question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
|---|---|---|
why does a car not move when you leave it in gear. | If you're talking about a manual transmission, it's because, typically, the car is left in either first gear or reverse when it's parked. When you're driving in these gears, the engine turns a lot to make the wheels turn comparatively little, to get the car moving. This means it's really difficult for the wheels to make the engine turn.
So when the ignition is off, with the car in gear and all the resistance of the engine from the engaged transmission, the wheels have a really hard time of turning.
I'm not too familiar with the specifics of automatics in this regard, but I imagine the answer is the same -- Park probably engages the transmission, giving the wheels resistance to stop them turning. I don't know for sure, though.
I hope I've answered your question, especially in the case of a manual, because I've driven one for years and should hope I know what I'm talking about. | [
"On some cars, starting off from rest involved using the gear change pedal like a clutch. On others, first gear could be selected but while the engine was still idling the car would not move even after the gear change pedal had been pressed and released. When the accelerator was pressed a centrifugal clutch or flui... |
Can you cross breed sharks? | Can it be possible to hybridize sharks? Yes. That particular combination, no. In order to cross breed, the two species must be closely related. Even then, the offspring usually are sterile. Sharks are unlikely to breed outside their species, so it'd have to be artificially done. | [
"BULLET::::- A group of about 50 hybrids between Australian blacktip shark and the larger common blacktip shark was found by Australia's East Coast in 2012. This is the only known case of hybridization in sharks.\n",
"Hybrids between the Australian blacktip shark and the common blacktip shark, comprising both F1 ... |
-how do ear candles work? | By good feelings and well wishes. | [
"Many advocates of ear candles claim that the treatment originates from traditional Chinese, Egyptian, or North American medicine. The mythical city of Atlantis is also reported to be the origin of this practice.\n",
"According to the US Food and Drug Administration (US FDA), ear candling is sometimes promoted wi... |
why do most forms say "caucasian" as an option for white if most white people aren't even from the caucus region? | Because a German man named [Christoph Meiners](_URL_0_) decided there were two races: Caucasians, who had the people of the southern Caucuses as their archetype, and Mongoloids, who were... everyone else. Christoph was something of a racist, so the defining traits of Caucasians were things like "More beautiful because white" and "More altruistic" among other things. He would later go on to subdivide the Caucasians to make such wonderful determinations like "the Celts are the best race" and "Slavs are scum." These views were not uncommon for Germans at the time, but he offered a pseudo-scientific veneer to them.
As history moved along other people based their pseudo-scientific racial groupings on this initial one and this has continued to the modern day. | [
"The use of the term \"non-white\" controversially refers to those who are not considered by the Canadian government to be Caucasian, and does open the door to ambiguity. For example, people who are Lebanese, Berber, Latin American or South Asian may consider themselves to be white, yet the federal government forci... |
what are extras in movies actually talking about in the background? | I had a friend who did that kind of work in NYC. She said they would sit there trying to make the other person laugh. Check out a cafe scene next chance you get and see how many people are trying not to laugh. | [
"In filming these movies, Van used the local folks as bit actors, making some of them go in blackface. One of the actors was a local, Lee Collins, who later had a career as a choreographer on Broadway.\n",
"On a film or TV set, background actors are usually referred to as \"junior artist\", \"atmosphere\", \"back... |
Are there any good books or documentaries about Japan's Sengoku Jidai period? | If you've been playing Shogun, I imagine you're looking for a military history. Sadly, I'm not aware of any authoritative military histories of the sengoku era.
If you're interested in the time period in general, Berry's [*The Culture of Civil War in Kyoto*](_URL_0_) is an excellent cultural history of the time, explaining what was going on with the rest of society while the Daimyo were fighting. | [
"The is a biography of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who rose to the office of \"taikō\" during the Azuchi–Momoyama period of Japanese history. The Confucian scholar (1564–1640) published the work in 1626 during the rule of the third Tokugawa shōgun Iemitsu. The work was published five times between 1626 and 1710. The comple... |
what exactly happens when you trade in your phone to get credit/upgrades with your cellphone company? | They aren't stealing your personal information if thats what you're worried about. One of the first things they do is wipe it. If you're really concerned about it you can wipe it yourself beforehand. They get them repaired/cleaned up to sale condition and then sell them. Even ones that aren't typically stocked for sale will be taken in and sold as budget options.
They may also be kept to exchange for the same model if someone brings in a broken one, or salvaged for parts.
They may be donated to organizations that give phones to the needy. | [
"This results in an \"on/off\" or \"all or nothing\" proposition for the prepaid service providers and their clients (i.e. the account either has enough credit to use the phone, or it does not). Some operators (e.g., Orange) allow their pre-paid customers to have a small negative balance to allow short calls or tex... |
how does lightning "repair" the ozone? | The high Voltage Discharge of the lightning has enough energy to Ionize some oxygen molecules which then reacts to O3 (ozone).
So O2 + Energy = 2 O• - > O• + O2 = O3
Look at it as if you had magnets 2 stick together and you need energy (force) to separate them, now you can take each one and connect it to other 2 magents | [
"Ozone is also produced by the action of sunlight on volatile organic compounds or VOCs, such as gasoline vapour present in the air of towns and cities, in a problem known as photochemical smog. The ozone formed can drift many miles before it is destroyed by further reactions.\n",
"Ozone may be formed from by ele... |
why does old electronics produce a high ptched noice when turned on? | The specific component is called the "flyback transformer". The whine is mentioned in this section:
[_URL_1_](_URL_0_)
More specifically, the high frequency alternating magnetic field makes the transformer core vibrate at whatever frequency is being made. Depending on the initial quality of the transformer, and how well it has aged (the varnish they coat everything in breaks down after a while) you'll get a louder or quieter unit.
The same thing happens with normal 60hz (household current) transformers too, it's just a much lower note, because of the 60hz cycle. Again, as the varnish breaks down over the years, you will get a louder and louder note. For the big ones, people will even sometimes have them re-coated for just that reason. | [
"A number of users throughout the world have reported that the hinges of their Ideapad U310 notebooks were popped out and sometimes cracking sounds could be heard after half of a year or one year's normal usage. So far, Lenovo refused to acknowledge this problem and tried to charge customers for replacing the whole... |
If coronavirus is spread by people coughing and sneezing how are asymptomatic people spreading it when they don't do either? | Spreading by bodily fluids such as saliva can even be passed through family if you share a drink or use the same spoon. Sometimes random coughing or sneezing (due to dust, allergies etc) without covering your mouth leaves droplets in the air or on surfaces and other people might come into contact with it especially in public places! | [
"Influenza spreads between humans when infected people cough or sneeze, then other people breathe in the virus or touch something with the virus on it and then touch their own face. \"Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread this way.\" Swine flu cannot be spread by pork products, since the virus is no... |
does alcohol tolerance come from your body learning to metabolise it more efficiently, or your brain learning to function better whilst under the influence, or both? | Both. Alcohol is metabolized into its non-toxic (less toxic?) form by enzymes in the liver. Once your liver realizes that it is frequently encountering this thing, it starts producing more enzymes which allow it to break the substance down more quickly.
Furthermore, since your brain *technically* doesn't want to lose motor control to alcohol, the system of neurotransmitters which are affected by the presence of metabolized alcohol eventually compensate to lose less fidelity when encountering it.
EDIT: It might incorrect to say it is metabolized into a less toxic form. I'm a little shakey on that - acetaldehyde and acetate are toxic substances, but that is nonetheless what the body does to the ethanol as it processes and prepares to excrete it. | [
"These neuroimaging methods have found that alcohol alters the nervous system on multiple levels. This includes impairment of lower order brainstem functions and higher order functioning, such as problem solving. These methods have also shown differences in electrical brain activity and responsiveness when comparin... |
the venezuelan protests right now. | Power vacuum after the death of chavez. people don't have money for food, and their money isn't worth much globally anyway. intense violence in the streets over the past year (i.e. robbery and murder). a nation raised under a nationalist/socialist identity, but that has always been politically polarized. without chavez (for better or worse) the people are trying to work out the future of their beloved country. I think some of that is true...hopefully a venezuelan can give a better answer | [
"The 2014 Venezuelan protests began in February 2014 when hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans protested due to high levels of criminal violence, inflation, and chronic scarcity of basic goods because of policies created the Venezuelan government. The protests have lasted for several months and events are listed be... |
Are there any languages that a parrot CANNOT learn to properly mimic? | Parrots certainly cannot mimic sign languages, which are just as much of a language as any other language. So that's something like 150 of the world's 7,000 languages that parrots are unable to imitate.
In terms of spoken languages, it depends on two things. First, what kind of bird do you mean? There are many species of parrots, some better at mimicry than others.
Second, what is close enough? Parrots seem to be able to imitate some of the phonetic qualities of human speech, but I wonder to what extent. I'm not so sure, for instance, a parrot would be able to distinguish between many of the [click consonants](_URL_1_), as they just don't have the correct oral structures for it. Similarly, I'm not so sure they could mimic some of the [coarticulations](_URL_0_) that humans are able to do.
That being said, I'm not aware of any studies on this topic. | [
"There is controversy about whether parrots are capable of using language, or merely mimic what they hear. However, some scientific studies—for example those conducted over a 30-year period by Irene Pepperberg with a grey named Alex and other parrots, covered in stories on network television on numerous occasions—h... |
how would it feel like to be a spider's prey? how long would you stay alive, and would you feel pain? | You wouldn't live for all that long. First you would be caught, and wrapped up in the web. Then the spider would bite you and inject you with their venom. It would work its way through your body, melting your internal organs. You would survive until a vital organ was destroyed, or until neurotoxins stopped your heart/lungs/brain. I have to imagine you would feel an extreme amount of pain unfortunately. Even without giant spiders or miniature humans, there are some spiders that have the ability to kill a full size human in a matter of hours. So with a higher proportion of poison compared to your body size, my best guess would be that after injecting the poison, you would be dead within an hour or two | [
"\"C. inclusum\" spiders are venomous and capable of biting humans. A bite begins with moderate pain (in contrast to a brown recluse spider's painless bite) followed by itching. Symptoms usually resolve within 7–10 days. However, the spider rarely bites (with females biting more often than wandering males), and the... |
how can a corporation be considered a person in the usa (and therefore a usa citizen...?) if they move their company to a different country and do not pay taxes in the usa. | An important distinction: corporations are not considered U.S. citizens. Never before in American history has that ever even been considered.
For the purpose of applications of common law and protection under the Constitution, there is a concept of "corporate personhood" in the United States. This defines corporations as "legal persons" (in that they receive legal recognition) and extends to them certain rights and privileges under the Constitution. This allows for corporations to, amongst other things, enter into voluntary contracts with natural persons or other corporations and be sued in court. This legal definition dates back to 1819 Supreme Court case Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward. The precedent dates back to British common law.
Now that it's been determined that they've never been and never will be afforded the rights of natural persons -- such as citizenship -- most of the issues regarding relocation should be cleared up. If they do move, they must incorporate under that country's law. If they no longer do business in the United States or with the United States, they no longer pay United States taxes. The same thing really applies to natural persons (citizens) emigrating from the United States. People who do not earn money in the United States don't pay United States taxes. Actually, when American sports players play games in Canada (Bills in Toronto or Raptors in Toronto) they pay Canadian taxes. | [
"Foreign owners of US corporations also benefit from the ability to have entities normally treated as flow-through instead be taxed as corporations by the IRS. In what is sometimes known as a \"domestic reverse hybrid\" strategy, a non-US corporation may set up a US holding company which elects to be treated as a c... |
why do certain foods make me gassy? what the heck is going on inside me? | Bacteria that lives in your stomach feeds on the food you eat and produces gas byproducts. | [
"Most cases of stomach bloating are due to improper diet. Gas occurs because of the bacteria in the colon and is a by-product of soluble fiber digestion. Inadequate or irregular intake of fiber and water will cause a person to experience bloating or constipation. The most common natural sources of fiber include fru... |
When you drink caffeine, does it act like glucose and simply give your cells more energy, or is there something more going on? | What you've read is close to the truth. Your idea about glucose is not.
Very simply put the action of caffeine is supposed to feel like you have more energy, that is to say, less tired. It does not provide any meaningful calories.
So how does caffeine work? Well blocking all adenosine receptors, specifically the A2A receptor is believed to be the main culprit, but the A1 receptor is probably in their too. Adenosine alters the activity of a variety of neurons in the brain, some directly related to sleep and wave (like the neurons which release histamine... yes, the same histamine that is blocked by antihistamines that make you sleepy). Some scientists suggest that this is the main way that caffeine promotes wakefulness: by increasing histamine release. Exactly where the adenosine comes from is a matter of debate. It is often released along side other neurotransmitters from neurons, but it may also be released by astrocytes (brain cells that aren't neurons).
There are also adenosine receptors in your heart, and your blood vessels, and these are probably responsible for how adenosine increases your heart rate and increases your blood pressure.
| [
"Caffeine and black coffee have been associated with increased energy expenditure and subsequent weight loss. Caffeine belongs to a class of compounds called methylxanthines, and is present in coffee, tea, cocoa, chocolate and some cola drinks. Caffeine induces a thermogenic effect in the body by increasing sympath... |
why/how is the housing sector so important to nations economy? | A few reasons.
1. Housing wealth is a very significant fraction of total wealth. Estimates vary, but the total value of US housing held by the "household sector" (i.e. not businesses) is roughly $20 trillion, out of roughly $70 trillion total net worth. See for instance table S.3.a here: _URL_0_
2. The percentage of wealth in housing (almost 30% for the US as a whole) is much higher for the middle class. Poorer people are less likely to own houses, and richer people are more likely to own financial assets such as equities. I don't have a good citation for you, but the number for the middle class could easily be 60%. And of course there are many individuals with all of their wealth in housing.
3. It's undiversified wealth, and therefore more risky. One doesn't own 0.01% of of 10,000 houses equally spread across the globe---one owns one house. If the housing market goes to shit in an area, everyone in that area suffers together and it can have a huge effect.
4. Housing is important for other reasons, such as mobility. For instance, suppose something happens to make it hard to buy and sell houses---let's say that mortgages dry up. People need to buy and sell houses in order to move for jobs. If housing frictions make it hard for people to flow toward jobs the unemployment rate goes up, etc.
I could go on. In short, housing isn't just any old asset---it's a very valuable, very indivisible asset that is very central to many other decisions in our lives, and is disproportionately important for the middle class. | [
"Economic development is the increase in standard of living and economic health of a country, reflected in its Human Development Index. For a country to develop economically it must invest in capital goods, such as infrastructure, health care and education. Unlike consumer goods, which promote immediate wealth for ... |
how that dog from two floors down can continuously bark for two hours and not lose his voice | he has seperation anxiety. i assume that he mainly does that when his owners are not at home? seperation anxiety builds up tension, so everytime he sees his owners leave the house he starts to get desperate and all the build up tension has to come out somehow. some dogs release that tension by destroying the whole house...some dogs release it by barking. if i were you i would go and talk to your neighbours and tell them to excersise more with their dog. Physical excersise before they leave the house is going to make that problem a hell of a lot less of a problem if it doesnt completely solve it. they are obviously not taking the dog out enough | [
"A dog is napping in a meadow, dreaming of being in a silent movie in which it saves a woman tied to a set of railroad tracks from being run over by a train. The opening of the song is heard faintly in the distance, coming from the open back door of a concert hall, and the dog wakes up and ventures inside. Here, Co... |
how do bullets fired into the air come down fast enough to do damage? | Bullets are propelled by gases from a gunpowder charge. Once it leaves the barrel traveling up, eventually the round reaches an apex, and heads back toward gravity. It will reach terminal velocity falling back down, which is much less than muzzle velocity firing up, but still enough to do damage. Case in point, a stray round coming back down in this manner took out the back window of my friends car a few 4th of Julys ago, it was found in the trunk after passing through the seat back. | [
"A bullet in flight is in projectile motion, meaning no other forces are acting on it except the acceleration due to gravity (and sometimes wind). When a bullet leaves the muzzle, it not only travels forward, but also begins to fall due to the influence of gravity. The downward acceleration is constant and does not... |
My mother and grandmother keep saying that living in the Soviet Union was way better than it is now because during then there was alot of food with cheap prices and i hardly believe that,was it actually true or am I getting brainwashed? | Adapted from an earlier [answer](_URL_0_):
You can poke around the internet and easily find graphs that claim that the average Soviet citizen had a higher caloric intake than the average American until the Soviet intake plummeted in 1991.
These generally come from FAO data, but an [examination](_URL_1_) of a number of different sources will show a spread of estimates.
A major takeaway is that the two big datasets available to international researchers on Soviet nutrition are through the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the US Department of Agriculture, as well as some official Soviet sources, such as Goskomstat and Torgovlya SSSR. A huge problem with the data sets available is that it's very much comparing yabloki to oranges. A lot of the official data is for Food Balances (food produced, plus food imported, minus food exported), which is not the same thing as food consumed by households. For one thing, such a data set will not capture the massive wastage issues in Soviet food production and transportation, and will erroneously capture Soviet food production that was actually used for livestock rather than human consumption. The Soviet data furthermore is in kilograms and not calories.
So most researchers have had to adjust the data to some degree. It's worth pointing out that Robert Allen (in his From Farm to Factory), when adjusting the data, comes to results that roughly match the FAO data.
Igor Birman, who was a Soviet economist who emigrated to the US in 1974, attempted to compare the two countries' nutrition in Personal Consumption in the USSR and the USA (1981). Birman considered the FAO data (and similar results produced by the CIA at the time) to be too high for reasons noted above, and found that, while Soviet diets were adequate (ie, in general the average person wasn't malnurished), caloric intake was slightly below US average intake, and if anything should be higher, because of a colder Soviet climate and a younger and more physically active population.
Birman also criticized the CIA's attempt to compare diets. He noted that the Soviet diet was much higher in bread and potatoes than the American diet, and higher in fish consumption, but much lower in meat and fruits. The average Soviet consumed more dairy than the average American, but this was mostly cheese (usually tvorog), as opposed to fresh milk. Some of these products, such as bread, were often considered superior to the American versions, especially by emigres (anecdote: this is true), but others, such as meat, were considered inferior. Soviet citizens also tended to spend a much larger proportion of their income on food purchases compared to Americans. Interestingly, much of the meat and dairy supply available to Soviet citizens came from private production by farmers, rather than from collective or state farms.
Birman notes that there were significant inequalities in what was available in major cities such as Leningrad and Moscow and more provincial ones, as well as what was available to party members versus nonparty members, and that certain foods (say, pineapples or avocadoes) that one could find in US supermarkets were simply unavailable to anyone. Soviet citizens also often consumed fresh products much more based on seasonality. And I should note that Birman doesn't hold back in his criticisms of the US either: he notes that rural and urban poverty in the US has real malnutrition issues, and that just because US supermarkets have choices doesn't mean that everyone has the ability to exercise that choice.
So in summary: there are data sets that show the average Soviet citizen's caloric intake as higher than the average Americans. Some historians, notably Robert Allen, consider these more or less accurate, but all the data sets need adjustments in order to be compared to US figures. With that said, even when Soviet citizens were eating adequately, they were eating a very different diet from that of Americans, one that would, for example, include eating larger amounts of potatoes every day. | [
"Under these conditions, the general quality of life for Soviet consumers deteriorated. Consumers traditionally faced shortages of durable goods, but under Gorbachev, food, wearing apparel, and other basic necessities were in short supply. Fueled by the liberalized atmosphere of Gorbachev's glasnost and by the gene... |
how does flavored seltzer have 0 calories per serving but 10 calories per bottle? | You're not required to disclose under 5 calories per serving per the FDA in the US - it can be rounded down to 0. As each serving is only 3.333... calories, it can be listed as no calorie.
_URL_0_ | [
"The energy content of a single-serving (1 g packet) of Splenda is 3.36 kcal, which is 31% of a single-serving (2.8 g packet) of granulated sugar (10.8 kcal). In the United States, it is legally labelled \"zero calories\"; U.S. FDA regulations allow this \"if the food contains less than 5 Calories per reference amo... |
Why does the United States not have a parliament like the United Kingdom? | It was Parliament that had tried to tax them, in their view unjustly. The Declaratory Act had declared that Parliament could pass any Act it saw fit in regards to America. This idea of unlimited parliamentary sovereignty was anathema to Americans. They were concerned above all to ensure that their Constitution safeguarded liberty and this could not be done if the legislative body could pass any law it saw fit by a simple majority.
Also, the fact that the Upper House of Parliament was composed of hereditary legislators struck the Founding Fathers as absurd. As the [Federalist No. 63](_URL_0_) stated:
> But if anything could silence the jealousies on this subject, it ought to be the British example. The Senate there instead of being elected for a term of six years, and of being unconfined to particular families or fortunes, is an hereditary assembly of opulent nobles. The House of Representatives, instead of being elected for two years, and by the whole body of the people, is elected for seven years, and, in very great proportion, by a very small proportion of the people. Here, unquestionably, ought to be seen in full display the aristocratic usurpations and tyranny which are at some future period to be exemplified in the United States. Unfortunately, however, for the anti-federal argument, the British history informs us that this hereditary assembly has not been able to defend itself against the continual encroachments of the House of Representatives; and that it no sooner lost the support of the monarch, than it was actually crushed by the weight of the popular branch. | [
"The UK has a parliamentary government based on the Westminster system that has been emulated around the world – a legacy of the British Empire. The Parliament of the United Kingdom that meets in the Houses of Parliament has two houses: an elected House of Commons and an appointed House of Lords, and any Bill passe... |
why is it difficult for us to recognize how annoying the annoying things we do are, when we're so quick to identify the annoying things other people do? | It is one of those things in life. We are all born with a million small bottles, each with a label. One is greed, one is lust, one for ambition, one for honesty. Every single trait has its own jar. Love, empathy, distrust, lying, amity, etc. each has a jar. In each jar is a bit of sand. Those who are greedy have the greedy jar overflowing, but their empathy jar might be empty, or their love jar overflowing. We all have the same jars with varying amounts of sand in each.
The kicker is that the jars are behind us, and while we can easily see the sand in other people's jars, we cannot see our own. | [
"Various reasons exist for why one finds particular stimuli annoying. Measurement of annoyance is highly subjective. As an attempt at measurement, psychological studies on annoyance often rely on their subjects' own ratings of levels of annoyance on a scale. Any kind of stimuli can cause annoyance, such as getting ... |
can a programmer explain what a "delegate" is and why you should use it? | _URL_1_
gives a good explanation.
basic answer: it's like a secure, typesafe version of C's function pointers. More simply put, it's an object which references a method.
Here's a good example:
_URL_0_
It's an easy way to pass a method you wish to invoke to a function, so the function can invoke that method without actually knowing which method is being invoked. (try saying that 10 times fast) | [
"A delegate is a form of type-safe function pointer used by the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI). Delegates specify a method to call and optionally an object to call the method on. Delegates are used, among other things, to implement callbacks and event listeners. A delegate object encapsulates a reference to a... |
why does a phone without a battery break when dropped in water? | Electronics guy here.
It happens because it isn't the water that breaks the phone - *minerals* ***left behind by the water*** cause short circuits which cause parts of the phone to fry the next time any voltage is applied to them.
In theory an electronic device can be restored after getting dunked in water... as long as the minerals are thoroughly washed off beforehand.
Edited to add: Professionals use isopropyl alcohol at as close to 100% concentration as they can find - among other things - to rinse away the minerals without leaving anything else behind. | [
"If the battery is over-filled with water and electrolyte, thermal expansion can force some of the liquid out of the battery vents onto the top of the battery. This solution can then react with the lead and other metals in the battery connector and cause corrosion.\n",
"Starting batteries are of lighter weight th... |
From Facebook: "Pineapples were a status symbol in 18th century England. They were so expensive that you could rent them by the night and take them to parties with you". Can I get more insight on this? | Collecting exotic plants of all kinds was quite a popular pastime for the landed gentry and aristocracy of 18th century England. By this I mean that people were devoting a great deal of time and energy to bringing back prized specimens to grow and cultivate in Britain. Such was the benefit of Britannia's increasing global reach. As you might imagine this was quite an expensive enterprise. Bringing both live plants and seeds from the Caribbean, South and Central America, Australia, and India required a great deal of effort. Live plants need sunlight, soil, and fresh water (something lacking on the open sea) while seeds need to be kept safe from insects and rats as well as requiring proper storage. A gardener named James Lee (1715-1795) wrote a meticulous guide on the subject of proper seed management whilst in transit.
With all this in mind, being able to get one's hands on some exotic specimen from a far flung corner of the earth and cultivating it on one's pleasant British estate was a great way to show off one's means. Pineapples were very much a part of this, as were other exotic fruits like mangoes and oranges. These were the best for displaying wealth as such things require a greenhouse in order to flourish. If you had pineapples then you were telling the world that you had the wealth to obtain and cultivate them. Some people went to absurd lengths to articulate this. The Earl of Dunmore's 1761 [greenhouse](_URL_0_) is a good example of this.
Furthermore, pineapples were in high demand not only from aristocrats but from mariners as well. James Cook and others realized that pineapples were a great source of vitamins and could fend off scurvy. Pineapple patches could be found in harbors around the world in order to supply a good diet to sailors. This boosted demand and therefore the exclusivity.
In terms of cost I haven't anything on the specific price of pineapples but I can offer some insight on the money people spent on exotic flora. In Feb 1821 a visitor to the Duke of Marlborough's Whiteknights Park recorded that the Duke had sunk 40-50 000 pounds into his plant collection and was 10 000 in debt. That's an extreme example but it gives you an idea.
Sources: Chilean Trees and Shrubs: A History of Introduction to the British Isles by William Charles Noble, Hidden Britain by Tom Quinn, Foods that Changed History by Christopher Cumo, Daily Life in 18th-century England by Kristin Olsen | [
"The Pineapple is 900 years old and it is mentioned in the Domesday Book. It was frequently used by shepherds and drovers as an overnight stop. The name is derived from the pine forest that once surrounded the area, a pine apple being a local name for a pine cone. The furniture inside the pub is noteworthy. It was ... |
What were the popular games during your period of expertise? | In 14th century Japan, a poetic game called linked-verse *renga* came into prominence among poets at court. I'm sure most people are generally familiar with haiku, a poetic form consisting of 5-7-5 morae (syllables). One of the oldest forms of Japanese poetry is called waka, which is 5-7-5-7-7. Poets developed a game called renga (which grew into more of an art form as time passed) from waka.
How renga worked is a group of poets would get together (often 3) and would take turns composing links for a poem. The first poet would write a 5-7-5 section. The second poet would then compose a 7-7 section. The third poet would then write another 5-7-5 section, and so on. The most common length was eventually standardized as 100 links, although 30 and 50 were also common. However, the goal was not to make a unified poem with a consistent theme or story. There was an assigned topic that each link had to vaguely connect to, but the poem was no meant to be a fluid piece. Rather, each adjacent pair of links were to fit together as an individual poem. The first and second links were one poem, the second and third links formed one poem, and so on, each connected by a close or distant link of theme or word choice. The poets aimed at making the best connects between the pairs, often using clever wordplay.
Now where renga really becomes interesting is the incredibly extensive and complex rules that developed over time, such to the extent that a book today that covers all the rules would be several hundred pages in length. The topics of the poetic links had specified lengths. For example, with the most common topics of seasons, spring and autumn themes could last no more than five links in a row, whereas summer and winter could only be three links long. The moon had to be mentioned in specific lines. Eventually, almost every important poetic word (chrysanthemum, willow, shrine, hut, etc) had a specific maximum mentions per renga. At the gatherings where the renga were composed, there would often be a judge who knew the rules particularly well to officiate the game.
Haiku eventually developed from the hokku, which is the opening link of a renga, consisting of 5-7-5.
The Poets at Minase by Sogi, Socho, and Shohaku is probably the most famous example of renga. It first five links are as follows (translation by Steven Carter in *Traditional Japanese Literature*):
Some snow still remains
as mist moves low on the slopes
toward evening.
Flowing water, far away--
and a plum-scented village.
Wind off the river
blows through a clump of willows--
and spring appears.
A boat being poled along,
sounding clear at the break of dawn.
Still there, somewhere:
the moon off behind the mist
traversing the night. | [
"Their best-known games are the \"Repton\" series of games, which have sold over 125,000 units in total. Other notable Superior Software games for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron include \"Overdrive\", \"Citadel\", \"Thrust\", \"Galaforce\", \"Stryker's Run\", \"Ravenskull\", \"Codename: Droid\" (sequel to \"Stryk... |
how are tangle-free headphones created? | They use wide flat cable that does not really flex much along the width. | [
"Patch cords are usually produced in many different colors so as to be easily distinguishable, and are relatively short, perhaps no longer than ten meters. Types of patch cords include microphone cables, fiber optic spectroscopy cables, headphone extension cables, XLR connector, Tiny Telephone (TT) connector, RCA c... |
What is the gold-colored wrapping on spacecraft and rover wiring? | _URL_0_
It's a lightweight insulator that keeps it's properties over large temperature ranges and doesn't have problems with outgassing in vacuums.
Here's some on Amazon
_URL_1_ | [
"Multi-layer insulation used on spacecraft is usually made of polyimide coated with thin layers of aluminum. The gold-like material often seen on the outside of spacecraft is actually single aluminized polyimide, with the single layer of aluminum facing in. The yellowish-brown polyimide gives the surface its gold-l... |
used oil? why is it considered bad for environment? | > It comes from the ground anyway, why can't it be just dumped out on the ground?
Because it would seep into groundwater or other environmentally sensitive areas.
In its natural state it is contained within its own environment. | [
"Due to its high energy density and ease of handling, oil has a unique role as a transportation fuel. There are, however, a number of possible alternatives. Among the biofuels the use of bioethanol and biodiesel is already established to some extent in some countries.\n",
"Because of concerns over Peak oil, pollu... |
Are the animals living in the city of Pripyat (the city that was devistated by the Cherynobil disaster) deformed from radiation? | Oh boy, my favourite topic!
While the Chernobyl wildlife do have large degrees of deformities, they largely manifest in their internal organs, immune systems, and reproductive sucess-- no three-headed deer, just birds with smaller brains, fewer eggs, and fewer babies that are born alive and make it to adulthood. A lot of the animals there appear to be abundant, but actually don't have enough surviving offspring to replace their own numbers; the population is maintained through immigration from the surrounding areas.
[Timothy Mousseau](_URL_0_) is the leading English-language scientist in the field and has spent over ten years publishing findings on Chernobyl's wildlife, check his papers out. | [
"Studies suggest the 30km (19-mile) \"exclusion zone\" surrounding the Chernobyl disaster has become a wildlife sanctuary. Animals have reclaimed the land including species such as the Przewalski’s horse, Eurasian lynx, wild boar, grey wolf, elk, red deer, moose, brown bear, turtle, voles, mice, shrews, European ba... |
how do tilt shift filters work? | Tilt-shift lenses are often used in architectural photography. Parallel lines that appear to converge due to perspective distortion can be realigned to appear parallel. Sometimes the terms 'perspective control' (PC) lens and 'tilt shift' (TS) lens are used interchangeably; perspective control lenses are often a specialised type of tilt-shift lens, often with shift-only movements. | [
"Shifting allows adjusting the position of the subject in the image area without changing the camera angle; it is often used to avoid convergence of parallel lines, such as when photographing a tall building. Tilting the lens relies on the Scheimpflug principle to rotate the plane of focus away from parallel to the... |
Is our sense of time affected by the rate of chemical reactions? | It is much more complicated than that, and is a very active area of research.
A professor at my school, David Eagleman, studies this stuff. He's a complete badass, check him out:
_URL_0_
edit:
one of his famous experiments involves using magnetic energy to slow the propagation of some signals in the brain, and if done properly it can make you think cause and effect are reversed in some special circumstances. he also dropped grad students from a tall structure with a quickly-blinking watch to see if the fear of death would help them see what the watch was displaying. they couldn't.
many biological reactions happen just as fast or faster than nitroglycerin degradation. something like time perception that involves consciousness must by definition be related to higher-order neural networks in the brain. | [
"The rate of a chemical reaction is influenced by many different factors, such as temperature, pH, reactant and product concentrations and other effectors. The degree to which these factors change the reaction rate is described by the elasticity coefficient. This coefficient is defined as follows:\n",
"The 'rule ... |
why is a man participating in rape culture if both the man and woman were drunk and not able to give consent | I'm not sure you know what "rape culture" means... It refers more to society's treatment of rape than rape itself.
But as far as why the man is many times more likely to be charged with rape, I suppose it has to do with an ingrained perception that masculinity is active, and femininity passive, so people just just more likely to take accusations of rape seriously if a woman is the alleged victim. | [
"Some have noted gender-specific and variable standards for intoxicated consent. In a recent lawsuit against Duke university, a Duke administrator, when asked whether verbal consent need be mutual when both participants are drunk, stated, \"Assuming it is a male and female, it is the responsibility in the case of t... |
Do gravitational waves add up or cancel each other out in amplitude like sound waves do when two run into each other? | _URL_0_
> Of course they can. Gravitational waves carry energy and energy curves space in a non - linear fashion.
One example would be to make a spherical 1000 km in diameter shell of about 1000 of those LIGO Sept 14 events, and then at the center the gravitational waves might pile up enough to create a black hole.
Even though gravitational waves are modelled quite accurately by the linear wave approximation, any two gradational waves that interact will always interfere with each other, at least in some extremely small manner.
The "If so are there areas of the universe with less or more gravity as a result." question does not make as much sense to me - the areas of the universe with more gravity are those that have the most matter + energy in them, no matter what the source. | [
"The phenomenon of interference between waves is based on this idea. When two or more waves traverse the same space, the net amplitude at each point is the sum of the amplitudes of the individual waves. In some cases, such as in noise-cancelling headphones, the summed variation has a smaller amplitude than the comp... |
a catch-22 situation? | Its named after the novel by joseph heller. And coined after this specific passage where a pilot tries to get out of combat missions by being proven mentally unstable
---
"You mean there's a catch?"
"Sure there's a catch", Doc Daneeka replied. "Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy." | [
"A catch-22 is a paradoxical situation from which an individual cannot escape because of contradictory rules or limitations. The term was coined by Joseph Heller, who used it in his 1961 novel \"Catch-22\".\n",
"Strictly speaking, a \"Catch-22\" is \"a problematic situation for which the only solution is denied b... |
I heard that orbiting objects are really just constantly falling, but they are moving so fast that when they fall they never hit the earth... How true is this? | This is exactly correct. For any object moving in a circle, it must be experiencing a force called centripetal force pulling it inward toward the middle of the circle. This is necessary for it to follow the curved path. In the case of an orbiting object, the gravity is pulling the orbiting object inward the center of the earth. However, it also has inertia that causes it to naturally move tangent to the path of the orbit. As long as this velocity is high enough, the object rather than hitting the earth will miss it wide and it will enter orbit.
In the case of an object in a circular low earth orbit, this speed is about 8 m/s. | [
"At a distance relatively close to Earth (less than 3000 km), gravity is only slightly reduced. As an object orbits a body such as the Earth, gravity is still attracting objects towards the Earth and the object is accelerated downward at almost 1g. Because the objects are typically moving laterally with respect to ... |
how there can all the gold ever mined only add up to three swimming pools worth | An Olympic swimming pool is 132,430 cubic feet. A standard gold bar is 44.4 cubic inches. You could fit 5,154,032 gold bars in *one* Olympic swimming pool.
Fort Knox has 147.3 million ounces of gold. With one bar weighing 400 ounces, that pool contains 2,061,612,972 ounces of gold. 14 times the amount held in Fort Knox. In just one pool.
Edit: By the way, the value of the gold in that pool would be over 87 billion dollars, | [
"Since 2006, goldfish have been observed in the lake, where they have grown to \"giant size\", behaving like an invasive species. They may have descended from former pets which owners dumped or escaped, when used as fishing bait.\n",
"The second-largest gold nugget in the world was found in Ballarat in the Red Hi... |
is body language cultural, genetic, inherited and/or something else? | I would say 50/50. Laugh and clap seems to ve innate actions, while some gestures (Like the "yes" movement up and down with the head VS the "no movement) are cultural.
For example the military salute isn't something innate, it's social construct to express order, loyalty and discipline even in a sarcastic way. But I don't believe early humans do this, in fact its said the gesture come from Medieval times when a knight had to put off his eyes' protection to see his interlocutor with a similar movement. And then... well, we adopted it. | [
"Language, in the modern view, is considered to be only a partial product of genetic memory. The fact that humans can have languages is a property of the nervous system that is present at birth, and thus phylogenetic in character. However, perception of the particular set of phonemes specific to a native language o... |
why are the blades on modern energy windmills so narrow? | The design of a wind turbine blade seeks a balance between the mass of the blades and the optimal lift. The wider the blades, the more mass and drag they have, which counters any increase in lift they might afford. You want a balance between those factors. The blades on the turbine don't function like the sails of a ship. Rather they are more like the wings of a [sailplane](_URL_6_), which tend to have long thin wings optimizing lift. Lift is more a function of the length of a wing than its thickness. Airliners tend to have wide wings because they're heavy and need that extra structure for the weight they carry--to keep the wings from buckling--which comes at a cost in energy because of the increased drag. As materials have become much stronger, newer airliner designs have sought [more efficient wings more like sailplanes.](_URL_1_)
Now, some wind turbines do indeed work rather like a ship sail. The simpler form of [Savonius rotor](_URL_7_) is rather like a pair of opposing [spinnaker sails](_URL_0_) or the cups of an [anemometer](_URL_4_), one side more streamlined than the other and so, in opposition, creating a differential force that makes the rotor spin. But these are not very efficient because that leading side is still experiencing drag, and so more efficient forms try to mediate this by using [helical forms](_URL_3_) or, again, switching to [thin airfoil blades.](_URL_5_) These are popular in very high wind applications such as on ships and lighthouses as they are physically robust. The most efficient so far [combine both approaches](_URL_2_) to get the most from very light winds. They still tend not to be as efficient as the horizontal axis turbines, but are often preferred for building and home use because they work well in low wind and produce much less noise and vibration.
| [
"A multi-bladed windmill is a mechanical device with a piston pump. Because a piston pump has a fixed stroke, the energy demand of this type of pump is proportional to pump speed only. On the other hand, the energy supply of a wind rotor is proportional to the cube of wind speed. Because of that, a wind rotor runs ... |
driving a fwd car in the snow | Hey buddy, sounds like what you're getting at is understeer and oversteer. FWD cars are more prone to understeer, and RWD cars are more prone to oversteer.
[This](_URL_0_) is the best image i can find to explain it simply.
You usually lose traction in a car when the driven wheels, (FWD vs RWD) are put under more load than the friction of the tyres on the road can maintain. Think of it like this: There is a finite amount of friction when a tyre makes contact with a road. This friction is being divided into a few uses; turning, acceleration, and deceleration. The friction you are using to decelerate cannot be used to turn, and so on. When you put too much force on the tyre, it will lose grip and the wheel will slide. This is why a basic driving technique is to brake before corners, go around them, then accelerate once you are straightened up. this is how you should be driving in snow with FWD or RWD anyway, because there is so much less grip.
When a car understeers, the wheels are turned into the corner, but they lose traction and the weight of the car forces it to continue in a straight line, rather than going around the corner. This is more common in a FWD car, because you are more likely to break traction with the front wheels because they are often being used to turn and accelerate at the same time. It is also totally possible in a RWD car too. You could force a FWD car to understeer by flooring it in the middle of a corner, for instance. You will know your car is understeering, because the steering wheel will be turned, but the car will be travelling in a straight line, towards the outside of the corner. To counter the skid, all you can do is ease off the throttle and straighten the wheel until you feel grip come back into the tyres, then try again with less speed. You must not turn the wheel further into the corner, as this decreases the chance of grip returning on its own. Honestly though, if you're already understeering in low grip conditions, especially ice, the best thing to do is get real religious real fast. It is quite difficult to correct.
When a car oversteers, the wheels are turned into the corner but the back of the car has slid to the point where it is beyond the desired rate of turn for the corner. This often happens in RWD cars, because you will lose traction from the rear wheels when turning whilst using the accelerator. The stress of the two requirements on the rear tyres becomes greater than they can handle, and the wheel spins. This means that the rear of the car is no longer gripping the road, so the rear of the car will slide away from the inside of the corner. To control oversteer, ease off the accelerator, and turn the steering wheel into the skid, away from the direction of the corner you are trying to go around. This will remove the stress on the rear wheels by causing them to no longer be needing to turn or accelerate. Once grip has returned, go about your business. with a little more care.
Something which is common to both these situations is the fact that it takes much more force to begin a skid than to maintain one. Once a wheel is sliding, it requires much less force to continue skidding than it did to start the skid. Because of this, you won't magically regain control the instant you ease the load on the tyre, you may have to ride it out a considerable way, or even simply come to a complete stop before you are in control again. To prevent understeer or oversteer before they happen, enter corners slowly. brake well in advance, ease off the brakes as you enter the corner, and only accelerate once you have straightened up the front wheels. | [
"BULLET::::- Sleet, which behaves like a thin layer of quicksand on the road. Cars sink in it or drive across the surface and then slide over the slick individual pellets when attempting to brake. Sleet is very difficult to remove from roads. Due to its self-distributive properties and high weight relative to snow,... |
when we type up an email and hit "send", how does the internet know where to correctly deliver our email? what does this process look like between two computers/email accounts? | When you hit send, your mail is delivered to the Mailserver of your mail provider. Your computer knows which one that is because it was part of your initial mail setup on your computer.
Once the mail reaches 'your' Mailserver it'll look at the domain (the part behind the @ sign in the mail address) and looks up the IP address of that domain using DNS (think of it as the phone book of the internet). Once the server knows the IP of the recipients mailserver it'll send your mail over there.
The recipients Mailserver then looks at the account name (the part before the @ sign in the mail address) and puts the mail in the correct mailbox.
Edit: the recipients computer is set up to know the recipients Mailserver and thus checks there for new mail.
So in the end, the two computers themselves don't communicate directly at all but the servers do. | [
"Email allows messages to be targeted at particular members of the audience by using the \"To\" and \"CC\" lines. However, some message systems do not have this option. As a result, it can be difficult to determine the intended recipient of a particular message. When messages are displayed hierarchically, it is eas... |
why are snowden documents still being released, nearly two years later? | I'll let Glenn Greenwald - the Guardian Journalist whom Edward Snowden contacted together with Laura Poitras - answer that one for you: ([source](_URL_0_))
> We've been reporting continuously on huge stories without pause for 18 months, using editors, reporters, and experts from all over the world.
> These documents are complex and take time to process, understand, and research.
> If we rush the reporting and make mistakes, we'll be doing a huge favor to proponents of mass surveillance, and then people like you will be coming and asking - reasonably: "why did you rush all this? Why didn't you make sure the reporting was accurate before publishing it"?
> Snowden expressly asked us to vet the documents carefully and subject them to the reporting process so that the public could be informed in a clear and accurate way. With an archive this vast and complicated, that takes time.
> I hardly think anyone can complain that there hasn't been enough reporting done - it's been an unprecedentedly continuous and rapid stream of stories. The public needs time to understand and digest them, and good reporting takes time to do.
| [
"As part of the global surveillance disclosure, the first of Snowden's documents were published on June 5, 2013, in \"The Guardian\" in an article by Greenwald. According to him, Snowden's documents exposed the \"scale of domestic surveillance under Obama\".\n",
"On May 20, 2013, Snowden flew to Hong Kong, where ... |
I found this symbol in Palma, Mallorca just outside the Seu Cathedral. What does it mean? | Here is some pics
_URL_0_
_URL_1_ | [
"The umbraculum (, \"big umbrella\", in basilicas also conopaeum) is a historic piece of the papal regalia and insignia, once used on a daily basis to provide shade for the pope (Galbreath, 27). Also known as the pavilion, in modern usage the umbraculum is a symbol of the Catholic Church and the authority of the po... |
Were the Romans Really as Brutal and Cruel as we Think? | They certainly had a mentality of ''might is right'' that led to brutally cruel things. I forget the exact quote, but Caesar wrote something along the lines of ''the victor is allowed to do whatever he likes to the defeated'', which gives you an idea as to how they generally thought.
Mass infanticide is not something I ever came across whilst studying my masters degree in ancient history - although you could potentially argue that they allowed their client king Herod to do something along these lines, depending on the accuracy of the events depicted in the New Testament. Genocide is perhaps a more difficult topic, as the Romans certainly eradicated cultures and civilisations in their conquest of the Mediterranean, Carthage perhaps being the most infamous example of this. However, enslavement was far more profitable than simple execution, which leads me on to the war rape you mention. Prior to Augustus' reforms in the late 1stC BCE, Roman soldiers received the majority of their pay from looting cities and being awarded farmland on retirement - this led to loyalty to popular generals who gave them these over the state. Therefore, on taking cities the raping and pillaging was usually widespread. I remember a site in Spain destroyed in a Roman siege (I forget which one, maybe Numantia) where a skeleton was excavated that had several spears inserted up every orifice going. Sieges were awful, but hardly typical events of life in the Roman Empire. The reliefs on Trajan's Column also depict plenty of awful scenes found in being defeated by Rome.
That being said, daily life in the Mediterranean was, by and large, at its most peaceful and prosperous until the modern era once the Empire was settled and stablised in the first and second centuries. The brutality that we hear about was usually extremely rare and acted as a deterrant. Basically, if you rebelled against Rome, they'd put you down with a hell of a lot of force to make an example of you (see the Jewish Revolt or Mithridates VI of Pontus, for examples), but by and large they certainly did not rule with an iron fist. Punishments such as crucifixion were definitely cruel, as were public executions in the arena, yet considering the Romans introduced organised law and prosecutions in many regions they can therefore perhaps be considered as advanced for the time.
For anyone interested, Luttwak's The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire is a thought-provoking (and controversial) look at how Rome operated, written by a non-expert. If I remember correctly Luttwak was an American diplomat during the Cold War. | [
"Although this period of Roman history is marked by the extreme violence and cruelty practiced by partisans on each side, Gratidianus suffered a particularly vicious death during the Sullan proscriptions; in the most sensational accounts, he was tortured and dismembered by Catiline at the tomb of Quintus Lutatius C... |
how does music royalty work? how do the music companies keep track of how many times a song is played? | Absolute speculation and close approaches, but with Spotify and YouTube (or any streaming platform) things change because you have more tracking.
When it comes to tv/radios they send a list of the songs they've played and then, whoever pays the artists, measures that channel/radio audience and then they come up with a number.
Live shows count attendees and bars/nightclubs pay a monthly fee that goes to these organizations. In these cases money won't return to the artists. | [
"When a recording is broadcast (either on radio or by a background music service such as Muzak), performance rights organisations (such as the ASCAP and BMI in the US, SOCAN in Canada, or MCPS and PRS in the UK), collect a third type of royalty known as a performance royalty, which is paid to songwriters, composers... |
why is censoring on facebook, twitter, reddit, or even banning products on amazon, or ebay considered an assault on "freedom of speech"? | The idea of free speech is often abused and misinterpreted. You can't say whatever you want on any social media site just like you can't walk into a store and start screaming obscenities. Facebook and Reddit and every other site owned by any company is free to limit speech in any way they see fit.
Whether or not it's a smart business move is a different story.
The main point is, say Facebook hypothetically started banning everyone that likes the color orange. That's OK, because those people can go make their own social media site for people who like orange, and if they want to they can ban everyone that prefers green. There's nothing stopping people who are banned for expressing their views on social media from creating their own social media. | [
"Governments and private organizations may engage in censorship. Other groups or institutions may propose and petition for censorship. When an individual such as an author or other creator engages in censorship of their own works or speech, it is referred to as \"self-censorship\". It occurs in a variety of differe... |
Did people in ancient and medieval times have anything comparable to hobbies? | Stitching patterns into fabric (embroidery) was something that both lower and higher class members of society participated in. this was considered more of a women's activity, however, and I don't recall any accounts of men (outside of tailors) doing this for leisure. | [
"The youth of Rome had several forms of athletic play and exercise, such as jumping, wrestling, boxing, and racing. In the countryside, pastimes for the wealthy also included fishing and hunting. The Romans also had several forms of ball playing, including one resembling handball. Dice games, board games, and gambl... |
why are laptop and tablet batteries often split into several smaller cells instead of having only one large cell? | If you hook multiple cells together in series where you put positive to negative that increases the voltage but keeps the amperage the same. Three 1.5 volt AAA cells connected in series become a 4.5 volt battery with 1000 mAh.
Hooking them in parallel puts their amperage together but keeps the voltage the same. Three 1.5 volts AAA cells become a 1.5 volt battery with 3000 mAh.
You could make the cell bigger like a AA cell which has 2400 mAh, but smaller cells can be more stable and reliable than larger cells. If a small cell goes bad it's less catastrophic than a large cell going bad.
You also have the benefit of being able to produce lots of small cells and help them together in interesting ways. A small 12 volt battery like would go in a garage door opener is 8 button batteries like from a watch hooked end to end. A small 9-volt battery like you would put in a smoke detector is 6 AAAA batteries wired together like would be used in a Microsoft Surface pen. | [
"Small cells are low-powered cellular radio access nodes that operate in licensed and unlicensed spectrum that have a range of 10 meters to a few kilometers. They are \"small\" compared to a mobile macrocell, partly because they have a shorter range and partly because they typically handle fewer concurrent calls or... |
why do people pull their windshield wipers up during a snow storm? | To prevent the wipers from becoming frozen onto the windshield glass, if ice forms due to snow melting and refreezing. | [
"A windshield wiper or windscreen wiper (British English) is a device used to remove rain, snow, ice and debris from a vehicle's front window. Almost all motor vehicles, including cars, trucks, buses, train locomotives, and watercraft with a cabin—and some aircraft—are equipped with one or more such wipers, which a... |
Why didn't Asians build castles like the Europeans? | I think part of the question here might be a the distinction between a palace (non-military) and a fort. European castles often combine the two into castles, but China seems to have kept the two concepts separate. [Palaces](_URL_0_) are more about projecting soft power through opulence and cultural symbolism. Forts, like [Jiayuguan](_URL_1_) look pretty militarily imposing to me.
I don't know the real answer, but arguably the distinction might stem from China's long history of Dynasties that were more or less stable internally (until they fell) with "barbarian" enemies outside of the empire's borders. Thus, they might have perceived a need to militarize the borders, but not the capitals.
Japan had military castles, like other people have mentioned. The thinking behind their architecture, as others have mentioned, is a point of debate.
I know Korea had palaces, but I don't know of any forts, although I assume there must have been some. | [
"By the 16th century, when Japanese and European cultures met, fortification in Europe had moved beyond castles and relied on innovations such as the Italian \"trace italienne\" and star forts. Forts in India present a similar case; when they were encountered by the British in the 17th century, castles in Europe ha... |
What is the dominant strain of historiography in the People's Republic of China? | Primary and middle-school students have Chinese history and World history classes.
Until recently, high-school students chose either an Arts or Science-based curriculum, with the Arts students continuing studying history, but I believe this has recently been made more flexible.
Students also study Politics, which includes some history of course.
In terms of the way it's taught, it's not particularly different from other countries in style, if slightly traditional (large amounts of rote-learning of dates, though there has in recent years been a big move towards analysis and critical thinking compared to the past; though it should be said that critical thinking about modern Chinese history is discouraged).
They don't really study things through a Marxist historiographical style anymore than other countries do. So class is mentioned a bit, as it would be in the West, for example the Landlords of the nationalist period, but when studying ancient China, it's a more traditional historiography of Emperors, philosophers, etc.
The big thing I think would be noteable to a western audience is the narrative that's pushed in modern Chinese history. Since 1989, there has been a big push of the narrative of "national humiliation" at the hands of western powers and Japan from the 19th century onwards. Prior to that, the narrative was more about the weakness and backwardness of the Qing government. The Cultural Revolution is barely taught, and the Tiananmen Square protests are hidden completely.
I will say that Feminist historiography is studied a little at higher levels (probably about the same as in the west), but I don't believe post-Colonialism is popular.
I should say that I'm semi-familiar with the way non-History majors are taught in University (because I teach English, and they have to do a semester of History), but I'm not familiar with the way History majors are taught. However, generally speaking I am genuinely shocked with how little knowledge of Marxist thought students have; these days, it's all Deng Xiaoping theory. I've never heard Chinese students, when discussing history, refer to class as a lense through which to understand it. It's generally a narrative of great men and women, and competing powers.
Now, I've really been addressing your sub-question about primary and secondary students here. I have no specific knowledge of which types of historiography are popular amongst Chinese historians. | [
"The Chinese government has used its public evaluations of historical, public figures as a means of communicating to the Chinese public the traits and political goals that it considers desirable and undesirable. The Chinese government has historically tended towards evaluating public figures either as villains or h... |
As historians, do you ever feel burdened by your lack of knowledge certain histories? | Personally? Absolutely! When you realise the sheer, absurd depth of your field, and then realise there are untold thousands of other fields just like yours, where people could study for decades and still not know everything? You definitely feel stupid, but it's an awe-inspiring thing too. As a field, perhaps the greatest gift that studying history gives you is that of common sense. You can't ever be a specialist on every field, but you can learn to navigate a lot of the pitfalls that turn up in popular history, even in areas that you never move into in-depth.
History is a strange, fascinating, and overall *massive* field. No one historian can ever hope to know everything they'll need to in their field. For me, with a relatively niche topic, there are still areas I run into all the time where I simply don't have all the answers - and it's like that for most people. History is a complicated, interlocked study - and something that happens outside my area of knowledge can, and most definitely will, influence something I'm more specialised in.
There are two fantastic things about /r/Askhistorians in this regard. Firstly, there are thousands of curious, knowledgeable, passionate people here who can teach and learn from each-other. None of us will have all the answers, but specialists from different fields can work together to produce a larger picture than any one person could. Secondly, this sub encourages us to look at what we *do* know in fascinating ways sometimes. It's great not just for widening your knowledge, but encouraging you to re-examine what you've already learned from new angles!
| [
"Mandel often reiterated that most people do not learn all that much from texts or from history, they learn from their own experience. They might be affected by history without knowing it. But anybody concerned with large-scale social change was almost automatically confronted with the need to place matters in broa... |
what does economic freedom mean? | This question was [asked yesterday](_URL_0_). The short answer is that it doesn't mean anything, but a particular group uses the term in a particular way. They define it in their report. | [
"Economic freedom or economic liberty is the ability of people of a society to take economic actions. This is a term used in economic and policy debates as well as in the philosophy of economics. One approach to economic freedom comes from classical liberal and libertarian traditions emphasizing free markets, free ... |
Were Romans broadly aware of the First or Second Triumvirates at the time they were active, or would they have sounded like conspiracy theories? | There's a great deal of misinformation that keeps appearing and disappearing on this thread.
Yes, the Romans were aware of the Triumvirate, and of the agreement between Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus popularly called the "first" Triumvirate. In reality, there was only one Triumvirate, that of Octavian, Lepidus, and Antony. This was a legally-defined collegiate magistracy, which though extraordinary nevertheless had a legally defined tenure of office, which was renewed several times between its creation and its eventual expiration prior to Actium. There was nothing to hide as far as the Triumvirate went, as it was a public office.
Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus were known to be working together pretty much from the moment it happened. They did not make any great attempt to conceal their cooperation, and openly extended hands to others as well. In a letter to Atticus (Att. 2.3) Cicero mentions that towards the end of December 60, between Caesar's election to the consulship of 59 and his assumption of the office, Caesar sent Balbus to him to offer him a partnership among the dynasts, specifically saying that he would value Cicero's advice as equal to Pompey's, and that he would reconcile Pompey and Crassus. Cicero has some difficulty turning down the offer, since he was following 63 very closely tied to Pompey and, as he says, hoped to resolve the quarrels with his senatorial enemies that had been hovering over him since his consulship, but ultimately he tells Atticus that he can't do it. In April of 59, early into Caesar's consulship and before Cicero started speaking out against him towards the end of the year, Cicero says to Atticus that he doesn't envy Crassus at all for his alignment with Caesar (things were not going well for the dynasts in mid-spring), and apparently Cicero was the original choice for the third dynast.
The dynasts also appeared publicly. If there were any who still weren't aware of their alignment to each other, when the agrarian bill to settle Capua was promulgated relatively early in 59 there could be no doubt. Not only was it strongly in all three men's interest, but in a contio prior to the bill's promulgation Caesar invited Pompey and Crassus to the rostra in order to say whether they supported the measure or not. They did, and apparently made some sort of threatening overture: App. B.C. 2.10 seems to suggest that they encouraged the people to show up to the vote carrying daggers, and Plut. Caes. 14.3-4 says that Pompey threatened to use military force to get the bill, which would settle his soldiers, passed. Bibulus was also invited to a contio, and foolishly accepted--Morstein-Marx has shown that though invitations to contiones were frequently extended to rivals, they were almost never accepted, because as is the case with Bibulus a rival speaking at a contio typically was a target for the crowd's ire, not a legitimate speaker. Yet another indication would have been Pompey's marriage of Caesar's daughter. In May 59, only one month after poking fun at Crassus for siding with the dynasts Cicero has this to say (Att. 2.9):
> etenim si fuit invidiosa senatus potentia, cum ea non ad populum sed ad tris homines immoderatos redacta sit, quid iam censes fore? proinde isti licet faciant quos volent consules, tribunos pl., denique etiam Vatini strumam sacerdoti dibaphoi vestiant...
> > Now indeed, if the power of the senate was so hateful, what then do you think ought to be when it has passed over not to the people but to three unrestrained men? So let them make whomever they wish consuls and tribunes, and let them even dress up Vatinius' tumor with a priest's twice-dyed purple
This is the first surviving written reference to a "rule of three," though App. B.C. 2.9 tells us that Varro published a book or pamphlet called the Tricaranus, or "three-headed monster."
By 56, however, the dynasts' relationship was weakening, since they had gotten what they had wanted and no longer had much need for each other (therefore Suetonius refers to the triumvirate as a "societas," which is not quite a coitio, though Caesar was accused of forming one with L. Lucceius, which was staved off according to Suetonius by Cato's rampant bribery). However, with Cicero returned from exile and Pompey's power over the senate in Caesar's absence significantly weakened, the dynasts reopened their relations at the so-called Conference at Luca in 56. The "renewal" of the triumvirate, if an unofficial agreement can really have official renewal, was a public event. The dynasts got together at Luca in Cisalpine Gaul, and agreed that Caesar should continue prosecuting the war in Gaul and that Crassus and Pompey should share the consulship of 55. With the dynasts at Luca were so many magistrates, promagistrates, and senators that according to Plut. Caes. 21.5 there were 120 lictors at the conference and over 200 senators. App. B.C. 2.17 repeats these figures. An earlier meeting between Crassus and Caesar had already taken place at Ravenna, says Cic. Fam. 1.9. In the same letter Cicero tells us that he himself was in negotiation with the dynasts through Pompey and his brother. Cicero had attempted to drive a wedge between Caesar and Pompey while ostensibly trying to restore the regular function of the state (or more concretely, as Tatum very persuasively argues, trying to get the dynasts to agree formally that Clodius' tribunate was invalid) by reopening the question, settled two years earlier, of what to do about the commission to settle the ager Campanus. When Pompey visited Caesar at Luca Caesar did not like what Cicero had had to say, so Pompey spoke to Cicero's brother Quintus, one of Caesar's legates in Gaul. Cicero says that Quintus reported that Pompey told him:
> nisi cum Marco fratre diligenter egeris, dependendum tibi est, quod mihi pro illo spopondisti
> > Unless you urge your brother Marcus on carefully (i.e. make him shut up), what you promised me on his behalf you'll have to pay.
Quintus had, while heading out to Gaul, tacitly guaranteed his brother's cooperation. | [
"By 59 BC an unofficial political alliance known as the First Triumvirate was formed between Gaius Julius Caesar, Marcus Licinius Crassus, and Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus to share power and influence. It was always an uncomfortable alliance given that Crassus and Pompey intensely disliked one another. In 53 BC, Crassus ... |
A way to test the "frame rate" aka flicker rate of the human eye | If you have a strobe that you can tune very finely... I have seen a few science projects that utilize that part of your brain, to make water look like stunt is going up. | [
"The frequency at which flicker becomes invisible is called the flicker fusion threshold, and is dependent on the level of illumination. Generally, the frame rate of 16 frames per second (frame/s) is regarded as the lowest frequency at which continuous motion is perceived by humans. This threshold varies across dif... |
How close were the Allies (specifically US) to losing WWII in Europe in terms of resources? | The allies suffered major supply problems after the invasion of Normandy and after breaking through into France and the low countries. This wasn't necessarily a problem with production so much as getting it to the necessary places. The rapid breakout that was operation Cobra stretched allied supply lines to the breaking point and motivated them to capture an intact port from which they could more easily resupply. They finally succeeded in capturing Antwerp (one of Europe's best ports) in late 1944 and after a campaign by the Canadians in the winter of 1944 which cleared out the last resistance in the area around the Antwerp, the port could begin taking in large amounts of supply. To give an idea of the supply needs of the allied armies in 1944. Take into account the allies need 700 tons of supplies a day for all their forces, the Germans needed only 200 tons a day.
The major setback would probably be the battle of the bulge, due to the allies being overstretched and Omar Bradley not appreciating the seriousness of the attack, the attack made significant progress, It ultimately failed but that's the closest the allies really came to a large sclae setback.
There was also Market Graden, which was a mass airborne assault intended to secure access into Germany over the Lower Rhine. This assault was also a massive failure.
Sources you may want to read.
John Keegan's the Second World War
Third Reich Series Richard Evans
A World At Arms Gerhard Weinberg
| [
"From 1944, as German defeat became more and more inevitable, the shape of post-war Europe assumed greater importance in Allied strategy. At the Second Quebec Conference in September 1944, the Allies agreed to partition and de-industrialize a defeated Germany so as to render her permanently unable to wage war Morge... |
if windows xp is still so popular, why is microsoft abandoning it? | Because they don't make money supporting outdated software. They want people to buy the new versions. | [
"Despite extended support for Windows XP ending in 2014, many users – including some enterprises – were reluctant to move away from an operating system they viewed as a stable known quantity despite the many security and functionality improvements in subsequent releases of Windows. Windows XP's longevity was viewed... |
If i was in a boat and dropped a one pound stone over the deepest part of the ocean (Mariana Trench?) What would happen to the stone as it decends? | Whether or not it would be crushed depends on the chemical makeup of the stone. The Mariana Trench is nearly 11 kilometers deep at its deepest point. That's a lot of pressure. The weight of all of the water above it would be pushing down on the stone.
If it survived, it almost certainly wouldn't travel to the bottom in a straight line. Ocean waters aren't still; currents due to pressure differences, due to hydrothermal vents or other phenomena, mean that ocean water is always moving around.
How long it would take would depend on the buoyancy of the rock. An iron ball sinks, but a cruise ship floats. There's no universal answer.
Would it look the same? Maybe. The rock could be pulverized from the pressure. It could be compacted into a smaller, more dense rock from the massive pressure. There wouldn't be much to see, though, because no sunlight would reach that far. | [
"With his \"Trieste\" able to reach depths of 24,000 feet, Piccard and his colleagues planned on an even greater challenge—a voyage to the bottom of the sea. On 23 January 1960, Piccard and Lt. Don Walsh reached the floor of the Mariana Trench located in the western North Pacific Ocean. The depth of the descent was... |
why is it ok to draw muhammad because of a few radicals. but, it's not ok to put a cross upside down, burn the us flag, and so on? | It isn't illegal to burn a US flag. Not aware of any laws against drawing crosses upside down. | [
"On February 3, 2006 he responded to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy by publishing a drawing in the first page of \"Le Monde\" representing Muhammad using many copies of the sentence \"I may not draw Muhammad\".\n",
"BULLET::::- The satirical nature of some of the drawings was not considered res... |
why when someone gets the all clear that they are cancer free they still have a high chance to get it back? | Because we're never totally sure that every cancerous cell is out of your body and that another tumor won't form. | [
"Chemotherapy does not always work, and even when it is useful, it may not completely destroy the cancer. People frequently fail to understand its limitations. In one study of people who had been newly diagnosed with incurable, stage 4 cancer, more than two-thirds of people with lung cancer and more than four-fifth... |
Is it possible Elizabeth Bathory was innocent? | Hopefully someone will see and be able to respond to your question shortly, but in the meantime, you may find this earlier discussion helpful:
[Was Elizabeth Báthory framed?](_URL_0_) | [
"The case of Elizabeth Báthory inspired numerous stories during the 18th and 19th centuries. The most common motif of these works was that of the countess bathing in her victims' blood to retain beauty or youth. This legend appeared in print for the first time in 1729, in the Jesuit scholar László Turóczi’s \"Tragi... |
Have all the Earth's crusts recycled to the mantle at some point? | It all started as molten because of the massive amount of energy released by coalescing from a gas cloud, but after that no. That's why we can find rocks as old as from when the earth first solidified in places like Australia. [Jack Hills](_URL_0_). Continental plates are less dense than oceanic plates - that's why they're continental - so generally they float about oceanic plates. | [
"Crustal recycling is a tectonic process by which surface material from the lithosphere is recycled into the mantle by subduction erosion or delamination. The subducting slabs carry volatile compounds and water into the mantle, as well as crustal material with an isotopic signature different from that of primitive ... |
Can a black hole exert an electrical force? | Yes you can have [charged black holes](_URL_0_). | [
"Matter propagating in a curved spacetime is similar to the electromagnetic wave propagation in a curved space and in an in homogeneous metamaterial, as stated in the previous section. Hence a black hole can possibly be simulated using electromagnetic fields and metamaterials. In July 2009 a metamaterial structure ... |
How many planets have we surveyed for signs of a Technological civilization? | We dont really have the ability to do that to any great degree at this point. The only thing i can think that we can actively do is do a spectral analysis of a planets atmosphere for artificial or life-produced chemicals. This can be done, but it is not easy. You have to be able to detect the stars light as it passes through the planets atmosphere. | [
"Proposals for \"the study of planets external to the Solar System\" include; the evaluation of the most effective means for the direct studies of exoplanets provided affirmation for the use of starshades. \"Planet Hunter\" Deep search of 65 nearby stars for Earth analogs. Mark Clampin/Goddard Space flight centre -... |
Can we harvest energy from black holes? | There's the [Penrose process.](_URL_0_) | [
"BULLET::::- Perhaps a more exotic means to generate usable energy would be to feed a stellar mass into a black hole, and collect photons emitted by the accretion disc. Less exotic would be simply to capture photons already escaping from the accretion disc, reducing a black hole's angular momentum; this is known as... |
Why do I see a staticy grid when I close my eyes? | I have some moderate expertise about the visual system, but I'm not an authority, so this is just my best guess based on what I know.
The short answer is that, to my knowledge, we don't know *precisely* why this happens, though it's probably a combination of things:
The first and more obvious contributor is the [visual afterimage effect](_URL_0_). That is, recent intense visual stimulation can cause a "negative" image to persist if one's eyes are thereafter deprived of light. This is likely the reason that many "floaties" people see when they close their eyes are more purple/blue in color: much indoor lighting and sunlight is more toward the opposing yellow/green end of the spectrum.
Another contributor is one we often don't consider: it only takes a single photon to depolarize a photoreceptor, and it only takes a small handful of simultaneous depolarizations to lead to the perception of light. This means that even in extremely low lighting conditions, perception can occur. Light can be easily perceived through closed eyelids in moderately lit situations, which may contribute to the sustenance of visual patterns when your eyes are closed.
Another, more cool and interesting contributor is a set of organizational factors. Specifically, the brain, including the visual system, is wired to detect and perceive patterns, and may [create patterns even when one isn't really there](_URL_1_). That is, you may be perceiving a staticy grid because your visual pathway is organized to detect organized patterns.
Finally, you've got top-down, cognitive factors. This is basically to say that you may be able to influence what you're perceiving based on your experiences and your preferences, similar to interpreting Rorschach blots. | [
"Eyelid fluttering artifacts of a characteristic type were previously called Kappa rhythm (or Kappa waves). It is usually seen in the prefrontal leads, that is, just over the eyes. Sometimes they are seen with mental activity. They are usually in the Theta (4–7 Hz) or Alpha (7–14 Hz) range. They were named because ... |
Why does samurai armour seem so badly designed compared to medieval european armour? | It's a question of resource availability. Japan had less natural sources of iron and other suitable metals, meaning that what they had was used to make weapons. It's a contributing reason that swords were so tied to nobility in Japan: they were incredibly expensive and precious.
Because of this Japanese armour was made from other materials like wood, leather, cloth and lacquer. These materials are not as malleable as metals, but beyond that there wouldn't have been as much need for tight, gapless armour. Europe warfare developed successively to make use if more and more armour penetration. Longbow volleys, pikes and the like. Knights meeting each other in a melee would grab their stilettos or morningstars rather than their swords. In Japan there wasn't such an arms race to penetrate or bash armour, so in a melee situation something to stop a sword slash was sufficient. If your opponent had a spear they'd be able to get through your armour regardless since metal armour was simply out of the question.
This is of course a wide generalization of an entire culture and their long history, and things varied in different eras, but this is the overall general difference. | [
"By the end of the Heian period, the Japanese cuirass had arrived at the shape recognized as part of iconic samurai armor. Scales of iron and leather, bound together by silk lace, were used to construct samurai armors.\n",
"In the 1500s a new type of armor started to become popular due to the advent of firearms, ... |
What happened to the idea of invading another country to expand a current one? Details inside. | Wars of aggressions are internationally outlawed. From the charter of the United Nations, Article 2, §4:
> All Members shall refrain (…) from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state (…)
This is the original purpose of the United Nations, described in Article 1 as
> To maintain international peace and security
and
> To develop friendly relations among nations
This, of course, is motivated by the gruesome lessons of the two world wars.
There have been many wars in the sixty years, and some wars of Aggression, but none have been labelled by the aggressor as such. The United Nations Security council can and does authorize war against aggressors, such as in the Gulf War. Iraq invaded Kuwait, thus breaking international law, and the UN authorized an invasion of Iraq consequently.
Word of warning: Don't discuss wars after the First Gulf war, this subreddit has a policy against discussing events of the last twenty years.
| [
"The invasion was committed by force, or by threat of force or coercion, such as that caused by fear of violence, duress, detention, psychological oppression or abuse of power, against such person or another person, or by taking advantage of a coercive environment, or the invasion was committed against a person inc... |
I need help with the relationship between feudal lords and their warriors in medieval times. | Ok first things first we need to define our field a bit. The Anglo-Saxons were not by any strict definition 'feudal'. "Feudalism' as an economic/political system only properly appears in England under the Normans after the conquest in 1066. So I'm going to give you sources that point towards that.
* Joseph Strayer's [Feudalism](_URL_2_) is a nifty little (47 pages of analysis) book with a great selection of primary documents at the end. The caveat, it is nearly 60 years old and so it is rather simplistic and out of date. That being said the documents are still very much primary and may be of help.
* Robert Bartlett's [England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings](_URL_1_) is a very *not* small book. It is, however, exaustive and up-to-date and so might prove helpful. It has chapters on everything from the actual political landscape to Lordship and Government, Warfare and even Faeiries.
* *English Historical Documents* is a series of works which combine numerous primary sources. Volume 2 is probably the best place to look.
* The [Internet Medieval Sourcebook](_URL_0_) also has a wide variety of primary documents worth looking at which don't even require a trip to the library!
I hope that is helpful. One last thing to remember about 'feudalism'. It is not a clean system and it is not a neat pyramid. It is a constant struggle for privilege and power. Kings want to get as much as they can from their vassals (service, payments, etc.) while giving up as few privileges/rights (land, support, protection) as they can. The same is true for the Vassals.
| [
"Medieval militaries did not have a unified rank structure; while the feudal lords were in some ways equivalent to modern officers, they didn't have a strict hierarchy—a king was conceived of as first among equals, not a monarch as later or ancient societies understood the concept, and all nobles were theoretically... |
Is there a reason why Evangelical Christians sometimes have seizures during "prayer"? | Dr. Walter Cannon ([Study here](_URL_0_)) in 1942 studied cases of "black magic deaths". Cannon noticed that in cases of victims being "cursed" they had an exceptionally strong belief that they were doomed to die. He speculated that the victims released hormones that caused a rapid and potentially fatal drop in blood pressure thus causing them to come down with a serious case of the deads. It's quite likely that these people having seizures have such a firm belief of being able to have this seizure and expecting it is causing them to in fact have one.
| [
"In July, 2007, The United States Senate conducted its morning prayer services with a Hindu prayer, a historical first. During the service, three disruptors, named Ante Nedlko Pavkovic, Katherine Lynn Pavkovic and Christen Renee Sugar, from the Fundamentalist Christian activist group Operation Save America proteste... |
Ohio Native Americans. Looking for resources. | **Moundbuilders**
* [The Moundbuilders: Ancient Peoples of Eastern North America](_URL_12_)
* [Gathering Hopewell: Society, Ritual, and Ritual Interaction](_URL_7_)
* [The Scioto Hopewell and Their Neighbors: Bioarchaeological Documentation and Cultural Understanding](_URL_1_)
* [Ohio Hopewell Community Organization](_URL_14_)
* [Hopewell Settlement Patterns, Subsistence, and Symbolic Landscapes](_URL_4_)
* [Recreating Hopewell](_URL_10_)
**Shawnee**
* [Shawnee: The ceremonialism of a native Indian tribe and its cultural background](_URL_2_)
* [The Shawnees and the War for America](_URL_5_)
* [The Shawnees and Their Neighbors, 1795-1870](_URL_11_)
* [A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815](_URL_13_;)
* [The Worlds the Shawnees Made: Migration and Violence in Early America](_URL_8_)
**Miami**
* [The Miami Indians](_URL_0_)
* [The Miami Indians of Indiana: A Persistent People, 1654-1994](_URL_6_)
* [The Indians of the Western Great Lakes, 1615-1760](_URL_9_)
**All Three**
* [Handbook of North American Indians, vol 15](_URL_3_)
**C.C. Trowbridge**
If you check the sources for the Shawnee and Miami books, you'll see the name C.C. Trowbridge come up. His *Shawnese Traditions* and *Meeār̄meear Traditions* are frequently cited, but hard to come by these days. They're worth checking out if you can managed to track them down; if not, you'll get most of main details for the works that cite them. | [
"The Great Lakes-Ohio Valley Ethnohistory Collection (GLOVE) is a unique assemblage of primary and secondary resources pertaining to the Native American occupancy of the region. It was collected by Wheeler-Voegelin in the 1950s, and was funded by the U.S. Department of Justice to prepare in depth reports concerning... |
how can straight talk use the same towers as verizon and other top tier providers? | Mobile phone companies own a lot of spectrum and towers, generally more than they can use (for now, things are growing). They sell their excess capacity to other providers, such as Straight Talk to use unused portions of their mobile phone networks. It's making $0 while not in use, so they'd rather sell it then have it generate no cash for them.
Just about all large mobile phone companies do this to a fairly significant degree, and as such, its not uncommon for a company (such as a Straight Talk) to have deals with multiple providers in order to make sure their network is good enough, as often one single provider can't give them everything they need. | [
"Straight Talk is a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) offering both CDMA and GSM support. The CDMA service uses Verizon's or Sprint's CDMA 1xRTT wireless networks and the GSM service makes use of either T-Mobile's or AT&T's GSM networks.\n",
"Xfinity Voice allows communication over the internet using VoIP, b... |
why would the israelis and saudis lobby *against* an interim nuclear deal between the us and iran? | A similar deal was given to North Korea in the 1990s with regard to their nuclear program. Now they have multiple nuclear weapons and have spread the technology to other countries like Pakistan, which have since built some nuclear weapons of their own. | [
"Israel and Saudi Arabia expressed concern about Iran's ability to use diplomatic cover and unfrozen money from the deal to strengthen its regional position and that of its allies. Critics in Washington accused the Obama administration of having been duped by Iran and Russia into accepting a deal that was antitheti... |
How close can stars get? | You have binary star systems in which each member can retain its own planets in their respective ecospheres.
| [
"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... |
Was it always a rude thing to ask about salaries? For example, would somebody in 19th century London be offended if I asked how much they made? | A lot of 18th century literature talks about money and how much a person had "settled" on them per year. Jane Austen and similar writers focused on this a lot. Jane's characters always knew how much every person made and how much they could expect to have if they married that person.
I am not sure how accurately that translated into real life though. Or how much it happened in the middle and lower classes, since most literature focused on the richer classes. | [
"In the 18th century, wages in Great Britain were low because of a surplus of labour. The average monetary wage was about 50 shillings (£2.50, ) a year for a plowman, and 40 shillings (£2) a year for an ordinary unskilled worker. Ships' captains negotiated prices for transporting and feeding a passenger on the seve... |
Which events led to enforcing speed limits on vehicles? | Speed limits are older than the "horseless carriage" itself; the Locomotive Act of 1861 in the UK limited steam-powered "road locomotives" (train engines designed to travel on roads instead of tracks) to a maximum speed of 10 mph. In 1865 the speed limit was lowered to 4 mph and a requirement was added for a man carrying a red flag to walk at least 60 yards in front of the vehicle to warn others of its passage. In 1896, following the development of the modern automobile concept, the red flag requirement was dropped and the speed limit was amended to 8 to 16 mph at the local authority's discretion.
Two examples of roads I'm aware of which previously did not have speed limits, but on which they were introduced:
Speed limits were introduced on the UK's M1 motorway after racing driver Jack Sears tested an AC Cobra coupe at 185 mph on it in 1964, instigating a moral panic that led to the implementation of a "temporary" 70 mph speed limit in 1965, made permanent in 1970.
Numerical speed limits in Montana were implemented [in 1998](_URL_0_) after a man charged with speeding successfully argued before the state supreme court that the state's restriction to "reasonable and proper" speeds was unconstitutionally vague. | [
"All speed limits for cars and motorcycles were abolished under the Road Traffic Act 1930 because 'the existing speed limit was so universally disobeyed that its maintenance brought the law into contempt'.\n",
"The Locomotive Acts of the late 1800s had placed heavy restrictions of speeds of \"locomotives\". Under... |
django and other web frameworks | An ELI5 would require an entire chapter to cover the basics. I'm going to assume you understand certain concepts. If the explanation is still confusing, ask, and I'll post a more detailed response.
**ELI20:** A framework is like an operating system. It provides libraries, as well as resource management and code architecture.
[Django](_URL_1_) is a Python framework for creating web applications. [wxPython](_URL_3_) is a Python framework for creating desktop GUI applications. Let's look at both of them.
## Libraries
A library is like a small mini program that does something specific. Just like a Firefox add-on, except in source code form. You use this functionality to do stuff within your own application. So having access to a library allows you to implement features without having to code that functionality yourself.
For example Django provides [sitemaps](_URL_2_) and [geolocation](_URL_5_). So if you used Django, you don't need to write your own sitemap module. You simply use the one provided by Django.
wxPython provides [wxODBC](_URL_0_) and [wxSound](_URL_4_). Both of these are tremendously useful when writing database frontends.
## Resource Management
The most basic webapp needs a database to store data and session management to keep track of all the people connected to your webapp.
Django provides a means to link your Python classes to your database, so the data from the database is automatically read/written to the class variables. This is called an an ORM (Object Relational Mapper). Without it you would need to write CRUD code to read/write/delete information in the database.
So in effect it makes your app a lot simpler. The downside is that you have to do things the Django way. Create classes, variables, and structures that Django needs to provide all these features. this brings me to the final point which is Architecture
## Architecture
Web frameworks, including Django, structure code using the Model-View-Controller design pattern. Django implements a hybrid version of MVC with templates. So if you used Django, your program would also have to be organized along MVC lines. | [
"Django ( ; stylised as django) is a Python-based free and open-source web framework, which follows the model-template-view (MTV) architectural pattern. It is maintained by the Django Software Foundation (DSF), an independent organization established as a 501(c)(3) non-profit.\n",
"Django's primary goal is to eas... |
the chinese market crashes | This crisis comes along with the GDP growth of China slowing down. Chinese people started to invest in the stocks because of China's central bank decision to lower rate (the idea was to keep the growth going).
This created a bubble as many businesses were overvalued. Fearing huge speculation, the Chinese authorities decided to correct it (some people were taking bankc loans only to invest) the bubble popped here.
However the Chinese government panicked and invested back in the stock market and encourage shareholders to invest in the stocks, keeping the bubble growing back.
This crisis didn't have huge effects on the rest of world as some people feared, but this kind of crisis is going to happen. | [
"By the end of December 2015 China's stock market had recovered from the shocks and had outperformed S&P for 2015, though still well below the 12 June highs. By the end of 2015 the Shanghai Composite Index was up 12.6 percent. In January 2016 the Chinese stock market experienced a steep sell-off and trading was hal... |
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, was England (or the United Kingdom) ever a similarly significant internationally? | Just drawing off the top of my own head here before a proper answer comes in, England always had a strong navy after the middle ages, henry viii leaving the catholic church made England pretty significant and then holding off the Spanish armada was no mean feat. | [
"After the defeat of France in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815), the UK emerged as the principal naval and imperial power of the 19th century (with London the largest city in the world from about 1830). Unchallenged at sea, British dominance was later described as \"Pax Britannica\" (\"British Peac... |
Relation b/w speed of light and gravity? | This is actually a pretty complicated question. In special relativity, for inertial frames, the speed of light is a pure global constant. In general relativity, the issue becomes more muddled, here's what Einstein said about it:
> "... according to the general theory of relativity, the law of the constancy of the velocity of light in vacuo, which constitutes one of the two fundamental assumptions in the special theory of relativity [...] cannot claim any unlimited validity. A curvature of rays of light can only take place when the velocity of propagation of light varies with position."
In essence, the speed of light constancy rule requires that you remain in an inertial frame, which involves two situations: Free falling into a gravitational source (ignorant non uniform, tidal effects) and being sufficiently far from any source of gravity thus replicating special relativity. The basic reason for this is in special relativity, Lorentz transformations take on a global usage, but on general relativity, you can only do these *locally* and as a result your speed of light measurement is only necessarily *c* when the light is near you.
Edit: Here's some resource on the topic:
_URL_1_
_URL_0_ | [
"Max Born agreed with Einstein and stated both speed and direction of light change in a gravity field first published 1923 in English, 1920 in German. Born expressed the magnitude of light speed as the square root of (−\"g\"/\"g\") gravity components in general relativity to leave no doubt about his intent.\n",
"... |
When and why did militaries stop updating 'ceremonial' uniforms? | as a side question, are they pieces of dress uniforms that actually do tend to be updated from this diversion point or are they pretty much unchanged? | [
"After World War II the coloured, full dress uniforms were again reintroduced for ceremonial occasions by the Brigade of Guards and to a limited extent by regimental bands. Officers (and later senior non-commissioned officers) resumed wearing mess uniforms in traditional colours from about 1956 on. These are still ... |
How romanticised is the 50s USA in comparison to how it actually was? | I'm not an expert on the 1950s, however, I'll take a stab at your question. To start, I think your question is framed in a dangerous way that could lead to a rather skewed representation of American history, and history in general. Describing a time period as a "good time to live", *except* (and this is a big modifier) for all the racial and gender based oppression is a scary way to look at America. The largely white communities (["little boxes on the hillside"](_URL_4_)) which began to proliferate in the 1950s did not exist in isolation, they were dependent on a wide variety of factors in nearby cities and towns, and, in communities all across the nation, that were not so racially homogeneous. Looking at the life of the "American white male" in a vacuum is akin to celebrating the golden age of the Portuguese or achievements of the American south, while ignoring the significant role slavery had in the success of both. It skews the reality of the situation and, perhaps, also creates some of the romanticism (conservatives or similar types yearning for a "whiter", greater America) you mentioned. With this in mind, I'll still do my best to answer the question as asked.
Although there were significant opportunities in the 1950s for white males, and other groups, these opportunities often required significant sacrifices or adjustments of one kind or another. The most obvious is the readjustment of returning veterans to civilian society, although the myriad benefits of the GI bill (largely restricted to whites) softened the blow to an extent. This bill allowed veterans to gain a academic or technical education and find a foothold a foothold in a changed society. The government also insured a certain number of mortgages for veterans, making home ownership far more accessible. As such, an overarching theme of the period was an emphasis on settling down, buying a nice, little home and raising a family in a safe (middle-class white), suburban environment. Removed from the terrors of the battlefield, this was an attractive prospect to many. However, societal critics like Sloan Wilson ([*The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit*](_URL_5_) )or William H. Whyte ([*The Organization Man*](_URL_1_)) decried the exchange of individual creativity for conformity, an empty suburban life and the all-powerful dollar. Other contemporary writers, such as the "Beat generation" and particularly Jack Kerouac, described the existence of " a hidden America", far removed from the technicolor glare of newly resurgent television- and ad-men. While shows like Mad Men have done a passable replication of the corporate culture in the 1950s, few have captured the spirit of the Beat generation and the grimy but vibrant spaces where they made their existences, for better or worse.
In the higher reaches of Washington, [McCarthyism](_URL_2_) reached a fever pitch, eventually spilling out into American communities and encouraging suspicion of "the communist other", whoever that may be (ethnic characters, professors, artists, etc. [some examples](_URL_0_)). Lives, careers were ruined, all in the name of some sort of perverted form of statism. That communists had played a significant role in [defending the rights of African-Americans](_URL_3_) for the past half-century did them no favors. So, while there was great advancement and achievements in business, science, and technology for America and Americans, problems were still endemic in society, not least of all with the aforementioned racial-, poverty, and gender-related problems not discussed here. I'll leave it up to you as to whether the 1950s were necessarily a good time to live (my opinion: probably as good as any other) but, at the very least, I hope this acts as a intro of sorts to the time period and, perhaps, to a slightly fuller version of history. | [
"This shift is attributed to a variety of widely recognized social changes that occurred in American society in the 1960s and 1970s: changing sexual morals increased the prevalence of sexual activity outside of marriage and decreased the stigma surrounding out-of-wedlock births; American attitudes about marriage an... |
can somebody explain ram for me? | Computer processors are really, really fast. Hard drives are really, really slow in comparison. If computers handled and processed data by writing and reading directly from the hard drive, computers would be extremely slow too, because the hard drive couldn't keep up with the processor's speed.
RAM is there to address this problem. It's a place where data is temporarly stored that is really really fast to read and write from. | [
"RAMIS was initially developed in the mid 1960s by the company Mathematica on a consulting contract for a marketing study by a team headed by Gerald Cohen and subsequently further developed and marketed as a general purpose data management and analysis tool. In the late 1960s Cohen fell out with the management of M... |
At what point in history did the average person have access to clocks? | There are a couple ways to talk about this topic. One is a straightforward survey, such that is is possible, of what I guess I'd call clock density. I'm not sure such a precise study exists, but we do know that in the 14th and 15th centuries mechanical clocks started to be more present in Europe. Certainly by the 18th century they were becoming far more common, but I really don't have any idea how I'd measure how many people could find a clock within 5 minutes of their home.
The other way to approach this question is at what point in history did *measuring time precisely* start to be something the average person either did or had to care about. This is an interesting question and is largely tied to economic life. There is some good work on this topic. It's a topic that has interested historians since at least the 1960s, which has a lot to do with the rise of interest in social history.
E.P Thompson's work is probably the standard on this topic and is definitely a classic. His article "Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism" published in *Past & Present* No. 38 (Dec. 1967) 56-97. Thompson contrasts a notion of time that revolves around time-of-day dependent work with the more rigidly scheduled work of industrial capitalism as it arose in the 19th century. Thompson calls this "task-orientation" and he says it has 3 key features:
> "First, there is a sense that it is more humanely comprehensible than timed labor. The peasant or laborer appears to attend upon what is observed necessity. Second, a community in which task-orientation is common appears to show least demarcation between "work" and "life." Social intercourse and labor are intermingled - the working-day lengthens and contracts according to the task - and there is no great tension between work and 'passing the time of day.' Third, to men accustomed to labor timed by the clock, this attitude appears wasteful and lacking in urgency." (60)
Of course, there is a relationship between "labor timed by the clock" and the actually presence of clocks in peoples' lives is relevant here, but the relevant location there is not the clock at home, but rather the clock at work. This is due to another observation that Thompson makes: "Those who are employed experience a distinction between their employer's time and and their 'own' time. And the employer must use the time of his labour, and see it is not wasted: not that task but the value of time when reduced to money is dominant." (61). With that relationship in mind, clocks dominated and structured time in the context of early industrial capitalism precisely because of the needs of employers hiring laborers in a capitalist system. Insofar as time spent at home was less "valuable" when reduced to money, clocks were less relevant even when present. Thompson admits the difficulty in tracking the spread and prevalence of clocks, but notes that their spread did increase not just incidentally alongside labor under industrial capitalism. Clocks were needed to enforce labor-discipline and Thompson argues that this was not merely an artifact of a particular historical moment but actually changed peoples' relationship to time. "In all these ways" he argues "by the division of labor; the supervision of labor; fines; bells and clocks; money incentives; preachings and schoolings; the suppression of fairs and sports - new labor habits were formed and a new time-discipline was imposed." (90).
Notice here that Thompson argues that new *habits* were formed. This transcended the imposition of employers and bosses and actually changed the way people habitually related to time. Consider how you yourself consider time - it is not merely the presence of clocks that makes pay attention to it. Indeed, you might even feel apprehensive when you're not near a clock, watch, cellphone or the like because you don't know what time it is. You might feel this even when you have no particular reason to need to know the time right at that moment.
Of course, this is all very classic Marxian analysis for which Thompson is known and is a great example of why historical theory helps shape analysis for people who are interested in that kind of thing. According to Thompson have the material, economic conditions of life influence society, culture and habits in the population. This kind of historical materialism is central to Marxian analysis and this is a case where that theory really shows its worth. Perhaps in what appears a bit too on-the-nose, in light of my comments, Thompson ends the article thus:
> For there is no such thing as economic growth which is not, at the same time, growth or change of a culture; and the growth of social consciousness, like the growth of a poet's mind, can never, in the last analysis, be planned." (97)
| [
"Before the sixteenth century European mechanical clocks were not in high demand. This lack of demand was brought on by the extremely high prices and the lack of preciseness needed by the population who had to calculate when they would have to have the prayer. The use of hourglasses, water clocks, and sundials was ... |
why does bacteria in our mouth become harmful to our teeth, while bacteria inside our body is usually kept in check and co-exists within us? | When bacteria in the mouth eat food they poop acid. That acid mixes with food and saliva to make 'plaque'. The plaque sticks to your teeth. The acid in the plaque dissolves the surface of your tooth (enamel), creating holes (cavities). | [
"Oral bacteria work with our immune system to keep our bodies disease free by fighting disease-producing germs that try to come in through the mouth. For example, some of these bacteria produce organic acids that kill the organisms that cause intestinal problems. Without these good bacteria, our immune systems woul... |
why are juggalos so hated on reddit (and in general), when female prostitution is viewed as for the most part completely acceptable? | Juggalo != gigolo.
Heck, I really have no idea whether male prostitutes even *like* Insane Clown Posse as a group. Anything's possible, I suppose. | [
"These feminists argue that, in most cases, prostitution is not a conscious and calculated choice. They say that most women who become prostitutes do so because they were forced or coerced by a pimp or by human trafficking, or, when it is an independent decision, it is generally the result of extreme poverty and la... |
in golf/baseball/hockey, why does a follow through matter? since the ball has already made contact with the club/bat, why does it matter if the swing is continued or not? | The advice is not given out as a way of influencing the ball after it's lost contact with the bat/stick/etc.
The advice is a way of mentally and physiologically improving the motion of the swing while it is still in contact.
I'm not a psychologist or kinesiologist, but I would guess that mentally if you prepare and train to swing a bat, planning to simply stop the swing at the moment of contact, you probably get a very different swing than if you prepare for and train to perform a full through swing. | [
"The detail illustration shows that when the handle is angled away from the ball both the position of contact with the ball on the ball and the part of the face of the stick making contact will be altered. The greater the bow the greater the degree of adjustment the player must make to his swing and to the hitting ... |
when did female breasts become a body part of sexual nature and why? | One theory I've heard is that it is related to human's and human ancestors walking upright.
Other male primates walk on all fours, are visually stimulated by the female's round posterior, and generally copulate in the doggystyle postion.
But, since humans walk upright and can copulate in the missionary position, the breasts evolved to be enlarged and provide visual stimulation similar to that of the posterior.
Another thing is, breasts, especially bigger ones, are an obvious sign of fertility. Prepubescent (infertile) girls don't have them, and elderly women (infertile) have saggy ones. Big full natural breasts = fertility. | [
"Breasts, and especially nipples, are highly erogenous zones, for both men and women. Nipple and breast stimulation of women are a near-universal aspect of human sexuality, though nipples in males are not as sexualized. Humans are the only primates whose female members have permanently enlarged breasts after the on... |
Was the War of the World's broadcast the first instance of an entire nation being trolled? Have there been other similar events? | Here are some precedents you may find interesting:
In the 12th century, legends began to promulgate throughout Christian Europe of a figure named "Prestor John", rumored to be the ruler of a rich and powerful kingdom in "the East" (at first, legend places him somewhere in India -- specifically the Three Indies -- but over time, his location would shift to various other favored exotic places which reappear in the Medieval imagination, such as Ethiopia).
Around 1165, a forged letter began to circulate Europe, purportedly from Prestor John himself. The crux of the letter centered around the fact that a remnant Nestorian Christian kingdom was holding out in the East, at the head of which was this Prestor John, and that he wished to vanquish the enemies of Christ. This was VERY popular in Europe at the time, the more recent Crusades not having gone well, and the letter with its surrounding legend "went viral" over the continent. Pope Alexander III attempted to make contact. Marco Polo discusses him in depth.
In 1862, Mark Twain fabricated a story wherein he claimed a petrified man had been discovered preserved in the side of a cliff. The story caused a sensation, and the small town where this petrified man was supposedly located was flooded with inquiries. Twain had reported in great detail the exact positions of limbs:
> “the right thumb rested against the side of the nose; the left thumb partially supported the chin, the fore-finger pressed the inner corner of the left eye, drawing it partly open; the right eye was closed, and the fingers of the right hand spread apart.”
A careful reading would have revealed that this unearthed man was literally "thumbing his nose" at his credulous readers.
Mark Twain was a bit of a "troll" in his day: he would also fabricate the story of the Empire City Massacre, wherein a man, losing everything in a bad investment, committed a murder/suicide on his wife and seven children. Twain wrote the piece in protest of contemporary bad business practices.
In June, 1899, newspapers across the US ran a story about American businessmen vying with one another for the right to tear down the Great Wall of China for the purpose of using its stone to build roads. However, this turned out to be a hoax, perpetrated by four Denver newspapermen who had deadlines due and no stories to fill them. The story caught on, and in days even the New York Times succumbed to the hoax, running this headline: "WILL CHINA'S WALL COME DOWN?" As various newspapers across the country picked up the story, the occasional embellishment would find its way in. In the end, this hoax would spawn a daughter-hoax: that of news of the Great Wall Hoax made its way to China and wound up being responsible for a popular uprising that would be known as the Boxer Rebellion.
[Source](_URL_0_) | [
"Chance interception of high-level communication is not unknown: during the 1982 Falklands conflict, a radio ham in London had intercepted and taped a conversation between the then-Prime Minister's press secretary Sir Bernard Ingham and the Assistant Director-General of the BBC, in which the BBC was pressurised int... |
why can't you get an electrical shock from the neutral | In a balanced 3 phase system, neutral should carry little to no current. Ground is actually fail safe. Ground is there in case the equipment becomes electrically charged. It will discharge to ground through the conductor, instead of you.
In an unbalanced system, neutral will carry a current, and could shock you. | [
"In power transmission systems, one side of the circuit, known as the neutral, is grounded to dissipate static electricity and to reduce hazardous voltages caused by insulation failure and other electrical faults. It is possible to get a shock by only touching the \"hot\" wire, due to the person's body being capaci... |
how do passwords work. specifically passwords to unlock devices such as smartphones or laptops | At a high level, typically most services (including a login to a device/computer) take what you type as a password (numbers, letters etc)
and run a mathematical transformation on it called a “hash”
The advantages of this are
1) you get the same “hash” output value every time for the same input (password)
2) the hash itself cannot easily be reversed, so that you can’t get the plain text password just by stealing (or looking at) it
When you type the password, the hash is generated and then compared to the hash stored somewhere on the system.
If they match, you gain access.
Where this hash is stored depends on the device or operating system (iOS, Mac, Windows , Linux etc) | [
"Smart locks allow users to grant access to a third party by means of a virtual key. This key can be sent to the recipient smartphone over standard messaging protocols such as e-mail or SMS. Once this key is received the recipient will be able to unlock the smart lock during the time previously specified by the sen... |
how sports venues paid for with tax payer money maintain a monopoly on crappy, overpriced food when there are obvious alternatives? | It's not a monopoly, it's more of a convenience issue. A restaurant can charge whatever they want, and if people don't want to pay, they can leave and find another restaurant.
Sports venues charge so much for food simply because they can. Yes, you can go watch a game for just the price of the ticket, and eat before/after the game somewhere cheaper. But since people like to eat/drink while they watch a game, they're willing to pay a lot more for their food.
This is basically how movie theaters make their money, in fact. They make most of their money on food/drink sales, while the movie tickets are really just their to get people in the door. | [
"Tax on gambling businesses is paid by registered gambling outlets at a flat rate per each table, slot machine or bookmaker's cash desk. The Code provides both minimum and maximum rate limits (1:5 ratio), thus prohibits establishment of tax-free gambling. For example, one slot machine is taxed at 1,500–7,500 rouble... |
Are reading and writing learned at the same time? | As to whether it is possible to learn to read or write without learning the opposite, I would certainly think that both are possible. I don't have attested examples to cite, but I don't see why someone born without arms would not be able to learn to read. In general, we certainly teach children to read before they learn to write. The opposite seems also possible. I imagine there are blind individuals out there who have learned to write, but who obviously can't read their own writing. That would just take training with some type of feedback.
As to the bigger question of whether or not they rely on the same sets of skills, in psychology you might frame that in terms of what is known as "modularity". We sometimes think about different processes in the brain as modules, separate pieces which combine together to do a larger function. For instance, reading is not one skill, it's made up of many smaller skills. You could then ask how much overlap is there between reading/writing in terms of those modules. One way to look at this is to look for individuals who have suffered some sort of brain trauma. Oftentimes things like strokes result in the loss of various language-related skills, which we refer to generally as aphasia. There are many different types, and every individual's trauma can result in somewhat different symptoms. For this discussion, the most important are [agraphia](_URL_2_), the loss of the ability to write, and [alexia](_URL_1_), the loss of the ability to read. Oftentimes, these two disorders coincide, but they do not necessarily. For instance, in [pure alexia](_URL_3_) an individual retains the ability to write, but has lost the ability to read. You could ask them to write out a sentence and they would would be able to do so, but when shown their own writing they would be unable to read it. The opposite, pure agraphia, is also possible although it seems to be less common. [Here's one case study](_URL_0_) of a 62 year old man who lost the ability to write, but more or less retained all his other language functions, including the ability to read. It's important to note that pure agraphia is not caused by a motor disorder, the man retained the function of his arm/fingers and could use them to perform other tasks, just not writing.
It's cases like these which informed a great deal of early work in psychology/psycholinguistics. The idea of modularity is not without (deserved) criticism, but individual case studies help demonstrate what is possible when particular regions in the brain become damaged. I think many people would be somewhat shocked at the very particular types of behaviors which can be lost, as with the 62 year old man with pure agraphia, having retained the ability to do just about anything with his hand except to use it to form words and sentences. | [
"Reading and writing are introduced in the next stage. The oral lesson learned in previous class is the reading material to establish a relationship between speech and writing. All reading material is introduced as orally first. Writing, in the early stages, is confined to transcriptions of the structures and dialo... |
why is 300 parts per million for particulate matter in the atmosphere significant enough to cause health issues? | A couple of nanograms (10^-9 grams) of botulinum (the toxin that causes botulism) can be deadly. Everything can be lethal if you have enough of it, and some things are just really, really good at disrupting your body and preventing it from doing the business of staying alive.
A single molecule of carbon monoxide from fire smoke, for example, can pretty much pretty much permanently break a red blood cell. We have a ton of them, and replace them all the time, so losing a couple of red blood cells isn't the end of the world. However, it doesn't take a whole lot of carbon monoxide before that problem starts to get really big and out of hand. | [
"Among these diesel emission components, particulate matter has been a serious concern for human health due to its direct and broad impact on the respiratory organs. In earlier times, health professionals associated PM10 (diameter < 10 μm) with chronic lung disease, lung cancer, influenza, asthma, and increased mor... |
why does the us order the day and month of a date differently to other countries? i.e. today to me (in europe) it is the 15/01/15 not the 01/15/15. how did this slight, but significant, difference come about? | IIRC in the UK we do **day - > month - > year** as its the smallest in time to largest.
The US does **month - > day - > year** as there are fewer months than there are days, and there are fewer days that there will be years. | [
"In the United States, dates are traditionally written in the \"month-day-year\" order, with neither increasing nor decreasing order of significance. This order is used in both the traditional all-numeric date (e.g., \"1/21/16\" or \"01/21/2016\") and the expanded form (e.g., \"January 21, 2016\"—usually spoken wit... |
when i sometimes go to sleep with my eyes closed and not moving, i know i'm not asleep. do i get any good quality rest compared if i'm sleeping? | If you're not asleep, then you're not getting the same quality rest as if you were sleeping. Your brain may appreciate the decrease in stimulation, and your muscles the rest, but if you're not asleep, then you're not... sleeping. | [
"Another study has indicated that sleeping with the light on may protect the eyes of diabetics from retinopathy, a condition that can lead to blindness. However, the initial study is still inconclusive.\n",
"Aristotle explains that during sleep there is an absence of external sensory stimulation. While sleeping w... |
some jobs are unpleasant but fundamental to society (eg: janitor, bus driver). why aren't these the best paid jobs? | Because anyone can do them. They are low skill and lots of people can fill that role.
Sometimes they do get better pay because the job is undesirable (I think trash collectors get paid decent, at least compared to minimum wage). | [
"It has been argued that payment-by-results whereby companies only get paid for finding people work meant that they focussed on the \"easiest\" cases among the long-term unemployed with the most \"difficult\" effectively sidelined. The term \"creaming and parking\" has been used to describe this process. The Depart... |
if you have good credit, and pay your bills off every month, how do credit card companies make money off you? wouldn't they prefer customers with bad credit? | They prefer low risk, which is what a good credit score indicates, and they still make money even if you pay all your bills in full. Every time you use your card, the merchant has to pay a fee. A portion goes to the network (Visa, etc.), though the biggest share goes to the issuing bank. As long as you keep using your card, the bank keeps making money off of you. | [
"Rewards based credit card products like cash back are more beneficial to consumers who pay their credit card statement off every month. Rewards based products generally have higher Annual percentage rate. If the balance were not paid in full every month the extra interest would eclipse any rewards earned. Most con... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.