question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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what are the limitations of genetic engineering in adults? | It is possible, in theory, to develop and administer a genetic treatment that would help an adult. There are a number of ways that this could be done, but in a certain sense CAR T cells are already a genetic treatment that is undergoing clinical trials. For a genetic treatment to work, you need to get that the following questions/issues:
1. **What and how much am I trying to change?** Breaking a gene is much easier than *fixing* a gene, and most genetic manipulations people like to dream up involves fixing things. Keep in mind that fixing things, even with CRISPR, is not an efficient process (2-50%, depending on conditions). So that means if you want to fix a lot of stuff in a cell, you're going to have an increasingly low chance of doing all of it!
2. **What and how many cells am I trying to change?** If you only need to change a few cells, that is good in a certain sense because if you have a 10% chance of changing them, your odds of changing all of them gets better the fewer cells involved. That said, targeting the treatment to specific cells is generally more difficult than hitting random cells.
3. **Where and how are you going to get the treatment to the cells?** Many people imagine changing all of the DNA within all of the cells in our body by taking some sort of shot. This would be called an *in vivo* treatment, and there are a lot of difficulties involved with doing it this way. CRISPR-Cas9 needs to be packaged into something to get delivered to the cells, and all the options we have for delivery are a compromise between amount delivered, specificity of delivery, and coverage of delivery. This is a very difficult problem that many people are working on. However, *in vivo* delivery isn't the only option. You could take a sample of the person's cells and grow them in a dish, and then apply the genetic treatment to those cells, then reintroduce them into the person. This would not lead to the treatment changing *every cell* in the body, but sometimes you don't need to do that. I mentioned [CAR T cells](_URL_0_) earlier, which are T cells isolated from the blood of the patient that are genetically modified outside the body (*ex vivo* or sometimes *in vitro*), and then are reintroduced into the body.
| [
"The kind of technology used in genetic engineering is also being developed to treat people with genetic disorders in an experimental medical technique called gene therapy. However, here the new gene is put in after the person has grown up and become ill, so any new gene is not inherited by their children. Gene the... |
how do sites track my activity in incognito mode? | Incognito mode only affects your browser. It won't keep any history/cookies/other information on your browser but it still goes through all the same channels otherwise. You can see the traffic on your network, sites that use trackers can still track your IP and when you visited what pages, and accounts like youtube can still do all the things they normally do. Incognito doesn't do anything but make sure your history doesn't save *in the browser*. | [
"BULLET::::- Online Presence Detection provides tracking of online and offline status of users and devices in realtime. Presence events are triggered when a connected device subscribes or unsubscribes from a channel, or times out. The Presence API also includes a “state” feature allowing for the persistent tracking... |
what role does federal reserve play in the economy? | > Are they responsible for debts and inflation that's going on in America?
I wouldn't really say so for debts as that's more fiscal policy, but they do have an affect on inflation. They generally try and keep it around 2% or 3%. Their primary affect is on the money supply and interest rates. The Fed's official objective:
> ...shall maintain long run growth of the monetary and credit aggregates commensurate with the economy's long run potential to increase production, so as to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates.
Conspiracies about the Fed are pretty much all wrong. The public / private thing comes from people not understanding how each part is set up. [Here is the Fed in plain English](_URL_0_), I'll quote some parts:
> ...What emerged—the Federal Reserve System—was a central bank under public control, with many checks and balances. Congress oversees the entire Federal Reserve System. And the Fed must work within the objectives established by Congress. Yet Congress gave the Federal Reserve the autonomy to carry out its responsibilities without political pressure. Each of the Fed's three parts—the Board of Governors, the regional Reserve Banks, and the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC)—operates independently of the federal government to carry out the Fed's core responsibilities. The Federal Reserve System was developed and continues to develop as an interesting blend of public and private interests and centralized and decentralized decision-making. | [
"One of the functions of a central bank is to facilitate the transfer of funds through the economy, and the Federal Reserve System is largely responsible for the efficiency in the banking sector. There have also been specific instances which put the Federal Reserve in the spotlight of public attention. For instance... |
Considering the length of time the Basque area was under Roman rule why is their culture/language so different from their neighbors? | In Mark Kurlansky's "The Basque History of the World" he argues that Basquelands were less fertile and less valuable to Romans and Basques were often rebellious. Therefore, he argues that the Romans were more accommodating of the Basques. Notably Basques didn't pay tribute and were allowed to govern themselves under their own laws. This would seem to be a basic justification for why Basques were never pushed to assimilate as closely to Roman law and therefore are rather different from their neighbours.
That said Kurlansky is not a historian, but a journalist, and i am an ex-history student and not a historian. | [
"Records of people and place names from Roman times indicate that the Basques occupied an area somewhat larger than that which they currently inhabit, and supported a claim by Sabino Arana, the traditional founder of Basque Nationalism, that the Basque homeland has been occupied by the Basques longer than any other... |
Why is it difficult to find the exact cause of canker sores? | Its a relatively harmless phenomenon, that almost always resolves on its own, so there isn't a lot of money or effort spent on studying it. The cause was less straightforward than "its an infection by ______" and since nobody dies from it, it generally isn't worth the effort to look more deeply at it. | [
"TLP is a harmless problem. These bumps can become notably red or white and are quite tender for up to several days. While the cause of TLP is not known with certainty, most experts feel that local accidental trauma (rubbing, scraping or biting) is a major factor; however, contact reactions to things like certain f... |
how to ensure anonymity online? | TL;DR yes by using a VPN (virtual private network).
You connect to a private server using your personal IP address and then use that private server to connect to the internet using that private server's IP and not your own personal IP. The only way to track you is by tracing the private server's IP and checking who access the private server at the time the IP was active. Some VPN services keep a record, some don't.
Real life translation: You go to a mask store (VPN server) then you get a mask (the VPN's IP address). You use that mask out while you do your every day life in public (the internet). When you finish you go back to the store and return the mask (disconnecting from the VPN and stop using the VPN's IP address). Say the police see you doing something illegal and they want to arrest you so they trace your mask back to the mask shop(tracking IP). Here they ask to see a record of who used the mask at the time they sighted you (checking who had access to the VPN at the time of the crime). Some mask stores don't have a record so cops can no longer track you (VPN keeps no record), some VPN do have a record but its so muddled they can't identify the specific person so its pseudo-untraceable, and sometimes there is a detailed record and cop finds the person. | [
"A sort of DIY option for privacy minded users is to use a software like Tor, which is an anonymity network. Tor functions by encrypting user data and routing queries through thousands of relays. While this process is effective at masking IP addresses, it can slow the speed of results. While Tor may work to mask IP... |
why doesn't ups deliver all night long? | Because just like you, the drivers would like to sleep at night. | [
"FedEx and United Parcel Service (UPS) directly compete with USPS Express Mail and package delivery services, making nationwide deliveries of urgent letters and packages. Due to the postal monopoly, they are not allowed to deliver non-urgent letters and may not directly ship to U.S. Mail boxes at residential and co... |
Assistance wanted to help identify these WWI Australian ANZAC items [x-posted] | From first glance number 7 is an epaulette, and 2 and 12 are shoulder pips, which would be worn on the epaulette (one can even be seen on it)
4 is a rising sun badge, but It looks a little small for the slouch hat. so perhaps it was used on the tunic? It does look like the third pattern, used from 1904 to 1949.
8 seems to be the Retired Member Insignia, but I'm not sure sorry.
I will have a closer look at some of the other stuff and try to get back to you soon. | [
"The Kogarah ANZAC Memorial is a war memorial located in the town square, on Belgrave Street, of Kogarah, New South Wales, Australia. Located between St George Hospital and the Greek Orthodox Church, it was built to recognize the sacrifice of Australian nurses and the significance of Greek support towards the Austr... |
why can't movies be offered on release date for more money at a premium for home viewing? | - You can lend it around and have an entire community see it within the first week.
- You can rip it and seed it and have DVD HD versions flood the market within the first week of the movie's release.
- The cinema chain that you have a deal with will lose out on ticket sales and food and beverage sales, which will cost you a lot more in the future to screen your movie at their locations due to loss revenue. | [
"BULLET::::- Needing a cheaper alternative to buying, such as renting a movie: a person is unwilling to pay the full price for a movie, so they rent it for a lesser price, but give up the chance to view it again later.\n",
"Between 2010 until 2011, due to the substantial increase in value added tax applied to for... |
Have humans evolved to the consumption of Alcohol over the last several millenniums? | Alcohol consumption by humans probably has origins in eating naturally fermented fruit. Many animals (elephants, monkeys, et al) become intoxicated this way.
Human alcohol consumption became routine once we figured out how to "domesticate" the fermentation process--which was originally a means of preserving foods; intoxication was just a side effect. Even beer was originally a way of preserving foods, so running out of beer was a genuine crisis.
I doubt humans as a species could become desensitized/tolerant unless alcohol gradually became the dominant food source and our liver, pancreas, kidneys, et al evolved accordingly.
| [
"Discovery of late Stone Age jugs suggest that intentionally fermented drinks existed at least as early as the Neolithic period (cir. 10,000 BC). Many animals also consume alcohol when given the opportunity and are affected in much the same way as humans, although humans are the only species known to produce alcoho... |
If both parties viewed war as almost inevitable, why would they both accept the German–Soviet Commercial Agreement (1940); the sale of raw materials from the USSR to Germany? | I'll answer this looking moreso from the USSR's point of view. The main reason is neither side wanted to fight each other right away - they needed time to prepare or had other issues to deal with. Stalin reputedly told Kaganovich that he was only buying time by making the deal with Nazi Germany. There is also the argument that Stalin attempted to form an alliance with the West but this was ultimately unsuccessful. But for the purpose of your question that kind of doesn't matter - after all the question is why Stalin and Hitler thought this was a good idea at all. Otherwise there would have been no viable alternative.
Also keep in mind it isn't as though the Soviets didn't get anything out of the deal. The secret bits of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact also resulted in territories going into the Soviet sphere of influence/control. In exchange for raw materials, which for Nazi Germany were fairly important for sustaining their war effort and home front, the Soviets received various military and industrial items. Particularly naval weapons designs/gear which in hindsight was probably a bad trade. But at the time the means of building up a modern navy and shoring up key areas of industry probably seemed like a good move for long term power politics etc. | [
"The agreement proved to be short lived. Just six months after it was signed, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, and economic relations between the two countries came to an end. The raw materials imported by Germany from the Soviet Union between 1939 and 1941 played a major role in supporting the German war effort a... |
why do plants growing in the wild not have to be watered like the same type of plant as a houseplant | Houseplants contain a small amount of soil. Even when the soil is fully saturated, it takes relatively little time to dry out.
In nature, the soil is virtually limitless, and the plant's roots can reach deep down into the soil where there is much more water available | [
"Watering houseplants on a regular basis is necessary for the plant to remain healthy and thrive. They should not, however, be watered on a scheduled basis, because different plant species need different amounts of water and sunlight so it is important to know the specifics for the particular plants that are being ... |
Why did crime drop in the middle of the great depression and onwards? | What's your source on crime rates during that time period? | [
"Scholars differ on the causes of the precipitous decline in crime in New York City (which also coincided with a nationwide drop in crime which some have termed the \"Great American Crime Decline\"). In a 2007 paper, economist Jessica Reyes attributes a 56% drop in nationwide violent crime in the 1990s to the remov... |
have any nations with incredible debt (like america) ever paid off their debt? | The United States pays off its debt whenever its due. We just immediately go and accumulate more debt, because we will be able to pay it back and it grows our economy. We have never missed a debt payment and are an economic power house because of that debt. | [
"While the dangerous accumulation of foreign debt occurred over a number of years, the debt crisis began when the international capital markets became aware that Latin America would not be able to pay back its loans. This occurred in August 1982 when Mexico's Finance Minister, Jesús Silva-Herzog, declared that Mexi... |
how did the english monarch come to be? | Here's a pretty good video about [History of the Royal Family](_URL_0_) from 1066 until today. | [
"Includes English monarchs from the installation of Alfred the Great as King of Wessex in 871 to Anne (House of Stuart) and the Acts of Union on 1 May 1707, when the crown became part of the Kingdom of Great Britain.\n",
"There was no consistent title for the king of England before 1066, and monarchs chose to sty... |
Were the Bohemian nobility treated differently within the Holy Roman Empire? | The Bohemian nobility were treated differently, yes. However, this treatment had nothing to do with their ethnicity, which was all but irrelevant, and everything to do with the unique religious and political privileges the Bohemian nobility earned over the centuries. The Bohemians, in fact, *required* that their king treat them differently, and led major rebellions roughly once a century for four hundred years to protect and expand their privileges. You're asking about other nobles, however.
A brief note before I go on: "Czech" and "German", as such, didn't yet exist as distinct, important cultural or ethnic markers until the 19th century. Germans themselves were (and still are, though very much less so) divided into several large linguistic and cultural subgroups.
More broadly, cultural and linguistic differences were relatively unimportant to the Holy Roman Empire's nobility. Their shared class and knowledge of Latin, French and/or German allowed them to communicate with ease, and they certainly had far more in common with one another than they did with most of their subjects. The *most* important difference, by far, was in fact religious—the Bohemian nobility was distinct in this way after the Hussite Wars, although the resolution of that conflict made the Utraquist Church into an accepted part of the Catholic Church, minimizing the importance of this distinction.
The Bohemian nobility took to the Reformation very readily, and roughly 90% of them were non-Catholic by the (Second) Defenestration of Prague. They vigorously defended their right to practice the new religion, which set them at odds with the Catholic Habsburgs and their Jesuit-backed re-Catholicization efforts. This same defense, naturally, earned them respect from the rest of the German nobility (which was, itself, majority Protestant before 1610).
After Ferdinand II decisively defeated the Bohemian rebels and their Winter King, the make-up of the Bohemian nobility (and, increasingly, its lower classes) became more German-speaking, subjugated to their prince, and entirely Catholic. By 1648, then, they were very similar to the nobility of the Southern half of the Empire by virtually ever barometer. | [
"According to the Golden Bull of Sicily, the estates of Bohemia and Moravia were an autonomous and undivisible constituent of the Holy Roman Empire. The King of Bohemia was no longer subject to appointment by the Emperor, and was only required to attend Reichstag diets close to the Bohemian border. Although a subje... |
why does cold metal feel wet? | The feeling of "wetness" isn't actually a sense, but more of a combination of senses. If you've ever touches water through gloves, your hand feels like it's wet, but you're not actually getting any water on you. This is because, even though you have gloves on, it's a combined triggering of your cold thermoreceptors and various mechanoreceptors that contribute to the perception of wetness, and these can be felt through the gloves. The same is true for the metal.
| [
"Once oxides have been removed from the substrate surface, most liquid metals will wet to most metallic surfaces. Specifically though, room-temperature liquid metal can be very reactive with certain metals. Liquid metal can dissolve most metals; however, at moderate temperatures, only some are slightly soluble, suc... |
- light, in terms of being a part of the electromagnetic (radioactive?!) spectrum... ? | There are three types of radiation:
* Alpha radiation is helium nuclei emitted from certain radioactive materials. It is highly ionizing but does not penetrate very far - a sheet of paper will stop it. Because it can't penetrate very far, it's harmless if the source is outside your body, but if you ingest it it can be very dangerous.
* Beta radiation is fast moving electrons, also emitted by radioactive sources. Beta radiation penetrates further than alpha radiation, but still not very far - a thin sheet of metal is sufficient to stop it.
* Gamma radiation is electromagnetic waves of very high frequency. Gamma radiation penetrates much further than alpha and beta radiation, and thick lead is typically used to absorb it.
Electromagnetic radiation is only harmful above a certain frequency - photons of visible or infrared light, microwaves, or radio waves, do not have enough energy to do anything but heat things up.
But EM waves in the high ultraviolet frequencies and above have sufficient energy to rip electrons from their atoms, which can damage living tissue. It is exposure to so called *ionizing radiation* which is harmful. | [
"Light is electromagnetic radiation within a certain portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. The word usually refers to visible light, which is the visible spectrum that is visible to the human eye and is responsible for the sense of sight. Visible light is usually defined as having wavelengths in the range of 400... |
what happens exactly to our bodies as we experience stress and anxiety? how does the body cope in positive and negative ways with this? | The body responds to stress by releasing the hormone cortisol. This is part of the bodies fight or flight response in order to raise blood sugar levels for our muscles to use. This is important to escape from potentially dangerous situations. When cortisol or stress hormones are elevated, or heart rate also increases and other bodily functions such as digestion and the immune system are put on halt. You can see why elevated levels of stress hormones can be harmful to your body as it needs time to "rest and digest". | [
"Chronic stress and a lack of coping resources available or used by an individual can often lead to the development of psychological issues such as depression and anxiety (see below for further information). This is particularly true regarding chronic stressors. These are stressors that may not be as intense as an ... |
how can a human possibly survive a headshot? what would the bullet have to miss? | As long as the bullet misses the Medulla Oblongata, a small section of your brain responsible for basic life support, you could in theory survive the gunshot if you were treated for the complications afterwards, such as internal bleeding. Obviously you'll suffer massive brain damage as the bullet rips through your skull, so it's impossible to be completely unscathed.
The Medulla Oblongata sits right around the nape of your neck, which explains the common execution pose of kneeling face down.
Edit: I've been getting a lot of comments about alligators and the movie Water Boy. It's a hilarious scene alright, but the medulla oblongata does NOT affect aggresssion. The amgydala has more of an affect on that. Hollywood just likes using Medulla Oblongata cause it's a sciency word. | [
"Her bones seem to be much more durable than normal; she had easily survived heavy hits in multiple areas of her body. For example, Flag-Smasher hit her twice on the head with his mace without much damage, and Sabertooth likewise threw her against a wall without harm. She also jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge twice (... |
what would happen if i was charged for a crime that became legal? | Depends how it becomes legal. Most have guidelines on if or how they will release current incarcerated people. | [
"Any person accused of committing a crime is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Therefore, a person charged with a crime should not be denied freedom unless there is a good reason.\n",
"When a person is arrested for a serious crime, the defendant will have their picture taken and be held in ... |
Guys... It sucks to admit, but I don't really understand evolution. | It doesn't suck to admit it.
Stupidity isn't *not* knowing things.
It's not knowing things and being content with not knowing. | [
"Evolution is a 2017 study guide to evolution written by Steve Jones and illustrated by Rowan Clifford. The volume, according to the publisher's website, explores the extraordinary diversity of life on our planet through the complex interactions of one very simple theory, and, according to its author, goes from fox... |
What are some good academic books/articles to consider when looking at intellectual history? | Have you checked out [this section of our books list?](_URL_0_) | [
"The Journal of the History of Ideas is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering intellectual history and the history of ideas, including the histories of philosophy, literature and the arts, natural and social sciences, religion, and political thought.\n",
"Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and t... |
why are there so many conflicting views on taking large amounts of fat soluble vitamins? | It's fine if you're getting that much of a particular vitamin if it's from a natural source, like whole carrots, sweet potatoes, etc because your body has to process vitamin A, for example, from beta carotene into a form it can use. Vitamin A supplements (and that from liver) are already in a form your body can use, and getting too much of this usable form can cause vitaminosis. | [
"Vitamins are classified as either water-soluble or fat-soluble. In humans there are 13 vitamins: 4 fat-soluble (A, D, E, and K) and 9 water-soluble (8 B vitamins and vitamin C). Water-soluble vitamins dissolve easily in water and, in general, are readily excreted from the body, to the degree that urinary output is... |
Why did the ancient Roman pantheon mostly consist of assimilated Greek gods? | The FAQ has answers to a [similar question](_URL_0_), courtesy of /u/idontplayoboe and /u/cleopatra_philopater | [
"The Roman pantheon had numerous deities, both Greek and non-Greek. The more famed deities, found in the mythologies and the 2nd millennium CE European arts, have been the anthropomorphic deities syncretized with the Greek deities. These include the six gods and six goddesses: Venus, Apollo, Mars, Diana, Minerva, C... |
why does it feel different/better when you get a bj/hj from a different person than when you masterbate? | You can give yourself a bj?! | [
"Ed Cole (Haley Joel Osment) feels like he is letting his life go by without him. He leaves his job at a bagel shop and works as an after-school detention teacher after impressing the principal (Matt Walsh). He moves out of his apartment, allowing his roommate JT (Glen Powell) to engage in kinky sex with his girlfr... |
why does the one cup of coffee i drink make me pee as if i drank 3 cups? | You probably already know this, but the active ingredient in coffee is a chemical called caffeine.
People don't normally think of caffeine as a "drug", but it is in the technical sense of the word. The main effect of caffeine is that you'll feel more awake, but it's also a mild diuretic.
So... caffeine makes you feel more awake and it also makes you have to pee a bit. | [
"Coffee is often served \"with great ceremony\", and it is customary to drink two or three cups to indicate your approval of the coffee. Cups are refilled unless a gesture—shaking your cup—is made to indicate you've had enough. It is considered good manners for a guest to eat heartily, and burping appreciatively \"... |
why is french so complicated? | Chinese is horrid because you can't tell how to pronounce a new character.
English is known for its bizzare amounts of homophones.
French has lists and lists of conjugations to add to words when you want to refer to different subjects, i.e. he, she, they.
Welsh just looks like the sign writer was sneezing or something.
Languages like French or English evolve naturally over time through slang and other means. Since it's us imperfect humans who created it, and since they were mostly developed at a time when you weren't expecting a language to sweep the globe like it does now, most languages have redundant, senseless and overly complicated rules.
An interesting exception is Korean, where the history of it can be generalised as just some guy sitting down and writing the rules to produce an efficient and no-nonsense language. | [
"Spoken on all continents, French is taught in universities around the world, and is one of the world's most influential languages because of its wide use in the worlds of journalism, jurisprudence, the academy, and diplomacy.\n",
"Because of its international status, there was a desire to regulate the French lan... |
Lou Gehrig's disease | the current hypothesis for how ALS works is dysfunction of the mitochondria in motor neurons resulting oxidative stress and therefore damage to the cell.
It is caused is also unknown however around 5% of suffers have a known genetic involvement such as a mutation in the superoxide dismutase-1 gene.
As a result of the damage to neurons there are many specific signs which medical professionals may pick up on and they vary from type to type and patient to patient. But the general gist is muscular weakness which can lead to dysphagia (trouble swallowing) difficulty/changes to their voice, muscle wasting and hyperreflexia or hypo-reflexia depending on where on the neuron it is damaged. Also these symptoms are progressive as more cells are damaged.
There is no cure currently all care given is palliative and to help relieve the symptoms. They include regular exercise with speech and physical therapy to help maintain utility of affected areas and to help overcome the disabilities that develop and dietic support for when eating becomes difficult.
A drug which has been shown to slow the progression called Riluzole may also be used. It works by decreasing the amount of glutamate released during nerve transmission and as this has been shown to damage nerves in the CNS and brain by reducing the level released it conveys a protective effect.
I primarily used here to ensure the reliablity of my statements.
_URL_0_ | [
"With Gehrig's 1939 diagnosis of A.L.S. (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a progressive neurodegenerative disease that causes muscle weakness, paralysis, and ultimately, respiratory failure), Rennie remained close to the ballplayer and his wife Eleanor through Gehrig's retirement and downhill slide until Gehrig's dea... |
[Serious] do we know if Jefferson raped "his" slaves at any point in his life? | One way of answering this question is in terms of consent as we understand it today. Thomas Jefferson *literally owned the bodies of all his slaves*. It's hard for modern people to conceive of that sort of power relation in any way, but that's what it was. He completely owned them; they had no power of consent over any aspect of their lives. In such a situation, *any* sexual encounter between master and slave is coercive, and meets the definition of rape. Therefore, Thomas Jefferson raped Sally Hemings, repeatedly and over a number of years. In this view, to talk of different degrees of rape, whether the rape was "violent" or "forced" is abhorrent, and can't be countenanced. I admit, there's a lot of power in this perspective, not least because it foregrounds the immoral criminality of slavery in absolute terms.
Annette Gordon-Reed, in her fascinating book *The Hemingses of Monticello*, which seeks to pull away from the larger history of slavery to understand one family (Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson, and their descendants), takes a somewhat more nuanced perspective. Reed, of course, acknowledges the monstrosity of slavery and its sexual power relations on a world-historical scale, but finds that perspective inadequate for her more targeted, micro-historical approach. Such a perspective, in her view, completely obscures the agency that enslaved women had--or may have had--over their own sexualities. It makes sexuality an entirely male-focused affair, rendering the question entirely "Did so-and-so have sex with a slave?" "Yes? OK, it's rape." It leaves no room for the possibility that Hemings or another enslaved woman might have had a real emotional and physical interest in an owner. Put another way, it renders entirely ideological (masters vs. slaves, in never-ending war), a relationship that surely must have had more nuance. To take the first view I enumerated, ultimately, in Gordon-Reed's view, serves to blot out the real lived experiences of enslaved women. These experiences are very hard for us to understand today, given the sheer paucity of literary and archival sources that directly convey the experiences of enslaved women. So she's hesitant to paint with the broad brush, because ultimately that brush serves to obscure understanding, not enhance it. It can even serve to render enslaved women eternally childlike, which itself was a goal of the ideology of slavery.
You might be interested in reading Gordon-Reed's book to further tease out the nuances of her argument. It's a really great book, though Gordon-Reed is trained as a lawyer and not an historian, and other historians have had various issues with the book's methodology.
There's no evidence that Thomas Jefferson, a refined and charming man who considered himself a statesman, ever held an enslaved woman down at knifepoint and raped her. Given the power relations between him and his slaves, it's doubtful he ever would have had to. So, I believe you are on firm historical ground if you want to claim that Jefferson raped Hemings. But there is at least one decent argument to say that the answer is more like "we don't know, and probably never can." | [
"To Brodie, Jefferson's ambiguous posturings on slavery could be explained by his personal life. If he had been conducting a 28-year affair with a slave, then he could not free his slaves because once they were freed, Virginia law would force them from the state, unless he gained permission from the legislature for... |
why do i sometimes get this ghost itch on the inside of my ear? | It's most likely wax moving toward the entrance of your ear and it hits a hair that tickles/itches the inner ear.
At least that's what makes the most sense to me. | [
"Itch can originate in the peripheral nervous system (dermal or neuropathic) or in the central nervous system (neuropathic, neurogenic, or psychogenic). When there is no identifiable cause it is known as essential pruritus.\n",
"\"D. gallinae\" is capable of infesting the ear canal, with symptoms including itchin... |
How accurate is Chapter 1 of Inglorious Basterds? | I cannot answer the other questions but if you are curious about the pipe, that is a Calabash Pipe, popularized in media because of Sherlock Holmes. [Quentin Tarantino specifically used it for narrative purposes]( _URL_0_) to portray contrast against the farmer's smaller pipe and to accentuate his detective skills. | [
"\"Centigrade 232\" is a poem by Robert Calvert, published in a 1977 book and released as an album in 2007. The title alludes to \"Fahrenheit 451\" by its metric equivalent, \"signifying the writer destroying his rough drafts\".\n",
"Here the novel ends abruptly. A short post-scriptural note, ostensibly written b... |
how does plant life begin on an isolated island in the middle of the ocean? | Plants may drift on the ocean, or be carried by wildlife (birds) or the wind, in certain cases. Or, they may be barren, as some islands are. | [
"Aquatic plants live in both the benthic and pelagic zones and can be grouped according to their manner of growth: 1) emergent = rooted in the substrate but with leaves and flowers extending into the air, 2) floating-leaved = rooted in the substrate but with floating leaves, 3) submersed = growing beneath the surfa... |
When was the first time an extensive/university education was available to anyone who was willing to pursue it and work for it (not just the elite)? | hi, this thread from the FAQ* may have some interesting information
[How has admissions worked at historical universities and schools?](_URL_1_)
and I believe there are more smatterings regarding admissions throughout this section in general
[Life at University](_URL_0_)
*see the "popular questions" link on the sidebar or the "wiki" tab above | [
"The Franciscan friar Juan Antonio Liendo y Goicoechea reformed university education towards the end of the 18th century by introducing science; Chemistry, Physics, Anatomy and Mathematics; and technology studies.\n",
"There were several advancements made in 17th-century Italian education systems. One example cou... |
I've heard some say that the Arab slave trade was far larger and more damaging than the Atlantic slave trade ever was. Is this true, or a false/misleading statement to advance political ideology? | While you wait for an answer to your question you might be interest in [these](_URL_0_) [previous](_URL_1_) answers regarding the slave trade conducted by Arabs and others across the Sahara and the Indian Ocean. The first notes that many claims about the Arab slave trade beong larger or more damaging rely on distortions and outright falsehoods about the Atlantic slave trade in order to make the comparison. | [
"But by the beginning of the eighteenth century, even slave trade dwindled, with the Dutch becoming a rather small player in the trans-Atlantic trade. Since globally this trade peaked in the 18th century, this meant that the Dutch contribution to the Atlantic slave trade only amounts to 5% of the grand total, equal... |
A thought experiment from childhood. Convoluted question inside. | So imagine your LP. The drive from the hole pulls on the molecules on that inner edge. Those molecules pull their neighbors along and so on down the line. Essentialy the disc rotates because that force is transmitted at the speed of sound in the material. Now if you build a giant disc and rotate it very quickly you still have to pull those inner molecules of the disc, and they'll pull on the next molecules out, and so on. Most likely if you were to rotate a vinyl disc at close to the speed of light it'd warp and break long before that. But even supposing you had some magic material, the fastest the speed of sound could be is the speed of light, and so the whole thing ends up accelerating relativistically. Eventually some molecules, despite their large strength just can't hold on because the force to accelerate the next ring of molecules outward from it is infinite (as that ring approaches the speed of light.) So even this disc shatters before the edge hits the speed of light. | [
"As evidence, Wegner cites a series of experiments on magical thinking in which subjects were induced to think they had influenced external events. In one experiment, subjects watched a basketball player taking a series of free throws. When they were instructed to visualise him making his shots, they felt that they... |
What wild animals have the best temperament towards humans? | Not many.
Think about it, why do almost all animals (barring those that live off of our waste) avoid us? If they didn't, they'd likely be extinct. The notion of going to the grocery store for food and walking around in the wilderness to observe is very, very new.
Even 500 years ago we pretty much ate whatever we could kill and wasn't poisonous, and obviously any animals that didn't know better than to avoid us or were unable to do so were the first to die. [This is the reason much of the worlds megafauna are extinct(along with climate change).](_URL_0_) | [
"Aristotle primarily divided 'sensitive' biological organisms into animals and 'non-sensitive' biological organisms as plants. Unlike livestock, which have become tamed for at least a few century and have a much different appearance and character to their inhabitants in the wild, wild animals have intrinsic charact... |
what’s to stop a bank from just making up money on their computer systems? | They get audited regularly and any discrepancies carry large penalties and potential criminal charges. | [
"As a result, banks have tended to buy in modern comprehensive software from large, specialist firms. This may be run by the bank itself or by an agency running the computing service on behalf of the bank.\n",
"Banking software is used by millions of users across hundreds or thousands of branches. This means that... |
After the conquest of Gaul by Rome why did none of the surviving tribe's try to rebel during the numerous civil wars following the conquest. | Roman influence was already significant before the Roman conquest, roughly since the late IInd century BCE (a bit before the conquest of the *provincia*).Treaties were passed with Gaulish states and coalitions, especially with Aiduoi who controlled not just their confederation and the road from Rhone to Seine but also had a certain dominance over Celtic Gaulish states, in order to ensure a flourishing trade (tableware, oil, wine) to the point eastern Gaulish coinage seems to have been indexed on half the value of a Roman denarius.
"Tribe", in the anthropologic meaning of the word (human groups tied by familial, imaginary or not, ties with a fluid social organisation) can't be attributed to late Gaulish culture : we'd be rather talking there about decentralized states (Caesar's civitates, including several pagi which might be identified with Gaulish *teuta*, tribe/citizenship) themselves held regionally trough coalition or assembly patronage.These complex state structures (Aiduoi,for instance, had the equivalent of a constitution and institutional rules) knew factional development of their politics, as Caesar accounted for.
> *In Gaul there are factions not only in all the states, and in all the cantons and their divisions, but almost in each family, and of these factions those are the leaders who are considered according to their judgment to possess the greatest influence, upon whose will and determination the management of all affairs and measures depends. And that seems to have been instituted in ancient times with this view, that no one of the common people should be in want of support against one more powerful; for, none \[of those leaders\] suffers his party to be oppressed and defrauded, and if he do otherwise, he has no influence among his party. This same policy exists throughout the whole of Gaul; for all the states are divided into two factions.*
Until the IInd century BCE, Druids seems to have enjoyed a great political role, not just amongst their own people, but as part of some sort of political-spiritual pan-Gaulish confraternity which regularly assembled. It's still debated what lead to a decline of Druidism in Gaul at this point (a conjunction of the damages of Cimbrii and Teutoni in Gaul; and the Roman influence from the South, possibly), and how much this decline was important (did Diviciacos stressed being Druid or not in this period?) but their traditional role of diplomats and intermediaries seems to have suffered some backlash and to have been more localized to their own states, making relations between them more likely to escalate.
While Gaulish factions took a lot of forms and were primarily functioning trough inner politics, one obvious polarization was a pro or anti-roman approach depending. Practically every Gaulish state we have a glimpse of their policies did have such opposition, Aiduoi included (Diviciacos, pro-roman and his anti-roman brother Dumnorix) and during the war (for Aruernoi, pro-roman Epasnactos and anti-roman Vercingetorix). Again, this polarization wasn't set in stone : out of opportunism, pressure or to Roman presence threatening local interests, people changed sides, radicalized or compromised, _URL_3_ a sense, pro and anti-Roman policies could be similar to the opposition between Optimates and Populares in Rome, owing to other matters and whom differences could be sometimes superficial.
Pro-Roman Gaulish elites were,thanks to their relations with Romans (Diviciacos was hosted by Cicero probably because both knew each other indirectly trough wine trading), could set up an efficient patronage and political networking, or at least hoped obtaining a similar position Aiduoi had (Arvenrs attempted without success to be considered "blood-brothers" of Romans as their rivals were considered). Rome, on the other hand, did intervened in Gaulish matters before Caesar by considering Ariovistos as a friend of Rome (possibly due to his opposition to Sequanoi, then foes of Aiduoi, this support fading when Ariovistos clashed with the latter).More or less anti-Roman did preexisted to Caesar's campaign, hinted by the alliance between Sequanoi and Eleuetoi, which were at least considered hostile and threatening to band with others.
Caesar eventually supported his interventions in Gaul trough the assembly of Celtic Gaul,and the assembly of all Gaul, dominated by Aiduoi which gave the general the protectorate of Gaul,more or less, making his intervention gaining a legalist veneer.
Right from the start of Roman conquest, some peoples and among them the more important, were ready to accept a Roman protectorate out of interest or pressure. Vercingetorix himself most probably was an auxiliary of Caesar at some point. Until -56, without being a constitutional walk, Gaulish opposition was relatively _URL_0_ Roman fiscal,commercial (increasing importance and monopoly of Roman traders), military and political pressure (especially as Caesar set up client kings against the wishes of the population) was felt more seriously, however, a general anti-Roman feeling appeared (at first in peripheral regions where Roman influence never was that strong). Caesar almost systematically dealt with this by heavily punishing revolts (killing off their senates and enslaving when not massacring the population). The general Gaulish revolt of -52 was a mix of disappointed nobles having hoped their alliance would have owed them something, people seeing in Romans an obstacle to their interests, people politically opposed to a Roman protectorate and (such as Aeduoi) some playing both sides.Their defeat meant an almost literal beheading of anti-Roman forces in Gaul.
& #x200B;
Still, you ***did*** have local revolts after -51. We don't know much about them, however.
In -46, Bellovacoi revolte against Romans. Giving that they participated to every major revolt before, it could point to a permanence of previous _URL_1_ -39/38, revolts happened in Rhineland (allied with Germans) and Aquitaine, without any mentioned people. The definitive settlement of Ubii in Belgica could be interpreted as being ordered to watch over the region as allies.Again in -30/-29, Morinoi and other Belgians possibly supported by Germans revolted _URL_2_ -29, Aquitains and Treviroi rebelled and after their defeat, Gaul was re-organized in provinces.
After that, troubles and revolts have a distinct anti-fiscal stance, as soon as Licinius' abuses against Gaulish elites (such as "adding" two fiscal months) or Sacrovir's revolt,which concerned more romanized Gauls striving for fiscal liberty firstmost.
As most opposition to Romans was crushed,and elite benefiting from Roman alliance remained, there was nobody left to really manage and to officer another armed opposition in Gaul in a regional scale, especially as peoples traditionally more or less hostile to Rome were ravaged. We're talking of ten years of war, including political strife and quasi-civil war, with ten of thousands of victims on battlefield or due to massacres, and probably the same being enslaved. Anything that could have represented a possible new rebellion was utterly broken (especially after the wake-up call of -52), when pro-Romans flourished,which supported an already present political romanization,which happened fairly quickly compared to Africa or Hispania.
Simply said, most of remaining Gaulish elite after Caesar, with noted exceptions, continued their Romanising policies as was their broad interest; adopted more and more Roman features and by the late Ist century CE, not much of Gaulish civilization remained.
**Sources**
*Vercingétorix* \- Jean-Louis Brunaux
*La vie politique des Gaulois* \- Emmanuel Arbarbe
*Vercingétorix, chef de guerre* \- Alain Deyber | [
"The uprising was, however, merely the prelude to a much bigger campaign led by Vercingetorix, chief of the Arverni tribe of central Gaul, who united many Gallic tribes and states under his leadership. Recognizing that the Romans had an upper hand on the battlefield due to their panoply and training, he declined to... |
What are the earliest End of Days/Apocalypse Myths? | Though I do not hold a lofty degree in history, social science or anything similar, I feel I may be able to add a small amount of perspective to this original question.
The concept of the Apocalypse is very old and is mentioned a number of times throughout the old and new testament. [The book of Job mentions it, as well as the books of Matthew, John and Revelations.](_URL_3_)
In addition to the Bible, Norse mythology gives mention to [Ragnarok](_URL_1_), which holds its own when compared to what was being said in the old and new testaments.
The [Messianic Age](_URL_0_) is also a concept of the Apocalypse but generally one viewed as a favorable change over a violent one.
Also it should be noted that the ancient Hindu texts of [Puranas](_URL_2_) mentions what they would consider an "apocalypse" in that it'll be the reintegration of Vishnu into the universe. Kali Yuga is the current time frame we live in in relation to the Hindu apocalypse, there's more in that wiki link about it.
As far as finding a specific date, I cannot. But the concept of the apocalypse has been around for a very long time, and could be argued by psychologists as being a mental manifestation of death that inevitably takes us all. | [
"BULLET::::- Apocalypse of Weeks (93:1–10, 91:11–17): this subsection, usually dated to the first half of the 2nd century BC, narrates the history of the world using a structure of ten periods (said \"weeks\"), of which seven regard the past and three regard future events (the final judgment). The climax is in the ... |
Why do polar animals tend to be larger than their temperate/tropical counterparts? | [Bergmann's Rule](_URL_0_) Basically, larger animals have a lower surface area to volume ratio and thus radiate less heat | [
"Other ecogeographical rules include Bergmann's Rule, coined by Carl Bergmann in 1857, which states that homeotherms closer to the Equator tend to be smaller than their more northerly or southerly conspecifics. One of the proposed reasons for this cline is that larger animals have a relatively smaller surface area ... |
Why does hypertension cause ocular blood vessels to narrow? | Baroreceptors, in this instance, likely have nothing to do with it...That's part of a autonomic circuit used to regulate heart rate and cardiac output relative to changes is BP. To my knowledge, there aren't any baroreceptors in the ocular arterioles.
Ocular vessels narrow due to something called "myogenic tone", or "pressure-induced constriction". The smooth muscle cells in these vessels are able to sense stretch caused by increases in pressure and constrict accordingly. No neural innervation is required; even a single isolated smooth muscle cell would constrict when stretched. The development of this myogenic tone protects the extremely fragile capillary bed from rupture due to high pressures, since capillaries themselves are extremely thin (1 layer of endothelial cells only) and non-contractile.
Pressure COULD get high enough to widen vessels instead, since the myogenic capability of smooth muscle reaches a plateau...but that pressure would need to be pretty dangerously high for that to happen.
I could wax poetic about how this increase in tone ultimately leads to remodeling of the vessel wall, decreased distensibility, and vascular dysfunction, but I won't...unless you want me to. (c: | [
"Hypertension can also be produced by diseases of the renal arteries supplying the kidney. This is known as renovascular hypertension; it is thought that decreased perfusion of renal tissue due to stenosis of a main or branch renal artery activates the renin–angiotensin system.\n",
"Although hypercholesterolemia ... |
What did people use bread for before the sandwich was invented/became commonplace? | Bread was typically eaten with some kind of moistener, usually based on an oil or sugar.
Bread or some other staple starch formed the foundation of the diet, and the term was sometimes used as a synecdoche, in which a part of something (bread) was used to refer to the whole (diet). "Give us this day our daily bread," for example, refers generically to food, and not merely to bread on its own. However, as Sidney Mintz discusses in his wonderful history of sugar, *Sweetness and Power*, while the main starch could be the food itself, it often couldn't culturally count as a proper *meal* unless it had the right accompaniment. Historically, in the West where bread was the starch, this has been some kind of moistener: in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean, olive oil is the standard; in northern Europe, it was frequently butter; with the development of plantation sugar production in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, and industrial food in the nineteenth century, jam became a very popular food for this role in Britain. In other cases, it might be "drippings," a generic term for the fat or moisture produced by cooking meat in certain ways. Of course, bread was also a ubiquitous accompaniment to all kinds of other dishes. Soup, for example, always comes with bread, to the point that in some situations, soup alone might not be considered an actual meal.
I should note that I specialize in the study of wheat, flour, and bread in modern Britain. And, while the sandwich was invented famously by the Earl of Sandwich in the eighteenth century, I actually come across very few references to it before the invention and proliferation of sliced bread. While not unknown before the 1930s, I think the sandwich as the staple form of making a meal out of bread is really a postwar development. In the period that I study, mostly 1750 to 1950, the standard is bread and butter, bread and jam, or bread and drippings. | [
"The modern concept of a sandwich using slices of bread as found within the West can arguably be traced to 18th-century Europe. However, the use of some kind of bread or bread-like substance to lie under (or under \"and\" over) some other food, or used to scoop up and enclose or wrap some other type of food, long p... |
How was Napoleon able to advance his rank in the French military so quickly? | The short and snippy answer to why Napoleon advanced so quickly is because of the French Revolution. But for all the brevity, such an answer is not facetious. The Revolution created a series of unique conditions that allowed a man of Napoleon's talents to vault quite high at a young age.
First off, and most obviously, the Revolution did create a shortage of officers within the French armies as the pre-1789 institution was dominated by the nobility, especially its upper echelons. Although Revolutionary zeal did not eliminate all nobles serving under French colors, the Revolution did decimate the officer corps. Some of the pre-1789 officers were executed during the Terror while other officers abandoned their commissions and fled the country. The outflow of officers meant that there were now positions open for men from the technical services or middle classes and the minor nobility. Napoleon belonged to the latter category, but he was not alone in this regard. His great Marshal Davout also came from the minor nobility and Napoleon's future chief of staff Berthier came from an established military family with close connections to the old nobility. These relative outsiders managed to seize the opportunity presented to them by the Revolutionary upheavals within the officer corps to advance their positions.
But opportunity was only one factor in climbing atop the greasy pole. The Revolution may have stressed meritocracy, but the politics of the Revolution could not eliminate patronage completely. The shifting factions within various Revolutionary governments meant that politicians often cultivated their own generals. In Napoleon's case, his connections with Antoine Salicetti led to the young man's advancement early in his career. But political patronage was a double-edged sword in the tumultuous politics of the Revolution. Napoleon's connection with Jacobins made him politically suspect in the Thermidorian reaction after the Terror. But Napoleon was lucky in his choice in political friends. Salicetti was able to save Napoleon from house arrest and later managed to cultivate a relationship with Paul Barras. These networks helped Napoleon gain commissions in what were subsidiary theaters for the French Revolutionary Wars, Italy and Egypt.
Napoleon managed to make the most of these appointments. Although Italy lacked the prestige of Germany, Napoleon succeeded in Italy while his compatriots in Germany failed. The military successes helped connect Napoleon to one of the Revolution's popular elements, military *gloire*. Generals and military exploits became one of the legitimizing components of the Revolution, especially as the more radical social levelling had led to the Terror. So military generals assumed a greater deal of political capital in the closing days of the Revolution than they possessed at its strat. Emmanel Sieyès, one of the key plotters in Brumaire, would famously quip, "I need a sword," in other words, a man who could command the loyalty of one of the few powerful institutions that possessed a great deal of popular legitimacy within the Republic, the army.
Napoleon was only thirty years old when he became First Consul, but many of his own contemporaries were not that much older than Bonaparte. His main military rivals to be the Brumaire coup's "sword"- Bernadotte, Jourdan, Hoche, and Moreau - were all born in the same decade as Napoleon. The youthfulness of this cohort underscores how the French Revolution created the right constellation that meant a young man with the right talents and connections could advance farther and faster than he could in the pre-1789 military. | [
"By 1820, Napoleon had completed his elementary studies and begun his military training, learning German, Italian and mathematics as well as receiving advanced physical training. His official army career began at age 12, in 1823, when he was made a cadet in the Austrian Army. Accounts from his tutors describe Napol... |
the relationship between the saudi royal family and religion | Ok so this is gonna be a long one with sweeping overviews and very little specificites, but this is the basic breakdown.
Towards the beginning of the 20th century, Arabia was still a collection of warring fiefdoms that couldn't really agree with one another. They had each been ruled by a sucession of rulers including the sultans of the Ottoman empire, their own individual rulers, and the new colonial powers that were pushing their way into what is now Saudi Arabia.
This time was also a time of great wars in the region. Concurrent with the wars, there was a new and thriving religious movement called Wahabism, named after the founder I believe. It basically contains all the crazy bits of fanaticism that the west consideres to be "violent islam." So all the hardcore following of Sharia law, and the insane punishments that come with it, and the whole women not being allowed to drive that mostly stems from the Wahabi movement.
Anyway, during the 1920s a nomadic tribe leader named Ibn Saud finally conquerored Mecca and declared himself king with the backing of a massive army that he had managed to gather together.
Now most people ask, "where'd the army come from? I thought he was the leader of a small nomadic tribe?" Great question.
The army was recruited from newly militarized followers of the Wahabi sect, who were goaded to use force to conequror in the name of Islam.
Ibn Saud made an agreement with the group of imams who were considered the governing body of the Wahabi Sec (Henceforth refered to as the Ulumat), to force wahabism onto the newly conquerored people if the Ulumat would tell their followers to back Ibn Saud. The backing of the Ulumat was the reason that the Ibn Saud was able to conqueror the country and name it after himself and his family: Saudi Arabia.
Anywho, continuing down to the formation of the government.
The Ulumat wanted their proverbial pound of flesh in return for helping Ibn Saud conqueror the kingdom so they set up an Islamic Jumhariya (Islamic State) where the king (Ibn Saud and his descendants) would rule, but ALWAYS defer to the Ulumat before making any laws.
This agreement continus down to today, and the Ulumat is more powerful than ever, even making oil concession descisions in certain cases. The king can make a law, but without the approval of the Ulumat it means nothing.
Don't be mistaken, the king is not the innocent pawn in this circumstance. Since the 1930s, when Ibn Saud and his family discovered that Saudi Arabia had more oil than sand, they sold out HARD to the west. Making massive concessions to the likes of BP and Aramco (Arab American oil Company).
After making these oil concessions, they allowed foreign governments such as the British and the Americans to station hundres of thousands of foreign troops in the nation in order to secure the oil reserves.
The king and the Ulumat are both at the mercy of these foreign powers. Without the backing of these nations, the people would rebel and overthrow both the Ulumat and the King. This is not speculation, since the assasination of King Faisal in the 1960s by a member of his own family, there has been a very uneasy feeling amongst the Saudi people regarind how their governmental structure runs, specially with the interest of the Ulumat and foreign powers dominating the rather powerless monarchy.
| [
"The alliance between the Saudi ruling dynasty and its extremist religious allies is at the heart of Saudi exclusion and mistreatment of women. The royal family has traditionally used a conservative brand of Sunni Islam (Wahhabism) to justify its rule. Present-day Saudi Arabia was founded by an alliance between Muh... |
Did Hitler have any plans to eventually invade France and/or Britain if they did not declare war when he invaded Poland? | The memoirs of the German Foreign Ministry interpreter Paul Schmidt relates an illuminating anecdote about Hitler's reaction to Britain's war ultimatum delivered to Hitler on the morning of 3 September 1939. According to Schmidt, Hitler read the ultimatum and angrily turned to his Foreign Minister on Ribbentrop and said "What now?"
Although Gerhard Weinberg doubts the veracity of Schmidt's account and Ian Kershaw believes that Hitler was prosaically asking what the French response would be, this particular anecdote illustrates the hazy and muddled German response to the expansion of the war. Although it was logical that an expansion of German force on the continent would inevitably lead to another war with France, the Germans did not make any systematic plans to defeat and occupy France. Although *Mein Kampf* had asserted that France was an eternal enemy of Germany, Hitler was remarkably lax in actually planning for this eventuality. When it was clear that the British and French would not be brought to accept Germany's dismemberment of Poland, Hitler summoned his service chiefs to the Reich chancellery on 27 September to tell them he intended to smash France and bring her to heel through swift military action between October and December 1939.
Much of the OKW leadership was aghast at Hitler's accelerated timetable and engaged in a degree of strategic footdragging to encourage Hitler to postpone what later became known as *Fall Gelb*. Although OKH was relatively enthusiastic about the Polish war, many commanders in OKH had believed that a political solution would prevent the need for an offensive in the west. Prior to Hitler's 27 September meeting, OKH had issued its *Directive for Reorganization of the Army for Defensive War in the West* on 17 September which stressed training for a defensive response to a Franco-British offensive. The resulting plans for an offensive in France and the Low Countries produced on 19 October were unimaginative frontal attack on a broad front. Hitler was unimpressed by these plans, but continually reaffirmed his commitment to an offensive despite the constant postponement of *Fall Gelb*.
Hitler's dissatisfaction with the conventional plans of attack, coupled with the Mechelen incident in which a plane carrying the current *Fall Gelb* plans accidentally landed in Belgium, gave an ideal opportunity to revamp the operation into something far more dynamic. The resulting Manstein sickle plan through the Ardennes is well-known, but even this firm operational plan created much dissension within the German ranks. Whether or not the panzers would need to be accompanied by the infantry or strike out on their own to swiftly close the trap in the Low Countries was fiercely debated in wargames prior to May 1940.
Looking at this chaotic and almost dysfunctional military planning, the German success in 1940 was all the more remarkable. The delay in operations proved indirectly quite valuable as it did allow the German forces to reequip and engage in training that would allow them to improvise at key points in the campaign. The German command at various points in the campaign seemed to be amazed and almost skeptical of the success of the sickle cut. Hitler's Fuhrer Directive No. 6 of 3 October stated German goals were:
> to defeat as much as possible of the French Army and of the forces of the allies fighting on their side, and at the same time to win as much territory as possible in Holland, Belgium, and Northern France, to serve as a base for the successful prosecution of the air and sea war against England and as wide protective area for the economically vital Ruhr.
That the German offensive had quickly achieved these relatively limited objectives and the door was seemingly open to the conquest of the whole of France shocked the German high command. The stiffening of French resistance along the newly-formed Weygand line during the wider offensive into France in June, *Fall Rot*, summoned up uncomfortable memories of a reversion to the static warfare of the First World War. The encirclement of the French armies in Lorraine and the French appeals for an armistice dispelled these fears, but they were operative through much of the campaign.
This muddled planning and the self-doubt that pervaded the German planning and execution of the invasion of France suggests that the Third Reich had no firm plan for an occupation of the entirety of France. It should be noted that this was all too typical of the planning culture within the Third Reich and the fact that there was no concrete plan for the occupation of France is somewhat irrelevant. Hitler created a geopolitical situation in 1939 in which it became essential that Germany completely neutralize France if Hitler was to realize his long-cherished vision of an empire in the east.
*Sources*
Frieser, Karl-Heinz. *The Blitzkrieg Legend The 1940 Campaign in the West*. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2013.
Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt. *Germany and the Second World War / Vol. 2, Germany's initial conquests in Europe*. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. | [
"Hitler miscalculated Franco-British reactions to the invasion of Poland in September 1939, because he had not realised that a watershed in public opinion had occurred in mid-1939. May also wrote that the French and British could have defeated Germany in 1938 with Czechoslovakia as an ally and also in late 1939, wh... |
in very remote places (e.g. 50km from your nearest neighbor, 2 hour drive to the nearest small village) in places like canada, scandinavia, alaska, etc, what jobs do people do to sustain themselves? | In Australia they are generally cattle stations, large areas of grazing country breeding cattle for export. In dry areas, there can easily be 50 km between station homesteads. | [
"Many people may go on road trips for recreational purpose (e.g. sightseeing or to reach a desired location, typically during a vacation period (e.g., in the US, driving to Disneyland from Oregon)). Other motivations for long distance travel by automobile include visitation of relatives, who may live far away, or r... |
Can history be effectively taught by teaching effect before cause and slowly progressing backwards into history? | I have a bachelor's in history, and obtained a Master's in Teaching, and then focused on teaching mathematics rather than history.
There's actually a lot of really good reasons, not so much the 'effects before cause', but because everyone who is born suffers from a necessary 'flattening' - the world that I was born into simply 'is' the world, another way of saying 'presentism'.
So by teaching history from the present backwards, we can constantly reference the world that the students know, and build up a backstory that explains the world they can see.
The reason this doesn't happen a lot more often is because state standards call for state history to be taught often in the 9th grade, and American history to be taught often to Juniors. There's this idea that we want citizenry and civics to be taught to the strongest reasoners.
The approach that you take has a certain beautiful symmetry to it - we could teach citizenry and civics to 7th and 8th graders, contextualizing the world they are in, and the move backwards to American history in the 8th and 9th, move backwards through America's foundation and European expansionism, and then finally land in the ancient world.
Another problem with this approach is that you're asking students to understand local history - but it's not as if you're really going to get into any solid international politics. So when you get to the part of the ancient world which is relevant to modern politics, you don't really have the time and scope to have covered enough of the arab or chinese world to make ancient history's explanatory power relevant.
| [
"\"The History of the World Backwards\" tells the story of the world, but in a world where time flows forwards whilst history told backwards. In other words, if you were born in 2007, you would be 60 years old in 1947. All the major historical events happen backwards, so for example, Nelson Mandela enters jail a Sp... |
What prevents full on recovery of limb function? | Some types of tissue don’t heal on their own. These are usually tissues that have no blood flow to them. Tissues that do heal almost always leave scar tissue, which interferes with the natural shape and limits movement. | [
"Limb-sparing techniques, also known as limb-saving or limb-salvage techniques, are performed in order to give patients an alternative to amputation. There are many different types of limb-sparing techniques, including arthrodesis, arthroplasty, alloprosthetic composite, endoprosthetic reconstruction, prosthetic im... |
dna replication, mitosis and meiosis? | Mitosis will replicate DNA and cell will divide creating two identical cells to form. 46 Chromosomes total (23 pairs) in starting and ending cells.
Meiosis will replicate DNA and cell will divide. Then chromosomes will crosslink allowing for DNA to move between chromosome pairs. Cells will divide again (no DNA replication) and a total of four cells have formed with only 23 total chromosomes (no pairs).
Crosslinking allows for genetic variance in new generations and is random. | [
"In meiosis, DNA replication is followed by two rounds of cell division to produce four daughter cells, each with half the number of chromosomes as the original parent cell. The two meiotic divisions are known as Meiosis I and Meiosis II. Before meiosis begins, during S phase of the cell cycle, the DNA of each chro... |
why is it that fat is removed with soap, yet soap is made from fat? | Things dissolve in water because water is a polar molecule. A water molecule is like the Disney mouse ears logo. A big circle with two smaller circles that favor one side. The area at the top of the mouse ears has a slightly more positive charge than the bottom of the mouse's chin. So water has a positive pole and a negative pole, based on where its molecules are.
As a general rule, other polar molecules will be able to dissolve in water. Non-polar molecules (like many hydrocarbons) are insoluble in water. Fat is a non-polar molecule, and does not dissolve in water. That's why oil and water do not mix. Polar molecules are generally known as hydrophilic (water loving); non-polar molecules are known as (hydrophobic).
Soap is somewhat of a hybrid. It has a polar end and a non-polar end, the latter it gets from being made partially from fat. So when soap is mixed together with fat and water, the non-polar end of the soap is attracted to the hydrophobic fat, while the polar end is attracted to the water. As you agitate the mixture more and more, you get tiny globs of fat that are entirely surrounded by the soap molecules, [like this](_URL_0_). Since it's completely surrounded by soap molecules and the entire external surface is hydrophilic, the whole thing acts like a hydrophilic molecule and dissolves in water, to be washed away with the next rinse. | [
"Soaps are formed from the reaction of glycerides with sodium hydroxide. The product of the reaction is glycerol and salts of fatty acids. Fatty acids in the soap emulsify the oils in dirt, enabling the removal of oily dirt with water.\n",
"Ordinary soap is a salt of a fatty acid. Soaps are mainly used as surfact... |
how/why the wind blows | Because of the temperature differences. Hot air tends to go up and colder air comes down to take it's place. In larger scale the Coriolis force -it's a force asked to masses due to the earth's rotation- makes air flow in some large scale ["cells"](_URL_1_)
In smaller scale is basically caused from temperature differences. Take for example a city near sea. There will be at one point a "breeze" flowning through the city ([sea breeze](_URL_0_) ) as the air above the sea is colder than that of the land (because reasons!). | [
"\" Blowin 'in the Wind\" is a cover of the song written by Bob Dylan in 1962 and released on his album \"The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan\" in 1963. The refrain \"The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind\" has been described as \"impenetrably ambiguous: either the answer is so obvious it is right in your face, or t... |
what's going on with "black money" in india? | A bunch of people aren't reporting their income, mostly because it's gained through illegal means (like the black market). This income is kept hidden in their homes generally, and isn't stored in banks.
In order to combat this, the Indian government surprised everyone by suddenly announcing that all their most common bills no longer have value, and must be exchanged for new bills. It would be like if the US government said "we're getting rid of the $10 and $20 bills and replacing them with $15 and $30 bills." Anyone who wants their money to have value must take it to a bank to exchange it, where the amount they exchange will be recorded. Those with a ton of "black money", i.e. money gained through illegal means and not reported for taxes, will be exposed. | [
"In India, \"black money\" refers to funds earned on the black market, on which income and other taxes have not been paid. The black money market situation in India is epidemic. India currently tops the list for illegal monies in the entire world, estimated to be almost US$1,456 billion stored in Swiss banks in the... |
Would we die if a supernova occurred? | If the closest star to sun 'proxima centauri' exoplodes as a supernova, the radiation reaching us will be the sixth of what we are constantly receiving from the sun, so basically no there is no close supernovas candidates. | [
"Supernovae can result from the death of an extremely massive star, many times heavier than the Sun. At the end of the life of this massive star, a non-fusible iron core is formed from fusion ashes. This iron core is pushed towards the Chandrasekhar limit till it surpasses it and therefore collapses.\n",
"A near-... |
what do the ows protesters want? | They want an end to economic injustice. As to what they want done about it, that's not the point. Angry mobs aren't there to set policy. They're there to show the people who set policy that they need to address a problem quickly, as they're losing the support of the governed. | [
"On 23 October 2011 Mahfouz held a teach-in at Liberty Plaza, in a show of support for the Occupy Wall Street movement. When asked why she came to the OWS protest, she replied, \"Many of U.S. residents were in solidarity with us. So, we have to keep going all over the world, because another world is possible for al... |
Were there any transgender people in the Holocaust? | From an older answer:
Research into this area has only begun in recent years and very little is known at this point.
The Weimar Republic had allowed people to officially change their sex officially. People who wished to do to had to appear before a judge, undergo psychiatric evaluation, an operative sex change and were then issued a so-called Transvestitenschein (a transvestite certificate or pass). This practice continued under the Nazis and we know of a case where a person had their sex changes as late as 1940.
All in all, historical research so far has turned up about 25 biogrpahies of transgender persons in the Third Reich who have official documentation attached to their names, i.e. appeared as people petitioning to receive a Transvestitenschein or came in contact with authorities while already having a Transvestitenschein from the Weimar Republic. Of those individuals, seven transitioned Female to Male, the rest Male to Female. Of the F2M individuals, we can trace one case of persecution: A person born Erna Kubbe who for reasons not entirely clear had their Transvestitenschein revoked and was imprisoned in the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp for women. There however, he received permission to wear men's clothing and have his surnamed changed again to Gerd as it had been before he was imprisoned. The other six cases show a fairly normal existence, one person appearing in the historical record to have adopted a child together with his girlfriend in 1943.
Of the F2M cases, seven were persecuted in some form, almost solely because of homosexual acts they had committed while cross dressing as a woman. In their cases, the cross dressing was viewed as resulting from their homosexuality but not as prove of it. They were brought to a Concentration Camp for homosexuality. The other eleven F2M individuals we know about, experienced problems but no persecution per se. In the case of an Austrian maid, she had undergone the operation but not changed her personal status with the courts yet, so when she was called up for the Wehrmacht, she was fined for draft evasion initially but otherwise left to lead her life.
What is curious is also that it appears that in 1940 so-called Transvestiteballs were still held in Berlin and enjoyed over 300 visitors, all of them cross-dressing apparently.
So as far as we can tell, as long as the suspicion of homosexuality could be evaded, trans individuals who had gone through the channels set up by the state were not specifically persecuted. The discrimination and bureaucratic hurdles they had to undergo where not specific to the Nazi state, had been put in place before and continued afterwards. E.g. sending children who experienced trans feelings to psychiatric facilities is a practice that continued in Germany and Austria well until the 90s. What their experiences in Nazi psychiatry might have been, we don't know since we don't have any records of this happening at the moment.
Similarly, we don't know how the Nazi authorities dealt either with transgender people in the occupied and controlled territories or with individuals who identified as transgender but did not want to undergo reassignment surgery. The Uckermark Camp Memorial has produced some research lately that their camp was also used to imprison young women who displayed sexually and gender non-conformist behavior, what today would be called queer, but that has remained controversial within the academic community because some felt projected queerness back unto people before the concept existed is a form of presentism.
All in all, a lot of research is still to be done and a lot of sources still to be uncovered before a comprehensive picture of the situation of transgender individuals in Nazi Germany can be painted. In my professional opinion, one reason why in the cases known to us, we see no systematic persecution is because the number of people who openly identified themselves as transgender was comparatively small so that the Nazis never really thought up a all encompassing policy but rather continued what had been the status quo before.
Sources:
* Volker Weiss (2010), „Eine weibliche Seele im männlichen Körper; Archäologie einer Metapher als Kritik der medizinischen Konstruktion der Transsexualität“. Dissertation FU Berlin.
* Rainer Herrn (2013), „Transvestitismus in der NS-Zeit – Ein Forschungsdesiderat“. Z SexFo 26.
* Ilse Reiter-Zatloukal (2014); "Geschlechtswechsel unter der NS-Herrschaft. 'Transvesttitismus', Namensänderung und Personenstandskorrektur in der 'Ostmark' am Beispiel der Fälle Mathilda/Mathias Robert S. und Emma/Emil Rudolf K."; Beiträge zur Rechtsgeschichte Österreichs, Bd 1-2014 | [
"Although other gay men who survived the Holocaust are still alive, they were not known to the Nazis as homosexuals and were not deported as pink triangle internees. At least two gay men who were interned as Jews, for instance, have spoken publicly of their experiences.\n",
"The most famous American transgender p... |
how does a tiny cable like usb-c carry such an incredibly huge amount of data so fast? and why couldn't they do that before? | It all comes down to signal processing, encoding, and bigger better chips. I havn't looked at USB 3.1 spec closely but this is the case for every 'faster' connection that came before it.
For example, by sending extra data that verifies the data you sent is correct, you can increase the speed that you send data at and only fix occasional errors. Other techniques include better connections, more advanced techniques for encoding the data, and more efficient measurement devices of the signal coming out the other end. | [
"BULLET::::4. USB cable - Small and light weight, has support for voltage source and most computers have extra ports available. The distance between the circuit to be programmed and the computer is limited by the length of USB cable - it must usually be less than 180 cm. This can make programming devices deep in ma... |
Where does the term "Roma" for the ethnicity come from? | The term Roma is plural for man (Rom in Romani) | [
"Some claim that \"Romani people\" originated in parts of the Rajasthan. Indian origin was suggested on linguistic grounds as early as 200 years ago. The \"roma\" ultimately derives from a form \"ḍōmba\" (\"man living by singing and music\"), attested in Classical Sanskrit. Linguistic and genetic evidence indicates... |
How extensive and fatal was Anti-Loyalist violence during the American Revolution? | I would not say that it was more bloody than the French Revolution, but there was more fighting than is popularly portrayed. T.H. Breen's American Insurgents, American Patriots offers a compelling read as to this issue. | [
"During the American Revolutionary War in 1776, a British loyalist, William Lounsbery, was attacked and killed by a group of revolutionaries led by John Flood. Several other skirmishes occurred that year between loyalists and revolutionaries.\n",
"During the American Revolutionary War, Walter Butler, a New York L... |
Do thermocouples take away heat when converting it to electricity? or does the heat not change at all? | In the case of Peltier devices, in which one side resides outside of the system of interest, heat is absorbed to create electricity. This occurs due to phonons (quanta of heat) being absorbed by electrons that are effectively pushed through the material. (The conditions that allow this are very limited.)
For thermocouples, it would depend on the design. The typical design, two wires of dissimilar alloy, would only absorb the amount of heat the materials absorb intrinsically (see: Heat Capacitance).
Source: Material science education
Regarding your question of a motor, you'll have to give more detail regarding your setup, and the type of motor. | [
"A thermocouple can produce current to drive some processes directly, without the need for extra circuitry and power sources. For example, the power from a thermocouple can activate a valve when a temperature difference arises. The electrical energy generated by a thermocouple is converted from the heat which must ... |
Do other animals experience optical illusions? | It has to do with visual processing in the nervous system, which varies between animals, and as such the perceptibility of illusions to different animals varies widely. [Kelley & Kelley (2013)](_URL_4_), for example, demonstrated that the [Ebbinghaus illusion](_URL_6_) is perceptible to bottlenose dolphins ([Murayama et al., 2012](_URL_0_)) and chickens ([Rosa Salva et al., 2013](_URL_3_)), but pigeons effectively see it "in reverse" ([Nakamura et al., 2008](_URL_5_)) and baboons can't see it at all ([Parron & Fagot, 2007](_URL_1_)).
It's difficult to make any broad generalizations here; different illusions have different neurological causes (Kelley & Kelley, for example, state that "the Ebbinghaus illusion is mediated to some extent by monocular neurons that occur early in the visual system in the lateral geniculate nucleus and V1, whereas another size illusion, the Ponzo illusion, appears to be a result of binocular processing in V1 and the visual cortices beyond ([Song et al. 2011](_URL_2_))"), and the effects of these causes, as demonstrated above, vary from animal to animal. The experience of illusions by animals is still an ongoing - and very interesting - field of research.
EDIT: fixed a typo | [
"Illusions may occur with any of the human senses, but visual illusions (optical illusions) are the best-known and understood. The emphasis on visual illusions occurs because vision often dominates the other senses. For example, individuals watching a ventriloquist will perceive the voice is coming from the dummy s... |
why vga connectors need to be screwed in when hdmi and others don't need to? | "Other" ports have their own locking mechanisms. HDMI, usb, etc rely on friction, and the fact they are flat surface to flat surface contacts.
VGA, serial, and parallel ports are all pin and tube type connectors without enough friction to hold them secure, and highly susceptible to damage if bumped or tripped over | [
"9-pin connectors are used in graphics systems that feature the ability to input video as well as output it. Again, there is no standardization between manufacturers as to which pin does what, and there are two known variants of the connector in use. As can be seen from the diagram above, although the S-Video signa... |
Were black people allowed to vote during segregation? | *Officially*, yes. Their right to vote was constitutionally protected, and could not be denied on the basis of race. However in practice, the right to vote is not actually that well defined under the Constitution, and there were many different ways that the white supremacist regimes in control of the segregationist states used to suppress or control black and poor white votes, some of which were nominally legal, others not so. Although the focus here is on the 19th century so leaves off a good deal of the time span in question, [this previous answer of mine](_URL_0_) does cover some of these issues. I'll quote the core excerpt for you here:
> [....] With the end of Reconstruction and the triumph of 'Redeemer' governments, just about any possible barrier to the voting by African-Americans was implemented. Most famous, perhaps, being literacy tests, but plenty of other mechanisms, including more expansive registration requirements that could be a bureaucratic quagmire for even a quite literate person to navigate, such as requiring documentation of voting history, and subjective tests that could be failed at the whim of the man conducting them. Even though they were clearly targeted primarily at the black population, being as written race neutral (the laws, after all, did impact many poor whites, a not-unwelcome byproduct for the white elites), the laws didn't violate the 15th Amendment as passed, although whether courts would have been forceful in upholding the Constitution with the draft language we can only speculate, given that even the ratified language was hardly well enforced (See Giles v. Harris or US v. Cruishank, among others), and registration requirements were waived or ignored in many cases for white persons, such as small-time felons, or with blanket "Grandfather Laws" which ensured that they needed to meet none of the requirements, essentially.
> Instances are known where certain requirements were waived for African-American men, but always in situations where the man was willing to vote Democrat. Holloway notes the case of Silas Green, who had committed some small time crime, who had been allowed to vote when he balloted Democrat, but upon switching his affiliation, was challenged by the Democratic election officials. It is important to note that in 1880, Reconstruction had only just ended and while ascendant, the Redeemers didn't necessarily feel quite in total control, so as Holloway aptly describes, this form of waiver for specific black persons was "particularly effective because they offered Democrats a flexible but effective way to manipulate the vote when a close race was at hand." They quite literally could create voters if needed, but immediately prevent further voting if they believed that person would no longer support them. This would, of course, become less necessary and less common as the Jim Crow laws were passed and the white ruling elite came to feel more secure in power, and there was no longer any need to court any black voters.
> The impact of such laws is stark. During Reconstruction, in Louisiana, 130,000 black men were voters. After the state was "redeemed", 5,000 black voters were registered. And even those few who were able to get through every hurdle thrown their way still had to contend with the intimidation and threats that would be directed their way for daring to make use of their right. Other states saw similar declines in the late 19th century (although by the early 20th century numbers would again rise as black community organizers worked to fight back and take back the vote). [....] | [
"With control of the legislature, white Democrats passed Jim Crow laws establishing racial segregation in public facilities and transportation. African Americans worked for more than 60 years to regain full power to exercise the suffrage and other constitutional rights of citizens. Without the ability to vote, they... |
why are there laws that you can not be convicted of different crimes after a certain amount of time has passed? | It becomes unreasonable to convict someone of some more petty crimes after a certain amount of time, when the case becomes stale and there could be a lack of evidence to prove or disprove. Also, the passing of a lot of time shows a lack of diligence in seeking such a conviction.
Really heinous crimes like murder generally don't have statute of limitations.
edit: more detailed explanation | [
"Crimes considered heinous by society have no statute of limitations. Although there is usually no statute of limitations for murder (particularly first-degree murder), judges have been known to dismiss murder charges in cold cases if they feel the delay violates the defendant's right to a speedy trial. For example... |
Since time is (sort of?) a fourth dimension along with the familiar three, does that mean time can be measured in meters, feet, etc.? | Yes, it can. The speed of light is the conversion between seconds and meters in this scenario. A meter of time is the length of time it takes light to travel 1m, which is a little over 3 nanoseconds. It's common for astronomers to do this in the other direction, expressing distances in terms of time (light years being the main example). To simplify things, some physicists use units in which the speed of light is unitless and equal to 1. That way they don't have to carry a bunch of c's around in their math. | [
"A temporal dimension is a dimension of time. Time is often referred to as the \"fourth dimension\" for this reason, but that is not to imply that it is a spatial dimension. A temporal dimension is one way to measure physical change. It is perceived differently from the three spatial dimensions in that there is onl... |
Would the royal women of the medieval ages really have the flawless features that we see in movies? | Echoing others here, generally not.
[This is a great article](_URL_1_) on the history of cosmetics for a general overview. If nothing else, the long history of "corrective aids" to appearance suggests that very few people in any age believe they are naturally flawless.
**Pock-faced Elizabeth**
The most famous example is probably [Elizabeth I](_URL_0_), who was said by court ambassadors (who were writing home to their own nations -- they would never have written this to be seen in England itself!) to be covered in smallpox scars. She popularized the use of white paint in order to cover them up, but unfortunately it contained lead. Over time, this led to severe hair loss at best and death at worst. Elizabeth had already lost a great deal of hair due to the scarring on her scalp from smallpox, but lost still more to the face-painting, and was said to be almost entirely bald by her forties.
While Elizabeth is an extreme example, she's not an entirely unrepresentative one. Noble women were only less susceptible to diseases like smallpox in the sense that noble families often moved around to avoid outbreaks (a group of young people fleeing a plague outbreak in Florence is the context for [Boccaccio's *The Decameron*](_URL_6_)), but they weren't any more immune to scarring illnesses or conditions than anyone else was. Between the lack of access to modern dentistry and orthodontia, lead-based make-up, diseases like smallpox, the ubiquity of fleas, and the inability to correct congenital deformities, I suspect people tolerated a lot more "imperfection" in pursuit of beauty.
Some fashionable practices didn't improve the situation much. The elaborate wigs and hairstyles favored during the 18th century were so difficult to put together that you'd have it done in a day's time and then try to maintain it for the next 2-3 weeks. The lard and greases used to keep the hairstyles in place attracted vermin, and the lack of brushing meant that any lice infestation wouldn't encounter any serious opposition. The [Duty on Hair Powder Act of 1795](_URL_2_) helped to kill off the mania for wigs in England, but I don't know when their popularity declined elsewhere.
**Flawless features are a lie anyway**
Second, and on a more modern note, even the women of *today's age* don't have the flawless features that we see in movies. Emilia Clarke has excellent skin, but in every shot, she's slathered in make-up and lit to advantage. In publicity shots and sometimes even production stills, you should always assume that the unseen hand of PhotoShop is at work.
Big movies even have the budgets to digitally alter key shots to still greater advantage. Remember the FX artist who worked on *Transformers* and did an AMA on Reddit? And the now-infamous scene with [Megan Fox and the car](_URL_3_)? It isn't real. Well, it's real in the sense that Megan Fox and Shia LaBeouf were both in front of a camera saying lines. It isn't real in the sense that Fox's body was digitally augmented, and in pretty much the places you'd expect. If you listen to the commentary tracks on a variety of movies, directors will usually point out the scenes where computers were used to hide something, from things as small as a pimple that Cameron Diaz had on a given day of shooting, to splicing in Natalie Portman's mouth and dialogue from a good take to a Natalie Portman in a take where the lighting was better.
As much as we can rail about the murky ethics behind it, it's the latest in a long tradition of artistic fakery. Portrait artists in earlier ages left out "imperfections" and accentuated good traits in order to keep clients happy. The camera had been invented for all about five minutes before [people started to screw around](_URL_5_) with the resulting pictures. Now PhotoShop is brought in to create an image of people that simply does not exist. And in the meantime, we keep trucking along with our pimples, cellulite, chipped teeth, pores, uneven eyes, varicose veins, and errant hairs, convinced that reality is a lesser version of what we should actually be.
Perfection is literally inhuman, but it's all we seem to want. Sorry to be maudlin, but threads like [this](_URL_4_) are starting to kill my soul. | [
"The other type it relates to is Titian's series of \"belle donne\" half-length female figures from the mid-1510s, which also includes \"Lucretia and her Husband\", as well as the single figures of \"Flora\" at the Uffizi, the \"Woman with a Mirror\" at the Louvre, the \"Violante\" and \"Vanity\" in Munich. Most of... |
can anyone be a great singer or is being a greater singer something you're born with? | As a singer i can say with utmost certainty that pretty much everyone can become a good singer in the same way that someone can become a good guitarist. But i'd say that it's more difficult if you don't already have an interest in music or aren't particularly interested.
All it takes is teaching and practice. (But as with everything natural talent does help)
I have seen people who were practically tonedeaf become great singers via the singing program that i am being taught by. | [
"In response to an informal study that named him the 'World's Greatest Singer\" based on a study of vocal ranges, Rose told \"Spin\" in 2014, \"If I had to say who I thought the best singers were, I'd say first that I don't know there's a definitive answer as in my opinion it's subjective, and second that my focus ... |
i realize that i don't like my government that much, and i decide to break away from my country and create a sovereign state. what steps must i make for this to happen? | A state can still be sovereign without recognition, as long as the original state has no ability to project their power within the bounds of your country. In the case of Groklamivlevskanya, the first step is simply declaring your independence. It helps if you don't do this alone, but with a sizable group of people, but you can do it alone.
Now, this declaration basically is an admittance that you won't obey the laws of your host country - won't pay taxes, won't obey officers, etc. The original country will try to enforce their laws.
If they are unable to do so - you are effectively sovereign. If you kill every tax collector to the point that they start sending police men, and if you kill them too to the point that they start sending army men, and you kill them too to the point that they give up - well, that's a war of independence.
At this point, you are sovereign. Not really a country though, unless everyone else recognizes your right to rule. I mean this domestically. You should start by going around to your neighbors and beating them up until they agree to pay your taxes. You can use those taxes to subcontract beating people up to a police force. Alternatively, you can make arrangements with people to recognize your authority - this is called a social contract. You can say that you will let other people participate in your sovereignty, freedom from the initial government, in exchange for obeying your laws and paying your taxes. They may ask for other things in return, such as healthcare.
At this point you are a sovereign state, even if you are not recognized as such, and in the company of regions such as Christiana, Palestine, Transnistria, Ossetia, etc.
If other legitimate countries choose to recognize your country as legitimate, then you can start engaging in diplomatic relations, trading, quelling internal secessionists, enforcing a personality cult, etc. | [
"A state may withdraw diplomatic recognition of another state, or simply refuse to deal with that other country, after withdrawing from all diplomatic relations with that country, such as embassies and consulates, and requiring the other country to do the same. The state will appoint a protecting power to represent... |
where does the saying "cats have 9 lives" come from? | Easy explanation: Because they're really good with their reflexes. They jump and land from heights we would break apart from.
More history:
An old English saying goes "A cat has nine lives. For three he plays, for three he strays, and for the last three he stays". The first three are the times where the cat is young. The next three are where it is in it's prime time and the last three are where it's too old to even catch mice. So first it plays, then it goes around, hunting and then it just stays home.
Cats are thought to be magical and have been worshipped in the past. The greek thought nine is the number of the "trinity of the trinities".
Basically, people have always seen how sturdy these animals are and, back then, have thought they are magical. | [
"According to a myth in many cultures, cats have multiple lives. In many countries, they are believed to have nine lives, but in Italy, Germany, Greece, Brazil and some Spanish-speaking regions, they are said to have seven lives, while in Turkish and Arabic traditions, the number of lives is six. The myth is attrib... |
why old tvs can change instantly between stations but new flat screen tvs that can even connect to the internet can't? | Here's the process an analog TV goes through when changing channels:
* Tune to new frequency, display signal. It's instantaneous, there are no processing steps required, it can just pipe the signal it receives directly to the screen.
Here's the process a digital cable box or TV goes through when changing channels:
1. **Tune** to new frequency
2. **Demux** bitstream and identify correct channel
3. **Decrypt** individual channel (on pay-TV systems)
4. **Unpack and Decode** channel video and audio streams
5. **Wait** for a keyframe in the video stream.
6. **Display** video signal.
Each of those steps takes tenths of a second to complete. The wait for a keyframe, especially, can take 1 or 2 seconds.
Let me explain each of these steps in more detail.
**Step 1** is tuning to the frequency on which the desired channel is broadcast. This step is pretty much instantaneous.
**Step 2** is *demultiplexing* or *demuxing* the signal. This is required because on the vast majority of digital TV systems, a single frequency will carry several individual video channels. These individual channels are smooshed (*muxed*) into a single stream of bits. Your TV/Cable box looks at this bitstream and figures out which bits belong to the channel you selected. It separates the correct bits into a different bitstream that carries just the channel you selected. This is called *demuxing*.
**Step 3** is decryption. On Pay-TV services, most of the channel streams are encrypted to prevent people from watching them if they haven't paid. Your cable box or satellite receiver must consult its internal decryption key table to get the right decryption key, and use it to decrypt the stream. If the key is not available, the box must wait for it to be resent, which can take several seconds (but this is unlikely).
**Step 4** is unpacking and decoding. This is another demux process, but instead of looking for the bits for a video channel, it is now separating the channel stream into video and audio streams. The video uses a codec like MPEG2 or MPEG4, while the audio uses a codec like PCM or AC-3. The box must identify these codecs and begin the proper decoding routines.
**Step 5** is waiting for a keyframe. MPEG2 and MPEG4 are video compression schemes. The way they compress video is by transmitting a *keyframe* (which is a complete frame of video) and then only transmitting the *changes* from one frame to the next. The receiver gets the keyframe, then applies the specified changes to make up subsequent frames. But what if the receiver jumped into the stream in between keyframes (which is the most likely scenario)? All it has are a bunch of changes, but no original to make the changes on. So it has to wait for the *next* keyframe (which usually takes a second or two) and begin decoding from there. This is the biggest reason for the delay in changing channels on most digital TV systems.
**Step 6**, finally, is displaying the decoded video and audio.
All of those processing steps take a little bit of time, and the cumulative effect is that it takes a couple of seconds to begin showing a newly-selected channel. | [
"It was feared that the US switch-off would cause millions of non-cable- and non-satellite-connected TV sets to \"go dark\". Viewers who did not upgrade, either to a television with a digital tuner or a set-top box, ended up losing their only source of television, unless they relied only upon the aforementioned non... |
why does congress have the power to completely alter a bill, changing the contents and even title, on its way through the house or senate? why was this power created? why has its apparent abuse not caused removal of the power? | Congress, and only Congress, has the power to choose each and every word of a bill. This includes the power to edit the bill before voting, and the power to vote on the final bill. If Congress couldn't do this, who would draft, edit, and pass laws? | [
"When, in the opinion of the House of Representatives, a Senate-introduced bill that raises revenue or appropriates money is passed by the Senate and sent to the House for its consideration, the House places a blue slip on the legislation that notes the House's constitutional prerogative and immediately returns it ... |
how do animals in the wild figure out that poison ivy is something to stay away from when it takes days after for the rash to show up? | Most animals are not affected. Humans are simply allergic to their "poison" because it penetrates the skin and is identified by the body as foreign invaders. | [
"BULLET::::- Poison ivy and poison oak are still harmful when the leaves have fallen off, as the toxic residue is persistent, and exposure to any parts of plants containing urushiol can cause a rash at any time of the year.\n",
"The pentadecylcatechols of the oleoresin within the sap of poison ivy and related pla... |
How were Viking and Spartan warriors that survived battles and wars seen once they made home? | I'm not sure about Vikings but elderly Spartan men could be elected into the Gerousia, a council of elders made up of 30 men over 60 years old who typically held office for life.
There were also the Ephors, 5 elected high officials who aside from the two kings held the most power. While I'm not sure if there was an age limit to this group they were likely often older, well known men.
In short elder Spartan men, essentially all of them by then being veterans of many battles (there were long stretches when the Spartans weren't warring with anyone however) could enter high governmental offices. They were an influential and respected part of society.
It is possible that there may still have been something of a stigma towards these men as they were no longer prime fighters in a society dedicated to producing prime fighters, but even if there was the society still held these men in high esteem. | [
"The Vikings are known to have fielded close to 1000 mail clad warriors. There is no mention of berserkers but a contingent of \"champions\" were noted as fighting from horseback. The rebel Irish, held in reserve, were swept away with the Viking rout after having played little or no part in the battle. Their leader... |
how can we be certain that there isn't another 'earth' on the opposite side of the sun, always out of view of our telescopes? | Its gravity would have an effect on our planet, the other planets in the system, and even(on a very small scale) the sun, as well as all the comets and asteroids constantly cutting through our solar system. As we have not observed any such gravitic effects(and we'd notice, because it would screw up trajectories for interplanetary probes and tracking asteroids, as well as screwing up the math for why the planets were acting the way they did), we conclude there is no such body. | [
"The fact that the stars visible from the north and south poles do not overlap must mean that the two observation spots are on opposite sides of the Earth, which is not possible if the Earth is a single-sided disc, but is possible for other shapes (like a sphere, but also any other convex shape like a donut or dumb... |
difference between serial killers and hitmen | Motivation. $ or power or sex etc. That's really it. And hitmen are typically serial killers after the third kill( I think).
It like all Catholics are Christian but not all Christians are Catholics
All hitmen are serial killers but not all serial killers are hitmen. | [
"A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more people, usually in service of abnormal psychological gratification, with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. Different authorities apply different criteria when designating serial ki... |
What percentage of the sky is covered by stars? | **Short answer:** If you don't count the sun, then basically zero. If you do count the sun, then it's about 0.0005%
**Long answer:** You're hitting on a really interesting problem that astronomers had a hundred years ago, called [Olber's Paradox.](_URL_1_) "If the universe is static and eternal and infinite, then shouldn't every line of sight end at a star? If this is the case, then why isn't he night sky as bright as the sun if everything we're looking at is the surface of a star." This turns out to be great simple evidence of the big bang and for a finite age of the universe.
Anyway, let's do some math. Bare with me for a minute. The observable universe contains about 100 billion galaxies with somewhere between 100 billion and 1 trillion stars per galaxy. This means that the the universe has about 10^18 or 10^19 stars. You can now use this to calculate something called the ["mean free path"](_URL_0_) of the universe. That just means the average distance something can go in a straight line before running into something else. Anyway, it turns out that it's about
MFP ~ 1 / (d^(2)) (N/V)
where d is the diameter of a star (use the solar radius about 10^9 m), and N/V is the density of targets (so in our case, stars).
The diameter of the universe is about 100 billion light years, so it has a volume of about 10^80 m^(3). Plugging all these numbers in yields:
MFP ~ 1 / (10^(9))^2 * (10^(19)/(10^80) meters
which adds up to about 10^43 meters. Again, for reference, the radius of the universe is about 100 billion light years, or 10^26 meters. This means, probabilistically, that if you drew a straight line from one side of the observable universe to the other, your odds of hitting a star are 1 in 10^(17) (from the ratio of 10^(26)/10^(43)).
So you can generalize this understanding for the purposes of our problem here. If you are at a random spot in the universe and you draw 10^17 lines away from yourself then this effectively means that only about one line will hit a star. This means, on average, you could run back and forth across the entire universe almost 10^17 times before you hit anything. Basically, it means that only 0.0000000000000001% of sight lines end on stars.
Of course, on the earth, it's a little different. The approximation above assumed a uniform distribution of stars in the universe, when it reality it turns out there's a bunch all clumped together nearby, called the Milky Way, which makes for a much richer number of targets. Indeed, if we repeated this experiment (with drawing lines out into space) then the fraction of lines ending on a star will be as big as 0.0005%, because that's the fraction of the sky occupied by the sun! Anything else other than that is just noise.
| [
"Typically, when looking at an area of sky filled with stars, only stars that are brighter than a limiting apparent magnitude can be seen. As discussed above, the very luminous stars that are farther away will be seen, as well as luminous and faint stars that are closer. There will appear to be more luminous object... |
if cold air can't hold much moisture, how come fog and mist exist? | That fog and mist is water condensing out of the air. The fog is water that has already separated out of the air and " clumped" together. It is just not quite heavy enough to fall thru the air to the ground.. The mist is actually heavy enough to fall | [
"Fog produced with liquid air does not present the hazards of carbon dioxide or liquid nitrogen because the liquid air has the same composition as ordinary atmospheric air (including the same level of breathable oxygen).\n",
"Fog begins to form when water vapor condenses into tiny liquid water droplets that are s... |
why is the "wizard of oz" so revolutionary in movie history? | Because it took a wildly popular book and applied new (maybe not original or first time) film making techniques to it to make a wildly popular film.
Remember, it's not who does it first, it's who does it best first. | [
"BULLET::::- In \"The Muppets' Wizard of Oz\" (2005), the Wizard of Oz is portrayed by Jeffrey Tambor. This version is a former tour bus driver named Francis Cornfine from Hollywood, CA who came to the Land of Oz where the residents assumed he was an all-powerful figure. Cornfine's talent at manipulating his finger... |
Why is the earth's crust thinner under the oceans? | [Oceanic crust, forming at mid ocean ridges and subducting at the trenches is like a conveyor belt](_URL_4_). It maintains a relatively constant thickness, 7km +/-, due to the melting/cooling/insulation as described by Sycosys.
What he/she did not address is why there is a much [thicker continental crust](_URL_0_). This is due to differentiation, which is really just the separation of lighter rocks, that "float" rather than being subducted. It is like the skin on a boiling soup, it just keeps piling up.
This is why the [oldest rocks on the planet](_URL_1_) (4+ billion years old) are part of continents, whereas the oldest oceanic crust, [ophiolites](_URL_3_) notwithstanding, are on the order of [170 million years old](_URL_2_): warning PDF. | [
"The Earth's crust ranges from in depth and is the outermost layer. The thin parts are the oceanic crust, which underlie the ocean basins (5–10 km) and are composed of dense (mafic) iron magnesium silicate igneous rocks, like basalt. The thicker crust is continental crust, which is less dense and composed of (felsi... |
can a mall cop arrest me if i'm in a store that's not in the mall? | I don't think mall cops can arrest, period. They're pretty much a liaison between the mall and the police. They're urged not to chase perpetrators and can even lose their job for doing so; reason 1 being it's dangerous and reason 2 is legal implications. If they're chasing a person across the street, and that person gets hit by a car, expect lawyers to get involved. | [
"Law enforcement officers are not prohibited from seizing any property from the premises. For example, in one 2010 case federal investigators broke into an Cleveland apartment, collected evidence, and then \"trashed the place to make it look like a burglary.\" According to a Department of Justice document, DEA agen... |
Why are some roads made from concrete/cement rather than asphalt? What determines whether it should be one or the other? Why do a lot of the cement roads have grooves in them? | Cement roads are significantly more expensive. Asphalt is the cheaper option and actually has a better safety rating due to more traction. The grooves are used for better road traction or to extend the life of the road surface. | [
"Today, roadways are primarily asphalt or concrete. Both are based on McAdam's concept of stone aggregate in a binder, asphalt cement or Portland cement respectively. Asphalt is known as a flexible pavement, one which slowly will \"flow\" under the pounding of traffic. Concrete is a rigid pavement, which can take h... |
why are fall colors coming early in north america this year? | They are not. The season of fall officially begins September 22 and it is not at all uncommon for the leaves to start to change as early as late August. | [
"Autumn in New England begins in Late September and ends in late December, it marks the transition from summer to winter and is known for its vibrant colors and picturesque beauty. The autumn color of the trees and flora in New England has been reported to be some of the most brilliant natural color in the United S... |
if isis entirely ignores the rules of the geneva convention, why can't countries fighting them ignore the rules, too? | Because two wrongs don't make a right?
We agreed to those conventions because we believe those are the right moral things to do in general - not only when our opponents agree. Why sink to their level? | [
"ISIS was founded on a belief that scientists have an obligation to participate actively in solving major problems of national and international security. ISIS focuses primarily on four parts: 1) prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and related technology to other nations and terrorists, 2) lead to greater transpa... |
what happens exactly when it's chilly outside and i'm not wearing enough clothes to stay warm? later i feel the beginnings of a cold/flu. | Cold air causes your mucous membranes to swell and excrete mucous, hence the runnyy nose, etc. This could lead to sinus pressure and headaches too, which might make your eyes watery or "crusty" with mucous. Extended time in the cold also drains your body of heat, which is energy, so if you haven't eaten, your blood sugar may be a bit lower causing you to feel tired. Similarly, you use more fluids in the creation of all that mucous and by the increased metabolism to keep you warm, which exacerbates feeling tired and sluggish.
You are not responding to bacterial and viral stimuli but to environmental stimuli. | [
"Everyone has the essential right to life, as confirmed under Article 3 of the UDHR. However, if people are not adequately clothed, they are far more exposed to the elements. Without warm clothing, a person may well die from hypothermia during a cold winter; clothing that is inappropriately warm, on the other hand,... |
it may seem dumb but... how do powerful telescopes see far into space without objects getting in the way. | Well, everything that's going to get in the way is in our own galaxy; beyond that space is vacant enough that it's not a problem. In order to get those mind-blowing Hubble Ultra Deep Field images that show thousands of distant galaxies, we had to point the Hubble towards the most vacant areas of sky we could find, and even then we ended up with a few Milky Way stars photobombing the thing. | [
"BULLET::::- The lenses used for the telescope were not manufactured for this purpose, so they're not able to achieve a sharp focus at high magnification across the whole field of view. For wide-field, low power views of the heavens these telescopes work well and low power Copyscopes can make good finder scopes whe... |
why cant we artifically metabolize food to use as a renewable energy resource? | We can. That's basically what bio-diesel/corn-based ethanol fuel is. The problem is that food provides enough energy to power a human body handily, but when you want to start powering machines with it, you need a *lot*, more than there's really room to grow if you wanted to power a whole civilization. The other problem is that all the energy that goes into growing the food and processing it into fuel vs the amount of energy produced by the fuel results in a net loss. | [
"BULLET::::- energy indirectly consumed is, as much as possible, renewable. Examples would be reducing either the amount or fossil carbon content of applied pest control chemicals and fertilizers, or accomplishing deliveries of farm inputs or of finished bioethanol fuel to market that minimize the use of fossil fue... |
what do people mean when they say there are two china's? | There are two countries which claim to be "China". There's the "Republic of China" (ROC) and the "People's Republic of China" (PRC).
The PRC is the one that actually controls what you'd normally call China. It controls that massive territory in mainland Asia, plus the Special Administrative Regions of Macau and Hong Kong.
The ROC only controls Taiwan and a few surrounding islands. Most people would probably just call this country Taiwan rather than China, but officially they claim to be the legitimate government of mainland China too.
This all happened because before and after WW2 there was a civil war between the Communists and the ruling Nationalists. The Communists managed to take over the mainland and declare it the PRC, and the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan. After a while most of the rest of the world decided to accept the PRC as the legitimate government of China, and on paper don't recognise Taiwan as a separate country. | [
"The term itself was brought up on April 2000 by Kuomintang politician Su Chi, who later in 2006 stated that he made up the term. The term, as described by some observers, means that, on the subject of the \"One China principle\", both sides recognize there is only one \"\"China\"\": both mainland China and Taiwan ... |
How much communication and collaboration was there between American and Soviet scientists and academics during the Cold War? | It probably did vary based on the field. In linguistics, communication theory and anthropology, for example, there was little official communication, but some little did pass through. The Soviets often managed to smuggle in the most important works of Western scholars and unofficial translations circulated among secret scientific societies (e.g. the Tartu-Moscow School of semiotics). Since they had to stave off KGB and their informants, outside information was often distributed in 18th century salon gatherings (which were very popular and influential in Russia especially), e.g. a distinguished person invited friends and acquaintances to his or her home. The reverse is also true - Soviet manuscripts were often smuggled out to be translated and published in Western journals. More often than not, though, they were published in departments of slavistics, so that Soviet film studies, for example, didn't actually have much influence on Western film studies. It was also the case that the French were much more it tune with Soviet humanitarian fields, perhaps because they were more openly Marxist, so that the French were often mediators between America and Russia. For example, the concept of "intertextuality" was originally Mikhail Bakhtin's term but gained notoriety through Julia Kristeva. So, too, with structural anthropology, which is attributed to Claude Lévi-Strauss, but only came to be because of the influence of Roman Jakobson. There are countless such examples, but they are easier to trace on the Western side, because the Soviets didn't cite or reference their Western sources. Also, during the Khrushchev Thaw, some few Western academics did get to travel into Soviet countries, especially for conferences, but were kept on a tight watch and driven around by KGB officers.
Source: am Estonian, e.g. from an ex-Soviet satellite country. | [
"One of the biggest successes of Soviet foreign intelligence was the penetration of the American Manhattan Project, which was the code name for the effort during World War II to develop the first nuclear weapons of the United States with assistance from the United Kingdom and Canada. Information gathered in the Uni... |
(serious) the thought process that leads doctors to choose to become proctologists, gynecologists or urologists. | I can think of three reason:
1) Money - If these positions pay more money, doctors will follow.
2) Demand - Perhaps a lot of doctors do not want want to be urologists and such. However, since fewer doctors take these jobs, these positions will more available. So the doctor has the choice to compete against 100 other doctors to be become a neurosurgeon, or can take the guaranteed gynecologist job.
3) Personal motivation - Some doctor specialize in certain areas due to personal reasons. A doctor might choose to become a cardiologist because his father died of heart failure. I'm sure this type of motivation might exist for gynecologists as well. | [
"Urogynecologists are medical professionals who have been to medical school and achieved their basic medical degree, followed by postgraduate training in Obstetrics and Gynaecology (OB-GYN). They then undertake further training in Urogynecology to achieve accreditation/board certification in this subspecialty. Trai... |
how is a chicken made from liquid? | The yolk must be fertilized first. The rest of the egg is formed around the yolk. The embryo uses the nutrients in the eggwhite to survive and grow inside. | [
"Chicken and dumplings is a dish that consists of a chicken cooked in water, with the resulting chicken broth being used to cook the dumplings by boiling. A dumpling—in this context—is a biscuit dough, which is a mixture of flour, shortening, and liquid (water, milk, buttermilk, or chicken stock). The dumplings are... |
What is the current historical understanding of how Native Americans developed corn (maize)? | Actually just this past February a study was [released](_URL_0_) in which the climate at the time of the end of the last Ice Age was recreated in a greenhouse. They discovered that teosinte looks remarkable more like maize in the past than it does today. | [
"The best archaeological evidence states that maize (corn) first entered the United States from Mexico around 800 CE. It quickly spread throughout the continent and created a full scale lifestyle shift for the prehistoric people of the area. The cultivation and harvest of maize would allow for the creation of perma... |
what are the people in syria fleeing from? | When the Arab spring happened, many Arabs protested in their respective countries calling for freedom and the fact that they were unhappy with their governments. The Syrians started protesting calling to overthrow the government as it was a dictatorship and they wanted more freedom.
However Assad refused to step down. He used brutal attacks and violence which killed many people to stop the revolution. Rebel groups were formed, and fighting ensued. ISIS took advantage of the situation and invaded Syria taking some territory.
In short the people are trapped between terrorists and their own brutal dictator, so they're fleeing the country.
Edit: [Heres a fantastic video by the Guardian following a refugee family on their journey. Really recommend you watch it OP](_URL_0_) | [
"The violence in Syria caused millions to flee their homes. As of March 2015, Al-Jazeera estimate 10.9 million Syrians, or almost half the population, have been displaced. 3.8 million have been made refugees. , 1 in 3 of Syrian refugees (about 667,000 people) sought safety in Lebanon (normally 4.8 million populatio... |
Is solar power viable in the U.S.? | You roommate is making a blanket black and white statement. They are almost never correct. :) The truth is usually in the gray area. We don't have to only choose solar for the sole energy source of the USA. We can implement it where it will work and where it doesn't have to be transmitted too incredibly far and do other energy sources in other places.
| [
"A report by research and publishing firm Clean Edge and the nonprofit Co-op America found that solar power's contribution could grow to 10% of the nation's power needs by 2025, with nearly 2% of the nation's electricity coming from concentrating solar power systems, while solar photovoltaic systems would provide m... |
what exactly makes a group of molecules alive? | There are a lot of definitions of what "life" is, but probably the best one that I've seen is that life is a system of chemical reactions that use outside energy to reduce their own entropy (versions of this were put forth by figures such as James Lovelock and Erwin Schroedinger). | [
"No single compound will prove life once existed. Rather, it will be distinctive patterns present in any organic compounds showing a process of selection. For example, membrane lipids left behind by degraded cells will be concentrated, have a limited size range, and comprise an even number of carbons. Similarly, li... |
What is the craziest story from history you have encountered in your research? | Just a few small stupid castrato stories...
* Pasquale "Pasqualino" Tiberti, born probably in the decade of 1710 in Citta Ducale, Italy, hired onto the Sistine Chapel in 1743, and fired 11 years later for stabbing a priest in a fight, the priest died of his injuries. Apparently suffered no real setbacks for this, as he shows up in an opera cast in Macerata's 1757 carnival festivities.
* Giuseppe Belli, had a promising opera career, but was murdered in 1760 at age 28, legendarily by a jealous husband.
* Andrea "Andreini" Martini: the last boy the Siena Cathedral officially paid to have castrated, age 14, in the year 1775, in payment he sang there for 4 years after. Good opera career.
* Francesco Bardi, was apparently so amazing that in the 1620s he was "kidnapped" from his conservatory by the San Pietro cathedral. Furious, the conservatory later compelled them to return him to school to finish his contract. The school had probably paid to have him castrated and that is not cheap. After that a good mixed career for the 17th century, splitting between church and opera work.
* Giuseppe "Gioseppino" Ricciarelli and Gaspare Savoy: two names otherwise entirely unpaired in history, except for the fact that Giacomo Casanova took the time to record that he found them sexually attractive. There are more castrati in his memoirs, of course, but these are the two he wanted you to know were hot. But only because they were dressed like women and it was so *very convincing.* Honestly I'll just quote his whole description of Savoy because it's June still:
> He was enclosed in a carefully-made corset and looked like a nymph; and
incredible though it may seem, his breast was as beautiful as any
woman's; it was the monster's chiefest charm. However well one knew the
fellow's neutral sex, as soon as one looked at his breast one felt all
aglow and quite madly amorous of him. To feel nothing one would have to
be as cold and impassive as a German. As he walked the boards, waiting
for the refrain of the air he was singing, there was something grandly
voluptuous about him; and as he glanced towards the boxes, his black
eyes, at once tender and modest, ravished the heart. He evidently wished
to fan the flame of those who loved him as a man, and probably would not
have cared for him if he had been a woman.
IF GOOD DRAG DOESN'T GET YOU HOT, YOU'RE A GERMAN. - man whose name has become a byword for aggressive male heterosexuality
Giuseppe Ricciarelli was also sworn in as a Freemason in 1774, apparently. Strange times.
| [
"Some fascinating stories have been discovered. The most poignant is the case of William Barnes or Burn who, on 7 October 1765, was sentenced to be transported for 7 years to His Majesty’s colonies or plantations in America for obtaining the sum of 6d from John Savage of Bradmore by falsely pretending that he, Will... |
why does it seem so hard for anyone to make a good usb-c cable? | The relevant thing that's different about USB-C is that it's designed to draw a lot more power. Previously a USB cable was insufficient to charge something like a laptop, but now it's designed to support that much power, if the device and power adapter support it.
The problem isn't typically with a USB-C to USB-C cable, it's with USB-C to USB-A cables so that you can plug a newer USB-C device into an older USB-A port.
There are certain specifications that require that such cables include a specific resistor on one of the pins so that one of the devices doesn't get confused and try to draw too much power. Some of the manufacturers didn't install this resistor even though they were supposed to.
The problem is that unless you test your cable with lots of different devices and power adapters, it might not be obvious that anything is wrong. It might seem to work fine 90% of the time, but with just the right combination of device and power adapter and a bit of bad luck you could end up damaging something.
There are certifications to ensure that cables are made properly according to the specs. But in a rush to get products to market, some manufacturers cut corners and started shipping cables before properly testing them and getting them certified.
| [
"The standard connectors were designed to be more robust than many past connectors. This is because USB is hot-pluggable, and the connectors would be used more frequently, and perhaps with less care, than previous connectors.\n",
"Traditional USB Y-cables exist to enable one USB peripheral device to receive power... |
Does the Milky Way Galaxy travel throughout the universe? | To describe "travel," or "motion," you need a reference point. When you say "the moon is orbiting the Earth," you are using Earth as the reference point for the Moon's motion. Then you use the Sun as the reference point for the Earth's motion, and so on. You could use different reference points if you wished, and the motions would be different. My motion relative to Earth is zero, but relative to the Sun is quite substantial.
The most obvious point of reference for the Galaxy's motion is the Cosmic Microwave Background, and yes, the Galaxy has a motion of about 625 km/s relative to the CMB.
Be careful not to confuse that motion with absolute motion "through the universe." There is no such thing as absolute motion through the universe. All motion is referred to some reference object. Relative to the Milky Way, the Milky Way is stationary, and that is exactly as good a reference frame as the CMB is, and "at rest relative to itself" is exactly as good an answer to your question as "625 km/s relative to the CMB." | [
"The Milky Way Galaxy is moving through space and many astronomers believe the velocity of this motion to be approximately relative to the observed locations of other nearby galaxies. Another reference frame is provided by the Cosmic microwave background. This frame of reference indicates that the Milky Way is movi... |
what is logistics? | Logistics are generally the process of moving things around. Shipping things like cargo. Stuff like that. FedEx, UPS, the United States Postal Service, etc... are in the business of logistics. | [
"Logistics is generally the detailed organization and implementation of a complex operation. In a general business sense, logistics is the management of the flow of things between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet requirements of customers or corporations. The resources managed in lo... |
Does modern day cryogenics keep the body intact, or does it irreparably destroy the body? | modern day cryogenics is, sadly, something used to steal money from rich people such as Walt Disney.
Like throwawydow has said, cells are damaged by freezing.
In the laboratory we have products such as DMSO and glycerol which we use to stop cells from freezing conventionally when at very very low temperatures (such as -80°C) but when you are unfreezing mammalian cells, about 80%-90% of them die.
Also DMSO is not good for you so we can't really put that in people or they will get sick. Plus it smells like rotten cabbage. (I don't think it is 100% toxic, but it certainly does make dangerous chemicals which would otherwise be safe, much more permeable to our skin).
Tl;dr
yes it appears to irreparably destroy the body. | [
"Cryonics, the practice of preserving organisms (either intact specimens or only their brains) for possible future revival by storing them at cryogenic temperatures where metabolism and decay are almost completely stopped, can be used to 'pause' for those who believe that life extension technologies will not develo... |
Approximately how many people would Mark Antony have ruled over in his time as a triumvir? | I can't even guess the number but your map has problems. It lists 3 Triumvirs: Antonius (Marc Antony), Lepidus (Marcus Aemilius Lepidus) and Brutus? Who is this Brutus? The 3rd person in the 2nd Triumvirate was Octavian, later known as Augustus. Is it referring to Marcus Junius Brutus, one of Ceaser's assassins? If so he was most defiantly not part of the Triumvirate. The division of the empire was Octavian the West, Antony of the East, and Lepidus Hispania and Africa not what is shown. I don't believe that Media and Mesopotamia are under Roman control at this point and parts of Asia Minor that are shown as not Roman were Roman.
I think you found some alternate history map. [Here](_URL_0_) is a correct map. | [
"Marcus Antonius, or Mark Antony, who is most well known for his civil war with Octavian, started off his political career in the position of quaestor after being a prefect in Syria and then one of Julius Caesar's legates in Gaul. Through a combination of Caesar's favor and his oratory skills defending the legacy o... |
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