question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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how does new york have a service economy when the rent is so high? | They don't live in Manhattan or Brooklyn... they live in the less expensive boroughs like the Bronx or Queens. And they cram more people/family members into apartments than elsewhere. | [
"New York City has a shortage of affordable housing resulting in overcrowding and homelessness. New York City attracts thousands of new residents each year and housing prices continue to climb. Finding affordable housing affects a large portion of the city’s population including low-income, moderate-income, and eve... |
Monday Mysteries | Secret Societies, Cults and Organisations | My favourite cult has always been the one created by [Hassan-i Sabbah](_URL_0_) and his assassins, which was adopted by the game Assassin's Creed, where it was loosely based on Hassan's group. It is said that the origins of the whole concept of an "assassin" is traced back to Hassan-i-Sabbah, who had an incredibly interesting backstory, as well as his even more interesting ways of creating assassins.
Hassan-i -Sabbah, or the Old Man of the Mountain, or the Sheikh of Alamut, was arguably the founder of modern Jihadist terrorist. He was incredibly strict, and ruled with incredible austerity - he banished a man for playing the flute and executed his own son for drinking wine. The way he converted people to work for him was surreal: he built an enormous gardens described as the best the world had ever seen. Within the walls there were conduits that were cut and ran wine, milk, honey and water, while groups of beautiful women danced and laughed. It was used to make people believe that it was Paradise. Marco Polo described how Hassan tricked and manipulated young men to become his obedient slave assassins:
> The Old Man...had a potion given them, as a result of which they straightway fell asleep; then he had them taken up and put into the garden and then awaked. When they awoke, they ...saw all the things that I have told you, and so believed that they were really in Paradise. And the ladies and damsels remained with them all day, playing music and singing and making excellent cheer; and the young men had their pleasure of them. So these youths had all they could desire, and would never have left the place of their own free will.
They were then promptly drugged again, removed from the garden and returned to their own rooms in Hassan's castle. Hassan then told them that they would return to Paradise if they did everything he asked, as he was the guardian of Paradise.
It is incredibly chilling and effective, and by far the most interesting historical cult which bred obedient followers with unswerving loyalty.
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"There are also a number of strongly rumored secret societies with less documentation including The Magnolia Society, which has apparently formed within the past decade and taps men and women from all classes into something like an elitist supper club. Magnolians, as they are called, can be identified only on their... |
Have terrorists through history ever succeeded in achieving their political/ideological aims? | In short, no, at least going off of the definition of terrorism you wish to be used. This isn't, however, to say that terrorist groups do not effect change in the domestic or international scene. There are really two levels of objectives for terrorist groups: short-term and long-term. Short term objectives would be things like raising money by ransoming hostages or robbing banks, gaining media coverage, and recruiting members. This is really the meat and potatoes aspect of any terrorist group. Longer term goals are probably what you're looking for, and they are normally much more significant: regime change, the complete reversal of a government's policy, etc. Terrorist groups are much more successful with the former rather than the latter. Short-term victories are pretty common, with an example being the early 1980s bombings of the US embassy and Marine barracks in Lebanon, which eventually led to the US pulling out of the country. But I honestly can't think of one terrorist group that achieved it's goals strictly through terrorism. Exceptions to this rule would be when terrorism becomes part of a broader military strategy, often guerrilla warfare.
Furthermore, we have to recognize that, despite popular claims that terrorists are radical and uncompromising, their attitudes and objectives *do* change and their views have the potential to become moderated. The Muslim Brotherhood is a good example of this. The decision for moderation, or even the group's renunciation of terrorism, arises because, just like politicians, terrorist groups have their own constituencies. Of course, this discounts terrorist groups who see themselves as a revolutionary vanguard that will spring the masses to action, a la the RAF. In those cases, the terrorists group's views are often so far apart from any mainstream view that they never gain much in the way of any wider following, often because their nihilism alienates the ones they're trying to call to action. But going back to terrorist groups who actively work to form greater constituencies within a society, these groups often have to moderate their views out of necessity if they wish to have any type of political relevance. Sometimes, their constituents may accept that violence is a legitimate course of action, although there are certainly limits. For example, through the 1970s to the 1990s, the IRA and Sinn Fein heeded their constituency's demands by mainly attacking British security personnel rather than Protestant civilians. To have engaged in a wider program of civilian terror would have risked the group losing their legitimacy in the eyes of their constituency. (As a side-note this is not to diminish or marginalize IRA terrorist attacks against civilians, which still constituted roughly 20% of the group's terrorist actions).
Lastly, in some cases, a terrorist groups stated strategic objectives may not necessarily be the primary reason why they are committing acts of terrorism. The Weather Underground is a good example of this type of terrorist group. For the Weather Underground terrorism was an end in itself, an action that was a moral necessity against a corrupt and repressive government, no matter the tactic's efficacy. In these cases, the terrorist group's objectives are less important than the individual member's psychological catharsis through terrorism.
So, the objectives or goals of terrorist groups are multi-layered and constantly changing. Rarely, if ever, do their most radical objectives come anywhere near reaching fruition. When a terrorist group fails to moderate their views there are a few paths through which the group may follow, almost inevitably, to collapse. The group will be dismantled by the state (or a multi-state institution), which can occur through either violent or non-violent means (the Italian Red Brigades are a good example of this). The group dissolves through internal conflict, often arising over a debate as to whether terrorist violence should continue or if the group should moderate its views (the Weather Underground suits this path). The last is for the group simply to slip into irrelevance, fighting for a cause that no one cares about anymore. This final case tends to occur when terrorist groups refuse to adapt to a changing domestic/international scene, for example the RAF in post-unification Germany.
Edit: Wording.
Edit: I forgot to list some relevant sources for further reading if you'd wish to do so. For general histories of terrorism the best single volume is Gerard Chaliand and Arnaud Blin's [*The History of Terrorism: From Antiquity to al Qaeda*](_URL_3_). Bruce Hoffman's [*Inside Terrorism*](_URL_2_) is also a must read. For an excellent look at the ideological motivations of the Weather Underground and RAF you can check out Jeremy Varon's [*Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies* ](_URL_0_). Lastly, you may be interested to learn how exactly terrorist groups end. For that, two good books are Audrey Kurth Cronin's [*How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns*](_URL_4_) or Seth Jones's and Martin Libicki's [*How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa'ida*](_URL_1_)
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"Right-wing terrorists aim to overthrow governments and replace them with nationalist or fascist-oriented governments. The core of this movement includes neo-fascist skinheads, far-right hooligans, youth sympathisers and intellectual guides who believe that the state must rid itself of foreign elements in order to ... |
when using virtual reality devices like the vive or rift, how do our eyes focus on 'distant' objects when they are really only centimetres away? | The lenses in VR device put the image at a distance. Early prototypes used infinite distance because reasons(similar how stars are essentially infinite distance away as far as your eye focus goes), it didn't really affect immersion, but now I understand the distance they use is less than that, not sure by how much.
Since the entire screen either is or isn't in focus, and there's no reason for eyes to shift focus distance, this may have been a problem. Turns out, it wasn't. Brain doesn't seem to use focus distance when deciding what the world is like, it's just a mundane task eyes do. | [
"Another technique to select and manipulate objects in 3D virtual spaces consists in pointing at objects using a virtual-ray emanating from the virtual hand. When the ray intersects with the objects, it can be manipulated. Several variations of this technique has been made, like the aperture technique, which uses a... |
why was dragon ball gt considered so bad compared to dragon ball and dragon ball z? | I don't know what the general criticisms are, but, personally, Z did a better job building tension and had far stronger villains/plot arcs. GT felt like a hokey pseudo-parody of Z. Then again, I was quite a bit older when I watched GT as well. | [
"Harris commented that \"Dragon Ball GT\" \"is downright repellent\", mentioning that the material and characters had lost their novelty and fun. He also criticized the \"GT\" character designs of Trunks and Vegeta as being goofy. Zac Bertschy of Anime News Network also gave negative comments about \"GT\", mentioni... |
A good biography of Lenin | There's a great little book called ["Lenin for Beginners"](_URL_0_), which I highly recommend.
If you're looking for something more standard, give [this one](_URL_2_) a go.
If you ask me, I'd say you can't view Lenin in a proper context without understanding the workings of the Party as well. The [official History of the CPSU](_URL_1_) is the best one for a complete overview as far as I'm concerned. | [
"Lenin: A Biography is a biography of the Marxist theorist and revolutionary Vladimir Lenin written by the English historian Robert Service, then a professor in Russian History at the University of Oxford. It was first published by Macmillan in 2000 and later republished in other languages.\n",
"Regarding Russian... |
are the acid levels in the hot springs at yellowstone park enough to dissolve a human body? | It's not so much his body was dissolved, it's more that his body was swept into the massive system of underground rivers flowing under Yellowstone.
I'm wondering if he could end up being blown out Old Faithful while school kids look on... It would make an epic field trip - or find a place in the plot line for a great horror story. | [
"Hot Springs Basin is located 15 miles (24 km) north-northeast of Fishing Bridge and has one of Yellowstone's largest collections of hot springs and fumaroles. The geothermal features there release large amounts of sulfur. This makes water from the springs so acidic that it has dissolved holes in the pants of peopl... |
Comrades: A World History of Communism - Its just me or this book is biased ? | **Part 1**
Ah yes, Robert Service, focal point of lots of controversy and yet still somehow getting glowing press reviews for the most part.
To put it very succinctly: Your impression that Service is biased is completely spot on, at least for both his books *Comrades* as well as for his more recent biography of Trotsky.
Seumas Milne writing for [The Guardian](_URL_0_), characterized *Comrades* as
> firmly in this neoconservative mould. From the first few pages, we are left in no doubt that, wherever it raised its head, communism was a bizarre and horrific historical detour. Unequivocally siding with the "totalitarian school" of Soviet historiography against the more even-handed "revisionists", his central argument is that, whatever the local variants, communists necessarily relied on dictatorship because of their lack of support, hare-brained socialist economics and reliance on an ideology, Marxism, that was inherently violent and totalitarian.
>
> In what often reads more like a polemic than a historical account, Service offers a relentlessly cartoonish portrayal both of communist politics and theory. Marx, Lenin and their followers had promised a "perfect society" and a "workers' paradise", Service claims absurdly. Revolution is explained as a "bacillus", communist leaders as variously "dotty", "foolish", "lunatic" and "gangsters" who were guilty of "rank hypocrisy". The accumulation of factual errors also scarcely inspires confidence: Allende's 1970s government was not "communist-led"; the Malayan communists fought the British not the Dutch in the 1950s; Antonio Gramsci didn't die in prison; and Germany's Spartacist uprising didn't take place in 1918.
Milne further accuses Service of delivering a polemic rather than a scholarly historical account. Dismissing the murder of one million Indonesian communists in a western-backed coup in 1965 in one sentence, Service, he writes "shows his colours with studied disdain for such policies as job security, narrow wage differentials and "discriminating in favour of the poorer citizens"."
Thought one of the biggest shortcomings of Service' book Milne points to is that Service completely overlooks and/or dismisses that communism as an ideology and a political movement did indeed have millions of supporters at one point or another in history. Now, whether one agrees with it or not is not the point when it comes to historical inquiry and so, the failure to distill and answer why an ideology, that as Service is so eager to point out, did take hold in Russia under extreme circumstance and then was exported to a third of the world to result in a number of dictatorial regimes did nonetheless attract millions of people to its cause, is the real shortcoming of the book. Writing about Communism as a project solely pursued and designed by a small number of conspiratorial elites wanting to establish a dictatorship for themselves while ignoring to explore the factors that made it so attractive to literally millions of followers not only demonstrates bias but also failure as a historian.
"Ok", I already hear some say, "Milne is hardly the best person to pass judgement here. After all, he is in the left-wing of the British labor party and recently became an important appointment of Jeremy Corbyn in the party." And while that is true (and does not diminish his criticism, especially when factual errors are concerned), Service has also been heavily criticized by people who are less easily dismissed as biased, foremost Bertrand M. Patenaude, fellow at the Hoover Institution and Stanford.
In 2009 Robert Service published *Trotsky, a biography*, which is attempting to do exactly what the title says. Generally well received by the press, it already started off with a misstatement of fact. Service claimed in his preface this was the first full length biography of Trotsky from someone outside the Soviet Union who is not a Trotskyite. A [claim](_URL_2_) that [is](_URL_3_) patently [untrue](_URL_4_) and inarguably [false](_URL_5_). A fact, none of his reviewers seemed initially to have picked up on.
Patenaude, an expert on Soviet Russia and former teacher of international security at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California (i.e. not a Trotskyite) had also published a book on Trotsky, called *Trotsky. Downfall of a Revolutionary* in 2009 and so was awarded the dubious honor of writing [a review of Service' book for the American Historical Review](_URL_1_) in 2011; a review about which one contributor at Inside Higher Education said "will earn a place in the annals of the scholarly take-down."
Patenaude eviscerates Service biography of Trotsky for its numerous factual errors and questionable interpretations. He sets out writing:
> It appears that he set out thoroughly to discredit Trotsky as a historical figure and as a human being. His Trotsky is not merely arrogant, self-righteous, and self-absorbed; he is a mass murderer and a terrorist, a cold and heartless son, husband, father, and comrade, and an intellectual lightweight who falsified the record of his role in the Russian Revolution and whose writings have continued to fool generations of readers—a hoax perpetuated by his hagiographer Isaac Deutscher. In his eagerness to cut Trotsky down, Service commits numerous distortions of the historical record and outright errors of fact to the point that the intellectual integrity of the whole enterprise is open to question.
Service main source and main exhibit in his efforts to paint a picture of Trotsky as dark and terrible as possible is Trotsky's autobiography *My life*, which he wrote in 1930 and of which Service claims to have access to a first draft significantly different from the published version. Enter Patenaude:
> Yet neither here nor anywhere else is Service able to provide a single example of a significant discrepancy between the published memoir and the draft. In fact, in his depiction of Trotsky's youth, Service relies almost entirely on the published version of My Life, not on earlier drafts. Service accuses Trotsky the memoirist of being “selective, evasive and self-aggrandizing” (p. xxi) (as if most memoirs do not fit this description), yet he reads other memoirs completely uncritically (for example, those of Gregory A. Ziv and Clare Sheridan) when they show Trotsky in an unfavorable light.
And it doesn't stop there. Concerning factual errors, Patenaude writes:
> I have counted more than four dozen. Service mixes up the names of Trotsky's sons, misidentifies the largest political group in the first Duma in 1906, botches the name of the Austrian archduke assassinated at Sarajevo, misrepresents the circumstances of Nicholas II's abdication, gets backward Trotsky's position in 1940 on the United States' entry into World War II, and gives the wrong year of death of Trotsky's widow. Service's book is completely unreliable as a reference. At times the errors are jaw-dropping. Service believes that Bertram Wolfe was one of Trotsky's “acolytes” living with him in Mexico (pp. 441, 473), that André Breton was a “surrealist painter” whose “pictures exhibited sympathy with the plight of the working people” (p. 453), and that Mikhail Gorbachev rehabilitated Trotsky in 1988, when in fact Trotsky was never posthumously rehabilitated by the Soviet government.
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"The Lost World of Communism is a three-part British documentary series which examines the legacy of communism twenty years on from the fall of the Berlin Wall. Produced by Peter Molloy and Lucy Hetherington, the series takes a retrospective look at life behind the Iron Curtain between 1945 and 1989, focusing on th... |
if a helicopter were to hover 12 hours without moving forward, would it be on the other side of the world? | No.
All of the air in the atmosphere is spinning with the Earth. If it wasn't there would constantly be very fast wind always travelling West - but there isn't.
Just like how the air moves with the Earth, a helicopter moves with the air.
This is a good watch which is kind of on topic (10 minutes): _URL_0_ | [
"A helicopter normally encounters this condition when attempting to hover out of ground effect above the hovering ceiling for the aircraft, hovering out of ground effect without maintaining precise altitude control, and while making downwind or steep, powered approaches when the airspeed drops to nearly zero.\n",
... |
How have the nutritional value of crops such a wheat changed over the last 1000 years and why? | This is nearly impossible to determine considering the chemical makeup of our foods hasn't been studied with modern peculiarity for very long. The history of enrichment and GMO sourcing would be a good start and you can almost rest assured that fortified foods are fortified for a reason. Unless there is a repository of un modified seeds not unlike the plant ark we'll never know as many of the components of these plants degrade, deaminate and deteriorate with exposure to air, water, light and anything else the cosmos throw at it. All in all we're better off now than ever for energy abundance as our foods, while overconsumption is a problem, offer more energy density and nutritional broad spectrum coverage than ever before.
MS in exercise science, health and human performance. I teach upper tier nutrition for performance as well as frosh/soph collegiate intro to nutrition courses.
A forensic anthropologist or evolutionary biologist might have better info. | [
"Sequencing the wheat genome completely is important for producers all over the world. Wheat currently makes up more than 20% of all calories consumed in the world, and as the global population increases, so does the need for wheat. Recently, however, wheat production has been stagnating because technological advan... |
Is it possible that dinosaur fossils played some role in the origin of dragon myths? | It is possible, yes, that fossils (not necessarily just dinosaur fossils) did play a role in the development of dragon myths. It's mostly all speculation, really.
Most fossils that people find are either recognizably some smallish organism, like a seashell or a small fish, or a disarticulated bone or piece of a bone. All perfectly laid-out skeletons just don't really happen very often at all, and even then it takes a keen eye to discern what is what.
We do know that prior to Georges Cuvier's pioneering work in comparative anatomy, people very often tended to assume large fossil bones were the bones of creatures that were still alive at the time, or possibly giant versions of them. In the Western world, it was also frequently assumed they were the remains of animals and people killed in Noah's flood. One particular thigh bone (now known to be from a type of meat-eating dinosaur) was originally thought to have been the thigh bone from a giant antediluvian person, then for the while the fossilized scrotum of said person, then recognized again for a leg and not a ballsack, and finally correctly identified as not from a flood-victim giant human at all.
Also, prior to Cuvier's work, we really didn't have a concept of extinction. The world at this point was also not fully-explored by any one group, so there was an idea that even though these giant critters may not be around *here* anymore, the might still be found out *there* somewhere. Thomas Jefferson actually gave specific instructions to Lewis and Clark for their westward exploration to try and find a living specimen of a giant ground sloth--an animal known from fossils and which the founding father assumed based on assumptions that were perfectly rational for the time to still be kicking around out *there* somewhere.
There are some speculations that specific fossils may have influenced certain mythological creatures. For example, some myths of the Griffin describe a four-legged creature with wings, a beak, a horn on the back of the head, and lives in the desert and guards gold. The dinosaur *Protoceratops* has four legs, shoulder blades that to the untrained can look sort of wing-like, a beak, a frill on the back of the head which if the sides break off--which is very common--can look like a horn, its remains are found in the deserts of Mongolia and China in areas where gold deposits are not unheard of. It's possible, maybe even plausible, but not really testable.
Stories of mythical beasts, like dragons, grow and change with the times. They ultimately have many sources, some from the natural world, some purely fantasy. Fossils may explain part of the stories, but not all of them.
Consider that if you go to the Roman and Medieval sources, a "dragon" is described many different ways, many of them only having a passing resemblance to what we today would agree on is a prototypical "dragon." For example, in some medieval bestiaries based on Pliny the Elder's works, dragons are described as giant snakes that live in the East (i.e. India), live in trees and hunt elephants by dropping on them from the trees and constricting them, and are deathly afraid of jaguars. | [
"Jones then argues against the common hypothesis that dragon myths might be motivated by primitive discoveries of dinosaur fossils (he argues that there are widespread traits of dragons in folklore which are not observable from fossils), and claims that the common traits of dragons seem to be an amalgam of the prin... |
why is hitting your child legal (corporal punishment) when hitting an adult isn't? | the fuzzy gray line lies around intention to discipline not intention to inflict harm. | [
"In England and Wales, section 58 of the Children Act 2004 enables parents to justify common assault or battery (crime) of their children as \"reasonable punishment\", but prevents the defence being used in relation to Assault occasioning actual bodily harm (i.e. when causing anything beyond \"transient and triflin... |
how does edward snowden's protection in russia work? | * Russia is not the US, so US law doesn't apply there. They can't just invade Russia and take him.
* The US must ask for Russia to "extradite" him (meaning to willingly turn him over to US authorities). Russia can choose to say no.
* They're saying no. | [
"Human Rights Watch said that if Snowden were able to raise the issue of NSA mass surveillance without facing espionage charges, he would not have left the United States in the first place. Human Rights Watch writes that any country where Snowden seeks asylum should consider his claim fairly and protect his rights ... |
Why do electric engines don't have gear box? | I'm not an engineer, but I am a physicist with a car hobby, so I think I can answer. The simplest answer has to do with the speeds of the energy source involved. Let me explain:
The reason why an internal combustion engine, such as the [reciprocating engine in most cars](_URL_1_), has such a variable "torque curve" is because, at a given rotation per minute (RPM), the cylinders are moving at a certain speed up and down. The [air-fuel](_URL_2_) mixture that is pulled into the cylinder and compressed during each cycle is ignited, and the [flame front](_URL_6_) propagates outward from the spark, increasing the pressure rapidly and pushing the cylinder downward. This downward, linear force is applied to the [crankshaft](_URL_3_), producing **torque**. The key is that the speed at which this ignition and rise in pressure happens is relatively slow, only a few tens of meters per second, and so at different RPMs the cylinders are moving at different speeds with respect to the flame front. This is also why engines have [ignition timing curves](_URL_5_): as cylinder speed increases, the ignition has to happen earlier and earlier so that the maximum compression will occur at peak burn.
Now, we've come up with a variety of very clever solutions to maximize torque across the RPM range, such as sophisticated engine management and [variable valve timing systems](_URL_4_), but it isn't perfect. Consequently, all engines have a certain RPM range where they produce the most torque.
Electric motors (there actually is no such thing as an electric "engine", since an engine is a thermodynamic machine), on the other hand, rely on the [interaction of magnetic and electric fields](_URL_0_) to generate force. These interactions happen extremely quickly, at a [large fraction of the speed of light](_URL_7_). Consequently, to the electromagnetic field, an electric motor is essentially sitting still, no matter how fast it goes. So the force that gets generated is pretty much constant, producing a very flat torque curve.
**TL;DR:** Ignition is slow relative to engine speeds, so there is an optimal engine speed for producing torque; the electromagnetic field is pretty much instantaneous relative to engine speeds, producing a flat torque curve in electric motors. | [
"Surprisingly, the three-speed manual gearbox, was mechanically a four-speed box with first gear blanked off. This was done due to the perceived high torque of the engine, so that first gear was deemed unnecessary.\n",
"A box motor, in railroad terminology, is a self-propelled boxcar, normally powered by electric... |
when financial companies "buy" commodities, how are they stored? or they buying "rights" to have them at that price? | no, sugar spoils anyway, you would never store it as an investment.
They own the future rights to buy sugar at a future date (hence why the contract is called a future).
when that date comes, they *could* demand physical delivery. This might make sense if we were talking about Delta airlines and they had a jet fuel future... Yes they could take and use the jet fuel, but due to logistical issues of such a thing, its almost never happens. They will settle in cash and the commodity will end go through the most efficient supply chain based on its location, delta will buy its fuel on the open market based on where it needs it.
Now, in other cases, like a Gold ETF, they may actually own gold. of course this is different, it doesnt spoil. in these cases, the gold is held in bank vaults around the world, NY, Zurich, London, ect. They spread it around to minimize risk. | [
"Commodities can be traded on financial markets, where there will be a single offer price (asking price), and bid price. Although there is a small spread between these two values the law of one price applies (to each).\n",
"A commodity market is a market that trades in the primary economic sector rather than manu... |
Has any virus or bacteria in humans ever mutated within us to then become a serious illness elsewhere in the animal kingdom? | _URL_0_
Chitrid disease in amphibians which is single handedly wiping out species across the earth is apparently spread by skin to skin contact from a fungus sometimes found on the hands of people.
It doesn't really affect people as far as I know.
Edit: And as far as I understand it didn't really start causing mass die offs until the 70's, could be a mutation, a sudden spread of a more virulent strain, or a sudden change in environment making it much more aggressive. | [
"A large proportion of viral pathogens that have emerged recently in humans are considered to have originated from various animal species. This is shown by several recent epidemics such as, avian flu, Ebola, monkey pox, and Hanta viruses. There is evidence to suggest that some diseases can potentially be re-introdu... |
what happens when a person such as myself, who's maybe worth $18,000 on a good day, gets sued for $10 million? | You retain an attorney and defend against the lawsuit. If you cannot afford an attorney, one may be willing to help you for free--there are legal aid societies dedicated to this, and American Bar Association asks all lawyers to donate some of their time each year. Defendants in highly publicized cases often receive donations from people who believe in their cause. You may be insured against (some kinds of) lawsuits, as found in many homeowner's insurance policies--if so, that'll come in handy now.
You could try to a settlement with the plaintiff. He is probably willing to slash his claim if it means he avoids the difficulty of a trial and the associated legal expenses for himself. Then, your payment is entirely according to your agreement with him. Let's say you believe yourself quite innocent, though, and go to trial--what if you lose, and are ordered to pay a large sum? (Not necessarily the amount the defendant originally asked for.)
You will typically establish a payment plan based on your ability to pay, slowly working to pay off that debt. If you do not pay as ordered, the plaintiff could ask for garnishment, meaning your employer would be required to withhold part of your wages. The court may transfer possession of your property to the defendant to help satisfy back payments, though state law protects a basic amount of property like your primary residence and retirement funds.
At the end of the day, though, perhaps you will never be able to satisfy the debt. People can cause a lot of damage and be liable for more than they expect to earn in a lifetime. Wise plaintiffs know this, and don't sue people who won't and can't pay--such people with no accessible assets or income to speak of are sometimes called "judgment proof." If there is an outstanding balance when you die, the plaintiff may recover it from your estate (the inheritance), potentially having access to assets that were legally protected during your lifetime. If the estate does not cover the bill, the plaintiff is out of luck and simply has to accept the loss of the remainder. | [
"There is a rule that \"Grama benizakin patur\". If somebody caused financial harm to somebody else via an action that was not guaranteed to harm them, the person cannot be forced by a court to pay, although he might be morally obligated to.\n",
"In 2008, she appeared as a defendant on \"The People's Court\". She... |
why do computers have a shutdown process instead of just cutting it's own power? | For the same reason that people generally lie down before going to sleep instead of just falling over: To avoid damage.
At any given time, a computer is running a lot of programs in the background, and they need to be safely closed before the computer shuts down. Many of them also save their state during their shutdown procedures, so they can resume where they were when the computer comes back on. These programs can be extremely important to the operation of the computer, and if things don't add up when it comes back on, the operating system itself won't run anymore. | [
"To shut down or power off a computer is to remove power from a computer's main components in a controlled way. After a computer is shut down, main components such as CPUs, RAM modules and hard disk drives are powered down, although some internal components, such as an internal clock, may retain power.\n",
"BULLE... |
internet infrastructure. | Inside your computer is something called a NIC (Network Interface Card). It has two main jobs - send data, and receive data.
Hook it up to another computer via an Ethernet cable and you have a simple network. Your computer's send is hooked up to the other's receive and vice-versa.
What if you want another computer? You add something called a Switch. All three computers now plug into the switch, rather than each other. The switch's job is to take data from one computer's "send" wire and send it to another computer's "receive" wire. To do this, it remembers the MAC Address of each NIC connected to it. (Every NIC has a unique MAC address set at the time of manufacture).
So now we have a basic network. Your neighbour John has done the same thing, and he now has his own network. You want to connect them together. Your Switch isn't going to want to have to remember every MAC address of every NIC being connected to and disconnected from every network, so...
Enter the Router. The Router does what it says on the tin - it routes traffic across networks. A router is like a computer with more than one NIC. (In fact, you can use an actual PC with two NICs as a router). One NIC will connect to the switch on your network, the other will connect to the switch in your neighbour's network.
The router will be set up with something called a "routing table" which is just information about the networks, now using IP (Internet Protocol) addresses rather than hardware MAC addresses, and where they are located - ie. Which NIC do I use to get traffic to John's network? (IP Addresses are structured for larger networks that NICs - ie. given a 'subnet mask', the router can work out which network an IP Address belongs to. So Routers tend to think in terms of networks, whereas switches tend to think in terms of Devices).
So when you send data to one of your neighbours computers, your computer will know that it's on a different network and will send it to the Router to deal with. Your computer doesn't know anything about John's network or how exactly to get there, and it doesn't need to. It just knows that the Router will take care of it. The router will look at the destination address, and send the packet to John's switch to be relayed to the destination.
Keep adding switches, routers, computers and other devices and the network gets bigger and bigger. As is the case with the internet. Also, the networks might not be directly connected together - data might have to travel across more than one subsection of the network to reach its destination.
Also, in a network the size of the internet, every router won't know about every other router on the network - it will only know about what it's connected to. To get data all the way across the internet, each router only needs to figure out the next 'hop' until the data gets to it's destination. You can see this happening by opening up a command prompt and typing:
tracert _URL_1_
That will show you the 'route' to the internet to get to _URL_1_. (Mine took 11 hops). Each entry in that list is a router. You'll probably find that the first one or two belong to your ISP.
The other thing is that routes can take different paths depending on many factors, such as if a segment of the network goes down, the routers can intelligently find alternate routes around the problem.
If the destination simply can't be reached, for example if [some old woman cuts the underground cable connecting America to other parts of the world](_URL_0_), the packets of data will just bounce around different routers until it times out. | [
"The infrastructure by which individuals, households, businesses, and communities connect to the Internet refers to the physical mediums that people use to connect to the Internet such as desktop computers, laptops, cell phones, iPods or other MP3 players, Xboxes or PlayStations, electronic book readers, and tablet... |
What are the best books on the everyday life of individuals in the past? | Well, there is Greenwood Press's *Daily Life in ________* series. These are of variable quality, at least the ones I've looked at. One of the strengths is the narrow scope of their focus. Like, there is a "Daily Life during the Spanish Inquisition," "Daily Life in Renaissance Italy", AND "Daily Life in the Reformation"; "Daily Life during the Black Death", "Daily Life in Chaucer's England", AND "Daily Life in Medieval Europe." That specificity goes a *long* way towards defeating the tendency to be overly general in accounts of daily life.
That said, books like that still do a fair amount of smoothing over--they're definitely on the more pop end of things. (Honestly, though, I'd say if you're looking for a starting point for writing historical fiction, you could do a whole lot worse!)
For the later Middle Ages, and medieval England specifically, there are two fantastic books I would further suggest: Ian Mortimer's *The Time Traveller's Guide to Fourteenth-Century England* (also the later one to 16C/Tudor England) and, more scholarly, Barbara Hanawalt's *The Ties That Bound*, which is about peasant life.
Once you move into the 19th century, or even the 18th and mayyybe the 17th in some cases, reading primary sources--diaries especially--can offer some really fabulous insight. If you can get ahold of some of the Mormon women's accounts of westward travel (Utah, California, etc), they are really interesting and fun reading. And Samuel Pepys--pronounced 'peeps', legit--is a good time in so many ways. | [
"\"A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived\" won gold at the 2017 Foreword INDIES Book Awards for science, and won the 2018 Thomas Bonner Book Prize. The book was also a 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award non-fiction finalist, featured on the 2017 Wellcome Book Prize longlist, and appeared on National Geogr... |
What is the worst anachronism: To impose modern theory on the past, or to assume that we're able to understand history "as it was" | Rankes 'bloss zu zeigen wie es eigentlich gewesen' is the core for your (and a historians) 'as it was'. Now, calling that an anachronism is in the light of Ranke a bit weird.
In 'as it was' histories, we are trying to recreate a (not the) picture of the past as best as we can, based on sources from that time. We are not using terminoligy or whatever out of historical context, we are simply holding historical sources to nothing but its own light. That is the basis of historical science and if done the right way, it is not anachronistic. | [
"In historical writing, the most common type of anachronism is the adoption of the political, social or cultural concerns and assumptions of one era to interpret or evaluate the events and actions of another. The anachronistic application of present-day perspectives to comment on the historical past is sometimes de... |
What actually causes you to throw up when you have the "stomach flu" ? | "Stomach flu" is a generic term for any number of illnesses--usually something like gastroenteritis--that are caused by an infection of the stomach and intestines. This causes inflammation all throughout the gastrointestinal tract, and makes it more sensitive. So eating, which always irritates the GI tract to some extent, is going to make the inflammation worse, to the extent that the vomit reflex gets triggered.
So, if you don't want to throw up, stick to foods that don't irritate the stomach as much. Bland carbs, water or Sprite/ginger ale (carbonation usually calms the stomach down a little bit), things like that, and stay away from spicy foods, alcohol, and overeating. | [
"The outlook depends on the cause. Most people recover within few hours or a day. While short-term nausea and vomiting are generally harmless, they may sometimes indicate a more serious condition. When associated with prolonged vomiting, it may lead to dehydration or dangerous electrolyte imbalances or both. Repeat... |
What would have pre-colonial North American battles looked like? | **The Early Colonial Example**
Looking at some of the earliest clashes between Colonists and Natives can give some indication of how groups at the "tribe/complex chiefdom" level of organization and population would have waged war. The general pattern is of a sort of sustained guerrilla warfare (i.e. [endemic warfare](_URL_8_)) with temporary flare-ups of more intense periods of surprise raids, ambushes, picking off easy/remote targets, and the occasional larger expedition to burn and pillage a settlement. That was the pattern seen in the [Anglo-Powhatan wars](_URL_6_), [the Pequot War](_URL_9_), and even in the largest early conflict, [King Phillip's War](_URL_5_).
This style of warfare is necessitated by low population densities and loose political control/organization, which both groups were experiencing at the time. The problem, of course, is that these are 17th century accounts, by which time epidemic diseases had either already swept through native populations, or were in the process of doing so. This particular wrinkle makes it difficult to truly say that this pattern of endemic warfare was a product of its time or a long standing and widespread cultural tradition. We do have early reports of contacts with some more established confederations like the Iroquois though, which do seem to indicate that consistent low-level warfare was not only an economic and political act, but also an important cultural institution. In particular the practice of ["mourning war"](_URL_7_) has been seen not only as a way to increase/replace population through taking captives, but also as a ritual response to death and a way to strengthen social bonds; sort of like an Irish wake, but with slightly more violence.
So while we don't (to my knowledge, someone else more knowledgeable is free to jump in) have information on the warfare practices of a large complex North American society like Cahokia, we do have evidence of a particular style of armed conflict from other groups in Eastern part of North America that everyone thinks of when they say "Native American," unless they are watching a Western, of course. On the other hand, we do have detailed accounts of pre-Columbian groups that, while a few cultural removes from the Eastern Woodlands tradition, did conduct large-scale state-level warfare. I speak of course of Mesoamerica, which is technically in North America, and particularly of the Aztecs (because I've got to keeping earning this flair somehow). Let's very briefly go over what a battle in that area would look like.
**The Aztec Example**
The Aztecs had a sort of universal draft system based on their organization of cities and towns in to neighborhoods called *calpulli*. This system also hosted a universal education system in the form of neighborhood schools called *telpochcalli* which all boys would attend for a few years starting around age 15 to learn the basics of warfare among other things. Through this system, the Aztecs could quickly raise tens of thousands of men in organized units for which to ware war during the dry (i.e. non-harvest/planting) season, which runs roughly from late Fall to mid Spring.
These neighborhood units would have their own insignia or particular color scheme to identify them and would rally around an experienced soldier denoted with a back-flag (*cuachpantli*), a few examples of which you can seen in the [*Codex Mendoza*](_URL_1_). Interspersed among the raw recruits would be veterans and/or members of military orders marked out by particular styles of dress, decoration, and hairstyle. Elite warriors, for instance, would wear whole body suits of thick cloth covered entirely in feathers for extra slickness and protection, which makes them sound like some sort of condom, now that I read that again. Another military order, the Shorn Ones (*Cuachchiqueh*) would have all but a single braided lock of hair cut off and their faces painted half-blue half-yellow or red. In short, the Aztec military wasn't just intimidating because of their numbers, but also because they had style.
Battle would begin with salvos of projectile fire from common troops armed with bows, but particularly with slings. Ceramic sling-stones of regular size and weight, whether made by the Aztecs or demanded in tribute, were regularly stockpiled. Another soldier equipped with a wooden shield covered in feathers (covering things in feathers was the Post-Classic Mexican equivalent of "put a bird on it," although the feathers did actually serve a functional purpose) would help to block in-coming fire from the enemy.
As the opposing forces closed and the ammo dwindled, the veteran soldiers would hurl [atl-atl darts](_URL_3_) to disrupt enemies ranks while closing the distance. The most experienced and skilled troops would lead the charge. Pairs of the previously mentioned cuahchicqueh, for instance, would traditionally the first to engage the enemy in melee combat, and the last to leave during a retreat. Rules about breaking rank were strict, the cuachpantli bearing "captains" would keep order in their immediate area, while an "officer corps" of nobility would signal larger troop movements and attacks using fires, smoke signals, and drums. Anyone fleeing a battle could expected *severe* repercussions.
Ross Hassig, who wrote the book Aztec warfare ([literally](_URL_4_)) and whom I'm drawing upon heavily here, pieced together first-hand Spanish and Native accounts, depictions in artwork, and the basic properties of the weapons used to come up with the accepted formation during melee combat. The ranks would be fairly open and broader rather than deep. Experienced/elite warriors wielding a [*macuahuitl*](_URL_2_) and shield, or a two handed macuahuitl, would form a string of nuclei down the ranks backed up by lesser ranking soldiers wielding *[tepoztopilli](_URL_0_)*, long slashing polearms. Basically you would have a series of duels between the best warriors taking place in the middle of two groups of pikeman/halberdiers who were simultaneously trying to help their duelist while also preventing the opposing group from doing the same. Reserve troops would be cycled in periodically.
| [
"In 1857, the Battle of Pima Butte was fought in the area of the mountains. The allied Yuma, Mohave, Yavapai and Apache peoples attacked the Maricopa village of Sacate. The Maricopa and their allies, the Akimel O'odham, defeated the attackers, leaving approximately 200 of them dead or wounded. It is notable for bei... |
Does holding up your cell phone really increase reception? | it's not that altitude intrinsically gives better signal, it is that your line of sight increases with altitude. If you can get better line of site to the tower, then you get better signal. if you have low buildings or rolling hills, a few feet could make all the difference. | [
"Radio waves decrease rapidly in intensity by the inverse square of distance as they spread out from a transmitting antenna. So the cell phone transmitter, which is held close to the user's face when talking, is a much greater source of human exposure than the cell tower transmitter, which is typically at least hun... |
why do we not have a universal chatting (im) service/client? or do we? | Basically [this](_URL_0_). To expand, each messenging service does well enough on its own to allow for its continued existence. Furthermore, most of them have some feature that makes them better for certain tasks. Skype is the king of video chatting. Facebook Messenger is, well, tied to Facebook. iChat blends seamlessly with your text messages.
> So the question is why has this been the case. Is it a technical issue? I understand that ftp and http are two entirely different things that serve entirely different purposes, so maybe even "translating" between them is a foolish idea; is this the same for IM?
Or is it a security issue? A money issue? Or are companies just being dickish with their closed-sourced services?
I think you are looking at it the wrong way. It's not that companies are conspiring to make you use 5 different IM services. It's just that they don't see a good reason to work together to produce a universal solution. | [
"TalkFree targets citizens and migrant workers in emerging countries who (1) cannot make online payments because they do not have access to Internet or mechanisms (e.g., credit card, PayPal) to make online payments; or (2) do not have access to VoIP due to legal restrictions. Unlike other VoIP providers, who cater ... |
can masturbating make your muscles bigger? | To grow muscle you need to do few reps with high exertion. Masturbation is the opposite of this. You will improve muscular endurance in this way but that does not make your muscles bigger. That's why weightlifters are bulky and marathon runners are skinny. | [
"It is physically possible for men with sufficient flexibility, penis size, or both, to perform fellatio on themselves as a form of masturbation; this is called autofellatio. Few men possess sufficient flexibility and penis length to safely perform the necessary frontbend.\n",
"Although uncommon, some men can ach... |
How appropriate is to call "The American Civil War", a "Civil War", instead of something like "Southern States Revolt"? | There's a lot of debate on 'what' the war was, which has carried on to today. And revisionism is a hotbed topic between the majority of America and regional nationalists like the *League of the South,* or the *Sons of Confederate Veterans.* (Let alone the overtly racist KKK.) There are more than a few places in the rural south where mentioning "The Civil War" will get you into an argument over the 'true' name, "The War of Northern Aggression" or "War between the States."
Now putting the context aside...
The answer to your question obviously depends on exactly how 'Civil War' is defined. [Merriam Webster](_URL_0_) defines it as, "A war between groups of people in the same country." As does [Oxford Dictionaries](_URL_2_).
More importantly, we can look at the definition in terms of international law...
> "The common scholarly definition has two main criteria. The first says that the warring groups must be from the same country and fighting for control of the political center, control over a separatist state or to force a major change in policy. The second says that at least 1,000 people must have been killed in total, with at least 100 from each side." ^2
([Edward Wong](_URL_1_), *A Matter of Definition: What Makes a Civil War? And who Declares it so?*)
Finally, we can see that it fits the American legal definition...
> Civil war exists when two or more opposing parties within a country resort to arms to settle a conflict or when a substantial portion of the population takes up arms against the legitimate government of a country. Within International Law distinctions are drawn between minor conflicts like riots, where order is restored promptly, and full-scale insurrections finding opposing parties in political as well as military control over different areas. When an internal conflict reaches sufficient proportions that the interests of other countries are affected, outside states may recognize a state of insurgency. A recognition of insurgency, whether formal or de facto, indicates that the recognizing state regards the insurgents as proper contestants for legitimate power. Although the precise status of insurgents under international law is not well-defined, recognized insurgents traditionally gain the protection afforded soldiers under international rules of law pertaining to war. A state may also decide to recognize the contending group as a belligerent, a status that invokes more well-defined rights and responsibilities. Once recognized as a belligerent party, that party obtains the rights of a belligerent party in a public war, or war between opposing states. The belligerents stand on a par with the parent state in the conduct and settlement of the conflict. In addition, states recognizing the insurgents as belligerents must assume the duties of neutrality toward the conflict.^3
(*West's Encyclopedia of American Law*)
Summary: It's very clear that though the Confederacy's war aim was not to seize control of the entire government, it's still accurate to refer to separatist movements as 'Civil Wars.'
Sources:
1 - I use to be a member of Louisiana's *Sons of Confederate Veterans* and a serial 'Lost Causer' in my misguided teens. I live in Mississippi now, and I've been in countless arguments with Southern friends over this very topic.
2 - Edward Wong, *A Matter of Definition: What Makes a Civil War? And who Declares it so?*
3 - West's Encyclopedia of American Law, second edition
EDIT: Added Summary | [
"The most common name for the American Civil War in modern American usage is simply \"The Civil War\". Although used rarely during the war, the term \"War Between the States\" became widespread afterward in the Southern United States. During and immediately after the war, historians often used the term \"War of the... |
Is there going to be a WW3? Why weren't there any major wars like WW1 and WW2 in the past 67 years? | As DrNoFriends said, nuclear proliferation has played a huge role. The world's major powers have been reluctant to engage in war with each other, with the risk of mutually assured destruction looming. Another important thing to keep in mind is that the power distribution throughout the world is drastically different now than before either World War I or World War II. Let's look at them both in order (note: obviously, this isn't by any means a comprehensive overview of things, but I think it touches on most of the major points):
Before World War I, Europe was populated by several imperial powers, each of which were equal enough in stature that one could not stand alone against an alliance of the rest of them. So, the alliance system that eventually tipped Europe into war gradually took shape. Once one of the powers declared war on another, the dominoes started to fall, and we all know what happened after.
So, let's look at Cold War Europe now. A system of alliances existed (and still in some ways does exist), but it was structured quite differently. At the turn of the century, each of the major nations had similar levels of power and strength, and they were (mostly) equal partners in their respective alliances. When it came to Warsaw Pact and NATO, however, each of these were dominated by the two superpowers, with other states being largely relegated to junior or even puppet status. While the smaller European nations may have been somewhat belligerent toward each other, they couldn't really move without the support of the US and the USSR, who both, again, feared escalation to nuclear war.
Another factor prior to World War I was the imperial ambitions of the major empires present, who had claims and counter-claims that conflicted throughout the third world at the time, which also led to escalated tensions. European forces fought over these colonies at the time (though colonial troops played major roles), and several times prior to World War I, wars that began as colonial conflicts overseas the escalated into European wars. Post-World War II, though, most of the imperialist conflicts were fought mostly as proxy wars, with one of the major powers fighting against a native enemy with supplies, weapons, and "advisors" provided by their opposite. Again, they were very careful not to let things escalate into open conflict between the superpowers or the major alliances.
OK, so now let's look at the situation leading up to World War II. Again, we have multiple major powers - the Allies, the Soviet Union, and Germany and Italy, each of which had conflicting ideologies, and in the latter two cases, ambitions over the rest of Europe (and in Italy's case, over Britain and France's African and Middle Eastern colonies as well). This is a simplistic view of things, but once Germany became aggressive, both the Allies and the Soviet Union had a vested interest in checking her expansion and escalating power.
Now, going back to Cold War Europe again - as mentioned before, the balance of power was rather different. Rather than three competing groups, we have just two, led by superpowers. Since there's no wild card third power here, they concentrate on each other, control their subordinate nations, and avoid conflict with each other as much as possible.
Now we're in the post-Cold War era. China is considered by many to be a new superpower, and Russian no longer has anywhere near the power that it once did. Will we see a World War III? Possible, but personally speaking, I doubt it. The spectre of MAD still looms over everything, especially with nuclear proliferation spreading further, to India, Pakistan, and other former third-world countries. Proxy wars do and will continue to exist, as it's a lot more economically feasible and safer to fund terrorists, insurgents, and other proxy armies rather than getting directly involved in conflicts. Direct wars between nations probably will continue, but superpowers have a vested interest in avoiding getting sucked too far into them - for example, if war between Pakistan and India breaks out, although the US is nominally Pakistan's ally, and India gets a great deal of aid from Russia, neither country will want to get involved, and will instead try very hard to broker a truce instead. I think it's very unlikely that a true World War III will break out, since there's comparatively a lot more at risk now.
**tl;dr - Fewer superpowers and fewer power blocs, plus the threat of nuclear war, is why there haven't been any true world wars since 1945.** | [
"World War II is generally viewed as having its roots in the aftermath of World War I, in which the German Empire under Wilhelm II, with its Central Powers, was defeated, chiefly by the United Kingdom, France, and the United States.\n",
"Prior to the beginning of the Second World War, the First World War (1914–19... |
What is happening when you drive on a highway and have only one window down? | Pretty much the same thing that happens when you blow across a jug. Essentially, the stream of air hits the open window / jug top. The leading edge of the stream of air creates a vortex, and spins off. There's a low density region that follows, which helps to create the next vortex. This cascades for as long as the stream of air is supported. The rate at which the vortexes peel off depends on the geometry of your car / the jug, and how fast you're going. SO, when you change your car, like opening up another window, you change how the air bounces off. Flutes and pipe organs work on the same principle, except they're tuned to make the air vortexes sound like amazing music.
[Here's a video that visualizes this kind of phenomena.](_URL_0_) The stream of air is coming on the left, in the middle of the screen, and the vortexes are peeling off on the right, at some frequency (which is what you would hear as sound). | [
"All cars must have a nylon window net to protect the driver from flying debris and to contain the driver’s arms during a crash. In addition, the drivers are instructed to lower the window net after a wreck to signify that they are uninjured.\n",
"BULLET::::- In case a person, while exiting a car from a driver si... |
why do so many free wifi hotspots have a gateway page? | There are concerns that if you use a wifi connection and you commit computer crimes, libel or harassment the owner of the wifi connection could be held liable. The boilerplate text provides a mechanism for the wifi owner to disclaim liability for your actions. | [
"A hotspot gateway is a device that provides authentication, authorization and accounting for a wireless network. This can keep malicious users off of a private network even in the event that they are able to break the encryption.\n",
"A wireless hotspot gateway helps solve guest user connectivity problems by off... |
Did scientists at Los Alamos genuinely believe that atomic bombs could ignite the earth's atmosphere? | No. Their general opinion was that the atomic bombs couldn't "ignite" the atmosphere (the suggestion was that the bomb might be able to trigger a fusion reaction). The only dissenting opinion was Arthur Compton, who was not convinced of the complete impossibility of it, but he didn't think it likely (he estimated the probability at less than 1 in a million).
See _URL_0_ for more detail and references. | [
"On November 3 Dr. Kaplan brought the plan to the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board at the Pentagon. Kaplan by this time had decided the fireballs might be a new type of rare meteor. Nonetheless, most of the scientists remained puzzled by the brightness, trajectories, and absence of sound. Seeming to contradict h... |
why bodybuilding competitions are not considered eating disorders? | It *can* be a disorder. There is a specific name for it: Muscle Dysmorphia.
That said, disorders are patterns of thought, not single occurrences. It has to control your entire life, not just occur one day every once in a while. | [
"Eating disorders are generally not a primary concern amongst youth athletes, however they are unusually prevalent in wrestling and aesthetic sports such as gymnastics. These place heavy emphasis upon weight and body image as ingredients for success in competition. In order to compete, 81% of wrestlers will deliber... |
Friedrich Engels owned multiple factories. Did he manage them based on communist principles? | The simple answer to this is "No, he did not". Now, this is not because Engels was a hypocrite,but rather because of the following two reasons:
a) Friedrich Engels never actually owned any factories.
There were plenty of factories within the Engels estate, both in Germany and Britain, but because of Friedrichs radical views, his father decided against Friedrich ever getting ownership of any of the factories. The closest Friedrich got, was when he in 1864 made partner in the enterprise.
b) Throughout all of Marx' and Engels' writings, they never wrote anything about how to manage industries, or how the Socialist mode of production would function. After Marx' death, Engels and Kautsky attempted to do so, but never finished any coherent works on the issue. To this day, Orthodox and Classical Marxism has always been more of a critique of the Capitalist mode of production, than a prescriptive ideology about how society should function
Sources:
Green, John; *Engels: A Revolutionary Life*; 2008
Hunt, Tristram; *The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels*; 2009
Kautsky, Karl; *Friedrich Engels: His Life, His Work and His Writings*; 1899 | [
"Wehrwirtschaftsführer (WeWiFü) were, during the time of Nazi Germany (1933–1945), executives of companies or big factories called 'rüstungswichtiger Betrieb' (company important for the production of war materials).\n",
"Geheimrat Koppel, who owned \"Auergesellschaft\", was later intimately involved in the financ... |
how come some peppers "burn" your skin if you touch them, but your mouth doesn't get burned if you eat them? | So it depends on the pepper, but it's not a burn like a fire would cause.
When it comes to spicy peppers, the reason you get the spicy sensation in your mouth is because of a chemical called Capsaicin. This chemical opens up the calcium channels in your tongue which tricks your body into thinking that it's on fire (the tongue has a hard time telling the difference between actual fire and capsiacin).
If the levels of this chemical are high enough in the pepper, the same thing will happen on your skin. | [
"Electrical burns in the mouth are usually caused by chewing on live electrical wiring (an act that is relatively common among young children). Saliva acts as a conducting medium and an electrical arc flows between the electrical source and the tissues, causing extreme heat and possible tissue destruction.\n",
"6... |
how can thailand go through a military coup when the same king is still in power, and has been for so many years? | The King of Thailand doesn't have any real power. Thailand is a constitutional monarchy, just like England. | [
"On 19 September 2006, less than a month before the scheduled elections, members of the Royal Thai Army staged a coup d'état against the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. It is the country's first coup in 15 years, though the practice used to be commonplace, with 17 having occurred between 1932 and 1... |
why does water taste worse when our throat is sore? | Not a doctor but I get the same thing, and I would say it's because the throat is infected and you're getting teh bacteria into your mouth and on your tongue. | [
"A sore throat is usually from irritation or inflammation. The most common cause (80%) is acute viral pharyngitis, a viral infection of the throat. Other causes include other infections (such as streptococcal pharyngitis), trauma, and tumors. Gastroesophageal (acid) reflux disease can cause stomach acid to back up ... |
why does football go by scores of 7 instead of 1 ' s like hockey and soccer? | It doesn't "go by scores of 7." There are different ways to score points, and each type of score is worth a certain amount of points. Some are only possible in certain situations. A common misconception is that a touchdown is worth 7 points - it's actually worth 6. | [
"Scoring is the same as in 11-man football, with the exceptions being on the point after touchdown attempt and the field goal. A point-after kick is worth two points, while a conversion made by running or passing the ball is worth one point; this is the opposite of standard 11-man football. In addition, a field goa... |
why are some viruses shaped like an icosahedron? | Most likely because it's a compact shape that can be built easily (make a triangle of protein 8 times, join them together).
Viruses hijack the cells of other creatures (or bacteria) to reproduce, so they need to keep things super simple. | [
"Capsids are broadly classified according to their structure. The majority of viruses have capsids with either helical or icosahedral structure. Some viruses, such as bacteriophages, have developed more complicated structures due to constraints of elasticity and electrostatics. The icosahedral shape, which has 20 e... |
why is gasoline sold per 9/10 gallon? | That is not 9/10 of a gallon. It's 9/10 of a cent.
When you see the price "$3.78 9/10", that's really $3.789 per gallon, not $3.78 per 9/10 of a gallon. | [
"In 2011 the United States Environmental Protection Agency introduced the \"gallon gasoline equivalent\" as a unit of energy because their research showed most U.S. citizens do not understand the standard units. The gallon gasoline equivalent is defined as 33.7 kWh, or about 1.213 joules.\n",
"Gasoline contains a... |
How CRT TV controls the beams so quickly back in the old days? | Well superhuman speed maybe but when it comes to electronics it is a fairly low speed thing.
Realize that the vertical refresh happens only 50/60 times per second - that's glacial speed, even for the 1930s electronics when tubes and oscillators running up to hundreds of MHz existed already. In fact, the 50/60Hz is originally derived from the mains frequency, generated by a spinning (i.e. mechanical) generator at a power plant.
The horizontal ray deflection needs to generate 525 (NTSC) or 625 (PAL) lines during that time. So that gives you (1/50) / 625 = 32us/line duration, thus 31.25kHz line frequency (for PAL). Again, that's very slow when it comes to electronics, it is just above the audio frequencies (\~20kHz). And that is neglecting the fact that the TV was interlaced, so only drawing half of the lines during each frame.
The only thing that needs to be fast is generating pixels within the line, because you have only those 32us to do so. So you are in tens of MHz pixel clock frequencies and up. However, with the analog TV **there are no pixels\*** \- the camera was scanning the image a the same speed and outputting an analog voltage corresponding to the brightness of the area of the imaging tube as the scanning electron beam passed over it (e.g. vidicon tube). This was reproduced in the receiver in the same way - a smoothly changing signal was modulating the current (and thus brightness) of the electron beam in the CRT as it was sweeping across the line.
Electronically, all you need to make a beam sweep is two linear ramp signals, one running at the vertical and the other at the horizontal frequency and synchronized with the incoming signal - that's what the "sync" pulses are for, to trigger the oscillators (well, in a real TV it is a bit more complex using PLL and such for robustness but the idea is the same).
So all of this was pretty much within reach, it wasn't much more complex than the contemporary radio circuits. In fact, the early television research has been done even using mechanical scanning, using a rotating wheel with a spiral of holes - Nipkow disc. Also the TV standards like NTSC and PAL didn't appear out of nowhere, other systems with fewer lines were common before that.
> also any reason no manufacturer tried to use more sets of cathode ray for higher resolution and faster refresh rate?
That has been probably tried but it was a niche thing for special purposes in the labs (e.g. multi-beam oscilloscope CRTs). The classic CRT design is well capable of full HD (1920x1080) resolution at 120Hz with a single electron gun and one set of deflection coils (high end PC monitors) or e.g. the Japanese HDTV TV standard going back to the 80s (1125 lines@60Hz). A multi-beam system would only cost a lot more for little gain when there were no signal sources capable of feeding such CRT anyway.
& #x200B;
\*Pixels are a computer thing that came much later with raster displays and cheap computer memory required for frame buffers. Original computer displays were so called "vector displays" that didn't work with pixels at all but were directly drawing lines ("vectors") by steering the electron beam around the screen. | [
"In a CRT television, the electron beam is moved in a raster scan on the screen. By adjusting the strength of the beam current, the brightness of the light produced by the phosphor on the screen can be varied. The cathode ray tube allowed the development of all-electronic television. \n",
"In conventional black a... |
Is there any plausible evidence for occurrences of single combat by "champions" or highly esteemed soldiers in the field of combat? | Single combat is mentioned quite frequently in the history of Ancient Rome – the Horatii's defeat of the Alba Longan Curiatii in the 7th century BC is reported by Livy to have settled a war in Rome's favor and subjected Alba Longa to Rome; Marcus Claudius Marcellus took the spolia opima from Viridomarus, king of the Gaesatae, at the Battle of Clastidium (222 BC); and Marcus Licinius Crassus from Deldo, king of the Bastarnae (29 BC).
| [
"Instances of single combat are known from Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The champions were often combatants who represented larger, spectator groups. Such representative contests and stories thereof are known worldwide.\n",
"Sometimes however, such single combat would merely initiate a battle rather t... |
what's all the fuss about megaupload? do that many people really need file storage? | Online storage is generally seen as the way of the future. If you have a fire at home and your hard drive is destroyed, what happens to your data? If you collaborate with people on many projects, how do you keep your files in sync? If you work at home and on the road and in the workplace, how can you keep your data in check? All of these are solved by online storage.
Edit: also pirating. | [
"People who used Megaupload for personal and business storage, such as large audio and video files for family and work, have also voiced their complaints about the fact that they no longer had access to their files on the service. Examples cited in the media included staff at public interest group \"Public Knowledg... |
Does motion/speed influence sound waves? | Absolutely. It's called the [Doppler effet](_URL_0_). A source moving towards the observer will sound higher pitched, and a source moving away from the observer will sound lower.
The same effect happens with light, too! Sources moving towards the observer look more blue, and away look more red.
E: As pointed out by /u/Patbott, I mistakenly switched red and blue. | [
"BULLET::::- Motion of the medium itself. If the medium is moving, this movement may increase or decrease the absolute speed of the sound wave depending on the direction of the movement. For example, sound moving through wind will have its speed of propagation increased by the speed of the wind if the sound and win... |
since all digital memory has to be stored as physical hard copies, will we ever have an information technology crisis? | We're going to have a lot of other problems before we run out of computer storage. Silicon is one of the most commonly occurring elements on Earth, and it doesn't take all that much to create a flash drive or solid state drive. Plus we can make storage out of other things too, like plastic (CD/DVD/Blu-Ray) and aluminum (hard drives).
The more likely problem is that we'll have too much data and no fast way to search through all of it. | [
"A common attack on digital evidence is that digital media can be easily altered. However, in 2002 a US court ruled that \"the fact that it is possible to alter data contained in a computer is plainly insufficient to establish untrustworthiness\" (US v. Bonallo, 858 F. 2d 1427 - 1988 - Court of Appeals, 9th).\n",
... |
how do machines calculate body fat percentage? | Usually scale use two electrod under your feet and use Tiny Ac current. By measuring the impedance and frequency responce of the human body they can deduce the ammount of fat and water. | [
"In contrast with clinical tools, one relatively inexpensive type of body fat meter uses the principle of bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) in order to determine an individual's body fat percentage. To achieve this, the meter passes a small, harmless, electric current through the body and measures the resistan... |
Can a fruit without seeds be genetically modified? | Most likely, no. Most fruits and vegetables are the result of simple breeding (that we've been using for millenia) experiments to develop produce with the most desirable qualities. If that's your friend's reasoning for not eating oranges, then there isn't anything see can eat except what she finds in the wild. | [
"Seedless fruits can develop in one of two ways: either the fruit develops without fertilization (parthenocarpy), or pollination triggers fruit development, but the ovules or embryos abort without producing mature seeds (stenospermocarpy). Seedless banana and watermelon fruits are produced on triploid plants, whose... |
How did Houston communicate with the astronauts on the moon? | [USB](_URL_0_). But not the adapter type. Radio waves - the general method of communication in space for basically everything (laser links are a very recent development).
By changing the amplitude or (better) the frequency of the radio waves you emit many times per second you can transmit information. | [
"During a mission the capsule communicators (CAPCOMs), always fellow astronauts, were the only people who normally would speak to the crew. For Apollo 15, the CAPCOMs were Allen, Brand, C. Gordon Fullerton, Gordon, Henize, Edgar D. Mitchell, Parker, Schmitt and Alan B. Shepard.\n",
"For long-duration missions the... |
If male lyrebirds are so good at mimicking the sounds of other objects and animals , how do female lyrebirds know what is a bird and what is the real deal? | Having seen many lyrebirds to the south of Sydney, it seemed to me that they're curious about any loud noise. I'm going to guess the the calls attract the female's attention, but it's the courtship displays which count the most. | [
"A lyrebird is either of two species of ground-dwelling Australian birds that compose the genus Menura, and the family Menuridae. They are most notable for their superb ability to mimic natural and artificial sounds from their environment, and the striking beauty of the male bird's huge tail when it is fanned out i... |
Is the graphical fidelity of games limited by computational power available currently or is it very difficult to make a realistic looking game? | It's both. You need a lot of data to represent all the realistic details, and that means either scanning them from real life objects (limited by scanner quality, issues with lighting, animation etc.), generating them procedurally (requires effort to make it look realistic), or creating them in the traditional ways (a lot of artists' work).
It's further complicated by the "uncanny valley" issue: the closer you get to the realistic looks, the more discrepancies you notice with the real life, making it look "just a bit off", while those discrepancies are usually overlooked with stylized visuals.
And as a game developer, I can say that when people want "realistic graphics" etc., they actually mean "like in a movie". And movies are not realistic, they use a lot of tricks to get a good looking picture, often fighting against realistic lighting etc.
| [
"The computational complexity of a game describes the asymptotic difficulty of a game as it grows arbitrarily large, expressed in big O notation or as membership in a complexity class. This concept doesn't apply to particular games, but rather to games that have been generalized so they can be made arbitrarily larg... |
Who really built the Kaaba in Mecca | There is no simple answer to this question, I'm afraid. As has already been posted on here, Islamic tradition - and the tradition at the center of the Haaj - states that it was a construction of the Prophet Abraham, who had traveled there to settle down with Hagar and Ishmael, although some stories even suggest it was a home for earlier Prophets, too. It's primary significance for a Muslim today, though - the events of the Islamic pilgrimage, or Hajj - are largely a reenactment of the events that are purported to have happened during the lifetime of Abraham, as well as the guidance of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad.
That Mecca was a holy site for quite some time before the coming of Islam is also known, and Islamic tradition itself recognizes this, too. It argues that the Arabs of the region had had their faith corrupted and had become polytheists, and the home of Abraham that had been built in Mecca - the Ka'ba - had become a shrine of veneration to the numerous Gods of the Arabian milieu. Mecca is therefore recorded as having become a holy place among the Arabs, a sanctuary (Arabic: *haram*) where the constant in-fighting and blood feuds that categorized ancient and late antique Arabia were not permitted to occur. This allowed trade to thrive, and it is argued that the worship of the many Arabian deities brought wealth to Mecca and the region.
Islamic traditions also says that once the Prophet Muhammad had established his new religion in the nearby town of Medina. After successfully gaining control of Mecca, he destroyed all of the idols of the Arabian deities that had been placed by the Arabs inside the Ka'ba. The site has been the location of pilgrimage ever since, although that pilgrimage has changed and developed over the near 1400 years since its establishment, of course! The [wikipedia page on the Ka'ba](_URL_4_) is actually quite good in helping to explain some of the events that surround the Islamic hajj, and is a really great starting point for better understanding why it is important to Muslims.
Aside from Islamic tradition, we do know that Mecca was a site of Arabian religion prior to the coming of Islam, and work has been done to reconstruct what Arab life would have been like in the region prior to Muhammad's revelation. Robert Hoyland's [*Arabia and the Arabs*](_URL_3_) is an excellent source of information for the pre-Islamic religious traditions if you want to know more. For a more basic introduction, Karen Armstrong's early chapters [here](_URL_6_) are foundational reading that includes much of the information I've mentioned.
There is also a very clear argument to be main *against* the Islamic tradition for the practical purpose of what became the Hajj. If we can say, for instance, that the Meccan economy was thriving because of its role as a center of religion, and/or if we can say that there were Arabs in the region who were committed to the ceremonies and religious practices that already existed in Mecca, it could have been a very shrewd political move for Muhammad. To incorporate already established religious rituals and traditions into his "new" religion would have provided a comfortable transition for those committed to the old ways, while ensuring the local elites remained in an area shielded from warfare and where pilgrims would continue to come and spend money.
As for specifics on the building itself, we don't have great or reliable details on the condition of the structure prior to the coming of Islam. Not much else can be said there. I've mentioned this in a previous post, but the Ka'ba has actually been raided, damaged, repaired, and significantly rebuilt many times just over the 1400 years since Islam's establishment. This has included combat in the second Islamic Civil war between the Caliph [Abd al-Malik b. Marwan](_URL_5_) and another claimant, [Abd Allah b. al-Zubayr](_URL_0_) where the structure was either completely reconstructed or damaged depending on reports, a raid by the [Qarmatians](_URL_7_) in the tenth century that saw the famed "black stone" stolen from Mecca temporarily, and subsequent damage a number of times in the Ottoman period. An excellent source for some of the building work that has taken place around the Ka'ba and the Mosque which was built to surround it - the Masjid al-Haram - can be found [here.](_URL_2_)
Lastly, I think it important to mention that the the way most people think the Ka'ba looks is from pictures which almost always include the special shroud which is created to cover it, known in Arabic as *kiswa*. The structure beneath the shroud is quite [plain](_URL_1_).
Edit: Clarity | [
"The \"Kaaba\", a cuboid structure located within the \"Masjid al-Ḥarām\" (\"Sacred Mosque\") in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, according to Islamic tradition was rebuilt by Ibrahim (Abraham) and his son Ismail (Ishmael), and is one of the holiest places in Islam. During his life the Prophet Muhammad laid the Black Stone in ... |
when you mix the same quantity of cold and hot water in a bucket, is the result the average of the two temperatures? | In a perfectly closed system with no loss of temperature to the air or buckets, yes. A 50 degree bucket and a 100 degree bucket will make a 75 degree double bucket.
In reality it will be slightly less than 75 as some heat is lost to the bucket and the air.
| [
"Temperature is a quantity for which there is an absence of concatenation operations. We cannot pour a volume of water of temperature 40 °C into another bucket of water at 20 °C and expect to have a volume of water with a temperature of 60 °C. Temperature is therefore an \"intensive\" quantity.\n",
" The temperat... |
what is the point of having the marine corps and the army separated? | The missions of the Marine Corps and the Army are entirely different, those differences came out of design and necessity. The Marines are a department of the navy, operating as their own entity and are constantly defending why they exist.
The Marines are referred to as "America's expeditionary force in readiness", they are always forward deployed ready to go into hotspots around the world. Generally Marines are sent first to gain a foothold of beachheads, ingress routes, supply lines, etc. Following that same general thought process, again generally they're meant to get in and get out fast and then transfer authority to a much larger force, like the U.S. Army who can better maintain a protracted conflict. However that has not been the case in recent wars/ conflicts.
Also the Marines are the only force that be called upon to react to conflict and or go to war or really do anything without the authorization of congress, the President holds authority over the Marine Corps and can "send them in" at his own discretion.
Also the Air Force was born out of the Army and was originally the Army Air Corps and didn't become its own branch of service until 1947.
The Army is responsible for land based operations where the USMC is responsible to maritime operations... soldiers of the sea. Their mission is as follows, from wikipedia: The United States Army serves as the land-based branch of the U.S. Armed Forces. §3062 of Title 10 US Code defines the purpose of the army as:[8][9]
Preserving the peace and security and providing for the defense of the United States, the Commonwealths and possessions and any areas occupied by the United States
Supporting the national policies
Implementing the national objectives
Overcoming any nations responsible for aggressive acts that imperil the peace and security of the United States
Also can confirm stuff about Marines, am one. | [
"The existence of the Marine Corps as the independent service was in question in 1945–1947, because newly appointed President Harry S. Truman intended the reorganize the United States Armed Forces. Due to cuts in Marine Corps budget, the threat of merging in the United States Army was more realistic. Platt was mean... |
why does it seem like the large majority of movies from the 80s were set in either chicago or illinois in general? | John Hughes was arguably the 80s movie king, and he filmed most of his stuff in and around Chicago. | [
"Chicago became a leader in motion pictures with innovative trailblazers and an interested public. In 1907, Chicago had more theaters per capita than any other city in the United States. Nickelodeons or five-cent theaters became extremely popular with the number of venues growing each year until the Great Depressio... |
How much value has been placed on humor by societies of the past? Has being funny always been considered such a positive trait as it is today? | Rhetoric scholar here. Cicero and Quintillian wrote extensively about the persuasive use of humor, and at least some of Cicero's reputation as an an orator derived from his wit.
Roman jokes tend to seem [not too funny](_URL_0_) to contemporary taste, though. | [
"The style of humor that flourished in the United States during the latter half of the 19th century was shared by DeQuille, Artemus Ward, Orpheus C. Kerr, Petroleum V. Nasby, Major Jack Downing, and most notably Mark Twain. It has since been theorized that America's hunger for this type of humor sprang from a sort ... |
what keeps people who work at kfc/coca-cola from stealing a sample of their secret recipes, reverse engineering them, and then selling them? | Not a huge amount, really. We already pretty much know what's in these products (I mean, with Coke, you can basically just read the label). The difficulty is only getting the exact formulation and mixing right. For most people, the prohibitive part of that is not knowing how it's done - it's having access to the kind of production chain that can produce that product consistently and cheaply.
Nobody buys KFC because their recipe is so much better than anywhere else. They buy it because it's convenient and consistent. Stealing or even improving on the recipe isn't (relatively) difficult, but entering the market as a competitor is. | [
"A copy of the recipe, signed by Sanders, is held inside a safe inside a vault in KFC's Louisville headquarters, along with eleven vials containing the herbs and spices. To maintain the secrecy of the recipe, half of it is produced by Griffith Laboratories before it is given to McCormick, who add the second half.\n... |
Nomadic animals | Migratory describes species which regularly return to the same spot at a particular point in time. Examples (as you noted) are most frequently birds, but also many marine mammals (humpback whales for example) and sea turtles. These species usually move to foraging areas in one part of the world where food is abundant, then migrate to breeding grounds (which are often warmer, which increases offspring survival rates).
Nomadic animals generally have no fixed point to return to. I notice on the wiki for black swans that they nomadic within Australia - This strategy has likely evolved because unpredictable weather means they cannot have a fixed breeding ground - they just have to go wherever conditions are suitable.
Another example I can think of is army ants (for example *Echiton burchellii*), the food source of these ants is ephemeral as they voraciously forage in whatever area their nest is in. After removing all available forage, they then move to a different site. They have no particular fixed area to return to - they just need to move when the food supply has been exhausted. They can do this easily as their nest is a 'bivouac' formed of their own bodies. | [
"Nomads keep moving for different reasons. Nomadic foragers move in search of game, edible plants, and water. Australian Aborigines, Negritos of Southeast Asia, and San of Africa, for example, traditionally move from camp to camp to hunt and gather wild plants. Some tribes of the Americas followed this way of life.... |
how do manufacturers get the little "pop/freshness seal bubble" on the tops of jars to stay down? | You can. /r/canning
You boil what is inside so the steam pushes out all the atmospheric gasses. Then when the can cools the water vapor condenses (mostly) back to water and leaves a vacuum. | [
"Jars of food items soon started appearing with a metal bubble-top lid, commonly known as a \"safety button\", which—like the lid of a Mason jar—popped out if the jar had ever been opened and stayed flat if the jar was in pristine condition. Customers were advised to never buy a product with a popped lid. (These li... |
I am a typical peasant farmer in western Europe in the 16th century. Where do I get my drinking water from and how safe is it? | There's always room for discussion, but perhaps the sections [Drinking Water](_URL_1_) and [Beer](_URL_0_) from our FAQ will answer your inquiry. | [
"In the 14th century Goslar was one of the very few towns that was able to provide all domestic properties with a water main system using wooden pipes, so that the kitchens were equipped with running water and the townsfolk did not have to collect water from a well.\n",
"Also noticeable was the planned network of... |
how do teeth know how to grow in the pattern so they fit together when you bite down? | They don't "know". Your body starts out with some stem cells. These are basically cells without an assigned function. They don't know where to go and what to do yet. They just divide. When your cells divide functions do get assigned to the new cells that form. This is done based on what it says in your DNA, which is basically a script. It'll tell a cell "you are part of the eye" or in this case "you are part of the jaw that's responsible for growing a tooth".
So the cell now knows where to go and what it's supposed to do. There is a rough pattern, but nothing like your actual teeth. While growing and through movement of your mouth pressure will be placed on each seperate tooth causing it to move. Not immediately, but like with braces this is a gradual process. The one tooth pushes the other to the side to make room, etc.
This isn't an overnight thing. Over many, many years the script (your DNA) has been refined enough to get to the point where we are now, with teeth sort of in a usefull position. But it's not hard to imagine that the first humans with teeth had horrible teeth with all sorts of issues, like soft enamel or issues like falling out because of a badly written script that left a lot of room for interpretation.
Teeth are still not perfect though. Many people have issues that influence how their teeth grow. Wisdom teeth for example are something that will probably dissapear at some point. They serve no function and often cause infections. | [
"The curve or bend may occur anywhere along the length of the tooth, sometimes at the cervical portion, at other times midway along the root or even just at the apex of the root, depending upon the amount of root formed when the injury occurred.\n",
"The mouth is unique, in that the teeth are well secured to the ... |
How did US gov't mints turn mined ore into coins? | This also involves the Carson City federal mint in Nevada (drawing on the famed Comstock Lode), established in 1869. These mints purchased bullion, either directly from major mines or from banks, which purchased bullion from the market (including from smaller producers). Although the mints were capable of refining the bullion, they often acquired precious metal that required nothing or little more than assay work to make certain the bullion met the purity standard required for a US coin. The rest is a matter of transforming ingots into round blanks, which is merely an industrial process involving heat, rollers, and cutting followed by the actual stamping of the mint press. | [
"The mint produced coins from 1838 until 1861, when Confederate forces occupied the building and used it briefly as their own coinage facility until it was recaptured by Union forces the following year.\n",
"After the establishment of the Territory of Oregon, the mint producing the coins became an entirely privat... |
why doesn’t isopropyl alcohol damage electronics? are there other liquids that also don’t do damage to electrical components? | it's neither corrosive nor conductive, so it doesn't dissolve or short anything. it also evaporates at low temperatures, so cleanup is a nonissue
candle wax shares the first 2 properties, but not the 3rd. this means letting a candle drip into your PC won't destroy it, but requires careful cleaning as it traps heat | [
"To prevent corrosion the fuel system must be made of suitable materials, electrical wires must be properly insulated and the fuel level sensor must be of pulse and hold type, magneto resistive or other similar non-contact type. In addition, high quality alcohol should have a low concentration of contaminants and h... |
When is a rock's birthday? At what point in it's formation does a rock become a rock? | That's a fun question.
Let me distinguish between 2 things: the date when some geological material becomes a rock vs the date when a rock becomes "the specific rock it is".
The answer plays into the general classification of rocks classes [sedimentary, igneous & metamorphic].
**Sedimentary rocks** start from loose sediment, sand, gravel, mud and similar materials. When buried, sediments undergo a process called ["diagenesis"](_URL_1_), where they undergo a series of changes where compaction and the precipitation of minerals (termed "cement") such as carbonates, clays and quartz will bind together these loose particles into a cohesive whole. This is usually a gradual process where you will not be able to easily pinpoint a specific date/year where you may affirm "today, this is now a rock". There are exceptions where the process can be quite rapid, say the formation of beachrock which can happen in decades, but usually you are waiting for a gradual process which operates at the pace of millenia.
**Igneous rocks** are figuratively simple to understand, as they form from the cooling of molten material [lava or magma]. Smaller bodies cool off quicker and might in some cases be said to have a precise date of formation [for instance, the Vesuvius ash flow of the 24^th of August 79 AD], while larger ones may take years or even millenia to cool off and completely solidify. Heat loss is a process controlled by the ratio of surface to volume, so while a magma body of about 1 cubic km might take a few years to cool off, another one of several million cubic kilometers might take a few millenia. The latter might have the opportunity to undergo a process called ["fractional crystallisation"](_URL_0_), whereby minerals precipitate in a certain order and separate from the remaining melt by gravity, either floating to the top [e.g.: anorthosite] or sinking to the bottom [e.g. olivine cumulates] - the process is not completely unlike a salad dressing unmixing.
But then there are **metamorphic rocks**. These guys start as rocks, but they usually progressively change their composition and features as they re-equilibrate to match the pressure and temperature stability conditions of their environment, as they are either buried or exhumed. Thus, a rather banal clay stone made up of an assemblage of clay minerals, quartz & feldspar, might as it is progressively buried deeper change it's mineral composition to a muscovite-garnet shist, then a cordierite-garnet shist , then a quartz-K-spar-biotite-sillimanite shist before reaching temperatures where it starts turning to liquid again.
Thus, when studying metamorphic rocks, one is always concerned with 2 "birthdates": the first one being the time when this lump of geological material first became a rock [termed "protolith"], and the time where the rock reached it's current state. Rocks being not unlike books, metamorphic rocks will often preserve quite a bit of the history of the various changes they underwent as they transitionned from their protolith to their final current state [see [P-T-t-path](_URL_2_)], and are great sources of information that way. | [
"The oldest dated rocks on Earth, as an aggregate of minerals that have not been subsequently broken down by erosion or melted, are more than 4 billion years old, formed during the Hadean Eon of Earth's geological history. Such rocks are exposed on the Earth's surface in very few places. \n",
"Although there have... |
Around 1975, almost every major progressive rock band "sold out" and started producing more radio friendly material. Why did this happen? | Your question is unanswerable because its central premise is flawed.
With Genesis, the change is easily explained - Peter Gabriel left as bandleader, Phil Collins took over. Phil Collins has a different style and sensibility, so naturally their work reflected that.
Rush released their first record in 1974, so to say that they "sold out" around 1975 is pretty ridiculous; what else do you have to compare it to? And in what universe is that material more radio friendly? As the 70's wore on, their songs became longer and longer and incorporated more and more synthesized elements and odd time signatures.
For Camel, you get an orchestral concept album in 1975, which again goes against your conceit. And their material became more jazz-influenced, which in the late 70s isn't exactly a big seller. You might as well say that Steely Dan was getting more commercial with Aja, or that Joni Mitchell was getting more commercial with The Hissing of Summer Lawns.
If you could provide more examples we could possibly answer your question, but as it stands your question is based on a flawed premise. As bands go on, they tend to get better at what they do and often have access to better technology due to bigger budgets and improved recording technology; oftentimes this can give the illusion of "more commercial" when compared to earlier work, when it really just means "played better, recorded better, in better facilities". Most of the time, though, "My favorite band sold out!" translates to "I liked the way they sounded before." | [
"The idea of rock music as a serious art form started in the late 1960s and was the dominant view of the genre at the time of new wave's arrival. New wave looked back or borrowed in various ways from the years just prior to this occurrence. One way this was done was by taking an ironic look at consumer and pop cult... |
There were ancient Pacific Islanders- were there Atlantic Islanders? What happened to them? | In the north, the Irish and then the Norse settled the Faeroes before the Norse jumped off to Iceland, Greenland, and (briefly) the coast of North America.
In the south, the Canary Islands were inhabited by the Guanches, who were present on the islands around 1000 BC and were originally from North Africa. (Although about half of the current Canarian population's DNA is Guanche, the culture and language have been largely extinct for centuries.)
The Guanches were reliant on stone tools when encountered by the Portuguese in the 15th century. They lacked metals and had no remaining tradition of navigation; the Canaries have strong currents and trade winds, so smaller vessels would have been death traps. As a result, the Guanches never expanded west or north into the rest of the islands in that region (Cape Verde, the Azores, Madeira, collectively known as "Macaronesia"); they were uninhabited when the Portuguese explored them, although there was some evidence of Roman and Viking exploration on Madeira. | [
"At the time of the European arrival, three major Amerindian indigenous peoples lived on the islands: the Taíno in the Greater Antilles, The Bahamas and the Leeward Islands; the Island Caribs and Galibi in the Windward Islands; and the Ciboney in western Cuba. The Taínos are subdivided into Classic Taínos, who occu... |
how does fingerprint authentication store the fingerprint information? | Fingerprint scanners are basically capacitive touchscreens minus the screen part. Fingerprints are made of ridges and valleys. When you press your finger against a scanner, it registers what parts of your finger are ridges and what parts are valleys based on what touches it. It then takes several parts of this information as markers. The next time you scan your finger, it looks for these parts. For example, just as your fingerprint is unique, so too is the upper half of your fingerprint, or the bottom left corner, or a random square millimeter. All sufficiently large segments of your fingerprint are as unique as your fingerprint itself. Therefore all the scanner needs to see is one or more of those parts. That's how it deals with not having the exact same scanned section each time. It doesn't need the entire fingerprint. | [
"Today, Identix' computerized fingerprint identification products are used by federal governments and law enforcement agencies around the world. Additionally, the verification of personal identity using fingerprints has propagated into everyday life. Fingerprint access is now used in smart phones, laptops, time and... |
How can I understand the motion of gyroscopes intuitively? | A gyroscope doesn't resist movement, it resists moment. So if you had a box with a gyroscope in it on a table, you could push it forwards/backwards/left/right with ease, but it would be difficult to spin it.
To see why this is, imagine you have a friction-less disk spinning clockwise and you want to reverse its spin. To slow it down to a stop and get it spinning counter-clockwise would require a couple moment to be applied for some time. The faster the wheel is spinning and the more rotational inertia it has the more energy required to reverse its spin. Of course, you could skip the whole slowing down and speeding up part and just turn the disk over. But since you are effectively reversing the spin by turning it over it requires the same amount of energy as slowing it all the way down and speeding it back up.
This isn't a perfect explanation and I may have botched a few terms but that's how I envision it. | [
"Gyroscopes measure the angular rate of rotational movement about one or more axes. Gyroscopes can measure complex motion accurately in multiple dimensions, tracking the position and rotation of a moving object unlike accelerometers which can only detect the fact that an object has moved or is moving in a particula... |
What's the deal with the Celts and the Norse? | One of the most thoughtful recent scholars on this subject was the late Bo Almqvist (1931-2013) - a Swedish folklorist who was the director of the Irish Department of Folklore at University College, Dublin. His "Viking Ale: Studies on Folklore Contacts between the Northern and the Western Worlds", edited by Éilís Ní Dhuibhne and Séamas Ó Catháin (Aberystwyth: Boethius, 1991) is an excellent collection of articles, many of which address what you are asking. Here is a quote that helps frame this discussion:
> [The Norwegian folklorist Reidar Christiansen] has pointed to a series of close parallels between certain Scandinavian and Scottish-Gaelic and Irish legends, and has introduced the term North Sea legends. It is not easy to account satisfactorily for these similarities. It may be that some of the motifs and legends are part of a common stock, but there can be little doubt either that the Norse and Gaelic speaking communities influenced one another, and that certain types and sub-types spread in either direction.
What is true of folklore is equally true of art and various other cultural motifs. We cannot speak of something like Newgrange without acknowledging that it is pre-Celtic, but the point is well taken - what seems to be elements of common cultural inheritance also seem to pre-date both the Celts and the Scandinavians - as we understand them. The question remains - why do these similarities exist? Diffusion through various periods of contact seems like an obvious answer, but aspects of shared cultural elements seem too deep to be accounted for strictly through diffusion.
I address this to a certain extent in my forthcoming, ["The Folklore of Cornwall: The Oral Tradition of a Celtic Nation"](_URL_0_). The following is an excerpt - before the copyeditor makes me seem far smarter than I am (so apologies for any clunky language!):
> Almqvist addresses a question in British studies, looking to those who conclude that Anglo-Saxons invaders gave as much as they took, creating a hybridised society. Almqvist applied this to assist in his life-long study of the interaction of Celtic and Scandinavian folklore. In his essay, ‘Scandinavian and Celtic Folklore Contacts in the Earldom of Orkney’, he attempts to determine which traditions were borrowed and which may represent common inheritance. It is no mean task, but Almqvist writes with authority, having spent decades pondering the question, reading sources in multiple languages to consider possible origins of parallel texts.
> Cornwall presented a similar situation since it encountered not only Anglo-Saxons but also Scandinavians. Cornwall cannot be regarded as the ‘Venice of the North’, as Almqvist characterises the medieval earldom of Orkney; nevertheless, the Cornish nation was also something of a crossroad. While it resisted medieval Anglo-Saxon advances, Cornwall was not as secluded as the hinterland of Wales or north-western, mountainous Caledonia. One would expect that the Cornish had their own oral tradition before the many forces of history had their way. Regardless of how factors affecting lives and culture played out, the folklore of Cornwall certainly exhibits the same common inheritance that Almqvist suggests ‘is part of the explanation of the unity that exists today among the peoples of the British Isles.’
What can be said about similarities throughout Britain and Ireland, can be extended effortlessly, also, to Scandinavia and Iceland. In otherwords, yours is an excellent question, and many have pondered the answer(s) with various degrees of success.
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"The Celts (, see pronunciation of \"Celt\" for different usages) are an Indo-European ethnolinguistic group of Europe identified by their use of Celtic languages and cultural similarities. The history of pre-Celtic Europe and the exact relationship between ethnic, linguistic and cultural factors in the Celtic worl... |
What is the total population of all life on our planet? | Do you count bacterias? The rest of the animals are just a rounding error for the bacteria population.
| [
"Some estimates on the number of Earth's current species of life forms range from 10 million to 14 million, of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86 percent have not yet been described. However, a May 2016 scientific report estimates that 1 trillion species are currently on Earth, with only one-t... |
would 2 equally loud noises combine to make a louder sound? why or why not? | Depends on where you're standing. Sound waves can add or cancel as they mix together.
(That's the science behind noise canceling headphones, which actually create a sound that is opposite in phase to the noise it's cancelling.) | [
"For Liquid Sound, for instance, a special stereo set is necessary because one hears differently underwater than in the air: it is impossible to hear from where the tones are coming. The reason is that sound waves go through water about five times as fast as through the air. Due to its higher speed, the sound seems... |
Have there ever been mafias/organized crime syndicates in the United States that were German, French, or Scandinavian? | There has been one case of plagiarism, several jokes, and a number of contentless posts offered up as "answers" to the OP's question.
This is AskHistorians. We ask that your answers be in-depth, comprehensive, and such that an historian might give. You should also be able to back your post with proper sources if requested. If you cannot provide an answer that meets our requirements, please refrain from posting. We prefer no answer to speculation, educated guesswork, jokes or memes.
Thank you. | [
"The same large and politically connected gangs from New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Boston, Detroit, Chicago and New Orleans that controlled gambling, prostitution, extortion, thefts and narcotics since the early to mid-19th century, now controlled bootlegging operations across America in the 1920s. These recen... |
since essentially everything nowadays causes cancer, should we just assume that we still don't really know what causes it? | Here's the thing with cancer: at its most basic level, whether or not you get cancer comes down to statistics and randomness. Cancer happens when you get a combination of mutations that cause a cell to reproduce continuously, avoid cell-suicide, infiltrate other tissues, etc. All a carcinogen is is a substance believed to increase the odds of such a combination of mutations occurring. Thing is, you could be a lifelong smoker, eat tons of processed meats, regularly get exposed to radiation, and yet never develop cancer just because you were lucky enough to never have the right mutation combination in the same cell at the same time. Conversely, you could do everything right and still get cancer due to a simple transcription error during cell reproduction.
Because of this inherent randomness, it's *extremely* difficult to predict and understand which substances actually create a significantly increased risk of developing cancer. | [
"In recent years it has come to the attention of researchers that many types of cancer are caused largely due to epigenetic factors. Cancer can be caused in a variety of ways due to differential methylation of histones. Since the discovery of oncogenes as well as tumor suppressor genes it has been known that a larg... |
why are tickets (to concerts, sports events, etc) purchased through third parties (stubhub, ticketmaster, etc) as opposed to directly from the venue hosting the event? | Back in the day you had to buy directly from the venue. You had to get in line and buy paper tickets often having to campout overnight for best seats or for high demand shows. Buying from a ticket seller is much easier for everyone. | [
"Ticket exchanges allow people to buy and sell tickets online. For example, an individual who purchased tickets to a football game may find that they can no longer go and hence sell their tickets on a ticket exchange. Those most likely to use the services of a ticket exchange are ticket brokers (commonly known as \... |
us federal income taxes | It is complicated, but the part that throws most people is the progressive tax rate. Think about it that instead of you specifically being taxed at one tax rate, each individual dollar you make is taxed at a changing rate. Let's say the first 10,000 dollars aren't taxed at all, dollars 10,000-20,000 are taxes at %10, and dollars 20,000+ are taxes at 20% (these are made upbrackets).
Amy makes $9,000. The first 10k is not taxed, so Amy owes nothing. If she has been having money withdrawn automatically from her paycheck, she will get it back as a refund.
Bob makes $15,000. The first 10k isn't taxed. After that, he has 5k left, which is taxed at 10%, so Bob owes $500.
Charlie makes 25,000. The first 10k isn't taxed. The next 10k is taxed at 10% = $1000. The remaining money is taxed at 20%. 20% of 5k also - $1000. So Charlie's total tax bill is $2,000.
Debbie uses deductions to her total income. She makes $25,000, the same as Charlie. However, she is able to make $5,000 of it tax deductible, which means it is not taxable income. So instead of $25,000, the IRS treats it like she made $20,000. As we saw above, the first 10k is untaxed, the next 10k is taxed at 10%, so she only pays $1000. | [
"The federal income tax is only one of several taxes Americans pay. Americans who pay zero federal income taxes do pay other taxes, such as payroll taxes (a.k.a. FICA), excise taxes, sales taxes, tariffs, gift taxes, unemployment taxes, state income taxes, property taxes, and self-employment taxes.\n",
"Federal p... |
How do surgeons sew arteries together? | I'm really hoping someone will answer your question.
And if you'll allow me to make a related comment: Does anyone know of a freely available source the general public can learn about surgical procedures *in detail*? I mean... say you take someone's intestines out. *How do you know how to fold them back in?* | [
"Coronary artery bypass grafting, also called revascularization, is a common surgical procedure to create an alternative path to deliver blood supply to the heart and body, with the goal of preventing clot formation. This can be done in many ways, and the arteries used can be taken from several areas of the body. A... |
the negative effects of the industrial revolution | Immediate or long term?
The immediate negative effects was the lowering of living standards (today we have higher living standards because of it). Working hours increased, deaths due to injury increased, pollution shot through the roof.
Long term is, well, still the pollution. | [
"The Industrial Revolution is an example of a positive technology shock. The Industrial Revolution occurred between the 18th and the 19th centuries where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transport, and technology occurred.\n",
"The effects on living conditions of the industrial revolution have... |
why are motorcycle helmets so heavy when the human neck is comparatively fragile? | Now think about what happens in a car wreck. The body is fastened to the car via seat belt so in an accident, the neck is the moving part which gives you whiplash. In a motorcycle accident , your entire body is in motion as you flail across the horizon to your new destination. So there is no worry of whiplash in a sense. Easy way of putting: most people prefer a heavy helmet that can cause a neck injury over your head being split open and brain matter all over the road. | [
"Motorcyclists are at high risk in traffic crashes. A 2008 systematic review examined studies on motorcycle riders who had crashed and looked at helmet use as an intervention. The review concluded that helmets reduce the risk of head injury by around 69% and death by around 42%. Although it was once speculated that... |
how did bugs such as bees and ants come to have "queens"? how did physiologically different creature originate but remain the same species? why is there no "queen" human? | Efficiency!
A small number of specialized *breeding caste* is enough to supply eggs for the whole hive. Keep in mind the queen is not *in charge*, she is just another specialized caste like workers or soldiers or drones.
Worker bees can override and evict a queen if circumstances require, and some ant nests have multiple queens.
There are other sorts of bees or wasps that live in much smaller groups, like a bumblebee queen that only has a nest with half a dozen brood cells or hunting wasps that make a nest for one baby at a time. | [
"The term \"queen bee\" can be more generally applied to any dominant reproductive female in a colony of a eusocial bee species other than honey bees. However, as in the Brazilian stingless bee \"Schwarziana quadripunctata\", a single nest may have multiple queens or even dwarf queens, ready to replace a dominant q... |
what makes deer/moose antlers symmetrical? | A symmetrical set of antlers are called typical, as opposed to a set of non typical which are not symmetrical. Antlers are "shed" and regrow every single year, a mature rocky mountain elk can grow 1 1/2" in mass a day during the peak. What trips me out about antlers... during the antler growth they're covered in skin and hair with lots of blood, the antler can become injured creating a deformity in the antler. This deformity will recur every subsequent year! The DNA for the shape of the antler changes and remembers that injury, how the heck does that happen! | [
"One of the principal means of distinguishing the closely related black-tailed deer and white-tailed deer is the growth habit of the buck's antlers. In the case of the Black Tail and California mule deer, the antlers fork in an upward growth, whereas the other species' antlers grow in a forward direction.\n",
"Th... |
How do technological changes affect musical styles? | You're asking kind of a lot of questions here. Typically classical music developed and changed with technology.
Take Baroque instruments, for example. You have [Baroque Horns](_URL_0_) with no valves, so they can only play in a handful of keys, and can't play scales, chromatics, and so on, so what you write for them is very limited based on the ability of the instrument. Same with writing for a harpsichord. It can't play any dynamics, can't play sustained notes, and so on, so you are writing within the constraints of the instrument.
As for writing in the baroque era, there was no formal agreement on what constituted an orchestra, it was just however many musicians you happened to be able to afford. As such, the music in the baroque era was very flexible, by necessity. A part for flute could easily be played by oboe, or recorder, or likely even violin. Ornamentation was never written in because it would always be improvised by each individual player.
As for bass instruments, you had what is called a [Figured Bass](_URL_1_) or Basso Continuo wherein there was never a written bass part that you played note for note. You were given the chord numbers of what was going on in the piece, and whoever was playing the bass part would completely improvise bass line around that. Whether it was an organ, or a Viola de Gamba, or a harpsichord, or whatever you had on hand.
The music was extremely versatile and flexible, but it was more so due to necessity.
As you get into the classical era, the instruments keep developing, and all the winds gain the ability to play full chromatic scales, and the orchestras get larger, and the complement becomes more standard. So you lose the figured bass lines, and you see composers write pieces that are more complex for the newer, more versatile instruments. You also see pieces that are more fixed to their instrument - a flute concerto from the Classical era likely wouldn't ever be played on any other instrument, as it was written specifically for the flute.
Then you get into the Romantic period, and the instruments keep getting better. At this time you also see much larger works, bigger orchestras, grander operas with massive casts, works for hundreds of players and singers. At this time the orchestra was getting larger, and composers must have assumed that this growth would continue, so you see works like the [Mahler's 8th Symphony](_URL_2_) known as the "Symphony of a thousand", written for double orchestra (plus lots of additional instruments that are not normally in an orchestra), 8 soloists, double choir, children's choir, 2 brass choirs, and full cathedral organ. It's an insane amount of people. (wicked fun to perform, though)
So, what would have happened if Mahler wrote this in 1702? First off, most of the instruments he was writing for existed in very primitive forms and wouldn't have been able to play a good chunk of the notes written for them. Some hadn't even been invented, like the [Celesta](_URL_3_). Next, you would have had to empty the entire country of musicians just to be able to find enough to play the piece (and somehow find the money to pay them). Then you're dealing with a style of music that no one had ever heard. It would be like playing Bob Marley or Tom Waits. No one would get it.
Music progresses, but not as quickly as we think. Tastes do change, but it's a gradual change where you add a few new elements to an already established, known, and popular formula. To take a totally unknown style and throw it into a different era, would likely scare and confuse the hell out of people.
Rite of Spring is an excellent example. A piece of music that went way beyond the boundaries of what audiences expected, and what was "good taste". As a result, there was a riot in which the police were called. The audiences of the 20th century weren't ready for a piece like that. | [
"Music technology is connected to both artistic and technological creativity. Musicians and music technology experts are constantly striving to devise new forms of expression through music, and they are physically creating new devices and software to enable them to do so. Although in the 2010s, the term is most com... |
why is the prices of games going up in canada even though the dollar has remained the same for about a year. | There is an ever increasing competition between game makers, and the cost of development is increasing. | [
"Nintendo Australia has also been criticised for the expensive cost of their games, but this is the same with all video game distributors and subsidiaries in Australia, and Rose Lappin has said that the Australian and New Zealand dollar are weak on the exchange conversion rate, and they must raise the prices in ord... |
if i try to hit a small insect, e.g. a fruit fly, with my hand at high speed, will i hit it or will the air which my hand pushes in front of it will save the insect? | The air in front of it will actually be hitting it itself if you swing hard enough. Of course this is way faster than your hand can really go on its own. So it depends on what you mean by 'high speed'.
That's why the space shuttle coming down from space catches fire. Not from friction, but by pushing the air so hard in front of it that it hits more air hard enough that it glows and gets super hot.
If you had some kind of superhuman punch the force from the punch could hit the fly with air molecules hard enough to kill it well before your fist made contact.
Have your punch go fast enough and you could turn the air into superheated plasma that would vaporize the fly. But at that point your hand has become a fist shaped weapon of mass destruction. As you'd be vaporizing everything in a vaguely cone shape for a large distance.
Of course, with a slow enough human hand speed, the air currents are likely pushing the fly away, because you're not moving the air fast enough to make it damage the fly. And your hand isn't moving fast enough to damage the fly. And because the fly is so small it will absorb way less kinetic energy from your hand than say, somebody's face.
At THIS speed, the air is doing you a disfavor, and that's why the air holes in a fly swatter help it snap down fast enough. But even a fly swatter hitting a fly will often not harm it. It's the impact against the fly swatter and the wall the fly is on that crushes it. | [
"The adult insect is an excellent flier and is able to travel great distances. While they prefer to attack palms that are already infested or weakened by other stresses, they will colonize healthy palms.\n",
"BULLET::::- Drone bees - These muscular bees can fire their stingers but they die if they fire them. If R... |
in a microwave, can i heat my food on half the heat for twice the time? | Pretty much that is what you can do. You can also in a sense turn it into a slow cooker if you set the power low enough. I do not know if your power level goes low enough, or why you want to do this at all.
I use mine to prepare fine chicken soup inside ten minutes using things from the refrigerator and freezer. Frozen vegetables do well this way as do noodles kept at room temperature. Seven minutes in the microwave at regular setting and I have better soup than Raman ever made. | [
"Microwave ovens produce heat directly within the food, but despite the common misconception that microwaved food cooks from the inside out, 2.45 GHz microwaves can only penetrate approximately into most foods. The inside portions of thicker foods are mainly heated by heat conducted from the outer .\n",
"BULLET::... |
how do throttleable rocket engines work? | Simply put you alter the fuel flow using pumps on the fuel line. More fuel means more thrust being generated in the combustion chamber.
Due to the inability of the pumps to work arbitrarily fast and the inability of the combustion chamber to handle all fuel combusting simultaneously you have an upper limit on how much you can put out per unit time. | [
"Rockets can be throttled by controlling the propellant combustion rate formula_11 (usually measured in kg/s or lb/s). In liquid and hybrid rockets, the propellant flow entering the chamber is controlled using valves, in solid rockets it is controlled by changing the area of propellant that is burning and this can ... |
why does shaking (like in a train or bus) and rocking a baby's crib help us sleep? | I am going to take a dig at this. I think the exact word you are looking for is "Rocking to sleep".
As to why Rocking helps us sleep, it is a matter of brain waves.
Firstly, we have been put to sleep a hundred times since our birth by gentle swinging motions of our parents. Hence our **brain associates these gentle movements to a relaxing environment**. As a result, we feel a little less stressed and calm, the perfect conditions for inducing sleep.
Now comes the question: Why do babies rock to sleep in the first place? I read about it a while back, so I might not be accurate here. It is still poorly understood, but the bottom line is, **any sort of slow rhythmic movement is sleep inducing**. The reason is that our brain is made to respond to any stimuli. This is an evolutionary trait, and is one of the most important traits in our survival as a species. While observing a slow rhythmic movement, our brain functions at a much slower rate than if it was observing a random fast paced movement. Since there is nothing much new to intake, that means nothing much new to process. *Same input, same output, less processing*. This applies to all the senses: sight, hearing and so on. Hence our brain functions at a slower rate, which is the ideal condition for sleeping.
Another reason is that, rhythmic movement **calms down our Amygdala - the part of the brain which responds to fear**. Since Amygdala is a key element in the sleep-wake cycle, calming it down is one of the foremost tasks before sleep.
So there it is. Hope I have remembered it well.
Note: Rocking does not only put us to sleep, it also helps us to sleep deeply.
P.S. This is my first comment on Reddit, please be gentle.
Edit: The article I read was probably about this study: _URL_0_. You can check this out. It more or less states the above. | [
"Many adults find rocking chairs soothing because of the gentle motion. Gentle rocking motion has been shown to provide faster onset of sleep than remaining stationary, mimicking the process of a parent rocking a child to sleep.\n",
"Children and adults will often rock themselves when distressed: there appears to... |
why couldn't you lose weight by just not eating until you were thin? | Because of the starvation response.
Your body is meant to be digesting food pretty much all the time. It's the constant digestion of food that supplies your brain with glucose.
If you go without eating at all long enough for your digestive system to stop producing glucose — anywhere from six to twenty-four hours, depending — your body will start metabolizing something called glycogen. Glycogen is a substance your body stores in your liver and your muscles and which can be broken down in your liver to make glucose.
When the liver starts breaking down glycogen, your body notices, and the regulatory endocrine system starts releasing a variety of hormones that get picked up by your liver and your digestive system in general.
This *hurts.* It's very unpleasant, like feeling hungry only more so. Headache, muscle and joint pain, irritability and generally feeling extra-emotional … it all adds up to a *profound* urge to eat.
But you can ignore it. It's not crippling or anything; it doesn't leave you writhing in agony. It just puts getting some food at the very top of your list of priorities, is all. If you choose to ignore it — or if you have no choice, because you don't have access to food, like if you're on a liferaft in the middle of the ocean or something — your body initiates what's called the *starvation response.*
When your body gets to the point where no more glucose is available from the digestive system or the liver, anywhere from a day and a half to three days after last eating, your *body* switches over to metabolizing fatty acids, and your *brain* switches over to primarily metabolizing ketone bodies. Your metabolism as a whole slows down because less energy is available — fatty acids and ketone bodies aren't as good a supply of energy as glucose is — which also has the effect of conserving what energy reserves you have left. Your body does begin digesting your own adipose tissue deposits — that is, at this point you do begin losing weight — but it happens *very* slowly, much more slowly than it would happen if the starvation response hadn't kicked in.
But there's a bigger problem. See, your body is now *mainly* running off fatty acids and ketone bodies, but it still needs a trickle of glucose to stay alive. Ordinarily, when your metabolism is normal and you aren't starving, you need about 200 grams of pure glucose a day just to live. After the starvation response kicks in, that requirement drops to just about 30 grams a day. Your body can synthesize glucose out of the byproducts of fatty acid metabolism, but that only adds up to about *20* grams a day. You still need ten more … and to get it, your body begins metabolizing proteins. Proteins are long chains of amino acids, and your body can make glucose out of amino acids in your liver. So your body begins eating its own core structures.
To synthesize one gram of glucose in your liver, your body has to break down about three grams of protein. While in starvation, your body needs to make about ten grams of glucose a day from protein, so that means your body loses about 30 grams of protein a day. This mostly comes from your big skeletal muscles.
So yes, by starving yourself you are indeed losing weight … but not in the way you wanted to. In addition to burning off body fat, you're also breaking down and digesting your own muscles, which *hurts!* It's *extremely* painful! And because your metabolism as a whole is slowed dramatically by starvation, you just have to endure that discomfort *longer* to lose a given amount, in pounds, of body fat.
So yes, you can in principle just stop eating to lose weight. But it's the slowest and most agonizingly painful way to do it. | [
"As a young adult, Ellen had fluctuations with her weight and that was when her fear of becoming fat began. In her writings, she expressed her strong cravings for food, yet she had an extreme fear of gaining weight. These thoughts eventually led to the development of depression. In order to stay thin, Ellen started... |
How much farmland was needed to sustain classical/ancient cities? | Quite a lot. Indeed, most large cities in the Mediterranean world got that way because they were able to exceed the production limitations of their surrounding hinterland by importing food. Few cities, even in the most productive regions, could sustain a particularly large population from their local area alone. Even smaller cities had difficulty sustaining themselves. Athens, while a decently large Classical city-state, was not particularly large compared to contemporary cities in the east or later cities in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods. With a population of probably only a few hundred thousand, and only something like 20,000 adult citizen males (estimates vary wildly, and I'm hardly on top of them) in the 5th Century Athens was absolutely dwarfed by the likes of Rome, Alexandria, Roman Carthage, or Antioch. But even the Athenians were forced to depend heavily on imported grain, receiving hundreds of thousands of μέδιμνοι. Much of this import was during the Peloponnesian War, when the city was cut off from its hinterland, but the Attic countryside could not supply the city during normal periods without imported aid in any case.
Furthermore, grain import was crucial to protect cities from famine. Prior to the Green Revolution farming was a much more risky ordeal. Even a slight dip in a region's temporary productivity might have devastating effects for cities that were packed full of inhabitants. The already strained food supply of large cities in antiquity could completely snap in the face of a poor harvest. Famine was a big fucking deal, and grain import helped provide a buffer against that sort of thing. Grain import allowed excess grain to be easily stockpiled, and it also ensured a steady supply of food even when the local countryside could not produce, even if that hinterland was in fact capable of providing for the city.
Of course the most notable example of a city that survived on the grain trade is Rome itself. With at least a million inhabitants by some time in the 1st Century, B.C. the city was totally unable to be provisioned by the local Latin countryside, and when the grain trade broke down in late antiquity the city's population dwindled rapidly. Imports from Campania and fertile Apulia (for real, go to Apulia some day, it's just wheat farms as far as the eye can see) were originally enough, but soon the city was demanding more grain than could be reasonably supplied for cheap. That's another thing, cost. A city of any reasonable size *might* be able to provision itself via overland routes, but it was too expensive to do so. It cost vastly less to haul grain by sea from Sicily and Africa, which were more productive in any case, than overland from Apulia or Campania. The acquisition of provinces allowed the city to provision itself at previously unthinkable levels, with the population rising in tandem. The Roman grain import, obtained largely through provincial grain taxes, was absolutely enormous. Sicily paid 3 million *modii* of grain a year, a tenth of its total production--more could be purchased if there was need, as was the case in 73 when nearly 4 million more *modii* were purchased to offset famine. According to Josephus the province of Africa alone supplied the city for eight months per year. Pseudo-Aurelius Victor reports that Egypt under Augustus supplied the city with a whopping 20 million *modii* of grain per year. The overseas grain trade was so crucial to the city that threatening it was tantamount to putting the city under siege. When the Cilicians disrupted the grain trade from Sicily and Africa the Romans were forced to grant Pompey an extraordinary magistracy to clear them out--Cicero reports that the day that Pompey's magistracy was enacted grain prices plummeted as traders began to become more assured of the survival of their cargo.
Much the same could be said about other large cities. Constantinople had to import most of its grain from Egypt in late antiquity. Alexandria also could not rely on its local hinterland, collecting grain taxes from throughout Egypt and almost certainly importing a significant amount as well. A smaller city might not need to import its grain, but once we start talking about real metropoleis the story becomes very different very quickly | [
"The ideal farmland habitat is a mixture of grass and arable fields, divided by thick hedgerows with pockets of dense scrub. They can tolerate a certain degree of urbanisation, and are found in green spaces in towns and cities, even Rome.\n",
"At the height of the city's occupation, the population reached the lim... |
Why did the Germanic invasions of Britain result in conqueror's language becoming the spoken tongue compared to the rest of the Germanic conquests in Europe? | The traditional narrative is that it was just that, a large scale population exchange with the Romano-British being killed, dying of plague and being driven West by the Anglo-Saxons, later becoming the Welsh and Cornish. The remaining small population of Romano-British in what became England and Lowland Scotland, merged into the Anglo-Saxon majority and soon began speaking the English language. The old Brythonic language and any Vulgar Latin that had developed were soon eradicated.
This viewpoint is supported by the historical sources we have available, place name studies - Brythonic influenced names are rare in England and tend to occur the most in regions close to Wales and Cornwall, for instance 'coombe' in Devon which is the cognate of 'cwm' in Welsh and the River Avon, which is a corruption of 'Afon' - Welsh for river. Another piece of evidence is vague records of plague in Britain in the 6th century. It's also supported in the English language itself, which shows very little Brythonic influence anywhere, I'd be surprised if I've even used one Brythonic word in this entire post aside from when quoting.
It's important to note that nowhere else in the former Roman Empire did the language of the Germanic invaders supplant the native languages, in England it replaces both Brythonic and the Vulgar Latin there. Something major had to have happened for this to occur, as it breaks the pattern of every other Roman province.
The alternative viewpoint is a little less defined. It's become vogue amongst some historians in the past 20/30 years to downplay the extent of the Anglo-Saxon invasion. The new ideas suggest that the Anglo-Saxon migration was much smaller, the Romano-British remained where they were and a hybrid population developed. However the population was politically dominated by the Anglo-Saxons (some suggest an apartheid-like system) and thus English was adopted. This idea is a bit troublesome in my opinion, as in history up until the modern day, very rarely did a minority impose their language upon the majority aside from in religious environments. When a minority language was imposed such as Latin, it ended up heavily corrupted by the original language, thus Vulgar Latin and eventually the Romance Languages. English shows no evidence of this language merging (sorry, I don't know the linguistic term) until the Norman Invasion, which is an example of language evolution similar to. Nearly every instance of language interaction has either the majority language killing the minority, the two co-existing together or a hybrid language being formed. Under this theory the Romano-British would have had to have spontaneously given up Brythonic and spoke Old English, because there's little evidence of Brythonic in Old English to suggest a slow transition over centuries. For this to have been true it would be like the Gauls suddenly speaking Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin/French never developing.
Supporters of this theory tend to point towards genetic surveys done recently such as Oppenheimer's which suggests that the population of Britain has changed little since the Ice Age, but they're somewhat unproven, as other surveys such as the Wellcome Trust/Oxford University's 'Face of Britain' survey have given results that back up the tradition 'Germanic domination' model. Furthermore this argument doesn't explain why the historical evidence and place name evidence is so heavily in favour of the traditional narrative.
So essentially, you can believe the historical narrative of 'German dominance', a Romano-British population collapse and that the English people are primarily a Germanic people speaking their German language; or you can believe the 'Elite Adoption' model, where the Anglo-Saxon invasions were small and the English people emerged as mixture of the Anglo-Saxons and Romano-British and the English language was adopted wholesale because of the political power of the Anglo-Saxons. A definitive answer is unknown, although you'll probably be able to tell my position from this post. | [
"Germanicist John A. Hawkins sets forth the arguments for a Germanic substrate. Hawkins argues that the Proto-Germans encountered a non-Indo-European speaking people and borrowed many features from their language. He hypothesizes that the first sound shift of Grimm's Law was the result of non-native speakers attemp... |
If milk chocolate has milk in it, how does chocolate have such a long shelf life? | Chocolate has almost no water in it. [There is a minimum water activity that is necessary for microbial growth](_URL_0_). Chocolate is below that, so microbes can't get in there and spoil it. Even when making things like truffles with liquid centers a lot of care is taken to make sure that the amount of water is low enough to retard mold growth while still keeping the center liquid.
Milk chocolate will eventually go rancid thanks to the unsaturated fat that reacts with air. This is slow, especially wrapped in an airtight and opaque covering. | [
"Some nutritionists have criticized chocolate milk for its high sugar content and its relationship to childhood obesity. In New York City, school food officials report that nearly 60 percent of the 100 million cartons served each year contain fat-free chocolate milk. Because chocolate milk can contain twice as much... |
why is airplane fuel measured by weight instead of volume? | Many aircraft are limited by their “maximum gross weight” for takeoff and/ or landing. It makes the math easier when you don’t need to multiply the gallons by the specific weight of the fuel / gallon. Make sense? | [
"The weight of fuel forms a significant part of the total weight of an aircraft, so any fuel calculation must take into account the weight of any fuel not yet burned. Instead of trying to predict the fuel load not yet burned, a flight planning system can handle this situation by working backward along the route, st... |
why are some photographs considered art? | From google:
art
noun: art; plural noun: arts; plural noun: the arts
1. the expression or application of human creative skill **and imagination**, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.
The ELI5 answer would be that most people agree that photography meets that definition. | [
"The aesthetics of photography is a matter that continues to be discussed regularly, especially in artistic circles. Many artists argued that photography was the mechanical reproduction of an image. If photography is authentically art, then photography in the context of art would need redefinition, such as determin... |
Why did England and France develop a strong centralized government while the Holy Roman Empire stayed decentralized and fragmented? | #**Summary**
Possible reasons for a decentralized and fragmented HRE
1. Structural causes
- Elective monarchy and papal coronation
- No single "capital city"
- Harder taxation and recruitment?
2. Religious and political causes
- Augsburg and Westphalia led to confessional stalemate
- Religious fragmentation triggered foreign interference against the emperor
- The threat of Habsburg encirclement motivated this interference
- The threat of imperial encroachment over princes' rights motivated the princes to search foreign allies
3. Other factors
- Dynastic luck?
- Geographical causes? May have a role but it's not very convincing for me.
- Failed reform attempts in the beginning (Maximilian I), lack of motivation near the end
#**Background**
In the Medieval period, the power of rulers over their subjects was very limited. It is in the early modern period that this started to change visibly, with complex political, economic and legal developments. These are dynamic historical processes and as such, a centralized France and a decentralized Holy Roman Empire (HRE) were not inevitable, and identifying their causes is difficult and usually controversial.
Here I will attempt to explain the reasons why the Holy Roman Empire was not centralized and unified, by mainly focusing on the period between 1450 and 1806. As the main differences in centralization between the empire and France and England arose in this period, I believe this focus will be largely sufficient. This has the benefit of simplifying dynastic issues in the HRE, as Habsburgs were nearly always in power in this period, but it also disregards possible paths to centralization under Hohenstaufens, Luxembourgs etc, so it won't be the whole picture.
#**Structural causes**
The first difference of HRE that comes to mind is that emperorship is elective instead of inherited like in England and France. Beginning from the Golden Bull of 1356, seven (later increased to eight) electors voted on the next emperor. Therefore the emperor had to spend political capital and money in order to secure the succession to the title. Even in the Habsburg era, there were many contested elections which got in the way of centralization.
In addition to this succession issue, emperors had to worry about the papal coronation as well. From the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 until the coronation of Charles V in 1530, nearly all emperors were crowned by the pope. Again, the emperor had to spend resources: the trip to Italy was often dangerous, incurring military and logistical costs, and the pope didn't always consent to the coronation easily.
The elective nature of the HRE also had another effect hindering centralization. There was no fixed "capital city", but every emperor used his own seat of power. Even though Habsburg domination led to this city being either Vienna or Prague, the Reichstag was held in different places (such as Regensburg, Nürnberg, Augsburg, Worms etc.) and the political organization of the empire never had a center like Paris and London were.
Neither Holy Roman Emperors nor kings of France and England could extract resources from their subjects at will. However, emperors' attempts at taxation, recruitment and reform were often blocked by the Reichstag. Maximilian I's attempt at Reichsreform is a good example, it succeeded in some legal reforms, but centralization is mainly about resource extraction, and at this point, it failed. The new tax, *Gemeiner Pfennig* was met with massive resistance and it could never be collected properly and was soon abolished. Admittedly, I don't know enough of English and French assemblies to compare them with the Reichstag, so I will leave this comparison to others.
#**Religious Conflict and Foreign Interference**
The reformation began in the empire, and there it had a very strong decentralizing effect. The conversion of many princes to Lutheranism and Calvinism brought them in conflict with the Catholic emperor, and being weak on their own, the Protestant princes formed large networks of alliances -or leagues- against him. These leagues attracted foreign support: France intervened in the Schmalkaldic War of 1546, and with the resulting Peace of Augsburg the Lutherans gained the guarantee that they can follow their religious practices in their own lands ([an old post of mine explains this in detail](_URL_0_)). Augsburg was successful in preventing another religious war for 63 years, but recatholization efforts, increasing tensions and the exemption of Calvinists from the treaty resulted in another, bigger conflict, the Thirty Years' War ([another old post] (_URL_1_)).
#**Sources and Reading List**
Normally I use page numbers with my sources as well, but this time I didn't have much time so I will list the names without them. For page numbers, you can check the two posts on Augsburg and 30YW (linked above in text) which have more detailed bibliographies.
* *Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire* by Peter H. Wilson
* *The Thirty Years' War*, edited by Geoffrey Parker
* *Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy* by Brendan Simms | [
"Although most of its neighbors coalesced into relatively centralized states before the 19th century, Germany did not follow that path. Instead, the Holy Roman Empire largely maintained its medieval political structure as a \"polyglot congeries of literally hundreds of nearly sovereign states and territories rangin... |
Do stars normally complete a full rotation around a galaxy? | Our sun, roughly middle, takes ~225-250 million years to make a full trip around. (this is called a cosmic or galactic year).
There are stars that are much bigger, and as such burn so quickly, that they do not make it a full trip around.
It would vary heavily based on type of star, and orbital period but it definitely happens and my gut tells me most make multiple trips around. (too lazy to do the research and math to back up that vague assertion) | [
"The stars and gas in the Milky Way rotate about its center differentially, meaning that the rotation period varies with location. As is typical for spiral galaxies, the orbital speed of most stars in the Milky Way does not depend strongly on their distance from the center. Away from the central bulge or outer rim,... |
Why is moonlight white? | > why, on a brightly moonlit night, is everything so devoid of colour compared to the daytime?
It's a function of your eyes, not of the scenery.
Retina:
rods return something akin to luminosity (sensitivity peaking around the blue end of green) with no colour response;
cones respond to colour but are less sensitive overall.
As the external illumination level drops, the signal from the rods begins to dominate, so effectively you're preserving luminosity-channel information at the expense of colour (with a shift toward blue as the last thing to go).
It's known as the [Purkinje effect](_URL_0_), and explains why a 30-second night-time photographic exposure looks like daylight colours (because camera sensors respond equally across R+G+B rather than separately to L/ab) whereas to you everything looks shades of inky blue and silver. Enjoy. | [
"The color of moonlight, particularly around full Moon, appears bluish to the human eye compared to most artificial light sources due to the Purkinje effect. Moonlight is not actually tinted blue, and although moonlight is often referred to as \"silvery\", it has no inherent silvery quality.\n",
"The Sun is a G-t... |
what's happening in our brain when we're looking for an object, but we're actually holding it in our hand? | Sensory information is represented in 'maps' in your brain. Meaning a certain small area in your brain (eg if you poke the back of your head, your primary visual cortex is around that area. If you poke the top of your head your primary somatosensory (skin sensations) is located around there. So zoom in to the top area on your brain, like really zoom in until you start to see cells. The cells are arranged in a sheet. If you move along a certain direction on the sheet of cells, the activity of those cells represents a continuous area of skin sensation on your body. These sensory cells then send signals to other areas of your brain (approx around top of forehead) which have 'goal related' brain cell activity. As in some cells are active and that represents the goal that you have, like 'i want this object'.
Now ultimately your behaviour (for example searching for an object) is just a sequence of muscle movements (for example to move your eyes, visual search. Or arm muscles to make reaching/grasping). "Attention" has to do with specifically what sense signals are used to program a movement. So maybe the object is in your hand. But the physical area of sensory cortex being investigated isn't the correct position of the object. So in this example. Maybe the cells in your frontal cortex (responsible for your goal of 'i want this object') is looking at the vis sensory cells in more detail than the sensory cells that represent skin sensation). So takes a bit longer to "find" the object in this particular event. | [
"By turning the attention inward, one discovers that no \"self-nature\" can be found in the movements of the mind. Eventually, dhyana leads to the realisation that awareness is empty, and cannot be grasped by concepts:\n",
"An explanation for this phenomenon is that observers see the critical object in their visu... |
A recent Crusader Kings II expansion introduced a mechanic that allows your ruler to join a secret society of demon worshipers. Is there any actual historical precedent for the existence of anti-Christian, organized demonic worship in Christian Europe during the Middle Ages period? | I haven't played the game, but this sounds a lot like the fate of the Knights Templar.
Before I go into this story, let's make one thing clear: There is no evidence of organized Satanic ritual activity on any scale. I assume there are small groups of iconoclasts who paint themselves as faux "Satanists," and at various times in history people who practiced pagan religion were called "Satanists." But in the sense that you mean... No, it didn't happen.
Here's what *did* happen:
During the Crusades there existed a number of "Militant Orders" which were groups of crusading knights who lived a quasi-monastic lifestyle. The knights organized themselves in a manner similar to monks living in a monastery, and devoted themselves to both war and religious practice. One of the most prominent of these was the Knights Templar. The Templars were a powerful and wealthy order of knights whose influence waxed and waned throughout the Crusades, but by the end of it they were pretty well off, to say the least. Some go so far as to credit them with the invention of modern banking.
The King of France (Phillip IV, the Fair) wanted to get his hands on some of this wealth, and the easiest mechanism by which he could do this was to have the Knights tried as heretics. In 1307 he put forth a list of charges that included such things as: worshipping various Satanic beings and idols, taboo sexual practices, and performing certain acts that disgraced Christian symbols. The concept that they were a secret Satanist cult gave him the political and legal justification to abolish the order, execute the knights, and steal their stuff. It is virtually certain that these charges were fabricated.
It's all a rather fascinating (and tragic) story. These accusations and other invented stories about the Templars have led to them becoming something of a pop culture trope. Rumors of Templar mysticism or cults flourish in conspiracy theories or speculative writing, and you can see the influence of this in media such as "The DaVinci Code" and "Assassin's Creed" video games.
| [
"Throughout the Middle Ages, there were a number of Christian sects, cults and movements that sought a return to the purity of the Apostolic church and whose teachings foreshadowed Protestant ideas. Some of the main groups were: Paulicians (6th to 9th centuries); Tondrakians (9th to 11th centuries); Bogomils (11th ... |
what makes elevators so safe? seems like few deaths occur on what seems like a potentially dangerous machine. | There are usually triple redundancies on elevators. i.e. far more than one cable holds the weight, so even if one snapped it would still be absolutely fine and would just be closed for maintenance. People are just stupid on stairs. | [
"Statistically speaking, cable-borne elevators are extremely safe. Their safety record is unsurpassed by any other vehicle system. In 1998, it was estimated that approximately eight millionths of one percent (1 in 12 million) of elevator rides result in an anomaly, and the vast majority of these were minor things s... |
How would early Anglo-Saxons decorate their shields? | Frustratingly, we don't know. Everything we know about shields in this period comes from archaeological sites (we don't have any contemporary art showing shield faces), and the fronts of shield, along with any decoration they may have displayed, have never survived.
We do know from archaeological excavations that shields were always covered with leather (probably rawhide), and in one case ([Tranmer House](_URL_1_)) this leather was covered in some sort of preparatory layer for paint (maybe gesso); but, the painting didn't survive. Many shields had metal appliqués (like Sutton Hoo, often less fancy), and some had a pair of large flat circular rivets whose functional purpose isn't clear (so, possibly another form of metallic decoration). But what, if anyting, would have been painted onto their faces is unknown.
In many cases, shields were buried to display their faces toward assembled mourners, and several graves at Mucking had shield boards (noe visible only as a dark soil stain) buried in the grave eithout their metal bosses. To me, that implies that shield faces *were* decorated: you wanted guests at the funeral to see the shield face and know who your family's friends were by recognizing the design(s) painted on it (even if you wanted to keep and recycle the still useful iron components).
We do have a record of late Roman shield designs, the [Notitia Dignitatum](_URL_2_). It's very possible that some of these designs would have continued to be used in Britain after 410. One might also wonder whether some of the circular motifs on Style 1 jewelry were also used to decorate shields, but that's just speculation with no hard evidence to support it.
If you want to read further, see [Dickinson and Harke's book on early Anglo-Saxon shields](_URL_0_), available free on Harke's _URL_3_ page. | [
"The shield was another extremely common piece of war equipment used by the Anglo-Saxons—nearly 25% of male Anglo-Saxon graves contain shields. In Old English, a shield was called a \"bord\", \"rand\", \"scyld\", or \"lind\" (\"linden-wood\"). Anglo-Saxon shields comprised a circular piece of wood constructed from ... |
If dragonflies see almost 360 degrees how come they don't go blind looking at the sun? | First a side note about insect vision, many insects, including dragonflies and damselflies, have ocellus. These are single lens eyes and are located on the top of the insect's head. So many different insects have "eyes" point up at the sun.
To answer your question: I'm not sure. [Scholarpedia](_URL_1_) makes a brief mention of changes in the nerve synapses with changes in light intensity meaning the nerves change the signal that they send to the ganglia (one of the insects brain's). This [book](_URL_0_)(page 426) mentions that the pigments change in adjacent ommatidia so, I believe, that the amount of light entering any given lens is diminished, decreasing the intensity of the light. I'll rummaged through my general entomology text book when I get to work and see if it has any thing else helpful to add.
Edit: The text book didn't say much more except that the light sensitivity of ommaitdia isn't that great due to their small diameter (nocturnal insects have a slightly different eye physiology to help compensate for this) so that may aid in their ability to deal with direct sunlight. | [
"The Komodo dragon can see objects as far away as , but because its retinas only contain cones, it is thought to have poor night vision. It can distinguish colours, but has poor visual discrimination of stationary objects.\n",
"It appears with more distinctness against a blue background. With practice, it is poss... |
numbers and letters on processor model? | For starters, that's an Intel Chip.
i7 is the product line. i3 is entry level, i5 is a step up, i7 is higher end.
4710HQ is the model, which is assigned to that specific chip.
4=4th generation (the current generation of the "i" product line)
710=model number (the specific chip from this generation and product line)
HQ=suffix, a feature code. Specifically, that's a "quad core".
(K=unlocked, as in, you may change the speed of the processor. S and T are low-power versions (gen 2, gen 3, respectively). R means it has Iris Pro Integrated Graphics. M is for standard dual-core mobile (laptop) processors.)
2.5GHz refers to the speed of the cores.
The other big name in processors is AMD, a common processor is an "FX-8350".
FX is the product line (FX is high end desktop, A are mid level processors, E/C series are low-power).
8350 is the model.
8 is series, which means, it has 8 cores. (A 4-core would be a 4350)
3 is the generation (3rd gen).
50 is the model number (tied to speed, so an 8350 is faster than an 8300, but both are 8-core 3rd-generation) | [
"As of November 2007, AMD has removed the letters from the model names and X2/X3/X4 monikers for depicting the number of cores of the processor, leaving just a four digit model number with the first character being the sole identification of the processor family, while Sempron remained using the LE prefix, as follo... |
why is mouth breathing bad for humans and why are we able to do it? | They don’t really say that mouth breathing is bad it’s just that breathing through your nose is better... the hairs in your nose “filter” the air hence why you get boogers(they are the “bad” stuff in the air) | [
"The adaptation from nasal to mouth breathing takes place when changes such as chronic middle ear infections, sinusitis, allergic rhinitis, upper airway infections, and sleep disturbances (e.g., snoring) take place. In addition, mouth breathing is often associated with a decrease in oxygen intake into the lungs. Mo... |
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