question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
|---|---|---|
what does aspirin do that helps prevent heart attacks, stroke and now cancer? | For the heart attacks and stroke risks: aspirin thins out your blood, lowering the stress on the veins and arteries. | [
"Aspirin is used in the treatment of a number of conditions, including fever, pain, rheumatic fever, and inflammatory conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, pericarditis, and Kawasaki disease. Lower doses of aspirin have also been shown to reduce the risk of death from a heart attack, or the risk of stroke in pe... |
Is it possible for a planet to have no night time? | One way I can think of for a planet to not experience any nighttime is for it to be located at [L1](_URL_0_) between two stars. However, either forming the planet at L1, or forming it elsewhere and then somehow moving it to L1 would be unphysical. Also, (assuming you got a planet there) it would be a very unstable configuration. If there was anything else massive in the system (say another planet) then the L1-planet's orbit would be perturbed and it would cease to be at L1.
The scenario of six suns is an interesting idea but also doomed to failure. The way I see this scenario is for the planet to be orbiting one star but there are several other, more distant stars around. The idea of groups of stars in mutual orbit around each other is a good one: such groups have been observed (I'm not sure if a group as big as six has been observed though). The idea falls apart when considering how close the other stars must be in order to sufficiently illuminate the planet: The planet needs to be far enough away from its host star so that it doesn't get fried but close enough to its host star (relative to how far the other stars are) so that the other stars can't steal it away. As a result the other stars will have far less illumination power simply because they must be much farther away from the planet then the planet's host star is. Such a planet might have day and a nighttime that's not completely dark, but the day/night cycle would be present.
One could also imagine a six-star scenario in which the planet orbits in and among all the stars, not particularly attached to any star in particular. In this case its orbit would be highly chaotic. The amount of illumination it gets would be highly variable (and visit values that would be very unhappy for life) and its expected lifetime would be short (it would be very likely for the planet to either impact one of the stars or get flung from the system).
Edit: Every time I hit save I think of something else ... | [
"All the Kepler circumbinary planets are either close to or actually in the habitable zone. None of them are terrestrial planets, but large moons of such planets could be habitable. Because of the stellar binarity, the insolation received by the planet will likely be time-varying in a way quite unlike the regular s... |
Would we be able to sequence DNA that's been fossilized, or preserved in amber? Or is it too degraded to even see? | DNA degrades pretty fast, as geologic time scales go. New(ish) techniques have allowed sequencing of DNA from relatively young fossils, but the oldest DNA to have been sequenced so far is that of a horse from about 700,000 years ago, and that only worked because the horse had been preserved in permafrost; no tropical DNA even remotely close to that has been sequenced.
> The fossil, a fragment of horse leg bone, was too old for radiocarbon dating, but Willerslev estimated, based on its location in the permafrost, that it was between 560,000 and 780,000 years old. ... No DNA had been salvaged and sequenced from a fossil more than 130,000 years old (that was a polar bear jawbone), and theoretical estimates put the upper limit of DNA survival at about 1 million years.
--[700,000-Year-Old Horse Becomes Oldest Creature With Sequenced Genome](_URL_1_)
A million years is a long time when you're trying to remember what you had for lunch yesterday, but it's really short as time goes. Dinosaurs mostly went extinct 65 million years ago, for example.
As for recreating or editing the DNA, it might be possible for microbes, but for complex organisms, we're nowhere near being able to do that. See answers in the recent question [Will we ever be able to clone dinosaurs from fossilized DNA?](_URL_0_) for why. | [
"Several chapters deal with the genetic material itself and how to obtain it, along with the difficulties of recovering viable DNA samples from mummified or fossilized remains. Due to the actions of nucleases after cell death, most DNA of extinct species is fragmented into small pieces that have to be reconstructed... |
does the brain stem ever learn anything new? | Hmm good question. The short answer is not really. At the most basic level, the brain stem is a way for the nerves of the body (PNS) to communicate with the brain and a way to regulate autonomic functions without active thought (imagine how much of a pain in the ass it would be to have to think about breathing 24/7.) So directly, no the brain stem does not learn in that it forms new synaptic connections in response to stimuli that it can “remember” and change its function. But, the mid and forebrain can influence its behavior so long as this influence does not cause a more significant important system to fall out of “acceptable levels” like heart rate and respiration.
So the learning that takes place in these areas can influence its behavior. For example, hypothalamus of the midbrain regulates sleep cycles. This means that when the midbrain (hypothalamus) has learned it’s close to sleep, it lets the hindbrain know to trigger more parasympathetic responses (rest and digest).
This is grossly simplified and probably wrong as I’m still a student but it’s as much as I can remember from my neuro block. | [
"Eriksson was a frequently cited scientist who made ground-breaking research on the neurogenesis in hippocampus in the adult human brain. He showed that new brain cells are created throughout the whole human lifespan, and that the integration of the new brain cells to the brain depended on the stimuli that the envi... |
why is gasoline always priced to .009? | > The extra "tenths" is a very old tradition that's never gone away. In 1935, a Reno Nevada newspaper wrote about "selling third grade gasoline at eight and nine-tenths cents a gallon."
> In those times, a penny had considerable value. To raise the price of gasoline from 8 to 9 cents would be more than a 12 percent hike. To compete, gas stations raised prices by tenths of a penny. Around this time, federal and state excise taxes were also introduced in increments of tenths of a cent, so it made sense to keep the decimal value.
Perpetuated for Profit?
The tradition stuck. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, 'prime suppliers' of 'motor gasoline' reported sales of 372,833.5 thousand barrels sold in February 2007. These gas sales collected US$ 141 million in nine-tenths-of-a-cent increments. With gasoline prices in the US$ 2.00 to US$ 4.00 range, the 9/10 no longer serves a constructive purpose, and occasionally measures have been introduced to abolish it. From 1980 to 1984, the state of Iowa experimented with even cents, but eventually returned to the 9/10 pricing.
Source: _URL_0_ | [
"The price of natural gas varies greatly depending on location and type of consumer. In 2007, a price of $7 per 1000 cubic feet () was typical in the United States. The typical caloric value of natural gas is roughly 1,000 BTU per cubic foot, depending on gas composition. This corresponds to around $7 per million B... |
Is there a genetic link between cleft palate and torus palatinus? | The soft and hard palate are both formed during foetal development (vs embryonic). There is a high likelihood that there is a minor genetic defect since both abnormalities to the palate, with similar point in gestation, have manifested themselves in siblings. Here is an excellent website explaining the development of the palate including abnormalities: _URL_0_. | [
"A cleft palate is one of the most common causes of VPI. Cleft palate is an anatomical abnormality that occurs in utero and is present at birth. This malformation can affect the lip and palate, or the palate only. A cleft palate can affect the mobility of the velopharyngeal valve, thereby resulting in VPI.\n",
"M... |
Are matter and antimatter symmetrical. | Now that is an interesting question. As you've phrased it, the answer is yes: our universe would work the same if it were made of antimatter, and the physical laws we would discover would be the same.
However, there are a couple of laws that, although their general forms would be the same, would have the sign of a fundamental constant or two flipped from plus to minus (or vice-versa, since we don't actually know the signs). This corresponds to the fact that there are a few physical processes that work differently than their anti-counterparts. None of them are particularly relevant for the kind of matter that makes up the objects we deal with in everyday life, or even planets, stars, and galaxies, although they could play a role in explaining why our universe does consist of matter instead of antimatter in the first place.
The buzzword for this sort of thing in physics is "[CP violation](_URL_0_)." It stems from the idea of CP symmetry, which is the mathematical expression of the statement "matter and antimatter behave identically." | [
"BULLET::::- Measurement of the magnetic moment of antiprotons provides further evidence for CPT symmetry, the hypothesis that matter and antimatter behave identical when time and space are reversed at the same time.\n",
"When antimatter was first discovered in 1932, physicists wondered about how it would react t... |
If Germany and Japan were not allowed to have armies and were defended by the US after World War 2, why wasn't Italy in the same situation? | There were limitations placed upon both the size, deployment, and structures of the Italian military in the [1947 Peace Treaty- Warning PDF](_URL_1_). Part IV of the Treaty demanded that Italy defortify its frontiers with France and Yugoslavia and deploy no weapons that could reach into these areas. Italian islands like Pantellaria had to be completely demilitarized. Both the Italian Air Force and the Army were limited to two hundred planes and tanks. Furthermore, the Army was limited to 250,000 men and the Navy could not acquire new ships until after 1950 and then could not build heavy units like battleships or aircraft carriers. The Allies also forbid Italy from developing either nuclear or guided missile technology.
Italy's joining of NATO two years later and the formation of the European Defense Community (EDC) in 1950 rendered many of these provisions and limitations moot. Although the EDC foundered amongst much wrangling and apprehension, the initial treaty allowed Italy to release itself from the military provisions of the 1947 Treaty. Since Italian rearmament took place under the auspices of these two institutions, there was little opposition among Western European and American governments over this development. The Italians allowed for the US deployment of IRBMs and the Italian Navy launched two large guided-missile cruisers and flirted with an abortive plan to deploy Polaris missiles on its ships.
The rearmament and incorporation of Italian troops into the defense structures of Western Europe were congruent with the wider trend of rearming former Axis powers. In both the cases of Japan and West Germany, the embryo of a postwar military emerged in the form of police forces that maintained domestic order and patrolled the borders. These polices forces often had a strong paramilitary character and were staffed by veterans from the war. Treaties with the US and Western forces in the 1950s allowed for these policing institutions to be expanded into proper military formations, albeit often with explicit provisions that they would be both subordinate to civilian control and be incorporated into defense organizations which were dominated by US military leaders for most of the Cold War. In the case of Japan, its armed forces, called the Self-Defense Forces, developed very strong defensive capabilities but lacked many offensive weapons that would allow it to project this military power outside of the home islands or immediate environs without major US assistance. The Japanese constitution explicitly outlawed war and renounced offensive weapons which resulted in stretching the terminology for military equipment (just recently, the Maritime Self-Defense Forces just launched a ["destroyer"](_URL_0_) which really looks like an aircraft carrier). These often self-imposed restrictions caused a degree of friction with the US in the latter half of the Cold War. Kissinger, for example, resented how the Japanese would never really step away from their defensive orientation and help the over-stretched US forces during the tail-end of the Vietnam War and its aftermath. This criticism avowed civilian control over the Japanese and German armed forces have often created the mistaken impression that neither Japan nor the FRG possessed a military worth much value. In fact, both forces were highly advanced, relatively large, and well-trained and their existence (and staffing by officers from the Second World War) was a consistent source of criticism within Soviet propaganda during the Cold War.
*Sources*
Di Nolfo, Ennio. *Power in Europe? II: Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, and the Origins of the EEC, 1952-1957*. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1992.
Hattendorf, John B. *Naval Policy and Strategy in the Mediterranean: Past, Present, and Future*. London: Frank Cass, 2000. | [
"With the European powers focused on the war in Europe, Japan sought to acquire their colonies. In 1940 Japan responded to the German invasion of France by occupying French Indochina. The Vichy France regime, a \"de facto\" ally of Germany, accepted the takeover. The allied forces did not respond with war. However,... |
how can devices such as google home and amazon echo understand your voice while loud music is playing in the background? | Background music adds complications to all signal processing, including for Google Home and Amazon Echo. Both of these devices have an always on functionality, meaning they are always listening. They are always listening for a distinct and very specific signal to be played (ie. your voice saying 'OK Google' or 'Alexa'). These two phrases have been broken down into their components and each component of the signal must be heard, in the correct order. So after the device processes the signal for the sound 'Oh', it expects to hear 'Kay' next.
Background noise is not able to affect the commands because even though the device recognizes there is background noise, it is only looking and waiting for specific sounds at specific frequencies in specific orders (which are the command phrases). Think of it as a coin sorting filter, no matter what you put into the coin sorting filter, it is only looking for a certain number of specific coins, and anything else will be disregarded.
This isn't to say that background noise is totally filtered out. If the background noise is too loud it can alter the command phrase and mess up the signal processing.
TLDR: These devices filter out any noise signal that isn't the command phrase signal while waiting for command phrase.
| [
"Echo devices offer weather from AccuWeather and news from a variety of sources, including local radio stations, BBC, NPR, and ESPN from TuneIn. Echo can play music from the owner's Amazon Music accounts and has built-in support for other streaming music services like Apple Music, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Sirius XM, a... |
what happens to a body when mixed with molten steel? | Molten steel is at least 1370 degrees celcius. Crematoriums operate at a maximum of 980 degrees celcius.
The body is basically cremated. Burnt into ash. | [
"The steel melt is produced in an oxygen top blowing process in the converter, and undergoes an alloy treatment in the secondary metallurgy phase. The product is aluminium-killed steel, with high tensile strength achieved by the composition with manganese, chromium and silicon.\n",
"Molten steel is also less flui... |
why do artists and painters in movies always hold out their pen and focus on it? | They're using the pen/brush handle/thumb as a reference for judging the size of an object, keeping it at arms length every time gives you a constant good-enough-for-art measurement. | [
"In an article for 'W' magazine, Dafoe further stated, \"I painted in a movie called \"To Live and Die in L.A.\", but it wasn't about painting--it was more about counterfeiting and killing people. In playing Vincent van Gogh, painting was the key to the character. I had to know what I was doing. The director, Julia... |
what causes veins in the arms and hands to bulge sometimes, in addition to a feeling of "fullness" or pressure without physical activity? | One of the main functions of veins is to serve as a reservoir for extra blood. If you had just enough oxygenated blood in your arteries for when you are at rest, then you would have a big problem as soon as you were active. So, your veins are like balloons that can expand when needed to hold extra blood. When you work out, the veins are distended because a lot of blood is going to the tissues, and it needs to get back to the heart quickly. When you're resting, they can be distended with all the extra blood. Lots of other things affect how distended they are--such as gravity, if you're relatively dehydrated, etc. | [
"Superficial veins are important physiologically for cooling of the body. When the body is too hot the body shunts blood from the deep veins to the superficial veins, to facilitate heat transfer to the surroundings. Superficial veins can be seen under the skin. Those below the level of the heart tend to bulge out. ... |
How were wounded soldiers treated during battle in formation-heavy armies (Roman legion, phalanx, Napoleonic line infantry, etc)? | John Keegan wrote a very enlightening analysis of what happened during battles. It's called *[The Face of Battle](_URL_0_)*. If you get the chance to read it, I highly recommend it. It gives a lot of insight into the factors that make up the actual battles, like fear, fatigue, terrain, weapons, formations, etc. He also makes a point of specifically talking about the dead and wounded.
My best understanding was his discussion of Agincourt, so I'll just briefly summarize that. In this battle the French suffered a lot more wounds, and basically all were left where they fell. For one, the battle wasn't incredibly long, and for two, the English couldn't afford to break ranks and the French were too cramped to break ranks, so the wounded had no where to go but forward or down. The wounded and dead just piled up. At least one English officer was either suffocated or had a heart attack after being buried in one of these piles. It was only after the most intense part of the fighting, when the French withdrew and were regrouping for another charge, that some of the English went out to look for loot or wounded men who might be worth ransom (a big caveat). The next day, the English killed the wounded they found still on the battlefield, and Keegan notes that they probably would have died from their wounds or shock anyway.
Andrew Goble wrote an interesting article about wound medicine in medieval Japan called ["War and Injury: The Emergence of Wound Medicine in Medieval Japan"](_URL_1_), but unfortunately he didn't talk much about treatment during the battle itself. There is one screen painting, and I wish I could find it right now, that includes a warrior giving rudimentary first aid to a comrade during a battle, but it's an artist's depiction and I haven't seen any English language description of Japanese battles that included handling the wounded. [State of War](_URL_3_) talks a lot about wounds, but doesn't give any insight into this.... which is a bummer because this is the period when Japanese militaries started using formations and the shape of battles changed significantly. Prior to this, when it was more one-on-one, warriors could withdraw when wounded (see [Takezaki Suenaga's scrolls](_URL_2_) for instances of this happening) partly because, in my own analysis, there were no formations or direct hierarchy preventing them from doing so. The only thing stopping them from doing this for a light wound might be that they were rewarded based on performance and only compensated for injuries. That and retreating, in formation or not, exposes even armored combatants and is a good way to get killed.
*Edit for formatting fail* | [
"Procedures, medical techniques, and medical problems for both sides were virtually identical. Commanders discouraged soldiers from leaving the battle lines to escort wounded back to the rear, but such practice was common, especially in less-disciplined units. The established technique for casualty evacuation was t... |
what has the mri scan done to help us understand the role of the brain? | It helped us map out which areas of the brain are activated under different situations, using contextual or sensory testing, such as exposing a person to visual, auditive, olfactory, etc... inputs, and watching which 'compartment' of the brain showed increased activity.
Researchers also draw conclusions from similarities in brain activity stemming from different substances ("sugar and cocaine activate the same part of the human brain"). | [
"Structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) can be used to identify the structural composition of the brain. Particularly in the context of neurogenomics, MRI has played an extensive role in the study of Alzheimer's disease(AD) over the past four decades. It was initially used to rule out other causes of dementia,... |
What films, if any, most accurately portray a pre-WWI battle, especially hand-to-hand fighting? | For a few reasons, you're probably *never* going to see it because (as /u/EyeStache pointed out) we don't know how they fought since none of the sources explicitly tell us (they assume the audience knew) but I feel modern audience has been so conditioned to view ancient/medieval battle in a certain way. No director will attempt to be 'realistic' as the audience would be confused, it would take a very skilled director with the pull to get it shot his way and willing to spend considerable screen time to 'get it right'.
Goldsworthy has a model of ancient combat that stresses the psychological aspects of warfare. That suggests that combat was pretty terrifying (in an age without Geneva Conventions, antibiotics, painkillers) and few would be willing to just charge straight into an enemy formation bristling with sharp pointy objects. So one would try to fight in a formation - be it a rigid Greek phalanx, a slightly more flexible Roman cohort, or even a loose Gallic tribal force - to ensure your flanks are covered. Certain men in the unit, be they huscarls, centurions, generals, will be the main motivator for the unit. They're the guys who'll whip the men into action, who'll lead the assault, who'll be fighting to kill their opponent. Most soldiers will be more intent on fighting to survive, concentrating on protecting themselves rather than killing their opponent. After several minutes of fighting both sides would tire and pull back to rest and to psych themselves up for another round. Rinse and repeat until one side takes too many casualties or loses the will to continue fighting (or both) and then panic takes effect and the unit dissolves. Its a good model and one that can explain how battles can take several hours yet the victor only comes out with a handful of casualties (even treating casualty numbers with some grains of salt).
Lastly, the majority of the killing was done when one side broke and ran. They'd abandon anything to slow them down like weapons and shields which would leave them defenceless and vulnerable when struck from behind. But there's hardly anything 'heroic' in showing Mel Gibson cutting down fleeing English soldiers without mercy. | [
"The action scenes were filmed near Hollywood. Emory selected an area where the terrain mimicked the European battlegrounds of World War I. To make the battle scenes more realistic, Emory used High Explosives, fake Gas Shells and mines. Many of the local residents began to think the Japanese had started to invade C... |
how exactly does more money translate to winning court cases more often? is it purchasing smarter lawers or just manpower to go through documents? | More manpower to go through documents and do legal research
More talented/experienced trial attorney's
More money to hire experts at trial
More money to file appeals, continuances and delay tactics | [
"Overcoming these problems can be made more difficult because of the large number of cases available. The number of legal cases available via electronic means is constantly increasing (in 2003, US appellate courts handed down approximately 500 new cases per day), meaning that an accurate legal information retrieval... |
how can a password not containing numbers or special characters be considered weak? | Unless you're using a randomly generated chain of letters, most password cracking software have functions built in to use the most commonly used words in passwords.
If you set a limit to the length of the password (say 20 characters), you go from very predictable, and easily brute-forcible using numbers, to somewhat predictable, and not impossible to brute force, using the 26 letters of the alphabet, to impossible (unless you have lots of time and a supercomputer) if you combined all 3. | [
"The full strength associated with using the entire ASCII character set (numerals, mixed case letters and special characters) is only achieved if each possible password is equally likely. This seems to suggest that all passwords must contain characters from each of several character classes, perhaps upper and lower... |
How was the Soviet invasion of Poland justified in the Soviet public? | Just 20 years earlier, the 'corpse of Poland' was supposed to be the road to global revolution. The defeat of the Soviet army at Warsaw in 1920 was a major setback to international socialism. Also the territories Poland took in that war, while historically a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, were populated largely by what we would call today Belarusians and Ukrainians. These groups were seen as part of a greater russian ethnicity, who were vulnerable to German atrocities due to the failure of the Polish government to protect them. This supposed intervention was the official reason cited by the soviets, though I would add that the sentiment of Poland as a historical enemy of international socialism helped as well.
Edit: after rereading your question, I would like to note that the molotov-ribbentrop pact was secret, and no 'justification of it was necessary. Apologies, I initially read your question as asking about the justification for invasion, not the pact itself. | [
"Historical evidence released under Russian President Boris Yeltsin indicates that the Soviet Union did not plan to invade Poland. In fact, Jaruzelski actually tried to persuade the Soviets to invade in order to support martial law, only to be sternly turned down. This left the Solidarity \"problem\" to be sorted o... |
how do broken bones knit when they aren’t completely immobile? | A lot of things actually heal better this way. For example, in hip fractures, the fixation depends on the bones being slightly mobile (look up a dynamic hip screw) as this reinforces repairs along areas of stress, making the overall repaired bone stronger.
Initially a haematoma will form around the site. Then fibrous, but reasonably flexible tissue will be laid down, this is called a callous. This will hold the broken parts close together. Then the bone will fill itself in within this area. Small movements aren't too much of a problem but larger movements will break the connections as they start to form. | [
"Open reduction with direct skeletal fixation allows the bones to be directly mandibulated through an incision so that the fractured ends meet, then they can be secured together either rigidly (with screws or plates and screws) or non-rigidly (with transosseous wires). There are a multitude of various plate and scr... |
why do bass sounds seem to travel better through walls, when high pitched sounds usually carry better over distance? | There are two effects at work.
The first is the physics of it. Any material will attenuate different frequencies at differing levels. For most solid materials, low frequencies will be slightly attenuated and high frequencies massively attenuated. Through free space, both attenuate over distance but by relatively similar amounts (high frequencies still don't travel as far, but low frequencies don't have the huge advantage they do passing through solid materials). This relationship is not strictly linear, but generally low frequencies penetrate/propagate better than high ones.
The second is the biology of it. Human beings hear high frequencies (relative to our range) significantly better than we hear low frequencies. What we think of as 'balanced' levels across the frequencies are actually incredibly loud low frequencies coupled with relatively quiet high frequencies. When you evenly attenuate across the frequency spectrum, this causes low frequencies to drop into the inaudible range much more quickly than high frequencies.
The combination of these two effects is what causes the phenomenon you're experiencing. If you've got a wall, low frequencies punch right through while high frequencies are almost completely blocked. If you're simply listening to a sound through free space, distance will cause both to attenuate - but your inability to hear low frequencies well will make everything turn 'tinny'.
In terms of your apartment, the walls likely block the sound from your birds entirely while the pounding bass of your subwoofer makes their furniture shake. | [
"Large bass speakers often take advantage of the surroundings as part of the horn. For example, they can be put in the corners of a room, so the walls act as part of the horn. Even outdoors, the ground can form part of the horn surface, and thus a partial horn can help provide a good impedance match to ground, or o... |
Are shades of grey actually colors that we just cannot see that part of the spectrum for? | Shades of gray is a matter of intensity, not wavelength.
White light (which is when our Red, green, blue receptors are equally stimulated), can appear anywhere from black to any shade of grey, based on how much light you are receiving.
While the minds can be very complex, seeing multiple colors as grey or red / green color blindness and whatnot, at a fundamental level different shades of grey are not at different spots in the spectrum, they are a single point in the spectrum.
It IS however possible that we see other parts of the spectrum as gray, as the human mind is a pretty amazing thing... 2-3% of women can see into the UV:
_URL_0_
I dont know if it shows up as gray for them, but it certainly is possible... but would still be different than normal white light that is lower intensity | [
"There are many color perceptions that by definition cannot be pure spectral colors due to [[Saturation (color theory)|desaturation]] or because they are [[purple]]s (mixtures of red and violet light, from opposite ends of the spectrum). Some examples of necessarily non-spectral colors are the achromatic colors (bl... |
How common/effective was guerrilla warfare in WWII? | TL;DR: Very common, and in MANY cases, EXTREMELY effective!
There were resistance movements in Greece, Yugoslavia, France, China, Indochina, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the occupied territories in the Soviet Union, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Albania, the Philippines, Indonesia; those are the ones that come to mind at the moment!
All of those movements save perhaps Czechoslovakia, Norway and Denmark were engaged in full on guerrilla warfare, often full scale battles. The Norwegian resistance engaged in important acts of sabotage, and aided in attacks on the German heavy water plant in Norway, and in attacks on the German held Svalbard Archipelago, while the Czech resistance 'iced' Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler's right hand man.
The Soviet, Yugoslav and Polish resistances amounted to small armies operating behind enemy lines, with the Yugoslav partisans especially engaging often in open warfare, while they and the soviet partisans took part openly in the liberation of their homelands. The Polish Home Army was incredibly sophisticated, taking part in the uprisings in Wilna (Vilnius) and Warsaw, while the French FFI & Maquis took part in engagements such as the brief uprising in the Vercors Massif.
The Filipino resistance forces aided the US in the liberation of the Philippines, along with the Alamo Scouts, Philippine Scouts, and US Army Rangers & Airborne. The Chinese communists under Mao made up a formidable force, although some of their exploits were embellished to say the least! Enver Hoxha's Albanian partisans, and the Greek resistance movements both took part in extensive actions against German and Italian occupation forces.
I doubt I've done justice to the manifold, and incredibly brave, resistance movements that operated against the Axis, and often each other! If I've left any out, which I undoubtedly have, please, ANYONE, add more!!! | [
"After the official end of the war, guerrilla warfare was waged on an irregular basis by the Spanish Maquis well into the 1950s, gradually reduced by military defeats and scant support from the exhausted population. In 1944, a group of republican veterans, who also fought in the French resistance against the Nazis,... |
Does fasting make people more famine resistant? | This Radiolab segment discusses the improvement of your resistance from disease if your father or grandfather is in a fasted state when they develop sperm.
_URL_0_ | [
"Fasting is often used as a tool to make a political statement, to protest, or to bring awareness to a cause. A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt, or to achieve a goal such as a policy change. A \"spiritual ... |
What precisely was a "fashionable regiment?" | The fashionable part was more for officers than the actual soldiers. Finding a good regiment or unit usually had to do with the location of their deployment, the favor of the commanding officer with the higher ups, the amount of action they saw, and sometimes where they had been mustered or who was in them. This was the case for most armies and navies of the time. An example would be a British nobleman who had recently purchased his lieutenancy trying to find a unit headed for India. He would want to go there because it would be a good place to gain experience against relatively under-equipped opponents, he would be able to make good connections with other officers and with executives in the various Trading Companies, the wars were generally very profitable so attracted the attention of the press and other officers , and a man could generally gather some manner of loot in the battles. A place where he wouldn't want to be deployed would be in a unit being sent to a Caribbean island where most of the soldiers died of various diseases and fevers from the climate. Since you had to buy your place and advancement in the armies of England in that time, the richer people were usually able to secure the best placements because of family connections. Another possibility for a British officer would be to try to find a position in a militia unit. These units got to look the best, parade around for the big cheeses and make good impressions on the lords and ladies without ever needing to leave their mustering grounds. This would change over time as militia units began to be deployed in wars overseas.
These are just examples for the British army but other armies were similar. | [
"Whether for reasons of appearance or reputation, grenadiers tended to be the showpiece troops of their respective armies. In the Spanish Army of the early 19th century, for example, grenadier companies were excused routine duties such as town patrols but were expected to provide guards at the headquarters and resi... |
how does someone who knows absolutely nothing about cars go about choosing a secondhand car? | Give each of the following traits a 1-5 score based on how important they are to you: Performance (in the sporty sense of the word), fuel economy, storage and carrying space, roominess, and reliability. Be realistic, if you want a car that is all 5's, you are going to spend a lot. Also write down your price range, and any preferences you have ($4000-8000, preferably green, not a truck, must have a sun roof, etc). Get a copy of the consumer reports used car edition they release each year, and look through it for cars that line up with what you wrote down. Get a friend who knows cars to help. Toyota and Honda will generally always be good bets. The German cars are usually very nice cars but may need more maintenance. Most other Japanese car brands will be good too but look and see. Of the American brands, Ford is probably the best bet, then GM. Stay away from Chrysler/Dodge except for a few very specific vehicles.
Make a list of 5-10 cars that match your needs well. If your price range is in the $8000-15000 range or so, you can look at car dealers, as most of them also deal in used cars. Sometimes they will have cheaper cars too. There are several websites that will conglomerate car listings, check those out. And keep an eye out on craigslist. Don't just look in your city, look around anywhere within a 2 hours drive or so, or more even. The gas money you spend driving there should be more than offset by the benefits of getting a great car for you.
Look at a few different cars, and test drive them all. Watch out for high mileage cars, you are more likely to run into a lot of maintenance. Take them to a trusted mechanic (arrange this beforehand) for an inspection. It may cost a bit, but if you don't do it it can bite you in the ass. The dealer should be okay with this, if they aren't then forget about buying from them. Oh and bring your car knowledgeable friend along too. As for negotiating a price, I am going to leave that up for you to find out. There are tons of guides online, and I am not going to try to cover all of that. Good luck | [
"Cars also make a difference, and a player must choose their ride wisely. Options include the SUV, Used Car, Bucket, or even no car at all. Choosing no car is risky because public transportation is unreliable and one needs a car to get around in Downtown.\n",
"To illustrate this, consider a simple decision about ... |
the difference between homo sapiens and homo sapiens sapiens? | Homo Sapiens is what species we are. Homo Sapiens Sapiens is a subspecies - it's used to mean "anatomically modern Homo sapiens", ie people who's bodies look like ours.
The subspecies H. Sapiens Sapiens, ie us, differentiates us from H. Sapiens Idaltu, arguably our direct ancestor.
Note that in this hierarchy, Neanderthals are a separate species of Homo, specifically H. neanderthalensis, and they died off. Homo Sapiens are the only surviving species of the Homo genus.
In my view, differentiating between h. sapiens and h. s. sapiens makes the question pretty poor, as it's comparing species to subspecies, but h. s. s. is the *most* correct, so unfortunately you cannot prove your teacher wrong. | [
"The question depends on the definition of \"Homo sapiens\" as a chronospecies, which has also been in flux throughout the 20th century. Authorities preferring classification of Neanderthals as subspecies have introduced the subspecies name \"Homo sapiens sapiens\" for the anatomically modern Cro-Magnon population ... |
Franco-Prussian War, any experts around? | /r/Genealogy might be useful for you? | [
"The Franco-Prussian War was a conflict between France and Prussia, while Prussia was backed up by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria. The complete Prussian and German victory brought about the final unification of Germany under Ki... |
given the gigantic size of its military, why can't the us impose its will on every country? | While we could do that to every country individually. We would piss off the world more then we already do. And we cant face the entire world. | [
"Great powers seek to maximize their share of the world's wealth because economic strength is the foundation of military strength. Great powers seek to prevent rival powers from dominating wealth-producing regions of the world. The United States, for example, sought to prevent the Soviet Union from dominating Weste... |
if the average human hearing is 20hz to 20khz, why do they sell headphones with higher ranges, like 30khz? | To get better results at 20KHz. The rules on this subreddit are forcing me to elaborate, but this is the simplest answer. Speakers with a 'response' from 20Hz to 20kHz cannot have a nice linear response (same output power for same input level, which is what you want for accurate reproduction of sound) across that range of frequencies, and then immediately drop to no output at all at 19Hz and 20,001Hz. On headphones marked as 20Hz-30KHz the audible range from 20Hz-20kHz can be made lovely and linear, with increasingly poor response between 16Hz-20Hz and 20kHz-31kHz, and worse response still outside that range. | [
"The human auditory system is sensitive to frequencies from about 20 Hz to a maximum of around 20,000 Hz, although the upper hearing limit decreases with age. Within this range, the human ear is most sensitive between 2 and 5 kHz, largely due to the resonance of the ear canal and the transfer function of the ossicl... |
why are other video hosting sites not as used/popular as youtube? | Here is a [video](_URL_0_) that goes into the problems start up video sharing websites run into. Their audiences end up being the very same people that drive everyone else away. | [
"Video hosting services are platforms which allow users to upload, share videos or live stream their own videos to the Internet. These can either be for the general public to watch, or particular users on a shared network. The most popular video hosting website is YouTube, with 1.8 billion logged-in users per month... |
How do lakes deep underground maintain an ecosystem with no energy input from the Sun? | Underground aquifers could support primitive microbial life-forms if they were adapted to living off the minerals, and hydrogen seeping into the water from the surrounding rock. They may also adapt similarly to deep sea life that lives off of/near hydrothermal vents if they're present in the underground aquifer | [
"The presence of water on the surface or underground is necessary and the local or regional management of this essential resource is strategic, but not sufficient to create such areas: continuous human work and know-how (a technical and social culture) are essential to maintain such ecosystems..\n",
"Deep waters ... |
Why is it in the overwhelming majority of societies in history, that gender roles remain consistent? | hi! it might be worth x-posting this question to /r/AskAnthropology or /r/AskSocialScience | [
"Socially constructed gender roles are prescribed as ideal or proper behaviors for specific categories of male and female. Societies have socially constructed women's roles because women are primarily financially dependent on men as is defined through a 'sexual contract', thus deeming them a \"private responsibilit... |
what is the 'school smell'? | Different schools will smell differently. You are talking about buildings and rooms filled with people all using different scents in their soaps and hygiene products (and some without), books, cleaning supplies, foods, and environmental factors that all combine to create the smell you know as school. | [
"\"Smells Like Teen Spirit\" uses a \"somewhat conventional formal structure\" consisting of four-, eight-, and twelve-bar sections, including an eight-bar verse, an eight-bar pre-chorus, and a twelve-bar chorus. Musicologist Graeme Downes, who led the band the Verlaines, says that \"Smells Like Teen Spirit\" illus... |
how are people with split personality disorder diagnosed? | There is also some really compelling evidence that the entire idea of "other personalities" isn't really a thing, that American psychologists who really wanted it to be real were inadvertently encouraging their patients to demonstrate that sort of behavior through positive reinforcement. Saying "Tell me about your other personality" encouraged patients to think of themselves in those terms, arguably making their situation worse.
| [
"Louis Vivet (also Louis Vivé or Vive) was one of the first mental health patients to be diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, colloquially known as \"multiple [or] split personalities.\" Within one year of his diagnosis, the term \"multiple personality\" appeared in psychological literature in direct refe... |
Why were the U.S. Army so ill-trained and ill-equipped when they entered WWI? | Not an expert on the topic, but here's my take, and anyone who knows more can correct me if I am mistake.
First, the U.S. wasn't in the business of having a standing army up at all times at this point in history. Most soldiers were drafted in order to fight in specific cases. This makes sense considering how logistically difficult and how expensive it is to pay for an army (including the loss of labor).
Second, this is before the time of simple and cheap transport. War in Europe didn't necessarily mean the U.S. was going to be involved so there wasn't a reason to prepare for battle.
Finally, the U.S. before WWI wasn't not as important, rich, or technologically advanced in relation to European nations at this point. In fact, if it hadn't been for the two world wars that practically destroyed Europe there is a good reason to suspect that the U.S. would have a similar role to China today (one in which it is economically growing, but is still politically on the outside). This part is speculation on my part, but the rise of the U.S. in my mind has to be inexorably linked to the fall of the European powers.
So to flesh out the answer, there are a lot of reasons why the U.S. was unprepared: logistics, politics, military structure, economics, and lack of need.
Hope that helps. | [
"Although American units were usually able to replenish their numbers quickly, the replacements rarely had sufficient tactical training. Many junior officers were short on tactical and leadership abilities. Some tankers were shipped to Europe without having so much as driven a car before; some tank commanders were ... |
Did early humans have any predators? | Many. Remember that it wasn't until fairly recently in the timeframe of modern human evolution that most large megafauna died off (well, was wiped out by humans anyway), so for most of that time humans coexisted with a panoply of large predators that did indeed prey on them.
Big cats including now extinct saber toothed cats and cave lions. Wolves including now extinct dire wolves. Crocodiles and alligators including now extinct giant varieties with jaws a meter long. Marsupial lions. Cave bears the size of polar bears and giant bears that weighed as much as a car. Cave hyena that were bigger than most humans. Constricting snakes, such as boas. Large birds sometimes preyed on children and humans possibly had to content with giant flightless carnivorous birds.
We know that early humans sometimes fell victim to these predators based on marks on various human bone fossils. There is also one particular case of evidence of a human skull having been bitten by a saber toothed cat (Megantereon) as the cause of death. | [
"\"Predation\" (the eating of one living creature by another for nutrition) predates the rise of commonly recognized carnivores by hundreds of millions (perhaps billions) of years. The earliest predators were microbial organisms, which engulfed or grazed on others. Because the fossil record is poor, these first pre... |
The personal life of women (circa 1050) | It would be useful to specify a location as well. Since you said "medieval," I'm assuming you're looking for European answers, right? | [
"Women in the Middle Ages participated in many healing techniques and capacities. According to historical documents, small numbers of women occupied almost all ranks of medical personnel during the period. They worked as herbalists, midwives, surgeons, barber-surgeons, nurses, and traditional empirics. Women treate... |
why is the highest tax bracket only about $450,000? why not have higher tax brackets at incomes of $1 million, $5 million, $10 million, etc.? | If you have that much money, it's easy to [minimize your effective tax rate](_URL_1_) (charities, retirement plans, investments, etc). The top tax bracket was as high as 94% in [1944](_URL_0_). As for why it's not very high now, look at the series of laws in that table. Rich people are able to lobby for tax changes, and tend to argue that the bulk of the economy is run by rich people so by taxing them less, they have more money to e.g. start companies, so you gain a stronger economy.
| [
"For example, suppose there are tax brackets of 10%, 20%, and 30%, where the 10% rate applies to income from $1 to $10,000; the 20% rate applies to income from $10,001 to $20,000; and the 30% rate applies to all income above $20,000. In that case the tax on $20,000 of income (computed by adding up tax in each brack... |
why can't dopamine be manufactured? | While we can create dopamine, there's no way to enjoy the dopamine without injecting it into our brain. It's much simpler to just take another drug that causes dopamine production. | [
"The direct precursor of dopamine, -DOPA, can be synthesized indirectly from the essential amino acid phenylalanine or directly from the non-essential amino acid tyrosine. These amino acids are found in nearly every protein and so are readily available in food, with tyrosine being the most common. Although dopamine... |
what is a dna schedule and how does it prove when human life begins? | It's not a term that exists. Huckabee made it up.
The question of when human life begins will always be a philosophical one. Science can't "prove" anything here. A new, genetically distinct organism is created at fertilization. So you could argue "life" begins there. But at that stage several eggs are fertilized and most of these will spontaneously abort rather than go on to form a fetus. So is it the beginning of human life? That's for you and your God to decide. | [
"Expression of genetic code in all life forms consists of two major processes, synthesis of copies of the genetic code recorded in DNA into the form of mRNA (transcription), and protein synthesis itself (translation), whereby the code copies in mRNA are decoded into amino acid sequences of the respective proteins. ... |
why was/is there such an incredible fear of communism? | *Note: I am not a history or a sociology major or anything that could be classified as 'a professional' on this subject. I've just had alot of history classes and read alot. Im going to try and cover Communism as a concept and as a history topic.*
* **Communism == USSR**
Remember that Communism, or Marxism-Leninism as in the 1920's was what overthrew the Russian monarchy in a revolution and began the USSR. As you must know that the USSR was an enormous economic power that grew extremely quickly to rival the U.S. After defeating Germany with the Allies, at the end of the WWII the USSR decided it would be *a great idea* if the whole world would reject democracy (or whatever government they currently had) and use socialist(?) Communist governments, and decided to enact this process by force- invading Eastern Europe and supporting parts of Africa (Congo and Ethopia) and East Asia (Korea) in communist reform. The U.S. (and some of Europe, but mostly the U.S took active measures) saw this 'spread' of 'communism' as a threat- and thus the war between 'democracy' vs 'communism', 'the west' vs 'the east *(of the Berlin Wall)*, the U.S vs the USSR in indirect conflict over ideology began (thus begins the Cold War.)
We can blame propaganda and people like McCarthy for giving the popular beliefs about communism being bad and such- but again, Im not a sociologist, the propaganda was likely as bad for both sides. But the 'War against Communism' was a frightening war where both sides could obliterate the world with nuclear arms; a war not on land or other disputes but the ideology of government. The outcome of this war between the U.S vs the USSR (and the collapse of the USSR) has been cemented into our ideals of Democracy vs Communism; and considering the public opinion of these nations you can guess which government system is favoured.
As for why there is still a fear now, we still have a major country that still uses Communism style of government- China. I'll presume you already know why people are in fear of China; I dont spread rumors so I'll refrain from listing them here. Of course China is still doing extremely well under its government so ultimately Communism cannot be labeled as bad/evil. On the other hand we also have North Korea- which with its military spending, personality cult, low standard of living(?), censorship and suspect behaviour, represents a threat(?) of what a Communism governments can perform (similar occurrences are reported from the USSR and China). I cant tell if any of this is completely true because yes, propaganda and censorship still exist both for and against North Korea.
* **Communism as a concept/ideal**
Assuming you know what communism is, most people confuse it with an extreme version of socialism. Socialism presumably being- reforms that favour use of state funding to help a majority of people (e.g welfare, health care reforms, etc). There's the belief that reliance on state funds will increase (thus more taxes) and people will do less to benefit themselves (this is ignoring people who are already in less than ideal situations due to circumstance and the state funding is their only reliable means of escaping poverty/etc). This doesnt seem to be much of an issue with European countries where social reforms are widespread- but in the U.S there seems to be a strong backlash against social reforms and these 'social reforms' are then perceived to be our government heading towards 'communism'.
The Western world (U.S, Europe) is probably never going to head towards Communism unless a very serious threat/something occurs.
Thats all I've got. Being from Nigeria, England and the U.S I think I gave a decent but neutral description on the topic. I dont think there's anything inherently wrong with Communism; but the examples we do have (excluding China?) have not been exemplary.
**TL:DR** The Cold War made the U.S (representing Democracy) seem like the good guy and the winners over the bad guy; the USSR (representing Communism.)
Lots of propaganda from both sides.
Lots of atrocities and low standard of living committed under Communist governments.
People link a 'welfare state' with being Communist.
**Edit:** Lots of grammar mistakes. LOTS OF THEM.
**Edit 2:** I acknowledge that my answer is by no means complete and I should have put more emphasis on the atrocities that occur as a result of Communist governments (the dictatorship of Stalin in the USSR, Mao Zedong of China, and various countries of the Eastern Bloc. I encourage people to read the criticism/replies before forming a complete opinion on Communism (although this is reddit- you should never take just one person's opinion on something anyway.)
Communism is also a very vague and nebulous idea- its important to learn from history but its also important to know that Communism is not **solely** the manner in which Stalin / Mao built up the USSR and China upon bodies of their own people (although it seems to happen **every time**, but the USSR/Stalin originated the first communist government so it might be what others built upon on, or maybe its just my bias in thinking dictators use Communism as a means for absolute power that caused me to omit this.) If someone can better explain what Communism is from a concept/ideal point of view please do. Thanks again- the original post has stayed the same. | [
"The widespread fear of Communism became even more acute after the Soviets' detonation of an atomic bomb in 1949 and discovery of Soviet espionage. Ambitious politicians, including Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy, made names for themselves by exposing or threatening to expose Communists within the Truman administ... |
How do you regulate calcium if you don't have a thyroid? | Calcitonin is actually not that important in normal calcium homeostasis - it's primarily regulated by parathyroid hormone. The parathyroid glands receive feedback from both vitamin D and serum calcium levels to modulate secretion of PTH, which increases vitamin D conversion to its active form in the kidneys while also inducing bone release of calcium to increase serum calcium levels as needed. | [
"In normal calcium regulation, a decrease in plasma calcium levels causes the parathyroid glands to secrete parathyroid hormone (PTH), which regulates the activation of Vitamin D in the kidney. These two compounds act to increase blood calcium levels by increasing absorption of dietary calcium from the intestine, i... |
when i close my eyes and blow my nose, i feel an air bubble in the inner corner of my eye. why? | Your tear duct (nasolacrimal duct) is connected to your sinuses.
There's a flap that's supposed to keep the two separate, but in some people, it doesn't quite seal.
You're trying to blow air through your nose, but because of the pressure, some of the air leaks through your tear duct.
If you're bored, search the internet for "squirt milk from eye". It's a very clear indication of the connection. | [
"A gas bubble may be placed inside the eye, to keep the retina in place. If a gas bubble is used, sometimes a certain head positioning (\"posturing\") has to be maintained, such as face down or sleeping on the right or left side. The gas bubble will dissolve over time, but this takes several weeks. Flying should be... |
what happens to caterpillars who haven't stored the usual amount of calories when they try to turn into butterflies? | There are two hormones governing moulting and metamorphosis in insects. Ecdysone is a fat soluble hormone and increases towards the end of each instar (it accumulates in body fat). Once a threshold is crossed, a moult is triggered. Ecdysone levels drop immediately after the moult, then slowly build up again towards the next peak.
Juvenile hormone (JH) shows declining expression with age. It tells the body what the next stage should be at the ecdysone peak when moulting is triggered. In a caterpillar, once JH levels drop below a predefined threshold, the next ecdysone peak initiates the pupal stage. If the caterpillar is underfed, this ecdysone peak (and hence the next moult) is delayed until sufficient energy reserves are available.
Tl;dr - Metamorphosis is delayed till the caterpillar has enough stored energy available | [
"Caterpillars are very fast eaters; they will spend their time eating or resting before they resume their eating again. Once a sufficient size has been attained, they will attach themselves to any available structure with their silky threads. They will then stay still until they become pupae. This will take about a... |
Question about shuffling a new deck of cards. | Seven shuffles.
_URL_0_ | [
"In 1878, Henry Ash proposed an apparatus to shuffle cards. His device was a box with an open top where the operator would place the deck. The operator would then slightly shake the box to make the cards fall through a comb at the bottom of the box. About half of the cards would fall into the lower compartment whil... |
What is the consensus of the theory that Marcus Brutus is the illegitimate son of Julius Caesar? | Very unlikely is the consensus since Caeser is only around 15 years older then Brutus which would have made him very young to be fathering children. Caesars affair with Servilla most likely started around 77bce after the death of her first husband. | [
"BULLET::::- Marcus Junius Brutus (born 85 BC): The historian Plutarch notes that Caesar believed Brutus to have been his illegitimate son, as his mother Servilia had been Caesar's lover during their youth. Caesar would have been 15 years old when Brutus was born.\n",
"Brutus, along with many other co-conspirator... |
how can steam charge for mods? haven't mod communities been permitted by developers because they don't profit off the content? | So as a mod maker, you can make the mod free.
Now that you can charge for it, steam takes a big chunk of the money. Probably most of it will go to the original content creators to prevent this very thing from becoming a legal issue. | [
"There are also free content delivery tools available that make playing mods easier. They help manage downloads, updates, and mod installation in order to allow people who are less technically literate to play. Steam's \"Workshop\" service, for example, allows a user to easily download and install mods in supported... |
the appeal and glamor of ivy league schools | Hello, I went to an Ivy so I can offer a few anecdotal points. First, you must understand that there are, broadly speaking, two main academic pursuits, which I would categorize as:
* Hard sciences/engineering
* Soft sciences/business
and of course some subjects in between. However these two are the most common. Now, on to the appeal. As far as the first category is concerned, for undergraduates these schools have some of the best reputations for engineering and premed, even though they are exceedingly difficult. Organic chemistry and thermodynamics suck no matter where you go, make no mistake, but the reputation of these schools in the eyes of Med School admissions boards, for example, can act to make up for slight disadvantages in GPA. Additionally, these institutions have some of the highest endowments/grants in the world, so for post-grad types, the research opportunities are really terrific (Cornell and Carl Sagan played a huge role in the development of the Mars Rover, for example).
Now, as far as the second category, the real allure here is the alumni network. You are paying, in large part, to have access to these people when you start looking for a job after school ends. Finance at Penn's Wharton School isn't tremendously more difficult than Finance at Colgate, but you better believe that they will have more and better connected alumni, particularly in the NYC area. Many of my friends got jobs out of school because their first interview was arranged by an alumnus they knew in the company.
TL;DR: For science, the academic reputation and research opportunities. For everything else, the huge networks of alumni. | [
"The Ivy League schools are highly selective, with acceptance rates since 2018 being 10% or less at each of the universities. Admitted students come from around the world, although students from New England and the Northeastern United States make up a significant proportion of students. In 2018, seven of the eight ... |
If Arab and Middle Eastern countries did not recognize or support the state of Isreal, why did they allow much of their Jewish populations to emirgrate there from the late 40's to early 70's? | It's important to contemplate what else was happening during this time. A lot of the countries involved were fighting against old colonial powers and remnants of imperialism, we have the Suez crisis in Egypt, intensifying Cold War in the region, tensions between Soviet aligned forces, US-leanings and the non-aligned movement. The Palestinian cause is often portrayed as an Arab cause, and the conflict with Israel as the defining element of the 20th century, but in practice there has been little done by Palestine's neighbouring Arabs that can be traced to a support of Palestine (when not beneficial to their own countries) | [
"Scholars of the Middle East, including New Historian Benny Morris, have argued that the one-state solution is not viable because of Arab unwillingness to accept a Jewish national presence in the Middle East. Morris has dismissed claims that a binational state would be a secular democratic state and argues it would... |
Are the relativistic time differences between clocks on the Earth and the clocks in GPS satellites, due to the reduced gravity 12,500 miles up or the speed at which the satellites travel or both? | The velocity causes the clocks to fall behind by 7 microseconds per day. The lower gravity causes them to go faster by 45 microseconds per day. Net result is that they go about 38 microseconds per day faster than clocks on the surface. So the gravity has a bigger effect and also the two effects are in opposite directions. [Source](_URL_0_) | [
"The effect of gravitational frequency shift on the GPS due to general relativity is that a clock closer to a massive object will be slower than a clock farther away. Applied to the GPS, the receivers are much closer to Earth than the satellites, causing the GPS clocks to be faster by a factor of 5×10^(−10), or abo... |
William III of England (or Holland, take your pick) was installed by a foreign power. How did this happen and what were the consequences? | Tiny correction: William III was stadholder of the Netherlands, not *just* Holland, and he installed *himself* with a bit of help from Parliament. Two years ago [Scott Sowerby held an AMA](_URL_0_) on England in the seventeenth century, including a lot of questions on the nature of the event you're describing, the so-called Glorious Revolution. | [
"As stadtholder of Holland, William was de facto ruler of the Dutch Republic; the coalition he built after 1678 to defend it against French expansion was threatened by an Anglo-French alliance. With political support from allies in England, Scotland and Europe, a fleet of 463 ships landed William and 14,000 men in ... |
e: keynesian economics | This is a relatively complicated concept, and your inquiry is rather open-ended, but I'll do by ELI5 best:
Keynesian economics is a theory of economics conceived (at least, among others) by John Maynard Keynes in 1936, in the book *The General Theory of Eployment, Interest and Money.* To a large extent, his theory was a response to the Great Depression.
The central premise of Keynesian economics is that the private market, on its own, gets things wrong from time to time, which results in (at times, vast) inefficiencies and economic harm. While this wasn't new thinking in 1936, Keynes beleived that - in the short term - a floundering economy could be corrected by the government intervening and injecting artificial demand into the private sector. (By the term "artificial" in this response, I mean something that is imposed by the government, as opposed to something resulting from the operation of the private sector left on its own.)
Keynesian economics proposes that demand can be increased - and the economy improved - by employing two tools simultaneously: (i) artificially reduced interest rates, usually accomplished when the central bank cuts rates; and (ii) massive investment in public works (building roads and the like), and other forms of government spending.
The idea is that there has been some hiccup in the private market that has caused things like wages, employment, and consumer spending to fall short of what the economy can sustain. So the government pumps resources into the economy to get people buying and borrowing more, which would in turn (hopefully) coax private enterprise to grow.
Keynesian economics rests on the concept of a "Keynesian multiplier," which is the concept that the government can spend money that generates additional spending in some multiple of that amount. In other words, the idea is that by spending $1 on roads (for example), the government actually adds $1.50 or $2 to the total economy. Of course, if you're trying to grow the economy with Keynesianism, your government has to deliver a multiplier greater than 1. Otherwise the government is producing less value than it's taking out of the private economy.
I won't weigh in on whether Keynesianism works or not. If you want historical examples, western countries have tried it to some extent. Here in the U.S., our approach to the economy was substantially Keynesian from post-WWII into the Carter years. More recently, the Obama administration's recovery efforts have been classically Keynesian. | [
"New Keynesian economics is a school of contemporary macroeconomics that strives to provide microeconomic foundations for Keynesian economics. It developed partly as a response to criticisms of Keynesian macroeconomics by adherents of new classical macroeconomics.\n",
"Post-Keynesian economics is a school of econ... |
How were 15h century halberdiers typically equipped? | Fellow 15th century reenactor here, here's my main advice: have a more specified goal.
The 15th century is a large time period with lots of changes. Not only that, but the definition of "Halberdier" will change depending on where you are. A halberd could be the traditional image of halberds we have in X place, but go to Y place and it could mean some complete other thing
That's how we did with my 15th century group. We said "we want to do 15th century Pikemen" and after two years we realised it was too difficult to have something coherent, so we narrowed it down to "1470's Burgundian Pikemen". Notice how we picked a precise place and time. From there we started exploring, studying, etc. We still have a lot to work on,but overall were getting better and better
Once you picked a more precise location and time, you can start researching sources from that precise setting and it maybe easier like that, since you probably will have less contradicting sources. Sources you can look for are Ordinances, manuscript miniatures and pretty much any contemporary source like written texts or surviving objects.
Hoping this helps | [
"The Halberdiers are commanded by an officer called a 'Captain-Commandant' — a rank derived from the Corps's purported origins as the \"Earl Of Essex's Honourable Company Of Free Halberdiers\" during the reign of Elizabeth I (the halberd being a popular heavy infantry weapon of the time). The rank is analogous with... |
if i hold a green light and i go into a dark i would see everything in that room not only green things(i.e things that reflect green color)? | Coloured objects work by absorbing all light to different levels. This is not quite as simple as 'red colours absorb EVERYTHING but red', the outgoing spectrum has significantly more red than other things, but it doesn't absorb ALL of the other light. That way you can dimly see non green things with your green light. | [
"Green Room: The Green Room is similar in size and decoration to the parallel white room, except for the color of the tapestry that is green, and has a mirror over the fireplace. The social function of the room is for the poorest people of the city, or students from the nearby university to meet. Students knew that... |
What is a chance of a number to be prime? | If you randomly pick a number between 1 and N, then the chances for it to be prime are approximately 1/log(N). This is the [Prime Number Theorem](_URL_0_), one of the most important results in Number Theory and is kinda like a Riemann Hypothesis-Lite. | [
"There are infinitely many primes, as demonstrated by Euclid around 300 BC. No known simple formula separates prime numbers from composite numbers. However, the distribution of primes within the natural numbers in the large can be statistically modelled. The first result in that direction is the prime number theore... |
after wwi and wwii, why doesn't america hate germany? | After WWII, Germany was completely destroyed and remade as the Allies saw fit, it was almost a completely different country than pre-war Germany. Plus, Germany was an essential ally during the Cold War, which made it easier to forgive them. | [
"Most of the US thought also that the country should have stayed out of the First World War and that the Nazis were, regardless of what they did in Germany or even Europe, no threat to the US. Many Americans even sympathized with Germany, as many had ancestry from there, and the latter both was strongly anticommuni... |
how is it possible that animals can fit so much complexity into such tiny brains? | Because nature creates bajillions of them, each of them a little different from the other, and lets them run wild. The survivors get to breed. With our technology we don't tend to create bajillions of experiments running in parallel. | [
"Some animal phyla have gone through major brain enlargement through evolution (e.g. vertebrates and cephalopods both contain many lineages in which brains have grown through evolution) but most animal groups are composed only of species with extremely small brains. Some scientists argue that this difference is due... |
Did the Romans Commemorate their dead in yearly ceremonies? | Keep in mind you're asking about a time period of 1-2,000 years.
The closest I can give you resides in the triumphal arches erected to celebrate victories. Whereas it's not a remembrance of the dead as we think about it, it is a remembrance to the victorious wars the Romans engaged in.
Otherwise the closest would be Roman funerals of at least the late republic. Aristocratic Romans would keep life-like masks of their ancestors that achieved great deeds and on the death of a member of their family they would hold public funerals where actors would wear these masks and don clothing appropriate to the dead person. This in a sense brought the dead back to life to welcome their newly deceased family member to the ancestors. In practical senses, it was a reminder of the great deeds their family members in the past did and to remind the public of these events and the part their family had in them. | [
"In February, the last month of the original Roman calendar when March 1 was New Year's Day, the dead were honored at a nine-day festival called the Parentalia, followed by the Feralia on February 21, when the potentially malign spirits of the dead were propitiated. During the Parentalia, families gathered at cemet... |
Has there been a case of a soldier in WW2 being killed by ordnance from WW1? | I have not heard a case of a soldier on land being killed by ordnance from WW1, but I have heard of cases in which sailors have died on ships that hit naval mines laid during WW1.
I have a link saved somewhere since I used the source on a recent term paper. I'll find it and post it when I return home from work
Edit: Added sailors | [
"BULLET::::- Soldiers Thomas Enright, James Bethel Gresham, and Merle Hay of the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division of the United States Army became the first official American military casualties of World War One. All three were killed in action during a German attack near Artois, France.\n",
"BULLET:... |
how do banks make profit from "free" products? | they make money using your money to loan out to others.
you deposit $1000. the bank isn't just sitting on it. they're using that $800-900 of that money pooled with other people's checking account money to make loans for people's mortgages, personal loans, business loans. etc | [
"The company sells its production, works, services and production waste at prices and tariffs established on the basis of supply and demand, and in the cases stipulated by the normative acts - at prices and tariffs regulated by the state. The enterprise's profit (loss) is determined in the manner prescribed by law.... |
why do we have different lotions and creams for out face and body? isn't it the exact same skin? (for example when you have a dry skin) | No. Some skin is thicker. The soles of your feet for example are much thicker than your eyelids. That's one difference at least. | [
"A lotion is a low-viscosity topical preparation intended for application to the skin. By contrast, creams and gels have higher viscosity, typically due to lower water content. Lotions are applied to external skin with bare hands, a brush, a clean cloth, or cotton wool. \n",
"Dermatologists can prescribe lotions ... |
What were the training regimes for heavy cavalry in the Napoleonic era? | > Cuirassiers are of greater use than all other cavalry. This arm...needs to be well instructed. It is in the heavy cavalry that the science of the mounted man should be carried to the highest degree.
-Napoleon
"Heavy Cavalry" probably denotes multiple types and styles of units during this period. Heavy Calvary in this age (at the onset of the 1800's) fought simliarly as in the previous centuries in that they were still primarily relient on charges and functioned overall as ["shock units"](_URL_10_).
[In Napoleon's army,](_URL_6_) it at one point might have consisted of a selection and assortment of the following regiments of ["heavy cavalry"](_URL_5_):
* [x2 Horse Carabiniers](_URL_0_)
* [x12-x15 Cuirassiers](_URL_2_)
* [x15-x30 Dragoons](_URL_1_)
When Napoleon first took control he had very few cavalry units that could compete with other nations such as Austria. At the time, there were not enough trained horsemen to fill his ranks. Upon centralizing his power and increasing the size of his *"Grand Armee"* he also knew the importance of increasing his selection and assortment of light and heavy cavalry regiments in which the following years after gaining control instituted several actions in order to bolster his calvary ranks.
At the initial onset of integrating a easier to manage horseback rifle/musket [carbines,](_URL_4_) and cavalry firearms in battle, these types of units eventually transformed from a heavy shock troop value to mobile and robust units capable of different platforms and fighting with the increased use of firearm technology. Thus, the training would have transitioned from this shock value to use more firearms and mounted tactics to incorporate the technology. Scouting, skirmishing, directly engaging, and chasing down enemies were all roles that the cavalry would continue to play which would require training of different sorts with the changing and different equipment as time progresses.
[This](_URL_7_) PDF talking about Cuirassier swords and some tactics and methods may give a slight clue as to some of the training that would be needed to perform the duties. For instance the PDF states:
> Figure 2 [17] :The sabre in action. This ink demonstrates the manner in which the sabre was wielded in the charge, and
secondly what became of the well dressed lines once the charge got under way. **The trooper therefore leaned well forward in
the saddle, right arm thrust out as far as it's would stretch with sabre continuing the plunge towards the enemy; in this
illustration the trooper's elbows are bent to a rather marked degree whereas, in fact, they would be trained never to bend the
sword arm lest the enemy's edged weapons slide off their sabre guard and amputate the elbow.**
These are types of methods and training requirements that more than likely would have applied to soldiers. Cuirssaiers relied on their sabers that had an edge, but most of the time it was the trauma and blow or a thrusting stab that caused the most damage. Correct sword play and sword handling would have been a very critical aspect of further training. Classically, cavalry troops were garnered from the upper class ranks. Owning horses were not cheap and having experience on one usually meant you were from a more privledged family. Learning how to handle a sword on both foot and horseback would have been an important training focus regardless of the experience level.
[One of Napoleon's cavalry commanders notes in one](_URL_9_) of the opening battles of his offensive in 1813 (Lutzen):
> In his report on the battle of Lutzen, for example, Marshal Ney praised the spirit and courage of his young horsemen but lamented that the attacks by the raw recruits were poorly coordinated and that they had the distrubing habit of falling off their horses during charges....Indeed, when Napoleon decided to seek an armistice in the summer of 1813, a move generally regarded as a major mistake, he stated that while he knew the risks, he needed time to train and equipe his cavalry properly...
We can see here some of the percieved failures and also deduce that training at the onset of the green Napoleonic cavalry was horseback skills and horse riding skills. Although there were more than likely veterans, because of the lack of horsemen when he started his military build up, there were recruits with little experience and bad skills in horseback. Training would have almost certaintly entailed basic horsemanship. Ensuring the soldiers knew how to care for their horses and ensure they were well fed and healthy during campaigns would have been another large aspect of the cavalry troops' training at first.
But, the difficult and more advanced training would have been formations and orientations as a group and a unit. [The future Duke of Wellington would say about cavalry training](_URL_3_):
> The formation and discipline of a body of cavalry are very difficult and tedious, and require great experience and patience in the persons who attempt it...
Maneuvers and shifts and drill tactics would have encompassed much of the training life of a cavalryman during this day and age, as well as many other time periods. Learning maneuvers like [this](_URL_8_) would have been very difficult without lots of practice and training and repitition.
Overall, the training for a cavalry man in the Napoleonic era would have been decided on a few factors such as country of origin and previous experience. Horseman ship and the ability to ride a horse was the first needed skill and the roles of a cavalry soldier were then added to those. More than likely, all soldiers would have been needed to exensively train on formations, drill and ceremony, and assault/defense tactics. This would have been done through reps and reps and reps of doing these tactics over and over again. Because cavalry played such a critical role in this era, these units were revered as important tactical units that were a necesity and mainstay of the armies during the 19th century.
Edit: Sp
| [
"At the start of the French Revolutionary Wars, the \"heavy\" cavalry were equivalent to dragoons or \"medium\" cavalry in the French and other armies. They consisted of three regiments of Household Cavalry, seven regiments of Dragoon Guards and six regiments of Dragoons. The Dragoon Guards had been regiments of he... |
how does the male body (idk if females experience this too) reach post nut clarity? | I don't have the answer. It's neurochemical stuff.
But way to go asking the question like you're five! That shows commitment to the sub. | [
"Once a female is located, the male latches onto her with his otherwise useless teeth. Through enzymatic processes, the tissues of the male gradually begin to coalesce with the tissues of the female, resulting in a permanent attachment and a shared circulatory system, forming a hermaphroditic chimera. The developme... |
what is "starvation mode", in terms of dieting? | It's a largely debunked idea based on a few poorly designed studies decades ago.
The idea is that if your body is deprived of calories for too long, it will start hoarding what calories it does have, thus increasing stored fat.
The main reason most people advocate not eating too little has more to do with sustainability of a dietary change rather than any sort of rebound effect. The other thing that goes into eating too little is the tendency many people have to "eat back" what they missed.
For example, if you don't eat for a day and your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure, or how many calories you burn in a day) is 2000 calories, you're 2000 calories ahead. However, if over the next week you "reward" yourself every day with an extra doughnut, then you can easily offset the calorie deficit.
This is what often leads people to say "I ate less and gained weight, it must be starvation mode."
At the end of the day, I highly reccomend both /r/loseit for good advice, and even cautiously recommend /r/fatlogic as a way to see what really works for people, as well as to hear all of the bunk science that repeatedly gets tossed around. If a point is made in /r/fatlogic it's inevitably backed up with science, and I actually tend to find most of the people there willing to actually discuss things. A lot of the other "dietary" advice I see on the internet seems to revolve around self-referential blogs, or people trying to sell you something, and rarely actual studies and reputable sources.
/Edit to add the one true part of the starvation mode idea: the more weight you lose, the less you burn every day. For instance, if you weigh 300 lbs, your TDEE might be ~3000 calories. If you drop a hundred pounds, it may be closer to 2000. So the less you eat, the less you CAN eat and maintain the same weight. That is true, but it's because of the lost weight and your body not needing to fuel the extra fat, burn as much energy to get around etc. not because of starvation mode.
/edit again to mention one of the things I like the most about /r/fatlogic. Most of the people there (myself included, though on a different account) have struggled with being fat, and many of the regulars include their heaviest weight as well as current weight in their flair. It's not a bunch of theory and echo chambering. It's people who used to believe a lot of the bunk science, but learned better and are now supporting themselves and the community by pointing out all of the logical/scientific flaws we tend to believe. It's NOT Fatpeoplehate, and I do see people get banned for inappropriate/hateful comments. | [
"Equivalent or closely related terms include famine response, starvation mode, famine mode, starvation resistance, starvation tolerance, adapted starvation, adaptive thermogenesis, fat adaptation, and metabolic adaptation.\n",
"Starvation is an imbalance between energy intake and energy expenditure. The body expe... |
could my immune system hypothetically "run out of storage space" for new diseases and thus be unable to become immune to any new ones? | No, your immune system forgets bacterias and viruses over time. That's why a vaccine will eventually not work anymore. But your body remember most bacterias and viruses for years. So no worries. | [
"Note that the innate and acquired portions of the immune system work together, not in spite of each other. The acquired arm, B, and T cells couldn't function without the innate system' input. T cells are useless without antigen-presenting cells to activate them, and B cells are crippled without T cell help. On the... |
New Orleans was a French possession for only about 45 years and had a very small population for most of that time. How did French influence manage to remain so strong there? | I'm assuming that you mean the French influence is strong in New Orleans as compared to other territories of French Louisiana added to the United States in the Louisiana purchase? Obviously, the French influence in New Orleans pales in comparison to that in Quebec. So taking the question as why is the French influence more obvious in New Orleans than in, say, St. Louis, I think the underlying answer is population. In 1810, New Orleans was a city of 17,000 inhabitants -- nearly all of them French speaking. As discussed below, Spanish Louisiana was really a continuation of French Louisiana and another 8,000 or so French speaking immigrants arrived in New Orleans in 1809. So, 1810 New Orleans was a large, well-established, Francophone city. The other cities of the Louisiana territory were not and so did not have the same cultural persistence.
As you note, New Orleans went through two colonial powers: France (to 1762) and essentially Spain -- though with the briefest return to France to the Louisiana purchase in 1803. You should, however, really think of this as a century of French influence -- not a half century each of divided French and Spanish influence.
During the Spanish period after 1762, Spanish cultural influence on the Louisiana territory broadly was limited. The first Spanish governor arrived in New Orleans in 1766 and was driven from the city by a Francophile revolt in 1768. The Spanish suppressed the revolt (oddly enough the governor sent to do this, Alejandro O'Reilly was Irish by birth) and then installed Luis de Unzaga as governor. To prevent further difficulties, Unzaga decided to embrace the francophone Louisiana elite. Unzaga married a francophone Louisian Creole woman (Marie Elizabeth St. Maxent), allowed significant cultural and political autonomy, and allowed the francophone Creole elite to continue to dominate affairs. Spanish culture simply did not penetrate Louisiana.
New Orleans also received several waves of French-speaking immigration. After the Haitian revolution, a large number of French speaking refugees (including much of the colonial elite) fled to New Orleans beginning in the 1790s. A number of French monarchists also fled France for New Orleans during the French revolution. A number of other Francophones fled Haiti for Cuba. In 1809 many of these were expelled and fled to New Orleans. In 1809 alone, over 9,000 of these (almost exclusively French speaking) refugees arrived, roughly doubling the population of the city.
Thus, we get to the early 19th century with a large, well-developed and French influenced city, so the next question is why this didn't unravel over the next 200 years. Of course, it did to a considerable extent. Again, New Orleans is not Montreal -- it's a clearly American, English-speaking city. There was simply a large enough cultural force to have some persistence over time -- thus, the French street names, French cuisine, fondness for the -eaux suffix and so on.
In 1812, Louisiana (as a whole, I don't know of New Orleans statistics) was 75% French speaking. Thereafter, there was large scale English speaking immigration, and Louisiana (again as a whole) was 70% English speaking in 1860. The French culture was stronger in rural South Louisiana than in New Orleans. In 1852, the New Orleans *Knickberbocker* [declared](_URL_0_): "The New-Orleans of 1852 is not the New-Orleans of twenty years ago. The innovations of the Anglo-Saxon race have been steadily undermining the manners and customs of the aborigines of the country ... The Creole influenced breathed its last breath ... New-Orleans is now an Anglo-Saxon city." The aftermath of the Civil War dealt the death blow to Louisiana French speakers -- the Reconstruction-era constitution mandated English language education. The French speaking newspapers in Louisiana largely closed in the second half of the 19th century. | [
"French colonists founded the city of New Orleans in 1718, traveling from Mobile, Alabama to the Mississippi River. Because the area was a major hub for the slave trade, there was an increase of African slaves from 300 to 1,000 between the years of 1726 to 1732. By 1800, the population of the city included Anglo-Am... |
WW2 Tanks - British/Soviet Commander Hatch machineguns? | There were two official types of roof mounted AA machineguns for Soviet WWII era vehicles: the 7.62 mm DT in a P-40 mount and the 12.7 mm DShK.
The [P-40 mount](_URL_3_) was developed before the war, in 1937, with an improved version built in 1938. This mount was installed on a wide variety of vehicles, including BT, T-26, T-28, T-35, and KV tanks. The A-20 also had it, but the production T-34 did not.
BT and T-26 tanks with these mounts were also called "AA tanks" and were considered a special kind of tank, much like commander's tanks. According to the table of organization, every fifth light tank would have an AA machinegun (one per platoon).
The P-40 was phased out of production since it was made clear during the Spanish Civil War that the DT was not powerful enough to shoot down modern aircraft. Self propelled AA guns in larger calibers were given preference. Nevertheless, you see KV tanks with cast turrets and ZIS-5 guns (at least late 1941) with these mounts, plus DT machineguns installed in ad-hoc manner for AA on tanks that weren't supposed to have them at all, like T-34s.
However, the idea of SPAAGs didn't work out despite many attempts, and the tankers still wanted mobile AA cover. The presence of a 12.7 mm machinegun on the M4A2 Sherman tanks delivered via Lend Lease was found to be a very desirable quality. The evaluation of the tank highlights that the presence of such a machinegun makes the tank superior in firepower to other domestic and foreign medium tanks.
Even though that evaluation was written in 1942, the wheels of bureaucracy turned slowly, and an [AA gun mount](_URL_2_) for a domestic 12.7 mm machinegun was only approved in October of 1944. Even then, it was only installed on heavy tanks and SPGs. I've read arguments that the T-34-85 was too unstable a platform for DShKs, but there are many photos of Syrian T-34-85s with that exact machinegun, so its absence from medium tanks is a mystery to me.
M.V. Kolomiets *T-26 Tyazhelaya Sud'ba Lyogkogo Tanka*
A.G. Solyankin et al *Sovetskiye Lyogkiye Tanki 1920-1941*
A.G. Solyankin et al *Sovetskiye Sredniye Tanki 1924-1941*
P. Samsonov [*M4A2 Sherman Assessment*](_URL_0_)
P. Samsonov [*AA MG*](_URL_1_) | [
"The Tank, Infantry, Mk IV (A22) Churchill was a British heavy infantry tank used in the Second World War, best known for its heavy armour, large longitudinal chassis with all-around tracks with multiple bogies, its ability to climb steep slopes, and its use as the basis of many specialist vehicles. It was one of t... |
How did professions that used lots of paper, like bankers and lawyers, preserve the hundreds of pages of documents in the 19th Century? | This has always been a problem and fire was a common enemy. You don't even have to go back as far as the 1800's. You can read about [The 1973 Fire, National Personnel Records Center](_URL_0_) to get a basic idea of what kind of loss could occur and how they might go about reconstructing as much of that data as possible. Redundancy, indexing, backups, and disperate storage methods have always been important in data retention, still to this day.
I'd love to read a 'Salt' like book about your very question and will be eagerly watching this thread. | [
"The growth of business during the industrial revolution created the need for a more efficient means of transcription than hand copying. Carbon paper was first used in the early 19th century. By the late 1840s copying presses were used to copy outgoing correspondence. One by one, other methods appeared. These inclu... |
Help me understand why my speed of light loophole is probably wrong. | > If gravitational attraction leads to constant acceleration, why can't two objects with mass be placed far enough apart in a sufficiently empty universe to accelerate towards each other and eventually reach the speed of light.
Because the acceleration becomes less and less, the closer you get to the speed of light.
You may or may not be aware of this, but in the theory of special relativity, when you add velocities, the relationship is **not** linear.
In classical mechanics, you have a very simple relationship between two speeds *v* and *u*:
*s = v + u*
In relativity, however, [the relationship has an additional factor](_URL_0_) that keeps the total speed *s* below the speed of light:
*s = (v + u) / (1 + vu/c^(2))*
At ordinary speeds, the term *(1 + vu/c^(2))* is very close to 1, so the factor is negligible. However, at high speeds (where the product *vu* is large compared to *c^(2)*), the factor is no longer negligible, and you get results like this:
*v = u = .5c*
*s = (v + u) / (1 + vu/c^(2))*
*s = (.5c + .5c) / (1 + .25c^(2)/c^(2))*
*s = 1c / (1.25)*
*s = 0.8c*
Similarly, if you plug in *v = u = c*, you get *s = c*. So, the composition of any two velocities *always* adds up to the speed of light or less, in every reference frame.
So in short, there is *no distance* for which *v + u* can possibly equal *c*. This is equivalent to saying: An infinite amount of energy is required to accelerate a massive body beyond the speed of light, and there is no distance for which the gravitational potential energy between two bodies is infinite.
Hope that helps!
> I'm assuming that the speed of the objects would actually be asymptotic to the speed of light, if that's the case, why? If acceleration is constant, shouldn't speed increase linearly?
Well, when dealing with gravity, the acceleration *won't* be constant -- it will increase with the decreasing distance between the two masses, according to [Newton's law of universal gravitation](_URL_1_):
_F = G (m1\*m2)/r^(2)_
But even if the acceleration was constant, acceleration is defined as the rate of change of velocity over time. But velocity is different in different reference frames! That means, while the acceleration may be a certain magnitude in a certain frame of reference, in a different frame of reference, the acceleration will be scaled down proportionally to the object's current velocity. That is to say, the faster an object is travelling (in a reference frame), the less it accelerates, when a certain (frame-invariant) force is applied -- or equivalently, the more force is required to accelerate it by the same magnitude as if it were stationary.
Another way of saying this is that the force law in relativity is not Newton's force law, *F = ma*, but rather it is *F = γma* where *γ* is the [Lorentz factor](_URL_2_).
> I'm also assuming relativistic principles play a part (increased mass of objects as they approach the speed of light, time dilation, other magical stuff)
Actually, mass *doesn't* increase as objects approach the speed of light -- these days, it is understood that "mass" means the *rest mass* of a body (its measured mass in the body's center of momentum frame), and kinetic energy is not considered part of an object's mass. The term that includes kinetic energy and scales according to *m = E/c^(2)* is known as "relativistic mass," and it is rather well established these days that relativistic mass is not the term *m* which appears in equations like *E = mc^(2)*, rather it is the term *M = γm* where *γ* is the Lorentz factor and *m* is the body's rest mass.
And by the way, in case you weren't aware, *E = mc^(2)* is actually a reduction of the complete formula, and it *only* applies to *massive* bodies, when the body is at rest. The full equation for an arbitrary body's energy at any speed is:
*E^(2) = p^(2)c^(2) + m^(2)c^(4)* where *p* is the momentum
As you may be able to tell, if you plug in *p = 0* you get *E = mc^(2)*. Similarly, for a massless body, if you plug in *m = 0*, you get *E = pc* which is the familiar energy of a photon (this is how a photon can carry energy and momentum despite being massless and having an infinite range). And for a massive body which is moving, the mass remains the same, while the momentum contributes to the additional energy of the body.
Hope that helps! | [
"If we repeat the exercise with light signals sent around the other side of the hole, the resulting anisotropy in the speed of light will now act in the opposite direction, and B will appear to be \"uphill\" of A.\n",
"Some physicists have claimed that it is possible for spin-zero particles to travel faster than ... |
Did the dinosaur-apocalypse meteor's impact change the Earth's orbit or rotation? | Slightly. Every collision results in the transfer of linear and angular momentum. But the mass of the impactor was so small in relation to the Earth that if it happened, it would be difficult, but not impossible, to measure the affect. | [
"The collision released about 100 million times more energy than the more recent Chicxulub impact that is believed to have caused the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs. It was enough to vaporize some of the Earth's outer layers and melt both bodies. A portion of the mantle material was ejected into orbit around... |
Is one side of the brain emotional/creative while the other side is logical/factual? | Things such as logical or creative can be complex behaviors and are not limited to a single area in the brain. There are some aspects of brain function that are lateralized (e.g., language on the left and visuospatial on the right), but even these are not only done on one side of the brain and are not the same for all people. There has been a great deal of research on so-called ["split-brain" patients](_URL_2_) which clearly show this [lateralization](_URL_1_). But, and here is a big but, most people do not have a severed corpus callosum and therefore the hemispheres of the brain communicate with each other and share in behaviors. Therefore, in the end, [both of the sides of the brain work together](_URL_0_).
Anything that you see from educational materials, brain training, self-help books, philosophy, etc. that tries to draw large truths about people in general from a left/right brain perspective, are taking an ounce of research findings and turning it into a metaphor instead of scientific truth. | [
"In \"The Divided Brain\", McGilchrist digests study after study, replacing the popular and superficial notion of the hemispheres as respectively logical and creative in nature with the idea that they pay attention in fundamentally different ways, the left being detail-oriented, the right being whole-oriented. Thes... |
What keeps food from ‘going down the wrong pipe’ and doesn’t when said event occurs? | Swallowing is a pretty complex process that takes place in three different stages. Esophageal stage isn't as important to your question. The oral phase is important in food bolus preparation for pharyngeal transit. Without the phase, food going down the wrong tube is more likely but not a given.
The pharyngeal phase is most responsible for preventing penetration and aspiration. What you're talking about is aspiration, food going through the vocal folds into the trachea. Swallowing in the pharyngeal phase takes place in less than a seconds time. The larynx elevates and the epiglottis folds down over the glottis to allow for a conduit into the hypopharynx. This is the main preventer of food going down the wrong tube. The glottis and false cords are also closed, you can't breathe during this time. If there is penetration for whatever reason due to some dysfunction of the pharyngeal phase and food enters the larynx, then you have your larynx, specifically the false and true vocal folds, that are extremely well innervated and the food induces a cough reflex. Even with aspiration into the windpipe, the trachea, which is also well innervated, will induce a cough.
There are many insults that can alter each part of this, but there is a lot of redundancy built in. | [
"There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip is a very old proverb, similar in meaning to \"don't count your chickens before they hatch\". It implies that even when a good outcome or conclusion seems certain, things can still go wrong.\n",
"The five-second rule, sometimes also the three-second rule, is a weste... |
how old black and white photos, that pre-date colored photography, can accurately have color added into them. | I don't do recolors, but to my knowledge when one is doing a recolor, he/she guesses approximately what the colors would be. There's no real science behind it. Hope that helps. If anyone has more knowledge, please chime in. | [
"Color photography is almost as old as black-and-white, with early experiments including John Herschel's Anthotype prints in 1842, the pioneering work of Louis Ducos du Hauron in the 1860s, and the Lippmann process unveiled in 1891, but for many years color photography remained little more than a laboratory curiosi... |
what is penicillin? and how do we get it from mold to curing things? | It's a chemical that forms in the namesake fungus. A scientist noticed by serendipity that a sample of the fungus prevented bacterial growths. | [
"The discovery of penicillin ushered in a new age of antibiotics derived from microorganisms. Penicillin is an antibiotic isolated from growing \"Penicillium\" mold in a fermenter. The mold is grown in a liquid culture containing sugar and other nutrients including a source of nitrogen. As the mold grows, it uses u... |
why are you not guaranteed a trial by a jury of your peers in the us? | The Supreme Court decided that "petty crimes" that have a punishment of less than 6 months in prison or only result in a fine do not require a jury.
_URL_0_ | [
"Clay Conrad has stated that libertarian-minded voir dire members can and should increase their odds of getting on a jury by telling the prosecutors what they want to hear, without actually lying. Jurors who lie to get on a jury can be charged with such offenses as contempt of court and obstruction of justice. Back... |
Did 'Bloody' Mary Tudor deserve her title? | I think it's fair to say she wasn't significantly worse than her contemporaries, even her lauded successor, Elizabeth I; it was a period where religion and politics were deeply intertwined, and warfare was constant across Europe. It's worth nothing that she killed fewer people over the course of her reign (283 is the exact number, I think) than her father did in single years of his, and her nickname and that of her sister were actually reversed in Ireland; instead of Bloody Mary, Irish Catholics were cursing Bloody Bess. English troops caused massive destruction in putting down Irish revolts, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths by starvation, in addition to the actual fighting.
Part of the reason we have the famous one-note perception of Mary is because her reign was ultimately quite short, so we only see the results of her immediate activities (suppressing Protestantism and losing Calais), rather than her long term policies (fiscal reform, naval expansion, and colonization), which bore fruit under Elizabeth. Her short reign was especially irksome with regards to Calais, since she was alive long enough to lose it upon entering war in support of her husband, Philip II, but not long enough to have a seat at the negotiating table at the end of the war, whereupon Spain and England passed out of personal union, and Philip had no problems letting the French keep Calais. | [
"Mary I (18 February 1516 – 17 November 1558), also known as Mary Tudor, was the Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 until her death. She is best known for her aggressive attempt to reverse the English Reformation, which had begun during the reign of her father, Henry VIII. The executions that marked her pu... |
Why does a silencer reduce the bullets velocity? | Most modern silencers, more correctly known as "suppressors," in fact do *not* affect a bullet's velocity in any significant way. Early suppressors contained a rubber gasket (called a wipe if memory serves) that would briefly be in contact with the bullet, and the idea is that the resulting friction would slow the ~~gun~~ bullet down a bit. But modern suppressors don't have such wipes anymore, and they are manufactured with high accuracy such that they do not influence the bullet's trajectory in any way.
Edit: I might add that suppressors have been known to cause subtle inaccuracies in target shooting because the added weight to the gun is harder to aim. | [
"Silencers reduce firing recoil significantly, primarily by diverting and trapping the propellant gas. The gas generally has much less mass than the projectile, but it exits the muzzle at multiples of the projectile velocity, so reducing the speed and quantity of the gas expelled can significantly reduce the total ... |
what is it that can make similar guns from different brands sound different when firing the same cartridge? | Barrel length affects the amount of propellant that is burned. Shorter barrel means louder blast.
Muzzle brakes/compensators/flash hiders on ends of barrels affects how the burned propellant is directed, which can change how the shot sounds.
| [
"Multiple discharges of one or more firearms are referred to as gunfire. The word can connote either the sound of a gun firing, the projectiles that were fired, or both. For example, the statement \"gunfire came from the next street\" could either mean the sound of discharge, or it could mean the bullets that were ... |
why is iran having nuclear capabilities such a big concern when the u.s. and plenty of other countries already do? | There is no nuclear weapons program in Iran, according even to Israel and the US:
**The United States, European allies and even Israel generally agree on three things about Iran's nuclear program: Tehran does not have a bomb, has not decided to build one, and is probably years away from having a deliverable nuclear warhead.**
_URL_0_
The US instead accuses Iran of having the "intention to obtain the capability" to make nukes. A "capability" to make nukes is a deliberately vague accusation since the technology is 60 years old, and so practically any country with some technological development is "capable" theoretically of making nukes.
In fact according to the IAEA 40 nations have this "capability" right now -- that's 1 out of every 4 or 5 nations on the planet:
**More than 40 countries with peaceful nuclear programs could retool them to make weapons, the head of the U.N. atomic watchdog agency said yesterday amid new U.S. and European demands that Iran give up technology capable of producing such arms.**
_URL_1_
| [
"BULLET::::- A potential reason behind U.S. resistance to an Iranian nuclear program lies in Middle Eastern geopolitics. In essence, the US feels that it must guard against even the possibility of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapons capability. Some nuclear technology is dual-use; i.e. it can be used for peaceful ener... |
Because of the time it takes for the light of distant stars to reach us, how different would the sky have looked hundreds of years in the past? | There are very few stars that will change on such short time scales. One example is Eta Carinae. It used to be one of the brightest stars in the sky, but "burped" a hundred years ago or so, and is now obscured by its own dust cloud.
Also, the time that light takes to reach us plays no part whatsoever into how many stars are in the night sky. | [
"When one looks out into the night sky, distances also correspond to time into the past. A galaxy measured at ten billion light years in distance appears to us as it was ten billion years ago, because the light has taken that long to travel to the observer. If one were to look at a galaxy ten billion light years aw... |
Japan and USSR during 1938-1939. Were the USSR's armies actually superior to those of Japan? In what ways? | The Red Army was superior to the Kwantung Army in three main ways, all of which feed into each other. They had a superior doctrine, were superior technologically, and were superior numerically. The last two were both dictated by, and enabled the first.
The Red Army in the region, under Georgy Zhukov, used the ideas of Deep Battle formulated by Mikhail Tukhachevsky. While this had been discredited by Tukhachevsky's purge, Zhukov was willing to put it into practice in this case. This doctrine dictated broad-front attacks to open the enemy rear to strong combined-armed forces. These could then be used to destroy the enemy ability to fight, by occupying territory, or, as it was used in this case, by encircling the forward forces of the opposition. It would later be used successfully in WWII. In comparison, Japanese doctrine was static, with armour being used separately from infantry. Attacks were made using small groups of infiltrating infantry similar to the German stormtrooper groups of the later part of WWI. Defensively, the doctrine mandated a thin forward defence, where a defence-in-depth is the best way to deal with Deep Battle.
The Soviet doctrine relied on fast tanks, supported by motorised infantry. This resulted in production of the BT series of tanks, ancestors of the T-34. These tanks were fast, and well armed with a high-velocity 45mm gun. While they were lightly armoured, their guns had an effective range far higher than those used by the Japanese. Japanese tanks were much slower, with less effective guns. At the same time, they had the same low armour as their Soviet counterparts.The motorised infantry required large amounts of trucks, which allowed Zhukov to ship supplies forwards from his railheads with ease. The Japanese, who didn't have the same access to motorised transport, struggled with this. In the air, the contest was surprisingly even. The Zero and Ki-48 Oscar of WWII had not yet entered Japanese service. Instead, Ki-27 Nates took on I-16s. This was a more even contest than that with the tanks, but still in favour of the Soviets. The I-16 was more heavily armed, and armoured than its Japanese counterpart. The Ki-27 was more manoeuvrable, but the I-16 was faster in a dive. With the advantage of numbers and improved tactics, the Soviet Air Force was able to prevent the IJA from affecting the battle significantly.
Finally, as was common for the Soviets, they had numerical superiority. They had 3 rifle divisions, 2 armoured divisions, 2 motor rifle divisions and 2 tank brigades. They also had the support of 2 Mongolian cavalry divisions. At the point of attack, the Japanese had a single division. In general in war, the side with more forces wins - there's a Patton quote to the effect of "war being decided by the side who gets there first with the most".
The second part of your question has two answers. The first is doctrinal.The Japanese doctrine of 1938 had a clear family resemblance to that of 1905. They had taken the wrong lessons from 1905 and from WWI. The Sino-Japanese War had done nothing to disprove this doctrine. As a result, their doctrine was heavily focussed on infantry combat supported by light artillery. This was fine in 1905 and 1914, and worked against poorly led Chinese infantry. This led to Japanese army procurement being focussed on weaponry that fitted this plan. In 1905, these were the most modern things on the market - bolt action rifles, machine guns, light field artillery. In 1938, the same types of weapons were being bought. Armour was experimental, and used low-velocity guns for infantry support. Heavier artillery pieces were neglected - some of the heaviest guns used by the IJA in 1938 had been bought to deal with the forts of Port Arthur in 1905. However, the rest of the world had moved on. Heavy artillery, tanks and trucks were the most important things an army could have, and Japan had only the most basic of these.
Even had their doctrine been in favour of producing these, they would have run into trouble doing so. Japan didn't have the greatest heavy industry in 1938. When the country is only producing a limited amount of armour plate per year, and the navy wants most of it for building battleships, the army can't build tanks. There were not enough trained mechanics to support a large tank or motorised corps. Even the IJN's aircraft carriers only had just enough mechanics for their air groups - the most significant losses at Midway were in ground crew, not pilots. The Soviets had the heavy industry, and the technically skilled manpower to support the demands of modern war. Japan did not. | [
"Organizationally, although Soviet forces in the Far East on paper amounted to some 32 division-equivalents by December 1941, they were regarded as only barely sufficient for defensive operations. Compared to a typical Japanese division, pre-war Red Army units possessed slightly less manpower, but had greater acces... |
Many questions about recent /r/science posts about our universe being inside a black hole. | 1) Not very. It's mostly just that one guy working on it. It's a cool story, so they picked up on it.
2) The arrow of time markers shouldn't be viewed as something causative: time doesn't advance because of entropy increasing or the universe expanding. Rather, they're ways to figure out which way is which. It's similar to losing your bearings while scuba diving, and watching the bubbles to figure out which way is up.
2B) I'm not sure this is fully understood, but by the time it gets small enough for that to happen it is emitting high energy gamma radiation. In reality black holes are colder than the cosmic microwave background so they won't have a net loss of energy.
3-5 I have to do more research and I'm not on a computer with journal access right now. | [
"What was formerly believed to be a supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way is revealed to be an artificial construct, known as the Void. Inside, there is a strange universe where the laws of physics are very different from those we know. It is slowly consuming the other stars of the galactic core—on... |
why technology "freezes" | It doesn't unless your in the arctic. Sometimes things lock up, due to software conflicts. | [
"In software engineering, a freeze is a point in time in the development process after which the rules for making changes to the source code or related resources become more strict, or the period during which those rules are applied. A freeze helps move the project forward towards a release or the end of an iterati... |
how did apex predators that existed millions of years ago go extinct? (i.e terror birds, megalodon, levyatan) | It's hard to pinpoint the exact causes ~~of~~ for most prehistoric animals and plants, beyond trying to extrapolate data from the scarce info we have. We can look at extinction events nowadays for clues though. Overfeeding and loss of habitat from environmental changes are the two biggest causes. | [
"Apex predators are thought to have existed since at least the Cambrian period, around 500 million years ago. Extinct species cannot be directly determined to be apex predators as their behaviour cannot be observed, and clues to ecological relationships, such as bite marks on bones or shells, do not form a complete... |
In America during World War II, what would happen if a man was drafted, and it turns out he wouldn't have made a good soldier? | In a draft, it's not like you get handed a uniform. It means you report for selection. People are turned down for all sorts of reasons, even in a draft. Poor vision, diabetes, epilepsy, heart problems, hearing problems, mental illness, being too short, or not strong enough to keep up. There are written tests, medical tests, physical fitness tests, and interviews to determine if you're a viable candidate for the military. Even though standards are usually lowered somewhat during a time of war, there are still standards to be met, and people who don't meet them will not be able to serve.
Knowing that, there were a lot of people, particularly in Vietnam, who tried to avoid service by failing the tests. For example, the [Ishihara test for Colour Blindness](_URL_0_) includes a plate that can be seen by people of any colour blindness, and was used during the draft to find out who was lying to avoid military service. | [
"The number of men who actively sought to evade the World War II draft in Canada is not known. Military historian Jack Granatstein says the evasion was \"widespread\". In addition, in 1944 alone approximately 60,000 draftees were serving only as NRMA men, committed to border defense but not to fighting abroad.\n",
... |
Are the steroids that cause people to gain weight in medication the same as the steroids people use to build muscle? | The term steroid refers to molecules that have a similar 4 ring, 17 carbon base skeleton. Additions to this skeleton are what make each steroid different, but still belong to the same family.
So the type of "weight gaining" steroid that most people are on would be something like prednisone. The weight gain is a side effect, since most people are using it to suppress their immune system. For anyone who has had to take it, they will tell you it makes them ravenously hungery and insatiable.
The type of bodybuilding steroid people take is an androgenic steroid (similar to testosterone).
Again both share a similar backbone, but are different. And it's not just these two types that have this similarity. Estrogens, progestogens, androgens, and mineralocorticoids (that maintain blood pressure), glucocorticoids (that help regulate immune function and blood sugar levels) are all steroid hormones. | [
"Anabolic steroids are artificially produced hormones called androgens, which are essentially male-type sex hormones in the body. The most powerful of the androgens is testosterone. Another group of steroids are steroidal supplements, a weaker form of androgens. Steroids and supplements are controversial when used ... |
Do we have any idea how gender egalitarian Teryan early pre-Christian pagan England was? And how much the introduction of Christianity change to that? | When you say "early pre-Christian pagan England", are you referring to:
pre-Roman pagan southern Britain (ie BC);
the early Roman period in southern Britain (pre-Christian pagan, so maybe the 2nd century AD);
or the early Anglo-Saxon period prior to Christianisation (so about 500-600AD)?
(Also, I confess I don't at all know what you mean by Teryan)
Checking Wikipedia, I see that the Mists of Avalon is a work of Arthurian fantasy, set during the time of the Saxon invasion. So, then, I'd have thought you'd really want to know how gender-egalitarian post-Roman Christian Britain was, not early pre-Christian pagan England.
Remember that Arthur is a fictional story set in what is essentially a fictional time; very few Arthurian romances portray the period accurately, because the source material (the original Arthur stories) is itself extremely inaccurate (it's portraying a legendary, mythical time, not an accurate picture of late Romano-British culture).
So, at the time prior to the Saxon invasions, what later became known as England (it was the Anglo-Saxons who named it England), was inhabited by the Romano-Brits; a somewhat Christianised, thoroughly Romanised culture. As Christianisation had been recent, it's quite likely that there were still many pagans; however, they were not the "Mother Goddess"-type pagans of Mists of Avalon; they were Roman-style pagans, worshipping gods like Jupiter, Juno, Mercury, Venus, etc (though sometimes with British names; for example, Bath was a city where people worshipped the goddess Minerva/Sulis, using both a Roman and British name).
That doesn't directly answer your question about gender-egalitarianism. But I want to explain the background.
Arthur is set in a fictionalised, mythical golden age. Many modern works try to set him in a slightly more realistic time, before the Saxon invasions. What they often miss, however (as I think Mists of Avalon does, but then, it is just a work of fiction, it's not trying to be history), is that the pre-Saxon period was the post-Roman period, nearly half a millenia after the Romans had conquered Britain. In some medieval legends, Arthur is related to the Imperial family of Rome.
So, it's a mistake to think about gender equality or other cultural sociological phenomonen at this time as being about Brythonic culture, but rather, as being like Roman culture. | [
"Developing from the earlier Iron Age religion of continental northern Europe, it was introduced to Britain following the Anglo-Saxon migration in the mid 5th century, and remained the dominant belief system in England until the Christianisation of its kingdoms between the 7th and 8th centuries, with some aspects g... |
why do people choose to live in high crime areas (e.g. compton, ca and south side, chicago) | High crime and low rent/property value go hand in hand. People live there because they can't afford to live anywhere else. | [
"The popularity of the neighborhood has costs. Older, lifelong residents often clash with the values of the young urban professionals and students moving in. Also, parking in the South Side is among the tightest in the city, as narrow streets and high density of buildings leave little empty street space. Nuisance c... |
what causes airplane turbulence in a completely clear sky? | Turbulence is caused when different currents of air mix, causing pressure differences in the air and thus affecting flight through it. This doesn't always form clouds or other detectable formation, called clear air turbulence. | [
"Wake turbulence is another type of clear-air turbulence, but in this case the causes are quite different from those set out above. In the case of wake turbulence, the rotating vortex-pair created by the wings of a large aircraft as it travels lingers for a significant amount of time after the passage of the aircra... |
why do some people (like myself) have big booming voices and have difficulty speaking at an inside voice, but some people have really soft voices and struggle to speak up? | Genetics. I think this question is similar to the question 'why am I blonde and my sibling is brunette?' Or 'why am I taller than my siblings?'. It's all in the genes. That being said, you can teach yourself to speak softly/loudly. It takes practice like everything else but it can be done. | [
"Creaky voice is prevalent as a peer-group affectation among young women in the United States. For example, researcher Ikuko Patricia Yuasa suggests that the tendency is a product of young women trying to infuse their speech with gravitas by means of reaching for the male register and found that \"college-age Ameri... |
-why were fifa execs arrested, and what did the usa have to do with it? | We don't know yet.
Even FIFA don't know yet. They've issued a press statement saying they are "seeking clarification".
We also don't know who's been arrested - only one of the six men has been named, and he's a FIFA official from the Cayman Islands.
The FBI are due to give a press conference at 3.30pm BST. No doubt we will know a lot more then. | [
"On 27 May 2015, the United States Department of Justice unsealed an indictment following the arrest of several past and present FIFA officials. It stated that \"a high-ranking FIFA official\" caused payments totalling US $10 million to be paid to bank accounts in the name of CONCACAF and Caribbean Football Union c... |
how hard is it to quit smoking? | Because it contains a drug and drug addiction is very hard to overcome. Even with willpower it's hard to overcome. Same with any addiction. I've never smoked so never been addicted to nicotine. But I have been addicted to medicine. I won't say "drugs" because of what that appears. I never abused my medicine but I sure as hell never missed a dose, and stayed on longer than I truly needed. My regular dr (different than prescriber-was a workmans comp dr), reg dr weaned me off and helped me.
Addiction needs the desire to overcome it plus willpower and strength to do so. Many people can't or won't.
Some people can quit cold turkey and not have any problems. Others relapse and or have bad withdrawal off add to rice substances. Everyone is different because of chemical biology. | [
"BULLET::::- \"From April 2009 to April 2011 (a prospectus)\" Front (Smoking damages your health. Once you start smoking, it is very difficult to quit) Back (It is illegal to sell cigarettes to people under 19! It hurts your children's health)\n",
"The Easy Way to Stop Smoking is a self-help book written by Briti... |
What are some other theories of gravity? | There are plenty. It's very easy to construct a new theory of gravity - just put in some new ingredients and decide how those ingredients behave, and how they interact with the gravitational field. The real question isn't whether you can do it, it's a) whether you can make it fit with observations, and b) whether it's preferable to our current theory, general relativity (GR). GR fits practically all the data very well, especially if you consider two modifications - adding in dark energy and dark matter. Moreover GR is about as simple a theory of gravity as you can get - it has pretty much the simplest form for a theory with no extra ingredients. So any new theory is going to be more complex and less attractive, and seem fairly ad hoc.
The motivation for modifying this simple and elegant theory of GR is usually to explain dark energy or dark matter, and for various reasons people tend to prefer doing this for dark energy (there's just a lot of evidence out there that dark matter is a particle, and the modified gravity alternatives like TeVeS are really complicated and messy in comparison). | [
"Gravity is most accurately described by the general theory of relativity (proposed by Albert Einstein in 1915) which describes gravity not as a force, but as a consequence of the curvature of spacetime caused by the uneven distribution of mass. The most extreme example of this curvature of spacetime is a black hol... |
how/why does 'ghost pepper' cause vomiting, rectal bleeding, sweating? | I'm assuming the chemicals in the pepper cause a great deal of irritation to human tissues.
Regular hot peppers cause similar irritation, but not to the same degree. At a certain point hot peppers are no longer foodstuffs and are just health hazards. | [
"In CBS's \"The Mentalist\" episode \"Red Scare\" (Season 2, episode 5, 2009), Patrick Jane realises that Pepper's ghost was used in an attempt to scare one of the characters, an architect, from an old house he was developing.\n",
"The makers of Skunklock compare the effects to those of pepper spray, but note tha... |
Where do stereotypical "redneck" names like Bubba, Skeeter, or Cletus come from? | LIke many Colloquial things, the etemology of these names is tough to trace because their use is rarely documented very well.
The etemology of the word bubba has [reportedly](_URL_3_) traced to the german word "Bube." (meaning boy), or a similar sounding Gullah Word [BuhBuh](_URL_0_) meaning brother. - See also [this article](_URL_1_) referencing different Gullah words for Brother, "Buh" "Bruh," and other contractions of the term all meaning "brother," and used as a familial term among African American Communities in the Antebellum south.
> Animals in the tales refer to each other as 'brother' in the same manner that slaveholders referred to their chattel as 'family.' On one side, they are indeed 'brothers' and 'family,' for they belong to the same species. On the other hand, certain characteristics, such as race or class, circumvent true kinship. These lessons were not lost on the young.
It's notable that in many southern Baptist Communities "Brother" is still a fairly frequent term used to reference a man who's a member of the community. "You should go see brother john."
Given the fairly limited German population in the South (Although a non-trivial population of German Catholics settled in the Mississippi Delta in the late 1800's and early 1900's, as well as significant german populations in Texas (per a comment) the Creole interpretation is more likely. And it's a fairly straightforward path as to how it would have gained more widespread use.
As to "Skeeter" - the root word is Mosquito. [Mirriam Webster](_URL_4_) lists the first known use of the word as referencing a mosquito to be 1839. It comes from earlier English origins describing something that is quick and darting (hence it also describing a small boat). Given the presence (or abundance I might say) of mosquitos in much of the South, it's not unusual that it might have some use as a nickname.
Cletus is trickier. Most sources seem to indicate the name is of greek origin. " It actually had some popularity as a given name in the late 19th century. I'm unable to find any sources specifically identifying how it *specifically* became associated with rednecks that predate its use on the Simpsons for the Character [Cleetus Spuckler](_URL_2_) who is a stereotypical hillbilly character with his first appearance in 1994. Edit: a comment response did point out that the Dukes of Hazzard (airing 79-85) had a character named Cletus as one of the Sherrif's deputies.
| [
"Because of its association with the southern part of the United States, \"Bubba\" is also often used outside the South as a pejorative to mean a person of low economic status and limited education. \"Bubba\" may also be taken to mean one who is a \"good ol' boy\". In the US Army and Marines, \"Bubba\" can mean a l... |
How accurate, topographically speaking, was the Chernobyl level in CoD 4? | I don't know about topography, but the way the game is styled is fairly accurate. Pripyat has been abandoned since the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster, so everything has been left for mother nature to control. But the ferris wheel is actually real and is still in Pripyat and some of the more famous building are also worked into the game
_URL_0_
_URL_1_ | [
"Unfortunately, hydrological and geological conditions in Chernobyl area promoted rapid radionuclide migration to subsurface water network. These factors include flat terrain, abundant precipitation and highly permeable sandy sediments Main natural factors of nuclides migration in the region can be divided into fou... |
If you had a properly sized lens completely free of any imperfection, could you build a magnifying glass that could see atoms? | No, because the wavelength of (visible) light is longer than the distances between atoms, so they cannot be distinguished are the therefore non-resolvable. 1000x magnification is about as far as light can go, which allows you to see bacteria, but not viruses.
Electron microscopes are instead used because the wavelength of electrons...or something...is short enough to distinguish between two objects at that scale. | [
"Lower size sensors also allow for the use of a wider range of lenses, since some types of optical impurities (specifically vignetting) are most visible around the edge of the lens. By only using the center of the lens, these impurities are not noticed. In practice, this allows for the use of lower cost glass witho... |
why do all space launch pictures make the space ship look like it’s going in a full circle? | The rocket doesn't go straight up to exit the atmosphere, it has to curve to conserve energy and reach the desired altitude. So the trail from the rocket explosion is really curved, because its trajectory was curved. | [
"The section of spaceship that appears in the park scenes was created using scaffolding covered with plastic sheets. The lighting of these scenes was intended to pastiche \"Close Encounters of the Third Kind\". The special effects shots of the ship in flight were recycled from the TV series \"\". Due to the variety... |
why have many pathogens evolved to be deadly if this constrains their ability to spread? | We are not the natural host animal for many pathogens. The best way to find the host organism is to ask...which animal does it hurt the least but still grow in?
The really deadly ones are usually not regular human diseases....HIV has only been in us for 70-80 years. Ebola is usually in small forest animals. | [
"While there might be pathogens that can infect other hosts and cause disease, the inability to pervade, or spread, throughout the infected host species indicates that the pathogen is not adapted to that host species. In this case, the ability or lack thereof of a pathogen to adapt to its host environment is an ind... |
why does a person's body stop the force of a grenade when the force is strong enough to break through walls? | Hand grenades aren't anywhere NEAR as powerful as shown in the movies, and they are specifically not an explosive-damage weapon, they are a shrapnel weapon.
| [
"The grenade has a lethal radius of , an injury radius of , but beyond radius the risk of injury is minimal. An untrained soldier could normally throw the grenade , making it safe to use as on offensive grenade, as well as a defensive grenade.\n",
"Throwing a grenade upstairs is dangerous, due to the risk of it f... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.