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In what ways did culture of the time influence Buddhist beliefs and practices? | Stephen Batchelor, a former monk in both the Tibetan and Zen traditions, wrote [Buddhism Without Beliefs](_URL_1_), an explicit attempt to separate the baby from the cultural bathwater in Buddhism. It's been ages since I read it, but if memory serves I believe Batchelor argues that Buddhism is a matter of practice and inquiry, not belief.
The history of Buddhist art tells you a lot about cultural accretion. Found [this](_URL_0_) from the Met. "In the earliest Buddhist art of India, the Buddha was not represented in human form. His presence was indicated instead by a sign, such as a pair of footprints, an empty seat, or an empty space beneath a parasol." Compare that to florid Tibetan iconography.
What's great about Buddhism is that it adapts so well to cultures it merges with, from spiritually athletic Zen to belief-based pure land to compassion-based Mahayana to insanely ritualistic Vajrayana. There are all these "skillful means" based on the varying needs of sentient beings. Why would you want to limit yourself to what the historical Buddha and his contemporaries did or believed?
Edit: You might be interested in the way Tibetan Buddhists conceptualize the various vehicles or "yanas" of Buddhism, from renunciation - the original vehicle - to great compassion to radical acceptance. There are scholarly explanations, but Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche wrote an excellent one that compares them to ways of being in a cinema. [Here](_URL_2_) | [
"Buddhism played an important role in the development of Japanese art between the 6th and the 16th centuries. Buddhist art and Buddhist religious thought came to Japan from China through Korea. Buddhist art was encouraged by Crown Prince Shōtoku in the Suiko period in the sixth century, and by Emperor Shōmu in the ... |
During World War II did merchant ships have insurance against being sunk by the enemy? Did the national governments offer compensation? | They were insured against loss. The precise details likely varied from ship to ship. I'm not sure where you would find the precise details of the amount any given vessel was insured for off hand. Lloyds and the American Bureau of Shipping did issue annual registers of insured vessels though. You won't find most of that information online though. Mystic Seaport has digitized many records from the 19th century but that doesn't really help you much.
If you are willing to do some hard copy searching the Mariners Museum in Newport News has a full run of both registers. Here's a link to their catalog for the years in question.
[_URL_0_](_URL_0_) | [
"In the second half of the 19th century, the number of claims greatly increased due to the number of passengers emigrating to North America and Australia. Shipowners became aware of their insurers' compensation limits, especially when it came to damages caused by ship collisions. While the UK Merchant Shipping Act ... |
During WWII what was the average distance that tanks fought other tanks? | Coox and Naisawald's 1954 study *Survey of Allied Tank Casualties in World War II* gives several statistics that attempt to determine this.
> A study of 800 U.S., British, and Canadian tank casualties in Western Europe, the Mediterranean Theater, and North Africa disclosed that the average range at which tanks were immobilized by gunfire was under 800 yards. A sample of 100 tank casualties in North Africa showed an average range of 900 yards; 60 tank casualties in Sicily and Italy--350 yards; 650 tank casualties in Western Europe--over 800 yards. These figures are explicable by the fact that in the western desert of North Africa, where the terrain favored ranges to the limits of visibility, tank fighting often resembled naval battles which boiled down to "slug fests" where light vessels (=light tanks and armored cars) were involved. A figure of 900 yards represents the averaging out of engagements at 1500 to 2000 yards as well as those at hub-to-hub range, e.g., Knightsbridge; Rommel's brilliant tank traps allowed his antitank guns to effect kills at short range. Martel has explained the reasons for the Germans' electing to fight armor at longer ranges in the desert as follows:
> > The German armored forces often attacked British unarmored troops if they found them insufficiently protected by artillery and antitank guns, but they always avoided closing with our tanks in a running fight. When meeting British tanks in strength they preferred to take up a position which was well protected by artillery fire and with antitank guns on the flanks, and used the superior gunfire from stationary tanks to shoot at the British tanks at long range.
> It should be stressed that the data on range are almost always derived from "subjective" estimates given in after-action reports or "third-hand" summaries. The only exception is a portion of the British ETO sample, wherein operations research teams from the 21st Army Group actually examined tanks immobilized after the Rhine crossing. The over-all average of 800 yards range is also probably higher than the actual figure, if it were known, for a much larger sample, inasmuch as a further 75 tank casualties to gunfire were listed only as "close," "fairly close," "point-blank," "various," etc.
**TABLE VIII**
**AVERAGE RANGES AT WHICH TANKS WERE IMMOBILIZED**
**(Sampling)** [gunfire only]
Category|Sample|Range (yds)
:--|:--|:--
US: ETO-First Army|330|796.4
ETO-Third, Seventh, Ninth Armies|119|713.7
ITALY|3|758.9
US: Total|452|774.4
UK: ETO|190|886.3
ITALY|51|348.1
SICILY|6|300.0
AFRICA|96|890.1
UK: Total|343|797.1
CANADA: ETO|5|432.0
ETO: US, UK, CANADA|644|804.8
All Theaters: US, UK, CANADA|800|782.0
Hardison's *Data on World War II Tank Engagements: Involving the U.S. Third and Fourth Armored Divisions* also gives a figure that is about 800 to 900 yards on average.
**TABLE V**
**SUMMARY OF RANGES AT WHICH ALLIED AND ENEMY TANKS WERE DESTROYED IN VARIOUS AREAS OF NORTHWEST EUROPE**
Area|Number of Allied Casualties|Average Allied Casualty Range in Yards|Number of Enemy Casualties|Average Enemy Casualty Range in Yards
:--|:--|:--|:--|:--
Vicinity Stolberg|26|476||
Roer to Rhine|37|959|6|733
Belgian Bulge|60|1000|9|833
Vicinity Arracourt|20|1260|74|936
Sarre|37|1116|35|831
Relief of Bastogne|19|731|16|915
Totals|199|946|140|893
> It was shown in the referenced report that the distribution of combat ranges is approximately represented by a Pearson III distribution function of the form:
> F(R) = e^-X (X + 1)
> X = 2R sqrt R
> R = range, Rbar = average range,
> F(R) = fraction of ranges greater than R. | [
"America's first tank versus tank battle of World War II occurred when Type 95 light tanks of the IJA 4th Tank Regiment engaged a US Army tank platoon, consisting of five brand new M3 Stuart light tanks from \"B\" company, 192nd Tank Battalion, on 22 December 1941, north of Damortis during the retreat to the Bataan... |
if the only way you can get an std, sti, and hiv is if you sleep with someone who's infected then how is it stds, sti's and hiv exist to begin with? | The question you really want an answer to isn't really explained in the post.
First, you're making a pretty big assumption that the first humans were "clean" as it were. Life started simple and got more complex from there, so bacteria, viruses, etc were around long before humans were. Microscopic organisms were around before complicated creatures like animals, some of these microscopic organisms found their way inside of animals because they were eaten or an animal cut itself on a rock, or something similar. Some of these bacteria couldn't survive inside of animals, others could.
So once bacteria managed to live inside something else, it just became a matter of getting from one animal to the other. Bacteria that could live in bodily fluids had a huge benefit because that gave them an excellent way of passing on between other animals. Those bacteria that couldn't were less likely to survive and pass on.
So that's how you end up with STIs and such. Over millions of years, bacteria that were able to be transmitted sexually found great success because it's more or less inevitable that an animal will have sex at some point in their lifetime if it survives, so these bacteria were most likely to survive and spread themselves. A bacteria that might have been spread through other means slowly but surely evolved to become better and better and staying in a living creature and spreading through sex. Not because there's anything special about it, but because these infections live in the things most like to be transferred between sexual partners. A bacteria that lived only in your armpit hair is going to have a hard time transmitting itself to other hosts. | [
"Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are bacteria, viruses or parasites that are spread by sexual contact, especially vaginal, anal, or oral intercourse, or unprotected sex. Oral sex is less risky than vaginal or anal intercourse. Many times, STIs initially do not cause symptoms, increasing the risk of unknowing... |
why do bottles of antibiotics and vitamins smell bad? | Not all antibiotics have that rotten egg smell, but those that do typically contain a Sulfur compound in the form of hydrogen sulfide that gives it that rancid smell. | [
"Reusable bottles can hold bacteria. Drinking from a reusable bottle can transfer bacteria from a person's mouth to the beverage it contains, which can contaminate both bottle and water. Contamination can cause bacterial or fungal growth in the liquid while it's stored. It is recommend that users clean reusable dri... |
how do we know counting rings in a tree is a definitive "1 year"? | In places with seasons, trees go through a predictable growth-dormant cycle that produces the distinctive ring pattern.
Since most of these seasonal trees go dormant regardless of what the actual winter temperature was that year (they're timing the day lengths, not responding to unpredictable temperature swings) a ring is produced even if the year's weather was very unusual.
You get big rings for years with optimal growing conditions and weak rings for drought years.
Rings are less pronounced and more difficult to count in trees that prefer more tropical climates, since they may grow all year instead of stopping entirely on a regular cycle. | [
"Dendrochronology or tree-ring dating is the scientific method of dating based on the analysis of patterns of tree rings, also known as growth rings. Dendrochronology can date the time at which tree rings were formed, in many types of wood, to the exact calendar year. \n",
"Currey originally estimated the tree wa... |
Whale sounds/songs can reach up to 190dB. Is this not dangerous for humans taking a swim nearby? | Simply put, the gap between water and air is too difficult to cross for a number of reasons.
First, the speed of pressure waves in water is much, much greater than the speed of pressure waves in air. This means that to someone near the water surface, it may not even become a recognizable sound wave.
Second, sound waves below water will have a very large amplitude. That means they will be much more likely to 'bounce' off the surface of water and reflect back downwards than to traverse the gap and continue into the air.
Finally, the surface of water is hardly uniform. Unlike a smooth membrane, water is perfectly capable of sloshing and absorbing energy in the form of motion. This will make any pressure waves more likely to become sloshing. | [
"Estimates made by Cummings and Thompson (1971) suggest the source level of sounds made by blue whales are between 155 and 188 decibels when measured relative to a reference pressure of one micropascal at one metre. All blue whale groups make calls at a fundamental frequency between 10 and 40 Hz; the lowest frequen... |
what exactly is a galaxy? | A massive collection of stars, all orbiting a central point, usually a supermassive black hole.
Basically,from what we can tell, they form much the same way individual star systems form. A cloud of gas (mainly hydrogen) condensed due to gravity, the center becomes a Star, and the eddys of the cloud help condense other parts into planets. A galaxy forms like that, but on a scale trillions of times larger | [
"A galaxy is a gravitationally bound system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter. The word galaxy is derived from the Greek \"\" (), literally \"milky\", a reference to the Milky Way. Galaxies range in size from dwarfs with just a few hundred million () stars to giants with one hundre... |
what happens when a country 'condemns' something? | That's pretty much it - just expressing disapproval. A lot of times there's not a good/politically palatable solution to problems, so all a politician can do is talk about it. | [
"Pure political betrayal trauma can be caused by situations such as wrongful arrest and conviction by the legal system of a western democracy; or by discrimination, bullying or other serious mistreatment by a state institution or powerful figure within the state.\n",
"Nonviolence is the personal practice of being... |
as someone who doesnt follow sports and social trends or have a twitter or instagram, why are people burning their nike clothes? | It's an extention of the kneeling during national anthem thing. The football player who started the kneeling protest did an ad with Nike. Now people who disliked the kneeling protest are burning thier Nike stuff to show they hate Nike now. | [
"Because the Nike+ web community profile can be linked to both Facebook and Twitter, users can now share their results and accomplishments with their friends. This has the ability to lead to a greater chance for positive results because interaction and motivation from friends has proven to benefit workout habits. \... |
asian flush syndrome | Are you asking what causes it? It's caused by the buildup of a chemical called acetaldehyde, which is a natural product of the metabolism of alcohol. It's genetic, and fairly common among people of Asian decent. There are a couple of genes responsible. One gene is responsible for producing a chemical called alcohol dehydrogenase, which is what breaks down alcohol. People with a certain variant of this gene make more acetaledehyde. Another gene is one which makes the chemical that breaks down acetaldehyde itself, and people with a variant of this gene don't produce enough of the enzyme to break down the acetaldehyde, so it accumulates. | [
"Alcohol flush reaction is a condition in which an individual's face or body experiences flushes or blotches as a result of an accumulation of acetaldehyde, a metabolic byproduct of the catabolic metabolism of alcohol. It is best known as a condition that is experienced by people of Asian descent. According to the ... |
why does white noise calm people down? | When it's quiet, your body reacts to every noise with a "what's that?" response which makes you perk up and be alert. By drowning out the sounds with white noise, you don't have that effect as often and your body has a chance to relax. | [
"The effects of white noise upon cognitive function are mixed. Recently, a small study found that white noise background stimulation improves cognitive functioning among secondary students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), while decreasing performance of non-ADHD students. Other work indicates i... |
If coats are just good insulators, why can't we wear them in the summer to keep cool? | Something not already mentioned yet: Your body produces heat. If you insulated your body during the summer, you would quickly overheat because your body would produce more heat than you could comfortably stand, with the coat keeping that heat locked in.
In the Winter, the cold and wind draw heat off of the coat at a rate roughly equal to how quickly your body produces it, so all is well. But if you layer up too much, you again experience the same effect, and you become hot and sweaty because you are wearing too much, even in Winter. | [
"One type of coating (low-e coatings) reduces the emission of radiant infrared energy, thus tending to keep heat on the side of the glass where it originated, while letting visible light pass. This results in glazing with better control of energy - heat originating from indoors in winter remains inside (the warm si... |
Why is there a maximum speed for light? What is "braking" it? | The speed of light is set by two fundamental constants known as the permeability and permittivity of free space. A classical analogy for these constants would be "stiffness", ie empty space has a stiffness and this leads to the speed of wave travel.
There are plenty of near light speed particles that were accelerated by both extra terrestrial and terrestrial processes (cf CERN!). | [
"Since kinetic energy increases quadratically with velocity (formula_1), an object moving at 10 m/s has 100 times as much energy as one of the same mass moving at 1 m/s, and consequently the theoretical braking distance, when braking at the traction limit, is 100 times as long. In practice, fast vehicles usually ha... |
how can the quietest room in the world be -9 decibels? | Decibels are a logarithmic scale. 0 isn't no sound, it's just the lower-limit of what a human can typically hear. So -9 isn't no sound at all, it's just quieter than the quietest sound a human can detect, by a factor about the same as the factor between 0 decibels and 10. | [
"BULLET::::- World's quietest room, located at Orfield Labs in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Orfield Labs chamber was certified by the Guinness Book of World Records in 2005 as the quietest room on Earth.\n",
"The Murray Hill anechoic chamber, built in 1940, is the world's oldest wedge-based anechoic chamber. The i... |
does “burning in” brand new audio gears such as headphones and speakers actually work? | First: The word 'gear' in this context is already plural. It's a group noun, like 'news' and 'furniture'.
Second: No. That idea comes from decades ago, when magnets were weaker and materials were worse. Even then, it had almost no impact on the sound. Only hard core audiophiles purported to hear a difference in sound quality.
Modern sound equipment uses materials that do not change physical characteristics over time. The diaphragm, if there is one, will not stretch. | [
"Initial sales were slow, because at the time electronics retailers provided low-cost lamp cords to consumers for free or at low prices and audiophiles didn't believe audio cables made a difference in the sound. Monster is credited with creating the market for high-end audio cables in the 1980s through Lee's \"mark... |
Is there any credible evidence for any kind of Giant humans existing? | I wouldn't say it is propaganda (that's a strong word!), but these entities, common in many people's folklore, have no basis in fact. You can ask /r/Askanthropology about things like the "giganthropus" fossil evidence, but whatever that represents, it is hardly evidence of giants, and it would be an incredulous stretch to conclude that there was some sort of primal memory of gigantic hominids many of hundreds of thousands of years ago - if they ever existed at all!
Giants are one of that species of supernatural beings that existed in a remote past: people talked about encountering ghosts, fairies, the devil, or any number of others things, but they never told of having encountered a giant. Stories about giants were always about other people living in the past having dealing with them. It seems that it was easy for people to imagine there was once a race of titans to explain enormous, seemingly unnatural things in the landscape. The name of the Giant’s Causeway preserves the idea that one of these entities built a path to walk from Ireland to Scotland. Wade’s Causeway, is another reference to a giant, in this case to explain a Roman road in Yorkshire. The etiological role of giants was paramount, but the explanation of the landscape, megaliths, or extraordinary things in general could merge with stories about other supernatural beings. For example, the Devil’s Dyke in Cambridgeshire is an example of tradition holding that Satan affected the landscape in a way normally reserved for giants. I wouldn't want to go so far as to say it was a process of 1. fantastic landscape element; 2. fantastic and necessarily large entity needs to be responsible; therefore, giants must have existed. That said, this sort of process serves as an underpinning to reinforce belief. | [
"Giant tortoises of the genera \"Geochelone\", \"Meiolania\", and others were relatively widely distributed around the world into prehistoric times, and are known to have existed in North and South America, Australia, and Africa. They became extinct at the same time as the appearance of man, and it is assumed human... |
how come no one has registered trademark using internet memes? are there any policies related to that? | To register a phrase as trademark, you have to prove that people recognize your company's products because you use the phrase. That's never going to be true for an internet meme. | [
"Some countries have specific laws against cybersquatting beyond the normal rules of trademark law. The United States, for example, has the U.S. Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) of 1999. This expansion of the Lanham (Trademark) Act (15 U.S.C.) is intended to provide protection against cybersquattin... |
"If there is no biological basis for race, how can forensic anthropologists distinguish the remains of a person of one race from those of another?" | The concept of race exists in biology, but there is only one human race. There are genetic differences between human populations based on geography but they are gradual and increase slowly with distance, there is no abrupt change or non-overlapping of genetic make-up as would be required to define a distinct race. _URL_0_ | [
"Similarly, forensic anthropologists draw on highly heritable morphological features of human remains (e.g. cranial measurements) to aid in the identification of the body, including in terms of race. In a 1992 article, anthropologist Norman Sauer noted that anthropologists had generally abandoned the concept of rac... |
the cable companies arguement to "data cap" my monthly internet usage is to prevent congestion of the system during peak hours. can it really be congested? | Yes, it's true. Netflix's servers are sending you the video, but it still travels down your ISP's internet connection to get to you. There is a limited amount of bandwidth from your ISP out to the Internet for you and every other customer to share.
What's different with cable TV is that the TV signals come in via satellite, and is then distributed to your home over the cables that the cable company has run. There's no bottleneck because when you and 100,000 other customers are watching the Superbowl, there is exactly one signal that comes into the cable company that they then send out to 100,000 customers. It's a one-to-many connection that is very efficient.
But the Internet isn't one-to-many. We think of it that way sometimes because of large sites like this one. But the Internet is really a shitton worth of private one-to-one connections. | [
"Most \"Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification\" (DOCSIS) cable modems restrict upload and download rates, with customizable limits. These limits are set in configuration files which are downloaded to the modem using the Trivial File Transfer Protocol, when the modem first establishes a connection to the p... |
bandwidth vs ping vs latency | Latency is a measure in milliseconds of how long it takes for another device to respond to your request for a response.
Ping is the most common tool for measuring latency. It sends a small packet out and measures how long it takes to get the reply.
Bandwidth is how much data you can send/receive at the same time. Think of it as the difference between a two-lane road through a residential neighborhood and a 16-lane super-highway - the width and speed differences of the two roads allow for different amounts of traffic to pass in the same amount of time. | [
"Latency (commonly referred to as \"ping time\") is the delay between requesting data and the receipt of a response, or in the case of one-way communication, between the actual moment of a signal's broadcast and the time it is received at its destination.\n",
"\"Ping\" refers to the network latency between a play... |
Why does nature sometimes prefer right or left? Example: Lorentz force | I see where you are coming from here:
If you have a vertical wire, with a current going up, then the magnetic field wraps around the wire according to a right-hand rule - counterclockwise when viewed from above. If I look at this wire in a mirror, the magnetic field is going in the other direction - clockwise when viewed from above.
So it seems like there is a definite handedness and violation of parity.
However, this really is truly just a matter of convention. Consider a positively charged particle going up. calculate the lorentz force on the particle, and you will see that it will be deflected towards the wire. The same thing happens in your mirror image. So the physics is the same in the mirror and in reality.
Everything that produces a magnetic field does so with a cross-product (right-handed) and everything that reacts to one also does so with a cross-product (right-handed). The implicit handedness cancels out. We could redefine the cross-product in a left-handed manner, and so long as everything was consistent everything will cancel out.
-------------------
Alternatively, if something was pushed parallel to a magnetic field, then we could see different physics in the mirror. The weak interaction does in fact do this.
If I spin align Cobalt-60 atoms with a magnetic field, the beta-decay electrons will preferentially be emitted in the opposite direction to the magnetic field (right-handed convention). So here our convention does matter and one would see physics behave differently in the mirror.
If I cleverly set up a lab with spin-polarized cobalt-60 decay happening with backwards text everywhere, and then showed you a video of a mirror image of the lab, you would be able to tell it was a mirror image purely by the physics of what happened. You can't do that with electromagnetic phenomena. | [
"Left-right asymmetry (LR asymmetry) refers to differences in structure (symmetry breaking) across the mediolateral (left and right) plane in animals. This plane is defined with respect to the anteroposterior and dorsoventral axes and is perpendicular to both. Because the left-right plane is not strictly an axis (a... |
What was the Nazi opinion on the Chinese? What was the Japanese opinion on the Jews? | The Japanese actually have a unique history of opinion towards the Jews. While fighting the Russians in (iirc) the Russo-Japanese War at the turn of the century, they stumbled across a book called *The Protocols of the Elders of Zion*. This anti-semitic literature was filled with the usual: the Jews control everything, massive conspiracy, lesser-men, and the like. Well the Japanese high command thought, why would anyone want to go against a small semi-integrated religious group that had miraculously managed to survive for two millennia despite prosecution, and who somehow managed to control everything, and had a large portion of European wealth in their hands?
Fast forward to the Second World War. The Japanese harboured several thousand Jews in Japan from the Germans, and despite being allies, they refused time and time again to hand them over to Hitler. They actually started building a facility to house 600 000 Jews escaping the Nazis. They thought that hey, if these guys control everything, might as well get on their good side.
Don't know anything about the Nazi opinion on the Chinese, though. | [
"At the time of World War II, both Nazi Germany and Japanese Empire started its long persecution against ethnic Chinese in each countries, as well as Japanese territorial control in mainland China. Anti-Chinese massacres like Nanking Massacre that would have been the remaining key reason for the issues remaining be... |
why the winter war happened | Relations between Russia and Finland had been strained since WWI.
Russia felt that Finland was weak, and that they would be able to easily seize a decent chunk of territory. Most of the rest of Europe was distracted by Germany gearing up to start WWII, and so the Russians felt that nobody else would really do much to help Finland if they invaded. | [
"The timeline of the Winter War is a chronology of events leading up to, culminating in, and resulting from the Winter War. The war began when the Soviet Union attacked Finland on 30 November 1939 and it ended 13 March 1940.\n",
"The Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union (USSR) and Finland. ... |
How does a vaccine with inactivated virus work? | Imagine you're playing CTF and you're on the Red team, but you don't know what the enemy team looks like. Turns out they're Blue. You can learn this when they attack you, but that's bad because they have guns and will kill your dudes while you learn this piece of information and move to repel their attack.
A vaccine is like an external force (who has an interest in seeing the Red team win) capturing some members of the Blue team, secretly giving them guns that don't work, then dropping them directly into your base.
The Blue team comes in, you learn about them and destroy them, but they can't hurt your team in the process. | [
"For the inactivated vaccines, the virus is grown by injecting it, along with some antibiotics, into fertilized chicken eggs. About one to two eggs are needed to make each dose of vaccine. The virus replicates within the allantois of the embryo, which is the equivalent of the placenta in mammals. The fluid in this ... |
Western Intensification: Why are currents much stronger on the western than eastern side of ocean basins? | Ok, this is both a fundamental tenant of oceanography but also very difficult to explain in a short space. The classic paper is Henry Stommel's 1948 [*The Westward Intensification of Wind-Driven Ocean Currents* (PDF)](_URL_0_). In this paper Stommel works through a simple mathematical model of wind-driven circulation and demonstrates that because of boundary conditions and the rotation of the earth, the interior wind-driven flow can only be returned on the western margin of the basin and not eastern. The abstract attributes this to the "variation of the Coriolis parameter with latitude," - what we now call the beta-effect. The full argument requires an analysis of the vorticity conservation and demonstration that only a western-boundary current provides a consistent solution. I have also heard a hand-waving type of argument that the boundary currents have to exist in the west because Rossby waves preferentially propagate energy westward - that's true too. Sorry that this response is kinda jargony but it's a challenging thing to describe at the explain-like-im-5 level.
tldr; because we live on a rotating sphere - sorry if that's a unsatisfying explanation. | [
"Due to persistent winds from west to east on the poleward sides of the subtropical ridges located in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, ocean currents are driven in a similar manner in both hemispheres. The currents in the Northern Hemisphere are weaker than those in the Southern Hemisphere due to the differences in... |
Does anybody know if there were any drugs developed or important medical discoveries made within the Soviet Union? | [Phage Therapy](_URL_1_) is the what immediately springs to mind. While not technically "invented" in the USSR (British and French scientists independently discovered bacteriophagic viruses in early 20th century and), the Soviet Union was where the technique was refined, expanded, and put into broad use. Georgia, in particular, is and was the center for all this, and Georgia is currently the only country where phage therapy is a standard of care treatment. This can be attributed to the microbiologist George Eliava who brought the technique over from his work at the Pasteur Institute, and physicians like Alexander Tsulukidze and Charles Mikeladze in Tblisi who ran some important early clinical trials showing phage therapy to be safe and effective.
There were Western scientists, particularly in France, working on phage therapy in the early 20th century as well. With the advent of sulfa drugs in the late 1930s, and then with the antibiotic revolution kicked off by penicillin in the 1940s, phage therapy was mostly abandoned in the West. The Soviets, on the other hand, found their access to Western-made antibiotics cut off at the end of WWII, and then had delays in regaining access, spotty supply chains & distribution, and problems starting their own domestic production. Homegrown phages helped fill in this "antibiotic gap" (along with some very shady propaganda about herbal treatments).
It wasn't until the past couple of decades -- spurred by concerns over drug resistant pathogens -- that Western physicians and scientists starting giving phage therapy a second look. The appropriately named [George Eliava Institute](_URL_3_) and the [Phage Therapy Center](_URL_2_) in Tblisi are still key centers for research and treatment using phages.
If you want to know more here are a couple papers on the subject (both open-source, I think):
- [Phage Treatment of Human Infections](_URL_4_)
- [Bacteriophage Therapy](_URL_5_)
There is also a pretty good book on the subject written for a popular audience, Kuchment's [The Forgotten Cure: The Past and Future of Phage Therapy](_URL_0_). | [
"The drug is almost unknown in the western world and is neither used in medicine or studied scientifically to any great extent outside Russia and other countries in the former Soviet Union. It has however been added to the list of drugs under international control and is a scheduled substance in most countries, des... |
When did Europe begin its shift away from religion? Why? | During the Middle Ages, religion played a hugely important role in life, since the Church was one of the few institutions that spread across the variety of feudal boundaries in Europe. As Europe transitioned out of feudalism and towards states (lead by monarchs), the Church in Rome lost power, but religion remained a tool for leaders to use. Indeed, the transition out of feudalism and into the modern era saw the very bloody wars between Catholic and Protestant monarchs and lords. However, by the 18th and 19th centuries, states had moved on to other ways of motivating their people, such as nationalism and ethnic identity. Religion became less political - we don't analyze the Seven Years War, Napoleonic Wars, etc with the same religious focus as the 30 Year's War, for example, but it still played a huge rule in everyday life. In the late 19th 20th century, science began to present an alternative to religion, and as education spread, religious superstitions became less important. Several people also claim that the World Wars disillusioned people from God, but I think that Europe would have become less religious with or without them. It is worth noting that "Europe" is a very broad term, and certain parts of Europe had very different societies from others. Religion plaid a huge political role in Ireland through the 20th century, for example, or the former Yugoslavia, or various other (mostly Eastern) European states. | [
"The modern age brought technological and organizational changes to Europe while the Islamic region continued the patterns of earlier centuries. The European powers, and especially Britain and France, globalized economically and colonized much of the region.\n",
"Following the religious wars of the 16th to 17th c... |
How did Luxembourg survive? | > annexed by the Netherlands because of its political ties?
Actually, Luxembourg has been absorbed into other countries through history, and the current Luxembourg is nowhere near as large as the historical Duchy of Luxembourg. See [this map](_URL_0_).
It came into the possession of Philip the Good of Burgundy, along with other Low Countries states. They all came under Habsburg rule as the Burgundian line became extinct, and under Charles V was united in inheritance. When the northern provinces rebelled under Philip II, Luxembourg remained part of the Southern Netherlands.
However, as France and Spain continued their war after 1648, France gained the southern parts of Luxembourg.
The entire Low Countries were annexed by the revolutionary French, until it was restored in 1815, minus eastern parts annexed by Prussia. Then it was forced to be part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands until the Belgian revolt of 1830, which settlement in 1839 once again split off parts of it into Belgium.
So, you need to better define what "survive" means. | [
"During World War II, from 1940 to 1944 under German occupation of Luxembourg, the Chamber was dissolved by the Nazis and the country annexed under the name \"Gau Moselland\". The Grand Ducal family and the Luxembourgish government went into exile (at first to the United Kingdom, then to Canada and the United State... |
why did we, as a species, develop a taste for art? | There will never be any one, completely satisfying answer to question like this. But, as far as we can tell, most of the higher-level mental attributes of humans are simply byproducts of having large, advanced brains. That is to say, we *didn't* evolve to appreciate art, we appreciate art because our brains evolved to do a whole suite of complex things, one of the most obvious and important of these things is communication, which humans can do in myriad complex ways. | [
"In her book \"Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes From and Why\" (first printed in 1992), Dissanayake argues that art was central to the emergence, adaptation and survival of the human species, that aesthetic ability is innate in every human being, and that art is a need as fundamental to our species as food, warmth... |
if our blood contains iron, why is it not orange or rust colored? | The iron in the hemoglobin molecules in our blood is what makes it red in the first place. There are other animals (horseshoe crabs are well known for this) that don't use iron to bind to oxygen, and instead use metals like copper in their blood. As a result, their blood is greenish blue. | [
"Historically, an association between the color of blood and rust occurs in the association of the planet Mars, with the Roman god of war, since the planet is an orange-red, which reminded the ancients of blood. Although the color of the planet is due to iron compounds in combination with oxygen in the Martian soil... |
why can extreme stress cause a psychotic episode? | Everyone will break, it's a matter of time and level of perceived stress and bodily fatigue they are going through at the time.
My first 48 hour shift at the hospital did something similar to me.
After finally going home I fell asleep only to wake up in a cold shower, and having my parents (whom I lived with) tell me I had been walking around the house crying about the waffle I had just eaten because it had disappeared and I was hungry.
Was not my best moment and I only vaguely remember cooking the waffle too.
| [
"Stress is known to contribute to and trigger psychotic states. A history of psychologically traumatic events, and the recent experience of a stressful event, can both contribute to the development of psychosis. Short-lived psychosis triggered by stress is known as brief reactive psychosis, and patients may spontan... |
What was so special about the Paris commune uprising that it seems to hold the imagination of communists greater than that of say the French revolution? | The Paris Commune was one of the first explicitly communist political actions. The 1848 revolutions happened before Marx had written the bulk of his work (and indeed, they both informed his writing). The French Revolution, much like the American revolution, is usually termed by communist academics as a 'bourgeois revolution,' a necessary stage in the historical development of capitalism, but not the proletarian revolution that communists support.
A bourgeois revolution means that it was essentially an anti-aristocratic revolution, but not an anti-class revolution. After the American and French revolutions, there were still rich and poor in America and France, but there were no longer nobles and arbitrary status determined by lineage. However, the Paris Commune, on the other hand, was an exercise in true egalitarianism.
Not sure what that other guy is talking about with Marx saying that the Commune "needed" a revolutionary terror; the Communards did kill quite a few members of the French military when they came to recapture the city, but the whole reason that the Paris Commune came to exist in the first place was because all of the people who would've been the target of a revolutionary terror had left the city in fear. Most members of the government, and anyone who had the money or influence to get out did. So really the Commune was created in a power vacuum, and there wouldn't have been anyone to commit a revolutionary terror against. The Communards were interested in other French cities joining them, but with communications at the time, and the commune being surrounded on one side by the Prussian Army, and the other side by the French Army, there wasn't really a good way to get any messages out, and anyway the situation that existed in Paris was pretty unique. Imagine if the city government in your town just left tomorrow. The Commune was less an ideologically-motivated movement and more a natural reaction by the people of Paris, who suddenly needed to organize things on their own.
So in a nutshell, that's why communists are into the Paris commune. It was a better example of functioning communism, though obviously in a much smaller timeframe, than the Soviet Union or whatever. They practiced proper worker democracy, had free education, and other things that communists like. It really is a very interesting and unique period of time in history, I recommend anyone read more about it. | [
"The Commune resulted in part from growing discontent among the Paris workers. This discontent can be traced to the first worker uprisings, the Canut revolts, in Lyon and Paris in the 1830s (a \"canut\" was a Lyonnais silk worker, often working on Jacquard looms). Many Parisians, especially workers and the lower-mi... |
Why do healthy young athletes die suddenly from cardiac arrest? | When young athletes die of cardiac arrest it is almost always due due to a heart disease called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. In fact, it is the leading cause of death of young athletes in America. This is a thickening and stiffness of the heat muscle that causes numerous problems during vigorous exercise that lead to cardiac arrest.
Testing is effective, but the disease is so rare (1 in 220,000) that it is not cost effective to screen all 15 Million youth athletes in the USA alone. | [
"Because several well-known and high-profile cases of athletes experiencing sudden unexpected death due to cardiac arrest, such as Reggie White and Marc-Vivien Foé, a growing movement is making an effort to have both professional and school-based athletes screened for cardiac and other related conditions, usually t... |
how do phones send texts? | In much the same way as they send voice to the tower when you talk on the phone. They have circuitry to create a signal, and send one that is the style the tower recognizes as text. They've decided certain bit patterns mean certain characters, and send a combination of address information and the text content as, essentially, a radio-wave pattern. | [
"Text messaging is most often used between private mobile phone users, as a substitute for voice calls in situations where voice communication is impossible or undesirable (e.g., during a school class or a work meeting). Texting is also used to communicate very brief messages, such as informing someone that you wil... |
how this battery train experiment works? | [This](_URL_1_) should help you out...people on a physics forum explaining it pretty simply
EDIT: Aww hell, I guess I'll copy/paste the answer here...
> If you run a current through a coil; it generates an magnetic field inside the coil [like this](_URL_0_)
> If the field lines are exactly parallel a bar magnet will feel no net force. However at the ends of the coil, where the field lines diverge, a bar magnet will be either pulled into the coil or pushed out of the coil depending on which way round you insert it.
> The trick in the video is that the magnets are made of a conducting material and they connect the battery terminals to the copper wire, so the battery, magnets and copper wire make a circuit that generates a magnet field just in the vicinity of the battery. The geometry means the two magnets are automatically at the ends of the generated magnetic field, where the field is divergent, so a force is exerted on the magnets.
> The magnets have been carefully aligned so the force on both magnets points in the same direction, and the result is that the magnets and battery move. But as they move, the magnetic field moves with them and you get a constant motion.
> If you flipped round the two magnets at the ends of the battery the battery and magnets would move in the reverse direction. If you flipped only one magnet the two magnets would then be pulling/pushing in opposite directions and the battery wouldn't move. | [
"Safety tests are performed daily to ensure that the MAPO system is working properly on each train. At the direction of the monorail station conducting the test, each train will intentionally overrun a hold point to verify that a red MAPO occurs and that the emergency brakes activate. Pilots perform tests in forwar... |
Can 'one' photon technically be divided into anything? | Read up on [spontaneous parametric down-conversion](_URL_0_).
_URL_1_
_URL_2_
| [
"A photon is massless, has no electric charge, and is a stable particle. A photon has two possible polarization states. In the momentum representation of the photon, which is preferred in quantum field theory, a photon is described by its wave vector, which determines its wavelength \"λ\" and its direction of propa... |
what is wikileaks? what is the current situation with them? | Wikileaks is a website that originated by civil libertarians who intended to promote transparency by publishing leaks of sensitive information about governments and large corporations, given to them in secret by whistleblowers. They rose to fame in 2010 with the publication of a huge number of military records and diplomatic cables, given to them illegally by the whistleblower, Chelsea Manning, who was a soldier and computer analyst in the US Army. Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years (threatened with a death sentence for “aiding the enemy”) and released after 6 after receiving a commutation of her sentence by President Obama in the last months of his president. Chelsea Manning is a transgender woman and was subject to humiliating treatment and solitary confinement inside of the military prison where she served time. She attempted suicide at least one time that we know of. The US government also put out a warrant for the arrest of one of the founders of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, an Australian citizen.
Julian is also wanted in Sweden on accusations of sexual assault, and the Swedish government has been attempting to extradite him for questioning regarding the allegations against him.
To avoid these attempts at arrest and extradition, Assange applied for asylum in Ecuador and was granted it, and when blocked from boarding a plane in London, he took literal refuge inside the Ecuadorean embassy, where he has lived for the last 6 years. If he attempts to leave the building, British police intend to arrest him immediately, to extradite him to Sweden. He has said he would be willing to allow himself to be extradited to Sweden to face the sexual assault charges (which he denies) if given promises that he would not be extradited to the US. The Swedish government have said that they wouldn’t, and the British claim they would only extradite him to Sweden, not to America, but he claims to not trust their word on this.
Further complicating matters, in recent years, Assange and Wikileaks are seen to be biased by many observers. They’ve been accused of softballing or ignoring leaks that are damaging to Russia, and focusing exclusively on leaks that are damaging to the US. They are also seen as having favored Trump in the 2016 US presidential election, and opposed Hillary. Some have gone as far as to say that Wikileaks is basically an arm of FSB, the Russian intelligence agency that is the equivalent of the CIA in America.
And then to add to it, Assange seems to have overstayed his welcome in the Ecuadorean embassy, where, as I said, he has lived for 6 years straight now and not once left the building (London police are parked outside the building 24/7 waiting to arrest him should he ever leave). They’ve built him a small residence inside the embassy building, with a bed, bathroom, and small kitchen. And they claim he is obnoxious, doesn’t shower often, and intentionally inflames the situation diplomatically, causing trouble for the Ecuadorean government. They’ve reportedly cut off his access to the Internet so he’ll stop talking. | [
"WikiLeaks has drawn criticism for its alleged absence of whistleblowing on or criticism of Russia, and for criticising the Panama Papers' exposé of businesses and individuals with offshore bank accounts. The organization has additionally been criticised for inadequately curating its content and violating the perso... |
how are the us still allowed to use drone strikes when the civilian casualty rate is so high? | Who is going to stop us. | [
"In recent years, the U.S. has increased its use of drone strikes against targets in foreign countries and elsewhere as part of the War on Terror. In January 2014, it was estimated that 2,400 people have died from U.S. drone strikes in five years. In June 2015 the total death toll of U.S. drone strikes was estimate... |
Why dose the Ussr anthem mention Russia | Here's the lyrics for the Anthem of the SSSR that were used from from 44-56 - the first stanza is the relevant one:
> Союз нерушимый республик свободных
Сплотила навеки Великая Русь.
Да здравствует созданный волей народов
Единый, могучий Советский Союз!
Roughly this translates as follows (correct me if I'm wrong):
> The undestroyed union, republic of the free,
> united forever, the great Rus.
> May we all greet the creation of the will of the people,
> the united, the powerful, the soviet union!
The trick here is that Rus does not necessarily refer to Russia alone, but can also refer to the whole empire, or to the descendants of the Kievan Rus.
There are a few *possible* reasons why this is worded this way, and the only two that I know of go back to two events: first, the events and thoughts surrounding the initial formation of the Soviet Union, and the events going on at the time the anthem was composed and adopted.
Regarding the beginning of the union, there was debate at the time of the creation of the soviet union regarding whether it was to be a worldwide revolution, or if it was to begin in one spot and the spread. The outcome was that the Communist movement considered the success of the USSR and its beginnings in Russia/Ukraine to be significant, leading to the possible inclusion of Rus in the anthem.
The second reason is that the anthem was adopted in 1943, towards the high point of the great patriotic war. This was a time during which the Soviet state adopted a lot of openly nationalistic policies and trappings in order to motivate citizens to whatever useful common identity might work to get them to fight for the fatherland, the idea of communism, or anything. This was a time of serious rapprochement with the Orthodox church, and we see lots of famous posters of "Mother Russia" (and massive statues built after the war), and keep in mind that in the 20s, mother Russia posters had been generally propoganda for the White Russians (meaning anti-communists, not Belorus).
The end result of this is that there were some "communist" reasons to lift up Russia as the mother of communism worldwide (at least of successful communism) and around the time the anthem was written, the traditional communist suppression of nationalism was dying away in the face of a need to motivate citizens to fight and contribute to the war effort. | [
"The \"State Anthem of the Russian Federation\" () is the name of the official national anthem of Russia. It uses the same melody as the \"State Anthem of the Soviet Union\", composed by Alexander Alexandrov, and new lyrics by Sergey Mikhalkov, who had collaborated with Gabriel El-Registan on the original anthem. F... |
Was the American Western Frontier as deadly as media portrays it? With gun battles, shootings, tons of diseases, etc.? If not, how did we get this impression? | Disease was certainly a problem, especially for Native Americans who didn't have the same heritable immunities as people of European descent. But the violence of the American West has been dramatized quite a lot.
You're statistically more likely to be shot Chicago today than you were to get shot in a place like Abeline.
Now, there were certainly incidents of violence. In the [Coffeyville raid](_URL_0_), for example, the Dalton Gang attempted to rob two Kansas banks but were cut down by armed citizens. Many people, especially ranchers and property owners, kept guns, although six-shooters were rarer than you might think. Shotguns ard rifles were more accurate and more practical for hunting and self-defense. Or the [Lincoln County War](_URL_1_), the basis for the (heavily dramatized) film *Young Guns* and one of several grazing disputes that turned violent during the period.
But all the same dime novelists and cowboy films have made the "Wild" West to be a good deal more violent than it really was. Shootouts make for good drama, but they were something of a rarity. | [
"The image of a Wild West filled with countless gunfights was a myth generated primarily by dime-novel authors in the late 19th century. An estimate of 20,000 men in the American West were killed by gunshot between 1866 and 1900, and over 21,586 total casualties during the American Indian Wars from 1850 to 1890. Th... |
is it possible to move an object in circular motion using magnets? | Absolutely, this is how most electric motors work. They have a coil of wire around the magnet, and adding a current makes the magnet attract or repel other magnets on a part that spins freely. (unless i misunderstood your question!) | [
"Relative motion between the magnetic/abrasive particle mixture and the workpiece is essential for material removal. There are several options for achieving the necessary motion. A common setup is the rotation of the magnetic pole tip. This is done by either rotating the entire permanent magnet setup or by rotating... |
how do doctors perform 20+ hour surgeries? don't they get mentally and physically exhausted? | Most surgeries (when things go to plan) take around 30 min-2 hours. Some major surgeries e.g. a liver transplant might take ~6-8 hours.
20+ hour surgeries would be exceptional e.g. conjoined twin separations where you actually need multiple different teams e.g. plastic surgeons, neurosurgeons etc.
Usually surgery is a very controlled situation so it would be theoretically possible to take a break. It might be reasonable (e.g. 20-30 min in a 6+ hour surgery) but you don't want to leave the patient open/unconscious too long.
In most specialty surgeries you would have someone else who can take over for some of it. | [
"The surgery itself along with recovery time depends on the patient. Robotic surgery can take approximately 6-12 hours. A patient's time in the hospital can take 7–10 days if no complications present themselves. Depending on the type of surgery the abdominal incision for this surgery may be up to eight inches in le... |
in special relativity, how is it determined which reference point will have time slowed down? | > Person B gets in a super space ship that launches up and then accelerates to 0.75 times the speed of light and travels for 1 year, then turns around, comes back, and lands on Earth.
Is time slower for one than the other?
Actually, once the traveler lands, he and the person that stayed on earth will experience time at exactly the same rate. However, the traveler will have aged less than the earthling. | [
"Special relativity indicates that, for an observer in an inertial frame of reference, a clock that is moving relative to him will be measured to tick slower than a clock that is at rest in his frame of reference. This case is sometimes called special relativistic time dilation. The faster the relative velocity, th... |
what is asmr exactly and how is it supposedly pleasant to the ears? | This is the best answer I've ever found.
_URL_0_
Plus it comes from a great comic to read. | [
"In addition to the effectiveness of specific auditory stimuli, many subjects report that ASMR is triggered by the receipt of tender personal attention, often comprising combined physical touch and vocal expression, such as when having their hair cut, nails painted, ears cleaned, or back massaged, whilst the servic... |
How quickly did prejudice towards Japanese-Americans by the general American population end after WW2? | There's a great book about this topic called "America's Geisha Ally: Reimagining the Japense Enemy" by Naoko Shibusawa. It goes into great detail about the United States government entering into the "reverse course" following WWII. What this basically means is that during and directly after the war, the general consensus of the government and populace of the United States was that Japan was going to pay dearly for its aggressive war. However, because of the looming threat of communism in the far east, and the capitalist framework that Japan had in place (infrastructure, skilled and disciplined workforce, industry, etc.) these plans were scrapped in favor of a program that would promote Japanese economic strength and stability. The United States went through great lengths to basically 'retrain' its populace from seeing the Japanese as a hated natural enemy to seeing them as effeminate and weak and in need of pity. Great book if you get a chance to check it out! | [
"The record of the Japanese Americans serving in the 442nd and in the Military Intelligence Service (U.S. Pacific Theater forces in World War II) helped change the minds of anti-Japanese American critics in the U.S. and resulted in easing of restrictions and the eventual release of the 120,000-strong community well... |
When and why did the US stop allowing (literal) boatloads of immigrants to just show up at a port and begin living in the US? | It wasn't just one single law but rather a series of laws. The first was the Page Act of 1875 that primarily targeted Asians, particularly Chinese people, that were immigrating to the western United States to work menial jobs like railroads. Just like we see in the debates today about Hispanic people coming to the United States to work mostly low-wage jobs, there were concerns about taking jobs away from white Americans, as well as diseases, immorality, and integration of the Chinese into American culture.
Another major law was the Immigration Act of 1924, which severely limited the number of people that could come from any one country to 2% of the number of people from that country that had already immigrated. This was similar to the Page Act in that it was designed to preserve a certain ethnic makeup of the country. But these laws continue to change over time and even now we see debates about how to "fix" them. The shift from almost entirely open borders to what we have now was very slow and incremental. | [
"Changes in immigration laws in the United States in the 1920s greatly restricted the number of immigrants allowed to enter. The law limited the number of immigrants to about 160,000 per year in 1924. This led to a major reduction in the immigrant trade for the shipping lines, forcing them to cater to the tourist t... |
Does quantum mechanics apply to energy? | That's not really what quantum mechanics is about. Energy is conserved in quantum systems unless there is an external reason for it not to be. | [
"Quantum mechanics is the science of the very small. It explains the behavior of matter and its interactions with energy on the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. By contrast, classical physics explains matter and energy only on a scale familiar to human experience, including the behavior of astronomical bodie... |
What terms did people use to describe rotation before clocks were common? | In Northern Europe, people would refer to the direction of the sun - indicating a direction was either "sunwise" or "against the sun": In the north, if one faces south to watch the path the sun takes, it moves in an arc that moves from the left to the right - "sunwise" or in today's term "clockwise." Clocks moved in the direction of the sun because that was the preferred, "safe" direction. Moving against the sun - today's counterclockwise" - was regarded as going again the natural order of things. It was potentially dangerous in magical terms to do things - stirring food or walking around a church - in a direction that was "against the sun." | [
"Before clocks were commonplace, the terms \"sunwise\" and \"deasil\", \"deiseil\" and even \"deocil\" from the Scottish Gaelic language and from the same root as the Latin \"dexter\" (\"right\") were used for clockwise. \"Widdershins\" or \"withershins\" (from Middle Low German \"weddersinnes\", \"opposite course\... |
how do we know cold is the absence of heat and not the other way around? | Temperature is a measurement of energy, specifically kinetic energy on a molecular scale with warmer things having more of this energy than colder things.
Because we warm something up by adding energy we define warm/hot as the presence of this energy. Since there is nothing that we can "add" to make an object colder, cold is inherently the absence of this energy or in other words, the absence of heat. | [
"Cold is the presence of low temperature, especially in the atmosphere. In common usage, cold is often a subjective perception. A lower bound to temperature is absolute zero, defined as 0.00K on the Kelvin scale, an absolute thermodynamic temperature scale. This corresponds to on the Celsius scale, on the Fahrenhei... |
what does being turing complete means? | Turing described a minimal, hypothetical computer which he used to mathematically prove results, known as a Turing Machine. It wasn't intended as a practical device, but rather to be as simple as possible to make proofs easier. A computing device that is capable of doing everything that a Turing Machine can is Turing Complete. One way to show that a computer or programming environment is Turing Complete is to implement a Turing Machine emulator. | [
"Turing completeness is the ability for a system of instructions to simulate a Turing machine. A programming language that is Turing complete is theoretically capable of expressing all tasks accomplishable by computers; nearly all programming languages are Turing complete if the limitations of finite memory are ign... |
If the Great Depression didn't truly end until the start of WWII, how come the US economy didn't dip in the post war years? | There was a recession in 1945. GDP fell by 12.7% in that recession. By comparison, the recession of 2007 lowered GDP by 4.3%.
| [
"By 1940 the Great Depression was finally over. A remarkable burst of economic activity and full employment came during the war years (1941–45). Fears of a postwar depression were widespread since the massive military spending was ending, the war plants were shutting down, and 12 million soldiers were coming home. ... |
What "generation" star is our Sun? | The Sun is a Population I star, meaning it contains metals from previous generations of stars. By measuring the spectral characteristics of stars, we can observe the ratios of metals to hydrogen or helium, and from this, we can determine how many generations of "ancestors" the star has had.
> Stars may be classified by their heavy element abundance, which correlates with their age and the type of galaxy in which they are found.
> Population I stars include the sun and tend to be luminous, hot and young, concentrated in the disks of spiral galaxies. They are particularly found in the spiral arms. With the model of heavy element formation in supernovae, this suggests that the gas from which they formed had been seeded with the heavy elements formed from previous giant stars. About 2% of the total belong to Population I.
> Population II stars tend to be found in globular clusters and the nucleus of a galaxy. They tend to be older, less luminous and cooler than Population I stars. They have fewer heavy elements, either by being older or being in regions where no heavy-element producing predecessors would be found. Astronomers often describe this condition by saying that they are "metal poor", and the "metallicity" is used as an indication of age.
_URL_0_
Astronomers also theorize that there was a generation of very old stars with extremely low metallicity. These are Population III stars. Recently, some astronomers have found evidence there may be Population III stars in a very bright, distant galaxy.
As a side note, the sun will not go supernova. It will become a red giant, shedding its outer layers, and making it very easy to roast hot dogs on Earth.
edit: red giant | [
"The Sun is a population I star; it has a higher abundance of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium (\"metals\" in astronomical parlance) than the older population II stars. Elements heavier than hydrogen and helium were formed in the cores of ancient and exploding stars, so the first generation of stars had to... |
why do we have sports commentators on television that talk non stop during the games? | Probably carry over from before people could watch games on their television. The commentators would give a play by play to those listening on the radio. And now it is tradition. Though they're supposed to be "analyzing" the game as well. Or telling people things they might have missed | [
"In sports broadcasting, a sports commentator (also known as sports announcer, sportscaster or play-by-play announcer) gives a running commentary of a game or event in real time, usually during a live broadcast, traditionally delivered in the historical present tense. Radio was the first medium for sports broadcast... |
How do we perceive things through light bouncing off of the objects we see and entering our eyes? | The secret to the eye being able to resolve things is the fact that the pupil is really small. [Look at this image](_URL_0_) of how a pinhole camera works. Your eye is much the same- replacing the pinhole with pupil.
Imagine a red light up above you, and a blue light down below. The red light shines light in every direction. But only the one direction that passes through the narrow opening of your pupil will actually hit the back of your eye (retina). So, the red light entering into your eye will come from the top, be heading down, and thus will hit the bottom of your retina. The blue light will be the opposite, the only one which will pass through your pupil will be the one beam headed up, and thus will hit the top of your retina.
This is why your pupil has to be small. Imagine the pinhole camera, but the pinhole being replaced by a window. Now, many light beams from the same object can pass through the window- headed in many directions and thus no coherent image is formed on the wall.
This is why squinting helps you see better. You reduce the effective size of your pupil, as your eye lids block more of the light from different directions, thus giving a sharper image. | [
"Our minds and bodies are bombarded by relevant and irrelevant knowledge and experiences every day. We will tune into salient ones (crane the ears to more fully hear enjoyable music) and tune-out non-salient ones (cover our ears from jackhammer noise). There is difference between seeing something and looking at it.... |
What is e in regards to natural logarithms? | Oh this is such a fun question!
The number's importance starts with one key observation.
Let a > 0 be a real number, we can define a function f(x)=a^x
What is the derivative of this function?
If we look at the limit definition of the derivative we get
f'(x) = lim h- > 0 ( a^(x+h) - a^x )/h = lim h- > 0 a^x (a^h - 1 )/h = a^x lim h- > 0 (a^h - 1 )/h
We can see that if the limit exists then the form of the derivative is
f'(x) = a^x g(a)
where g(a) is a function that depends only on a, which is a fixed number. We also notice that if the function is once differentiable (it is, I just don't know how to simplify that limit off the top of my head, but it should give the result log(a)) it is twice differentiable with derivative
f''(x) = a^x g(a)^2
and more generally
f^(n) (x) = a^x g(a)^n
We can then write a Taylor approximation to this function as
f(x) = 1 + g(a) x + x g(a)^2 /2 + ...
Now we note that the function has a very special property if g(a)=1, it is its own derivative, and note that if we find f(1) we get f(1)=a^1 =a
So computing f(1), g(a)=1, this let's us compute the number a such that the function a^x is its own derivative (we've named this number e). The Taylor approximation here becomes
e=1+1+1/2+... = sum_n=0^infinity 1/n! = lim n- > infinity (1+1/n)^n (this can be shown using the binomial theorem)
Tl;dr, e is the unique number that defines a function (e^x ) so that the function is its own derivative. (d/dx e^x = e^x ) | [
"The natural logarithm allows simple integration of functions of the form \"g\"(\"x\") = \"f\" '(\"x\")/\"f\"(\"x\"): an antiderivative of \"g\"(\"x\") is given by ln(|\"f\"(\"x\")|). This is the case because of the chain rule and the following fact:\n",
"The natural logarithm of \"x\" is the power to which \"e\"... |
How did most Medieval kings die? | Most medieval kings died of old age, illness, or some other "natural cause." If a king died from something more nefarious, it usually stands out in the historical record. Take the English monarchs, of which there have been about 50 if we count liberally between Alfred the Great and Charles I (by liberally I mean including people like Lady Jane Grey and Matilda).
Three were killed in battle or by wounds sustained in battle (Harold Godwinson, Richard the Lion Heart, and Richard III)
One king (Edmund I) died in a brawl that he probably started.
Three were definitely murdered (Edward the Martyr, Edward II, and Richard II).
Two were probably murdered (William Rufus and Henry VI [who was already deposed])
And two were beheaded (Lady Jane Grey and Charles I).
So, that's 11 deaths total that weren't natural causes, out of 50 people, and two of those are only suspicious deaths, not confirmed assassinations. | [
"The king was mortally wounded during the suppression of a revolt by Viscount Aimar V of Limoges in 1199, and died without legitimate heirs. The chronicler Roger of Howden claimed that later that same year,\n",
"In some cases, kings have personally murdered people. In 1568, King Eric XIV beat his secretary Martin... |
Is the Mandate of Heaven directly responsible for the technological and philosophical advances in the early history of dynastic China? | I think you have elevated the mandate to a height that it doesn't deserve. Innovations in China did not depend at all on unification. Some examples:
The great advances in military tactics, poetry, and paper all occurred in the six dynasties period, that which lies between the Han and sui/tang. The next great innovation was the printing press, which saw it's first major use in the five dynasties/ten kingdoms period between the tang and song. There is no great correlation between unification and innovation. | [
"The concept of the Mandate of Heaven was first used to support the rule of the kings of the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BCE), and legitimize their overthrow of the earlier Shang dynasty (1600–1069 BCE). It was used throughout the history of China to legitimize the successful overthrow and installation of new emperors, ... |
Is there an increased risk of lung cancer by just being in a room that smells like cigarette smoke with no one actually smoking in it? | Yes it appears so;
"
Researchers now know that residual tobacco smoke, dubbed thirdhand smoke, combines with indoor pollutants such as ozone and nitrous acid to create new compounds. Thirdhand smoke mixes and settles with dust, drifts down to carpeting and furniture surfaces, and makes its way deep into the porous material in paneling and drywall. It lingers in the hair, skin, clothing, and fingernails of smokers—so a mother who doesn't smoke in front of her kids, smokes outside, then comes inside and holds the baby is exposing that child to thirdhand smoke. The new compounds are difficult to clean up, have a long life of their own, and many may be carcinogenic.
"
\- [_URL_0_](_URL_1_) | [
"Results from epidemiological studies indicate that the risk of lung cancer increases with exposure to residential radon. A well-known example of source of error is smoking, the main risk factor for lung cancer. In the West, tobacco smoke is estimated to cause about 90% of all lung cancers. \n",
"The risk of lung... |
how did children from completely different parts of the world come up with the exact-same schoolyard games? | Think you are underestimating both the time these games have been around for and the extent to which families move around. | [
"Children's games during the Middle Ages and earlier are something of a mystery, since the rules of the games were passed from generation to generation orally. In rare cases, the games survived long enough to be recorded in later centuries. Pieter Bruegel's painting \"Children's Games\" (1560) depicts many games po... |
Why are there only 4 "letters" of DNA? | The interesting thing is that the Adenosine, Thymine (Uracil for RNA), Cytosine and Guanine are NOT the only nucleotides that are present in nature. There is also xanthine, hypoxanthine, and inosine.
Also, the traditional Watson-Crick bases that are said to be present in RNA are NOT the ONLY bases that can be present in RNA. For example, there is an enzyme called Adenosine deaminase (ADA for short) that deaminates adenosine to form inosine (which is a non-Watson-Crick nuceloside) and if the enzyme does not deaminate a specific nucleotide in a specific gene, this results in ALS (or Lou-Gerrig's disease). In short, the "four nitrogenous bases rule" is an over simplification of RNA since other nitrogenous bases can be present in mainly RNA structures.
As to if it is possible that a similar DNA structure could exist that is double helical and self-replicating (DNA actually uses protien enzymes to replicate and is generally considered to have very little catalytic activity. RNA is the one that is self-replicating and has catalytic activity), it is entirely possible that very similar nitrogenous bases could be arranged with a phosphate backbone to form another organism's "basis of life" but the problem is that the structure of said molecule would be hard to determine unless we were exposed to it and were able to determine the structure. In the scenario in which we discover a new "basis of life," the structure of the molecule does not necessarily matter if the organism finds a way to deal with the structure and replicate. The reason that we care that DNA is helical is that the enzymes that bind DNA as well as unzip it to make more DNA (the enzymes that make DNA are called polymerases whereas the enzymes that unzip the DNA are called helicases) are specifically tuned to work with that helical structure.
edit: mindule pointed out my error in saying that DNA contains Inosine; RNA actually contains Inosine. For RNA, there is more variation with the types of nitrogneous bases that are present, but in general, DNA does only contain 4 nitrogenous bases. I do think that jurble and smashy_smashy made some excellent points as to how this necessarily a limitation since it leaves a lot of room for genetic variation. | [
"The possible letters are \"A\", \"C\", \"G\", and \"T\", representing the four nucleotide bases of a DNA strand — adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine — covalently linked to a phosphodiester backbone. In the typical case, the sequences are printed abutting one another without gaps, as in the sequence AAAGTCTGAC, re... |
If you were placed in a room with 30% oxygen and 70% helium, would you be able to breathe normally? | Yes; you can breathe this just fine. Deep sea divers utilize HeliOx to avoid nitrogen narcosis. You would take funny, but could breathe it just fine at least short term.
This assumes that you're breathing this at a normal pressure. If you were actually diving or in a compression chamber, you have to consider the partial pressure of the gases.
I'm not sure the long term effect of the elevated O2 percentage. Someone else will need to address that. | [
"Inhaling helium can be dangerous if done to excess, since helium is a simple asphyxiant and so displaces oxygen needed for normal respiration. Fatalities have been recorded, including a youth who suffocated in Vancouver in 2003 and two adults who suffocated in South Florida in 2006. In 1998, an Australian girl (he... |
What parts of WW2 fighter aircraft were armored? | For the most part there was very little armor included in fighter aircraft of WWII. The Japanese Ki-43-II only had a single 13mm steel plate behind the pilot. Even planes renowned for their ruggedness such as the P-47 had only minor armor. The P-47D had a 10mm plate behind the pilot and a small plate in front of the pilot under the canopy. For fighters, armor played only a small role in the durability of the plane. Fighters had to be light and manoeuvrable in order to effectively fit their role. The Bf-109 came with an additional armor plate behind the headrest, but this was often removed by pilots who considered increased visibility to be more valuable.
The only other protection resembling armor on fighters would be strengthened glass which could withstand a few hits from low calibre rounds. This would only be found right in front of the pilot, with few exceptions. The skin on the wings and fuselage were not thickened because the disadvantage of the extra mass far outweighed any small increase that may have been gained in this manner.
If you would like to know more about planes with heavier armor we would need to look at ground attackers such as the legendary IL-2 and the Hs.129. A modern example of such a plane would be the A-10 Warthog currently in service with the US military.
I would suggest you watch [this](_URL_0_) video by youtuber Bismark for a good overview of this topic. | [
"The Spitfire, from about mid-1940, had 73 pounds (33 kg) of armoured steel plating in the form of head (of 6.5 mm thickness) and back protection on the seat bulkhead (4.5 mm), and covering the forward face of the glycol header tank. The Hurricane had a similar armour layout to the Spitfire, and was the toughest an... |
Why is a lump of coal black, but a diamond is clear? | Coal is a sedimentary rock composed of many minerals. Diamond is a mineral composed of a carbon-based crystal structure. If impurities are present in that structure, the clarity of diamond (or any mineral) can be altered. That is why we see varying colors of diamonds.
A better question would ask why graphite (also a cabon-based structure) is gray/black and diamonds are clearer. Both are considered allotropes of carbon with different crystal structures that propagate light differently, which varies their appearance.
Fun fact: Diamond is not stable at our atmospheric temperature and pressure (think ground surface and areas we inhabit) and will eventually break down to graphite. Although, this could take a few billion years. | [
"The researchers discovered that all blue diamonds show red and green peaks in their phosphorescence spectrum, due to the presence of nitrogen and boron in the stones. The intensity and rate of decay of the spectrum varies from diamond to diamond. \n",
"BULLET::::- Type Ia diamonds make up about 95% of all natura... |
Why was the SA and SS allowed/accepted in Germany before Hitler ultimately took power in 1933? | The Republic did have the legal power to ban both of these organizations as early as 1922. The *Republikschutzgesetz* (Law for the Protection of the Republic) gave both the *Land* and central governments broad authority to suppress organizations deemed a threat to the Republic. These laws allowed for the temporary bans of media that encourage violence. Under the rubric of "endangering public safety," the *Republikschutzgesetz* outlawed the organizations from owning unauthorized weapons, the creation and brandishing of a weapons arsenal, and criminalized the failure to report on the existence of weapons arsenal. But gun control and regulation was not the primary focus of the *Republikschutzgesetz* but rather to restrict the operations of various anti-republican groups and provide grounds for their prosecution. The *Republikschutzgesetz*'s provisions on firearms were predicated upon a pre-existing January 1919 Reichstag legislation which banned the private ownership of firearms to meet provisions of the Versailles Treaty which called for a wide-ranging German disarmament, including non-state affiliated militias.
The Law had a five-year life, but was extended in both 1927 and 1929. Inn the latter year, the Republic used the *Republikschutzgesetz* to ban the KPD's paramilitary wing, the *Roter Frontkämpferbund* (RFB). The ban was relatively ineffective; Berlin police reported that the RFB still collected dues and many RFB members simply did not wear their uniforms and insignia, but still hewed to their paramilitary organization. The ban restricted membership and new recruitment, but did not kill the organization.
Nonetheless, the ban of the RFB did send a clear signal as to the authorities' thoughts on Communist paramilitaries. But neither the NSDAP's SA or SS were banned in 1929, despite evidence of considerable violence by the NSDAP groups. Nor did the ban the *Stahlhelm* paramilitary of the right-wing DNVP or the socialist *Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold* of the SDP. These paramilitaries continued to function in the chaos years of the Depression and their street brawls contributed to a larger sense of the Republic's terminal decline.
The nominal reason for not banning these organizations was that a group like the SA was only open to NSDAP members. Therefore, applying the *Republikschutzgesetz* to the SA or SS was not banning a paramilitary organization, but suppressing an internal part of a political party, which the Constitution forbid. But this type of rationale could have also applied to the RFB. The continued survival of both the *Stahlhelm* and the RSRG point to favortism on the part of the state towards those in power, but this still does not explain the reluctance to apply the law to the NSDAP, who were self-described political outsiders. There were repeated calls between 1930 and 1931 to ban the NSDAP's paramilitary wing, but the state and *Land* governments dragged their feet until April 1932 and the Brüning government banned the SA and SS.
But by this time, the SA, and to a lesser extent, the SS, had a large enough following to make the ban toothless. SA men simply wore insignia on the inside of their lapels or marched in plain white shirts. Various *Land* laws against uniforms were evaded through such measures. Moreover, both the SA and SS tended to frame their flaunting of the ban or *ersatz* uniforms as an issue of free speech protected by the constitution. The fall of the Brüning led to a reversal of the NSDAP ban by von Papen the following June.
This reluctance and von Papen's reversal showcases one of the fundamental problems of the *Republikschutzgesetz*: although the law itself was politically neutral, its application was not. Von Papen and his entourage certainly thought they could use the NSDAP for its own ends, but the reluctance to use the law against right-wing groups ran deeper than the immediate political milieu of 1932. The Weimar justice system, ranging from police to judges, was "blind in the right eye," meaning that right-wing radicals received far less attention for their activities than those on the left. Hitler and his fellow defendants' slap on the wrist for the Beer Hall Putsch was only one example of a justice system that was quite lenient for right-wing radicalism. In all the debates over applying the law to the NSDAP, few in the central government considered reversing the RFB ban. The various Weimar police departments investigated the KPD's groups with far more alacrity than equivalent right-wing opponents of the Republic.
This selective legal astigmatism did not prevent Hitler from making political hay from the few times the NSDAP felt state repression. Both in his run-up to power and after Hitler's appointment as Chancellor, the NSDAP would use these few examples of the *Republikschutzgesetz* as evidence that the NSDAP had triumphed against a hostile establishment that had stacked the odds against them. The Republic's use of political suppression became an opportunity for the NSDAP to cast democratic opponents of the Nazi seizure of power as hypocrites. When the Centre Württemberg State President, Eugen Bolz critiqued the NSDAP's antidemocratic moves in February 1933, Hitler responded in a speech attacking both Bolz and presenting his Chancellorship as a true defense of freedom:
> Those who made no mention of our freedom for fourteen years have no right to talk about it today. As Chancellor I need only use one law for the protection of the national state, just as they made a law for the protection of the Republic back then, and then they would realize that not everything they called freedom was worthy of the name.
Bolz ended up forced out of office, spent a few weeks inside a concentration camp, and then in the political wilderness of the 1930s under Gestapo surveillance.
It is possible that Hitler and other NSDAP leaders may have believed that the main ire *Republikschutzgesetz* was directed at them. The NSDAP soon enacted their own version of *Republikschutzgesetz* in February 1933 as part of the Reichstag Fire Decrees, and Goebbels's diary entries from this period show a certain glee at meeting out vengeance and bans against their political enemies of the 1929-33 period. But the NSDAP's public rhetoric about the *Republikschutzgesetz* was half-right. The application of the law did stack the deck, but in *favor* of the NSDAP and their fellow-travelers on the right. They saw not only their ideological rivals on the left suppressed by the law, but could benefit from knowing how the RFB evaded it when the *Republikschutzgesetz* belatedly came for them.
*Sources*
Evans, Richard J. *The Coming of the Third Reich*. New York: Penguin Press, 2004.
Fulda, Bernhard. *Press and Politics in the Weimar Republic*. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Swett, Pamela E. *Neighbors and Enemies: The Culture of Radicalism in Berlin, 1929-1933*. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. | [
"On 30 January 1933 Adolf Hitler was appointed Reichs Chancellor. The AWO continued to function for a few more months, but after the Reichstag fire at the end of February and the Reichstag election of 5 March 1933, political parties found themselves banned, with the SPD, second only to the Nazi party in the March e... |
credit score lookup. why does it impede your credit score? seems like a basic, no hassle thing to find like checking your bank account. | It's like asking "am I cool?".
Asking the question automatically makes you less cool. | [
"Credit scores are compiled from information sources relating to credit, such as number of credit accounts held, balances on each account, dates of collection activity, and so on. Credit scores do not measure any financial or personal activity that is not related to credit, and identity fraud that does not involve ... |
How , and how often, did American GIs clean their rifles in WWII? | You might be best served by posting this in r/guns. | [
"Before and during World War II, stored rifles were reconditioned for use as reserve, training and Lend-Lease weapons; these rifles are identified by having refinished metal (sandblasted and Parkerized) and sometimes replacement wood (often birch). Some of these rifles were reconditioned with new bolts manufactured... |
how are car batteries able to be charged up with a jump start, if car batteries use chemicals for energy? | The jump start doesn't charge the battery, it just starts the car.
When the car is running, it charges the battery. | [
"Car batteries are most likely to explode when a short-circuit generates very large currents. Such batteries produce hydrogen, which is very explosive, when they are overcharged (because of electrolysis of the water in the electrolyte). During normal use, the amount of overcharging is usually very small and generat... |
Are there any organisms that live their entire existence in the air? | There are living bacteria in clouds. I don't think any are native to clouds, but I wouldn't be surprised if a fair number spend an entire generation (the duration of a bacteria's "life" is a bit hard to define) suspended in the air. | [
"Besides providing locomotion opportunities for winged animals and a conduit for the dispersal of pollen grains, spores and seeds, the atmosphere can be considered to be a habitat in its own right. There are metabolically active microbes present that actively reproduce and spend their whole existence airborne, with... |
lightspeed | The absolute speed limit of the universe, very close to 300,000,000 meters per secend. It is the most accurately known physical constant. | [
"Litespeed uses 6/4 titanium, which is an alloy of titanium with 6 percent aluminum and 4 percent vanadium, instead of the more-common 3/2.5 titanium. It is more difficult to work with, but has a better strength to weight ratio than other available alloys. It was initially not available as tubes, so Litespeed bough... |
Where does (more) space come from? | Its more like the space we have is stretching than more space is being added. | [
"BULLET::::- \"Ākāśa\" (Space) – Space is a substance that accommodates the living souls, the matter, the principle of motion, the principle of rest and time. It is all-pervading, infinite and made of infinite space-points.\n",
"Space is any conducive area that an artist provides for a particular purpose. Space i... |
I mostly know the "Magic Bullet" theory of the JFK assassination from the Seinfeld parody. What is the conspiracy theorists' claim, and why is it wrong? | The magic bullet theory is, indeed, the claim that the trajectory of the bullet was impossible, requiring several turns in mid air, and thus that there was a second gunman.
In reality the magic bullet theory is based on some false premises, and itself ignores some of the critical evidence. As in, if the magic bullet was fired by a second gunman we are short one bullet hole in the car...
Note, the 'magic bullet' was the 2nd (of 3) Oswald fired. The 1st missed cleanly. The 3rd was the head shot that killed Kennedy.
Also, given the range and circumstances, this did not require nor did Oswald demonstrate unusual marksmanship.
Some issues-
Kennedy was shot from behind, why did his head jerk *backwards*. This is a subtle effect of physics. Penn and Teller (among others) recreated it exactly with a melon. Not an issue.
Bullet trajectory- The Magic Bullet Theory assumes several things there were not, in fact, correct.
The car they were in was not a normal model. It was specifically modified for parades, to show off the important passenger.
As a consequence-
A) Kennedy and Connolly were not aligned front to back. Connolly was closer to the center.
B) Kennedy and Connolly were not at the same height. Kennedy's seat was higher, so the crowds could get a better look.
C) Kennedy was not sitting upright at the time. He had leaned forward to talk to Connolly ('was that a gunshot?')
D) Connolly was not facing forward at the time, he had twisted around to listen to Kennedy.
As a consequence of all of this, there was, indeed a straight line through Kennedy and Connolly, and thus no need for turns in mid air and no actual 'magic bullet'.
Why was the bullet not deformed? Until it ended up in Connolly's wrist, it passed entirely through soft tissue. And the bullet was, in fact, deformed.
Kennedy's as the most investigated murder in world history. And the committee doing the investigation was *extremely* thorough. There was no conspiracy, no second gunman. There was just a lone man with an opportunity. | [
"According to author John C. McAdams, \"[t]he greatest and grandest of all conspiracy theories is the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory.\" Others have often referred to it as \"the mother of all conspiracies\". The number of books written about the assassination of Kennedy has been estimated to be between 1,0... |
renouncing citizenship | 1. It sometimes has benefits. Some countries don't allow for dual citizenship, so you must renounce your old one to get a new one. In some cases having a foreign citizenship can bar you from certain jobs, especially dealing with secret government information.
2. Usually yes. Most countries won't allow you to become a stateless person.
3. You lose all the privileges associated with being a citizen. The legal system treats you differently, you no longer have free access to your former country, etc.
4. Benefits are things like avoiding a certain cost of citizenship (like mandatory military service in some countries) or being granted another citizenship that conflicts with your old one.
5. You can, but you would have to file as a non-citizen resident. You would require a visa and other immigration documents to be able to work and live in the US.
6. You know, maybe you could, but probably not. The Constitution requires the President be a "natural born citizen" which could apply to someone who renounced, but it would be a tough case for the courts. Congress would probably also seek to bar any non-citizen from being elected, by a Constitutional amendment if necessary. | [
"San Francisco attorney Wayne M. Collins helped many people who had renounced citizenship under the provisions of the 1944 Act to have the government's recognition of their renunciations reversed. On Independence Day in 1967, the Department of Justice promulgated regulations which would make it unnecessary for renu... |
i was recently diagnosed with coeliac (gluten allergy) and of course need to change my diet. how does this come about when for the last 30 years or so i was fine? | Celiac is an autoimmune disorder. It is not an allergy.
You absorb gluten as well as nutrients through villi in your intestines. Because your immune system immune system thinks that gluten is a foreign invader, it will try to destroy it. In the process, it will actually destroy your villi, meaning eventually you not only stop digesting gluten but all other nutrients as well... and that can kill you, puts you at increased risk of prostate cancer, and other fun stuff.
As for what triggers Celiac, it can be any number of things. [Stressful life events may be a cause](_URL_0_). It could just be bad luck!
In some ways, you are very lucky to be diagnosed now. 10 years ago, there was basically nothing in the way of gluten free options. Today GF is everywhere and you should have not trouble adjusting to a GF lifestyle.
If you want advice, recipes, or support, I am happy to share with you. Just send me a PM :) | [
"Non-coeliac gluten sensitivity (NCGS) is described as a condition of multiple symptoms that improves when switching to a gluten-free diet, after coeliac disease and wheat allergy are excluded. People with NCGS may develop gastrointestinal symptoms, which resemble those of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or a variet... |
What would the world be like if the Planck Constant were large enough to experience "quantum weirdness" at a macroscopic scale? | Two points:
It may sound pendantic, but you cannot imagine changing fundamental dimensionful constants, like hbar or c. Their value is meaningless, being just a property of your system of units. All speeds in the universe are proportional to c, and all quantities with units of angular momentum are proportional to hbar. So "changing" any of those two has no effect - not even their value in SI units changes, as the units get rescaled accordingly.
What the title of the game really stands for is that they're imagining stretching your units so as to make c have a small numeric value. Essentially you're not making c small, you're just making the user much faster than a human would be, so increasing the ratio (player walking speed)/c which is an adimensional ratio and so meaningful. Identically, in your hypothetical simulation you'd stretch units as to make hbar's value in those units large - you'd be shrinking down the user, not making hbar big.
Sorry for this correction, but it's actually a subtle and very misunderstood point.
Now, for the second part: quantum systems can always be simulated to arbitrary accuracy by a classical computer, but the computational costs grow unpractically large with the size of the system, to the point that systems with what we'd call a small number of components are absolutely outside the possibilities of any plausibly-sized classical computer. So... no, unless you want to omit essential parts of quantum mechanics from your simulation, or you're content with simulating a small system.
Quantum computers wouldn't in principle have this problem. | [
"Macroscopic quantum phenomena refer to processes showing quantum behavior at the macroscopic scale, rather than at the atomic scale where quantum effects are prevalent. The best-known examples of macroscopic quantum phenomena are superfluidity and superconductivity; other examples include the quantum Hall effect. ... |
Does the sun get uniformly dense as we get closer to the core? | The main effect is that it has to achieve balance between outward pressure and inward pointing gravity. If you go through the math, you get that it will be most dense at the center. If you want an image, NASA has a nice one [here](_URL_0_). Note that this model involves more than what I just said above, but that's sort of the first step in the whole calculation. | [
"The core of the Sun extends from the center to about 20–25% of the solar radius. It has a density of up to (about 150 times the density of water) and a temperature of close to 15.7 million kelvins (K). By contrast, the Sun's surface temperature is approximately 5,800 K. Recent analysis of SOHO mission data favors ... |
Does a massless particle traveling through a medium experience the passage of time? | Photons don't exist outside of time! They don't have a reference frame, which is more an artifact of the way we define reference frames against c. It's sort of a vacuous statement anyway-- one moment is like any other for a photon, a fluctuation of the electric and magnetic fields that continues from when emitted to when it strikes something and is absorbed. | [
"Aspects of modern physics, such as the hypothetical tachyon particle and certain time-independent aspects of quantum mechanics, may allow particles or information to travel backward in time. Logical objections to macroscopic time travel may not necessarily prevent retrocausality at other scales of interaction. Eve... |
Are there other historical instances of the "model minority" phenomenon? | Oddly enough, Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were considered the model Christian minority prior to the emergence of the Armenian Question in the late 19th century. They even earned the epithet of *millet-i sadıka*, "the loyal millet", millet here is an ottoman term used to denote an ethnic and religious community. The reason for this, as the title implies, was the perceived loyalty of Armenians compared to the other Christian minorities.
In the European part of the ottoman empire, rising wave of nationalism was felt relatively shortly after the French Revolution, with the first Serbian uprising happening in 1804, and Greeks were the first amongst Empire's Christian subjects to have their own independent state in 1832. Although the Greek kingdom was restricted to Peloponnese for most of the 19th century, it opened a Pandora's box which the ottomans never managed to shut down.
For Armenians however, things progressed far more slowly. "The Eastern Question" didn't become a widely spoken issue until it was mentioned in the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. Even this was the result of external powers' pressure upon the ottoman government to improve the situation of the Christian subjects in the eastern provinces, and not an Armenian rebellion. An Armenian bishop at the time even states that this is the first time in which the Armenians make a political, rather than merely religious, appearance. Reasons for relatively late development of this national identity is complex, but i think it is fair to state that Armenians, living at the eastern provinces, were somewhat isolated from the events happening at the Balkans at the turn of the 19th century.
Source;
Masayuki Ueno (2013). “FOR THE FATHERLAND AND THE STATE”: ARMENIANS NEGOTIATE THE TANZIMAT REFORMS. | [
"The concept of \"model minority\" is heavily associated with U.S. culture and is not extensively used outside the U.S., though many European countries have concepts of classism that stereotype ethnic groups in a similar manner to model minority.\n",
"Some have described the creation of the model minority theory ... |
During the fall of Germany, was there a population flight from places likely to be taken by the Red Army to places likely to be taken by the Anglo-Americans? | After the death of Hitler the new Reichspraesident Doentiz, actively moved soldiers from the Eastern Front to the Western Front so that they could surrender to the Western Allies. However, civilians were largely left to fend for themselves. Doentiz kept the war going with holding actions to allow as many soldiers to flee as possible and thus civilians kept dying as the Soviets bombarded cities, towns, etc.
A book on this very topic is "The End" by Ian Kershaw which is about the final days of the Third Reich. | [
"The first exodus of German civilians from the eastern territories was composed of both spontaneous flight and organised evacuation, starting in mid-1944 and continuing until early 1945. Conditions turned chaotic during the winter, when kilometres-long queues of refugees pushed their carts through the snow trying t... |
how does self-disappearing ink work? | Disappearing ink is usually reacting to carbon dioxide in the air around us, creating carbonic acid through an interaction with an agent in the ink, which causes it to "disappear" as sodium carbonate. Sometimes, the ink is photosensitive instead, which will cause it to disappear due to exposure to light. | [
"Inks that are visible for a period of time without the intention of being made visible again are called disappearing inks. Disappearing inks typically rely on the chemical reaction between thymolphthalein and a basic substance such as sodium hydroxide. Thymolphthalein, which is normally colorless, turns blue in so... |
competitive eating. how can people eat so much in one sitting? what happens to their stomachs and bodies after eating so much? and why does it seem that so many competitive eaters are very skinny? | They are able to eat so much because they prepare. They stretch their stomachs, they practice techniques for speed, etc.
After a competition, it's not unlike how you feel after Thanksgiving. Full, sluggish, tired, maybe even a little nauseous. Just to a greater degree. Most of these people don't vomit after competition. Other than that, you recover pretty easily within a day.
It isn't necessarily that most competitive eaters are skinny so much that the successful ones tend to be. This is for several reasons. First, your stomach is (supposedly) better able to expand when you don't have shit tons of fat around it. Second, people who are fit burn more calories, so if you do a lot of competitions it benefits you to stay in shape for your health. Third, competitions are exhausting. It may seem like just aggressive eating, but it's tiring and if you aren't in shape it is hard to keep up aggressive activity for 10-12 minutes non-stop.
Source: Former low level competitive eater. | [
"The argument that competitive eating can cause weight gain, which may lead to obesity and elevated cholesterol and blood pressure, is common. The potential damage that competitive eating can cause to the human digestive system was the subject of a 2007 study by the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Th... |
abortion as a costitutional right | Supreme court opinions walk through the logic of how a principle outlined in the constitution applies to a specific case. Roe v. Wade's opinions are [here](_URL_0_).
The path they take is as follows:
The constitution contains no explicit right to privacy, but it does contain enough restrictions to protect citizens privacy that it can be inferred that citizens privacy was important to the authors of the constitution (specifically the first amendment, ninth amendment, and fourteenth amendment). Therefore:
> This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.
In other words, it's either in the right is one of the not enumerated rights in the ninth amendment
> The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
or that abortion bans were the state depriving a woman of her liberty without giving the woman proper due process of law.
> nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
As far as other things related to the decision, the legal logic was very similar in the court's opinion to strike State restrictions on firearms ownership in Heller v D.C. and MacDonald v Chicago. | [
"The Christian right opposes abortion, believing that life begins at conception and that abortion is murder. Therefore, those in the movement have worked toward the overturning of \"Roe v. Wade\", and have also supported incremental steps to make abortion less available. Such efforts include bans on late-term abort... |
if i didn't know something was illegal, how could i get in trouble for it? | Not knowing the law is not, in itself, a defense. This is a pretty important legal principle, important enough to [have its own Latin phrase](_URL_0_). I'm not quite sure what you're asking, since there's no particular reason you *wouldn't* get in trouble for it. | [
"Illegality in English law is a potential ground in English contract law, tort, trusts or UK company law for a court to refuse to enforce an obligation. The illegality of a transaction, either because of public policy under the common law, or because of legislation, potentially means no action directly concerning t... |
how much of the currency in films and tv shows is real? | Very little, probably. Maybe a few bucks changes hands in this scene or that, but when you see a briefcase full of money it's prop currency that's been specially created not to run afoul of counterfeiting laws. | [
"Over $1,000,000 of real United States currency was used in the movie, but was carefully watched by armed guards. Most of the currency shown being printed was larger by half of actual United States currency and had obvious printing errors, so there was no chance the money could be passed as genuine.\n",
"The film... |
What was the extent of Persian influence on the Deccan Sultanates? | Persian as in the culture? If so it was huge, not only was it the court language and culture, it was also the language of the arts and sciences, thanks in part to a massive influx of Persian immigrants (brain drain?) that migrated there 1500s.
If you meant Persian, as in the Safavids, then that was also considerable, or even huge if you were to define some of the acts the Deccan Sultanates (the Shia ones, such as Golconda) as acts of subservience. Salma Ahmed Farooqui (Comprehensive History of Medieval India) writes that the Qutb Shahi dynasty of Golconda, themselves descendants of the Qara Qoyunlu, would read aloud the names of the Safavids Sahs in their call to prayer, which is an act of subservience, one you'd to for the Caliph.
| [
"Persian was the official language of the Delhi Sultanate, the Bengal Sultanate, the Bahamani Sultanate, the Mughal Empire, and their successor states, as well as the cultured language of poetry and literature. Many of the Sultans and nobility in the Sultanate period were Persianised Turks from Central Asia who spo... |
How common would water-borne diseases such as Cholera have been in cities that used aqueducts such as Rome? Would the drinking water have been that much safer compared to other cities? | History enthusiast here.
Other cities as in other Roman cities?
To answer your question, considering that the aqueducts were fed by springs quite far away from Rome itself, the possibility of a waterborne illness is quite unlikely. To entertain the possibility would call for some infected body (human, fish, vegetable) to take a dip in an aqueduct (or the spring itself). However, if the source was a stagnant body of water (unlikely as the master planners knew the relation between stagnant water and waterborne diseases), then bid farewell to a large chunk of Rome's population.
To your other question, yes, the aqueduct was vastly superior (in terms of safety) compared to drawing water from a well, spring, or river, as those sources could become easily contaminated over a short period of time.
Sources: _URL_1_
_URL_0_ | [
"In the 19th century numerous American cities were afflicted with major outbreaks of disease, including cholera in 1832, 1849 and 1866 and typhoid in 1848. The fast-growing cities did not have sewers and relied on contaminated wells within the city confines for drinking water supply. In the mid-19th century many ci... |
Many facets of American social culture appear to have gotten less "formal" over the course of the last 100 years (male/female dress, reverence for elders etc). Are there any noticeable examples of American society becoming more formal over this time period? | It's more like 150 years, but weddings have gotten much more formal and formalized in that timeframe. Of course, plenty of people have informal/courthouse/Vegas weddings, but the idea of a wedding has changed from a small gathering of family and close friends in the home of the bride's or groom's parents to a large, fancy, ceremonial affair.
In 1840, Queen Victoria of Great Britain married Prince Albert. The bride wore a white satin dress, which immediately set the standard for brides-to-be who could afford white material and had the means to keep it clean. Prior to that (and for many years following for most women), women were typically married in their "best" dress, which was often made of a dark material so it could double as a funeral dress for those occasions. The rise of a (White) middle class in the United States meant that more women could aspire to the trappings of wealth, such as a big fancy white dress, catered dinner, a confectioner-made (rather than homemade) cake, engraved invitations, and such. Professions arose or adapted to meet these needs - florists, caterers, etc. Much of the modern wedding industry is based on this desire to imitate the formality and wealth the rich and aristocratic displayed on a daily (or at least frequent) basis -- allowing the bride and groom to be "rich for a day." (As someone who studies the history of media and technology, I have to point out here the influence of the invention of photography and the spread of newspapers, whose "society pages" helped circulate images of wealth widely.)
If you are interested in reading more, Carol Wallace's *All Dressed in White: The Irresistible Rise of the American Wedding* (Penguin, 2004) is a pop history of weddings in the U.S. | [
"According to Thomas Keith in \"Masculinities in Contemporary American Culture\", the longstanding cultural assumption that male–female dualities are \"natural and immutable\" partly explains the persistence of systems of patriarchy and male privilege in modern society.\n",
"The increasing acceptance with which m... |
why don't we put msg in everything? | People are stupid and still think it is bad for you. A lot of store bought soups and stocks will still label their product as msg free, even though there is no need to be msg free.
Personally I do put it on everything. You can get a huge thing from amazon for like 15 bucks | [
"The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given MSG its generally recognized as safe (GRAS) designation. A popular misconception is that MSG can cause headaches and other feelings of discomfort, known as \"Chinese restaurant syndrome,\" but blinded studies fail to find evidence of such a reaction. However, some ne... |
The nearest star is a little over 4 light years away. Do we know of any solar systems with neighbors that are very close to each other (relative to our proximity with Proxima Centauri)? | The density of stars near the galactic center will be higher. [Wikipedia](_URL_0_) puts it at 2 stars per cubic light year compared to the 0.004 stars per cubic light year near the sun. This corresponds to an average separation of ~0.8 light years between stars near the galactic center vs the ~6.3 light years between stars near the sun. This is assuming a locally uniform distribution of stars; the commonality of binary star systems should probably be taken into account for a better estimate. | [
"The nearest star to the Earth, apart from the Sun, is Proxima Centauri, which is 39.9 trillion kilometres, or 4.2 light-years. Travelling at the orbital speed of the Space Shuttle (8 kilometres per second—almost 30,000 kilometres per hour), it would take about 150,000 years to arrive. This is typical of stellar se... |
why do athletes look so much faster on tv compared to live (in-person)? | Most likely because of the camera movement.
& #x200B;
on TV the camera focuses on the player and the rest moves around them. in person, you are already far and you point of view is the whole stadium. | [
"The increasing broadcasting of sports events, along with media reporting can affect the number of people attending sports due to the ability to experience the sport without the need to physically attend and sometimes an increasingly enhanced experience including highlights, replays, commentary, statistics and anal... |
what is the largest known individual object in the universe and how you can understand it's true scale? | _URL_0_
Here's a good gif to understand scale. Thank me later | [
"The smallest known near-Earth asteroid is with an absolute magnitude of 33.2, corresponding to a diameter of about . The largest such object is 1036 Ganymed, with an absolute magnitude of 9.45 and a diameter of about .\n",
"BULLET::::- The largest structures in the universe are larger than expected. Current cosm... |
why are motorcycle engines capable of running at such higher rpm than car engines? | They are smaller and don't have as much metal to sling around. Since they have less mass in order to create the forces required to move it has to have higher RPM's. When you get up to the larger high speed diesel engines 1300RPM - 1500RPM is usually a max rating. Then the even larger medium speeds will typically max around 600RPM -800RPM. Any higher RPM's from these large engines will literally tear the engine apart.
Edit: A really ELI5 metaphor would be to think about throwing a punch. You can throw a lot of punches pretty fast. If you are holding a weight it would slow the punches down but have more force with each punch. If you attempt to punch too fast while holding a heavy weight you could dislocate your shoulder. | [
"Modern motorcycle engines are often available with higher specific outputs than car engines, which provides a performance advantage in a lightweight car. The motorcycle's sequential gearbox is often fitted with the engine, allowing for fast gearshifts. \n",
"This motorcycle's engine performance is not very inspi... |
how exactly was russia allegedly involved with the presidential election and what did they do? | The allegations claim that hackers working for two Russian intelligence agencies broke into email systems belonging to the Democratic National Committee as well as email accounts of other Democratic figures, such as Hilary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta. The emails they found were then released through Wikileaks, an organization that specializes in sharing secret information. The release of information was carefully managed, both in terms of timing and content, in order to create a series of news stories that presented Hilary Clinton and the Democrats as dishonest and untrustworthy. By calling attention to insecurities in Democratic email systems, they also supported one of the key talking points of the Trump campaign, which was that Hilary Clinton had compromised national security by running her own email server while she was Secretary of State.
I think that's a neutral summary. It is a fact that some emails were stolen and then released to the media in such a way as to hurt the Clinton campaign. It has also been _claimed_ that this was done by agents of the Russian government. So that's what people mean when they say 'Russia was involved'.
But wait, there's more. There are also allegations that Donald Trump and key figures in his campaign are sympathetic to the Russians, or are being or could be manipulated by Russia (which is to say by Russian president Vladimir Putin). It's also claimed that Trump or members of his campaign were in contact with the alleged Russian agents responsible for stealing and leaking the information.
Going into all the details would take a long time. What is certain is that some key members of Donald Trump's campaign, such as campaign manager Paul Manafort and foreign policy adviser Carter Page, had strong links to Russia. Manafort worked for the former president of the Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, an ally of president Putin. Manafort also apparently arranged to change parts of the Republican party's official policy in a way that benefited Russia. Both Manafort and Page resigned from the campaign because of concern over their ties to Russia. More recently, other people close to Trump, such as his appointee for national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and attorney general Jeff Sessions, have been revealed to have had contact with key figures in Russian intelligence. In Flynn's case, he was obliged to step down as a result of this.
There are also allegations that Trump himself may be compromised by Russia in some way. | [
"According to Russia Today, many in the Western media portrayed Russia's presidential election as nothing but a farce. It reported that the claims of rigging the election were not supported by the various international election monitoring organizations in attendance.\n",
"According to \"Russia Today\", many in th... |
Why can some people flex certain muscles and others can't? | Training builds and strengthens neuromuscular connections. If you workout your chest consistently then you should be able to move your pecs. | [
"Muscle contractures can occur for many reasons, such as paralysis, muscular atrophy, and forms of muscular dystrophy. Fundamentally, the muscle and its tendons shorten, resulting in reduced flexibility.\n",
"Stretching prior to strenuous physical activity has been thought to increase muscular performance by exte... |
How much autonomy did each State in the Holy Roman Empire have with respect to the military? | As for your first question, it depends on the era you're talking about. Prior to the Thirty Years War, most states did not have a standing army, but rather formed/hired an army as needed. However, this was not particularly unique within the HRE, given that standing armies were very expensive, and most states did not have a standing army. As standing professional armies became more common in the post-Westphalian period, many of the states did maintain standing forces.
In terms of more general autonomy, the various states of the HRE did have a degree of say in how/where troops were deployed. The *Reichstag*--the Imperial Diet--which consisted of the electors, princes, and free cities, could vote to raise troops or money for the defence of the Empire in general, and the Emperor could request such a vote for defence against a particular threat, such as the Ottomans advancing against the Empire's southern frontier, or the French in the west. Of course, there was a difference between the *Reichstag* voting for money/troops to be sent to the Emperor, and that money and troops actually materialising.
The Empire was subdivided into several 'Circles', which were regional gatherings of princes in certain regions of the Empire. The Circle was essentially an attempt to localise defence amongst the princes. Each Circle had its own Diet for deliberation amongst the princes that were apart of the Circle, and were meant to allow them to co-ordinate their responses to threats and collection of taxes voted for by the *Reichstag*. In times of *Reichskrieg*, the Circles were responsible for raising and supporting a set number of forces in order to form a combined Army of the Empire, independent and seperate from the army of the Emperor.
As for your second question, it's important to note that from ~1500 on, the Empire was under the rule of the Perpetual Public Peace, which obligated the princes of the Empire to settle their disputes through the Imperial legal system, rather than through force of arms. While the Thirty Years War serves as an obvious counter-example, the Public Peace was generally respected, and escalation to force of arms within the Empire relatively rare until the complete breakdown of the Thirty Years War. It does depend on how you define 'regularly', of course, as the post-Thirty Years War period through the whole of the 18th century had many wars, but whether or not this counts as 'regularly' fighting battles is up for debate. It is worth noting that in many of the major wars throughout the period, there was fighting in and amongst the princes of the Empire (See War of the Spanish Succession, War of the Austrian Succession), but in the Nine Years War and Great Turkish War, the Empire presented a relatively united front. The princes of the Empire did indeed fight against each other and foreign powers, but whether you can characterise that as 'regular' infighting or fighting against external powers is going to depend on what you want to focus on.
Hopefully this answers your question, and feel free to ask any followups! | [
"The Imperial Military Constitution (, also called the \"Reichskriegsverfassung\") of the Holy Roman Empire, like the rest of the imperial constitution, grew out of various laws and governed the establishment of military forces within the Empire. It was the basis for the establishment of the Army of the Holy Roman ... |
What exactly happened when you got the letter that you were drafted in WWII? | I answered a question similar to this [here](_URL_0_), but I'll repost it below. | [
"BULLET::::- \"Why I Refused to Register in the October 1940 Draft and a Little of What It Led To\" (1999), from Gara, Larry and Lenna Mae Gara, eds., \"A Few Small Candles: War Resistors of World War II Tell Their Stories\". Kent, Ohio. Kent State University Press. .\n",
"During World War II, families with sons ... |
why do some communities trick-or-treat on the day before halloween? | For safety mostly. If you get a lot of people to Trick-or-Treat the day before you end splitting the number of people up over two days instead of everyone trying to do it all at once.
Also, it allows parent's to take really young kids out without having to worry about asshole teenagers because most of them will be out Halloween night. | [
"Trick-or-treating is a Halloween ritual custom for children and adults in many countries. Children in costumes travel from house to house, asking for treats with the phrase \"Trick or treat\". The \"treat\" is usually some form of candy, although in some cultures money is used instead. The \"trick\" refers to a th... |
the mechanisms of voting in the us and the controversy about requiring government id in order to vote | You have to register to vote a month or 2 before the actual election is to take place. You then get a voter ID card but your name goes on a list. Your local voting station gets a list that contains your name (and others who registered). You then tell the voting station your name, they cross you off a list and go to vote.
Source: I worked at a voting station a few years back.
The issue is that for starters we don't automatically register people to vote, if you don't register before hand you usually can't vote or you have to go through a huge process to be able to vote. Additionally in terms of having a photo ID, most people use a drivers license but there are large swaths of people that don't have a license. Ok so use a state ID, well that requires a bunch of documentation that poor people are statistically expect to lose. Social Security cards and birth certificates are generally required and if poor people lose them it's super hard to get any sort of ID. Then tac on the fact that you have to go to the department of motor vehicles to get this ID (notorious for being slow) it's really hard for a poor person to take off work to find a bus to ride for an hour each direction and wait 3 hours at the DMV.
Edit: also go search for the DMV in the state of Texas you'll see a handful, but you'll also notice that many people up North and West have to drive a huge distance to get to one.
It's more of an issue with how we don't register and don't automatically give people access to state issued IDs. | [
"In 2011, several state legislatures passed new voting laws, especially pertaining to voter identification, with the stated purpose of combating voter fraud; the laws were attacked, however, by the Democratic Party as attempts to suppress voting among its supporters and to improve the Republican Party's presidentia... |
why do we have a more intense "falling feeling" in amusement park rides than we do when we are actually free falling like in skydiving or high dives? | That feeling is the experience of G-force. Simply put, once out of the plane, you will eventually achieve terminal velocity. That's the speed at which you stop accelerating. When you're not accelerating, you're G-force is zero.
Roller coasters are designed, essentially, to basically never achieve terminal velocity. Or, a better way of saying that is, roller coasters will likely never achieve terminal velocity simply because their weight, or mass, is too high and the drops too short to achieve them. Couple that with several twists and turns, and the rider is basically "always" experiencing some form of G-force. | [
"Marcus Leshock of WGN-TV commended the uniqueness of the zero-g stall element, stating \"it's something I've never really felt on a coaster before\". He describes hanging upside down as a \"really nice, fun, exhilarating feeling\" without feeling disorientated.\n",
"As well as rollercoasters, drop towers can pro... |
Is the smell of cooking food appetizing to babies too young to eat solids? | Babies can determine the difference between breast milk and baby formula by smell. They can actually find their way to a nipple to feed on even when they're at a small distance because of the smell. I know this isn't exactly the answer you are looking for but it's still interesting.
[There are actually plenty of baby smell studies listed at the end of this article](_URL_0_) if you want to take a look. | [
"The process of acquiring a taste can involve developmental maturation, genetics (of both taste sensitivity and personality), family example, and biochemical reward properties of foods. Infants are born preferring sweet foods and rejecting sour and bitter tastes, and they develop a preference for salt at approximat... |
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