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graphic card memory | Graphics card memory is RAM that's built directly into the video card itself.
Unlike general RAM which can be used for whatever, this stuff is reserved for *just* graphics, and being hooked right to the GPU makes it fast and easy fo rthe GPU to use it.
Typically, things like textures are stored in this memory. More memory means higher resolution textures can be stored, [which gives you nice graphics like this.](_URL_0_). Things like lighting and shadows also use memory, if there isn't enough memory available to remember what's in light or shadow the game may simplify or skip over how it handles lights. | [
"Memory cards are flash memory storage media used to store digital information in many electronics products. The types of memory cards include CompactFlash, PCMCIA, secure digital card, multimedia card, memory stick etc.\n",
"A memory card reader is a device for accessing the data on a memory card such as a Compa... |
Terms in electrolysis which confuses me. | The anode is ALWAYS the electrode where the oxidation reaction occurs. Similarly, the cathode is the electrode where reduction reaction occurs. Just remember
*AnOx, RedCat*
The anode and cathode switch depending on whether the cell is galvanic or electrolytic. | [
"Electrolysis is the passing of a direct electric current through an ionic substance that is either molten or dissolved in a suitable solvent, producing chemical reactions at the electrodes and a decomposition of the materials.\n",
"The key process of electrolysis is the interchange of atoms and ions by the remov... |
what would happen to italy if we got out the euro? | No one really knows and that is what makes it so scary.
One problem is that your debt would still be in Euros, so going back to the Lira would not get you back in control of your debt. While debtors do not like the idea that you would inflate your way out of debt, they prefer that to the idea of default. So it is easier to borrow if you can borrow in your own money because debtors know that if push comes to shove, you can always print money to pay them back. But with you debt in Euros, lenders would worry about default.
There is also the problem of contracts written in euros. What would happen to those. Would a contract between Italians be translated into Lira? How about a contract between an Italian and a German. What about your bank deposits. You put Euros in the bank. But would you get Lira when you take it out? Probably so. It would probably all get translated into Lira at some rate. That means it all has to be done quickly and as a surprise to avoid a run on the backs because people would have more faith in the euro and want to get euros in had before the switch.
And if Italy had to default on it debt in Euros, it might make it very hard for them to get new loans in Lira.
So the fear is that there would be confusion and chaos.
But it might be better the continuing with German demands for more and more austerity. The problem with austerity, is that every time you cut back on government spending to reduce the debt, the economy takes a hit, unemployment goes up, and tax receipts go down. The reduction in taxes offsets your cut in spending so that your deficit is no better but your economy is worse. There is no way to pay off your debts with so many people unemployed not producing any wealth to pay off the debts with. If you had the Lira, its value would be going down as people became worried about the debt, and everyone would take a hit. The whole country would be poorer because their money would be worth less, but the would still have their jobs and would still be producing wealth that lets you dig your way back out. | [
"With regards to Europe, Roubini predicted that Italy, and possibly a series of other eurozone countries (Portugal, Spain, Greece) might have to exit the eurozone if they did not implement \"serious economic reforms.\" \"[It] is not a foregone conclusion but, if Italy does not reform, an exit from EMU within 5 year... |
How do you store plasma? | Magnetic fields can be used to store a plasma. This is done in fusion reactors, for example. Alternatively you can just keep it in a regular container but keep supplying energy to ionize new atoms while others become neutral. | [
"A plasma is any gas in which a significant percentage of the atoms or molecules are ionized. Fractional ionization in plasmas used for deposition and related materials processing varies from about 10 in typical capacitive discharges to as high as 5–10% in high density inductive plasmas. Processing plasmas are typi... |
Is it possible to generate every possible combination of every pixel on your screen to create every image that could ever be taken? (For a specific resolution, anyways) | I'll assume a 1920x1080 resolution. Each pixel has three red, green, and blue sub-pixels that can each be in one of 256 brightness values, therefore each pixel can display as many as 256^3 = 16,777,216 colors.
A 1920x1080 resolution screen has 1920*1080 = 2,073,600 pixels. Therefore, there are 16,777,216^2,073,600 possible images that a screen with that many pixels could display. That number has nearly 15 _million_ decimal digits. That's a big number. At this point I think you can see that even the most advanced technologies would still take an incomprehensible amount of time to go through all of them. | [
"An entire class of operations on binary images operates on a 3×3 window of the image. This contains nine pixels, so 2 or 512 possible values. Considering only the central pixel, it is possible to define whether it remains set or unset, based on the surrounding pixels. Examples of such operations are thinning, dila... |
I just recently read that there's a black hole at the center of our galaxy, would it be logical to assume that there might be one at the center of most galaxies and nebulae, thus causing them to contract in the first place? | Not really. Most galaxies have them yes but not nebulae. For galaxies it's still a chicken an egg question, did supermassive black holes form very early and take part in galactic formation, if so how did they collapse? Or were they simply an outcome of the collapse of the central regions of proto-galaxies already forming? Right now it isn't known. We can see similar things in some globular clusters but smaller black holes, intermediate mass black holes. Again which came first isn't known . To be clear these black holes are not massive enough to cause the entire galaxy or cluster to orbit them but they may be a disruptive presence which assists collapse and formation.
On the topic of nebulae there are a few types. Planetary nebula and supernova remnants are from dying stars, they didn't collapse to form the nebula. Star forming regions and diffuse nebulae do collapse but it is not really due to one gravitational body, as far as I'm aware a supermassive black hole has never been found in a nebulae (ignoring galactic centres, which are sometimes somewhat nebulous). You do sometimes find black holes in star forming regions but this is to be expected, stars are forming including massive ones (which can die fast) and gas is collapsing (direct collapse to a black hole is possible). It does not mean they formed the nebula, I'm quite sure none found in nebulae are massive enough. | [
"Every massive elliptical galaxy contains a supermassive black hole at its center. Observations of 46 elliptical galaxies, 20 classical bulges, and 22 pseudobulges show that each contain a black hole at the center. The mass of the black hole is tightly correlated with the mass of the galaxy, evidenced through corre... |
In animals with a larger brains than humans, what is the purpose of their extra brain mass and volume? | > Surely an elephant leg, despite being much bigger than a human leg, wouldn't require over triple the brain mass to control a limb that is functionally equivalent to the scaled-down human version.
That's where you're wrong. While the elephant's leg is effectively just a blown up version of a human leg on a macroscopic level, at a microscopic level the cells are all basically the same size. Larger limbs means larger muscles, and that means more muscle cells and therefore more motor neurons required. The same thing goes for sensory neurons - more surface area and volume mean more sensory receptors, which means more sensory neurons are required in the CNS to receive and process all of those signals. | [
"Brain size was previously considered a major indicator of the intelligence of an animal. Since most of the brain is used for maintaining bodily functions, greater ratios of brain to body mass may increase the amount of brain mass available for more complex cognitive tasks. Allometric analysis indicates that mammal... |
Why do baby boys or boys below puberty age get boners? | Why questions are very difficult to answer, as they frequently have very nebulous answers. Adult males get erections every night. It's one of the methods they use to detect whether impotence is psychological or physical. They put a paper band tightly around the base of the penis, and if it breaks in the night, then your problem probably isn't physical.
Given that it seems to be a conserved biological mechanism like that, it's probably got an important function. A plausible hypothesis might be that it serves a function in maintaining the correct functioning of the erectile tissues of the penis. | [
"During puberty, the physical traits of the syndrome become more evident; because these boys do not produce as much testosterone as other boys, they have a less muscular body, less facial and body hair, and broader hips. As teens, XXY males may develop breast tissue and also have weaker bones, and a lower energy le... |
AskScience, why is the landing of Curiosity so important? | Curiosity rover is the biggest, most sophisticated explorer we've landed on another planet. | [
"\"Curiosity\" successfully landed in the Gale Crater at 05:17:57.3 UTC on August 6, 2012, and transmitted Hazcam images confirming orientation. Due to the Mars-Earth distance at the time of landing and the limited speed of radio signals, the landing was not registered on Earth for another 14 minutes. The \"Mars Re... |
Discounting infant mortality, at about what rate has our life expectancy been increasing? | Wolfram alpha has the data. try:
_URL_0_
Between 1980 and 2000, life expectancy for 5 year olds males in the US has increased from about 71 years to 75 years. | [
"The infant mortality rate went down 5.9% between 1999 and 2013. The Gini coefficient fell from 47.8 in 1999 to 44.8 in 2006. The government earmarked 44.6% of the 2007 budget for social investment, with 1999-2007 averaging 12.8% of GDP.\n",
"The decline in the human mortality rate before the 1950s was mostly due... |
What is the formula to convert gigabytes to gibibits and which is right, google or ddg? | Google is wrong, Wolfram Alpha is right.
A Gigabyte is 10^9 bytes. A gibibit is 2^30 bit.
The giga- prefix is defined in base 10, the gibi- prefix in base 2. | [
"The gibibyte is closely related to the gigabyte (GB), which is defined by the IEC as 10 bytes = , ≈ . 1024 gibibytes are equal to one tebibyte. In the context of computer memory, gigabyte and GB are customarily used to mean 1024 (2) bytes, although not in the context of data transmission and not necessarily for ha... |
If I traveled back in time with modern medical knowledge, would I be able to make antibiotics/vaccines? | I can't speak to vaccines, but I work with antibiotics, so I'll just comment to that effect.
Could you make penicillin? Maybe. In order to make it you'd need to do two things: 1. find a microbe that produces it, and 2. purify it from the microbe.
Part 1 might be relatively easy, if you knew what you were looking for. You could culture a normal bacterium, then add environmental samples until one produces [a zone of clearing](_URL_0_) around your sample. From there, you just get more and more fine separations until you find the microbe (eg. penicillium fungus) that produces the antibiotic. The challenge would probably actually be making sterile media without modern lab apparatus. Today, we use [autoclaves](_URL_1_) to sterilize nutrient broth, and add [agar](_URL_2_) as a solid support. You might be able to get away with a different sterilization method, and gelatin can work in the place of agar, but it would be pretty work-intensive.
Part 2. is harder. It took [Chain and Florey](_URL_3_) 15 years to isolate penicillin after [Fleming](_URL_4_) found it. To make the antibiotic it takes large sterile growth vats, followed by chemical separation techniques to get the pure antibiotic. That's really hard to do without at least 1900's lab equipment. | [
"Antibiotics have been used since ancient times. Many civilizations used topical application of mouldy bread, with many references to its beneficial effects arising from ancient Egypt, China, Serbia, Greece and Rome. The first person to directly document the use of moulds to treat infections was John Parkinson (156... |
Given that energy can't be created or destroyed, will wind/tidal power remove energy from the wind/tides and thus affect the environment in their own way? | It does. But so does erecting tall buildings that block the wind and form turbulence. Ultimately, the amount of energy extracted is insignificant compared to the amount present, even scaled up to supply the world's energy needs thousands of times over. A mature hurricane, for example, is driven by moist convection with an energy output equivalent to a 10 megaton nuclear explosion every 20 minutes - an energy level sufficient to cover the entire world's energy needs as defined in the 1993 World's Almanac. And that's just *one* hurricane. | [
"Tidal energy can be extracted by two means: inserting a water turbine into a tidal current, or building ponds that release/admit water through a turbine. In the first case, the energy amount is entirely determined by the timing and tidal current magnitude. However, the best currents may be unavailable because the ... |
- why do we only ever see white people with down syndrome | Nobody is exempted from having Down Syndrome. But, there may be a variety of factors at play that have resulted in your lack of encounters with non-white people with Down Syndrome.
First, according to the Centers for Disease Control, the mortality rate for black infants with Down Syndrome is higher than for white infants.
Second, there is some interesting sociological evidence to suggest something called homophily in general social networks, which means that people tend to interact, by and large, with people like themselves. I'm assuming some things about you with this explanation: You're relatively young, white, middle-class, and from the US. If my assumptions are accurate, your exposure to a wide enough range of black/mexican/asian folks is limited enough that you're less likely to encounter someone in those racial groups with Down Syndrome.
Third, DS is fairly rare. 1 in 691 children, roughly, is born with DS. (again, according to the CDC). It occurs more often in children whose mothers are over the age of 35. There may also be some cultural/sociological issues at stake there too, younger motherhood rates amongst those populations in the US, for example. (That's just a guess on my part, though I wouldn't be surprised to discover it to be the case)
But, I suspect that the second reason is the most likely explanation, at least in part, for why you haven't ever noticed a black/latino/asian person with DS. | [
"The following missing person cases have been cited as instances of missing white woman syndrome; media commentators on the phenomenon regard them as garnering a disproportionate level of media coverage relative to contemporary cases involving missing girls or women of non-white ethnicities, and missing males of al... |
Does torture work? | Torture is *very* good at getting people to talk. Unfortunately, it is *not* good at getting people to tell the truth. The victims usually just end up admitting to whatever their torturer wants them to admit, regardless of how true it is. | [
"The psychology of torture refers to the psychological processes underlying all aspects of torture including the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim, the immediate and long-term effects, and the political and social institutions that influence its use. Torture itself is the use of physical or psycho... |
What was life like for a Spanish citizen living in the new world in the 16th and early 17th centuries | A reply to /u/thomasin500
The situation was different at different periods in different locations. But in the 16th-17th centuries, what tended to happen was that explorers came first, while clergy and administrators came later, and sometimes much later. This is due to the limited extent that the Spanish monarchs were able to control their own agents. Columbus' own efforts at exploration and colonization serve as a good example whereby he had quite a bit of time to truly mess things up before a proper administration was put in place, and clergy sent to ensure the spiritual aspects are looked after. This same pattern repeated itself with each exploration effort.
> small communities existing around catholic churches
So this is highly vague, I am not sure what you mean exactly.
In the early phase of exploration in a new area, the church had to catch up with the explorers/colonists. Later on, as the Spanish wanted to stabilize their frontier in the north, the church came first and then built small colonies around the churches.
You should read /u/RioAbajo 's posts [here](_URL_0_), and /u/anthoropology_nerd 's post [here](_URL_1_). In the northern frontiers, Franciscan missionaries established *missions* that are built around the church, and are run in the *encomienda* fashion.
As for the day-to-day activities, you may want to look up the *encomienda* system as it provides a starting point that became the effective template in the colonization / extraction phase. | [
"During the Colonial era, the Spanish restricted the entrance of other Europeans, however, some non-Spanish Europeans were present. In 1556, the English adventurer Robert Thomson encountered the Scotsman Thomas Blake (Tomás Blaque), who had been living in Mexico City for more than twenty years. Blake is the first k... |
How does the polarized light that reflects off of the screen in a 3D movie theater retain its polarity? | Also worth noting that some 3D Film projections aren't vertically/horizontally polarised, but rather circularly polarised in different directions (otherwise the effect wouldn't work if you turned your head). | [
"RealD 3D cinema technology is a polarized 3D system that uses circularly polarized light to produce stereoscopic image projection. The advantage of circular polarization over linear polarization is that viewers are able to tilt their head and look about the theater naturally without seeing double or darkened image... |
why is michael jackson so associated with pedophilia? has he ever even been convicted of it? | Michael Jackson reportedly had a large collection of 'paedophilic' content at his Neverland Ranch in 2003, according to police reports cataloging the property following a search.
This info was released to the public just recently. | [
"Jackson had previously been accused of child sexual abuse in 1993. He denied the allegations and settled with the accuser's family out of court, which ended the lawsuit. Prosecutors dropped the criminal investigation after the accuser refused to cooperate following his settlement. In the 2005 case, Jackson was acc... |
How similar (or different) are the techniques used for cloning both animals and human cells? | At the heart of it, cloning is the same. However, the difficulty in successfully cloning varies between species. Cloning frogs is relatively easy and was first done several decades ago. Cloning mammals is more difficult and so that's why Dolly the sheep was publicised so much in the 90s. However, cloning primates is more difficult still. Scientists have not been able to clone monkeys but they have been able to create an early embryo from which they can extract stem cells that are genetically identical to the donor monkey. This research has led to the latest news where this was done in humans. Again, cloning in humans is even more difficult because the egg cells are more fragile.
The techniques across all of these species is largely the same, but the method is continuously being improved and modified to allow cloning of more complex organisms. | [
"In recent years, the technique of cloning whole organisms has been developed in mammals, allowing almost identical genetic clones of an animal to be produced. One method of doing this is called \"somatic cell nuclear transfer\" and involves removing the nucleus from a somatic cell, usually a skin cell. This nucleu... |
why is dreaming about not wearing pants such a common childhood nightmare? | It's embarrassing in today's society to be naked. In a child's brain, which (among other things) is highly concerned with social groups and social development, the fear of being put in social situations where you are made to feel vulnerable and losing social status frequently manifests itself as nightmares. Of course, culture plays a role--you hear about how people get nightmares of being naked, and therefore you learn to fear that yourself.
| [
"During most dreams, the person dreaming is not aware that they are dreaming, no matter how absurd or eccentric the dream is. The reason for this may be that the prefrontal cortex, the region of the brain responsible for logic and planning, exhibits decreased activity during dreams. This allows the dreamer to more ... |
How do we get footage inside insect colonies? (And other insect and ant film questions) | **1)**The [BBC's website](_URL_0_) provides a clue as to how filmmaker John Brown filmed honeypot ants:
> To film them he caught some females that had just mated and set them up in a fake colony in his studio. He also had a wild nest in the field where he filmed the above ground behaviour of the ants.
**2)** In many ant species, queens can be found during their [nuptial flight](_URL_1_) phase.
**3)** [Dr. Scott Powell](_URL_2_) provides some insight into how a living ant bridge begins:
> "When the ants bump into a hole they cannot cross, they edge their way around it and then spread their legs and wobble back and forth to check their fit. If they are too big, then they carry on and another ant will come along and measure itself in the same way. This carries on until an appropriately sized ant plugs the hole."
**Edit**: added more references. | [
"In cinematography, butterflies (also known as overheads) are structures on which materials are mounted so to control lighting in a scene or photograph. Materials commonly used on butterflies include: flags (black, opaque materials), nets (layers of neutral-colored bobinette), and diffusions (translucent white mate... |
What are some good books on the Battle of Kursk? | I can confirm that *Kursk: the Greatest Battle* is a good book, it has a few bits and pieces that could be better. But its a solid work none the less. However another good book is *Armor and Blood: The Battle of Kursk* by Dennis Showalter.
You can't go wrong with either one. | [
"BULLET::::- \"Kursk: The German View\" by Steven H. Newton. The first part of the book goes to a new translation of a study of Operation Citadel (the great tank battle of Kursk) edited by General Theodor Busse, which offers the perspectives of key tank, infantry, and air commanders.\n",
"The Battle of Kursk was ... |
why do people tend to idealize the past and catastrophize the future? | Entropy applies where thermodynamics are concerned, but as far as human civilization goes thus far, the overwhelming trend is that things get better. In general, people live longer, are healthier, wealthier, and less likely to die in particularly horrible ways (famine, war, disease) the closer you get to today.
People tend to idealize the past because the past is a known quantity (or at least they think so). The future is unknown, and that naturally scares people. Also, people only tend to do this if their past was actually nice, which, compared to the world in general, is a startling minority of people. You don't often find racial or ethnic minorities, homosexuals, women, or people in developing countries romanticizing the past, because for them the further back in time you go the more likely they are to be persecuted, treated as property, or live in destitution. If you go back far enough, even us straight white dudes start to get that treatment.
EDIT: If your grandpa is American, and is nostalgic about the mid to late 70s, he misses Muhammad Ali and Fleetwood Mac and the free, easy days of his youth. If your grandpa is Cambodian, and he is nostalgic about the mid to late 70s, he is probably a murderous psychopath. The mid to late 70s were a great time in Cambodia. A great time, that is, to be a murderous psychopath. | [
"Future thinking, also known as autobiographical thinking, serves as a way to speculate and anticipate future events. Though it's costly for current external activities performances, the benefit will be paid off later since future thinking allows better plan and preparation of the future goals. Actually people are ... |
What is the "youngest" species we have discovered? | According to [this](_URL_0_) BBC article, the answer may be senecio eboracensis, having originated mere decades ago. It's worth keeping in mind, though, that there's no clear set of guidelines for what makes an organism a separate species. The definition has been changed numerous times with new scientific discoveries, and will probably always be arbitrary. Single mutations that don't immediately leave the gene pool are enough to make the mutated line different, but wouldn't be considered a new species.
Ultimately, what makes a species a species is arbitrary, and the concept of species only exists to us humans. Just as there's no fundamental measurable "Tuesday" in the universe like there are neutrons or hydrogen, the concept of species is one we invented to try to keep track of a complex phenomenon. Also like days of the week, they aren't perfect, and as we continue to make new scientific discoveries (such as now knowing we need to add leap seconds to force our concept of days of the week to continue to work), "species" as a concept will almost certainly evolve and be redefined again. | [
"\"B. vanhouteni\", described in 1998 by Bloch and colleagues, is the oldest species, and was discovered in Wasatchian deposits in Wyoming, USA. It is based on a juvenile specimen, consisting of a mandible and some teeth.\n",
"Fossils of the older species, \"C. leiseyorum\", from Florida are from 1.4 Mya, while f... |
the stomach has neurons, but what are they for? | Neurons are not only useful for sensation you feel but to allow areas of the body to communicate information to other areas. For example if the senses detect food it is helpful to be able to start up the digestive process such as salivation and increased stomach activity. Similarly the stomach is going to need to be able to sense when there is food inside it in order to digest it, both with muscle action and balancing acidity. | [
"In humans and many other animals, the stomach is located between the oesophagus and the small intestine. It secretes digestive enzymes and gastric acid to aid in food digestion. The pyloric sphincter controls the passage of partially digested food (chyme) from the stomach into the duodenum where peristalsis takes ... |
air quality index (aqi) reports | There is no standardized way to measure "air quality", everyone is free to label it as they wish. The number indicated by one system isn't intended to be compared with other systems, but with itself over time. If the number is going up the quality is deteriorating, that kind of thing. It's like ranking temperature outside on a 1-10 scale, everyone has their own idea of what 1 and 10 represent. But at least we can all agree that a 6 is better than a 2, whatever they might be.
Actual concentrations of pollutants are always given with the unit of measurement included: parts-per-billion, milligrams per cubic meter, whatever. If you want to compare results, compare the actual measured concentrations, not the AQI. | [
"The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has developed an Air Quality Index that is used to report air quality. This AQI is divided into six categories indicating increasing levels of health concern. An AQI value over 300 represents hazardous air quality and below 50 the air quality is good.\n",
"... |
Is there any species of mammal where there are not sex differences in behavior/temperament? | AFAIK, mammals all reproduce sexually and use hormones as a mechanism to differentiate sexually during development. This difference in development includes differences in brain development, at the very least for sex-related behaviors. [This review article](_URL_0_) goes into greater detail about how hormones affect the development of the mammalian brain.
> Despite many unresolved issues, it is now clear that steroid hormones effect permanent changes in the development of multiple interconnected regions of the mammalian forebrain that participate in the neural control of reproduction and influence other homeostatic functions as well. Estrogen and testosterone regulate most major developmental events including neurogenesis, neuronal migration, cell death, and neurotransmitter plasticity. In addition, sex steroid hormones specify sex-specific patterns of neuronal connectivity by affecting axonal guidance and synaptogenesis. The signaling events mediating these developmental activities interact at multiple levels with neurotrophin and neurotransmitter signal transduction pathways. In addition, sex steroid hormones signal to the nucleus through their ligand-activated receptors to influence a broad array of gene-expression events that contribute to the important developmental role of these hormones in specifying the architecture of forebrain pathways that are fundamental to propagation of mammalian species. | [
"The MWH argues that the sex differences in attitudes towards outgroup members may be a result of the different reproductive strategies used by males and females—specifically, the greater competition among males for mates. In mammals, males and females have distinct reproductive strategies based on the physiology o... |
why do hit radio stations, who have access to thousands of songs, seem to always play the same exact playlist all day, every day? | Record companies underhandedly pay radio stations to keep their artists' songs in rotation. Interesting article [here.](_URL_0_) | [
"Each week, the Radio Songs chart ranks the 100 songs with the most airplay points (frequently referred to as audience impressions, which is a calculation of the number of times a song is played and the audience size of the station playing the tune). A song can pick up an airplay point every time it is selected to ... |
Were there any notable cases that caused the public to distrust the "insanity defense"? | Probably the most high-profile successful insanity defense was probably too late to inspire the literary trope, but was nevertheless very important: the case of John Hinckley Jr., who shot President Ronald Regan in 1981. Hinckley was obsessed with actress Jodi Foster and apparently believed that as an assassin of a president, he would be a public figure and therefore her equal. The jury in his criminal trial found him not guilty by reason of insanity.
There was a fairly substantial backlash to the verdict--how could a man who shot the president be not guilty? A number of legal reforms resulted. As an example, in 1984, the United States Congress passed the Insanity Defense Reform Act, which applies to federal crimes (for those not familiar with the US legal system--most criminal offenses are state-level, so this doesn't directly control, for example, your average murder trial. A number of states also changed their laws, though). This act required the accused to prove insanity by clear and convincing evidence rather than requiring the government to prove the accused sane, as under prior law. The act also prohibited experts from testifying that the defendant was sane or insane--they can only talk about the mental diseases. Finally, it limited the defense to people who can't appreciate the nature and character of their acts. Under prior law, and the law of some states, people could also make the insanity defense if they essentially knew what they were doing and couldn't stop themselves (so-called "irresistible act").
Speaking of iressistible acts, one literary example of the defense being used as an escape is the book and film Anatomy of a Murder. I've never read the book, but the film is fantastic and deals directly with the insanity defense generally and the "irresistible act" prong specifically. The book was written by then-Michigan Supreme Court judge Paul Voelker, so the story has a lot more legal grounding than the usual courtroom drama. The reason I mention it is that it was based on a real trial defended by Mr. Voelker as an attorney. So while that real trial wasn't necessarily so high profile that it caused the trope because of a general anti-insanity defense fervor it was a real case that inspired one instance of the trope. | [
"One of the best known applications of the insanity defense was for John W. Hinckley, a man who attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan in 1982. He was ultimately acquitted of his charges under the insanity defense. The outrage after the court decision caused four states to eliminate the insanity defense: Montana, U... |
Is there any evidence of Soviet/Communist involvement in the black civil rights movement? | Someone else actually asked [a similar question](_URL_2_) a few months back. My answer was: there is some evidence that the Soviets attempted to infiltrate and co-opt the civil rights movement — they weren't providing support to the movement out of solidarity, but rather saw an opportunity to foment dissent and attempt to destabilise American civil/political society.
The KGB's 'Service A' was tasked with carrying out "active measures" around the world — these operations varied in nature from misinformation, to political propaganda, to assassinations. In the case of the civil rights movement, the KGB hoped to use MLK and his colleagues as a political weapon against the US. When that effort failed, they instead tried to discredit him, in the hopes of opening the door to the emergence of a more compliant, sympathetic leadership.
The below is from a book I quote regularly and at length as one of the definitive sources on the history of Soviet foreign intelligence — *[The Sword and the Shield](_URL_5_)* by Christopher Andrew and KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin:
> King was probably the only prominent American to be the target of active measures by both the FBI and the KGB. By the mid-1960s the claims by the [Communist Party of the USA] leadership that secret Party members within King’s entourage would be able to “guide” his policies had proved to be hollow. To the Centre’s dismay, King repeatedly linked the aims of the civil rights movement not to the alleged worldwide struggle against American imperialism but to the fulfillment of the American dream and “the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.”
>
> [...]
>
> Having given up hope of influencing King, the Centre aimed instead at replacing him with a more radical and malleable leader. In August 1967 the Centre approved an operational plan by the deputy head of Service A, Yuri Modin, former controller of the Magnificent Five, to discredit King and his chief lieutenants by placing articles in the African press, which could then be reprinted in American newspapers, portraying King as an “Uncle Tom” who was secretly receiving government subsidies to tame the civil rights movement and prevent it threatening the Johnson administration. While leading freedom marches under the admiring glare of worldwide television, King was allegedly in close touch with the President.
On the other side, King's opponents sought to cast him as a communist sympathiser and a Soviet stooge in an effort to discredit him as a voice in the US political discourse. This was the height of the Cold War, and the height of J. Edgar Hoover's [COINTELPRO](_URL_0_) operations, by which the FBI attempted to systematically undermine groups they deemed "subversive" — particularly the CPUSA, but also the civil rights and black nationalist movements, and others; especially those they deemed likely targets for infiltration by communists.
In the event, active measures against MLK and the civil rights movement largely failed in co-opting the movement, but it may have contributed to the FBI/Hoover's conviction that King was a communist fellow traveller. But the FBI's efforts to discredit him also proved ultimately unsuccessful; COINTELPRO became a national scandal after Hoover's death, and in the context of the Church Committee investigations.
(As an aside: there's a great deal of scholarship and research on COINTELPRO — you can read [a huge amount of primary source material online](_URL_4_). I'd also look at *[The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr.](_URL_3_)* by David Garrow and the more recent *[Enemies: A History of the FBI](_URL_1_)* by Tim Weiner.)
Were there communists involved in the civil rights movement? Probably/almost certainly. Were they a prominent force in that movement? No, not really — certainly not as much as the FBI believed, or conspiracy theorists will *continue* to tell you.
*Edit: new link.* | [
"In the October 1967 General Conference Apostle Ezra Benson declared that the civil rights movement was a tool of Communist revolutionaries, and that it was led by mostly white male Communists who want to \"destroy America by spilling Negro blood\". He also stated that accusing law enforcement of \"police brutality... |
Why are some types of firewood more likely to "pop" when burning? | Trapped pockets of resin vaporize and violently escape. | [
"Exploding trees also occur during forest fires and are a risk to smokejumpers. In Australia, the native eucalyptus trees are also known to explode during bush fires due to the high flammability of vaporised eucalyptus oil produced by the tree naturally.\n",
"The wood is very dense and produces a hot flame when b... |
Are all planet's cores made out of iron? | No, not even Earth's. It's primarily iron, but has enough "not iron" to qualify as "not really iron". Most of the "not iron" is nickel, but also the huge majority of Earth's complement every metal heavier than iron is in the core. The core could be as much as 25% nickel, but is probably less, maybe 8-10%. This is expected to be similar to the composition of iron meteorites, as these likely formed in the same way.
Most of early Earth's heavier stuff sank, as the planet was an emulsion of different materials, which then sorted itself out by weight (this stratification is known as "differentiation" in astronomy). The least dense material, silicate and light metal oxides (lithium, sodium, magnesium, aluminium), were forced upwards while the denser metals sank. The silicates formed the crust and outer mantle. Olivine and pyroxene are the two main components of the outer mantle and are both silicates.
We think all the inner planets, have substantial quantities of iron in their cores. Jupiter and outward likely do not have iron based cores, due to how different elements fractionate in a protoplanetary disc. They'll have some iron, of course, because it's hard to be iron-free. Smaller objects, like Pluto, Eris, etc. will have rocky cores. New Horizons was equipped to detect any significant iron or other metallic component to Pluto's core, and found nothing. | [
"Metallic or native iron is rarely found on the surface of the Earth because it tends to oxidize. However, both the Earth's inner and outer core, that account for 35% of the mass of the whole Earth, are believed to consist largely of an iron alloy, possibly with nickel. Electric currents in the liquid outer core ar... |
How come urine and feces are generally always yellow and brown, and smell generally similar, even though people consume hugely varied diets? | See [this thread](_URL_6_), as well as searches for [urine](_URL_1_) and [feces](_URL_7_) color.
The short answer is that the breakdown of heme produces [urobilin](_URL_3_) and [stercobilin](_URL_0_), which are responsible for the colour of urine and feces, respectively. As this process is a constant part of your body's maintenance, your body's waste will always contain these compounds. There are things that you can eat that alter the colour of bodily waste, such as [rifampin](_URL_2_) that colour your urine red, [Pepto-Bismol](_URL_4_) that colour your feces black, or [beets](_URL_5_) that colour both urine and stool red. | [
"The urine of animals of differing physiology or sex sometimes has different characteristics. For example, the urine of birds and reptiles is whitish, consisting of a pastelike suspension of uric acid crystals, and discharged with the feces of the animal via the cloaca, whereas mammals' urine is a yellowish colour,... |
What is the melting point of roads? | _URL_0_
Mixing is generally performed with the aggregate at about 300 °F (roughly 150 °C) for virgin asphalt
| [
"For successful bonding of the roads in the process control of the thermal environment is necessary. Therefore, the system is kept inside a chamber, maintained at a temperature just below the melting point of the material being deposited.\n",
"Use of ice as the main construction material allows unusual constructi... |
why do large and already established companies feel the need to advertise their company in general? | They actually are trying to raise awareness. They want to make it so that when you think about fast food, you think about McDonald's. That way, when get an urge to eat fast food, your first thought is to go to McDonald's. Most people don't want to spend a huge amount of time deciding where to go, so they will go to the first place that they can think of. If McDonald's didn't show ads, but Burger King did, your first thought would be to go to Burger King, and that's likely where you would go. This is also why many companies show ads that are funny, but don't actually do anything to convince you that their product is good. A funny ad is more likely to stick in your head than an informative one, which means it will influence your decision next time you want to buy something. | [
"Companies that want to take advantage of last minute ad space must make it easy for the media source to work with them and use their ad. Because these ad spaces come up at the last minute, media companies often would rather simply offer the opportunity to their larger advertisers because they have ready budgets, a... |
Rolling Stone recently published a fascinating article about JFK and how he faced down the military brass during the Cuban Missile Crisis, thereby preventing all-out nuclear war. They make it sound as if he nearly lost control of the generals. Is that sensationalized or factual? | There is a counter-argument written by Sheldon Stern in *The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory* [available here](_URL_1_). Mr. Stern argues, compellingly, JFK was largely responsible for the crisis and its escalation.
Benjamin Schwarz recently wrote a summary in the Atlantic Monthly [here](_URL_0_).
Schwarz concludes Kennedy mucked up the outset, but did help once the catastrophe was there:
> Although Stern and other scholars have upended the panegyrical version of events advanced by Schlesinger and other Kennedy acolytes, the revised chronicle shows that JFK’s actions in resolving the crisis—again, a crisis he had largely created—were reasonable, responsible, and courageous. Plainly shaken by the apocalyptic potentialities of the situation, Kennedy advocated, in the face of the bellicose and near-unanimous opposition of his pseudo-tough-guy advisers, accepting the missile swap that Khrushchev had proposed. “To any man at the United Nations, or any other rational man, it will look like a very fair trade,” he levelheadedly told the ExComm. “Most people think that if you’re allowed an even trade you ought to take advantage of it.” He clearly understood that history and world opinion would condemn him and his country for going to war—a war almost certain to escalate to a nuclear exchange—after the U.S.S.R. had publicly offered such a reasonable quid pro quo. Khrushchev’s proposal, the historian Ronald Steel has noted, “filled the White House advisors with consternation—not least of all because it appeared perfectly fair.”
Edit - clarity | [
"\"JFK and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power\" argues that United States President John F. Kennedy would not have placed combat troops in Vietnam and was preparing to withdraw military advisors by the end of 1965. Oliver Stone, director of the 1991 film \"JFK\" called it \"a breakthrough expl... |
why should i worry about companies (such as fb and google) data-mining my internet profiles? | In the popular FB-deleting current trend, data was obtained from 50 million people. Psychological profiles were executed on these individuals. Based on their psychological type, targeted ads, even with fake news, were targeted towards these individuals to influence their decision on who to vote for. This can be dangerous, corrupt, and potentially immoral.
This is one example. I know people do research to see what color you prefer to buy from, so they can change their ad to cater to you. This seems somewhat manipulative, but not totally exploitive. Although the lines between these two examples are fine.
Personally, I just don't want someone to know much about me. I had a flip phone for the past couple of years but recently went back to the iPhone. I might switch back soon... | [
"Through data mining, companies are able to improve their sales and profitability. With this data, companies create customer profiles that contain customer demographics and online behavior. A recent strategy has been the purchase and production of \"network analysis software\". This software is able to sort out thr... |
why is "whistleblowing" such a heavily punishable offense? | Whistleblowing is not a punishable offence in and of itself, but the desemination of classified information is, especially if you agreed in your employment not to do so. Someone reporting the find, like Wikileaks, has done nothing wrong. But snowden violated a number of conditions in his contract that are designed to prevent him from leaking classified information since he was a member of an intelligence gathering agency. Right or wrong he committed a crime, the crime was not the whistleblowing itself however. | [
"Whistleblowers are often protected under law from employer retaliation, but in many cases punishment has occurred, such as termination, suspension, demotion, wage garnishment, and/or harsh mistreatment by other employees. A 2009 study found that up to 38% of whistleblowers experienced professional retaliation in s... |
What would a dark age church service look like? | There are a great number of possible variations on the following, but I'll do my best to give you an idea.
**Tithing**
Firstly, my family are rye farmers. Much depends on what that means. If we're at the bottom of the social pile producing rye for another citizen farmer then we probably get enough food to live but no income of marked coins (either that issued by the state, the manor or the church). Our tithes are taken care of by the farmer whose land/seed/tools we use. If we're running our own farm or, more likely, strips of land then our tithe is one tenth of the rye we produce because that's the literal meaning of tithe. We may have to give more for church ales (think fundraising event, medieval-style). That's not to say that we don't give more to the church for other reasons, but I'll come back to that later.
If we're a landowner higher up the scale then there's a good chance we're actually collecting the tithes or performing some other important task in the burg or liberty (effectively the town/district), and we're probably not breaking our backs collecting our own rye. That depends on exactly how the church and the district are set up and who they were set up by - it might be our family that built the church and own the chantries, I'll come back to that later too.
One more possibility of many is that we're actually wards of the church, we might live on church-owned land in which case everything we produce is the property of the church. Again, we'll get what we need to survive (which may be surprisingly little) but we *may* have the added advantage of better medical care. That's not a great improvement to life but it will help some people.
& #x200B;
**The Church**
The following is all dependent on the size of the church - small village churches would have a high altar and a few additional altars, wealthy town churches would have a high altar, numerous specific chapels and many altars dedicated to particular saints, while cathedrals would have a high altar, any number of chapels and many *many* additional altars. Sizeable stone buildings would be astonishing to most people of the time, even a small-ish church would have been quite something, and cathedrals must have been mind-blowing.
You'll know that churches can be divided into two main sections: the chancel (where the high altar stands) and the nave. Cruciform churches (in a cross plan) also have a crossing (the centre of the cross) and transepts (the north and south wings of the church). The chancel and the high altar are only accessible to those who have been ordained. Everything that happens in there is hidden by a chancel screen (or "rood screen"). The general public can hear the mass being performed, they can smell the mass, but they can not see it. The chancel would have been brightly candle-lit so the effect would be quite theatrical - some churches would have a golden rood (cross) hanging above the rood screen where it would be lit by candles. The ghostly, ethereal singing and the golden cross hovering in the drifting candle/incense smoke would have been deeply dramatic.
All this heavenly celebration wouldn't just be happening on Sundays, there would be masses all week round and, depending on the size of the church, for most of the day. Nor would the High Altar be the only place where stuff would be happening - the church would have numerous altars (depending on size) and possibly a chantry chapel dedicated to a wealthy benefactor. Chantry chapels would be near the high altar, often to the south with secondary chantries built to the north, and would commemorate a specific deceased person or family. Priests would be employed to perform regular masses in the chantries, sometimes these would alternate with high mass or take place as part of it. During main festivals like Nativity, Annunciation, Assumption and Easter there would be processions of the clergy through the local area and into the church where people could see the service that was being done for them.
The sides of the church would be lined with additional altars raised by guilds or local families, each of these would be dedicated to a particular saint and tended to by the altar's benefactors. Masses would take place at these on particular days of the week with the regularity depending on the donations. If a church had nave aisles and arcades (the arches that run down the main body of the church) then each arch would be separated into a bay by a parclose (a dividing screen), there may be seating in each to allow more comfortable prayer for the visitor or any priests who were specifically appointed to that altar. With that said, most of us would spend our visit in the nave, probably facing east. The first-millennium tradition was for baptisms in the West end and funerals in the East because in life we travel towards the light. Easter/Oster/Oester (we get the name East from the same root as oestre, or egg, or life) is the most important direction in Christian building and liturgy, a practice that goes back long before Christianity and which was specifically adopted by Sees around the 6th Century. Norman churches continued this tradition - if we were receiving a blessing or communion we would be expected to be facing the East window and altar, even if we couldn't see it through the rood screen. Interestingly, a priest saying prayers or preaching a sermon would also be facing east, not west towards the congregation as is the custom in many churches today.
Although we know that some churches had seating in the main body of the nave it was considered unusual and was very rarely fixed in place. The public would stand in the nave and receive blessings or simply replenish their holy goodness through their presence in the house of God - and it's easy to imagine that it really felt that way to somebody in the 1300s. Of course, the public wouldn't just be there to recharge their spirit - we know that all kinds of public matters took place in church naves and porches, meetings, trade, markets, ales (a local festival that also acted as a bit of a fundraiser for churches), and pretty much any public event. In larger churches there would still have been a mass going on in the chancel or chantries.
& #x200B;
Basically, how much we pay for that depends on who we are and our importance in the community. Our visit to the church would be a smoky, sweet-smelling experience with the light of the cross visible from the murky dimness of the nave, and the sound of heavenly (ish) singing echoing around the body of the church.but all in all it must have been a quite magical experience.
& #x200B;
**Sources:** not exhaustive but they cover the above and give a good grounding in Norman medieval Catholic churches in Europe, that particularly covers France and large parts of England
*Prof. English:The Lords of Holderness*
*Prof. Warwick: The Archaeology of Churches*
*Dr. Taylor: How to Read a Church - A Guide to Symbols and Meanings in Churches*
*Hitchcock: History of the Catholic Church: From the Apostolic Age to the Third Millenium*
*Weidenkopf: A History of the Catholic Church* | [
"The Church in the Darkness is an upcoming action-adventure video game. It was originally announced in 2016 to ship in early 2017, but is now expected to be released in 2019 for Microsoft Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. It was designed by Richard Rouse III under the name Paranoid Productions.\n",
"Du... |
Who was the first person to have their own army? | As far as I am aware, the first recorded individual was a ruler named Sargon of Akkad. He apparantly created a standing army of 5400 men:
_URL_0_
Keep in mind we have pictorial evidence of people fighting in organized bodies prior to that, but Sargon was the first individual with whom a military force was *personally* associated with.
| [
"The full army was normally led in battle by the two kings; initially, both went on campaign, but after the 6th century BC only one, with the other remaining at home. Unlike other states, their authority was severely circumscribed; actual power rested with the five elected \"ephoroi\". The kings were accompanied by... |
Are there cultures where smiling is not used to show happiness? If not, how did it develop to mean this across the world? | Like birds know to fly south in the winter, humans are born with certain facial expressions as a representation of emotion. Facial expressions associated with disgust, happiness, surprise, fear, anger, and sadness have been found to be the same across the world, including cultures isolated from the rest of the world. It's been measured using multirater consensus as well as facial muscle group used to create the facial expression. They are innate motor reflexes.
We just covered this a couple of weeks ago in the Psych 101 class I taught this semester, so your question came just at the right time for me to answer well. I hope this is helpful and answers your question. | [
"Among humans, smiling is an expression denoting pleasure, sociability, happiness, joy or amusement. It is distinct from a similar but usually involuntary expression of anxiety known as a grimace. Although cross-cultural studies have shown that smiling is a means of communication throughout the world, there are lar... |
Was bronze ever used for (chain) mail? | The Roman period is before my period of expertise, so I can't say much about the Lorica Hamata.
However, in the Middle Ages there are occasional uses of latten (a copper alloy, generally containing Zinc - basically brass) to make mail. The most common use of this is a decorative border on the edge of a mail garment - the hem of a mail skirt, cuffs, etc. There are a number of examples of this surviving, such as [this example at the Wallace Collection](_URL_2_). This shirt also has a latten 'signature' link identifying the mail-maker - you can see it [here](_URL_1_). In Thom Richardson's description of the Tower of London inventories of the 14th century, he mentions a mail collar ('pizzane') decorated with latten borders and pendants of butted (IE not rivetted) latten links attached to the collar proper. The borders of latten links create a contrasting, decorative border that seems to be made of gold. Similarly 14th and some 15th century plate armour sometimes has decorative applied borders of gilt latten. You can see this in the famous ['Breastplate number 10'](_URL_0_) from Castle Churburg in South Tyrol.
In the accounts of the Tower of London from the 14th century there is a mail shirt 'of latten' mentioned repeatedly in inventories through the decades (from 1344 to 1362) - probably the same shirt. In one of these accounts it is identified with mail shirts 'for the tournament'. If this was a mail shirt entirely made of latten, it may have been made for early forms of club tournament where whalebone swords were used, and not for battle. In this case protection against piercing by lances/arrows/swords was less important, and a more visually striking but less tough metal could be used. | [
"Mail, sometimes called \"chainmail\", made of interlocking iron rings is believed to have first appeared some time after 300 BC. Its invention is credited to the Celts; the Romans are thought to have adopted their design.\n",
"Common bronze items included domestic wares like oil lamps, incense burners, tables, i... |
what is the point of ticketmaster if it just brings you to another site to but the tickets? | Ticketmaster gets a commission from every ticket sale made from another website. The cost for that commission is ultimately paid by you. | [
"TicketHurry is an online ticketing company, serving as an alternative to similar marketplaces such as StubHub and TicketsNow. TicketHurry's listings include all spectator events, including concerts, sporting events, theater, and Broadway. The company is primarily an aggregator, as they do not purchase tickets or a... |
why is it so difficult for people to admit they are wrong about something? | I don't know about any studies, but I think it's probably something to do with either pride, or they don't want people to think badly of them for not being right | [
"BULLET::::- People can be very resistant to admitting they are wrong about something, or that they did (or said) the wrong thing. They like to believe they got it right, even when others disagree. Acknowledging that they got it wrong, could be very embarrassing, confusing or distressing – especially if they person... |
why do i sleep like a beautiful princess after i wash my sheets and make my bed? | After a shower and a shave - I'mma sleep till NOON. | [
"Parents and family members are frequently stressed by a child's bedwetting. Soiled linens and clothing cause additional laundry. Wetting episodes can cause lost sleep if the child wakes and/or cries, waking the parents. A European study estimated that a family with a child who wets nightly will pay about $1,000 a ... |
why it is metres per second per second instead of metres per second? | 10 m/s^2 is an acceleration, not a movement, it means that for every second, it moves 10 meters per second faster.
10 m = length
10 m/s = speed
10 m/s^2 = acceleration | [
"The joule-second \"should not be confused\" with the physical process of joules per second (J/s). In physical processes, when the unit of time appears in the denominator of a ratio, the described process occurs at a rate. For example, in discussions about speed, an object like a car travels a known distance of kil... |
shifts in what is considered attractive | Another point is that now tan women are generally preferred because it means you have time to work/play outside as opposed to sitting in an office all day. However, it used to be considered attractive to be pale because it meant you didn't have to work outside in the fields. | [
"One other possible explanation about the cause of this perception of higher attractiveness is \"mere familiarity or exposure\" (Zajonc, 1968). This means that previously seen stimuli may be perceived more positively than new stimuli. In addition, another explanation comes from the commodity theory (Brock, 1968). A... |
how come some countries' money is cheap and others' expensive? | What's stopping a country from secretly printing a lot of money and exchanging and buying things it needs from another country without the other countries realizing that they have been duped with their now deflated trade off? | [
"Most things are cheaper in poor (low income) countries than in rich ones. Someone from a \"first world\" country on vacation in a \"third world\" country will usually find their money going a lot further abroad than at home. For instance, a Big Mac cost $7.84 in Norway and $2.39 in Egypt in January 2013, at the pr... |
Why do whirlpools cast shadows? | Stagnant water can still cast a shadow.
A whirlpool casts a different shadow due to the turbulence in the water which causes different directions in which the light scatters. | [
"However, Shadow shares a lot of similarities with Sonic. He can perform spin attacks common to Sonic, which are a variation on the tendency for hedgehogs to roll into tight balls for protection. Additionally, with the power of a Chaos Emerald, Shadow can warp time and space with Chaos Control. Shadow is also able ... |
Were there any Christian or Muslim rulers who converted to a non-Abrahamic faith in History? | The one person who comes to mind is the Roman emperor Julian (360-63), who, though raised Christian, turned back to the Greek religion of the Homeric gods and tried to reestablish that faith as the principal religion in the Roman empire. For that reason the Christian historiography referred to him as "apostata". Since he fell in battle three years after his ascension to the throne nothing came of his efforts (and, as Christianity was already quite wide spread at the time, it would arguably be doubtful if that would have been reversible at all). A good overview about Julian and his political and religious aims is given in: Adrian Murdoch, The Last Pagan. | [
"The conversion of the native Christians to Islam did not mean the total erasure of previous beliefs and social practises. There is some evidence of a limited cultural borrowing from the Christians by the Muwalladun and other Muslims in Al-Andalus. For instance, the Muslims' adoption of the Christian solar calendar... |
What factors lead to Opera's decline in popularity in the United States? | Kindly release opera from its grave! Just because you don't personally consume something, doesn't mean it's dead. For America in particular, I can comfortably state that you live in the best time of all for consumption of opera. As of today opera is the most accessible and affordable to Americans that it has ever been, every major US city has an opera company, DVDs and Youtubes and albums abound, available at prices almost always lower than a lower or lower-middle class working person's single day of wages, which is virtually unthinkable for most of history. [I expand a bit here,](_URL_1_) unfortunately my link to statistics about American opera consumption died, so [here it is rebirthed.](_URL_0_) Unfortunately they haven't been able to redo that survey to update, but as of 2012, a steady percentage of 2% ish of Americans consume live opera every year. 2% seems small, but it's roughly, by some people's estimates, currently the number of Americans who are vegan, and yet I can get both my opera fix and my LightLife Smart Bacon fix with ease in my city. Of course we can't compare this to 18th century Italy, but to put it in perspective, for the oldest opera house in America, the Met, in 1900 if they sold every seat and standing place in the house (which, no way), it would have accommodated 0.112% of the city's total population on any given night. | [
"After World War I, however, opera declined in comparison to the popular heights of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Causes included the general cultural shift away from Romanticism and the rise of the cinema, which became a major source of entertainment. A third cause is the fact that \"internationalism\" had br... |
What is the difference between a hypernova and a super luminous supernova? | I'm definitely not an expert in this topic by any means so take this with a grain of salt.
From the cursory research I've done, it seem that the difference is in mass vs light. A hypernova is exceptional in the kinetic energy of it's mass ejections, whereas a super luminous supernova is exceptional in the amount of electromagnetic radiation it gives off.
Perhaps someone more knowledgeable could elaborate on what exactly causes them to be different in particular (aside from just being larger or differently classed stars). | [
"A supernova is a violent explosion of a star that occurs under two principal scenarios. The first is that a white dwarf star, which is the remnant of a low-mass star that has exhausted its nuclear fuel, undergoes a thermonuclear explosion after its mass is increased beyond its Chandrasekhar limit by accreting nucl... |
chicago note style (in academic papers) | If you want an actual guide to formatting, the [Purdue OWL](_URL_1_) academic writing lab is incredibly helpful as a guide. If you have Firefox, the [Zotero](_URL_0_) extension automatically creates perfect citations according to the official formats (for Chicago and other research citation formats) where you just input the information, so it is a very helpful tool (I personally used both Zotero and OWL in a major English research paper last year). I'll try to provide some background on why Chicago style exists. I am assuming that you know what MLA and APA are, what a bibliography is, and what footnotes/parenthetical citations are, since you are asking an academic research question.
The brief ELI5 answer on why people use Chicago over other formats: footnotes instead of parenthesis, and smoother-looking styles that appeal to humanities students instead of rock-solid formats that the sciences prefer.
Details:
Different disciplines prefer different citation styles based on the demands of their own research papers. MLA and APA are popular with social sciences and the hard sciences, but Chicago is usually used with the humanities (English, history, etc). Chicago style gets its name from the University of Chicago where it was developed. It has the benefit of defining a format for footnotes *and* bibliography citations, which the humanities LOVE. Open any literature research paper, you will probably see footnotes. This is probably because the humanities like to have their reading uninterrupted by parenthetical citations (which, if I'm not mistaken, MLA and APA both have).
So instead of throwing all the citations right in the body of the paper, the humanities like to put all the sources on the bottom of the page and the bibliography at the end. This is why Chicago style is so helpful. The sciences prefer formats that use parenthetical citations because the more important aspect of science research is having evidence for every scientific claim you make. But for English, history, and similar studies, they prefer to read your academic work and understand your interpretations and conclusions, and *then* verify your sources.
Oh, and one nice thing about Chicago is that it just looks pretty. You get to write an author's name as "Charles Dickens" instead of "Dickens, Charles" and you can use italics on some parts, which makes things easier to read when surrounded by quotation marks, periods, and other funky things you commonly see in a bibliography. | [
"\"Chicago\" style offers writers a choice of several different formats. It allows the mixing of formats, provided that the result is clear and consistent. For instance, the fifteenth edition of \"The Chicago Manual of Style\" permits the use of both in-text citation systems and/or footnotes or endnotes, including ... |
How does coordination work? | Your muscles have a bunch of nerves in them that communicate with the brain not only to contract/relax, but how the muscle is being stretched and how it’s moving. It’s called proprioception. This, combined with the vestibular system in the ear and visual input from the eyes provide information to the brain that combined, let you know where you are in space. Conscious and unconscious proprioception are communicated to the brain through different nervous pathways, which is why you don’t have to think every time you do basic physical activity activity, and why some motions become “muscle memory”. The brain can learn patterns of movement based on how the muscles respond and stretch in response to stimuli. | [
"Coordination is defined as \"\"the deliberate and orderly alignment or adjustment of partners’ actions to achieve jointly determined goals\"\". Collaboration tools supporting this are the ones who allow you to set up group activities, schedules and deliverables.\n",
"Coordination refers to \"the degree to which ... |
At the Battle of Ulundi, during the British-Zulu war, how did the British win while only destroying such a small part of the opposing Zulu force? | It's important to know that battles are not determined by how many casualties each side takes. Without getting into a lengthy discussion about strategy, in general, the goal is to make the other side withdraw. Whether this be a rout (enemy cohesion breaks, disorderly retreat, time when most casualties occur) or an organized withdrawal doesn't matter in terms of who "won" the battle, though it may have very large strategic implications.
The British commander, Lord Chelmsford was being replaced. The British suffered a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Islandlwana under his command. However, he had some time before his replacement would arrive. Chelmsford used this opportunity to provoke the Zulu forces into attacking in order to claim victory and repair his tarnished reputation.
To his credit, Chelmsford learned from the lessons of Islandlwana. There, the British were taken by surprise and used standard battle tactics. As seen [here](_URL_0_), the British forces had formed a standard battle line with their flank protected, but the maneuvering of the Zulu forces, and their superior numbers, allowed them to outflank and encircle the British forces.
Chelmsford would not let that happen again. For the Battle of Ulundi, he formed a [square](_URL_1_) because he knew the Zulu were aggressive and would try to encircle the British forces. As the Zulu had some firearms, and were able to pick off British soldiers, but not enough to abandon their traditional hand-to-hand fighting. But the British were prepared. The cavalry provoked the Zulu into charging, and the square was 4 ranks deep. The Zulu tried many times to rush the square, but were beaten back by massed rifle, Gatling gun, and artillery fire.
This goes to my earlier point - they may have only lost a "small part" of their force, but the withering fire broke their morale. The British cavalry charged and rode down the fleeing Zulu warriors. | [
"The Battle of Ulundi took place at the Zulu capital of Ulundi on 4 July 1879 and was the last major battle of the Anglo-Zulu War. The British army broke the military power of the Zulu nation by defeating the main Zulu army and immediately afterwards capturing and razing the capital of Zululand, the royal kraal of ... |
Historian's with a specialty in religion, how have your studies impacted your faith? | For me, being a historian of religion has made me very skeptical of claims that modern people make like "Judaism teaches x" or "According to Christianity, no one may do y." Because for most claims like that, the important people associated with the religion said pretty much the opposite at some point in their history. History has taught me that "Christianity says," functionally, means "Christians say." And people have beautiful crazy complicated different lives, so they say beautiful crazy complicated different things.
It's also helped me really understand that, for most people, religious statements aren't truth-apt propositions. Understanding the all-encompassing nature of medieval religion helped me understand that, for me and the people around me, religion is a way of life, not a system of proofs. I sort of knew that before, but it's easier to understand when you study people who have religious practices that seem kind of absurd to us but that make total sense to them. They're not stupid, they're just having a different conversation. | [
"Partridge writes that \"by the second half of the twentieth century the study of religion had emerged as a prominent and important field of academic enquiry.\" He cites the growing distrust of the empiricism of the nineteenth century and the growing interest in non-Christian religions and spirituality coupled with... |
I've heard that "the equations of particle physics and of general relativity cannot be reconciled in the mathematically expected manner", can someone elaborate? | It's complicated. When you do a calculation in quantum field theory (what particle physics is based on), you eventually get an infinite result, and you essentially get around it by subtracting another infinity from that until things work out. It's called renormalization and mathematicians hate it, but it works well for the problems it attempts to solve.
You can attempt to take a classical field theory (like general relativity) and quantize it. General relativity can be described by a spin-2, mass-0 field, described by something called the Einstein-Hilbert action. If you try to renormalize this, you will not be able to. The infinities will not go away.
[Here](_URL_0_) is the most basic explanation I know of, that probably still requires graduate level physics. | [
"If general relativity were considered to be one of the two pillars of modern physics, then quantum theory, the basis of understanding matter from elementary particles to solid state physics, would be the other. However, how to reconcile quantum theory with general relativity is still an open question.\n",
"For t... |
Is Albert Speers book on the Third Reich a good source? | Hello - I read this book two summers ago and may I say I found it to be a riveting read. It provides details into the intimate workings of the Reich, and Albert Speer's relationship with Hitler that would be difficult to find elsewhere. In particular I was struck by the inefficiencies and haphazard administration of the Third Reich, and how its politics were administered.
I don't think that Speer's book could be considered biased from the standpoint of being 'Pro-Reich' or anything of the sort. The one thing you could probably criticize him for is shifting blame for the holocaust away from himself.
Overall definitely worth reading but, like all primary sources, should be read with a grain of skepticism. | [
"He has written extensively on the Third Reich, including on Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Reinhard Heydrich, Adolf Eichmann, the formation of the Nazi Party, the Munich Beer Hall putsch, the Berlin Reichstag fire, the Night of the Long Knives, the Nuremberg racial laws, Vichy France, Stalingrad, the D... |
How was it to attend or work in a university in Nazi Germany? | One thing you have to keep in mind about the Nazis is that from fairly early on they began a program of "coordination" which made sure that practically all organizations that had any sort of state connection were rearranged along very linearly hierarchical lines of authority, ultimately leading towards people at the top who were very loyal to the Nazi party line. The university system, then as now (I believe) was a form of civil service employment, operated by the state. So it underwent this kind of "coordination" as well. This included, among other "reforms," the immediate firing of all "non-Aryan" faculty with the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service in 1933, and meant further than Party officials had direct connections to the operation of universities and departments.
There was very little room for academic discussion of much of anything that had political implications, and what had political implications could be a moving target (some, like anthropology, were obviously related to the Nazi political platform; some, like physics, were not but could be tied into it). There was an enforced conformity with the ideals of the Nazi state, and this enforcement could take many forms, from the very direct (losing jobs, choice of new hires, etc.) to the very indirect (many of the German university student groups were very pro-Nazi and would hold rallies, protests, and the like regarding what was taught).
The case of German physics is one of the most famous examples of this but also one of the most popularly misunderstood. The basics of the story is this: a number of German physicists had, especially since WWI, campaigned to return to a "true" German physics of hard empiricism and experimentalism, rejecting the more abstract physics that was popular in the UK and had many connections with German Jewish physicists. (A connection created out of the circumstances of prejudice — the best physics positions were experimentalist positions and as such routinely denied to Jews. Theoretical physics was originally less prestigious and thus was a place where a Jewish scholar could thrive. By the 1930s the prestige had shifted.) Some of these advocates for "German/Aryan" physics were early supporters of the Nazis, and attempted to get the Nazi Party interested in their argument that physics had a "racial" component. In the very early years of Nazi rule these physicists had some success in getting various parts of the Nazi government interested in attacking "Jewish" physics of relativity and quantum mechanics, but the Nazis never really embraced it as a fundamental part of their operations. They succeeded in harassing a few physicists for awhile (like Heisenberg, though he was able to use personal connections to avoid serious consequences), and they succeeded in making sure a few new academic appointments were filled with like-minded physicists. But by the time of the war their influence had been largely neutralized, the "Aryan" physicists thought the Nazis had abandoned them, and the theoretical physicists had gotten insulated by their work on atomic energy.
I like this story both because it points out the way in which the ideology _could be used as a resource_ by people _within the system itself_ — that is, not just a "top-down" approach — as a means of trying to enact policies (some academic, some professional, some personal) that they wanted. The Nazi party could sign on to it but also reverse course if they found it useful. In some ways this is comparable to the way that party ideology operated in the USSR as well — sometimes as a doctrine that is handed down from the top, but more often as a resource that some academics could use to attack other academics. (An instinct that any academic will find instantly recognizable.)
I know less about the humanities than the sciences; I would expect that the more explicit the conclusions were with regards to the various parts of the Nazi political/ideological platform, the more obvious the constraints would exist, with the caveat that sometimes the connections between the content and the ideology could be unexpected. | [
"During the German occupation, which lasted from 1940–1945, the university rector, Didrik Arup Seip, was imprisoned. The university was then placed under the management of Adolf Hoel, a NS (Norwegian Nazi Party) appointee. A number of students participated in the Norwegian resistance movement; after fire was set in... |
How does the heart work differently in space compared to earth? | Blood does not fall into the ventricles, the atria contract and force it in. If the circulatory system relied on gravity we wouldn't be able to lie down or hang upside down. | [
"In humans, other mammals, and birds, the heart is divided into four chambers: upper left and right atria and lower left and right ventricles. Commonly the right atrium and ventricle are referred together as the \"right heart\" and their left counterparts as the \"left heart\". Fish, in contrast, have two chambers,... |
how do the cells stay alive when you fall asleep on a body part for an extended period of time? | Your arteries are high pressure hoses that stay open even if you compress them. They are deeper in your body too so they wont get compressed easily. | [
"In non-resting cells, the cell cycle consists of G0 - G1 - S - G2 - M phases, and is tightly regulated at checkpoints between the phases. If the cell has undergone stress, certain proteins are expressed that will prevent the specific sequence of macromolecular interactions at the checkpoint required for progressio... |
how did early television shows record episodes for later broadcast? | There really was little thought of "later broadcast" (as in reruns) for very early TV, meaning late 1940s/early 1950s. Some "live" shows were filmed directly from a TV monitor screen (these filmed copies were called "kinescopes") for archiving and for rushing to the west coast for broadcast 3 hours later. Filmed shows (shot on 35mm or 16mm originally) were broadcast by running the film through a film chain, where the frame rate of the film was synchronized to the video camera to the frame rate of the film (24 frames per second) to eliminate the "flutter" of broadcasting black frames (the projector's shutter between frames).
Bing Crosby was an early backer of the development of video tape, which allowed more flexible time shifting. Video tape began to be employed during the late 1950s. | [
"It is not known how many episodes still exist, given station practices of the era. A 16mm kinescope recording of the episode aired 26 August 1957 is held by National Archives of Australia. (note: Kinescope recording, also known as telerecording, was an early method to record live television, used in the days befor... |
A domed building a good place to be in a tornado? | Probably more of an engineering question. | [
"A tornado struck the building on April 3, 1974, causing extensive damage to the cupola and roof. It also ripped the main sanctuary doors apart, damaged or destroyed 34 of the 38 stained glass windows, and caused water damage in the interior. The damage was repaired from 1975–76. Destroyed stained glass windows wer... |
how does a proposition become a law? | [Schoolhouse Rock: I'm Just a Bill](_URL_0_) | [
"A proposition is also a measure or proposed legislation \"proposed\" to the members of a legislature or to voters, in a direct popular plebiscite, for their approval. In the US American phenomenon of popular plebiscites, propositions can take the form of an initiative or a referendum; for example, see the list of ... |
If wind is primarily generated by the rotation of the Earth, then how are some days windier than others? | The answer to "If X, then why Y?" is often "Because X isn't true."
Wind is not *principally* caused by the Earth's rotation: the main cause is differences in air temperature. Air heated by the sun rises, and cooler air moves in to take its place. This movement of cooler air is the phenomenon we call "wind".
The Earth's rotation does contribute to wind, however, because as the Earth rotates, parts warmed by the sun during the day cool down during the night. The other effect that Earth's rotation has on wind is the Coriolis effect, which causes wind to spin in cyclones and anticyclones rather than moving directly from one place to another. | [
"In the absence of rotation, the wind tends to blow from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure. The stronger the pressure difference (pressure gradient) between a high-pressure system and a low-pressure system, the stronger the wind. The coriolis force caused by Earth's rotation gives winds within high-pr... |
the most modern understanding of human evolution/origin? | No, it goes like this:
1. Homo erectus. A few H. erectus leave Africa (able to survive only in the tropics of Eurasia, lacked fire); some of these Eurasian H. erectus groups evolve into new hominid species.
2. Meanwhile, back in Africa! Homo erectus has evolved into several new hominid species, most notably Homo heidelbergensis. A few H. heidelbergensis leave Africa; Eurasian H. heidelbergensis began to evolve into a new species, but that proto-species got divided across opposite ends of Eurasia so it ended up becoming two species: Homo neanderthalensis (Europe and Middle East) and Homo denisova (SE Asia, although the only surviving remains are in Siberia). At around this time the Homo erectus in Eurasia begin to disappear, possibly due to the Heidelberg/Neanderthal/Denisova clan.
3. Meanwhile, back in Africa! Homo heidelbergensis has evolved into several new hominid species, most notably Homo sapiens. Some H. sapiens branches head down to SE Africa, and next to Central Africa. At this point a few Homo sapiens leave Africa for Eurasia. One branch begins heading out along the tropical coastline immediately; when this branch gets to SE Asia, there is some denisova/sapiens banging. Another branch later north through the Caucasus, where there is some neanderthalensis/sapiens banging, and then breaks up, heading west into Europe and east into East Asia.
4. Meanwhile, back in Africa: no new species! We do have some hominid/hominid banging, possibly with two different species, but we don't really know the details because fossils don't survive in tropical climates, so we don't have any DNA from those species.
Make sense? Both the main trunk of the human family tree and the Neanderthals (plus Denisovans) evolved from *Homo heidelbergensis.* Subsequently happenstance brought these cousins back together, and they were sufficiently closely related to have children. So a very large fraction of the world population is descended from two or three branches of this family tree; they're not *evolved from* Neanderthals, they *are* (part) Neanderthal, even though the majority of their genes come from the Homo sapiens branch. | [
"The timeline of human evolution outlines the major events in the development of the human species, \"Homo sapiens\", and the evolution of the human's ancestors. It includes brief explanations of some of the species, genera, and the higher ranks of taxa that are seen today as possible ancestors of modern humans.\n"... |
Why did the Marshall Mission, the American attempt to create a unified government between Chinese Communist Party and Nationalists following WWII, ultimately fail? | Hello, and thank you for this thoughtful and well-worded question! I'm unfortunately not an expert on the Chinese Civil War, but I'll try my best to provide some background.
The very short answer to everything is that Mao Zedong and the Communists never had any intention to cooperate with the Nationalists or the Americans in the long term. Before George Marshall even set foot in China, the CCP created plans to "neutralize the United States" or, as Zhou Enlai later expressed, "[make] use of the United States... [and] make every effort to delay the onset of civil war." Their position is quite understandable, of course: the United States wanted China under a non-communist government, and its policies consistently favored the Nationalists. Chiang Kai-shek, on his part, was initially amenable to negotiations, if only to pacify both the United States and the Soviet Union, even though his advisers warned that Mao would simply exploit the opportunity to consolidate his forces and that the United States would likely blame the Nationalists for any failure to maintain peace.
The Soviet Union played a major role in these developments, as you suggested. When the Red Army occupied Manchuria in August 1945 near the end of the Second World War, they handed over an enormous quantity of captured weapons and other materiel to the CCP: according to one source, "700,000 rifles, 1100 light machine guns, 3000 heavy machine guns, 1800 cannons, 2500 mortars, 700 tanks, 800 ammunition depots, and ordnance factories kept by the former Japanese Kwantung Army." The Politburo then recommended to the CCP a month later that they adopt the strategy of "expanding toward the north and defending toward the south"--that is, secure their position in Manchuria--to which Mao wholeheartedly agreed. In the meantime, while the Red Army allowed the CCP to maneuver freely throughout the region, they prevented Nationalist officials and troops from expanding their foothold. The Soviets finally agreed to withdraw after Chiang protested, but they delayed it until March 1946. This, along with the temporary ceasefire with the Nationalists later brokered by Marshall, bought extra time for Mao.
So the Marshall Mission never really stood a chance. Marshall himself failed to resolve the fundamental differences dividing the Communists and Nationalists (and I don't see how he could have); on the other hand, while he later reported that "almost complete, overwhelming suspicion" between the two parties limited any meaningful chance for mediation, Marshall also complained about the CCP's "unwillingness to make a fair compromise." You might consider this the "final straw," though Truman recalled him in January 1947 so he could serve as Secretary of State (allegedly without Marshall's prior knowledge). As for the military dimension, I'll defer to someone better-versed on the topic. I hope you find this helpful nonetheless! :D | [
"The Nationalists and Chinese Communists were allies during the Sino-Japanese War, but their domestic rivalry resumed after the defeat of Japan. To prevent the resumption of civil war, the U.S. government sent George C. Marshall to China to mediate. The Marshall Mission was headquartered in Beiping where a truce wa... |
Can anyone explain this mythbusters result? Because it seems to break my understanding of Newtonian physics. | The movement is from the small amount of air that rebounds in the opposite direction off the sail. | [
"Newton himself often told the story that he was inspired to formulate his theory of gravitation by watching the fall of an apple from a tree. Although it has been said that the apple story is a myth and that he did not arrive at his theory of gravity in any single moment, acquaintances of Newton (such as William S... |
why whenever i eat fruits i still feel hungry, but eat fatty foods and feel full. | According to [this article](_URL_0_):
"When the fat remains stable in the acid environment of the stomach, it empties into the small intestine more slowly and increases satiety."
However, for a more ELI5 version:
Think of your stomach as a bonfire. When you put in a piece of paper (e.g. the apple) it burns it very quickly and it provides relatively little heat. However, when you put in a large log (e.g. the fatty meat), it burns slower and releases its heat slowly over a longer period of time.
| [
"Although fruits provide a source of carbohydrates, they have very little protein, and because protein cannot be stored in the body as fat and carbohydrates can, fruitarians need to be careful that they consume enough protein each day. When the body does not take in enough protein, it misses out on amino acids, whi... |
how does a stylus work on a phone screen, but other objects won't? | The screens are capacitive. Basically, things like your skin change surface voltages, and that's how it detects where you're tapping. It will work with sausages (though you'd get your screen greasy).
If something can't change the voltage (like a cotton swab), it won't register on your phone screen. | [
"In computing, a stylus (or stylus pen) is a small pen-shaped instrument that is used to input commands to a computer screen, mobile device or graphics tablet. With touchscreen devices, a user places a stylus on the surface of the screen to draw or make selections by tapping the stylus on the screen. In this manner... |
why does touching metal to a metal cavity filling hurt like crazy? | Have you ever touched a 9-volt battery to your tounge? Similar thing. Along with other stuff in your mouth, certain metals brought together make a very small and weak battery. While weak, you have sensitive nerves in your tooth, and the metal filling makes it very easy for the electricity to reach them. | [
"Rubbing dissimilar materials against one another can cause a build-up of electrostatic charge, which can be hazardous if flammable gases or vapours are present. When the static build-up discharges, explosions can be caused by ignition of the flammable mixture.\n",
"Pitting results when a small hole, or cavity, f... |
Did the Mughals cultivate special breeds of elephants, as Westerners do with horses? | Due to the long lifespans and long gestation periods of elephants, breeding them as one does with horses was impractical at best. There are no known acknowledged "breeds" of elephants (aside from the Asian and African varieties that we know of today). | [
"Elephant cavalry first appeared three thousand years ago, simultaneously in India's Vedic Civilization and in China. Female Asian elephants were used, sometimes in small groups, sometimes in vast regiments of thousands of animals in the 13th century, primarily to produce a tactical \"shock and awe\" effect in the ... |
What did the North Vietnamese Army do to all of the South Vietnamese Army once they captured Saigon and ended the war? Were a lot of people killed on the South Vietnamese Army side once the Americans left? | [I have written about this before here](_URL_0_), which might answer some of your questions. | [
"After the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), the ARVN was dissolved. While some high-ranking officers had fled the country to the United States or elsewhere, thousands of former ARVN officers were sent to reeducation camps by the communist government of the new, unified Sociali... |
how do large indoor spaces like warehouses have their own weather? | In short, they don't.
The Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral, the largest buildings ever constructed in terms of open interior volume, is the typical source of this urban legend. The rumor goes that its air conditioning system, which replaces the entire building-volume's air every hour, is less effective at dehumidifying the air than it is at cooling it. As such, the humid Florida air cools to under its dewpoint, causing internal clouds and even rain.
That's not what happens. Every air conditioning system dehumidifies as it cools. The water comes out at the air's coldest point: in the air conditioner itself. Air conditioners have varying strategies for what to do with the resultant moisture, but none of them simply pump it all back into the output air.
It's an urban legend, and an attractive one, but unfortunately it just doesn't happen. | [
"In rural and suburban areas most facilities contain multiple single-story buildings with mostly drive-up units which have natural ventilation but are not climate-controlled. These buildings are referred to as \"traditional\" storage facilities. Climate-controlled interior units are becoming more popular in suburba... |
what does 'bridge' mean in musical terms? | A bridge is a contrasting section of music that prepares for the return to the 'original' section.
It is often used to contrast with and prepare for the return of the verse and the chorus of a piece of music. | [
"The Bridge chord is a bitonal chord named after its use in the music of composer Frank Bridge (1879–1941). It consists of a minor chord with the major chord a whole tone above (CEG & DFA), as well as a major chord with the minor chord a semitone above (CEG & DFA), which share the same mediant (E/F). () Both form e... |
How are medical grade sterile cloths made? | Gamma Irradiation normally. But occasionally Ethylene Oxide. They make it, put it in a bag, and then zap the hell out of it with a gamma ray source, usually Cobalt 60. | [
"Non-surgical scrubs come in a wider variety of colors and patterns, ranging from official issue garments to custom made, whether by commercial uniform companies or by home-sewing using commercially available printed patterns.\n",
"In general, surgical instruments and medications that enter an already aseptic par... |
What is the deepest someone could breathe underwater through a tube to the surface? | A normal adult has a [vital capacity](_URL_0_) of about 3-5 liters, which is the maximal volume of air that can be exhaled or inhaled. Let's use the max and say 0.005 cubic meters.
The average diameter of a snorkel is 3/4 inch or 0.01905 meters.
Volume of a cylinder is v = (pi) times radius^2 times height. Solve for height of cylinder by substitution.
Therefore, a snorkel must be shorter than 4.38 meters to have *any* new air brought into your lungs.
This presumes maximum inspiration and respiration (difficult) in someone with very large lungs.
If you were to narrow the cylinder of the snorkel, you could increase the length, but then achieving maximal expiration and inspiration would be incredibly difficult (think breathing through a straw). | [
"Jim Bowden is an American technical diver, known as a cave diver and as a deep diver. In 1994 he set a world record, since broken, by diving to . He is one of only eleven people who have dived below a depth of on self-contained breathing apparatus. He has also made six sub-five hundred foot dives.\n",
"BULLET:::... |
why do some medications have to be specifically taken or applied at night? | Usually it is because they have a sedative effect (make you drowsy) so it's safer to take them at night when you are going to sleep anyway.
For some others it's because it times with bodily functions (cholesterol medication for e.g. because the liver is more active at producing cholesterol when you are asleep)
Some are just more effective when you are less active.
This question would be much easier to answer if you had a specific medication in mind. | [
"Hypnotics, sometimes referred to as sleeping pills, may be prescribed by a physician, but their long-term efficacy is poor and they have numerous adverse effects including daytime drowsiness, accidents, memory disorders and withdrawal symptoms. If they are to be taken, the preferred choices are benzodiazepines wit... |
why do republicans and similar think that president obama is directly trying to destroy america? | _URL_2_
_URL_1_
_URL_0_
| [
"Margolis wrote this about Barack Obama's election:Americans did not \"liberate\" Iraq, but they certainly liberated their own nation last week by sweeping the Republican Party from power. One prays America's long nightmare of foreign aggressions, fear, religious extremism, and flirting with neo-fascism is finally ... |
Why are "elite" forces of the Napoleonic era beefed up standard regiments with special honors while "elite" forces of the modern era are special operations units? | This is just one an example of the centuries long trend in modern military history of increasing dispersion in the face of increasing firepower.
Elite troops (i.e. Guard Regiments) in Napoleonic times were elite because they were better organized, braver, more disciplined and sometimes physically larger and more intimidating than other units. They could retain their unit cohesion under fire or when entering melee, where it would be decisive. Under Napoleonic conditions, the side with higher morale that sticks together no matter what usually can win an infantry slugfest.
In modern times, or even the 20th century, the conventional ideas of bravery and a "stand-up fight" have disappeared in the face of increased firepower. Under artillery, machine gun fire and aerial bombardment, troops can't outclass their opposition by being bigger, braver, and more tightly organized. Troops have to spread out, conceal their position and use dispersion to avoid being overwhelmed with firepower. Concentrated groups of elite troops would quickly become targets for firepower they can't even necessarily see. Similarly firepower of a large group of troops tends to depend more on the number of artillery tubes and machine guns a unit possesses, and the expertise of it's officers and specialists, rather than the abilities of individual soldiers.
However, with dispersion comes a whole different problem. How can units keep fighting and accomplishing objectives if they can't actually see each other or their chain of command? 20th and 21st century militaries have found various ways of training units to deal with this problem in standard military units.
Elite units in modern times go into situations where the utmost dispersion is required: At the tip of a fast moving armored column, suddenly appearing by aerial insertion, or infiltrating behind enemy lines or into a country where they can't operate out in the open due to politics. These situations are ones which are more chaotic than normal and where the additional dispersion might be expected to break down communication and inhibit military effectiveness.
In these situations, extra training is needed to make sure that the individual soldiers can fight under more chaotic than normal conditions. Soldiers need to use more individual initiative and be comfortable fighting in smaller groups and in more unexpected situations. Extreme physical training in modern elite troops is needed not to intimidate the enemy or overpower him but to provide the flexibility to hike over a mountain or into a jungle and still be combat effective when away from motorized logistics.
Napoleon's Imperial Guard was in thus "braver and brawnier" than regular troops. Whereas modern elite forces are "smarter, sneakier and more flexible" than their regular army counterparts, and the change is due to an increase in firepower and dispersion in the modern era. | [
"France's Imperial Guard (\"Garde Impériale\") was the elite military force of its time and grew out of the \"Garde du Directoire\" and \"Garde Consulaire\". It was, quite literally, a \"Corps d'Armée\" itself with infantry, cavalry and artillery. Napoleon wanted it also to be an example for the entire army to foll... |
how can concert tickets and big clothing drops seemingly be already sold out at the exact same second they go live? | Either someone had access to buy before that, or a lot of buyers were just faster than you.
There's many examples of employees buying the entire stock before the sale goes live. And there's also many examples of people making software to buy tickets as fast as possible (seconds) as soon as sales opens, leaving little chance to people who buy manually. | [
"Concert tickets went on sale on Monday, June 3, and almost all (60,000) were sold the same day, with online wait times to purchase tickets that exceeded six hours. This caused the organization to initially freeze ticket sales and then release 30,000 tickets for sale on the 17th, though these were for seats at the ... |
What happens to the electrons in the positive plate of capacitor? | There are two things going on here.
First, a charge distribution is what actually produces a voltage. Everything wants to be neutral, so if you connect a conductor between the positively and negatively charged components in a charge distribution, it will cause the charges to equalize.
The second thing is that a battery creates a charge distribution by chemically reacting with the anode and cathode. The type of reaction dictates the equilibrium. It reaches equilibrium because as the charge distribution builds up, it inhibits the reaction. That is why batteries don't just consume all reactants and grow to massive voltages.
Now, if you connect a capacitor, that capacitor will take some of the charges at the terminals. As it does that, the battery is no longer at its "equilibrium" voltage, which allows the reaction to continue to produce charge at the terminals. This is where the extra charge comes from. The voltage *does* drop, and this is proportional to the current times the internal resistance of the battery. As the capacitor charges, the voltage difference between the two gets smaller, the current gets LOWER proportional to Ohm's Law and as a result, the battery reaches its equilibrium again.
| [
"where the sign is negative because charge leaves this plate (the charge is decreasing), and where \"S\" is the area of the surface \"R\". The electric field at surface \"L\" is nearly zero because the field due to charge on the left-hand plate is nearly cancelled by the equal but opposite charge on the right-hand ... |
why is the bathroom always the first room you see when you enter a hotel room? | Mainly because that layout is cheaper to build. Having the plumbing all as close as possible, towards the hallways means a more compact and efficient layout than spreading it to the outsides of the rooms. | [
"Customers who have rooms may leave their room doors open to signal that they are available for sex. An open door can also be an invitation for others to watch or join in sexual activity that is already occurring.\n",
"The Hotel Sterling opened with approximately 175 rooms and 125 bathrooms. This suggests a large... |
why is there a ball inside of guinness beer cans? | It's to create a head on the beer when drinking or pouring, as guinness is ment to be drank that way, and it's actually a bottle shaped piece of plastic
Edit*I couldn't remember the name of the ball/bottle thing, it's called a widget,
_URL_0_
| [
"Unlike kegs, which can be simply stood upright on the floor, casks are used lying on their sides. This allows the beer to run from the tap under gravity, with room in the \"belly\" of the cask below the outlet for the finings to collect. The shive with the spile will then be the highest point on the cask. As the b... |
why does your body feel things to be bigger than they are? | If I understand your question correctly, you're curious why your tactile sense is not as accurate as your eyesight, right? Well it's tricky, but for a good reason, so brace yourself.
You have incredibly sensitive skin. Practically everywhere, really, but there are some localized differences. Here's an example: find a loose hair or pluck one and lay it over the bare skin of your knee. Try and do this without looking at it and just focus on how it feels. Not exactly that evident, right? Maybe a tingle over your leg hairs (if you don't shave your legs) but even if you shave, it's still probably not that noticeable.
Now do the same with your forearm, again, without looking. This probably will be a little more sensitive, maybe enough to urge yourself to remove the hair, though not exactly irritating. You can "feel" that it's a hair or something like a hair, but it could feel the same as if you place a string or a strand of cobweb over it.
Here's the last test: lean your head back, as if you were to add eye drops, close your eyes, and lay the hair across just under your eye to your nose (if you have bags or know the area that bags develop, lay it there). *This* should be a clearly different feeling. You know it's a hair, it feels like a hair, but it also feels like *something-the-mighty-devil-planted-on-your-face-and-has-to-go-away*. Instinctive alarms sound off that make you want to get it off your face, regardless of how patient a person you are.
The reason for these different sensations is survival, just like most everything else basic about the human body. You are far more likely to bang your knee than bang your eye into something. And you're also likely to bump your arm into something while walking around; since your hands, however, are vital tools to you, you're more concerned with them than your knee. This variation of desensitization is basically the difference between you kneeing a desk, reacting with "Ow..." and you kneeing the same desk and reacting with "For the love of Zeus, this oaken beast is killing me!".
So, essentially, this is designed by different kinds of hair and presence of nerves. You have hair everywhere. Literally, it's all over your skin (with the exception of the bottom of your feet, but that's a different kind of situation) and it's there to feel things. Things touch hairs, hairs talk to nerves, nerves scream to brain. The difference in the hairs is kind of complicated, but for simplicity, leg hair < arm hair < cheek hair in terms of sensitivity. On top of that, the same goes for presence of nerve endings. Your hairs on your legs are more spread out than your arm hairs and ever more so than your cheek hairs.
*That* is why you have a hard time judging things by sensation. Your eyes are always the same distance from each other, so they always have the same conclusion when they see something. Your body hairs aren't always the same distance and type and can't make the same conclusion easily.
As far as your other example, about feeling a blister, that's a little simpler to explain: your brain's dumb. Not *yours* specifically, just the brain of anyone who is "gifted" with sight. Let's say I have a collection of wooden pegs, all of different diameters. I write on each one the size and show you this then have you close your eyes. If I held out peg after peg for you to feel with just one finger, you'd spend hours before finally giving up trying to determine their size. It's just not what we're designed to do; feeling is just the sidekick to sight when it comes to survival.
**TL;DR You have a hard time judging size by touch because evolution wants to spare you some black eyes** | [
"In poetry, fiction, and other literature, size is occasionally assigned to characteristics that do not have measurable dimensions, such as the metaphorical reference to the size of a person's heart as a shorthand for describing their typical degree of kindness or generosity. With respect to physical size, the conc... |
How come that whole state of New York was named after a city? | It's less that the state is named after the city or vice versa, and more that both geographical regions were given Anglicized names at the same time. While the legacy of Native tribes and people can be seen in place names such as Manhattan (based on a Wampanoag or Lenape word used to describe the land mass between the Hudson and East Rivers), name places in New York State reflect the region's appeal to a variety of European colonizers.
Prior to the arrival of Europeans, a collection of Indigenous settlements and communities were spread across what would become New York State, parts of Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. The region, described by many Europeans as "Iroquoia", would become the home of the Iroquois League of the Five Nations (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca) sometime between 1450 and 1550. Eventually, a sixth tribe, the Tuscaroras, joined what would become the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Members of the Confederacy traded with Europeans on an individual, village, and nation basis and multiple name places reflect their presence. Counties in Central New York carry the names of the tribes of the Confederacy. Counties in Western New York (e.g. Erie, Chautauqua, Cattaraugus) take their names from tribes from the western part of the state or place-names used by members of the tribes.
Dutch colonizers from the Dutch West India Company lay claim to the land inside the Confederacy, on Esopus land along the Hudson, and on Wampanoag, Munsees, or Montauk lands on the state's southern islands and identified it as New Netherlands. In doing so, they basically ignored the early mapping activities of Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano ([more](_URL_0_) on colonial naming practices from /u/sunagainstgold). They identified the region at the bottom of the colony as New Amsterdam and a region about 150 miles north along the Hudson, as Beverwijck.
England took over the land 1664 and immediately renamed several key locations.^1 The colony itself and what had become the two largest settlements in the colony were named after the Duke of York and of Albany, who, in 1685, would become James II of England. The settlement on the Hudson would be chartered as The City of Albany in 1686, making it the longest continuously chartered city in America. New Netherlands became "New York" and the area that was New Amsterdam also became "New York." The City of Greater New York was established in 1898, bringing together the various boroughs into the city we recognize today as The Big Apple. New York County, which originally included parts of the Bronx and Staten Island, now includes only the NYC borough of Manhattan.
But to be sure, the problem was noted from the very beginning. One author in mid-1690's noted that England had "planted seeds of confusion across the path of one who would seek the meaning of a New Yorker. No other state has to deal with such confusion.”^2
____
1. For more on the transition from Dutch to British rule,[ this article](_URL_1_) from 1901 gives a pretty detailed timeline of events.
2. Reitano, J. (2015).*New York State: Peoples, Places, and Priorities: a Concise History with Sources.* Routledge. | [
"The city of New York is a special case. The state legislature reorganized government in the area in the 1890s in an effort to consolidate. Other cities, villages, and towns were annexed to become the \"City of Greater New York\", (an unofficial term, the new city retained the name of New York), a process basically... |
why are tank tracks so efficient at traction? | The purpose of tank tracks is not traction. The purpose is to spread the significant weight of the tank over a large area so they don't sink into sand or mud or whatever. | [
"Other designs dramatically increase surface area to provide more traction than wheels can, for example in continuous track and half-track vehicles. A tank or similar tracked vehicle uses tracks to reduce the pressure on the areas of contact. A 70-ton M1A2 would sink to the point of high centering if it used round ... |
baudrillard's "simulacra and simulation" | Basically, the treatise states that our world is "fake", and that our culture is made up of false symbols. In other words, reality is hidden behind a fake mask that we've created.
It's saying that most of our current society is a construct that we've created ourselves. It argues that the way we see of the world isn't the way it looks, but rather an exaggerated picture seen through the lens of mass media.
It describes how he felt society got this way, as well. At first, the symbols (e.g. news, descriptions, any sort of media) people experienced were accurate reflections of reality. People knew they were fake, but they could differentiate between them and reality.
Later, people assigned more weight to the symbols. They became corrupted, but people still saw the symbols as accurate, and reality as wrong. For example, people would romanticize reality, and they (or others) would believe their romantic image over how reality actually is.
Later still, the symbols became so different from reality, that they held no meaning at all relative to the real world, yet people still believed the symbols over reality. This is when media and culture start dictating people's beliefs without any relation to the real world, e.g. "Brand X toothpaste is the toothpaste of winners! Buy our product and be a winner!". At this stage, media determines people's "reality" more than actual reality does. | [
"Simulation, Baudrillard claims, is the current stage of the simulacrum: all is composed of references with no referents, a hyperreality. Progressing historically from the Renaissance, in which the dominant simulacrum was in the form of the counterfeit—mostly people or objects appearing to stand for a real referent... |
95% of the moving truck vehicles for families i see are uhauls. how did one company create such a monopoly over the moving business? | One of the innovative things U-Haul did was franchise via gas stations. Existing infrastructure for fuel, office and garage space made the barriers to entry of a new franchisee really low. And there needs to be gas stations located strategically, so you get the coverage.
Also, the one-way rental is pretty huge, not sure if the other truck rentals have come up with anything similar that doesn't cost a fortune. | [
"As reported in June 1995 in Popular Science Magazine, self-driving trucks were being developed for combat convoys, whereby only the lead truck would be driven by a human and the following trucks would rely on satellite, an inertial guidance system and ground-speed sensors. Caterpillar Inc. made early developments ... |
A question about forces | In our present understanding, quantum fields are the fundamental concept. The existence of quantum fields leads to the existence of particles such as gauge bosons, as well as to other kinds of physical entities (e.g. bound states and extended field configurations like solitons). | [
"Since forces are perceived as pushes or pulls, this can provide an intuitive understanding for describing forces. As with other physical concepts (e.g. temperature), the intuitive understanding of forces is quantified using precise operational definitions that are consistent with direct observations and compared t... |
How does the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere directly affect coral reef building? | The build up of excess CO2 in the atmosphere has slowly began to change the pH of the earth's oceans, making the oceans more acidic, a process also known as [Ocean Acidification.] (_URL_0_) As the ocean acidifies, corals cannot absorb the calcium carbonate they need to maintain their skeletons, which cause the stony skeletons that support corals and reefs to dissolve. | [
"A study released in April 2013 has shown that air pollution can also stunt the growth of coral reefs; researchers from Australia, Panama and the UK used coral records (between 1880 and 2000) from the western Caribbean to show the threat of factors such as coal-burning coal and volcanic eruptions. The researchers s... |
why do toiletry bags have handles on the side? | It's for hanging. When you unzip the toiletries bag and hang it on a hook, you have easy access and may avoid having to place it on a damp counter, etc. | [
"In those settings, bucket toilets are more likely to be used without a liner, or the liner is not removed each time the bucket is emptied. This is because the users cannot afford to regularly discard suitably sized, sturdy liners. Instead, the users may place some dry material in the base of the bucket (newspaper,... |
if i weigh 100 pounds and eat 50 pounds of food, do i now weigh 150 pounds? | Yes. If you somehow ate 50 pounds of food, you would in fact gain 50 pounds to your weight. Now this wouldn't last because you body wouldn't be able to metabolize this vast amount of food. You would probably be sick, gain a decent amount of fat, but in the long run you certainly wouldn't suddenly gain 50 pounds in fat mass. | [
"BULLET::::- First, after a nutrition demonstration from chef Curtis Stone, the group is required to answer a series of eight questions (one per team). If the group collectively answers five questions correctly, 15 pounds will be deducted from the 150 requirement.\n",
"BULLET::::- The allowed carbohydrate amounts... |
who are the "kurdish"? and why are their female fighters such a big deal in usa media? | The Kurds are an ethnicity of people who do not have a country to call their own. They are closer related to Persians than they are Arabs or Turks, and they have a language and history distinct from all three.
The nearly 40 million of them live in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria.
The reason why the female fighters are so important is because not only is it a big deal that nearly 50% of their army is women, but of all regions of the world this sort of social equality is huge.
It is also a big story because it shows the Kurds as a people and not an army, all active bodies to protect their brothers and sister. | [
"The Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK (Kurdish: \"Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê\") is Kurdish militant organization which has waged an armed struggle against the Turkish state for cultural and political rights and self-determination for the Kurds. Turkey's military allies the US, the EU, and NATO label the PKK as a te... |
Were there revolutions outside of Europe/North America (pre-20th century) that implemented enlightenment (or something similar to them) ideas? | Sorry, we don't allow ["example seeking" questions](_URL_1_). It's not that your question was bad; it's that these kinds of questions tend to produce threads that are collections of disjointed, partial, inadequate responses. If you have a question about a specific historical event, period, or person, feel free to rewrite your question and submit it again. If you don't want to rewrite it, you might try submitting it to /r/history, /r/askhistory, or /r/tellmeafact.
For further explanation of the rule, feel free to consult [this META thread](_URL_0_). | [
"The Industrial Revolution began in Britain in the 18th century. Under the influence of the Enlightenment, the Age of Revolution emerged from the United States and France as part of the transformation of the West into its industrialised, democratised modern form. The lands of North and South America, South Africa, ... |
When did Countries became Countries? | Can you clarify your question? Do you mean when did they consolidate as political entities? | [
"Western Europe, briefly mostly united into a single state under Charlemagne around 800CE, a few countries, including England, Scotland, Iceland and Norway, had already effectively become nation states by 1,000CE, with a kingdom (Commonwealth in Iceland's case) largely co-terminus with a people mostly sharing a lan... |
Is the UK/ island of Britain a fatherland or a motherland? | Neither, or both.
This is more a linguistics question in the field of contemporary and historical usage, but in the interests of fulfilling your question, let me talk about these terms for awhile.
Firstly, “Fatherland” and it’s cognates has a well established usage across European languages, especially Indo-European and Romance languages. You can see it, if you know Greek and Latin, in the forms *πατρία and πατήρ/patria and pater*. Anyway, ‘Fatherland’ is not really a common English term, and for many English speakers its associations are caught up in the emergence of the term *Vaterland* in propaganda associated with Nazi Germany. Thus, for English speakers, ‘Fatherland’ sounds like an echo of that ideology, even though *Vaterland* is not itself so definitively tied up in Nazism in the German Language, anymore than its cognates in other European languages are *necessarily* tied to nationalist ideas of that kind.
Several other countries and languages prefer to use feminine language/language forms, for their nation, most notably Russia, and the term Россия-Матушка, or ‘Mother Russia’. This personification of the nation as a woman is found even in languages that use patri-based terms. For example, even though Latin has *patria, Roma* is still a feminine form and the personification of Rome as a female entity also played a role in civic and national identity-discourse. I would suggest that personification of the nation as a mother figure has to do with the combination of traditional depictions of the ‘earth’ as feminine and the land/nation as the place that gives birth to a people.
To come back to English, neither of these is ‘more’ correct or appropriate, there does not seem to exist a longstanding tradition of embedding one of these concepts into the language more firmly than the other. “Mother Country” is used sometimes to refer to the UK by emigrants/descendants in colonial situations.
All of which is to say, neither or both could be viewed as appropriate. I hope this has been at least mildly informative and answered your question. Feel free to ask follow up questions if you’d like more historical/linguistic information.
| [
"Motherland refers to a \"mother country\", i.e. the place of one's birth, the place of one's ancestors, the place of origin of an ethnic group or immigrant, or a Metropole in contrast to its colonies. People often refer to Mother Russia as a personification of the Russian nation. Within the British Empire, many na... |
how does the liver function when we consume alcohol? | After alcohol is absorbed, it is distributed fairly evenly amongst the body's water reservoirs, so there is no concentrating effect in the liver. The liver's job is to metabolize the alcohol into acetic acid.
Nothing special happens when you drink a lot such that your liver can't keep up with the elimination - the alcohol concentration builds up. You'd be surprised to know that this occurs _easily_ - a standard drink (one glass of wine, one shot of liquor, one glass of beer) is enough to overwhelm the liver's enzymes. This is why for most blood alcohol concentrations, alcohol is metabolized in what's called _pseudo-zeroth order_ - a constant rate. In other words, your liver enzymes are already working at peak capacity. Otherwise, you won't be able to get drunk easily in the first place. | [
"During the metabolism of alcohol via the respective dehydrogenases, NAD (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) is converted into reduced NAD. Normally, NAD is used to metabolize fats in the liver, and as such alcohol competes with these fats for the use of NAD. Prolonged exposure to alcohol means that fats accumulate... |
why do pc's need to be upgraded for newer games while consoles can handle newer games just fine? | Two reasons.
The first is that consoles sport 1 hardware configuration each. Every 360 has the same processor, same ram, same graphics card, and understands the same code. As a programmer, this is useful, because you can design your game right around the hardware. Optimization is much easier(and so is debugging, for that matter), and so you can squeeze much more performance out of a given console than its hardware equivalent on PCs. This is also why console games get better looking over the course of the generation even though the hardware does stay the same.
The second reason is that because PCs can vary in processing power, PC games typically have settings that enable them to far, far surpass anything that the current console generation can do. Case in point: I'm sure you've seen some of the trailers for Battlefield 3 by now. Most of those cinematic trailers, unless stated otherwise, are running the game on Ultra quality on the PC. The console version doesn't look nearly that good and never will. Based on what we know it will probably look somewhere between Low and Medium settings on PC. There are videos showing off the console versions of the game, so you can look and compare. In addition to straight up graphical quality, the resolution on a PC is also higher, meaning more detail is possible on the screen at once. If you look at [this chart](_URL_0_), you can see what resolution most console games run at by looking at the HD 720p box. PC games, provided you have the hardware and monitor to run it, can be as big as the biggest box in the picture. Big difference. | [
"Some consoles lack the ability to play games from previous generations which allow a developer to release older games again but on the new consoles. The re-released game may be unchanged and simply be the same game but run on the new technology or it can be changed by the developer to have improved graphics, sound... |
Exactly how fast can a light sail travel? | According to [this](_URL_0_) paper, it will depend on the mass area loading on the sail, which is equal to (total mass) / (area of sail)
but the article says:
> The slowest
approach in Table 1 passes the 0.01 AU perihelion point and continues out into space at a
constant velocity of 0.0014 С (420 km/Sec).
You should check out Table 1. It has other values up to 0.009 C. | [
"From the planetary frame of reference, the ship's speed will appear to be limited by the speed of light—it can approach the speed of light, but never reach it. If a ship is using 1 \"g\" constant acceleration, it will appear to get near the speed of light in about a year, and have traveled about half a light year ... |
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