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During the period of westward expansion, were there any U.S. or European leaders arguing against the appropriation of the land or taking up the cause of indigenous peoples? | In the 1832 Supreme Court case Worcester v. Georgia, Chief Justice John Marshall, in the majority opinion, ruled that the Cherokee nation was its own distinct community and not subject to the laws of a particular state. How, Andrew Jackson chose not to enforce that ruling, thus paving the way for the Trail of Tears. | [
"In the case of Public Lands, European colonizers forcibly relocated many Southeastern Native American tribes. One argument against reparations is that in assigning public lands to African-Americans for the enslavement of their ancestors, a greater and further wrong would be committed against the Southeastern Nativ... |
how to buy a house, and what "refinancing a mortgage" is or "taking out a second mortgage". | You find a house that you like and make an offer to buy it. With that offer, you include something called "earnest money" that goes directly to the sellers, typically $1000-$2000. This money shows that you are serious about buying the house. If the seller accepts your offer, you will sign a contract to buy with a specific closing date. If you decide to break this contract for any reason other than it fails inspection, you lose the earnest money.
Between now and the closing date, you will have the house inspected. You'll also line up financing... this is the loan you'll need if you don't have enough for the house in cash. Typically you have to put down 10%, but some lenders will let you put down 3.5%. If you put down less than 20%, you have to pay PMI or private mortgage insurance every month.
On the closing day, you will go to an attorney's office and they will have drafted all of the paperwork for you, and typically done all of the bureaucratic legwork. Most of this is known as "closing costs" and typically runs around $4000. You sign the paperwork and the house is technically ready to move into.
Your lender then begins charging you your monthly payment for the loan. At first, your payments go mostly towards paying interest on the loan. This is bad because you're not paying down much of what you borrowed to buy the house. However, the money you use to pay interest is tax deductible, so a new home owner will see a nice tax credit. You can see how much principle you're paying down on something called an amortization schedule that you'll probably receive from your lender.
People refinance their mortgage to change from their existing mortgage to one with different and better terms. Sometimes they will refinance to get a better interest rate, as many people are doing now. There are typical closing costs involved, just like when you bought the house, so you have to weigh if paying those are worth it. | [
"When refinancing, if the homeowner wants to refinance the first mortgage and keep the second mortgage, the homeowner has to request a subordination from the second lender to let the new first lender step into the first lien holder position.\n",
"A mortgage loan or, simply, mortgage () is used either by purchaser... |
when looking at cell phone coverage maps, why is there always a drastic line that cuts vertically across the us? | Population density. Notice the vertical line on [this map.](_URL_0_)
It's not cost effective to provide dense coverage where the population isn't also dense. Typically you'll see coverage over major roadways or cities or pockets of population.
Coverage resumes on the west coast. | [
"Often coverage maps show general coverage for large regions and therefore any boundary indicated should not be interpreted as a rigid limit. The biggest cause of uncertainty for a coverage map is the quality (mainly sensitivity) of receiving apparatus used. A coverage map may be produced to indicate the area in wh... |
why does using cellular data have such a big hit on battery life? | To get more data the radio needs to work harder, which takes more power. The radio is the second largest power consumer in your phone behind the screen, so if you're say streaming netflix you're killing your battery because you're asking the radio to do a ton of work and then using it to watch a movie. | [
"By the end of 2017, smartphone battery life has become generally adequate; however, earlier smartphone battery life was poor due to the weak batteries that could not handle the significant power requirements of the smartphones' computer systems and color screens.\n",
"Due mainly to the widespread loss of power, ... |
Are there any records of black people in medieval Prussia/Czech Republic? If so, are there any records of how they were treated? | [There you go](_URL_0_) | [
"The poet Adam Mickiewicz retells in his poem \"Dziady\" how the Black Brothers from Kražiai were the first among the Lithuanian youth to be prosecuted in the Russian Empire. In the poem there is also a scene where Mickiewicz describes how the young adolescents, handcuffed and chained, were bid farewell at the Gate... |
Folk, Baroque, Classical, Rock & Roll... how much have musical genres varied amongst any one culture throughout history? | I'm only qualified to give a response for european music, so I hope there is someone out there who is learned in asian and african music who can contribute as well. There were definitely different "genres" of music as far back as the late medieval period. The split between sacred music and court music is a perfect example. Consider the difference between chant and plainsong (sacred) and early lute based songs.
Does anyone have expertise in early medieval music? I am aware of the sacred musical tradition in this period, but when did folk music and dance music begin to appear? | [
"The field of art music, also known as \"classical music\", includes various musical styles such as Renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic, 20th-century music, and post-modern music. Guatemala was one of the first regions of the New World to be exposed to European music. The Spanish missionaries and clergy intro... |
why is solar power quite common here in northern england when we have very low solar potential and are one of the windiest places on the planet? | There was a time a few years ago the government has heavily subsidising solar power. The subsidy was so high that if you had a large enough roof you could not only get all your electricity for free but earn money by selling the surplus to the grid.
With house prices being very low in the North it was much easier to buy a large enough house to achieve the threshold production to make a profit. | [
"In 2014, Imperial College predicted that Britain could have 40% of electricity from solar power in sunny days by 2020 in 10 million homes compared to a half a million homes in start of 2014. If a third of households would generate solar energy it could equal 6% of British total electricity consumption.\n",
"The ... |
Can the internet be disabled, even temporarily? Does it have a hardware or software vulnerability that would shut it down everywhere? | The only method I am loosely aware of to kill/shutoff the internet is if a major AS like AT & T or Level 3 were to go rogue and start advertising routes for basically every IP address and send them more or less nowhere. I wish I could tell you that I am a network engineer and I understand this in depth, but I don't.
You can read up when Pakistan did this to youtube by mistake here: _URL_0_
Basically have a more trusted actor than Pakistan do the same thing, but to a much wider array of addresses.
This method is not forever but it would shut down most/all of the internet very rapidly. | [
"Policy makers have to take into account the cost of shutting down the Internet, if it is even possible. The loss of the network for even a day could cost billions of dollars in lost revenue. The National Cybersecurity Center was set up to deal with these questions, to research threats and design and recommend prop... |
if you punched someone hard enough to knock them out whilst they were sleeping, would they wake up and pass out or stay asleep through your punch? | Typically if you hit someone hard enough to knock them out, it’s caused some degree of brain damage. Even if very mild, you definitely gave them a concussion. I’d wager they go into a sort of deeper sleep from their brain being jarred. Unconsciousness in that way is different from sleep. | [
"Knocking a person unconscious or even causing a concussion may cause permanent brain damage. There is no clear division between the force required to knock a person out and the force likely to kill a person. From 1980 to 2007, more than 200 amateur boxers, professional boxers and Toughman fighters died due to ring... |
the texas bill about wrongful births. | In Texas (and maybe other states, I'm not sure) a mother can sue a doctor for failing to properly diagnose problems with a fetus. This started in a 1975 case where a pregnant woman sued her doctor. She got rubella while pregnant and claimed her doctor failed to properly diagnose her or warn her about the effect the illness could have on her baby. She had the baby who had several medical problems. The court held that she could sue the doctor for the baby's medical expenses since the doctor negligently failed to tell her about the possible complications.
This bill would make it so that a woman cannot sue a doctor for negligently failing to tell her about potential fetal defects before birth.
Proponents of the bill argue that every life is worthwhile and people shouldn't be able to sue doctors for failing to tell them their baby isn't worth having. They also think that some doctors might be more likely to recommend abortion in order to avoid a lawsuit.
Opponents of the bill argue that doctors should fully inform their patients of everything they can and that some doctors who oppose abortion might not reveal all the risks of a pregnancy in order to encourage the mother to carry the baby to term if they don't have to worry about being sued for it. | [
"Texas has the seventh highest birth rate in the United States, with nearly 400,000 babies born each year. Over half of all Texas births are paid by Medicaid, totaling over $2.2 billion per year in birth and delivery-related services for mothers and infants. Studies have found that infant mortality is usually cause... |
can dreams actually tell us something or are they just random head-noise | Don't listen to some of the ignorant comments here. The only truth we know about dreams is that we don't really know what their exact purpose is. There are many interesting theories about it, but the true purpose of dreaming is not yet understood.
That being said, you can definitely choose to find meaning behind your dreams through your own interpretations of them. But that's all it would be at this point- interpretations. | [
"John Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley propose that dreams are caused by the random firing of neurons in the cerebral cortex during the REM period. Neatly, this theory helps explain the irrationality of the mind during REM periods, as, according to this theory, the forebrain then creates a story in an attempt to re... |
how do lice see? | They see with their eyes.
Umm... I'm not sure what you really expected. They usually have two little eyes on their head which they use to look around, but they may also just navigate from the dead, cold bird towards the warm flesh of the girl who just picked it up. | [
"Lice can be indicators of contact with another person. Many species closely associated with humans can be easily transferred between individuals. DNA identification of multiple individuals using blood meals from body and head lice has been demonstrated in laboratory settings.\n",
"PEX is characterized by tiny mi... |
- what is a solar/steller wind? | Ok
Most stars are basically giant fusion reactor which constantly spits out radiation and charged particles,
And think there are trillions of them around the galaxy and universe doing that exactly, depending on the type of star they spit out different ranges of radiation and at different strength,
those radiations cause currents of matter, particles and energy which are called "solar or stellar winds". | [
"The solar wind is a continuous stream of plasma that flows outwards from the Sun: near the Earth's orbit, it contains several million protons and electrons per cubic meter and flows at . The magnetic sail introduces a magnetic field into this plasma flow which can deflect the particles from their original trajecto... |
why does our brain stop us from biting down too hard on a finger, but will allow us to willingly kill ourselves? | The brain does not allow us to willingly kill ourselves, on an instinctive level. If you jump headfirst out of a window, you'll be forced to try to save yourself during the fall. You will raise your arms to try and break the fall. This is analogous to preventing us from biting our fingers off.
However, both can be overcome with planning. If you put your finger on your mouth and have your friend uppercut your jaw, you can take a finger off. Similarly, all common methods of suicide rely on putting oneself in a position where your body doesn't realize you're going to die until it's too late to prevent. | [
"Giving the finger has resulted in negative consequences. A Malaysian man was bludgeoned to death after giving the finger to a motorist following a car chase. A Pakistani man was deported by the United Arab Emirates for the gesture, which violates indecency codes.\n",
"Nail biting usually leads to harmful effects... |
Do we have the technology to "rewrite" someone's DNA? | Allow me to parse your question into a few different ones (I'm going to interpret "rewrite" loosely, to include getting a cell or cells to express a single new gene. More complicated "rewrites" are possible using similar techniques, but may be disproportionately more complicated to carry out.):
> Do we have the technology to "rewrite" the DNA of every cell of an individual organism?
Yes. Consider bacteria: We can introduce new genes into bacteria through [transfection](_URL_4_), [transduction](_URL_13_), and other methods. On top of that, there's the recent big steps *towards* synthesizing bacteria from scratch (I say "towards" because it depends on what you mean by "from scratch"). Here's a [layman friendly (pdf)](_URL_7_) article from Science, as well as the [actual report](_URL_8_).
> OK, what about multicellular organisms?
Yes. Some techniques involve altering the DNA over a couple generations, or, to "rewrite" at the very start of an individual's life i.e. a one-cell stage. For instance, see the procedures for making knockout mice ([wikipedia](_URL_9_)), and the use of [nuclear transfer](_URL_2_) to make [Dolly](_URL_12_).
> What about a multicellular organisms that are here, now? (This starts to get to your question.)
Yes. Though don't count on getting every cell, oh, and it may or may not be permanent, depending on the technique and the cells you're targeting. One technique is biolistics (here's [wikipedia](_URL_0_), and here's an example from [PNAS](_URL_5_)).
> What about something big and complicated, like a human?
You won't get every cell, or even most of the cells. But, you *can* do a "rewrite" in a specific set of cells. ...see, another technique involves using a virus, loaded with custom DNA, to infect a cell. Viruses are picky about the cell type they infect. Also, some cells in your body replicate and are shed very quickly (e.g. most of the cells that make up your skin, or those lining your digestive tract), so doing a "rewrite" in only those cells isn't very interesting ... the effects would be as temporary as those cells' lives. On the other hand, you could infect cells that stay with an animal for most/all of its life. For instance, you can infect neurons with this technique.
This is used in optogenetics (here's [wikipedia](_URL_3_) ... Deisseroth lab is a big player in this, so [here's their website](_URL_6_) which has links to several research articles).
That technique has also been used, in humans, to treat a type of blindness called *Leber's Congenital Amaurosis*. Here's a [ScienceDaily article](_URL_10_) if you want a brief overview, and here's a journal article ([NEJM](_URL_11_)) on the topic.
For a bit more info, here's a [technical review of gene therapies at the retina.](_URL_1_)
| [
"Baltimore recently joined with other scientists to call for a worldwide moratorium on use of a new genome-editing technique to alter inheritable human DNA. A key step enabling researchers to slice up any DNA sequence they choose was developed by Emmanuelle Charpentier, then at Umea University in Sweden, and Jennif... |
military redditors: what is the point of announcing ahead of time where and when we will be mounting an attack against isis? doesn't this just help the other side prepare a defense? | The warning is given so that civilians have an opportunity to get out of the area.
This type of warning is given in this situation because, even if they have all of the time in the world to prepare a defense, they can not win. If this were a war between equals, or an existential war, warning would not be given. | [
"On 4 November 2016, Fox News reported that the U.S. military ended its bombing campaign against ISIS in Sirte after three months of round-the-clock airstrikes the U.S. military conducted a total of 367 airstrikes since 1 August 2016, according to officials, no American airstrikes took place since 31 October; units... |
Can we learn things while we sleep? | It is pretty unlikely that you have the capability to learn while sleeping like that. It has been theorized that your brain spends your time sleeping to unpack the information from the day and store it, so it may not be able to learn additional information because it is already at capacity.
However, this is a subject of study and there are many of us that would like to be able to retain, process and internalize knowledge both faster and during periods of sleep. | [
"Since the electroencephalography studies by Charles W. Simon and William H. Emmons in 1956, learning by sleep has not been taken seriously. The researchers concluded that learning during sleep was \"impractical and probably impossible\". They reported that stimulus material presented during sleep was not recalled ... |
why do i get shivers when i take a shot of cheap whiskey? | Please tell me you are not doing shots with single malt scotch?
Cheaper blended whiskys are mixed with grain alcohol (basically vodka), more expensive whisky will be just made with malt barley and pure spring water | [
"BULLET::::- Stage 1 (30 minutes to 12 hours) consists of neurological and gastrointestinal symptoms and looks similar to alcohol poisoning. Poisoned individuals may appear to be intoxicated, dizzy, lacking coordination of muscle movements, drooling, depressed, and have slurred speech, seizuring, abnormal eye movem... |
why is judge an elected position? | Perhaps not the answer you're looking for, but electing judges (and a few other legal professions, such as district attorney) is an almost uniquely American habit. Much of the rest of the world (certainly that which is based on the British legal system) performs judicial appointments via the legislature or executive, or from within the judiciary itself. Seems to be working out fine for us so far. | [
"The court's judges are appointed solely by the Chief Justice of the United States without confirmation or oversight by the U.S. Congress. This gives the chief justice the ability to appoint like-minded judges and create a court without diversity. \"The judges are hand-picked by someone who, through his votes on th... |
What would a battle during World War II really be like? Do any video games actually simulate this? | I think one thing which many downplay was just how static the soldier's experience of WWII could be. It was not all, or even mostly, aggressive attack and counterattack like popular culture implies. German offensive successes in 1940-42 (what most people call Blitzkrieg, although the Germans never called it that) and the Allied breakout from Normandy have both given the impression that such sweeping moves were routine, but attacks were almost always slow and grinding. In fact combat in WWII in my opinion bears much more resemblance to the stereotypical view of WWI than the view espoused by films and games set in WWII. It's inarguable that the belligerents of WWII went into the war with methods that had been developed in the latter stages of WWI--in particular WWII re-emphasized the necessity of tremendous amounts of supporting artillery fire to neutralise enemy defences and 'shoot' the attacking troops into enemy defences. What's more, the pattern of fighting became more slow and grinding as the war went on--the Germans abandoned anything resembling Blitzkrieg and began to build their tanks as mobile bunkers and emphasize flexible defence by groups of heavily-armed infantry; the Allies relied more and more upon the brute fire-power that their industrial superiority could supply. British troops eventually became so reliant on this support that the routine reaction to coming under fire was to go to ground and wait for fire support. The same kind of tactics used in Normandy, with any attack supported by tons of shelling and any enemy counter-attack smashed by artillery as soon as it began, resemble closely those developed on the Somme, where artillery was used in just this manner--the effect on the landscape was similarly destructive. In WWII soldiers fought in basically the same way their fathers had fought in 1918, with the addition of more mobile tanks (of which there were always relatively few compared to infantry), portable radios, reliable motor vehicles (though the only fully mechanised army at the beginning of the war was the British Army), and larger firepower.
This continuity is summed up really well by John Ellis in *The Sharp End of War*, which is a great book on the soldier's experience which I'd recommend you read if you can.
> Above all, perhaps, the two world war have in common the shovel and the entrenching tool. From 1914 onwards the paramount fact in war was firepower of such intensity that only in holes in the ground could the front-line soldier even begin to feel relatively secure. Armoured vehicles briefly robbed defensive tactics of their supremacy, but by 1941 at the latest anti-tank gun, the mine, and a little later the bazooka/PIAT/Panzerfaust, had done much to restore the balance. Attacking remained a hazardous and slow procedure, only to be undertaken when necessary and with the maximum amount of fire support...though World War II never had trench systems as static or elaborate as those on the Western Front, the individual soldier nevertheless spent much of his time burrowing into the ground...if defensive firepower was no longer sufficiently predominant as to make only the most trivial gains possible, it was still quite enough to make progress agonisingly slow and to necessitate constant retrenchment after each desperate bound. Even when troops were not themselves on the defensive, actual advances across the battlefield were sporadic and slow, each attack a frenetic spasm in the troglodyte routine. In the front line at least 90 per cent of the infantryman's time was spent under cover either on the defensive, often under bombardment, awaiting an enemy attack, or nerving himself to the prospect of going forward.
I'd also recommend *Time to Kill: The Soldier's Experience of War in the West, 1939-1945* for excellent, more academic assessments of the key belligerents. Otherwise there are countless works which look into the minutiae of how individual armies operated and how the precise forms of battle differed greatly, as others have pointed out. | [
"For many World War II wargamers, this became the ultimate World War II wargame, even if it was not possible to complete all that many games. Nearly two decades later, Decision Games published a computer version by Greg Ploussios which recreated the game, which is still played by email between enthusiasts. The main... |
When and why Viet Nam and Korea (both North and South) abandoned Chinese characters? | North Korea made the shift starting in the late 1940s. 1949, officially.
South Korea was still using them quite frequently as late as the 1990s, and you can still find plenty of examples of mixed script Korean in academic texts today. In the early 90's newspapers finally switched over to Hangeul. However Chinese characters (*hanja*) are still used for abbreviations and some technical terminology where they can clear up ambiguity. Officially, the teaching of *hanja* stopped in 1971 in South Korea for younger students. In both Koreas, *hanja* are still taught to high schoolers, but in limited number. It's also worth mentioning that prior to this, hangeul was only really standardised in the 1930s, and then again in the 1980s.
In Vietnam, Chinese characters (chữ nôm) were replaced in the 1920s. The system that replaced it wasn't too new. It was developed and in use by missionaries in the mid 1800s.
Why, for both languages, is a little more complicated. A big part of it had to do with national identity. A big part of it had to do with efforts to improve literacy. On those grounds even Mao Zedong made early pushes to replace Chinese characters with an alphabet, though this ultimately never happened (though it got close in some places).
Another significant factor is that at this time (early 20th century) the practice of writing all formal texts in Classical Chinese was falling out of favour across Asia. People were starting to use the vernacular to write, rather than an archaic form of another language entirely. If you're going to write the way you speak, then there's less perceived value in using an old foreign orthography to do it, especially when the list of perceived shortcomings is quite long when it comes to how that script can represent your language.
Simply put, one could say that the sort of nationalism that was developing at the start of the 20th century across the region (e.g. 五四運動) was really the key factor. | [
"Produced five years before the beginning of the United States' rapproachment with Mao Zedong in 1972, \"Red Chinese Battle Plan\" was made during the Vietnam War under the Lyndon Johnson administration. Despite the widening rift between the China and the Soviet Union, both powers supported the Vietnamese communist... |
why would the government classify alien activity ? | It is almost guaranteed that evidence of extraterrestrial life would destabilize the planet.
We've seen how people behave at a Walmart on Black Friday - How would they act if they found out there was a superior species *out there*?
Fear, hope, riots, gatherings would occur. Everything you know and love about your society would become insignificant. We'd suddenly become a global society, finally identifying as *human* rather than American or Chinese, black or hispanic. Governments would lose control after a large portion of our species becomes unified in such a manner and the rest descend into an existentialism induced chaos.
How then would we find structure? Who is in charge of the entire planet? How do you decide?
It would be much safer to keep knowledge of extraterrestrials from the common people and avoid such an embarrassment to the visitors. We're basically still the same creature that evolved to survive on the plains of Africa. Sometimes we need to maintain this sort of control over our society.
The aliens might even realize this themselves and command us to keep it a secret. They'd have to understand the reality or else they'd simply fly some of their ships over our cities or start a broadcast on all frequencies.
Supposing this, we would presume then that Governments would decide (or be instructed) to begin unifying the planet culturally in preparation for this extraterrestrial-based social unification. Globalism would be encouraged, peace and understanding would be encouraged. Wars would slow down or vanish completely...
But instead we see that petty wars over money and territory continue to this day. We see wars against terrorism on TV, but read on the internet that we're the terrorists. We still see petty squabbles and social striations. We still let our own people die of starvation while others are forced to undergo drastic surgeries to reduce their weight. We'll force women to reproduce and then wait patiently to put that unwanted child into prison 18 years later.
If the government(s) are in contact with extraterrestrials then those extraterrestrials are probably not the ones that we'd want to meet. If they were then we would expect much different behavior from our financial elite and our governments.
We might expect those aliens to be non-benevolent anyway.
You don't end up with advanced technology from a friendly environment. Wars and struggle are what inspires intelligent beings to create technology. What use is a nuclear reactor when your food is plentiful and weather pleasant? What good is a fortress when you have no enemies?
What is Human history, if not an ongoing succession of greater technologies grinding lesser ones beneath their boots?
The idea that any star-faring civilization will be the same ones who've been forced to bend and break their environment to survive could be reason enough for the riots and chaos of an Earth now made aware of extraterrestrial intelligence.
Imagine you're a peaceful alien and humans landed on your planet. Would you be worried? You would if you knew about our history genocides, hate, and destruction. | [
"Alienage, or the state of being an alien, i.e. a non-citizen of the United States, is a unique category. For purposes of state law, legal aliens are a suspect class (\"Graham v. Richardson\", 403 U.S. 365 (1971)). As such, state actions are analyzed according to strict scrutiny. In contrast, because the United Sta... |
why is it illegal to fight back on a "no knock warrant"? | No knock warrants just mean they don't knock. They will loudly and repeatedly identify themselves as law enforcement agents, and they will be wearing vests with POLICE in large letters on both sides. So there's really no way you could legitimately not know if they are are law enforcement agents. | [
"No-knock warrants are controversial for various reasons. There have been cases where burglars have robbed homes by pretending to be officers with a no-knock warrant. There have been many cases where armed homeowners, believing that they are being invaded, have shot at officers, resulting in deaths on both sides. W... |
Many technological advances in the past decades can be attributed to NASA. How much (if any) technological advances can be attributed to the Soviet space program? | I know it may not be what your looking for but I think a lot of your answers will inevitably be in regards to rocketry.
On that front, the Soviets developed a number of advanced rocket engines, some of which are still some of the best in the world. The [RD-170](_URL_1_) for instance maintains the title as the most powerful rocket engine in the world. Most people believe this title goes to the American F-1 engine which was used for the Apollo program. However the F-1 is only the most powerful single cone engine, and comparatively the RD-170 outputs over 1,000,000 more Newtons of thrust.
Secondly the [NK-33](_URL_0_) rocket engine which was originally developed for the Soviet Moon program has the second highest thrust to weight ratio of of any rocket. Similarly, it also has a very high specific impulse. It's only other contender is the SpaceX Merlin 1-D which was developed very recently.
| [
"During the Cold War, the world's two great superpowers — the Soviet Union and the United States of America — spent large proportions of their GDP on developing military technologies. The drive to place objects in orbit stimulated space research and started the Space Race. In 1957, the USSR launched the first artif... |
Why is the myth that conscripted make up the bulk of medieval armies so prevalent? | I have a theory that the reason for this is fairly simple: miscommunication.
"Medieval" usually refers to the European Middle Ages, a period that stretched from the Fall of Rome in 476 until the Fall of Constantinople in ~~1492~~ 1453. There are about a thousand differing start and end dates, but using the demise of two Roman empires is convenient and a little poetic -- because, unlike dating it to Gutenberg's printing press, we don't have to quibble over whether to point at when he started or the vague "c. 1525" figure that better represents the spread of the printing press. But what's important here is that, no matter the exact start and end dates, the period corresponds to a stupidly long period of time. If we go with a more conservative figure of dating the start to 800 when Charlemagne founded the Holy Roman Empire, we're still looking at a period of nearly 700 years from start to end. More time separated a Genoese soldier on the walls of Constantinople in 1492 from Charlemagne than what separates this sub from Columbus himself. That's the first thing that makes communicating on this subject rather difficult at times.
There's also the matter of nomenclature. How do you define "peasant," exactly? For most people, especially those who don't study medieval history, a peasant is probably just someone who occupies the second lowest strata of society (being just one step above slaves). A farmer, basically. Maybe a fisherman or hunter.
If we look at the English at Agincourt, 5/6ths of their army could probably be classified as "peasantry." Yes, the longbowmen absolutely did go to war with a fairly extensive kit and a very specialized skillset. Yes, those longbowmen had to meet various requirements to actually qualify for service (like actually being able to draw and fire one of those massive warbows). Yes, those longbowmen would have been paid for their time and entitled to various rights while on campaign (most notably looting). But they weren't men at arms (who could very well have held sizable tracts of land) and they absolutely were not of the proper nobility (who comprised, perhaps, 100 of the 6,000 English soldiers at Agincourt).
Now let's return to the first sentence in this post. Even if we get past all the traps above, the miscommunication *still* arises from the fact that when I say the English army was largely comprised of the peasantry, I'm referring just to social standing. If someone who is not as well informed on the subject were to then read that part of my post and see me classify the English army as peasantry, said person could, not knowing any better, simply conjure up the stereotypical image that Hollywood likes to give us of the peasant: dirty, dressed in earthy tones (bonus points for dirty brown), and probably featured on a set that is just as drab-looking as they are.
There are probably another half dozen factors that would contribute to the miscommunications that seem to breathe new life into these misconceptions on a regular basis, but I think that you've got the idea. | [
"Though usually the aspect of financing of a military force is seen as \"derivative,\" in the case of the States Army it played an important formative role, and influenced the peculiarities of the organisation also. Though 16th-century armies were usually preponderantly mercenary armies, there often were elements o... |
what stops cops from simply planting cocaine in your pocket and arresting you? | It happens. Cops have been known to plant drugs on suspects to arrest them.
Why don't they? Well should they be caught the will be on the other end of that jailtime. | [
"A man goes looking for cocaine on an island. Some cops (undercover) offer to help by taking the map and getting the coke in exchange for half. The cops (still undercover) send the man a picture of a hole with a bag in it, implying that cocaine is in the bag. They ask the man to come to a parking lot to give him hi... |
Can cancer go away on its own? | [Coley's toxins](_URL_0_) were developed from when William Coley observed a small number of patients whose incurable cancers went into remission following sepsis caused by streptococcal infections. In this sense, the spontaneous remission followed infection, so it didn't go away "on its own," but it did go away without intervention. | [
"Treatment and survival is determined, to a great extent, by whether or not a cancer remains localized or spreads to other locations in the body. If the cancer metastasizes to other tissues or organs it usually dramatically increases a patient's likelihood of death. Some cancers—such as some forms of leukemia, a ca... |
Is it possible to have a solid block of something floating in a gas? | ~~Yes! Here's a [video](_URL_0_) of an aluminium foil ship floating in sulphur hexaflouride.~~
Wait, this isn't what you asked at all. Sorry, ignore. | [
"Gas bubbles with a radius greater than 1 micron should float to the surface of a standing liquid, whereas smaller ones should dissolve rapidly due to surface tension. The Tiny Bubble Group has been able to resolve this apparent paradox by developing and experimentally verifying a new model for stable gas nuclei.\n... |
Books about Diogenes of Sinope | *Diogenes the Cynic*, L. Navia (2005) | [
"BULLET::::- Lost works of Diogenes of Sinope He is reported to have written several books, none of which has survived to the present date. Whether or not these books were actually his writings or attributions are in dispute.\n",
"The Liexian Zhuan, sometimes translated as Biographies of Immortals, is the oldest ... |
Is it true that the quantum states of two related electrons can be entangled, making it so that changes to one effect the other, regardless of distance? If so, why? [Layman Here] | It's kind of a version of Schrodinger's Cat, also known as the EPR paradox. For the wiki article, read:
_URL_0_
Here's it in short - one type of subatomic particle (a muon) can decay into an electron of spin up and an electron of spin down. However, before you measure the spin on the electron, you don't know which one is spin up and which one is spin down. Actually, it's funny, they both exist in *both states*, with 1/2 probability for either way. Until you measure it, they exist in both states. However, let's say you separate these two electrons by some distance. Now, if you measure the spin on one of the electrons, and it comes out positive, you know with 100% certainty that the other electron is negative. This means that you have just transmitted *information* in zero seconds, and if velocity is distance/time, and distance is non-zero, you've just transmitted information at infinite speed, which is actually greater than the speed of light. This is the nature of the paradox that Einstein shat himself over for 20 years.
There are lots of interpretations, most of which I'm not familiar with, but have a huge section in that wikipedia article, so I'm going to read that now and you're welcome to join me in that if you'd like.
If you don't want to read the wiki, well, here's what Feynman has to say about it:
_URL_1_
Basically, experiment is experiment. There is no 'why', just 'how'. Later we figure out the why, but usually it's pretty hard to understand because we don't have everyday experience about it. It's just the way nature acts! You don't have to like it, you just have to know it's true.
| [
"If two different quantum registers are entangled (they cannot be expressed as a tensor product), measurement of one register affects or reveals the state of the other register by partially or entirely collapsing its state too. An example of such a linearly inseparable state is the EPR pair, which can be constructe... |
why do some drinks like arnold palmer have a faint marijuana-like taste? | Could be that ganga you just smoked? I personally haven't had this experience. | [
"The Arnold Palmer is a name commonly used for a non-alcoholic beverage that combines iced tea and lemonade. The name \"Arnold Palmer\" refers to the professional American golfer Arnold Palmer, who was known to often request and drink this beverage combination; some attribute the invention of the beverage to the go... |
why there's no algae over the surface of oceans ? | There is. A lot of it. But constant turbulence of the surface prevents it from getting too clumped up. Additionally, there are a *lot* of things eating the algae, too, which keep algal populations manageable.
Sometimes those things get out of whack and you end up with [massive algal blooms](_URL_0_) that cover huge swaths of the ocean.
You rarely see solid mats of algae, though, because of the constant motion and turbulence. Algae that *does* clump together has evolved into different forms that are strong enough to deal with the ocean currents and don't *look* like algae, like [giant kelp](_URL_1_), which is, in fact, algae, not a plant. | [
"\"S. algae\" is of great interest to the United States Department of Energy because of its ability to reduce the amount of radioactive waste in groundwater by making it less soluble. An example would be:\n",
"Algae's strong photosynthesis creates a large affinity for nutrients; this allows the seaweed to be used... |
Weapon ownership in Medieval Europe | In Iceland it certainly, from a Saga perspective (from the viewpoint that they reflect society in the Sturlung period, that is from about 1200 onwards) does not seem uncommon for 'farmers' (in Medieval Iceland nearly everybody was a farmer, as there were not urbanised areas/ towns|), or lower class landowners, to possess an axe or spear at least.
Axes and spears have the virtue of being relatively cheap to make; only a small amount of poor quality iron was necessary, and although I am not convinced by the argument axes did have utilitarian purposes.
| [
"\"Weapons\" is a compendium of virtually every edged or impact melee weapon used in any medieval or primitive culture. \"Weapons\" is an indexed sourcebook describing hundreds of different melee weapons, each illustrated. Weapons are covered in six sections: Swords, Knives, Hafted Weapons, Spears, Pole Arms, and M... |
Why didn't the Jews attempt to rebel or "rise up" in WW2 against their Nazi captors? | You are right, it isn't that simple.
First of all, the nazi persecution of the Jews happened incrementally, not all at once, and it was by no means clear that "they were going to die anyway". It is clear to us in hindsight, but you have to keep in mind that the concept of rounding up men, women and children, putting them on trains, unloading them at a purpose-built death camp, and gassing them, was never before encountered in the history of the world. It was so novel and alien an idea that hardly anyone at the time believed it was happening *even when they were told about it by eye witnesses*. Escapees from Auschwitz and Treblinka told their fellow Jews and were disbelieved initially. The same escapee reports were relayed through the Polish government in exile to the Western allies, and they disbelieved it too.
Secondly, "the Jews" were not a nation with an army. They were a people who were a small to tiny minority in a number of separate occupied countries. They had no governing structure or access to arms. They were not unified structurally in any way.
Thirdly, and most importantly, there *was* Jewish resistance, what's more, it even arose in the most dire and impossible of circumstances.
There were uprisings in several Polish ghettos, most notably those of Warsaw in January and April-May 1943, and in Bialystok in August 1943. They were of course brutally suppressed and everybody to the last child was carted off to Treblinka and killed.
There were Jewish partisan groups fighting the Germans in Poland, the Baltic states and the Soviet Union. The reason there were separate Jewish partisans is, by the way, is that often Polish and Baltic partisans refused to admit Jews as members and even went so far as to kill them...
Lastly, there were uprisings in the death camps themselves.
There have been three large-scale uprisings in Nazi death camps. As the odds were stacked heavily against the inmates, these stories make for some bleak reading.
**[SonderKommando revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau](_URL_0_), October 7, 1944**
The Sonderkommandos were groups of Jewish prisoners charged with processing the belongings and handling the cremation of other prisoners. They knew that they would not be allowed to survive the war and had gathered some makeshift weapons and explosives. On the fateful day, they managed to set Crematorium IV on fire and kill three SS men. Some of them escaped briefly but all were recaptured and killed. In all, the revolt cost the lives of 451 members of the Sonderkommandos.
**[Treblinka uprising](_URL_1_), August 2, 1943**
300 inmates of Treblinka managed to escape, of whom 200 were recaptured (sometimes with the help of the Polish inhabitants of the region) and killed. According to various estimates, about 60-70 of the Treblinka escapees were still alive at the end of the war. Three guards were killed in the uprising, as well as about 600 of the 800 to 900 inmates. After the uprising, two more transports of Jews arrived and were killed. Shortly afterwards, Treblinka was dismantled, ploughed over and turned into a farm. The remaining inmates were killed at Sobibor.
**The Sobibor Uprising on October 14, 1943**
12 German officers were killed in the revolt as well as a number of Ukrainian guards. As Sobibor was strictly an extermination camp, where those that arrived by rail were immediately gassed, the number of prisoners was very small, just enough to keep the camp running. 300 out of 700 inmates managed to escape during the revolt. Many were recaptured and killed rather quickly, others were killed by the Polish resistance they met in the forests around the camp, still others were betrayed by Polish inhabitants of the region. Some were helped by the Poles, though, mainly in return for money and valuables belonging to gassed Jews that they had smuggled out of the camp. It should be remembered that to harbour Jewish refugees meant an almost certain death sentence at the time. Only about 50 of the escaped survived the war.
Immediately after the revolt, all remaining prisoners in Sobibor were killed and the camp was dismantled.
| [
"If the Germans discovered people were involved in the resistance, they were often immediately jailed. It was the social democrats, Catholics, and communists who started the resistance movement. Membership of an armed or military organized group could lead to prolonged stays in concentration camps, and after mid-19... |
How well accepted is the theory that the Minoan civilization was devastated by a massive tsunami and that this event lead to the the myth of Atlantis? | Not even a tiny little bit.
* Just to be clear, strictly speaking "Minoan" is the name of a style of material culture. It is often dangerous, and often wrong, to equate that with a particular ethnic group, language, or political entity. Certainly by the historical period Crete had a very diverse ethnic composition. Having said that, it is very possible that "Minoan" does equate to a single political entity controlling the island from Knossos (there's some archaeological evidence suggesting that; but it's not crazy to disagree with that conclusion and see Minoan Crete as a group of autonomous palace cultures).
* As a bit of background, the so-called "Old Palaces" of Crete were destroyed in the mid-18th century BCE, and it is often supposed that earthquakes were the cause. This destruction did not interrupt ongoing development, however, whatever the real cause.
* The palace (i.e. "Minoan") culture of Crete didn't come to an end until ca. 1450 BCE.
* There have been attempts to pin this on the eruption of Thera/Santorini, to be sure. Geological evidence of a powerful tsunami has been found at various points on the coast of Crete.
* However, these attempts are just a tiny bit flawed by the data we have relating to the date of the eruption. Dating by pottery evidence is extremely contested in terms of absolute dates, but relative dates are secure; the eruption belongs to the period known as Late Minoan 1A, yet we know there was a building boom in the Late Minoan 1B period. Even without absolute dates, that's fairly damning. Moreover, radiocarbon dating has pointed to an earlier date still, in the late 17th century. Even before that, some archaeologists had already been arguing for a 17th century date (Stuart Manning's 1999 book on the subject argued for 1628/1627, based partly on ice-cores taken from Greenland, evidence that has subsequently been challenged); one olive branch that was buried alive in the eruption has been radiocarbon dated to 1627-1600 (95% confidence). Even without consensus on the dates of pottery styles, there's a pretty good consensus putting it, if not before 1600 BCE, then certainly not much later. You can't blame events in the 1400s on an event with that kind of dating evidence.
* (Having said that, it is moderately safe to say that the Minoan settlements on Thera itself were wiped out by the eruption.)
Instead, evidence of destruction caused by human agency in the LM 1B period, followed by evidence of Mycenaean material and textual culture on Crete in the LM II and III periods, points to Mycenaean invasion as the occasion of the downfall of the Minoan palace culture. Attempts to drag Thera into it are unnecessary and unfounded.
"Atlantis" doesn't even enter into it. That's a "legend" that was invented for a specific occasion by a 4th century BCE philosopher, and which he set in the Mesolithic (in the 10th millennium BCE, to be specific). And in myths recorded after 800 BCE, it takes some believing to see historical events even in the Iron Age, let alone in the Mycenaean period, let alone in the Minoan period.
**Edits:** formatting error; added a bit more detail about Manning's book. | [
"Around 1600 BCE, a tsunami caused by the eruption of Thira devastated the Minoan civilization on Crete and related cultures in the Cyclades, as well as in areas on the Greek mainland facing the eruption, such as the Argolid.\n",
"The Thera eruption, dated to the seventeenth or sixteenth century BC, caused a larg... |
why haven't we researched more into tunnelling through the earth as a means of travel? | It's simply far, far, far, far, far, faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar simpler to travel across the surface.
Maintaining (for that matter, even creating) a tunnel through the earth is beyond our technological capabilities for the far forseeable future. Even if we could do it, it would be astronomically expensive, with the total benefit of shaving a few hours off however many vehicles we could fit through it.
Additionally, the center of the earth itself is a solid metal ball, with liquid metal around it, and above that viscous rock. | [
"A major tunnel project must start with a comprehensive investigation of ground conditions by collecting samples from boreholes and by other geophysical techniques. An informed choice can then be made of machinery and methods for excavation and ground support, which will reduce the risk of encountering unforeseen g... |
Why have the majority of governments adopted parliamentarian republicanism rather than presidential republicanism? | The premise of this question is rather flawed. In democratic Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia, Westminster-style systems are the distinct minority. Far more common in the aggregate are three other systems: strong Presidents (i.e., not only executive Presidents in the US sense but possessed of significant legislative power exercisable by decree), US-style systems, and French-style hybrids, with an executive President who shares authority with a Prime Minister and Cabinet somewhat or entirely responsible to the majority of the lower house of the legislature.
Where Westminster-style systems prevail, it's for one of three reasons. Mostly commonly, because the state was a former British colony, felt comfortable with that system, and never had a post-democratization crisis which required (or permitted) a strong Presidency to take shape. Secondly, because the state wanted to become a constitutional monarchy (such as the Commonwealth states which retained the Queen, or Japan or Thailand) and the Westminster system is the obvious solution to the state having, by definition, a head of state who is both non-elected and required to be above partisan politics. Third, pretty much only in Eastern Europe, because a state had a legacy of mistrust of authoritarian leaders and wanted to emulate the Westminster style systems prevailing among their western European (new) peers. | [
"Politically, republicanism is officially supported by the Labor Party and the Greens, and is also supported by some Liberal Party members of the Australian parliament. Australian voters rejected a proposal to establish a republic with a parliamentary appointed head of state in a referendum held in 1999.\n",
"In ... |
Tell me about ANZAC soldiers roles in WWII | ANZAC (Australia New Zealand Army Corps) is actually mostly a WWI term which didn't have a whole lot of application to WWII. However, it is commonly used as a moniker for all Australian and NZ land forces in WWII.
As part of the British Empire, Australians and New Zealanders were deployed alongside other Commonwealth forces, mostly in two theatres: they served in North Africa with the Eighth Army and then in Italy with the same unit. They served in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, the latter theatre mostly being in defensive dispositions.
Some major and famous battles involving large ANZ forces are:
(1) Tobruk: the Australian 9th Division was surrounded by the German Afrika Korps in the harbour town of Tobruk where it survived a seven month siege April 1941 - November 1941.
(2) Battle of Second El-Alamein: the above Australian unit and the New Zealand 2nd Division were closely involved in major parts of this battle, in which British General Montgomery broke through Rommel's (Stumme's) defences and reversed the Axis offensive momentum in North Africa.
Rommel was very complimentary to the New Zealand troops in North Africa, and the Australians too. They say that Rommel said that if he had to capture hell, he would use Australians to take it and New Zealanders to hold it. But I am not sure if he ever really did say that.
(3) Battle of Greece. Big disaster, but not their fault. It was a bad move.
(4) Australian troops were deployed to defend Singapore from the Japanese. These units did not perform very well. Many were captured with some dishonour (if you want to think about it that way). The Australian commander in this battle escaped Singapore while his troops marched into captivity and became quite an unpopular person for this.
(5) Australian troops protected the city of Port Moresby in New Guinea, which was the closest port facility to Australia that Japan could reasonably occupy. When US carrier units forced the Japanese away from an amphibious landing, they went overland, through dense jungle, along the Kokoda Track. Australians repulsed them in very difficult fighting.
A lot of people seem to be prone to saying that Australia/New Zealand troops were the "shock units" of the British Empire (they also say this about Highland troops, Gurkhas, Canadians, et cetera). There's not a lot of evidence to support this. If you look at the Australian Army in WWII you find units of varying calibre. Some were excellent, some were not. The British deployed the Australians and New Zealanders were they were needed and they went to those places and fought the Germans, Italians, or Japanese there.
However, as Japan got closer to Australia, significant Australian units were withdrawn to protect Australia, a military decision the British were not too happy with but that they couldn't politically resist. Australia raised large military forces, but many were simply used for the defence of Australia against a potential Japanese invasion.
| [
"Anzacs (named for members of the all volunteer ANZAC army formations) is a 1985 Australian five-part television miniseries set in World War I. The series follows the lives of a group of young Australian men who enlist in the 8th Battalion (Australia) of the First Australian Imperial Force in 1914, fighting first a... |
is it more politically correct to say indian or native american? is one preferred by the race? | Indians are from the Indian subcontinent. Native Americans were in the US before it was the US. | [
"Some Indian Americans who were unfamiliar with the ethnonymic conventions used in the United States, mistakenly indicated that they were \"American Indian\" as their race in the 1990 US Census, because they were unaware that this term is used in the United States to refer to Native Americans.\n",
"Compared with ... |
Why is digital camouflage preferable to more traditional styles? | Some references [here](_URL_0_) | [
"\"Active camouflage\" (or \"adaptive camouflage\") is a group of camouflage technologies which would allow an object (usually military in nature) to blend into its surroundings by use of panels or coatings capable of changing color or luminosity. Active camouflage can be seen as having the potential to become the ... |
why, in some videos i've seen recently, is the snow not melting and just turning black when people try to melt it with lighters? | because the flame isnt hot enough, so it's basically just spitting the gas residue onto the snow. | [
"The orange snow was malodorous, oily to the touch, and reported to contain four times the normal level of iron. Though mostly orange, some of the snow was red or yellow. It affected an area with about 27,000 residents. It was originally speculated that it was caused by industrial pollution, a rocket launch or even... |
according to the cdc, the transmission rate for hiv and other stds are statistically low. why exactly is this? | The human immune system is pretty good.
You don't get a cold every times somebody sneezes around you. You don't get e.coli every time somebody undercooks a burger.
...and you don't get HIV every time your dick touches somebody. | [
"Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) remain a major public health challenge in the United States. CDC estimates that there are approximately 19 million new STD infections yearly. The two most commonly reported infectious diseases with 1.5 million total cases (2009) are chlamydia and gonorrhea. Adolescent girls (15... |
why are buildings in australia and america not built with sturdier materials, to deal with the regular natural disasters? | So, *nothing* holds up against tornadoes. You can build a tornado-resistant house, but it's extraordinarily expensive and frankly not worth it. You essentially need to build a missile-proof bunker. Bricks will not stand a chance against one. | [
"The hard grey stone is one of the most durable materials available and helps to explain why the city's buildings look brand-new when they have been newly cleaned and the cement has been pointed. Unlike other Scottish cities where less durable stone, such as sandstone, has been used, the buildings do not weather, a... |
Is there an animal who can control their digestive systems? | Many animals including birds and insects have the ability to purge their stomach contents on command. Bird feedings and flies vomiting stomach acid is an example of this phenomena. Once it goes past the stomach there is usually in mammals at least a one way valve that prevents food from going in the opposite direction. | [
"The arthropod digestive system is divisible into three areas: the fore gut, mid gut, and hind gut. All free-living species exhibit a distinct and separate mouth and anus, and in all species, food must be moved through the digestive tract by muscular activity rather than cilia activity since the lumen of the fore g... |
What makes James Dean an icon? | You might get a good answer on r/truefilm as well. | [
"Dean was named the first \"Producer in Residence\" at New York University, for the 2010–11 academic year. About.com ranked him number 27 on its list of the \"Top 50 Greatest Hip-Hop Producers,\" and \"The Source\" included him on its list of the \"20 greatest producers\" in the magazine's 20-year history. Fellow A... |
how do they measure the time a car needs to accelerate from 1 to 100 km/h? does this not heavily depend on the driver? | It actually does depend on the driver, and other factors. Manufacturers are known to cheat a little bit with this, but usually not so severely that it results in a grossly inaccurate time. The following factors are important:
1) Condition of the pavement or strip (wet, smooth?)
2) Temperature, humidity, and ambient air pressure
3) Weight of the car
4) Sunny or cloudy (affects temperature of track and tires)
5) Intake temperature (engine revving can destroy performance)
6) Use of rollout in determining time
7) and... of course... they're going to be using a skilled driver, who will try different combinations of launch rpm and wheelspin
8) Fuel -- highest recommended octane for that vehicle
note: fuel is a real kicker, as the proper fuel provides cooling and maximum power availability for a well-designed engine. using a lower octane will cause the engine's computer to reduce engine output. using a higher octane will waste fuel and result in a lower efficiency and less acceleration | [
"In another study drivers were asked to indicate how much time they feel can be saved when increasing from either a low (30 mph) or high (60 mph) speed (Fuller et al., 2009). For example, participants were asked the following question: \"You are driving along an open road. How much time do you feel you would gain i... |
How do we know the age of the universe, specifically with a margin of error of 59 million years? | There's a phenomena called the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB. If you point a radio telescope in any direction, you see radio waves from the CMB. Looking at radio waves from the CMB is kind of like looking at visible light from the sun. If you go far back enough in time, the universe was denser and hotter, so dense and so hot that hydrogen atoms filled all of space ~~and there was fusion happening everywhere~~. But as time went on, the universe became less dense and less hot, until ~~fusion stopped happening and~~ the light could travel freely through space. The light we see from the CMB is from the moment that light could freely travel.
Interestingly enough, both light from the CMB and light from the sun follow a blackbody spectrum. In fact, anything with a temperature emits blackbody radiation. If you measure the intensity of the light at different frequencies, you can fit the temperature. Right now the CMB is in radio, which is cold (about 2.73 kelvin), but if you go back in time the CMB light was much hotter. The reason it's colder now is because light is a transverse wave. As the universe expanded, the peaks and troughs of the light waves expanded with the expanded space. This phenomena is known as red-shifting.
Anyway, if you look in different directions, the original temperature of the CMB is almost exactly the same in every direction, to about one part in 100,000. But it's not exactly the same in every direction. If you look at different angles, the temperatures can be slightly different. If you look at temperature deviations as a function of different angles, you can calculate what's called a Power Spectrum. The Power Spectrum allows you to solve what are called the Boltzmann Equations. The Boltzmann Equations are thermodynamic equations which constrain many parameters of the universe, such as its age, the expansion rate, the density of normal matter, density of dark matter, etc. Solving the Boltzmann Equations constrains the age of the universe.
As a side note, the Boltzmann Equations are perhaps the most compelling argument for dark matter, since it's impossible to fit the Power Spectrum without a dark matter component (but this argument is so technical that many people are not familiar it).
edit: if anyone is interested in learning more, this is a good resource: _URL_0_. It's the 2015 Planck results, an experiment to map the CMB super precisely.
edit2: As others have mentioned, the period of fusion was between 10 seconds and 20 minutes after the big bang, and is known as big bang nucleosynthesis. The period when light could travel freely was much later, about 380,000 years after the big bang, and is known as the time of last scattering.
Also I should mention there are easier, more intuitive ways of calculating the age of the universe, such as measuring the Hubble Constant directly from redshifts and distances and calculating T = 1/H. However, the current best margin of error of 59 million years comes from precise measurements of the CMB Power Spectrum. | [
"The age of the universe based on the best fit to Planck 2015 data alone is billion years (the estimate of billion years uses Gaussian priors based on earlier estimates from other studies to determine the combined uncertainty). This number represents an accurate \"direct\" measurement of the age of the universe (ot... |
Would an object falling to Earth fall faster if it is in the Earth's path as it revolves around the Sun? | Well that depends on where the object originated. For example, if it was simply floating in the space that the Earth is moving into, then yes. It will fall like a normal object with an initial downward velocity equal to the speed of the Earth. If the object originated from Earth's frame of reference, it would not matter which side of the planet it launched from because in both cases it would have the same initial velocity. I hope that helps | [
"With the Earth move [...] all things that are on the Earth. If, therefore, from a point outside the Earth something were thrown upon the Earth, it would lose, because of the latter's motion, its straightness as would be seen on the ship [...] moving along a river, if someone on point C of the riverbank were to thr... |
How successful was Friedrich Engels as a businessman? And how were the living conditions of his employees? | Engels was not in charge of the business he was sent to Manchester to join - a cotton thread factory. It was majority-owned, and run, by his father's business partner, Peter Ermen.
Ermen suspected that the younger Engels had been sent to spy on him, so he refused to place him in positions where he had much responsibility or participated in strategic decision-making. Engels was largely restricted to mundane clerical duties in what he called "the bitch business", spending 20 years maintaining an extensive correspondence with suppliers and clients, while systematically raiding Ermen's petty cash box for some of the funds he passed on to help support his colleague Marx.
As for the living conditions of employees, it was horror at the appalling slum conditions that he found in Manchester that prompted Engels to write his first book, *The Condition of the Working Class in England* and which inspired much of his radicalism. It's well worth mentioning in this connection that, while Engels had the money to live comfortably, and from a social point of view was expected to do so, he actually preferred to spend most of his time living in cheap lodgings under an assumed name with his mistress, an Irish worker named Mary Burns.
I have written in much more detail about Engels's time in Manchester, conditions in the city, and his relationship with Mary Burns, [here](_URL_0_). It's a fascinating story. | [
"Having accumulated considerable wealth, he financially supported several European botanists and donated large sums to various scientific institutions at home. He bequeathed his estate to the University of Uppsala.\n",
"Via the \"Arnold Georg AG\" and the \"AG für Steinindustrie\" (both headquartered in Neuwied, ... |
Was there ever an official reason as to why the Confederate Army chose not to invade Washington DC in the beginning days of the Civil War when the city was completely unprotected? | Your question presupposes a couple of things that aren't necessarily true. First, the Confederates weren't in any better position to just storm "Washington City" (as it was known then) than the Union was to march straight into Richmond. The early months of the war saw both sides consolidating and, even more importantly, drilling the civilian-soldiers pouring into the respective capitols. Moving an army en mass is an extremely complicated undertaking, and neither side (but especially the Confederates) had the infrastructure in place to get their armies and supply trains organized for a major offensive (let alone a siege). If nothing else, the timeline illustrates this clearly. The war started in April 1861, and the first major clash of the armies came at Manassas/Bull Run in late-July of that year. If it was as easy as just sprinting the 100 or so miles to take the other city, both sides would have tried to do so: but it just wasn't feasible. Either side trying such a thing so early in the war would have been playing with an all-in proposition with extremely green troops (and with no one left behind to guard the capitol just abandoned in case things didn't work out). So in the Spring of 1861, it was a risky proposition at best, and a reckless one at worst.
Second, Lincoln was keenly aware of the strategic and symbolic importance of holding Washington, and some of the first actions he took when assuming office was to reinforce and fortify the city. The accounts you mention of Lincoln saying "why won't they attack" sound vaguely familiar, but I don't immediately recall a source for that. Do you have one? To my mind, that conversation or recollection had to do with the period immediately after 1st Manassas/Bull Run, when the Union was on its heels a bit (though never in any real danger of losing Washington).
The truth of the matter is that both sides in the Spring of 1861 had extremely raw armies with little formal training outside of the officer corps. The armies had neither the infrastructure, numerical strength, or knowhow to pull off so audacious and difficult an operation as sacking the other side's capitol. Even in 1862, when McClellan had a well-trained, sizable army at his disposal, he was unable to take Richmond (a city with far fewer defenders and defenses than Washington). To think that the Confederates could have sacked Washington so early in the war just doesn't jive with the facts and what leaders then (and historians now) understood about the actual capabilities of the Confederate army, such as it was.
[Sources, Bruce Catton, 'Mr. Lincoln's Army'; James McPherson, 'Battle Cry of Freedom'; Doris Kearns Goodwin, 'Team of Rivals'] | [
"In May, it was decided to move the Confederate capital from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia, in part because the defense of Virginia's capital was deemed vital to the Confederacy's survival. On May 24, 1861, the U.S. Army moved into northern Virginia and captured Alexandria without a fight. Most of the ... |
What were the scale of the battles in both the world wars? I have a hard time imagining millions, plural, dying. | OK, here are the top ten deadliest battles of both wars. You have to remember that these "battles" were often more like "offensives" or "campaigns" - they could last up to several weeks or months (in WWI), and weren't settled in a day like most medieval battles. People died in their thousands or tens of thousands in a daily meat grinder.
**WWI**
1. The Hundred Days Offensive (1,855,369 casualties), 1918
2. The Spring Offensive (1,539,715), 1918
3. The Battle of the Somme (1,219,201), 1916 (The British lost 60,000 men in a single day, more than the Americans lost *in all of Vietnam*).
4. The Battle of Verdun (976,000), 1916
5. Battle of Passchendaele (848,614), 1917
6. Serbian Campaign (633,500+), 1914-1915
7. First Battle of the Marnes (483,000), 1914
8. Battle of Gallipoli (473,000), 1915
9. Battle of Arras (278,000), 1917
10. Battle of Tannenberg (182,000), 1914 (The only one on the Eastern front)
**WWII**
1. Battle of Stalingrad, 23 August 1942–2 February 1943: (1,250,000–1,798,619)
2. Battle of Berlin, 16 April–2 May 1945: (1,298,745)
3. Battle of Moscow, 2 October 1941–7 January 1942: (1,000,000)
4. Battle of Narva, 2 February–10 August 1944: (550,000)
5. Battle of France, 10 May–25 June 1940: (469,000)
6. Battle of Luzon, 9 January–15 August 1945: (332,330–345,330)
7. Second Battle of Kharkov, 12 May–28 May 1942: (300,000)
8. Battle of Kursk, 5 July–23 August 1943: (257,125–388,000)
9. Battle of the Bulge, 16 December 1944–25 January 1945: (186,369)
10. Battle of Monte Cassino, 17 January–18 May 1944: (185,000)
So, if you're wondering why we Europeans aren't all that gung-ho about wars and invading Irak and bombing Iran and having civilians running around with assault rifles, you can read the reason in the numbers above. Most of us our countries were invaded (or were attempted to) and people died like flies and lay rotting in the streets and in fields and in the forests. It's sickening and there *has* to be a better way. | [
"Three of the ten most costly wars, in terms of loss of life, have been waged in the last century. These are the two World Wars, followed by the Second Sino-Japanese War (which is sometimes considered part of World War II, or as overlapping). Most of the others involved China or neighboring peoples. The death toll ... |
why do people keep saying 'splenda is poison' | One thing people don't understand is that a molecule isn't necessarily toxic just because a toxic molecule was used to make it. For example, I'm currently trying to make an anti-tumor drug but a few of the reagents are carcinogenic. | [
"Poison is the story of a rebellious human teenager living in the swamp town of Gull with her father, stepmother, and her baby sister Azalea. She struggles against the oppression in her life, particularly with her strained relationship with her Stepmother, Snapdragon. Her only friend in Gull is the old traveler, Fl... |
why don’t car manufacturers design cars that cannot be started without seatbelt being fastened | Emergencies. What if there is some sort of accident while you’re driving and you can’t pull over? What if you want to pull over and sleep with the heat on? What if you need to jump start your car alone, hopping in and out.
Also it’s too easy to trick the car. It also creates another system that could go wrong and cause the car not to start. That’s no good.
What if the kids in the back seat undo their belts while you’re sailing along.
It’s just a terrible idea. Now... breathalyzers connected to the ignition are a good idea!! Hahah | [
"In the United States, the Legacy was introduced with automatic seat belts due to United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) regulations stating that all cars produced from April 1, 1989 were to be equipped with a passive front passenger restraint system that would protect front occupants ... |
how does sound work on a microscale? eg if i've shrunk myself to insect size could i hear a spider chew its food if i stood next to it? | You can hear it without shrinking, you just need to get close with your ears. Maybe the spider has to sit in your ear chewing on its food.
It is not your size really that determines that, it is more that evolutionary your ear are not designed to hear something like that, since it was never important for your survival.
Edit: Typo | [
"Communication using surface-borne vibrational signals is more widespread among insects because of size constraints in producing air-borne sounds. Insects cannot effectively produce low-frequency sounds, and high-frequency sounds tend to disperse more in a dense environment (such as foliage), so insects living in s... |
coffee culture | My good friend The Oatmeal can explain it all in [a handy infographic!](_URL_0_)
Lets break down your question. Size? I comes in small, medium, and large. Starbucks loves to use Italian names for their sizes because foreign branding works. Ingredients? Ground coffee, milk, sugar, cream and maybe in very select cases [Chicory Root](_URL_1_).
Your different types of drinks depend on how its brewed and what's added to it. You can brew coffee by drip, steam, press and cold brew to name a few but it all comes down to putting water through ground coffee beans. Whats added to it in the process also determines what it is. A Cappuccino is steamed coffee and milk put together. They have weird names because coffee was considered very foreign and a product of the elite so the foreign branding and elite-ish culture stuck around.
Edit: Straight black coffee is typically far too strong for most people to drink. For your first drink I recommend a Café au lait (say it "Cafe-o-lay), that's standard drip coffee with steamed milk added. It's easy to drink and one of my favorites. | [
"Coffee culture is a phrase that describes a social atmosphere or associated social behaviors that depend heavily on coffee, particularly as a social lubricant. The term also refers to the cultural diffusion and adoption of coffee as a widely consumed stimulant. In the late 20th century, espresso became an increasi... |
How does the intestinal flora re-establish? | 1) This would depend on the gut flora and how they respond to the treatment. A lot would die from the antibiotics, although some do survive. This can cause gastrointestinal distress because the antibiotics essentially change the biodiversity in the intestines. You end up having high abundance of some, low abundance of others, and this really messes with the intraspecies controls that they exert on one another that will promote high population growth of microbes that are normally kept low due to interactions with other microbes. So to answer, the biodiversity changes.
2) The flora can fix itself because you never really 100% kill everything in your gut. If you did, you would have more problems than runny poo because of malnutrition and what not. Also, a lot of food carries these microbes, and when ingested, will re-establish a normal community. If it is a serious concern, then probiotics and things can be taken. | [
"In humans, a gut flora similar to an adult's is formed within one to two years of birth. As the gut flora gets established, the lining of the intestines – the intestinal epithelium and the intestinal mucosal barrier that it secretes – develop as well, in a way that is tolerant to, and even supportive of, commensal... |
why is christianity in decline in the western world?. | Expanding religions have historically grown most in times of colonial power structures or population booms. As the people of the western hemisphere have lost new places to expand into and supplant existing cultures with their own, and don't have as many children as the rest of the world, there has ceased to be an avenue for growth. Islam and Hinduism lose plenty of adherents over time, but high birth rates means those religions are still expanding. | [
"The decline of Christianity is an ongoing trend in Europe. Developed countries and denominations in the post-World War II era have shifted towards post-Christian, secular, globalized, multicultural and multifaith societies. Infant baptism has declined in many nations, with thousands of churches closing or merging ... |
Is there any historical/archeological record regarding the beginnings of widespread hair styles? If so, where and when did it begin, and which gender was more likely to participate? | It's not like people were putting together catalogs of what was in style for the season, but ideas and styles were communicated visually as well as aurally. Men and women would have both been interested in hair styles, but in the West women's styles were often more elaborate. There is actually a really great record just in the art that each culture left behind, but it is notable that there are much fewer depictions of the working classes than upper classes. I personally like sculpture for hair styles since you get to see things all the way around. I love [this Minoan fresco](_URL_1_) but it's hard to tell exactly what is going on, compared to this [Etruscan sarcophagus.](_URL_0_) One of the more notable hair styles in ancient Roman art is the [bust of a Flavian woman](_URL_2_). I also took [this picture](_URL_3_) at the Getty Villa (which is all antiquities) earlier this year because of how well it shows all the detail, but I'm kicking myself for not getting the information on it.
Anyway, to answer your question, there is a MASSIVE record of hair styles from Mesopotamia to the renaissance. Let me know if there's any culture or time period or region or kind of style (mens/long/braids etc.) that you're more interested in and I'll try to find you some sources! | [
"The oldest known depiction of hair styling is hair braiding which dates back about 30,000 years. In history, women's hair was often elaborately and carefully dressed in special ways. From the time of the Roman Empire until the Middle Ages, most women grew their hair as long as it would naturally grow. Between the ... |
How do babies get the essential bacteria in their large intestine, if the slightest infection will nearly or just outright kill them? | They get it from mom.
Vaginal birthed babies aspirate as they pass through, breast fed babies get it as they nurse (from the skin), and they otherwise acquire it in the classic stick-everything-in-your-mouth stage. | [
"During birth and rapidly thereafter, bacteria from the mother and the surrounding environment colonize the infant's gut. The exact sources of bacteria is not fully understood, but may include the birth canal, other people (parents, siblings, hospital workers), breastmilk, food, and the general environment with whi... |
Can a photo-realistic game be run on a super computer? | Warning. I am not a graphics researcher so my answer is an educated guess. I would say that we aren't even close.
Photo realistic stills are still very difficult. Graphics research would be a lot less exciting if all they did was make existing systems render faster. Advances in the way we handle light are still being made (I think). This is critically important for making things like skin and hair look correct. Then we have to deal with physics engines, which are still extremely rough approximations of the real world. Getting rigid objects to behave correctly is tricky, let alone fluids. While this is partially a product of our limited resources when rendering at 60fps, remember that Brave and Tangled were considered to be huge tech achievements in how they handled hair. Those stills are rendered by supercomputers working for a long time. Getting the render time down to 0.02 seconds is not easy.
I think it is tempting to say that CGI in movies is photo realistic but I don't think we can say that yet. Remember when you saw the star wars prequels and they looked amazing? Look again and notice how far we have come since then. It is difficult to imagine how much we can improve our tech. The recent hulk movies are another good example.
You could probably cheat a bit and make a game in an environment that was easy to handle. Limited light sources along with hard and smooth surfaces are much easier to handle than grass, skin, and water. | [
"Today there are several different computer programs that simulate things like cars and airplanes. An obvious example is a flight simulator, another would be video games where players drive cars. But neither of these tools is designed to help movie makers and content-creators to make editable, recorded animation ma... |
why is it so hard to remove pharmaceuticals from water? | Molecules are really small and difficult to deal with on an individual basis. It isn't like you can just strain them out like with a sieve. | [
"Traces of prescription drugs — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been detected in drinking water. Pharmaceutically active compounds (PhACs) discarded from human therapy and their metabolites have been found to not be completely eliminated by sewage treatment plants a... |
AMA: The Economy of the Ancient Roman Empire | This is something I've long wondered:
During the height of the Empire, Rome had a population close to a million people, and most of those people lived in apartment blocks. They presumably didn't have any arable land as part of their personal property. So what did those people do all day? Did they work 9-5s like we do today? Did they leave the city to work in agriculture? Did they just not work in an organized fashion?
TL;DR What was the typical job of a city dweller like? | [
"The Ancient Economy is a book about the economic system of classical antiquity written by the classicist Moses I. Finley. It was originally published in 1973. Finley interprets the economy from 1000 BC to 500 AD sociologically, instead of using economic models (like for example Michael Rostovtzeff). Finley attempt... |
How did Michelin, a tire company, become the creators of the definitive guide to fine dining? | As it should be when connecting tire companies with restaurant reviews, the Michelin Guide's popularity started to rise with the innovation of the "motor tourist," the vehicle-toting traveler. The Michelin Tyre company made its first *Guide Michelin France* in 1900. The first Michelin Guides were just driver's handbooks, with tips for vehicle maintenance and nearby petrol stations. These pocket Michelin Guides were given out freely for "l'instruction sur l'emploi des pneus Michelin pour voitures et automobile" (instructions for the use of Michelin tires on cars and automobiles). The ultimate goal was to reassure new drivers that, even if they left town in their new motor vehicles, they could still find petrol stations, mechanics, and even post offices. As Kory Olston points out in her study of *Michelin* maps, the guide's popularity was indebted to the rise of motor tourism in turn-of-the-century France. The *Michelin* maps were designed differently than standard travel guides; town plans were relatively sparse and two-tone, with major roadways taking the focus instead of urban landmarks. The guide catered to bourgeois drivers, offering a "more restrained number of tourist venues" with a "clarity of display to make it easier for their readers to traverse unfamiliar municipalities easily."
In 1926, these "tourist venues" finally included restaurants for motor tourists to frequent on their holidays in the countryside. The *Guide* of 1926 included a "restaurant star," or a single star to denote a particularly special dining experience. A decade later, the second and third stars showed up, along with a criteria: one star for "Une très bonne table dans sa catégorie" (a good site in its category), two for "Table excellente, mérite un détour" (an excellent site worth a detour), and three for "Une des meilleures tables, vaut le voyage" (one of the best sites, worthy of a trip). Within three decades, the *Guide* had gone from a mechanic's handbook to a special purchase for rich motor tourists looking to get the best out of their journeys.
The three-star feat is more difficult to explain. One possible reason for its "impossibility" may come from the fact that the third star didn't exist during the WWII era. During the War, the *Guide* was simply reprinted from its 1939 edition, and then post-war shortages forced Michelin to put a halt on three-star ratings until 1950. *Guide* critics are anonymous, so there's not much testimony on the elusive three-star review--but we can guess that the restaurants that *do* have three stars have supreme quality of ingredients, consistency between visits, and head chefs with dedicated personalities.
Sources:
Kory Olson, *Maps for a New Kind of Tourist: The First Guides Michelin France (1900–1913)*. Available [here](_URL_2_).
*Michelin Guide History*. Provence and Beyond. [Here](_URL_1_).
*The Michelin Guide: Over 100 Editions and a Century of History*. ViaMichelin. [Here](_URL_0_).
| [
"François Michelin (15 June 1926 – 29 April 2015) was a French heir and business executive. He served as the Chief Executive Officer of Michelin from 1955 to 1999. Under his leadership at the helm of a family business founded by his grandfather in 1889, Michelin became the number one manufacturer of tires globally,... |
Tuesday Trivia | Where Are they Now? Surprising Legacies of Historic Places and Things | On the main square of the old centre of the Sicilian city of Syracuse stands the [Duomo di Siracusa](_URL_0_). On the outside, it is a beautiful 18th century High Sicilian Baroque church.
On the inside, it is a [Greek temple](_URL_1_).
The columns that still support the roof of the church date to the 5th century BC. The building was originally a temple to Athena; it is mentioned in the writings of Plato (who lived in Syracuse for a while) and Cicero. | [
"Many visitors investigate their genealogy at historic immigration sites such as Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Other tourist destinations include the Empire State Building, for 41 years the world's tallest building after its construction in 1931, Radio City Music Hall, home of The Rockettes, a variety of ... |
Engineering/Environmental Science: How viable are solar panels when considering when material production concerns? | Depends on the type of panels. For crystalline Silicon (most common), energy payback times (how long it takes to produce the energy required to make it) are a few years. Silicon is the second most abundant element on the planet, so supply isn't really an issue. The problem for c-Si is centered around cost -- growing crystalline wafers is very expensive. There are a variety of other technologies which could replace or improve on c-Si. These are all in varies stages of development from on the market now to a decade or more from commercial manufacture. | [
"Its negative impact on the environment lies in the creation of the solar cells which are made primarily of silica (from sand) and the extraction of silicon from silica may require the use of fossil fuels, although newer manufacturing processes have eliminated CO production. Solar power carries an upfront cost to t... |
does it take more energy to run with 4 legs than it does 2? | The really simple answer is that humans run more efficiently because we let gravity do a lot more of the work; when we go forward we're basically putting one foot out and falling forward, then pulling ourselves forward and repeating the process with the other foot. When quadrapedal animals run, they need to propel themselves forward with their front and back legs; the advantages of this are that they can put more of their total muscle mass into running and you get more sources of speed, and run faster/quicker; pretty much any quadraped can out-sprint a human. But humans are the undisputed champions of distance-running on Earth, partly because their run is more energy efficient.
The other thing that helps us run, just as a sidenote, is the fact that our bodies are really good at not overheating. A cheetah for instance can only keep up their vaunted 60 mph run-speed for a very short distance without overheating and exhausting themselves. But our ability to have the airflow of our forward motion wick heat away by evaporating sweat off of us is one of nature's best heat regulation mechanisms, and allows for humans to run for hours on end without stopping, when properly trained. | [
"Compared to a conventional bicycle, a tandem has double the pedalling power, without necessarily doubling the speed, and with only slightly more frictional loss in the drivetrain. It has about the same wind resistance as a conventional bicycle. High-performance tandems may weigh less than twice as much as a single... |
What is the definition of Boiling Point? | Ever try and do a push up with someone sitting on your back? (Don't do that.) It's kinda like that.
External pressure modulates *where* the boiling point is, the mechanism is still the same, but it's where the thermodynamic scale tips in favor of phase change. A high pressure provides a lot of surface force onto the liquid (though molecular collisions) which force the liquid molecules to be of even higher thermal energy to escape into the vapor phase.
You can do this at home with some water and a pump and a sealed jar of water. As you lower the pressure, the water will begin to boil at room temperature. Here's a chart of this for water:
_URL_0_ | [
"Boiling-point elevation describes the phenomenon that the boiling point of a liquid (a solvent) will be higher when another compound is added, meaning that a solution has a higher boiling point than a pure solvent. This happens whenever a non-volatile solute, such as a salt, is added to a pure solvent, such as wat... |
If the brain is split, are some tasks harder if the input comes from just one eye/ear, or if the input moves from left to right eye/ear? | Just to clarify, the thing that makes split-brain patients interesting is that they can highlight cognitive difficulties (things to do with thoughts being broken), which we were not aware of prior to these experiments. The reason we were not aware of these difficulties is that they do not manifest in daily life. You will find very few, or maybe no, situations where information is coming into just one of your two sense organs.
Wikipedia has a really nice article on [split-brain patients](_URL_1_), and there are descriptions of case studies. YouTube also has a [video of one of these patients being tested](_URL_2_) by [Michael Gazzaniga](_URL_0_). It's only ten minutes and worth a watch. | [
"The brain contains areas that are specialized to deal with language, located in the perisylvian cortex of the left hemisphere. These areas are crucial for performing language tasks, but they are not the only areas that are used; disparate parts of both right and left brain hemispheres are active during language pr... |
why did it change from chinese new year to 'lunar new year' if multiple other cultures have lunar calendars with different dates for new years (ie islam, judaism, etc)? | It is technically called Lunar New Years because, as you know, the calender is based off the phases of the moon. It is commonly called Chinese New Years in the west because "white people" first heard of this from the Chinese immigrants who came during the California Gold Rush of 1849 to 1860s. Chinese New Years has been changed to be known as "Lunar New Years" now because Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese culture also still/used to celebrate this Lunar New Year.
| [
"The lunisolar Chinese calendar determines the date of Lunar New Year. The calendar is also used in countries that have been influenced by, or have relations with, China – such as Korea, Japan and Vietnam, though occasionally the date celebrated may differ by one day or even one moon cycle due to using a meridian b... |
My friend's farts always smell like death. Do people really have distinctive fart smells? | The answer to both your questions is yes. People do have colonic bacterial ‘fingerprints’, but they are not static and change over time depending on a multitude of factors. The bacterial biome can change the odor of a persons flatulence but that is also dependent on diet, illness, etc. For example the smells associated with a *C. diff* infection are quite unique.
The gut biome is usually initially colonized during birth as the baby passes through the vaginal canal. C-sections are of course a different mechanism. You inherit fart smells from your mother in most cases. | [
"The effect his scent has had now confirms to Grenouille how much he hates people, especially as he realizes that they worship him now and that even this degree of control does not give him satisfaction. He decides to return to Paris, intending to die there, and after a long journey ends up at the fish market where... |
why do conditioners make little to no foam unlike shampoos? | It is about their purpose. The foam in soaps and shampoos is part of what makes it able to clean the dirt and oils from the hair and scalp. Conditioner is there to add back in some of what is lost since not all those oils are required to be stripped away as part of that cleaning, so they are made differently, conditioner is not a soap. | [
"Conditioners are often used after shampooing to smooth down the cuticle layer of the hair, which can become roughened during the physical process of shampooing. There are three main types of conditioners: anti-oxidant conditioners, which are mainly used in salons after chemical services and prevent creeping oxidat... |
Why does both heating and cooling my house dry out the air? | With very few exceptions, air has a certain level of water vapor in it, which is what we refer to as humidity. Air can only hold so much water vapor in it until it is completely saturated, and this is what we mean when we say the (relative) humidity is 40%: currently, the air has 40% of the maximum amount of vapor it can hold. The amount of vapor air can hold is dependent on temperature and warmer air can hold more vapor while colder air can hold less.
A related quantity is called the dew point, which is the temperature where the relative humidity (RH) would become 100% (the air cannot hold any more water). So if the temperature is 70F and 50% relative humidity, the dew point is 60F, which means if we cooled the air to 60F without adding or removing any water vapor from it, the RH would be 100%, which makes sense since cold air can't hold as much vapor as warm air.
So when you take your 70F/50% air and run it through your air conditioner, it is cooled to well below the dew point. Since you can't have greater than 100% RH, that means that some of the water vapor has to come out of the air. When it gets pumped into the room, it gradually warms back up to 70F, but since it lost some water vapor in the air conditioner, your relative humidity will now be lower.
Similarly, when you heat air, you're raising the amount of water vapor it can hold without actually adding any vapor to it, so your RH will go down.
As an aside, natural gas heaters produce water vapor as a product of combustion, but I don't know if that vapor makes it into the heated air or is condensed/exhausted elsewhere.
EDIT: Corrected a dew point typo | [
"To conserve energy the cooling air is not refrigerated but is cooled by being passed through a labyrinth of pipes buried under the house at a depth where the temperature remains suitable all year round. The house is designed so that the maximum temperature should not exceed .\n",
"The house is designed to mainta... |
Why did the Danube valley fail to produce a great early civilisation, like the Nile, the Euphrates, the Indus, the Yangtze etc. | /u/cthulhushrugged is right on here. The question can't be answered, and if it could, it would be an anthropological question just as much as a geo-climactic one.
A note on the latter, though: the Danube watersheds were largely primeval forests in prehistory (though this is a gigantic region and can't really be so easily categorized in any period). The others you mention (Nile, Mesopotamia, China, Indus) were naturally more predisposed to farming for surplus, which is the key to "getting ahead" (as Diamond might put it).
And a second note: as attractive as they are, arguments based on geographical determinism are almost always flawed. They work well on paper, but not in practice. | [
"The Indus Valley Civilisation went into decline around the year 1700 BC for reasons that are not entirely known, though its downfall was probably precipitated by an earthquake or natural event that dried up the Ghaggar River. The Indo-Aryans are believed to have founded the Vedic civilisation that existed between ... |
Besides Market Garden, what are some other notable and interesting Allied failures of World War 2? | While this might be a bit of a stretch since in the end it is billed as an Allied military victory, I think the Battle of Anzio and its after effects failed to accomplish their primary objectives.
At the end of 1943/beginning of 1944 the Allies were bogged down assaulting the Gustav line, a series of German defensive works that spanned the Italian peninsula west to east, with its anchor in the town of Monte Casino. Churchill's idea was to land two infantry divisions to the northwest of the Gustav line near the city of Anzio. According to Rick Attkinson's book *The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943–1944* this attack appeared to demonstrate two benefits, it would either force the Germans to divert troops from the Gustav line, making an Allied breakthrough there more likely, or the troops at the Anzio beachhead could advance inland and trap the defenders between several Allied Divisions.
The first landings took place in January 22, 1944, and at first things looked great. The Allies managed to land 36,000 soldiers and 3,200 vehicles without any casualties at all and the American General in command at the beach, John Lucas, quickly consolidated the beach head. Unfortunately, after this, things just got worse and worse for the Allies. With only two infantry divisions and no supporting armor, it was important for Lucas to advance rapidly inland, as the Anzio beachhead was surrounded by high ground, perfect for the defensive mastermind Albert Kesselring, who commanded the German forces in Italy. According to Lloyd Clark’s book *Anzio: The Friction of War. Italy and the Battle for Rome 1944.* Lucas considered his force too small for his mission, and worried about Kesselring’s inevitable counter-attacks that would feature heavy artillery and tanks, he also declined the aid offered to him by Italian partisans, who claimed they could help his divisions navigate the local, hilly terrain.
Thus, Lucas spent too much time consolidating the Anzio beach head, and Kesselring could move minimal reinforcements to the hills and mountains surrounding it, and a long battle of attrition that resembled the stalemate at Monte Casino grinded on for about four months. In the end, the Allies took the town and Abbey of Monte Casino after assaulting it directly 5 times, and it was only after Allied armies began marching north that Major General Lucian Truscott, who had replaced Lucas coordinated a successful breakout of the beachhead. Clark’s book also points out that in the aftermath of Anzio yet another Allied failure shows it head; as Truscott was driving east to capture retreating German division from the Gustav line, his commander, Lieutenant General Mark Clark ordered Truscott’s corps northward to liberate Rome, in what is widely considered a purely symbolic victory for the Allied armies. This decision by Clark allowed thousands of German soldiers and their equipment to withdraw to the Gothic line, another set of defenses similar to the Gustav line that was towards the north of Italy.
Thus we see not only did Anzio not directly lead to the Allied breach of the Gustav line (you could even argue the troops who breached the Gustav line were the ones that allowed the Anzio breakout), but the Allied divisions that landed failed to trap retreating German forces. So despite the fact that the Allies eventually “won” the battle of Anzio, the poor planning and decisions made would help the Germans keep the fight up in Italy until almost the last days of the war in Europe.
Sources:
The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943–1944; Rick Attkinson
Anzio: The Friction of War. Italy and the Battle for Rome 1944; Lloyd Clark
| [
"Operation Market Garden was a failed World War II military operation fought in the Netherlands from 17 to 25 September 1944. It was the brainchild of Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, planned primarily by Generals Brereton and Williams of the USAAF. The airborne part of the operation was undertaken by the ... |
if lava is melted rock, why is it so fertile when it cools down? | It's not. Take a look at the [western coast of the island of Hawaii](_URL_0_). The land on the western coast is considerably more recent than the land on the eastern coast. The weather and mountain range plays a large role as well but the fresh land was so rocky and porous that it could not hold water sufficiently to make fertile land. | [
"Because lava usually cools and crystallizes rapidly, it is usually fine-grained. If the cooling has been so rapid as to prevent the formation of even small crystals after extrusion, the resulting rock may be mostly glass (such as the rock obsidian). If the cooling of the lava happened more slowly, the rock would b... |
What is wrong with the "Black Legend"? | Here's three things:
1. Most of the perpetrators of the Black Legend weren't simply saying "the Spanish are very oppressive to indigenous peoples." The Pope called them "the scum of the Earth." Immanuel Kant, in *Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime*, calls the Spaniard cruel, centuries behind in science, lazy, ignorant of reform, and un-European (derogatively). These are not objective utterances. Pope Paul IV, for instance, had what you might call a personal vendetta against the Spanish, having hated growing up there and being a political opponent of its royalty. Black Legend wasn't always a criticism of deeds, but the defaming of a people.
2. In modern popular accounts, criticism of the Spanish is typically tied with a hidden "noble savage" motif. The narrative is as follows: the Inca are living their happy peaceful life in the Andes. They've got a lot of cool things: roads with regular storehouses/rest stops, a diverse religious culture, nifty stoneworking techniques, etc. Then the white man comes with his horses and guns and tramples over them, forcing them to near slavery in tin and silver mines. Poor Inca! That was rightfully their land, and they never did anything to deserve that!
What's wrong with this? Any time you see this story, the Inca are the good guys and the Spanish are bad. As targustargus tried to point out, this completely lacks nuance and knowledge of Andean prehistory. For instance, the Inca were only native to the Cuzco area. They had conquered the rest of the Andes within the past hundred years, and they were still conquering places in the far north when the Spanish first arrived. Like the Spanish, they were a small ethnic group with big ambitions for conquest who laid their own culture and infrastructures on top of subjugated groups and who appropriated resources, culture, and religion for their own goals.
Additionally, the mit'a system you bring up was in fact an effective method of creating an infrastructure. In the Inca empire's brief existence though, this was often an infrastructure for conquest, with roads to facilitate troop movement and storehouses to extend campaigns. If a people joined the empire through treaty, then such a taxation might be reasonable. But if you're a former citizen of the enormous city of Chan Chan, defeated by Topa Inca Yupanqui's army ~1470, being forced to help replicate your own destruction is unspeakably humiliating. As an archaeologist of pre-Inca cultures, I am regularly frustrated by how much cultural knowledge has been lost due to the Inca conquest.
3. In addition, popular accounts focus on the Spanish actions and downplay native agency. It's always "The Spanish conquered the Inca" and it's never "The Inca attempted political intrigue and military outmanuevering against the Spanish, but failed." The conquest changed the Spanish as it did the Andeans.
**TL;DR Popular narratives downplay any benefits of the Spanish conquest and romanticize the prior Inca conquerors.**
Some good sources for complex looks at the conquest period:
Gose, P. (2008). Invaders as ancestors: on the intercultural making and unmaking of Spanish colonialism in the Andes. Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press.
Mumford, J. R. (2012). Vertical empire [electronic resource]: the general resettlement of Indians in the colonial Andes. Durham [N.C.]: Duke University Press.
Ramos, G. (2010). Death and conversion in the Andes: Lima and Cuzco, 1532-1670. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press.
Wernke, S. A. (2013). Negotiated settlements : Andean communities and landscapes under Inka and Spanish colonialism. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
| [
"A black legend is a historiographical phenomenon in which a sustained trend in historical writing of biased reporting and introduction of fabricated, exaggerated and/or decontextualized facts is directed against particular persons, nations or institutions with the intention of creating a distorted and uniquely inh... |
asteroid belts and planetary rings | Orbiting happens when you continuously fall towards the planet but keep missing. Missing the planet happens because of sideways motion, you drop towards the planet a bit, but your sideways motion has taken you so far the planet is still just as far away as it was before.
If you orbit too fast, you will just fling out, if you orbit too slow, you won't be able to miss the planet, your free fall ends in a crash.
Now, the curious thing is, gas cloud can have momentum, that is, spinning energy. And this energy will be retained unless external force acts on the system. And in space, there aren't that many external forces. So if gas cloud spun one way, so does the star that forms from it, and so do the planets that eventually orbit it. | [
"The asteroid belt is located between Mars and Jupiter. It is made of thousands of rocky planetesimals from to a few meters across. These are thought to be debris of the formation of the Solar System that could not form a planet due to Jupiter's gravity. When asteroids collide they produce small fragments that occa... |
why can luxury restaurants charge $60 for a single ravioli on a white plate? | Well, lets start with the food itself. The food components used in a luxury restaurant like a Michelin-starred one are generally of very high quality and fresh. Where "normal" restaurants may substitute with e.g. pre-made sauces and pasta, a luxury restaurant of certain reputation will always prepare everything fresh and by themselves. Deep fried products and other convenience foods are (almost) never used. So, besides the high purchasing prices of the components used in "luxury" food, you have to add the cost of time needed for its preparation. Producing a stack of self-made ravioli, for example, takes a lot of time.
And all this time that is needed forces a luxury restaurant to have enough kitchen staff/cooks to deal with the immense workload they have to deal with if the restaurant is full. Cooks in luxury restaurants are usually very well-educated and have a lot of experience, so they are paid very well. This is especially true for the chef (de cuisine), since he is the one that designs the product and is responsible for its success. A huge amount of creativity, sense of taste and understanding of different kinds of tastes and cuisines is necessary, so you can imagine that they'll earn a lot.
But it doesn't end at the kitchen staff. If you go to a luxury restaurant, you expect excellent service which is provided by well educated and experienced waiters, lead by an even more experienced Maitre d'. Additional services usually include a Sommelier who counsels you on your choice of wine for your dish. All these people want to get paid, too.
Then you have the equipment. Tables, chairs, chinaware, silverware, tablecloths, napkins... you name it. Where "normal" restaurants might not concern themselves too much with the condition of your silverware, a luxury restaurant cannot afford anything less than perfection, so theiy'll replace anything that looks remotely worn out quickly. Costs that have to be covered, too.
And on top of that you have an owner, who wants to drive a Porsche, too. Usually a renown chef with years of experience who likes to earn six figures a year at least. Add all that up and you easily get a $100 three course meal. | [
"Kaiseki is often very expensive – kaiseki dinners at top traditional restaurants generally cost from 5,000 yen to upwards of 40,000 per person, without drinks. Cheaper options are available, notably lunch (from around 4,000 to 8,000 yen (US $37 to $74), and in some circumstances bento (around 2,000 to 4,000 yen (U... |
if the nsa can easily mine most/all data and circumvent encryption methods, why can't they easily locate groups like anonymous? | They aren't allowed to. NSA's main goal is to investigate/surveillance foreign intelligence(foreign military threats to the US and since 9/11, terrorist plots and threats , Not *foreign intelligence services* ) And they can only investigate US citizens if they can find a link between that citizen and a foreign terrorist and with a warrant acquired by the FISC court(Foreign intelligence services court, a 11 member panel appointed by the chief justice of the supreme court himself)
Plus they are legally bound to as of current, three laws of which that deals with terrorism. The Patriot act, Protect america act of 2007 and FISA amendments of 2008.
TLDR: They are legally and constitutionally barred from surveillance of anything other then foreign threats(terrorists/plots/attacks/ enemy military actions) | [
"Due to new technologies, it was necessary to update cryptographic algorithms. This need has raised the level of complexity of techniques used for encrypting the data of individuals to guarantee network security. Because of the difficulty of deciphering data, government agencies have begun to search for other ways ... |
Why did the Japanese stop wearing kimonos? | Well some people actually do still wear kimonos as a part of their everyday.
Before we start, we should define what kimono are. In Japanese, 着物 *kimono* literally means 'thing you wear'. In other words, for Japanese people, kimono literally just meant 'clothes'. Anything you wore was a kimono. This only changed with the introduction of Western clothes which were called 洋服 *youfuku*, literally meaning 'Western garments'. Now a days, when someone says kimono in America, it conjures up images of [elaborate traditional dress](_URL_8_) and [images of elegant women or high quality dress](_URL_4_).
[But everyday clothes were also called kimono](_URL_0_). And kimono are not exclusively worn by women. The [traditional clothes of Japanese men can also be called kimono](_URL_10_). Pop media has contributed to the image of 'exotic' Asian women or geisha and the kimono has taken almost fetish like levels of sexual association by some people (in a similar way the china dress is).
In my post, when I talk about kimono, it is generally inclusive of all traditional Japanese clothes, as worn by men, women and children, as well as the different clothes worn by elites in the capital as well as the farmers in the fields. Now let's begin.
The first shift from kimono to western dress began with the Meiji Period during the mid 19th century, after the opening of the ports by Perry. It was a part of the large importation of various technologies, knowledge & information, methods, foods, and various other things from the West.
A big proponent of adopting Western clothing was **military dress**.
The Japanese government were moving away from the feudal samurai - lord system of military power in favor of establishing a central, government funded and nationally associated professional military in the style of [Prussia or the British Empire](_URL_1_).
The government forbid military men from wearing kimono to any official functions and/or while on active duty, forcibly committing a massive organization in Japan to the Western dress. Government officials were also bound by similar rules put forth for the bureaucrats.
You can see here an illustration of what the average officers and line infantry would have looked like in the newly formed [Japanese Imperial forces](_URL_7_).
This was a time of many firsts for the Japanese military, including the first time they had a really unified command and a standardized uniform, uniting the armed forces of Japan in mind and body.
The other big driving force of adopting Western clothing were **Japanese elites**.
To see how rapid the changes made during the Meiji Restoration were, look no further than the Emperor himself. This is what [Emperor Meiji looked like in the early days of 1872](_URL_5_).
Later that year, he would cut off his top knot, a sign of hundreds of years of tradition, and adopt Western dress to symbolize his support for progress, pragmatic adoption of Western things, and a new Japan. [This is what the Emperor looked like just one year.](_URL_6_)
The Meiji Restoration was a top-down movement to rapidly industrialize Japan and to make the transition smoother, the ruling elites of Japan believed that they needed to be able to absorb Western culture, language, science, and ways if they were to also be able to rapidly learn Western medicine, military strategies, economic systems, and earn a strong position in global politics.
This led the elites of Japan to lead the way and pioneer adoption of all things Western. Western food, Western entertainment (to put the Meiji Restoration in context, Western composers like Wagner, Liszt, Brahms, Saint-Saëns, and Dvořák were all alive and making music during this time. Mozart and Beethoven had only been dead for maybe 20 years), Western literature, and of course, [Western dress](_URL_9_).
Most notably, *men adopted suits* rather quickly and it became the norm to wear a suit to work for the upper and middle class. Lower class citizens generally kept wearing their kimono, especially farmers. The Meiji Restoration mostly focused on urban populations, while rural areas generally just kept going about daily life as they always did as the gap between urban and rural areas grew wider and wider.
Another notable thing is that **women generally did NOT adopt Western dress**. Many new ideas and ways of thinking were being born in Japan but gender equality was not one of them. Female participation in the labor market did not change a great deal during the Meiji Period and most women remained the masters of the home and hearth. This meant that they still spent the majority of their day at home, child rearing and maintaining the household.
Women quickly found that western dress was incredibly impractical for the inside of the average Japanese home. So the vast majority continued to wear kimono at home. As a matter of fact, most men also continued to wear the kimono at home as well. They would wake up, change into their suits, go to work, then come home and change into more comfortable kimono as home wear.
For elites, some women would also wear Western style dresses outside but many continued to wear kimono even outside. One of the big reasons was that for the first time, sumptuary laws from the Edo period that forbid the common people from wearing kimonos with silk or ostentatious colors, designs, etc. were repealed. The average Japanese women could now wear glamorous kimono that were previously only permitted on those of incredibly high status or even restricted to only the Imperial court.
The design of the kimono changed quite a bit. To the outside world looking in, one may not be able to tell the difference but for the average Japanese woman, the changes were huge. They were suddenly allowed to buy (and able to afford!) silk, they could pick and choose designs that previously would have literally been forbidden to someone of low status. It sparked a massive uptick in the domestic textile industry and helped propel a major part of Japanese light industry development during the time period.
The design of the kimono also changed. [For example, the *obi*](_URL_2_), the sash that is tied around the waist that holds the kimono together while also being decorative. Because of the repealing of sumptuary laws and a general change in the way society thought about clothes in public spaces, the way one could wear a kimono was relaxed quite a bit during the Meiji Period. For example, in this picture, the obi is tilted and simply tucked as opposed to being tied in a more complex and 'proper' way that would have been necessary for clothing etiquette during the Edo Period.
[The obi was also featured lower and 'boxier' than in previous designs](_URL_3_), as a result of the influence of Western dresses. [With lower, boxier obi](_URL_12_), the sillouhette of a woman's kimono now looked similar to that of a Western dress worn over a corset that accentuated the bust and hips into an S curve.
After the Meiji Period, Japan enters the Taisho Period, between World War I and World War II. Japan experiences even more freedom and liberation of clothing culture and more people wear Western clothing during everyday moments, including casual Western clothing. Western clothing is no longer something simply worn at work. This is also a period of a rise in **Western architecture**(_URL_11_) that further facilitated the wearing of Western dress (particularly in the home).
The kimono becomes increasingly out of fashion when worn outside of the home and adoption of Western clothes steadily increases. Western clothes are associated with progress, civilization and modernity while kimono are symbols of the past. That being said, there were reactionaries that disapproved of the rapid changes of Japanese society refuse to adopt Western ways and Western clothing.
By the time World War II ends and Japan begins to rebuild, Western clothes are a dominant part of Japanese clothing culture. In most work places, especially corporate office jobs, the business suit is standard and often required. Many uniforms are Western style. And casual Western clothing like shirts, pants, etc. are everywhere. By the 1950s and 1960s, much of Japan is wearing Western clothes on a near constant basis, with traditional dress being taken out during the summer for festivals, religious ceremonies, holidays, etc.
_URL_11_ To say that people have 'stopped wearing' kimono is a little misleading. The vast majority of Japanese people wear kimonos several times a year, especially during summer. It's not uncommon to see Japanese people wearing kimono on the streets, even in major metropolitan cities.
During the summer time, which is unbearably humid and hot in Japan, many people wear simple kimono because they are cooler and light, helping people deal with the heat.
And it's almost a staple to wear kimono to festivals throughout the year in Japan, whether they be children, teenagers, or adults.
**If anything Japanese people wear their traditional dress a great deal more than most other cultures.** | [
"The formal kimono was replaced by the more convenient Western clothes and \"yukata\" as everyday wear. After an edict by Emperor Meiji, police, railroad men and teachers moved to Western clothes. The Japanese began shedding kimonos in favor of Western dress in the 1870s. The Western clothes became the army and sch... |
Are different sections of our bodies different temperatures? Everyone talks about internal body temp, but how much variance do we normally see in the temperature in extremities and such? | In humans the average internal temperature is 37.0 °C. However, we don't always has exactly the same temperature at every moment of the day. Temperatures cycle up and down, controlled by our circadian rhythm. The lowest temperature occurs about two hours before we normally wake up (Altough the circadian rhytm can be altered). Temperatures also change according to activities and external factors.
It really depends, if it is cold outside, your limbs will be much cooler than the rest of your body. | [
"Normal human body temperature varies slightly from person to person and by the time of day. Consequently, each type of measurement has a range of normal temperatures. The range for normal human body temperatures, taken orally, is (). This means that any oral temperature between is likely to be normal.\n",
"Indiv... |
How (If at all) do rainstorms interfere with cellular phone reception? | Rainfall certainly does; as well as interference caused by the leading edge of a storm front. The general phenomenon is called [rain fade](_URL_0_).
Radio and TV are just colors of light that we can't perceive with the human eye. They can be affected by physical objects (like raindrops). | [
"Cell Broadcast is not affected by traffic load; therefore, it is usable during a disaster when load spikes of data (social media and mobile app), regular SMS and voice calls usage (mass call events) tend to significantly slowdown mobile networks, as multiple events have shown. \n",
"The rainstorm warning signals... |
How/why did the tribes who took over areas of the old Roman empire go from speaking Germanic languages to Romance ones? And why not in England? | One must remember that when Rome fell, the people in the provinces did not simply disappear. They, for the most part, stayed right where they were. The people of Gaul spoke a vulgar form of Latin, but it had become region specific, displacing much of the Celtic languages that were there before.
A linguist might be better suited to answer this question.
However, once Rome fell, the provinces were open for invasion. Here is where your tribes come in. Let's take, for example, the Franks. The Franks raided into Gaul even before Rome fell. Some of them stayed. Various people who were called Franks were some times enemies and some times allies of the Roman. When Rome fell there were Franks in the Roman army. Thus it can be assumed they spoke vulgar Latin, or something very similar.
Slowly the Franks gained control of much of Gaul and there developed Old French, which was based completely in Latin, thus a Romance language.
England did not have as long a period of assimilation with Rome. Rome was not as entrenched and so Latin did not become as wide spread. The same goes with Germany. If the average person did not speak it, it did not last.
Of course Latin remains an important language in England, as in the rest of Europe, partially because of its ties with the Catholic Church.
------------------------------------------
[_URL_1_](_URL_1_)
[Gregory of Tours History of the Franks](_URL_0_) | [
"The \"cisrhenane Germani\" eventually ceased to be restricted to a band of occupation near the border, and all Roman provinces west of the Rhine were eventually conquered by Germanic tribes, speaking Germanic languages: the Franks (Germania inferior, Francia), the Alemanni (Germania superior, Alemannia), the Burgu... |
how can someone survive a 3500ft fall and expect to make a full recovery? | The article says the parachute malfuctioned, not that it didn't open at all. The full story is that the parachute partially opened and that she hit the ground at 50 mph instead of terminal velocity. Also, she landed in a way in which her legs absorbed the power of the fall. | [
"In October 2018, at least two fairing recovery tests were performed, involving \"Mr. Steven\" and a helicopter, which would drop a fairing half from the height of about 3300 meters. The actual outcome of the tests is unclear.\n",
"In 1942, DeHaven started the Crash Injury Research project at Cornell, and publish... |
How much would the Roman Colosseum cost if it were to be built today? | Woah something I can answer. I work at an architecture firm, so I can give some insight but I've never worked on a stadium. I mostly work on large higher ed. and hospital projects.
The Colosseum is a load bearing masonry structure. Large scale projects stopped being built this way around 1900. The last great examples in my city, Chicago, are the [Monadnock Building](_URL_1_) and the [Auditorium Theater](_URL_4_) (bonus trivia, this is where Frank Llyod Wright started practicing architecture under Louis Sullivan).
The reason almost no one builds this way anymore is that it requires a lot of labor and as a very rough rule of thumb labor makes up about 2/3's of the cost of a building project (applies in US anyways, in China it's 1/3 labor 2/3 material). I mention this because the final number I come to will be lower than it would be to build this out of brick and stone. I'm not sure what the premium would be, 50% maybe?
Here's the size from [Wikipedia](_URL_2_):
> It is elliptical in plan and is 189 meters (615 ft / 640 Roman feet) long, and 156 meters (510 ft / 528 Roman feet) wide, with a base area of 6 acres (24,000 m2). The height of the outer wall is 48 meters (157 ft / 165 Roman feet). The perimeter originally measured 545 meters (1,788 ft / 1,835 Roman feet). The central arena is an oval 87 m (287 ft) long and 55 m (180 ft) wide, surrounded by a wall 5 m (15 ft) high, above which rose tiers of seating.
That gives you an area of about 246,340 SF or 22,900 m^2 . This completely ignores the fact that the actual area is not two dimensional (multi-story). I can't find a resource to provide this info which is definitely a limitation of this answer.
I'm taking the area:cost ratio for recently constructed stadiums from this article in [The Atlantic](_URL_3_). I made a [quick spreadsheet](_URL_0_) to come up with a cost of $473/SF or about $5,100/m^2.
246,340 SF x $473 = ~$166,500,000
Again, this ignores the fact that the area is much larger than this. The Colosseum held 50,000 people which is about the size of a modern baseball park in the US. The ranges in the spreadsheet go from about 1 million to 1.3 million SF (about 93,000 - 120,000 m^2). This would give us:
Low
1,000,000 SF x $473 = ~$473,000,000
High
1,300,000 SF x $473 = ~$615,000,000
So $500-600 million plus a huge premium for the fact that it's load bearing masonry. You're probably looking at a **$750 million to $1 billion building** (570-750 million euros) if you were to build this today.
**Edit:** formatting and forgot to divide by four for the equation of an ellipse which is (A x B x 3.14)/4 with A and B being half the long and short axis.
At the risk of being incredibly facile I will mention that, to a large extent, the construction process and methods used to build the Colosseum would be very familiar to us today. Obviously the tools have changed but the guy laying the stones? Basically the same. On a much smaller scale this is how many buildings are still built today in the developing world.
| [
"In Malta, a replica of about one-third of Rome's Colosseum was built, to a height of 52 feet (15.8 meters), mostly from plaster and plywood (the other two-thirds and remaining height were added digitally). The replica took several months to build and cost an estimated $1 million. The reverse side of the complex su... |
how much of the sky do we see at any given moment in time? (lying on a beach on at night, what percentage of the sky am i currently seeing with a naked eye)? | Human vision is 210 degrees wide and 150 degrees high. But if you lay on the ground you are on a flat plane so you can only see 180 degrees wide. 150 degrees is 150/360=0.41 of a circle. So you can see maximum of 41% of the sky without moving your eyes.
A more complex question if that mound of that field of view you can process and notice. We usually move our eyes and look directly at what we are interested in.
The the percentage of what is out there we can see with a naked eye is small.
There is a estiamtion of 43000 object that is possible to see with a naked eye but most o them are hard to see.
There is a estimation of 200-400 billion stars in out galaxy but the majority cant be observed by any human telescope.
There is a estimation of 100 billion galaxies observable universe. We can see a 9 with a naked eye byt the look like a fuzzy small object or like a star.
So the percentage of what is out there we can see is close to 0% | [
"A human can see objects in starlight or in bright sunlight, even though on a moonless night objects receive 1/1,000,000,000 of the illumination they would on a bright sunny day; a dynamic range of 90 dB.\n",
"The very large field of view of the telescopes and the short exposure times enable approximately 6000 sq... |
the sign on the utility pole says "we buy houses, cash" - who are these guys and why do they advertise this way? | Rich investors with lots of cash buy houses for cheap, from desperate sellers who need the money fast. Then they can take their time, fix them up a bit, and sell them at full price when ready. | [
"Typically the goods in a garage sale are unwanted items from the household with its owners conducting the sale. The conditions of the goods vary, but they are usually usable. Some of these items are offered for sale because the owner does not want or need the item to minimize their possessions or to raise funds. P... |
How stable is the planetary orbital structure of our system? | Highly stable. Looking at the surface geology and chemical composition of the planets, there's no evidence that they've moved significantly in the past few billion years. All the movement happened at the very beginning of the solar system.
Without gravity, planets would move in straight lines. Gravity pulls them toward the sun, bending their path into nearly-circular orbits, but does not make them spiral in closer and closer. Sun + gravity + one planet is a stable system. For a planet to move closer to the sun, it must trade energy and angular momentum with other nearby objects, through collisions or close fly-bys.
The various planetary migration hypotheses, including your article, are talking about the very earliest history of the solar system, when the planets were surrounded by a cloud of gas and tiny bits of rock called planetisimals. In that time, there was plenty of mass for Jupiter to trade energy with: its gravity pulled on planetisimals, throwing them farther from the Sun: by action vs reaction, this pushed Jupiter closer in.
But eventually, almost all the planetisimals got swept up to build the planets, or ejected out of the solar system. Now there's nothing left for planets to push against, so they're locked in place. Now it's true they could push against *each other*, but they're far enough apart that their pull on each other is too weak to do much... and Jupiter, being the biggest, is especially hard to move. | [
"Orbital resonance from major orbiting bodies creates regions around the Sun that are free of long-term stable orbits. Results from simulations of planetary formation support the idea that a randomly chosen stable planetary system will likely satisfy a Titius–Bode law.\n",
"Long-term numerical integration shows t... |
multiple life sentences. | The murderer was charged with and convicted of two crimes each carrying a life imprisonment sentence. The sentencing judge ruled that the sentences not be served concurrently.
The two charges now exist independently of one another, and can be appealed and removed independently. This means that if the murderer can later prove he didn't do one of the crimes in an appeal, he's still got another life sentence. | [
"The laws in the United States divide life sentences between \"determinate life sentences\" and \"indeterminate life sentences.\" For example, sentences of \"15 years to life,\" \"25 years to life,\" or \"life with mercy\" may be given, which is called an \"indeterminate life sentence.\" A sentence of \"life withou... |
Why was the center of the Arabian Peninsula ignored by so many conquerors? | The other responses in this thread have it basically correct.
The interior of the Arabian peninsula is not a hospitable place. It is [very dry](_URL_0_), and isn't traversed by any permanent rivers. This affects both the *why* would people conquer it and the *how* would people conquer it.
The climate meant that the few people who did live in the interior of the peninsula were small groups of nomadic herders. These groups neither posed any significant threat to larger polities, nor had much in the way of cities and wealth worth taking.
Even if people did want to add the peninsula to their domains, there really wasn't any feasible way to march or garrison any significant number of troops across/within the desert. The land isn't fertile enough for an army to forage or for a garrison town to plant gardens. There aren't rivers to drink out of or ship food to garrisons in the interior.
Conversely, the coasts of the Arabian peninsula have long supported agriculture, fishing, and mining economies. Coastal population centres were well integrated into East African and south Asian maritime trade networks, and the rise of Islam and its tradition of the Hajj provided major financial, political and religious incentives for empires to control Mecca and Medina.
*Edit:* I see the other comments are now dropping like flies. If there's part of this answer that doesn't meet subreddit standards or needs elaborating, please mods, let me know and I'll do my best. But please keep in mind that this question is a counterfactual one, and it's difficult to provide sources, documentation, and explanation of things that *didn't* happen. | [
"The Iberian Peninsula was the westernmost tip of the Umayyad Caliphate of Damascus and was under the rule of the governor of Ifriqiya. In 720, the caliph even considered abandoning the territory. The conquest was followed by a period of several hundred years during which most of the Iberian peninsula was known as ... |
why doesn't everyone keep their money in tax haven accounts? | Generally speaking you aren't taxed on your savings, you are taxed on your income. The only advantage to moving it overseas is to prevent a garnishing of your assets. For the most part tax haven accounts are more for companies and corporations. The idea being if it is cheaper to do business in another country and pay import/etc taxes many companies will do it. Not everyone can because it makes things more complicated from an accounting/structure standpoint which has costs and corporate structure associated. | [
"All of the funds in the account are exempt from income tax and capital gains tax, including at maturity. However, the 10% dividend tax payable on franked income (UK share dividends) cannot be reclaimed. The UK government has stated that at age 18 it will be possible to transfer the entire CTF into an ISA to keep t... |
Why do lipophilic molecules diffuse THROUGH membranes? | If a molecule is too lypophilic it will get stuck in the membrane and won't come out. Certain membrane dyes used in molecular biology work this way and are used to label the membrane for imaging. A good drug has a balance of hydrophobic and hydrophilic groups.
In general, a drugs preference for where to go can be measured by determining its partition coefficient. In pharmacology the partition is usually measured between octanol and water. | [
"Polar molecules and large ions dissolved in water cannot diffuse freely across the plasma membrane due to the hydrophobic nature of the fatty acid tails of the phospholipids that make up the lipid bilayer. Only small, non-polar molecules, such as oxygen and carbon dioxide, can diffuse easily across the membrane. H... |
Why does burnt food like milk stick to the bottom of the pot and why is it almost impossible to remove? | The milk contains proteins and sugar. The excessive heat applied to the pan caused the proteins to coagulate and bind to the source of the heat. The first amount of protein has thermal insulating properties that allow the pan to get even hotter, since less of the heat gets transferred to the water content of the milk. The higher heat of the pan causes the proteins and sugars to brown then burn through partial pyrolysis and caramelisation (Maillard reaction). You can remove the protein without scraping several ways. You can remove the liquid and heat the pan even more, generating huge amounts of smoke and stink until the pyrolysis is complete and the proteins turn to ash. Ash is easy to wash and rince away. Or you can use solvents and heat to dissolve the proteins and sugars. Water is a good solvent. Leaving the pan soaking overnight in water will hydrate most of food particles enough to clean the pan with light scrubbing. You can also alternate soaking, heating, and light scrubbing for several repeated cycles. You can also use an acid like vinegar or home strength hydrogen peroxide to soak for a while. The acid will react and dissolve the protein very well. That's why hydrogen peroxide is used in a lot of soft contact lens cleaners - to dissolve proteins that have built up. Acids are a bit less safe to use around kids, pets, and ignorant adults.
Don't heat milk over excessive heat. Heat slowly and continue to stir constantly, not leaving it unattended for a second. When you're heating milk, what else is so goddamned important that you have to leave it? Pretty much nothing. If someone needs emergency assistance while you're heating milk, turn off the heat source, move the pan off the heat to a safe place to cool, then go administer the aid and call 911. Better yet, microwave the milk in a microwave safe container for one minute. At least it has a timer to shut itself off. | [
"The food inside the pot loses little to no moisture because it is surrounded by steam, creating a tender, flavorful dish. Water absorbed within the walls of the pot prevents burning so long as the pot is not allowed to dry completely. Because no oil needs to be added with this cooking technique, food cooked in cla... |
Was Mao's "Let One Hundred Flowers Bloom" campaign a genuine attempt to engage the intellectual community, or a means to flush out dissidents? | I'm cautious to comment, because my main impression of this period of Chinese history was formed through reading Jung Chang's autobiographical/biographical *Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China*, and her later work with Jon Halliday, *Mao: The Unknown Story* (both are available from Amazon). You need to understand that Chang did not have a pleasant experience during the Cultural Revolution, and developed a strong antipathy towards Mao as a result of this. That said, her work in *Wild Swans* is sourced directly from interviews with her mother - it is primary material.
With that in mind, Chang relays the experience of her mother, then a ranking official in the Communist Party's Chengdu Education administration when she was told of the Hundred Flowers campaign:
> When my mother’s level was told about Mao’s speech soliciting criticism of officers, they were not informed about some other remarks he had made around the same time, about enticing snakes out of their lairs - to uncover anyone who dared to oppose him or his regime.
After about a month of the campaign, in June, "Mao’s speech about ‘enticing snakes out of their lairs’ was relayed down orally to [Chang's] mother’s level."
Both of those extracts are from *Wild Swans*. In *The Unknown Story* Chang and Halliday are direct:
> On 27 February 1957, Mao delivered a four-hour speech to the rubber-stamp Supreme Council announcing that he was inviting criticisms of the Communist Party. The Party, he said, needed to be accountable and ‘under supervision’. He sounded reasonable, criticising Stalin for his ‘excessive’ purges, and giving the impression there were going to be no more of these in China. In this context, he cited an adage, ‘Let a hundred flowers bloom’.
> Few guessed that Mao was setting a trap, and that he was inviting people to speak out so that he could then use what they said as an excuse to victimise them. Mao’s targets were intellectuals and the educated, the people most likely to speak up.
Chang and Halliday then tell us that
> On 12 June, Mao issued a circular to the Party, to be read to all members ‘except unreliable ones’, in which he made it explicit that he had set a trap. He did not want his Party to think he was a liberal – in case they themselves should turn liberal. In this circular, Mao set a quota for victims: between 1 and 10 per cent of ‘intellectuals’ (which meant the better-educated), who numbered some 5 million at the time. As a result, at least 550,000-plus people were labelled as ‘Rightists’. While many had spoken out, some had not said anything against the regime, and were pulled in just to fill Mao’s quota.
In *Wild Swans*, Chang notes that her mother faced enormous pressure to make the quota of around 5% of intellectual dissenters.
Based on this, especially the timing of Mao's speeches and the selective way in which the circular was distributed, it's fairly apparent that Mao's only goal with the Hundred Flowers campaign was to tease out potential dissidents and then neutralise them. But if I was you, I'd check additional sources besides Chang/Chang and Halliday.
Relating to your second question, Mao made a lot of noise about Marxist/Marxist-Leninist thought - I have a copy of the *Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung* (the famous "Little Red Book") somewhere (for a political history course at University), and there were quite a few lines about how Marxism or Marxism-Leninism was the foundation of all their efforts and ideals, as well as numerous references anyone familiar with communism would recognise; this book was studied assiduously in China during his life. Chang notes in Wild Swans that her brother was praised by his commanding officer in the People's Liberation Army for having "studied Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought conscientiously."
Chang and Halliday also contend that his disdain for intellectuals was selective:
> To Mao, writers, artists and historians were superfluous. Scientists and technicians, however, were largely exempted from persecution – ‘especially those who have major achievements’, a September 1957 order decreed; these ‘must be absolutely protected’. Scientists who had returned from Europe and America, in particular, were to be ‘neither labelled nor denounced’. Nuclear physicists and rocket scientists were treated extra well. (Throughout Mao’s reign, top scientists were given privileges superior even to those enjoyed by very senior officials.)
Based on this, it seems that Mao reconciled his distaste for intellectuals with Marxism by turning the latter into a doctrine - "Mao Tse-Tung Thought" - a sort of sanitised, approved, orthodox intellectualism, where critical thought is reserved for criticism and condemnation of "class enemies". There's no conflict there at all - that kind of constrained thinking is the opposite of intellectualism.
Hope that provides you with some clarification; like I said, I'm drawing on two sources, and although one is direct primary material, they are both subject to a certain bias. With luck, someone here with a wider background will be able to provide better insight. | [
"The first part of the phrase is often remembered as \"let a hundred flowers bloom\". It is used to refer to an orchestrated campaign to flush out dissidents by encouraging them to show themselves as critical of the regime, and then subsequently imprison them. This view is supported by authors Clive James and Jung ... |
What is this weapon? Are there any historical records of it's usage?Any famous historical or mythological users? | It looks like [a guandao](_URL_0_). According a legend it was invented Guan Yu (~200 AD), but there is no evidence it existed before the 11th century. | [
"The weapon, along with and , is listed as one of \"three great spears\" in the \"Kyōhō Meibutsucho\", a listing of famous Koto blades made before the Nanbokucho period and compiled by the Hon'ami family during the Kyōhō era (1716–1735).\n",
"The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a 16th-century combination weapon ... |
why do flatscreen/lcd monitors display random colours and bizzare shapes or patterns upon being cracked? | Like others have mentioned, it can be the glass breaking and causing rainbows (from diffraction). You asked specially about Liquid Crystal Displays, the liquid can flow around when the display is (more accurately, the pixels are) broken.
“Flatscreen” is a physical shape and not a method of building a display - these can have many methods. LCD is one type, the others will have different reasons for weird behaviors when they break. | [
"Flat panel displays are thin panels of glass or plastic used for electronically displaying text, images, or video. LCD (liquid-crystal displays) and OLED (organic light emitting diode) displays are largely the same, except that an LCD uses a liquid crystal that reacts to an electric current blocking light or allow... |
the front page of reddit | Your front page is made up of the top topics from the subreddits to which you subscribe. Each person starts with default subreddits to which they subscribe, but subscriptions can be changed simply by hitting subscribe or unsubscribe on the right side of a subreddit topic's screen.
When someone refers to the front page in a general sense, they mean the front page of r/all, the "subreddit" that includes all subreddits. The link to r/all is at the top left of the screen, next to to "my reddits". This is the front page for all reddits and is considered to have the most important front page.
So, how does reddit decide which posts get listed in the top 25? [Here's a good explanation.](_URL_0_)
| [
"The front page is often an important community related news story, featuring a large captioned picture. The pages that follow contain an assortment of columnists' contributions, local news stories, community bulletins, and business advertisements. Beyond these pages, the newspaper has several sections including an... |
Why do frogs hatch from eggs as tadpoles and not baby frogs? | > I was never taught why frogs are born as tadpoles instead of miniature frogs.
Some frogs do have direct development:
_URL_1_
Many salamanders do too, like many of the Plethodontid salamanders like Redbacks.
> Other than insects such as butterflies
That "other than" covers [most animals](_URL_0_).
> I can't think of any other species that aren't born as tiny versions of the adult form.
Tunicates, Cnidarians, marine crustaceans like lobsters and barnacles, many marine fishes (flounders, eels), etc. flukes, echinoderms (starfish, urchins, and sea cucumbers), many salamanders, etc.
Having a larval stage is typical of animals, not unusual. A tiny animal is unlikely to occupy the same ecological niche as a large animal: it experiences the physical environment differently, it must eat different prey, it will have more and different predators. So why should a tiny individual have the same body plan as a big inidividual? Individuals also must disperse at some point. Sessile organisms like barnacles and tunicates must have motile larvae the same way plants must have motile seeds. Butterflies that are good dispersers as adults but do not grow have larvae that are poor dispersers but very good at growing.
Losing the larval stage tends to happen in organisms that are mobile as adults and those that invest more resources in a few offspring rather than spreading them out over many offspring (these have a direct trade-off, if an animal has many offspring they cannot be large). Having large offspring (relatively speaking) means that a specialised fast-growth-from-tiny-size stage can be skipped. | [
"Adult frogs lay their eggs in moist places, including on leaves, in plants, among exposed roots, and elsewhere. Once the eggs hatch, the adult piggybacks the tadpoles, one at a time, to suitable water, either a pool, or the water gathered in the throat of bromeliads or other plants. The tadpoles remain there until... |
Why do popping noises sound the way they do? | There has been a [related investigation.](_URL_0_) | [
"A hum is a sound made by producing a wordless tone with the mouth opened or closed, forcing the sound to emerge from the nose. To hum is to produce such a sound, often with a melody. It is also associated with thoughtful absorption, 'hmm'.\n",
"Many popular aquarium fish such as goldfish and loaches have these s... |
how do squatters take over homes. | The reasoning behind it is, for the most part, to prevent honest people from being made homeless because of dishonest landlords/owners. In theory, you could get a gullible person to pay rent without a lease, and the moment the cash is in hand, the landlord calls the cops and gets them hauled out. Without a paper trail saying that they were truly tenants and paid rent, there's nothing stopping this from happening. Honest people are now homeless and without the money they paid because they were taken advantage of. So instead of dragging them out by the ankles, the cops leave it to the courts to decide who is actually in the right, and then act accordingly.
It's not a perfect system, and people certainly take advantage, but not as many as you would think. There's a reason these stories are newsworthy, they're the exception. It's also not true that you can't do anything about it, you can. You just have to file with the courts to get them removed. It's inconvenient and you're unlikely to get your filing fee back as they're probably just going to disappear, but it works.
TL;DR - The justice system would rather have an honest property owner be inconvenienced than for an honest tenant to be homeless because they were taken advantage of. | [
"Squatting presents a non-economic way for people to transfer parts of the bundle of rights. Depending on the applicable laws, a squatter can acquire property rights by simply occupying vacant land for an extended period of time. Areas with high concentrations of squatters are sometimes thought of as \"informal set... |
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