar to what happened in the short run with cash for clunkers. Yes, there were some new cars made and purchased but the dip in supply of used ones rekt the prices in the used car market.
"Mr. Pies, that's a terrible example."
I know. I couldn't think of a better one at the time. Comparing consumables with durable goods, blah blah blah. | [
"One way of dealing with food waste is to reduce its creation. Consumers can reduce spoilage by planning their food shopping, avoiding potentially wasteful spontaneous purchases, and storing foods properly (and also preventing a too large buildup of perishable stock). Widespread educational campaigns have been show... |
What would happen if the Earth were to pass through the particle beam of a black hole or quasar? | If the Earth went through an AGN (Active Galactic Nucleus) jet, all life would be obliterated. The atmosphere would be stripped away in very short order by the bombardment of highly relativistic particles; the Earth's magnetic field (which is far, far weaker than the magnetic fields present in AGN jets) would not be able to stop that. The oceans would boil away and the surface would melt. If you left it in the jet for very long, the surface would start to ablate away.
Gamma ray bursts are mostly high-energy electromagnetic radiation, probably along with some protons/electrons. AGN jets consist largely of highly relativistic protons and electrons (much more energetic than whatever massive particles are present in a GRB) spiraling around magnetic field lines, along with X-ray flux from both the black hole accretion disk and the jet itself.
There's a hypothesis that one of the Earth's [major extinctions was caused by a GRB](_URL_0_). During that event something like a third of all animal genera went extinct. If the Earth entered an AGN jet there would be no more life. | [
"BULLET::::- It has been suggested that a small black hole passing through the Earth would produce a detectable acoustic signal. Because of its tiny diameter, large mass compared to a nucleon, and relatively high speed, such primordial black holes would simply transit Earth virtually unimpeded with only a few impac... |
how do companies like kfc, mcdonalds or even coca cola protect their recipes? wont modern science be able to breakdown whats exactly in the food they serve? | Yes you can break down the exact components of something like Coke and see what is in there.
It won't help.
I could tell you a house is made of several hundred boards, a few thousand nails, hundreds of pounds of gypsum, various types of metals (copper, iron), some plastic, and some other stuff.
Does that help you *build* a house? No. What is secret is the *process*, the actual recipe. *How* to make it. *When* to put in certain ingredients. It's much more about what it's made of. It's about consistency, texture, stability, and many more things. | [
"The CFS has also been an advocate for GE food labeling at both the state and federal level, pushing for new legislation and generating public support across the country for the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to take action.\n",
"Opponents claimed Prop 37 backers real intent was to ban GMOs via ... |
Is Gavrilo Princip a "Yugoslav nationalist" or a "Serbian nationalist"? | I think it really depends on how you conceptualize the Serbian nationalist movement in the early 20th century. "Yugoslav" means "south Slav" and a Yugoslav nationalist would be someone who supported the unification of southern Slavs - Serbians, Bulgarians, Croatians, Bosnians, etc - into one state. This is the geopolitical result of Pan-Slavism.
On the other hand, a Serbian nationalist would have seen Serbia as the protector of the Slavs in the Balkans. As a newly founded state which had won substantial victories in 1912 and 1913, Serbia could rightly hope to woo the Balkans' Slavic populations away from the existing Empires there: namely Austria-Hungary. A Serbian nationalist would have supported the idea of a Serb-dominated Southern Balkans in which Slavic lands were incorporated into Serbia or Serb-friendly governments installed.
See how those can be pretty confusing? They both stem from the idea that together, the Slavs of the southern Balkans are strong and can defend themselves against the various Empires which had dominated them for so long. Yugoslav nationalism is interesting because it necessarily involves the breakdown of the barriers which already existed within the South Slavs themselves - Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian Muslim, Kosovar, etc. Serbian nationalism is more outright nationalism, in that it supports the idea of a strong South Slavic people, but a South Slavic people under the direct guidance of a strong Serbia.
I think Princip was more of an outright Serbian nationalist, in that he saw the Bosnian Serbs living under the domination of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as being rightfully Serbian. As in, the lands inhabited by Bosnian Serbs should rightfully be attached to Serbia. That's why the 1908 Annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria drove the Serbian nationalist absolutely *nuts*. | [
"In socialist Yugoslavia, Gavrilo Princip was venerated as a national hero and a freedom fighter who fought to liberate all the peoples of Yugoslavia from Austrian rule; however in the modern day, many Croats and Bosniaks have now expressed viewpoints characterizing Princip as a murderer. Asim Sarajlic, a senior MP... |
what is the difference between credit cards systems in u.s.a and europe? | People use mostly same cards (Visa, Mastercard) some are unheard of (Diners)
Differences:
In EU, People favor using Debit cards instead of Credit cards.
There is no "credit score" in EU, so people have little motivation to use credit card just to improve credit score.
In USA when you pay in restaurant, they take your credit card and do the processing in back. In EU, they bring machine to you.
Technology in ahead - no magnetic swipes, everyone has contactless cards and readers.
Stuff like Card Skimmers is less common (due to advanced security features) and because there are less things like unattended gas pumps where you pay with CC.
US has better customer service (like easy revertion of payments) when your CC card gets cloned and abused. | [
"Within the United States, credit card transactions are controlled by four main financial institutions: Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover, making it an oligopoly. Credit cards work as a two-sided market, with the institutions providing benefits to consumers (by allowing them to access lines of credit... |
what happens short-term and long-term when a person defaults on their student loans? | The usual suspects. Credit score tanks. Collections calls start flowing in. Stuff gets repo'd or your wages get garnished until the debt is repaid.
Of course it might vary by state and by whatever agency granted the loan (federal vs state vs whatever), but the basic pattern of "this person owes us money" doesn't change much. | [
"There are other negative consequences resulting from a defaulted loan. A student who wishes to return to school cannot qualify for federal aid in the United States until satisfactory payment arrangements are made on the defaulted loan or the loan is rehabilitated, a process that can take as long as a full year of ... |
When the Roman Empire began to collapse, the Saxons invaded England. Were they united in doing so, or was it one tribe that invaded, or many? What happened to those that stayed behind in Germany? | Invasion is a loaded word that really does a poor job of describing the Saxon's role in England. Many, many individual tribes traveled across to England and began settling the eastern coast. While there was some conflict between the native Britains and the Saxons it was largely a peaceful transition.
There was really no unity in the immigration. It really seems like the Germanic tribes came over as opportunists; seeking land. When they found open land they invited more tribes to come over. It was largely a familial affair. It was much more immigration than invasion.
Due to the breaking of Roman trade ties the entire island (well, south of Hadrien's Wall) was thrown into a total upheaval. The culture from the early 5th century to mid 7th century saw a lot of transition and combining of the Roman, British, and English cultures.
There are theories that the early immigrants rose to economic supremacy due to their relationship with the Germanic mainland. Being the first to arrive, they had the opportunity to set up trade networks with the mainland. Those left in the mainland often moved island-side due to the economic opportunities. We know that at least until the mid 7th century there was frequent trade with the mainland. Change in jewelry culture in the mainland manifested itself in England, for example. | [
"As the Roman Empire declined, its hold on Britain loosened. By AD 410, Roman forces had been withdrawn, and small, isolated bands of migrating Germans began to invade Britain. There seems to have been no large \"invasion\" with a combined army or fleet, but the tribes, notably the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons, quickl... |
why we can secure banking/investment accts online but we can't secure voting | The requirements are different.
Most importantly, banking information needs to be tied to the person making the transaction. If any inconsistencies come up they need to be able to make sure they have enough identification information to trace the transactions back to the person who made them.
This is exactly the opposite in voting. Voting has to be anonymous. Having anonymous voting but still being able to trace the inconsistencies back is a trickier problem. It's not impossible tho.
The real big issue is that an election screwing up and a country having a tyrant running it who is willing to fix an election to win is far, far worse than any loss of money a bank might suffer. Electronic elections software has way more riding on it than banking software. | [
"A problem of privacy arises with moves to improve efficiency of voting by the introduction of postal voting and electronic voting. Some countries permit proxy voting, which some argue is inconsistent with voting privacy.\n",
"Unlike large scale data centers and company brand image, people may be less likely to t... |
religion. honestly i don't understand it. | People want answers.
But what are the questions?
Things like these:
What is the meaning of life?
Why are we here?
Who made us?
Who made the universe?
Do I go somewhere when I die?
What is good?
What is evil?
Religion answers all (or at least one) of these questions and more while giving peoples' lives a purpose and structure. | [
"A religion is a system of human thought which usually includes a set of narratives, symbols, beliefs and practices that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power, God or gods, or ultimate truth.\n",
"Religion is a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and... |
what is the purpose of those robocalls where no one is on the other end | > But what value could a call be that gets no information other than you picked up so it’s a live number?
That information is useful to reduce the calling list to numbers that at least work.
Robo-calling outfits operate by having a call center full of workers ready to pick up and start the scam. The system automatically calls people and then if someone picks up will transfer them to a worker with an open line. But if more people pick up than expected and there is no open line available the call might not be connected to anyone and the system will just hang up. | [
"Robux is the virtual currency in \"Roblox\" that allows players to buy various items. Players can obtain Robux through real life purchases, another player buying their items, or from earning daily Robux with a membership.\n",
"Unlike other \"Custom Robo\" titles, once shot out of the Robocannon, players have a r... |
cold hot water?¿ | I remember one of my middle school science teachers explaining something like this. If I remember correctly, the body's nerves have a hard time telling the difference between extreme hot and extreme cold temperatures. So, the receptors can mix them up. When putting your hand in freezing water, it can feel like it burns. And when putting your hand in really hot water, it can feel like you're freezing.
If I am incorrect, someone feel free to let me know and steer me in the right direction. | [
"Hot water can cause painful, dangerous scalding injuries, especially in children and the elderly. Water at the outlet should not exceed 49 degrees Celsius. Some jurisdictions set a limit of 49 degrees on tank setpoint temperature. On the other hand, water stored below 60 degrees Celsius can permit the growth of ba... |
how do babies/toddlers run on their knees like it's no problem but adults can't? | I think it has to do with the fact that the bones of a baby don't really solidify into hard bones until they are older. So going on their knees isn't too bad. Also as a baby the have at what 15lbs of weight on their knees and are usually somewhat chubby (thinks more padding) Adults are a lot heavier with more wear and tear on their joints already.
But I could be wrong. | [
"In infants, some babies may be hypotonia, a loose and floppy baby, or hypertonia, a stiff and rigid baby. Toddlers may have trouble feeding themselves or may stand, sit or walk later than what is developmentally normal. Other signs of motor skills disorders may be children that are clumsy or have excessive acciden... |
The Cold War was a time of incredible technological achievement. How did that directly impact ideas of national defense for both NATO and the Warsaw Pact? | I've forwarded your question to a colleague who is a specialist in this area. I too am very interested to know more. | [
"During the 1970s there was growing concern that the combined conventional forces of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact could overwhelm the forces of NATO. It seemed unthinkable to respond to a Soviet/Warsaw Pact incursion into Western Europe with strategic nuclear weapons, inviting a catastrophic exchange. Thus,... |
Sailing Speeds | This is an area of interest to me, but finding actual speeds is like digging a ditch with a teaspoon. You find a bit here, a bit there, and once in a great while, how many days it took to press on from one port to another. Due to the recreated ships, you can find out more hard data about Classical galleys in the Mediterranean and Norse ships crossing the Atlantic than about medieval ones.
In general, figure a Venetian galley, under sail with a quartering wind, does 12 kn. They did usually sail, and only took down the mast and rowed when battle offered, or when it was dead calm, or they had a contrary wind.
Rodgers says of Mediterranean galleys "In the thirteenth century the ordinary galleys were about 128 feet long and 17 feet wide with a deep draft of 4.0 to 4.5 feet when they displaced about 130-145 tons. ... Each carried one mast which was usually struck when clearing for action." This would have about 120 rowers, free men who fought for the ship. Sizes ranged down to the "vachette" (little cow) with 8 oars (16-32 rowers), about 23 feet long and 6 feet wide.
Besides the rowers were a captain, steersmen, officers, and an unspecified number of marines, especially crossbowmen.
In a 1313 Genoese law, merchant galleys of large size had to be manned with "12 crossbowmen, 4 pilots, and 162 rowers and seamen, all armed with helmets, cuirasses, darts, swords, maces, and other weapons."
In 1203, Rodgers notes, it took a Venetian fleet under sail 31 days to sail 700 miles, though that includes 8 days at Abydos to wait for stragglers. So let's say 700 miles in 23 days. This is over open sea, not stopping each night along a coast, so it's 24 hr/day, meaning they covered 30-31 miles per day, which is kind of pitiful.
In 1284, the Genoese fleet sailed in pursuit of the Pisans, from Genoa to Porto Pisano in 5 days.
Sources: *Naval Warfare Under Oars, 4th to 16th Century* by Rodgers. He admits he uses some galleasses in the Spanish Armada as an excuse to be able to include the Armada Fight.
Gardiner, Robert (Editor) *The Earliest Ships: The Evolution of Boats into Ships*
Parker, Foxhall A., Commodore USN, *The Fleets of the World: The Galley Period*
This makes me want ebooks of Rodgers, so I can Search rather than eye-scan around the Crusader battles. | [
"The outright sailing speed record has since been claimed by the French trimaran Hydroptère which, on 4 September 2009, reached a speed of 51.36 knots over 500 meters and 50.17 over a nautical mile in open ocean and only 25 to 30 knots of wind.\n",
"Speed sailing is the art of sailing a craft as fast as possible ... |
I have read that Crete produced some of the best quality archers in the ancient Mediterranean, what was it that set them apart from other archers of the time? | Mostly the fact that they were Cretan. I've written about Cretan archers at length recently - see [here](_URL_0_). While Cretans were known to specialise in ranged combat due to the rugged nature of their homeland, their reputation as mercenary archers was largely self-sustaining. Cretans offered their services as mercenaries; since Cretans were available, those looking to hire archers would hire Cretans; the Cretans therefore became widely known as useful mercenaries, increasing demand; the Cretans realised that service abroad was a good way to make a living, and offered their services; and so on. Effectively, the Cretan archer was a brand. While skilled use of the bow certainly took a lot of practice, there is nothing in the literary evidence to suggest that Cretans had special skills that others couldn't replicate.
The Cretan archer would likely have been indistinguishable from other Greek light infantry in dress and equipment. They would wear tunics, but no body armour; on their heads they might wear a felt cap or a loose wide-brimmed sun hat. Their bows were probably short composite bows, expensive and delicate; the maximum range of these bows was perhaps 150 meters, their lethal range much less than that. Those who could not afford composite bows would have used simple bows with a smaller effective range. Xenophon once mentions that the Cretans of the Ten Thousand carried small bronze shields, but it is difficult to picture how such a shield would be wielded by an archer. Either some of the Cretans with this army were not in fact archers but peltasts, or they carried the bronze shields purely for the occasion Xenophon is describing (they were meant to flash their shields in the sun to make the enemy think there was a large force waiting in ambush).
The only distinctive feature of Cretan archers was that they sometimes used arrows with very large bronze tips. These were so much larger than the average arrowhead that it is difficult for archaeologists to distinguish between Cretan arrows and the bolts of the [*gastraphetes*](_URL_1_) or belly-bow, the earliest piece of proto-artillery. However, I can't think of any scholarship that has examined the impact of this large arrowhead on the Cretan archer's range and potential armour-piercing capabilities. | [
"Philip II was also able to field archers, including mercenary Cretan archers and perhaps some native Macedonians. In most Greek states, archery was not greatly esteemed, nor practised by native soldiery, and foreign archers were often employed, such as the Scythians prominent in Athenian employ. However, Crete was... |
(xpost /r/askhistory) When the first recordings of someones voice were made, did people think it was flawed without knowing you sound different in your head then to other people? | Guys, we get it. They could have asked someone else.
If you have something to say based on historical records about people's reactions to hearing their voices recorded, please feel free to give OP an answer. If you don't, please refrain from commenting because your comment will probably end up deleted anyway. | [
"Konstantin Raudive, a Latvian psychologist who had taught at the Uppsala University, Sweden and who had worked in conjunction with Jürgenson, made over 100,000 recordings which he described as being communications with people. Some of these recordings were conducted in an RF-screened laboratory and contained words... |
what exactly causes the putrid smell that is released when a dead animal is in the process of decaying? | Various complex molecules in our body break down into computers with apt names like putricine and cadaverine.
Since decaying bodies are often unsafe to be around, we have evolved to be particularly sensitive to those odors. | [
"Decomposition begins at the moment of death, caused by two factors: 1.) autolysis, the breaking down of tissues by the body's own internal chemicals and enzymes, and 2.) putrefaction, the breakdown of tissues by bacteria. These processes release compounds such as cadaverine and putrescine, that are the chief sourc... |
How do scientists calculate the location of a comet and its trajectory (projected orbital path) and then articulate it for others to confirm the data? | You would want to report:
1. the comet's position on the sky (usually in J2000 RA,dec; J2000 is the epoch, which sets where the axes of the coordinate system are)
2. at each time you saw the comet
3. precisely where you were located at those times
4. optionally, the brightness ([magnitude](_URL_2_)) of the comet
You bundle this up and send it to the [Minor Planet Center](_URL_1_). For example, if you scroll down on [this page](_URL_3_) you can see the data for Sedna.
In practice, you don't have to worry too much about exactly how the coordinate system is defined. What you do is take a catalog (e.g. [USNO B1.0](_URL_0_)) which has position information for a large number of stars. You then measure the position of the comet relative to the positions of several nearby stars.
If the comet is new then you'd want to get a good orbit and to do this you have to track the comet for a while. What 'a while' means depends very strongly on a number of things ... This comes from the fact that what you can measure (sky position vs time) doesn't have information about velocity towards/away from you if you only have a couple nights of observations. You need to wait until the comet-Earth-Sun angle has changed and re-observe to get at understanding the comet's movement in 3D. I have experience with orbit determination of Kuiper Belt objects, and there you need to get several observations over at least two (preferably at least three) years before you can really trust the orbit determination. | [
"The orbiter will send a signal which will be picked up by the lander. As the orbiter moves along its orbit, the path between it and the lander will vary and so pass through differing parts of the comet. In addition, the rotation of the comet nucleus will also change the relative position of the lander and the orbi... |
why is it supposedly rude to point? | Pointing makes people uncomfortable or even feel threatened. If a stranger points at you on the street (assuming you're not a celebrity), it never means something good. They could be signaling an attack, mocking you, etc. Whatever the reason, it's bad.
Thus, it's rude to point. | [
"In much of the world, pointing with the index finger is considered rude or disrespectful, especially pointing to a person. Pointing with the left hand is taboo in some cultures. Pointing with an open hand is considered more polite or respectful in some contexts. In Nicaragua, pointing is frequently done with the l... |
My mom says to gargle salt water when I have a cold. Is she right? | The [Mayo Clinic](_URL_1_) recommends salt water to relieve a sore or itchy throat. [This New York Times article](_URL_2_) cites [this study](_URL_0_) that showed a decrease in upper respiratory tract infections among people who gargled with salt water several times a day during cold and flu season.
My personal experience is also that salt water does indeed reduce the pain of a sore throat. I haven't usually gargled with salt water when I *didn't* have a sore throat, even if I did have a cold, but perhaps I'll start... I'm a teacher, so can pretty much always use another boost against colds! | [
"Salt poisoning is an intoxication resulting from the excessive intake of sodium (usually as sodium chloride) in either solid form or in solution (saline water, including brine, brackish water, or seawater). \n",
"An Anacin advertisement in 1962 featured a mother trying to assist her grown daughter with various c... |
Are there any rich or powerful families who can trace the origins of their wealth/power back to Roman times? | Although the declining Roman empire left lots of room for non-patricians to make a name for themselves (especially in the army, more on that [here, aren't self-plugs fun!](_URL_0_)) many old Roman families were alive and well (albeit often refreshed with new blood. As stated in the link above, the last emperor, Romulus Augustulus was himself half-roman, half "Barbarian").
Here are some anecdotes of interesting families I'm familiar with (adapted from an earlier answer):
The Visconti, lords of Milan from the 13th to the 15th century (and active in Lombard communal politics since the 10th century) claim to have been landholders in Massino on the shores of lake Garda since the land was granted to an ancestor in the days of Imperial Rome. They also claim descent through the Roman era from Eneas, the ancient Trojan hero (mind sources on this are questionable and propagandistic, many conveniently having appeared when a match was being made between Gian Galeazzo Visconti and Isabel of Valois, daughter of the King of France. The most complete chronicle was written in the 14th century by the Milanese chronicler Galvano Fiamma, who spends a great deal of time on the Visconti's great exploits in his Politia Novella, or modern history of Milan, today stored in the Ambrosian Library. The tone he takes when speaking of the Visconti is unsurprising given he was Duke Giovanni Visconti's personal chaplain).
Although the main Visconti line died out in the 15th century (and the throne passed to the Sforza, a cadet branch that later went extinct) a couple of cadet branches continued to exist in obscurity as small landholders in the Lombard countryside. Many are involved in business and real estate in North Italy up to this day, the most easily traceable being the line of the Visconti of Modone, descendant of Vercellino Visconti, younger brother of Matteo Visconti (1250-1322) who was the Duke of Milan from 1294 to his death (with an eight year-exile after the Della Torre seized back the lordship, but that's a story for another time). The family was clever with their allegiance even after the throne of Milan slipped from their family, and several members were modestly important diplomats and civil servants in the court of the Sforza Dukes. They themselves were elevated to the title of Dukes by Napoleon in the early 19th century. The family count among their number Lucchino Visconti (1906-1976) and his brother Erpirando Visconti (1932-1995), both successful film directors. For a while I thought that this was the last branch of the Visconti to go extinct, but I just checked and it turns out I was wrong; Erpirando does have descendants, and they live in a modest villa near Bologna. It appears they do not own any more land near Modone, but have significant wealth managed privately.
Another cool example are the Obertenghi, who descend from Boniface, a Bavarian ennobled with significant lands in Northern Italy by Charlemagne (he was granted nearly all of modern Tuscany, Emilia, Lombardy, Peidmont and Liguria). The Obertenghi saw their lands reduced to Lombardy and Emilia by the eleventh century, and finally split into three cadet branches by the twelfth century: the Estensi, Pallavicini, and Malaspina, all three mildly influential during the communal era and increasingly obscure when the communes were consolidated into the dozen Italian states of the renaissance. The Estensi, who became lords of Ferrara, are the most illustrious and are related to nearly every royal house in Europe. They were also the first to go extinct. The Malaspina, the Tuscan branch of the Obertenghi, became Marquis of Massa-Carrara, but had their holdings progressively reduced under the Florentine Republic and subsequent Grand Duchy of Tuscany. They split into various branches living along the Tuscan-Ligurian border and as far as I know all went extinct (although I don't know as much as I'd like on Tuscan history). The last branch are the ones who answer your question: the Pallavicini, already active in Emilia and Lombardy in the communal era, became powerful vassals of the Duke of Parma, but wisely allowed themselves to slip into obscurity during the Italian Wars. To this day there are Milanese and Emilian (based in the town of Zibellio) branches still in existence, both are active real estate developers in the Emilia-Romagna region.
I'd also like to mention the Dandolo, a family that gave the Republic of Venice four Doges. A branch of them is still extant today and inhabits one of their original palaces along the Grand Canal in Venice. The Dandolo family traces their lineage back to the Roman gens Ursia, who arrived in Venice in the eighth century from the Pentapolis (the last five Roman cities to be abandoned by the withdrawing Byzantine empire). However, I am not sure they still hold the deed to the other palaces previously owned by the family (I know of two; one is a hotel, the other holds Venice's city hall) or what sort of activities the descendants partake in. | [
"Wealthy families of the Roman nobility followed Constantine's example. Their memory frequently survived, after the families themselves became extinct, in the names of the properties they once presented to the Roman See. During his reign, Pope Sylvester became the owner of properties in Italy, Sicily, Antiochia, As... |
why does finding a smaller hubble constant imply that the universe is older than we thought? | Imagine the universe as a balloon. And we hook up the balloon to a helium tank that is slowly filling up the balloon. If you measure the size of the balloon, as well as the rate in which the balloon is being filled up at (the Hubble constant), you can make a good estimate as to how long the balloon has been expanding.
You then discover that the rate of expansion for the balloon is much less than you originally thought. This means that the balloon, for its current size, has been expanding much longer than you originally thought.
| [
"Hubble's skepticism about the universe being too small, dense, and young turned out to be based on an observational error. Later investigations appeared to show that Hubble had confused distant H II regions for Cepheid variables and the Cepheid variables themselves had been inappropriately lumped together with low... |
If there were two moons, would nights be noticeably brighter? | It depends on the position of them. If both are positioned in a close proximity they will reflect more sunlight combined hence making the night brighter. But, if they are opposite to each other you could see only one moon at a time. But tides will be crazy. | [
"As with Uranus, the low light levels cause the major moons to appear very dim. The brightness of Triton at full phase is only −7.11, despite the fact that Triton is more than four times as intrinsically bright as Earth's moon and orbits much closer to Neptune.\n",
"However, the low light levels at such a great d... |
Can modern Turks trace their origins to ancient Anatolian peoples like the Hittites and the Trojans? | Probably not. Turks, as an ethnic identifier, are connected to central Asia (e.g., Turkmenstan) and were part of the [expansion of peoples prior to the Mongol invasions](_URL_0_). Those in Ionia might have some extra-Turkic connections that can be traced, but further inland, it becomes murkier owing to displacement, migration, religious change, and limited records. If someone is from those regions they might be able to say something with more certainty, but most Turks I know identify first as Turks (in the sense of the Republic), then as Muslims, then as residents of wherever they're from. But I am of course an outsider. | [
"Although the Hittites are first attested in the 2nd millennium BCE, the Anatolian branch seems to have separated at a very early stage from Proto-Indo-European, or may have developed from an older Pre-Proto-Indo-European ancestor. If it separated from Proto-Indo-European, it likely did so between 4500–3500 BCE.\n"... |
How is a historiography written? | > what exactly is a historiography
Historiography is the history of history. So what you're doing, in essence, is talking about how historians talk about history. (Sometimes I've found that undergraduates decide that "historiography" is just a more fancy-sounding work for history. It isn't, and misusing it doesn't make you seem smarter. And despite what Microsoft Word's spellchecker says, historiography _is_ a word...)
A practical example. Let's say I'm interested writing a _history_ of the atomic bomb. A straight history of the atomic bomb would be about the scientists who built it, the political decisions that went into its production and use, the consequences and so on. Pretty straightforward. My primary sources are going to be things like interviews with people involved, government documents from the time, and maybe press coverage afterwards to talk about how the news was received.
Let's say I was writing a _historiography_ of the atomic bomb. Now I'm writing about _historians_ and my primary sources are _historical works_. So I'm going to talk about how Herbert Feis, a foreign relations historian, wrote his book _Japan Subdued_ in 1966, and how his take on the history of bomb different from that of Robert Jungk, whose _Brighter than a Thousand Suns_ came out in 1958. I'm going to talk about how Gar Alperovitz's _Atomic Diplomacy_ (1965) put forward the thesis that the atomic bombs were just meant to scare the Soviet Union, whereas Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's _Racing the Enemy_ (2005) argued that it was the Soviet invasion, not the atomic bombs, that led to Japan's defeat. I might talk about how Richard Rhodes' _The Making of the Atomic Bomb_ (1986) relies upon "genius" narratives for telling its stories of the scientists, but nonetheless is ambiguous about the morality of the bombing. I could mention that Ruth Howes' _Their Day in the Sun_ (1999) is the only book that really takes into account female contributions to the bomb project (which were substantial), but that it has been more or less ignored by most subsequent histories of the bomb written by males (hmm). I might even blur the lines between history and historiography by talking about how the original historical actors — like General Groves or Secretary of War Stimson — were very deliberate with regards to manipulating what was known about the atomic bomb, and in the process ended up writing the "first draft" of the history of the bomb (and many of their key arguments continue to be points of discussion by modern historians). Ultimately it can be quite wide, but what I'm looking at is how we talk about the history in question has changed over time — history itself becomes historicized.
So you can sort of see the difference here in my examples. What's the value of historiography, you might be asking? For one thing, it helps us see, at a glance, what different types of arguments and interpretations have been put forward. It can help us see the production of history as a product of its time, as well. It helps us be more critical about works of history, because we see that _they themselves_ are products of their time and context — they don't sit "above" anything like that.
| [
"Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians have studied that topic using particular sources, techniques, and theoretic... |
why is there a threat of gun violence / mass shootings at joker screenings?? | The Colorado shootings during the first screenings of the dark knight rises. The guy who did it "idolized" the joker. | [
"The Joker makes another television appearance with a similar threat. This time, he plans to kill Judge Thomas Lake and Bruce Wayne. Police officers are at both men's houses; however, Gordon is at Lake's. Bruce starts laughing and turns white, but his butler, Alfred Pennyworth, administers a shot to slow his heart ... |
Could gravity in space bend the light coming from stars so much that where a star appears to be isn't actually where it is? | This is exactly the effect that was measured by Eddington and Davidson back in 1919 that make Einstein world famous. During a solar eclipse, when the Sun is dimmed, you can see the starlight near it. If you record the positions of those stars and compare them to their locations when the Sun isn't in the way, there is a bending of light or shift which occurs because of the Sun's gravitation.
Here's some info about it with a diagram,
* _URL_0_
The actual paper,
* _URL_2_
And the even more impressive and related effect of the Einstein Ring,
* _URL_1_ | [
"When the stars reach the point of their closest encounter, the mutual gravitational pull between the two stars will cause them to become slightly ellipsoidal in shape, which is the reason for their light being so variable.\n",
"The gravitational weakening of light from high-gravity stars was predicted by John Mi... |
how do computer viruses work? why can't whatever bug they exploit simply be fixed? | *The* bug they exploits can be fixed. But software has become so complex that there will be more. It is a race between those finding bugs to exploit, and those finding bugs to fix.
There is also a major fault that we can't fix. That is the actions and understanding of the user. We can make our software really good, but all of that is in vain if the user will tell the computer to install the virus because the virus promised to display a pretty picture. | [
"As software is often designed with security features to prevent unauthorized use of system resources, many viruses must exploit and manipulate security bugs, which are security defects in a system or application software, to spread themselves and infect other computers. Software development strategies that produce... |
Why has no country ever tried to emulate the succes of the roman republic, and why did it take european countries so long to get rid of their kings when all it took the romans was one bad king? | Though not an exact emulation, both the French and American revolutions were directly influenced by the Roman Republic and the ideals of Libertas achieved by the early Romans, as Sellers writes (reference at the bottom):
“A new "Senate" would meet on the "Capitol" hill, overlooking the "Tiber" river (formerly "Goose Creek"), as in Rome, to restore "the sacred fire of liberty" to the Western world. The vocabulary of eighteenth century revolution reverberated with purposeful echoes of republican Rome as political activists self-consciously assumed the Roman mantle. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, the primary authors and advocates of the United States Constitution, wrote together pseudonymously as "Publius" to defend their creation, associating themselves with Publius Valerius Poplicola, founder and first consul of the Roman Republic. Camille Desmoulins attributed the French Revolution to Cicero's ideal of Roman politics, imbibed by children in the schools. At every opportunity, American and French revolutionaries proclaimed their desire to re-establish the "stupendous fabrics" of republican government that had fostered liberty at Rome. The Roman name of "republic" evoked first and above all the memory of government without kings. Roman authors dated their republic from the expulsion of Rome s last king, Tarquinius Superbus, and mourned its fall in the principate of Augustus.
As French and American politicians came increasingly into conflict with their own monarchs, they found a valuable ideology of opposition already fully formed in the Roman senatorial attitude towards Caesar and his successors. The guiding principle of this republican tradition, as remembered (for example) by Thomas Paine, was government for the "res-publica, the public affairs, or the public good," perceived as naturally antithetical to monarchy and to any other form of arbitrary rule. Paine and other eighteenth century republicans viewed the individual and collective well-being of citizens as the only legitimate purpose of government. Their rallying cry of "liberty" signified subjection to laws made for the common good, and to nothing and to no one else. Statesmen traced this principle to the frequently cited passage in Livy that attributes the liberty of Rome to Lucius Junius Brutus and to his introduction of elected magistrates into Roman politics, constrained by the rule of law”
As Sellers suggests, it is not that they directly tried to “copy” exactly the Romans (though in many ways they did - hence for example the movement itself being called Republicanism!) but that the foundation of the Republic served as an ideological benchmark through which they could express their desires for liberty and self governance. This is why for example during the time of the French Revolution there was an increase in paintings and art that recalled famous events from Rome’s early history (Jacques-Louis David is perhaps the most famous, such as the Oath of the Horatii). Both in France and America, intellectuals were consciously linking themselves to the Romans to both help justify and inspire their contemporaries into moving away from monarchy and towards Republicanism and they saw the Roman Republic as both their symbolic and literal predecessors.
Though not as overt, this can be seen in the artistic and intellectual culture of the English Civil War. For example John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” draws mainly from the inspiration of Virgil, who’s often-conflicted portrayal of Aeneas as an effigy of Rome’s first emperor Augustus has led many scholars to believe that Virgil’s work is more subversive of Augustus due to Virgil’s own conflicted opinion of one-man rule under the newly established Principate - rule by the “First Citizen”. It is perhaps unsurprising then that Milton’s Paradise Lost begins with Satan, cast out from heaven for his rebellion against God, the king of heaven. Some of Satan’s sentiments (“better to reign in hell than serve in heaven”) reflect a rejection of absolute monarchy that was beginning to take hold within western intellectualism.
As to why it took so long for more modern countries to reject monarchy I am no expert, but the enlightenment was built off of the back of the Renaissance - which was a “rediscovery” of Greek and Roman ideals - so you could argue that it is no accident that rejections of monarchy began to take root directly after European intellectuals began to study Rome’s republic (as well as Athenian Democracy and Sparta’s mixed constitution) in a more widespread way.
As to why Rome rejected their kings this is still a source of debate, as Livy (the main source for Rome’s early history) acknowledges himself that the stories passed down are more “poetic tales than history” and so most of the stories are more than likely legendary fables. My own guess based on studying/teaching the Roman King’s and Rome’s early republic is that there was a cultural shift within Rome that had begun before the rejection of Tarquinius Superbus. For example Rome allegedly always had a Senate, and under the Etruscan Kings there was an increasing importance placed on the increased political participation of Rome’s citizens. For example the 6th King Servius Tullius reorganised Rome’s citizens so they voted according to their property value - landowning citizens had more of a say in the political life of Rome but the burden for military service was placed on them. When the King’s were thrown out we are told by Livy that Brutus and the first republicans decided not to change too much of Rome’s constitution, but instead to dissolve the power of the Kings and divide their roles among the pre existing political bodies, such as the Senate and Popular Assemblies. Livy also tells us that the earliest Kings used to be elected, rather than it being a hereditary monarchy in the strict sense of the world. Therefore it was not an absolute monarchy like many medieval kingdoms.
Further reading:
Sellers, M. “The Roman Republic and the French and American Revolutions” in: Flower, H. I. (2014).
The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic.
Cambridge University Press.
Link to book:
_URL_1_
_URL_0_
Hope this helps! | [
"The constitutional consequences of this event were, formally at least, to reverberate for more than two thousand years. Rome would never again have a hereditary \"king,\" even if later emperors were absolute rulers in all but name. This constitutional tradition prevented both Julius Caesar and Octavian Augustus fr... |
Do tall people have more nerves, and therefore feel more pain? | No, we all have roughly the same layout. I say roughly because that really only applies to the major nerves and branching elements, with the rest a bit more (not random, but) on-the-fly. Broadly speaking though, being taller isn't going to mean that you have more nerves, although you will have more total "mileage" of nerve tissue than a shorter person. A much fatter person will also have their nerves innervate the new tissue, but I don't think that's really what you're asking about. Still, a larger body of the same tissue will tend to be *less* sensitive. Even though it will necessarily be fully innervated, the body interprets sensation in a way that takes account of how many nerves are being stimulated at once.
You could imagine that rather than having "more nerves" larger people have "more diluted" nerves. Still it would be an *incredibly* subtle effect that would be swamped by almost any natural variance in sensation.
As to pain though, taller people might experience more pain just because they're taller, carry more weight, their joints may be under more strain, etc. Especially *very* tall people will often experience joint and spinal issues which can be very painful. That's not a result of having more nerves though, even though it is related to being tall/large.
Edit: Link to a previous, related question with a very good answer from a (then) medical student. _URL_0_ | [
"Conduction velocities in both the Median sensory and Ulnar sensory nerves are negatively related to an individual's height, which likely accounts for the fact that, among most of the adult population, conduction velocities between the wrist and digits of an individual's hand decrease by 0.5 m/s for each inch incre... |
what is the procedure for when a demolition fails? | Controlled implosions aren't just about bringing a building down...its about bringing it down so the debris goes where you want it to.
The actual amount of explosive force needed to bring a structure down is actually low (because of gravity) So if there is a screw up in the implosion process, the building is still coming down...just in a really unsafe way. | [
"Demolition, or razing, is the science and engineering in safely and efficiently tearing down of buildings and other man-made structures. Demolition contrasts with deconstruction, which involves taking a building apart while carefully preserving valuable elements for reuse purposes.\n",
"The demolition of a house... |
will the city of detroit ever get better? when will it be on par with other cities of similar size? (ex.- charlotte, boston, denver, seattle) | There's no definite answer to that question. It really all depends on whether the city's economy improves, and that depends on the city being able to attract businesses. | [
"Detroit has a variety of neighborhood types. The revitalized Downtown, Midtown, and New Center areas feature many historic buildings and are high density, while further out, particularly in the northeast and on the fringes, high vacancy levels are problematic, for which a number of solutions have been proposed. In... |
How does a strong magnet fall in a copper tube? | > At first I assumed the magnet would no longer move but if that where the case there would no longer a velocity, resulting in the retarding force becoming zero. It seems the magnet would neither fall or not fall.
Roughly speaking, ∞ × 0 != 0. It can equal any number including 0 or infinity itself, it depends on the function you are approaching infinity and zero with. Infinite strength and zero velocity could come out to a real force to match gravity. I haven't done the math here, but I'm pretty sure that's the case and it will cause an equal force even with no movement.
As for the answer here, I found [this article](_URL_0_) deriving the terminal velocity.
v_t = 64mga^4 /45πeσμ^2
Here m is the mass of the magnet, g Earth's Gravity, a is the pipe size, e is the pipe thickness, σ is the conductivity of the pipe, and μ is the strength of the magnetic dipole moment.
So leaving the geometry, mass, and gravity alone, we have the pipe conductivity and magnet strength to work with. They are in the denominator, so to get a 0 terminal velocity we need to get them to infinity. So yes, making an arbitrarily strong magnet would eventually freeze it in place. Magnetic field would be so strong that even infinitesimal movement would be adequate to drive a strong enough current for an opposing force. However, the thing with a magnetic field approaching infinity is you have energy approaching infinity and you're likely going to break the bounds of this equation at some point. Like I don't know, your magnet being impossible to achieve or the field being so energy dense it's gravity comes into play or even sucks the whole pipe up into a blackhole.
But as for the other variable, we can send conductivity to infinity. In other words, resistance to zero. A superconductor. A regular magnet trying to fall by a superconducting material would remain in place. In fact, [here's a video of one doing excatly that.](_URL_1_)
| [
"Currents bound inside the atoms of strong magnets can create counter-rotating currents in a copper or aluminum pipe. This is shown by dropping the magnet through the pipe. The descent of the magnet inside the pipe is observably slower than when dropped outside the pipe.\n",
"Most often, magnet wire is composed o... |
how do languages with a different number of characters share the same computer keyboards? | They don't. A lot of languages use their own keyboards. German keyboards for example are layed out qwertz instead of qwerty and include the letter ö, ü, and ä.
France uses an azerty layout with their special characters (various accents).
However, because most languages use the Latin alphabet, it's possible to write on the same keyboards because the basic set of 26 letters is the same, a standard qwerty layout includes options for adding some basic accents to letters, and other than that you can use Unicode shortcuts to use special characters | [
"The U.S. IBM PC keyboard has 104 keys, while the PC keyboards for most other countries have 105 keys. In an operating system configured for a non-English language, the keys are placed differently. For example, keyboards designed for typing in Spanish have some characters shifted, to release space for Ñ/ñ; similarl... |
if i had a room covered completely in mirrors, and turned on a flashlight, what would happen? | Michael Stevens does a great video about spherical mirrors in this video _URL_0_
He talks about turning a light on and then turning it off, hoping to keep the beam reflecting, but light gets absorbed by the mirror so nothing would *really* happen. | [
"BULLET::::- An intruder detection or access control system could be used in conjunction with light level sensors to turn lights on and off. So when you walk into a dark room the lights turn on (if you are allowed to be there) and when you leave they turn off behind you, thus making energy savings by preventing lig... |
how on earth does a snake move at all? | [This Gaboon Viper movement is really cool](_URL_1_) This movement is called Rectilinear movement and the snake just moves their belly scales forward a small amount alternating sides. [There are 4 other types of snake movement](_URL_0_). Each one allows the species of snake to play to the strengths of its body characteristics. Remember that snakes still have tons of muscles and are very flexible, they use all those muscles and flexibility to coordinate their body and move gracefully through their habitat. | [
"Most snakes move using lateral undulation where a lateral wave travels down the snake's body in the opposite direction to the snake's motion and pushes the snake off irregularities in the ground. This mode of locomotion requires these irregularities to function. Another form of locomotion, rectilinear locomotion, ... |
What is the earliest date I, an English speaking American, could effectively communicate with other earlier English speakers? | hi! fyi, you'll find a few previous posts in this FAQ section
* [How far back could I go and still communicate?](_URL_0_)
As you'll see in those threads, the differences between Old English and modern American (and every other variety of) English is extreme. But on the off-chance that your last question is asking about the divergence of British and American Englishes, there's another FAQ section that may be of interest
* [American and British accents](_URL_1_) | [
"Since Native Americans and First Nations peoples speaking a language of the Algonquian group were generally the first to meet English explorers and settlers along the Eastern Seaboard, many words from these languages made their way into English.\n",
"Native Americans in the United States have developed several o... |
Can/will Psychology ever be considered a physical science? | Psychology is never going to be a physical science. Wikipedia's definition of physical science being;
> Physical Science is an encompassing term for the branches of natural science and science that study non-living systems, in contrast to the life sciences.
So, no.
Let me go into a bit more detail. Psychology is actually a *really, really* broad subject - to the extent where sometimes I feel it's justified to treat it as multiple subjects masquerading under one name - and many of its subfields might be classified in different ways.
As quick examples, I'd feel comfortable calling biological psychology part of the life sciences, cognitive psychology part of the behavioural sciences, social psychology part of the social sciences, and a few like analytical psychology might even be better classed as arts or humanities. All of these categorizations are somewhat vague - that's the nature of scientific taxonomy, I suppose. I also imagine that there will inevitably be some disagreement with my classifications; I've seen some claim that psychology can never be a science at all, or that all its subfields should be classed as behavioural science, or social science, *et cetera*.
The point I'm making, however, is that although psychology can never be a *physical* science, at least parts of it are (arguably) within the realm of *natural* science - so leaf through a few articles in, I don't know, a recent issue of *Psychological Review* or the *Journal of Experimental Psychology* if you want to see how the field looks today. | [
"Physical science is a branch of natural science that studies non-living systems, in contrast to life science. It in turn has many branches, each referred to as a \"physical science\", together called the \"physical sciences\".\n",
"History of physical science – history of the branch of natural science that studi... |
what does "the u.s. has officially quit the un human rights council." mean? | We didn't do much on it, and Trump isn't the biggest supporter of the U.N., so it was only a matter of time. The human rights council, last I heard, is actually headed by Saudi Arabia, a country that stones unfaithful women and throws gays off tips of towers, so I don't think they're the best example of human rights anyways. | [
"On June 19, 2018, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced that the United States, under President Donald Trump, was pulling out of the United Nations Human Rights Council, accusing the council being \"hypocritical and self-serving\" and, in the past, Hale... |
why does the circle on the isis flag look poorly drawn? | idk about the circle, could be stylistic choices or that it's easy to reproduce but the writing is the [shahada](_URL_0_), with the top line saying "there is no god but god" and the words inside the circle being, from top to bottom, "god messenger muhammad" but if you read it from bottom to top it w/ some arabic grammar thrown into the mix there it says "muhammad is the messenger of god", and bam, baby you got a shahada going | [
"According to Ludvík Mucha, author of \"Webster's Concise Encyclopedia of Flags & Coats of Arms\", the white disk located in the center of the flag represents the sun. The red crescent and the five-pointed star, two ancient symbols of Islam, were most notably used on Ottoman flag and have since appeared on many fla... |
Would two people pointing guns at each other have enough time to react to the first gunshot? | Let's take [600 feet per second](_URL_0_) as the speed of the bullet (this would be a pretty slow bullet). At 10 feet, the bullet would take ~0.02 seconds to get to the target. Average human reaction time is in the order of [0.2 seconds](_URL_1_). So to have any chance of reacting in time, you need a bullet traveling around ten times slower or ten times further away. This ignores the fact that you may notice the protagonist's hand moving before they actually fire the gun.
So in conclusion, Han must have shot first.
Edit: I accidentally a word. | [
"Neddie is doubtful. He says \"How can someone shoot themselves by pointing their finger at their head like this and going...\" At that point there is the sound of a gunshot, followed by Neddie's body falling to the ground.\n",
"For a pistol duel, the two would typically start at a pre-agreed length of ground, wh... |
Is radiation given out from everyday objects harmful towards us? | Radio frequency (RF) radiation isn't harmful in the levels produced by household electronics.
"Radiation" is a broad category; there's a lot of confusion about what it means. There are various types of radiation, primarily including:
* Beta radiation-- this is electrons that are emitted by the nuclear decay of certain isotopes. This is ionizing radiation and can cause cancer.
* Alpha radiation-- alpha particles are helium nuclei, two protons & two neutrons bound together, and are emitted by the nuclear decay of heavy isotopes. This is also ionizing radiation, but can easily be blocked by skin and so is only dangerous if the isotope is inside the body.
* Neutron radiation-- neutrons emitted in nuclear decays. Also ionizing, also dangerous.
* electromagnetic radiation-- this includes radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, x-rays, and gamma rays. Only UV, X-rays, and gamma rays are ionizing. Radio waves can't ionize atoms in your body. If you expose yourself to a really strong emitter, it can heat up your tissues and cause burns (this is what would happen if you were to expose yourself to the magnetron in your microwave). But all that about it "accelerating brain waves" is complete nonsense.
Basically the guy in the video is walking around discovering that objects like wifi routers which are designed to send radio signals do, in fact, send radio signals. Anything running an unshielded electrical current is going to emit some radio waves. These are nothing to be concerned about unless you're very close to a very powerful and unshielded source--which won't happen unless you do something willfully stupid like rig your microwave to work with the door open and then stick your hand in it. | [
"This article deals with radiation damage due to the effects of ionizing radiation on physical objects. Radiobiology is the study of the action of ionizing radiation on living things, including health effects of radiation in humans. \n",
"Radiation protection, also known as radiological protection, is defined by ... |
why is folk music called “folk”? | What's so hard to understand? It's the music of ordinary folk, originating in the days before the term "pop(ular) music" was made up, before electrification, and was passed down by word of mouth (song) from one genreation to another - oftan a way of preserving stories - folk tales. | [
"According to its encyclopedic definition, the term folk music (that derives from the German word \"folk\" or people in English) serves to designate the music spontaneously created and preserved by the people of a country, in contrast with the terms commercial and classical music, which are related to works generat... |
how do earthquakes effect the rotation of the earth? wouldn't that be an object acting upon itself, like using a fan to power the sails on a sailboat | Rotation can be affected by the rearrangement of mass. Much like if you're spinning, pulling in your arms so more mass is towards the axis of rotation will make you spin faster and throwing your arms out will make you spin slower. | [
"Some movements are aperiodic, others regular, as the Earth tides caused by the lunar and solar gravitational field. The pendulums measure a distance of 95 m between the upper and lower mountings, which contributes to the fact that the instruments detect tectonic movements with high precision and are relatively imm... |
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