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why aren't more uplifting, good news (the ones that put faith in humanity) shown in journalism? | Longtime communications person w/ a journalism degree and a lot of feeling about this topic.
Speaking to American journalism specifically, the vast majority of outlets are for-profit (as opposed to non-profit), so they have to try and generate revenue through their reporting to stay afloat. Think NY Times, FOX News, etc.
There's a saying in reporting: "If it bleeds, it leads." This means that media outlets put all your negative/sensational stories at the front of the broadcast/on the front page because its what peaks people's interest and keeps their attention. In a consumer-driven market, the consumer's interest dictate what outlets report on.
Conversely, if the entire country stood up and "All I want are tella novellas and cooking shows on TV!" and - here's the important part - ACTED ON IT by not consuming any other kind of media, we'd have nothing by tella novellas and cooking shows on TV by this time next week. So people can bitch and moan about the low quality of reporting, but if they don't act on it, there's no incentive for the outlet to change their reporting style. So its ultimately the consumer's fault.
Meanwhile, you look at non-profit/public reporting outlets, you tend to see much more measured, thoughtful reporting about things that actually matter.
TLDR: In for-profit journalism, the outlets are forced to pursue revenue, which in turn makes them publish stories that people respond to. People like sensational stories, so outlets publish them because there's no motive to publish stories people aren't going to read. | [
"A number of writers have tried to explain the decline in journalistic standards. One explanation is the 24-hour news cycle, which faces the necessity of generating news even when no news-worthy events occur. Another is the simple fact that bad news sells more newspapers than good news. A third possible factor is t... |
How did Hezbollah go from a small militia to such an impressive paramilitary force? | Quick answer: Support from Iran via Syria and stong social presence. More detail:
* Hezbollah military men get trained in Iran. They also get weapons from Iran through Syria. Lots of weapon and artillery. They know the country and the villages and the inner streets so they are very well positioned to fight off any attack.
* Hezbollah men will fight to the death because it is a cause they are born and raised to believe in, unlike regular soldiers. Plus if they die, other than the prestige, they become martyrs and their wives and children are taken care of financially by the party.
* In addition, they created themselves as champions of the Shia sect. Shia in Lebanon were the underdog and completely neglected by the government,they had virtually no representation. So Hizbollah provided them with a voice, not to mention all the charity and rebuilding work, so Hizbollah had a major popular base.
* Hizbollah's leader, Nasrallah, is a seriously intelligent and charismatic man, he has a large appeal in the country even among some of the Christians. | [
"The militia is described as an \"operational auxiliary\" or subsidiary of Hezbollah. Group members fight under the Hezbollah flag and command structure in combat, but are at least nominally separate in peacetime. They also receive intelligence from Hezbollah.\n",
"At its zenith, the militia had 14,000 troops. Am... |
how do you explain that depak chopra and other woo woo new age pseudo science/medicine is bogus to someone that is deeply invested in them? | Sounds like it is trying to take advantage of the placebo effect, a real phenomenon. Honestly, people who are deeply invested in these pseudosciences usually will not listen to reason and they will reject any evidence that doesn’t support their belief, much like a person who is delusional with a psychiatric illness. | [
"Chopra has equated spontaneous remission in cancer to a change in quantum state, corresponding to a jump to \"a new level of consciousness that prohibits the existence of cancer\". Physics professor Robert L. Park has written that physicists \"wince\" at the \"New Age quackery\" in Chopra's cancer theories, and ch... |
Do any ancient bibles/scriptures show that Jesus did not resurrect? | Honestly, not really. Even in the earliest gospel (Mark), after women enter Jesus' tomb, an angel says
> "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. *He has been raised; he is not here*."
And the earliest sources that we have -- the epistles of Paul -- are permeated with references to Jesus' resurrection.
The only thing that's been hypothesized is that the earliest Christians originally did not believe that Jesus underwent *bodily* resurrection, and that they instead believed that his body really did remain dead (wherever it had ended up), and that it was just his spirit that was "exalted to heaven." But, again, this was just hypothetical, and doesn't enjoy wide scholarly support; and the only texts that we have are insistent on resurrection. | [
"According to the New Testament, some Christians reported that they encountered Jesus after his crucifixion. They argued that he had been resurrected (belief in the resurrection of the dead in the Messianic Age was a core Pharisaic doctrine), and would soon return to usher in the Kingdom of God and fulfill the rest... |
if we were to go extinct today, would earth be able to erase any evidence of us completely? | Yes and no. The things you mention, such as buildings and bridges, would pretty much fade to oblivion. Foundations would probably remain for some things but for the most part, we would simply fade away. However, many of our more forward thinking projects, such as seed banks, would be around for millennia. When we decide that we want something to last, we can do a pretty good job of it. Furthermore, our effects on the planet will live on for the rest of the Earth's lifespan. Trapped in the geology of our planet will be records of our lives here today. Changes in carbon and methane levels, along with traces of elements and isotopes which simply do not exist naturally, will be infused into the planet for all time. To a future civilization, it would be as clear as the words you are reading right now. | [
"Researchers experience difficulty in studying near human extinction directly, since humanity has never been destroyed before. While this does not mean that it will not be in the future, it does make modelling existential risks difficult, due in part to survivorship bias. However, civilizations vanished rather freq... |
why do humans feel shame? | It's a social emotion similar to embarrassment. When you feel shame, it's usually from doing something not socially accepted and whatnot, so you feel a bad emotion to be discouraged from doing it again, as humans are social creatures, and we generally prefer to be accepted by our communities. | [
"Shame can be a contributor to those with problems of low self-esteem. Feelings of shame usually occur because of a situation where the social self is devalued, such as a socially evaluated poor performance. A poor performance leads to higher responses of psychological states that indicate a threat to the social se... |
why its carl's jr. on the western half of the u.s and hardee's on the midwestern/some eastern | Carl's and Hardees were originally different restaurant chains. Back in 1997, the parent company of Carl's Jr. bought Hardees and is slowly combining the two restaurants. I expect they will keep the names separate indefinitely, as there's no reason to throw away name recognition. | [
"By 1975, there were more than 100 Carl's Jr. locations in Southern California, and the company expanded into the northern part of the state. Carl's Jr. celebrated its success by building its Anaheim corporate headquarters in 1976. The following year, it became the first QSR chain to offer salad bars in all 200 loc... |
how does lying to yourself work? | You don't actually "lie" to yourself. You don't say something factually wrong like "I'm not fat" and suddenly believe you are not overweight.
What you do is delude yourself about things that are less factually certain. You say things like "I might be overweight, but I am still pretty healthy". You focus on the evidence for being healthy, like being able to go on long bike rides, and pay less attention to the evidence against, like your high blood pressure. Next time you have to decide between a double cheeseburger and a salad, you comfort yourself with how healthy you are, and get some fries with that. | [
"Researchers have looked into individuals cognitive effort when choosing between a lie versus the truth. Lying has been proven more difficult for the brain than telling the truth, they have found that lying increases activity in the brain regions. It takes the brain longer to formulate a deceptive answer than it do... |
what exactly is a bruised bone? | A bone bruise, or a bone contusion, is an injury to bone typically caused by trauma that results in [microscopic fractures and the build-up of blood and fluid in the surrounding tissue and bone](_URL_0_). Bone bruises can be very painful but are much less severe than a fracture. While fractures can be seen on x-rays, a bone bruise can only be seen on MRIs. | [
"A bruise, also known as a contusion, is a type of hematoma of tissue, the most common cause being capillaries damaged by trauma, causing localized bleeding that extravasate into the surrounding interstitial tissues. Most bruises are not very deep under the skin so that the bleeding causes a visible discoloration. ... |
why do people have pairs of chromosomes? what does that do? | You get one chromosome from each parent. It increases genetic diversity by giving you one from each parent, rather than just one chromosome from one parent. | [
"Humans have a total of 46 chromosomes, but there are only 22 pairs of homologous autosomal chromosomes. The additional 23rd pair is the sex chromosomes, X and Y. If this pair is made up of an X and Y chromosome, then the pair of chromosomes is not homologous because their size and gene content differ greatly. The ... |
Why does it hail in warm weather? | Sleet is just normal rain which freezes prior to hitting the ground. Freezing rain is also just normal rain, but freezes on contact with a surface. Hail on the other hand, is formed by a completely different mechanism. The stones are created deep inside strong updrafts in powerful thunderstorm, very high up in the atmosphere where the air temperature is still below freezing (even if it is 80 degrees on the ground).
For more on how hailstones form, see [this page](_URL_0_). | [
"Hail fog sometimes occurs in the vicinity of significant hail accumulations due to decreased temperature and increased moisture leading to saturation in a very shallow layer near the surface. It most often occurs when there is a warm, humid layer atop the hail and when wind is light. This ground fog tends to be lo... |
How are vaccination schedules determined? | There's many things going on when deciding on vaccine schedules. From the top of my head, there's
**Maternal antibodies** (The mother will transfer some antibodies to the infant that lasts for a couple of months and might interfere with the vaccine response)
**Risk of side effects** of the vaccine versus severity of the disease should infection occur (It is a common thing for medical personel to delay vaccination of preterm babies - this is often contraproductive since the consequences of e.g. whooping cough is especially severe in preterms)
**When** the disease that is vaccinated against tend to occur.
**Burden to the parents**. Asking the parents to vaccinate their children too often results in a drop in compliance and acceptance, which is a big issue. Therefore multiple vaccinations tend to be pooled at a single point in time that is a good compromise between optimal time periods for the individual vaccines.
**Ease of administration.** Ideally, you want to time the vaccinations so that they come jointly with other routine contacts with the health care, such as follow-up visits after the child is born, school entry and so on. This factor can make schedules in different countries diverge quite a bit.
**Whether the vaccine is good enough** that a single dose give a good protection or if several doses are needed. This touches on your other question regarding booster necessity. Basically, decisions on boostering are based on research on what level of antibody presence is deemed protective, together with trial-and-error clinical trials; you first conduct a clinical trial with a certain schedule set up to the best of your knowledge, and if the vaccine is not quite protective enough you may try and add a booster. In the case of late boosters (e.g. three doses at 3,5 and 12 months of age, and then a 5 year booster), you take into account immunological and epidemiological research regarding the decline of vaccine effectiveness over time.
Regarding the duration between doses, there can be a bigger risk with taking the doses too close in time versus spacing them out more. If taken close enough, the immune system might just ignore the extra provocation that the new vaccine represent, and you won't get any benefit at all from the booster. Waiting a bit longer just mean that you have a longer period of not-quite-optimal protection.
[CDC](_URL_1_) has a nice overview that at least partly talks about what influences various decisions. You might also be interested in reading the english summary on page 36ff of [the swedish report on revision of vaccine schedules](_URL_0_) that was delivered in 2010.
Disclaimer: I'm a statistician that has been working on epidemiological analysis of vaccine schedules of B.Pertussis, not an MD. There's probably several simplifications and mistakes present in the above.
| [
"An alternative vaccination schedule is a vaccination schedule differing from the schedule endorsed by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). These schedules may be either written or \"ad hoc\", and have not been tested for their safety or efficacy. Proponents of such schedules aim to reduce the r... |
Does soap attack or dissolve phospholipid bilayers? (cell membranes and such) | Since there's already a thread discussing question 1, I'll start one for discussing question 2.
Phospholipids *do* form micelles.
Amphiphilic molecules like phospholipids and soaps are lyotropic liquid crystalline molecules. A liquid crystalline molecule exists in a phase of matter that is intermediate to a solid and a liquid. A lyotropic LC, specifically, has phase behavior that changes as its concentration increases. As a contrast, another major type are thermotropic liquid crystals, which have phase changes based upon temperature. The LCs in your television, for example, are of the thermotropic type. Most biological molecules that have liquid crystalline phase behavior are lyotropic. Phospholipids, lysophospholipids, and cholesterol all have these phase behaviors and are the most well-studied, but in recent years concentration-dependent formation of LC phases has been found in DNA and certain filament-forming proteins. Anyway, I digress.
As I mentioned, the phase behaviors of soaps and phospholipids are dependent upon concentration. Micelles and bilayers are simply different aspects of this same basic phenomenon. Refer to this image:
_URL_0_
As you can see in this image, you can construct a phase diagram (much like the phase diagrams that every 1st year chemistry student sees) of the different phase subtypes. Note that the axes are not temperature and pressure but temperature and amphiphile concentration.
Below a certain concentration -- called the critical micelle concentration or CMC -- amphiphilic molecules are dispersed in solution. This is intuitive but still contrary to what most intro bio and intro chemistry students are taught. Above the CMC for a given temperature, entropy effects drive amphiphilic molecules to aggregate into micelles. As the concentration continues to rise, amphiphilic molecules move through a variety of exotic LC phases before finally forming the lamellar phase at high concentration, relatively speaking.
This phase diagram will be different for soaps/surfactant which will be different than what you see for phospholipids and different than what you see for cholesterol, etc.
To the point made by Hmmhowaboutthis, geometry is important but not determinative. Surfactants do still form lamellar phases, and phospholipids do still form micelles; however, the geometry of surfactant molecule tends to stabilize micellar phases and the geometry of phospholipids stabilize lamellar phases. | [
"The surface charge of endothelial cells at points of diffusivity can determine which type of molecule can diffuse through the capillary walls. If the surface is hydrophilic, it will allow water and charged molecules to pass through. If it is hydrophobic, non-charged and lipophilic molecules will be able to diffuse... |
How do Americans get 115V? | most of us do get 240V to the home, as a single phase- but that phase is "split" - the transformer that supplies the house is center-tapped, that center is pinned to ground, so there's effectively a +120 and a -120. obviously not really positive and negative since it's a/c, but they're 180° out of phase. so some circuits get one polarity, some get the other, and if we need the full 240 (like for an air conditioner or the stove, etc) we use both. | [
"Illinois 115 is a north–south highway from Perdueville to Buckingham; at Buckingham, it turns east but is still marked north–south. South of Kankakee, Illinois 115 turns north again on its way into Kankakee.\n",
"Route 115 is a highway in the St. Louis, Missouri area. Its western terminus is at exit 237 of Inter... |
Why does the trait of skin color mix together into a shade rather than being one or the other, like eye color? | Most interesting traits are polygenic - they are controlled by many different genes, not just one or two.
When we’re taught introductory genetics, we’re taught inheritance with Mendelian diagrams showing how one dominant/recessive gene set is inherited. Later maybe we’re taught how two or three genes get inherited, and maybe given a few words on co-dominant and more complicated combinations.
This is all true, and it does apply to a handful of traits - eye color is one of the few (though even there, real life is more complicated than the simplistic versions we’re taught). But more interesting inherited traits, like height and skin color and propensity to heart disease and so on, are influenced by dozens, hundreds, or thousands of genes, all interacting together.
If you think about the apparently complex inheritance patterns you get with, say, three genes, imagine what happens with a thousand different genes. Everything ends up blending together, and instead of a tidy on/off appearance, you get what looks like a normal distribution of possible outcomes.
Historically, this polygenic inheritance led to lots of confusion. Darwin never figured out inheritance properly, while Mendel did. Is that because Mendel did the experiments and Darwin didn’t? In fact, Darwin did exactly the right experiments, almost identical to Mendel’s. The difference is that Mendel was lucky, and looked at plants (peas) and traits (wrinkled/smooth, etc) that have simple one-gene two-allele inheritance — the unusual, exceptional situation that allows you to figure out what’s going on. Darwin looked at primroses, where such simple traits are not as obvious. ([Darwin, C. R., 1877 The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species. John Murray, London.](_URL_1_)), and didn’t figure out that he was not seeing blending inheritance.
(I’ve read that there are simple inheritance models in primroses and that Darwin could have spotted them if he’d been primed for it, so Mendel still gets credit for understanding what he was seeing in his model.)
Polygenic inheritance looks like [blending inheritance ](_URL_0_), which was the main explanation for inheritance in Darwin’s time and until Mendel was rediscovered. The difference is that (as Darwin understood) evolution by natural selection can not work with blending inheritance - it needs Mendelian (particulate) inheritance for his theories to work. | [
"Skin colour is a polygenic trait, which means that several different genes are involved in determining a specific phenotype. Many genes work together in complex, additive, and non-additive combinations to determine the skin colour of an individual. The skin colour variations are normally distributed from light to ... |
how do i perceive myself as a single entity, when i'm actually composed of a group of cells that are each self replicating blocks of life? | You just asked "what is the nature of consciousness?" People have been debating and researching that for millenia. | [
"The individuality of a being is a certain intricate form, not an enduring substance. In order to understand an organism, it must be thought of as a pattern which maintains itself through homeostasis – life continues by maintaining an internal balance of various factors such as temperature and molecular structure. ... |
What were the attitudes of the labour movements in New Zealand and Australia towards the indigenous populations? | This question is made for /u/w2red and /u/Algernon_Asimov but I can answer for one union in particular...
The North Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) founded in the Northern Territory in around 1911.. Their history is covered in this doctoral thesis by Bernie Brian
_URL_0_
To quote from there:
> For the most part the union movement was not interested in the plight of Aboriginal workers except for when they competed with ‘white’ union members for jobs. The only exception to this was when members of the Communist Party were leading the union in the period immediately after the Second World War.
This however puts it a little mildly, the AWU clashed frequently with the administration of the NT, with several rounds of strikes, and eventually succeeded in getting the administrator (Gilruth) removed in what is now known as the Darwin Rebellion, this also led to the Territory getting direct representation in federal parliament...
One of the many issues they clashed on, was that Gilruth was employing Chinese and Aboriginal labour in state hotels, and occasionally paying equal wages to them, which outraged the AWU. As Brian puts it:
> many members of the NAWU and its predecessors were aggressive proponents of the racist white Australia policy and callously disregarded the plight of Aboriginal workers.
Other social relations in Darwin at the time in most sources are were typified as
> a leading member of the Communist Party, remembers the
main past-time in Darwin as drinking, gambling and ‘chasing gins’ (slang term for
Aboriginal women).
This changes post-war, and Jack McGuinness was head of the union for a while, did quite a lot for indigenous rights, as did many other unions Australia wide... | [
"New Zealand's claims to be a classless society were dealt a fatal blow in the 1980s and 1990s by the economic reforms of the fourth Labour government and its successor, the fourth National government. A cultural shift also took place due to the economic and social impact of international capital, commerce and adve... |
Why do many people take sniper kill counts for granted? Can we really trust any of the offical numbers, some as high as 4-500? How reliable are the figures? | > Why do so many military historians take the numbers for granted?
So the question is... do they? Now, to be sure, *popular histories* like those kinds of numbers. Take for instance the aforementioned Simo's profile on "[_URL_1_](_URL_0_)", which, as an aside, also manages to only go 2 for 3 of actual photos of the man, the third being a common misattribution, but while his exploits might be the main fact your average internet denizen knows in regards to the Winter War, a quick check of several books on the Winter War which I'd consider to be at least a decent level in their approach turned up only one which makes mention of him, and presents a cautious approach to his 'kill count'. Gordon F. Sander states "the reported number would eventually rise to as high as 505", which reads as doubly hedged, in my opinion, and in any case the larger point is that you just generally won't find more serious histories caring too much about *individual* snipers. It falls into the coverage of popular histories, which, when checking, for instance, "The Winter War 1939-40" from Osprey Publishing, not only makes a number of mentions of the man throughout, but even credits him with 542 *confirmed* kills, which is doubly an error, since that includes his (likely inflated) confirmed number plus unconfirmed! So anyways, my point here is that while you might read uncritical acceptance of these numbers from Simo, I would venture - admittedly not taking a *super* in-depth survey of the literature - that this is more common with works which are less academic in their approach.
Now, as to the broader topic at hand, I'm going to briefly touch on why, yes, you shouldn't trust these numbers! I'll focus specifically on the Soviets, simply because it is both the angle I'm best suited to handle, and also the cult of 'Sniperism' was far and away most developed there during World War II, and I don't think it is a stretch to say the Soviet snipers of WWII were the most singularly notable collection of the 20th century. In simplest terms, the Soviets were crazy for snipers. Even before the war, they put a good deal of effort into training and deploying them, and they, as you allude to, saw great value in them as propaganda tools. For those familiar with the film "Enemy at the Gates" it is a fairly loose dramatization of one of the most famous from the war, Vasily Zaitsev, and while it plays quite loose with the facts, in all fairness, much of the source material it draws upon does as well. The sniper duel with "Major Konings" which forms a central part of the film is taken right from Zaitsev's memoirs, yet any attempts to actually corroborate the account has been met with failure.
This is only a single example, but endemic of the entire propaganda machine which operated around the cult of the Sniper in the Soviet Union. With numerous 'sniper heroes' lauded and credited with kills of several hundred, I would again question the premise of the question though, at least when approaching those improbable heights allegedly achieved by figures like Zaitsev of Pavlichenko. From my own readings - popular and academic - I find that it is more common than not that those who discuss 'Sniperism' include the caveat that these numbers need to be approached for what they are, propaganda, or at the very least present them as less than certain even if dispensing with a paragraph on their speciousness. Certainly there is little doubt that they are *generally* reflective of the success of those individuals, but few accept that they are specifically reflective of an accurate accounting of confirmed kills. There really isn't any way to ascertain the true numbers, as those records were simply not left behind, and the snipers themselves at the very least bowed to the needs of the state and went along with the 'official tallies', even if they knew the real numbers. And of course, they *did* likely had a fair idea of that number, going about tallying their confirmed (A confirmed kill, according to Zaitsev's memoirs, required the signature of a witness on the report, but doesn't seem to have required physical confirmation) and unconfirmed kills and reporting them, but it just wasn't for public consumption, or posterity. Interestingly, the Soviets on at least one occasion inflated *German* kill counts too. It is alleged that Pavlichenko recovered documents off a sniper following a duel that she bested him in, which showed over 400 confirmed kills - but all against British and French early in the war. There is no corroboration beyond the Soviet's claim though, almost certainly intended to inflate the prowess of their own sniper.
I think it is also important to add one small caveat there as well, namely that you don't see it thus suggested that these snipers simply *weren't good*. Those who found themselves at the forefront of Soviet propaganda - "She has killed 309 Fascists, what have you done?" - most certainly were talented and accomplished marksmen and -women, and their successes were inflated, but there is no reason whatsoever to believe they were created out of thin air. Certainly German accounts, especially of urban combat in areas like Stalingrad, recalled the threat fearfully. But the short of it is, you are absolutely on the money to suspect that "*it seems to me that inflating these numbers was something people would do for propaganda services*", as there is no doubt that, at least in the case of the Soviet sniper movement, this was very much the case.
Now, as for other countries, I can't speak too much to, say, how reliable American kill counts are regarded (in WWII or otherwise), so I'll leave that to others, but for the Soviets, hopefully this provides you a bit more information to confirm your existing gut feelings on the matter.
Sources consulted (by which I mean, in some cases, literally just checking to see what phrase is used to describe sniper kill counts):
* The Sniper at War by Mike Haskew
* Notes of a Russian Sniper by Vassili Zaitsev
* Soviet Women on the Frontline in the Second World War by Roger D. Marwick
* The Stalingrad Cauldron by Frank Ellis
* Victory at Stalingrad by Geoffrey Roberts
* Winter Storm: The Battle for Stalingrad and the Operation to Rescue 6th Army by Hans Wijers
* The Winter War: Russia's Invasion of Finland by Robert Edwards
* The Winter War 1939-40 by Vesa Nenye & Peter Munter & Toni Wirtanen
* War of the White Death: Finland Against the Soviet Union 1939-1940 by Bair Irincheev
* The Soviet Invasion of Finland: 1939-1940 by Carl van Dyke
* The Hundred Day Winter War: Finland's Gallant Stand Against the Soviet Army by Gordon F. Sander
* A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-40 by William R. Trotter
* Finland and World War II: 1939-1944 by John H. Wourinen | [
"This list is not exhaustive, as such data is generally not tracked nor managed under any official procedure. For example, the Canadian Army 2002 sniper team that saw two soldiers (Arron Perry/2,310 m and Rob Furlong/2,430 m) set consecutive new records, also made a number of kills at that are not counted here. The... |
how do seasons work around the world? is it summer everywhere, or is it just summer on a part of the world? | When it is summer in the northern hemisphere, it is winter in the southern hemisphere. When it is hot in the US, it is cold in Australia. When the days are long in the US, they are short in Australia. This is due to the tilted axis of the earth, resulting in the different hemispheres getting different amounts of sunlight as we travel around the sun. | [
"A season is a division of the year marked by changes in weather, ecology, and amount of daylight. On Earth, seasons result from Earth's orbit around the Sun and Earth's axial tilt relative to the ecliptic plane. In temperate and polar regions, the seasons are marked by changes in the intensity of sunlight that rea... |
how can we recall memories and imagine scenarios and see them visually, while also seeing and observing the current environment? | Your brain does lots of things simultaneously, if it didn't your heart would stop when you needed to take a breath, or when you thought about a math problem.
Needless to say, the thing you're seeing in actuality is based on stimulus coming from your optic nerve. That path only takes inputs from your eye (normally) whereas the input from your imagined scenarios is coming from elsewhere in the brain. They may have some overlap in terms of where they are processed in the brain (giving you the sense you are "seeing" a memory), but that portion of the brain is pretty good at doing things simultaneously. | [
"Spatial view cells are used by primates for storing an episodic memory that helps with remembering where a particular object was in the environment. Imaging studies have shown that the hippocampus plays an important role in spatial navigation and episodic memories. Also, spatial view cells enable them to recall lo... |
It seems like every modern President of the US was a golfer. Were there any who weren't? | Teddy Roosevelt, Hoover, Truman and Carter were the only US presidents not to play golf since McKinley, who introduced it to the White House. [Source](_URL_1_)
[FDR considered himself a golfer even though he was physically unable to play.](_URL_0_) I'll leave it up to you whether or not to include him in the list. | [
"Harry Watkey Easterly Jr. (1922-2005) served as president of the United States Golf Association, one of the World's two ruling bodies of Golf (the other being the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews), in 1976 and 1977 and later as its first Executive Director.\n",
"Charles Robert Coe (October 26, 1923 – Ma... |
Is there a timeline of the history of women's rights in ancient Greece between the 5th and 1st century BC? | Is this a homework question? It says in our [rules](_URL_1_):
Our users aren't here to do your homework for you, but they might be willing to help. Remember: AskHistorians helps those who help themselves. Don't just give us your essay/assignment topic and ask us for ideas. Do some research of your own, then come to us with questions about what you've learned. This is explained further [in this [META] thread](_URL_0_).
You can also consider asking the helpful people at /r/HomeworkHelp. | [
"Although most women lacked political and equal rights in the city states of ancient Greece, they enjoyed a certain freedom of movement until the Archaic age. Records also exist of women in ancient Delphi, Gortyn, Thessaly, Megara and Sparta owning land, the most prestigious form of private property at the time. Ho... |
Why can i not see the exhaust from a bus, but i can see its shadow | Its a [shadowgraph](_URL_0_) caused by the difference in index of refraction between the hot exhaust and cold air.
| [
"“I mean for example the tailgate lights they aren’t electronic, they are just reflectors, like the sort of reflectors they have on bicycle wheels, so that’s on the back on the bus. Very simple lighting. They are not air-conditioned, you always see them driving around with the windows open,” Rowan Beard from Young ... |
How dangerous are dog bites? | It depends on the severity and how it is treated.
As a veterinarian, I get bit often. Most of them heal fine with soap and water, but one started to cause intense pain and swelling that spread through my entire finger after 24hours. Without antibiotics, there is a real chance I would have lost my finger, or worse.
An elderly client of mine broke up a fight between his chihuahuas with his hands. Apparently, the bite wounds were not all that extrnsive, but he didn't get treatment, an infection started which eventually went systemic and killed him.
In short, if you are asking this because you've been bit, go get treatment. And see if you can find out the dog's rabies vaccine status.
As for the bacteria becoming resistant from one bite to the next, I'm calling bullshit on that unless there is some sort of odd circumstance you can elaborate on. | [
"The study defined dog attacks as \"a human death caused by trauma from a dog bite\". Excluded from the study were deaths by disease caused by dog bites, strangulation on a scarf or leash pulled by a dog, heart attacks or traffic accident, and falling injury or fire ant bites from being pushed down by a dog. The st... |
Iceland was one of the poorer countries in Europe 1980. How did it grow so quickly after that to become so wealthy today? | I would like to preface this post by saying that I am not an economist and nor do I specialize in economic history. I am, however, somewhat acquainted with the economic development of Iceland as well as the historiography of this phenemenon due to being an Icelandic historian.
It is true that Iceland endured some economic hardships during the 1980s. This includes both catch failures for cod and capelin as well as massive inflation. Indeed, inflation rose to heights of more than 100% during 1983 and consistently stayed above 50% from 1980 to 1983. Government responded by devaluing the currency multiple times in a bid to boost the exports of the main economic sector - the fishing industry. Obviously, such measures were incredibly unpopular with the average worker whose purchasing power simultaneously decreased. This period of economic development can best be described as a time of monetary policy failures. Price levels fluctuated wildly and inflation was a chronic ill. The króna declined by almost 600% against the US dollar from 1980 to 1986.
This was followed by a short time of economic expansion from 1985 to 1988. This was mostly due to an increase in fishing catches as well as a boost in exports. However, this economic prosperity proved to be shortlived as fishing catches (mainly cod) failed again in 1988. During the late 1980s the Icelandic economy can best be described as stagnant. Although inflation fell, unemployment rose at the same time and Iceland's competitive position in the global economy detoriorated. In 1990, however, the cornerstone towards economic stability is sometimes said to have been laid when government managed to strike a tripartite deal with employers as well as labour unions. This deal is generally referred to as 'The National Agreement' (Þjóðarsáttin) and is considered a notable economic achievement for a few reasons. Firstly, the vicious cycle of wage increases followed by price level increases (and inflation) was ended. The labour unions agreed to relatively modest wage increases over the next few years in exchange for more stable price levels - which was made possible thanks to a fixed exchange rate of the króna. Secondly, this is one of the few instances in Icelandic history where collective bargaining of the government and labour movement was possible. Historically speaking, this inability to strike collective bargains has mainly been explained in terms of a very left-wing labour movement in conjunction with mainly right-wing goverments. In 1988, however, a left-wing government had been formed which facilitated this deal. Lastly, the National Accord of 1990 is generally seen as a prerequisite to the economic changes that Iceland underwent during the 1990s. These changes include economic liberalization, privatization of state-owned banks and utility companies as well as Iceland's membership of the EEA which was approved in 1992. Taxes were lowered and a period of economic prosperity began. However, these changes are also seen by many as a major cause of the 2008 Icelandic financial crisis wherein the entire financial system of Iceland collapsed spectacularly.
I would also like to add that although Iceland struggled economically during the 1980s it can hardly be classified as a poor country. Indeed, if we look at indicators such as GDP per capita we can see that Iceland was on par, if not ahead, of most Western European states during this time. For instance, Iceland's GDP per capita was $12,057 in 1984, compared with West Germany's $9,277 and France's $9,432. It is important to state that Iceland's economy is extremely volatile and most recessions are deeper and more frequent than in other European states. This is due to a number of factors. Firstly, because of the small size of the Icelandic economy as well as its unvaried nature and heavy emphasis on fish exports. Secondly, there are natural factors to consider, such as the weather and natural disasters (like volcanic eruptions and perhaps even avalanches). Thirdly and lastly, we can name the very pro-cylical economic and monetary policies of successive Icelandic governments which generally excerbated these crises with massive devaluations of the currency. Iceland can thus truly be called an economy of instability.
**Sources:**
Árni H. Kristjánsson. *Þjóðarsáttin 1990: Forsagan og goðsögnin*. BA-thesis. University of Iceland, 2008.
Guðmundur Jónsson and Magnús S. Magnússon, ed. *Icelandic historical statistics*. Reykjavík: Statistics Iceland, 1997.
Palle S. Andersen and and Már Guðmundsson. *Inflation and Disinflation in Iceland*. Reykjavík: Central Bank of Iceland, 1998.
Sigurður Snævarr. *Haglýsing Íslands*. Reykjavík: Heimskringla, 1993.
| [
"Until the 20th century, Iceland relied largely on subsistence fishing and agriculture. Industrialisation of the fisheries and Marshall Plan aid following World War II brought prosperity and Iceland became one of the wealthiest and most developed nations in the world. In 1994, it became a part of the European Econo... |
putin's government in russia and the quality of democracy that exists there. | Well, I lived in Russia during Putin's primetime. And in all honesty, 10 years ago he was the best thing that happened in Russia. He made the country great, became a very popular, most people loved him. Then when reaching his maximum term, he declined to rewrite a law (that would let him stick around longer consecutively) and all the country praised it as an honorable act. Then Medvedev took over, and the people seemed to take a liking to him as well...eventually, which seemed to upset Putin. Putin got jealous, over reacted, and made sure he won the next election... and now he's setting dumb policies in place.
So how is life there now?
Well, the media always has to be careful of criticizing the govt., the people still get beat up for having even peaceful protests, and there is still a ton of corruption (which will take decades to go away). The mindset of Russian people is what makes the difference. I personally believe it's great that every person in the US has the ability to buy a weapon, but I feel the opposite about the same issue in Russia... God forbid that Russians get access to guns (technically it's fire-powder ban, I believe). Russia is nowhere near developed enough to trust it's people to that extent. The current anti-democracy measure are a bit much, but I think there needs to be a balance between govt control and peoples freedom in the Russian Federation. | [
"Sovereign Democracy in Russia was realised in the form of a dominant-party system which was put into place in 2007 when as a result of the Russian legislative election of 2007 the political party United Russia, headed by president Vladimir Putin, without forming a government, formally became the leading and guidin... |
How much did scientists know about the makeup of other planets in our solar system prior to spectroscopy? | Even though I don't have a clue, I'll take a stab at answering, since no one else has. I'm going to take it as sort of a running narrative of how I'm researching it... No particular reason why.
[Wikipedia](_URL_4_) states astronomical spectroscopy dates back to the (rather unhelpful) "early 1800s", but states that there were retail devices available by at least 1884. Of course, it also took awhile for spectrographic lines to be made sense of and mapped. To begin with, it informed us more about the nature of light and matter itself, than the planets or sun. So... hopefully 1884 is just as good as any other date.
So, if we look at a [timeline for astronomy](_URL_0_) and work backwards from 1884... Well, aside from spectroscopy, there's not a whole lot.
* 1846, Neptune is credited to Johann Gottfried Galle, but there's evidence Galileo may have discovered it.
* 1801 an asteroid is discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi and demonstrated by William Herschel.
* 1781 Uranus is discovered by William Herschel (busy guy!).
etc.
Doesn't help as much as I thought.... Too vague to properly answer your question. So, we can take a look at what we knew about *specifically Jupiter*. Turns out, the [red spot](_URL_3_) has been observed since 1830, but was observed earlier by individuals. The first time it was described as being "red" was in a painting by Donato Ceti in 1711, though (based just on the Wiki description), it may have been artistic license, since the next description as red doesn't come until spectrography.
How about moons...? Well, aside from the [Galilean moons](_URL_1_), there were a few prior to mid-to-late 1800's. Specifically, 20 prior to 1884 (not counting the actual "moon" - that was way early).
Seems we didn't know a lot about the planets. Some idea of color. They had a good handle on the math to calculate basic orbits, but based on wikipedia on the discovery of the moons during the 1800's, they weren't first demonstrated mathematically (though many of the articles are vague on the issue). [Ceres](_URL_2_) is something of an exception, so they did have some basic rules of orbits and such.
Hope this helps you get started... I'd dig further, but I'm out of time. | [
"Most of our direct information on the composition of the giant planets is from spectroscopy. Since the 1930s, Jupiter was known to contain hydrogen, methane and ammonium. In the 1960s, interferometry greatly increased the resolution and sensitivity of spectral analysis, allowing the identification of a much greate... |
what keeps a bowling lane from getting warped from thrown balls? | Wood lanes are shaved down usually every 2 years. Also the lanes are not 1 continuous piece of wood. There are sections. The front part of the lane (where balls land) are made of a harder wood.
Most lanes today are made of a synthetic material. Also in sections that can be replaced. | [
"As bowling balls are quite heavy to throw, some alleys provide portable slides from the top of which the ball is pushed down rather than thrown. Use of these slides is often combined with the use of bumpers. These slides are used by children and the disabled to assist their throw. They are also referred to as \"ra... |
I am looking for a Site which has a database of News Clippings of English Newspapers from 1900-1950?? | [Proquest Historical Newspapers](_URL_0_) has the Guardian and the Observer. If you are member of a uni, library or other institution with a subscription, it's free. | [
"The British Library has already digitised two separate collections of newspapers: British newspapers 1800-1900 and the Burney collection of British 18th century newspapers. This project added another 1m pages of historical newspapers to the platform\n",
"This is a list of defunct newspapers of the United States.... |
is there a reason why all or most ip addresses begin with 192.168..? | 192.168.x.x is part of the 'private' range of addresses set aside by the Internet masters (APNIC). Whilst these are valid addresses, they are specificically designed not to be transmitted across the wider Internet. There are actually 3 such sets, (Class A, B and C).
These are:
A: 10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255.
B: 172.16.0.0 to 172.31.255.255.
C: 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255.
The Technical term is '[Non Routeable IP addresses](_URL_0_)'
| [
"For example, the global IPv4 address has the corresponding 6to4 prefix . This gives a prefix length of 48 bits, which leaves room for a 16-bit subnet field and 64 bit host addresses within the subnets.\n",
"Addresses in this group consist of an 80-bit prefix of zeros, the next 16 bits are ones, and the remaining... |
why are americans so obsessed with halloween? | Because Halloween is fun. The little kiddies dressed up in their costumes out getting candy. The harmless pranks people can play on others. Great movies on T.V. Everything about Halloween is just fun. | [
"While not traditionally a part of Australian culture, non-religious celebrations of Halloween modeled on North American festivities are growing increasingly popular in Australia, in spite of seasonal differences and the transition from spring to summer. Criticism stems largely from the fact that Halloween has litt... |
Can you layer sun protection products and is their SP factor cumulative? | You can layer but you will only get the higher protection. 15 + 15 does not equal spf 30.
They’re tested at a rate of coverage that equals about 1/4 teaspoon for the average male face too. It’s a good idea to measure it for a while to be sure you are getting enough.
It doesn’t last all day, so reapply about every 2 hours or after profuse sweating or swimming or rubbing. | [
"A relatively new rating designation for sun protective textiles and clothing is UPF (Ultraviolet Protection Factor), which represents the ratio of sunburn-causing UV measured without and with the protection of the fabric. For example, a fabric rated UPF 30 means that, if 30 units of UV fall on the fabric, only 1 u... |
Which books of the Bible attributed to a single author (ex: first six books of Old Testament to Moses, Luke/Acts to Luke, John/Revelation to John, various letters by Peter and Paul) do scholars agree were really written by the same person? | You might want to post this in /r/academicbiblical as well. | [
"Irenaeus (died c. 202) quotes and cites 21 books that would end up as part of the New Testament, but does not use Philemon, Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 3 John and Jude. By the early 3rd century Origen of Alexandria may have been using the same 27 books as in the modern New Testament, though there were still disputes ... |
why are some people great at abstract thinking but terrible at algebra which involves it? | Math requires abstract thinking to understand why you're supposed to do certain things, but not to literally do them. You need abstract thinking to understand why you can divide two from both sides of 2x=4, but not to do it.
The people that are good at math before calculus are people that can do well in a system that requires logical and step by step thinking. It isn't really until calc and beyond that you need to understand why you can/cannot do certain things. | [
"Abstract mathematical problems arise in all fields of mathematics. While mathematicians usually study them for their own sake, by doing so results may be obtained that find application outside the realm of mathematics. Theoretical physics has historically been, and remains, a rich source of inspiration.\n",
"By ... |
In fantasy it is common to read about colored or painted armor. Is there any historical basis for this? | There was a style that became popular in 16th century Germany referred to as "black and white" armor. Decorative patterns were created by selectively polishing certain areas. [Here's a good example.](_URL_1_) As you might expect, the higher one's status, the fancier of a pattern one could afford. [This](_URL_0_), by contrast, is a relatively "budget" example. | [
"The clear and detailed depiction of the costumes of the figures in the tinted drawings has been discussed and copied in works on the history of costume since the late 18th century; in particular the sleeveless open-seam surcoat worn over chain mail of the kneeling knight is often used as an example of this innovat... |
the yahoo-alibaba spin-off | Yahoo is doing terribly and its' core business is pretty much worthless. However, Yahoo owns a lot of shares in a company called Alibaba, which is actually very profitable. So they want to get rid of their actual business and make money on the shares instead. | [
"In June 2011, Alibaba Group Executive Chairman and former CEO Jack Ma announced that Taobao would split into three different companies: Taobao Marketplace (a C2C platform), Tmall.com (a B2C platform; then called Taobao Mall), and eTao (a search engine for online shopping). The move was said to be necessary for Tao... |
the bill of rights | Most of them are pretty self-explanatory.
1. There can be no laws against what you say, or what religion you follow, or who you associate with.
2. We need a military force, so you're allowed to own guns.
3. You cannot be forced to house troops.
4. Your home can't be searched without an OK from a judge.
5. You can't be tried twice for the same offense. You can't be forced to testify against yourself.
6. You have to have a fair public trial with witnesses you can cross-examine.
7. If you want a jury trial, you are entitled to have it.
8. The punishment must fit the crime.
9. This is not an all-encompassing list. You may have other rights too.
10. If it's not specifically a federal issue, then it's automatically a state issue. [There's more, but I can't really describe it LY5.] | [
"The Second Bill of Rights is a list of rights that was proposed by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt during his . In his address, Roosevelt suggested that the nation had come to recognize and should now implement, a second \"bill of rights\". Roosevelt's argument was that the \"political rights\" guara... |
the philosophical concept of epiphenomenal qualia and jackson's "mary" thought experiment. | It's not open and shut because it's not demonstrable that Mary *has* learned anything new. [Mary's room](_URL_1_) has been argued by greater (or at least more singularly focused) minds than either of ours, and yet they still disagree.
This is how I see it: Suppose Mary *and Martha* work together in the black & white room, studying color vision. After a thoroughly complete study, and a development in both researchers of a complete-as-possible understanding of the phenomenon, Mary leaves the room and experiences color vision for the first time. When she returns, Martha asks her what she has learned. Can Mary tell Martha anything that will expand Martha's understanding of color vision? I think it is obvious that she cannot, so Mary really hasn't gained any new *knowledge*, even though she may perceive that she has.
Similarly, a person using "magic mushrooms" or LSD may perceive subjectively that they have expanded their consciousness and gained knowledge far beyond what their tiny minds could have held before. This is subjective, however; the knowledge is "useful" only within the tripper's own psyche.
Lastly, take a look at the problem from another angle used in the study of artificial intelligence. It is obvious that while in the black & white room, Mary does not experience color vision. However, the *system* which is composed of Mary, the room, the monitor, and all connected cameras and sensing equipment, *does* experience color vision. That *system* can differentiate a red apple from a green one just as readily as any person who can perceive color naturally. That person, after all, is a system of optics, sensory apparatus and neural tissue that can perceive color, even though the actual sensors (the [cone cells](_URL_2_) of the [retina](_URL_0_)) only register relative light intensity. | [
"Jackson believed in the explanatory completeness of physiology, that all behaviour is caused by physical forces of some kind. And the thought experiment seems to prove the existence of qualia, a non-physical part of the mind. Jackson argued that if both of these theses are true, then epiphenomenalism is true—the v... |
Today I was in a 15 story building during an earthquake. If the building collapsed, would I have been safer on the first floor, 15th floor or somewhere in between? | Structural engineer here. Everything is coming straight down in a total collapse. Think building demo. People have this idea of buildings falling way sideways like a Jenga block and it doesn't work that way at these scales.
But what you should do in an earthquake is different than the ideal place for a building collapse. Remember, engineers design buildings in earthquake zones to survive earthquakes that statistics indicate are the likely worst case. The same is true for hurricanes along the gulf.
If I knew for a fact the building was coming all the way down I'd want to be the hell outta there. If I had to be in the building I'd pick the basement beneath the biggest columns and girders I could find. Buildings tend to be pretty close to free fall once total collapse is induced. So the idea of riding the roof down isn't too different from jumping. In the middle you get crushed. At the bottom you probably get crushed by you may be able to pick a spot that doesn't get pancaked and hope to be dug out.
Odds are good the building (in america or japan, don't know about other places) will survive ~~and~~ an earthquake, but you will get partial damage.
In an actual earthquake *you should not assume a full collapse*.
Get to the inside (away from extererior windows), stay out of the elevator, stand underneath a doorway if you can. The main structure should hold-anything in it is likely to move or collapse. | [
"Of 14 hotels that had already been built under false pretenses when the problem first came to light, two of them were shown to fail Japan's earthquake resistance standards. Because the concrete had insufficient reinforcing steel, there was a fear that an earthquake of magnitude 5 on the Japanese Shindo scale could... |
the lake effect, as in what happened in buffalo. | Basically, the Lake Effect is what happens when cold air moves over warmer water, picking up water vapor which freezes in the air, and then comes down as snow when the air moves downwind to land. Since Buffalo is right next to Lake Erie and Ontario, there is plenty of water for the cold air to move along. Additionally, since Buffalo has a higher elevation than the lakes, then the air moves up when it deposits snow, causing very intense snowstorms. | [
"Buffalo was a major port on Lake Erie and felt the force of the storm as water from the lake forced ships onto the piers and shoreline of the city. The creek rose 20 feet as the wind and the harbor front were swept away.\n",
"In Buffalo, New York, another winter storm triggered a strong lake-effect band, which i... |
Is there any other way for life to develop besides cells? | It seems like this question gets into the philosophical definition of "what is life." Scientists are still debating whether or not viruses constitute a form of life, so realistically we haven't even nailed down a definition of life on earth.
That being said, I don't see why life on other planets would have to adhere to any of the rules that life on earth follows. | [
"The German pathologist Rudolf Virchow brought forward the idea that not only does life arise from cells, but every cell comes from another cell; \"\"Omnis cellula e cellula\"\". Until now, most attempts to create an artificial cell have only created a package that can mimic certain tasks of the cell. Advances in c... |
How are electrical signals traveling on neurons directed to its target? | What /u/unia_7 said. Each nerve carries a large number of individual axons. Each axon either goes to one group of muscle fibers, or from one sensory receptor.
That said, an axon CAN split in two and make synapses onto multiple separate target neurons. But it can't 'route' electrical signals down one branch vs. another. A branched axon duplicates the information it transmits; it can't selectively route information. | [
"A neuron receives signals from neighboring cells through branched, cellular extensions called dendrites. The neuron then propagates an electrical signal down a specialized axon extension to the synapse, where neurotransmitters are released to propagate the signal to another neuron or effector cell (e.g., muscle or... |
what are the blue and orange/yellow lines that i see on the edges of everything when i have my glasses on? | You are nearsighted, your eyeglass lenses are concave, and the outer edges act like prisms that split up light into its component colors. A white object, seen through the edge of your lenses, will appear to have a reddish halo that oozes out towards the outer edge of your lens, with a corresponding bluish halo that oozes in towards the center of your lens - and this happens no matter if you are looking through the left, right, top, or bottom edges.
At night, you can enjoy superhuman vision skills. Go outside and glance at a distant street light through the outer edge of one of your lenses. You will see a truncated rainbow - just three or four colors instead of a full wash - and you will be able to tell whether the streetlight is a sodium-vapor lamp (a heavy orange halo) or mercury-vapor lamp (a blue halo plus a green halo) just from the spectrum that only you are able to see because of the lenses that give you mutant powers. | [
"Glass containing two or more phases with different refractive indices shows coloring based on the Tyndall effect and explained by the Mie theory, if the dimensions of the phases are similar or larger than the wavelength of visible light. The scattered light is blue and violet as seen in the image, while the transm... |
Why is New York City named the same as the state? IE why do the city and state share the same name? Do any other places on earth do this? | > Do any other places on earth do this?
There's one example in Germany: Bremen, Bremen. Bremen (the city) is part of Bremen (the state), together with another city called Bremerhaven (roughly translates to *Port of Bremen*). This is the only example in Germany, for Hamburg and Berlin, there is no distinction between the state and the city. | [
"New York City is frequently shortened to simply \"New York\", \"NY\", or \"NYC\". New York City is also known as \"The City\" or \"The Big City\" in much of the Western hemisphere. Other monikers have taken the form of \"Hong Kong on the Hudson\" or \"Baghdad on the Subway\", references in different cases to the c... |
does having a "will to live" help you overcome a severe illness or injury, and if so, how? | Definetly. Someone who has given up on everything is less likely to think about his/hers well being. As someone who has a will to live will check up symptoms, have less anxiety. Some cures in life are really the pure basics like sleeping and eating well. | [
"In psychology, the will to live is the drive for self-preservation, usually coupled with expectations for future improvement in one's state in life. The will to live is an important concept when attempting to understand and comprehend why we do what we do in order to stay alive, and for as long as we can. This can... |
when nuclear weapons were added to the us arsenal, why was the ability to launch them given to the president of the united states and not congress? | Constitutionally, (although not really in practice any more), Congress is the sole authority on declarations of war or authorizations of the use of military force, but the President is the commander in chief of the armed forces. Congress can't tell generals what to do and it can't give or veto military orders. A nuclear attack is a military order and as such only the President has the authority to initiate it.
On a more practical note, if nuclear missiles have already be launched at the US, there would be only a few minutes to authorize a retaliatory strike, and even a functional congress is not capable of acting that quickly. No country in the world with nuclear weapons has that authority given to their legislatures. In every case it's the head of government or the head of state. | [
"Since World War II, the President of the United States has had sole authority to launch U.S. nuclear weapons, whether as a first strike or nuclear retaliation. This arrangement was seen as necessary during the Cold War to present a credible nuclear deterrent; if an attack was detected, the United States would have... |
why are the baby boomers considered the worst generation? | Generally because they inherited a hard-won and prosperous welfare state but then proceeded to dismantle it in the name of short-term profit at the expense of their children. This current generation are the first who, on average, are going to be worse off than their parents, and the policies of deregulation and privatisation pursued in the 1980s are directly responsible for that. | [
"This population is sometimes referred to as Generation Jones, and less commonly as Tweeners. These cuspers were not as financially successful as older Baby Boomers. They experienced a recession like many Generation Xers but had a much more difficult time finding jobs than Generation X did. While they learned to be... |
why my car windows do this and how i can prevent it? mostly happens in rain. | It's condensation because of the temperature/humidity difference between the cabin of your vehicle and outside.
They make antifogging coatings that you can use (rainx makes one, for instance) but for immediate relief, use the defrosting setting on your air conditioner. | [
"Stone damage can be dangerous in many ways. Stone damage can cause small cracks in the windshield that can refract or reflect normally unharmful light such that it can distract or blind the driver. Stone damage can also cause large cracks in the windshield – this usually happens during the winter period because of... |
do those pedestrian button things at traffic lights actually do anything? how do they work? | It will depend on where you are (including which country you're in) and even what time of day it is. It may be that some of those buttons are just there to make people feel they have some sort of control, but many of them -- I can attest from personal experience -- really do work.
I have encountered pedestrian crossings, for example, where you have to push the button or the lights really won't change. This is always true when it is just a light-controlled pedestrian crossing and not also an intersection. And I have encountered pedestrian crossings at intersections, where at busy times the lights change whether or not you push the button, while at less busy times they only change if you do push the button.
As for how they work, they send a signal to the software controlling the lights. On simple pedestrian crossings they change the traffic lights to red and then, after a short pause, the crossing lights to green; if the lights have recently been operated in this way, the software waits before changing the lights, so ensure that cars aren't backed up forever as pedestrian after pedestrian pushes the button.
At an intersection, the software waits for the traffic lights, as they go through their normal sequence, are switched so that the pedestrians can cross, and then change the crossing lights to green.
The box with the button may seem to be simply bolted on, but where that box contacts the post it's bolted to, there will be a hole. | [
"Call buttons are installed at traffic lights with a dedicated pedestrian signal, and are used to bring up the pedestrian \"walk\" indication in locations where they function correctly. In the majority of locations where call buttons are installed, pushing the button does not light up the pedestrian walk sign immed... |
how does the common signature hold so much power confirming identity? anyone could copy it and there are much better tools available. | Signatures don't confirm identity, they affirm it. When you sign something, you're making a promise that you're the person named in the document. | [
"A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for verifying the authenticity of digital messages or documents. A valid digital signature, where the prerequisites are satisfied, gives a recipient very strong reason to believe that the message was created by a known sender (authentication), and that the message was n... |
copyright / trademarks. | **Copyright:** You wrote something, and nobody else gets to make copies unless you say they can. Also they don't get to make a movie of your book, or a performance of your play, unless you say they can. There are some exceptions for people who are talking about your work, teaching, writing reviews ("fair use"). For music, you can't stop people from singing or playing the tune you wrote, but they have to pay you ("compulsory licensing").
**Trademark:** You made up a name for something you're selling. You use that name on your product and your ads, so that people can recognize it. Competitors aren't allowed to call their products by the same name or one that's confusingly similar, because that would trick the customer. But you don't get to stop people from using the name of your product when they write reviews or articles about your product. And if you *let* your competitors call their products by the same name, or customers just decide that your product's name is the name of the whole general concept (like "xeroxing" or "kleenexes"), then you can't go after them any more. | [
"Current federal trademark law follows the Lanham Act, otherwise known as the Trademark Act of 1946. Under the Lanham Act, a trademark is \"any word, term, name, symbol, or device, or any combination thereof\" used in commerce to identify a service or good. Under this definition, it is possible for the names and li... |
why don't big companies get hitmen to off people who successfully sue them? | It's not particularly easy to commit murder without leaving a trail to follow. It's too much of a risk for the company. | [
"Serious torts and fatal injuries occur as a result of actions by company employees, have increasingly been subject to criminal sanctions. All torts committed by employees in the course of employment will attribute liability to their company even if acting wholly outside authority, so long as there is some temporal... |
Why didn't the Roman Empire expand into Africa more then it did? | Because of a little something called the Sahara Desert. The only real routes of expansion into Africa were along the southern Moroccan coast (which was desolate, sparsely inhabited all the way up to the late 18th century, when the Moroccan government began to encourage irrigation projects there) and via the Nile Valley. However, the rough terrain and relative poverty of the Sudanese and Ethiopian highlands meant that it was not really worth challenging the Kushite and Axumite lords of the upper Nile region for control. Then a far more economical policy was to maintain a web of buffer vassal states to hold off the more powerful kings in the southeast.
In other words, both the paths into Africa were impractical to use for any sizeable party in ancient times, much less a host of men, animals, and camp followers the size and scope of several Roman legions. The regions were, for lack of a better term, nigh on unconquerable in ancient conditions. Even a thousand years later, the Ottoman Empire found it extremely difficult to extend its rule south of the Wadi Halfa, and by then the introduction of the camel had led to the establishment of proper roads due to the trade explosion.
Though the lack of true oceangoing ships prevented any Roman colonisation of the West Coast of Africa, in theory it would have been possible for them to preempt the Arab colonisation of Eastern Africa even with galleys, establishing tradeposts around the Horn of Africa. However, the only really suitable port, Baranis on the Red Sea (Berenice Troglodytica)... Simply put, it did not have any trees, at least not of sufficient size and tensile strength to build proper vessels. It functioned as an emporium for the Red Sea trade, but could not construct vessels of its own. In other words, for a Roman living in Alexandria to set up a trade post e.g. near Zanzibar, he would first have to travel down the Nile with hundreds of settlers, cross the desert mountains filled with Tuaregs, Berbers, and probably bandits, to get to Baranis, and there *buy* enough ships to take his entire party and supplies on a practically blind four-month journey into uncharted waters. Once there, he would have to find a trade goods worth exporting all the way back to Baranis, then set up and fortify his colony while establishing farmland and regular trade routes with Baranis, all the while probably fending off hostile natives... It was simply not worth it, when spices and ivory could be obtained far more cheaply from Indian, Arab and Ethiopian merchants.
If you want a more detailed answer, I can recommend some books and articles. | [
"North Africa remained a part of the Roman Empire, which produced many notable citizens such as Augustine of Hippo, until incompetent leadership from Roman commanders in the early fifth century allowed the Germanic peoples, the Vandals, to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, whereupon they overcame the fickle Roman defe... |
the void | Instructions were not clear. I hurt my back trying to shake my 27 inch CRT monitor. | [
"\"A Void\"'s plot follows a group of individuals looking for a missing companion, Anton Vowl. It is in part a parody of \"noir\" and horror fiction, with many stylistic tricks, gags, plot twists, and a grim conclusion. On many occasions it implicitly talks about its own lipogrammatic limitation, highlighting its u... |
How do plants get the material to grow so much from just a tiny seed? | Carbon dioxide out of the air, water and nutrients out of the ground and energy from the sun. The carbon dioxide and nutrients make up the cell structures of the plant. The water helps move everything around and inflate the cells. The sun gives it the energy to do all of it. | [
"Plants are readily propagated from seed. As seed is surrounded by irritating hairs within the pod, extraction requires care. Stem cuttings of semi-mature growth can be taken in late summer and require the application of rooting hormones and bottom heat.\n",
"To grow new plants by seed, the seed capsule should be... |
How do Historians use other Social Science disciplines in their research? | I use sociology, LGBT studies, queer theory, gender studies, and even dance studies in my work. In my case it is largely out of necessity, as there are no true histories of the AIDS crisis and still fairly few about gay and lesbian history. Other disciplines can offer a different perspective when you are dealing with a well-researched area of history, and are sometimes your only recourse when dealing with a less known area. | [
"Social Science History is a quarterly, peer-reviewed academic journal. It is the official journal of the Social Science History Association. Its articles bring an analytic, theoretical, and often quantitative approach to historical evidence. The journal's founders intended to \"improve the quality of historical ex... |
In 17th Century Europe, how were coffee and coffeehouses viewed? | I'll have to make this brief as I'm about to go out (but I can explain (a lot!) more, if necessary).
To answer those three questions in a go, let's establish the 17th century coffee-house in general (funnily enough, I have a chapter more or less dedicated to this in my PhD):
During the latter half of the seventeenth century, coffee-houses were becoming increasingly popular, across a fairly diverse social scale. For the fairly inexpensive price of a dish of coffee (about a penny, according to John Spurr - see ref below), an individual got the opportunity to see whatever published paper the coffeehouse subscribed to (most likely the *London Gazette* thoughout the 1670s until licensing lapsed in '79), as well as whatever manuscript newsletters were available.
The discussion, therefore, often concerned a composite of foreign and domestic news, which is a pretty significant thing - Jurgen Habermas and others (more recently, Mark Knights, John Sommerville, Steve Pincus) have even seen this as the birth of 'public opinion' - that is, a shared and widespread perception of 'current events', inspired by a communal experience - in this case, news reception and mutual interpretation.
It's precisely this reason why official authorities tended to severely mistrust coffeehouses (See John Sommerville's 'The News Revolution in England'). A place where the ordinary folk could get together and discuss the actions of their superiors? Never!
Sir Roger L'Estrange (Surveyor of the Press to 1679) perhaps best summed up the official view in the mid-1660s:
'[Coffee-house News] makes the Multitude too Familiar with the Actions and Counsels of their Superiours; too Pragmatical and Censorious, and gives them, not only an Itch, but a kind of Colourable Right, and License, to be Meddling with the Government.' (this is from his *Intelligencer* in the early 1660s)
So mistrusted were the businesses, in fact, that in the 1670s, there was a brief period where all coffeehouses were actually barred from trading in London, to which the government relented very shortly after. There was quite an outcry!
Much work has been done on this recently - Steve Pincus' article 'Coffeehouse politicians does create' is very good, as is Sommerville's work noted above. For more info, these are good places to start (Sommerville's especially).
| [
"In the 17th century, coffee appeared for the first time in Europe outside the Ottoman Empire, and coffeehouses were established and quickly became popular. The first coffeehouses in Western Europe appeared in Venice, as a result of the traffic between La Serenissima and the Ottomans; the very first one is recorded... |
why does symmetry make people look more attractive? | Not 100% sure about this but I think that it is in our genes.
Symmetry is associated with healthiness. Back then when it was "only the strongest survive" symmetry was (and is) a sign of a healthy individual with good genes.
If you have a healthy partner, you and that person are more likely to create a strong and a healthy descendant that will survive till he/she is able to pass your genes to the next generation. | [
"Some physical features are attractive in both men and women, particularly bodily and facial symmetry, although one contrary report suggests that \"absolute flawlessness\" with perfect symmetry can be \"disturbing\". Symmetry may be evolutionarily beneficial as a sign of health because asymmetry \"signals past illn... |
what exactly happened in the olympic boycotts in 1980/84? | There were 4 significant Olympic boycotts, two in 1976 and one each in 1980/84. I mention the 1976 boycotts because they inform the subsequent ones:
**Chinese-led boycott**: Taiwan (officially the Republic of China) and China (officially the People's Republic of China) both boycotted over the recognition of the other, each insisting it was the sole government for all of China.
**Congolese-led boycott**: In July 1976 the New Zealand Men's Rugby Team participated in a tour of South Africa, playing against all-white teams. In response to this "approval" of apartheid 26 African and Middle-eastern nations boycotted the Olympic Games that started that month. Most athletes were already in Montreal when they learned of the boycott and had to return home without competing.
Thus, in this climate the Soviet Union was set to host its Olympics in 1980.
**US-led boycott**: President Jimmy Carter announced that the US would not participate in the 1980 Moscow Olympics in response to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It was clear to the western world that the Soviets were making an effort to extend its oil resources at the expense of the Afghani people. 65 countries joined the United States in boycotting the games, and several others did ceremonial boycotts of the opening ceremonies or releasing their athletes to compete under the Olympic Flag.
**Soviet-led boycott**: The Soviet Union and 14 other countries did not participate in 1984 games in protest of "chauvinistic and anti-Soviet" attitudes. It is widely understood that this boycott was retaliatory for the 1980 boycott. | [
"The Olympic Boycott Games of 1980 were held at the University of Pennsylvania in response to Moscow's hosting of the 1980 Summer Olympics following the Soviet incursion in Afghanistan. Twenty-nine of the boycotting nations participated in the Boycott Games.\n",
"1956 was the first time in history that several co... |
Following the Muslim conquests, many local languages, such as Berber or Coptic, were gradually replaced with Arabic and turned into minority languages. What allowed Persian to not share the same fate? | I apologize that I mostly know about Coptic and Berber but I will try to demonstrate why this question is hard to answer and then introduce a recent theory into this particular subject. First, I would like to point out that when talking about "Berber" or "the Berber" one is actually talking about quite a diverse group of people and languages, some of which are not around today and some which still exist. I will reference "the Berber" in as general terms as I can but understand there are exceptions and differences among them. Additionally, there is not as much research on the Arabs and the Berbers in context with linguistic shift as there is for Coptic and Persian.
One is tempted to believe that conversion to Islam would inherently coincide with adoption of Arabic but those two factors actually don't share as close of a link as you would expect. Coptic Christians were using Arabic in their own Bibles as early as the 10th century^(2) They continued to be Christian and speak Arabic for the next century and to a lesser extent thereafter. Coptic Christian scholars eventually complained that Christians couldn't speak their own language in the 11th century^(3) Many Berbers converted to Islam quickly and revolted against the Arabs as early as 749 under their own form of Khawarij Sufrism yet their languages proved more resilient than Coptic over time (likely in great part due to the formation of the Almoravid dynasty)^(4) . Many early Muslim scholars would be angry with me for calling many Berbers of the Middle Ages "Muslim" since they often practiced syncretic forms of the religion but it's still a strong point in demonstrating separation between the religion and the Arabic language. Meanwhile, Persia (correction, see comment: Main Persian speaking area) became Islamisized quicker than either of those locations (early 8th century, there is some controversy to this, though) and yet the Persians managed to hold onto their language^(5). These cases demonstrate that conversion to Islam is a tricky factor in determining the cause of local languages *extinction* in comparison with one another.
One is also tempted to believe that the level of Arab migration an area received would influence the vitality of local languages. Indeed, the decline of the Coptic language in the 10th and 11th centuries coincided with increased Arab immigration yet it also coincided with a shrinking Coptic population, decreased heretic oppression, and an expanding economy under the Fatimids^(6 7). I will also concede that the Berber languages in North Africa do not seem to have declined so greatly until that area received higher migration but I also want to point out that Persia actually received more Arab migration in its earlier years than Egypt^(1)
Language replacement and language adoption are two different things. After all, bilingual societies exist around the globe and Coptic itself persisted under centuries of Greek rule when Greek became a dominant language in Egypt. Why do some societies exist bilingually and others not, though? Many factors come into play when considering language shift. Recently, scholars by the names of Reza Ghafar Samar and Tej K. Bhatia have released a study proposing that surface level structural similarity between two languages greatly influences the development of a bilingual society or a monolingual society where one language overcomes another. In a recent article released last year the two scholars attempted to explain why Arabic overcame Coptic while Persian persisted by comparing the structural similarities of the two languages^(5). They worked off the premise that when two languags come into contact they demonstrate "borrowing" (the wholesale importation of individual words or phrases from one language into another, often with target language influence) or "code switching" (switching between languages completely.) They argue that the more structurally similar two languages are the more likely speakers of one language who most often encounter both are to participate in code switching instead of just borrowing. They demonstrate that Arabic and Coptic share many similarities that Persian does not and therefore Coptic speakers would have participated in code switching moreoften than just borrowing. They argue that code switching contributed to language extinction and that this phenomenon can even be seen in surviving Coptic texts.
**Therefore, Persian persisted into today in great part to its lack of structural similarity with Arabic.** That also explains its abundant borrowing.
Many more details exist in their article and I encourage you to read it since they obviously explain it better than I can. I hold a small amount of skepticism towards their article, though, because I do not believe they properly delineated MSA from historical dialectal Arabic found in Persia vs. Egypt. Additionally they make no mention of Berber vs. Arabic.
Additionally I would like to mention looking into the Shu'ubiyya movement and the pro-Persian practices of the Abbasids but I will let those better versed in Persian history expand on those .
1. Abdul-Husain Zarrinkub**The Arab conquest of Iran and its aftermath** R.N. Frye (Ed.) (2007), pp. 1-57
2. Mullen, Alex, and James, *Multilingualism in the Graeco-Roman Worlds*, 68.
3. Cotton, Hannah. *From Hellenism to Islam: Cultural and Linguistic Change in the Roman Near East*. Cambridge University Press, 2012, 426.
4. Abun-Nasr, Jamil M, *A History of the Maghrib in the Islamic Period, 39.*
5. Predictability of language death: Structural compatibility and language contact Reza, Ghafar Samarab, Tej K. Bhatiac
Predictability of language death: Structural compatibility and language contact [RezaGhafar Samarab](_URL_2_!)[Tej K.Bhatiac](_URL_2_!)
6. Sullivan, Shaun. "Coptic Conversion and the Islamization of Egypt." *Mamluk Studies* *Review* 10, no. 2 (2006): 6579. [_URL_1_](_URL_0_).
7. Parker, Kenneth S. "Coptic Language and Identity in Ayyūbid Egypt1." *Al-Masāq* 25, no. 2 (2013): 222 39. doi:10.1080/09503110.2013.799953. | [
"With the advent of the early Muslim conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries, the hitherto largely uninfluential Arabic language slowly replaced many (but not all) of the indigenous Semitic languages and cultures of the Near East. Both the Near East and North Africa saw an influx of Muslim Arabs from the Arab... |
the who announcement regarding processed meats. | So first off you really need to understand what the numbers look like here. We're talking about maybe 34,000 cases worldwide. Almost 13 million cases of cancer are diagnosed every year. So even if we take this announcement at face value, you're looking at about .002% of all cancer. Over the course of your life you have about a 40% chance of getting some kind of cancer (much more likely very late in life) so if you live to be around 80 you're looking at about a .001% chance that you'll get any sort of cancer from your bacon intake assuming this is correct.
Here's the thing: almost any sort of cooking that alters the food a lot might be carcinogenic. A good char on your steak? Probably a little bit carcinogenic. The same applies to that char of your tofu, too. This sort of modified chance is less about meat (and the processing of it) as much as it is about the methods used to make things.
Also, you need to be aware that when they did this study they basically used the crappiest bacon you can find. A crap bacon made of a miserable pig full of nitrates and nitrites really is not the same thing as a traditionally smoked and cured slice of bacon from a healthy and properly raised pig. When we're talking about odds this small, those things matter a lot.
But basically this is because these things have nitrates in them. It's not news or new. Nitrites degrade into nitrosamines in high acid or high heat environments. Nitrosamines are carcinogenic. Even "uncured" meats have nitrites in them, as they are cured with celery juice which contain high amounts of natural nitrates instead of chemical curing agent.
People seem to have it in their heads that the idea of living is to never die, but it's not. You evolved to make other humans by the time you hit middle age. After that, there's no promises. Something will kill you. If it's not the 0.002% chance it's bacon, then there's the much larger chance that it's liver failure from alcohol consumption or heart disease or the massive environmental stress put on a body by a lifetime of not enough sleep, too much work, and weird exposure to electronics 24/7. All of it's got a chance of being the thing that does you in, but only one of them gets to win and ultimately one of them will. That's what this means. "of the people that have cancer, a really small number of them had it triggered by the carcinogens that came from nitrates in processed meats as opposed to the carcinogens that came from just about every other aspect of their life or from the free radicals that they generated themselves."
EDIT: TL:DR: life is a cost benefit analysis in action. Everything you do might have a negative consequence somewhere. Some things have a better change of hurting you than others. Eating bacon is absurdly safe compared to most everything else you do. | [
"The 2013 meat adulteration scandal started when German authorities detected horse meat in prepared food products including frozen lasagna, where it was declared fraudulently as beef. The mislabeling prompted EU authorities to speed up publication of European Commission recommendations for labeling the origin of al... |
when i eat apples my face sweats, why reddit | Are you allergic to apples? I never had this happen or heard of it happening to anyone. Bot pls don't kill me :( Friend bot? | [
"The skin of the fruit is a delicately waxy yellow-green with crimson spots and reddish lines, but the apple may also occur in a classically red variation. These red apples, known as Red Gravensteins, are sports, which are genetically similar to Gravenstein, so they are not good pollinators for it, and nor is it fo... |
what happens to water when it goes stale? | After about 12 hours tap water starts to go flat as carbon dioxide in the air starts to mix with the water in the glass, lowering its pH and giving it an off taste | [
"In the United Kingdom, plumbers refer to waste water as 'bad water'. This is under the premise that the water they are moving from one area to another via the use of a drain is not needed and can be removed from the area, like a 'bad apple' being removed from a fruit bowl.\n",
"BULLET::::- Various pathogens, inc... |
why hasn't a car company come up with a new better performing, more efficient air cooled engine? | Ironic username is ironic.
I think engineers like water cooling because it helps solve a number of problems. It quiets the engine, provides a reliable source of heat for the HVAC systems and allows the temperature of the engine to be contained to a narrower range, allowing it to run more efficiently.
That said, I long ago promised myself that my next car will have an air-cooled boxer six in the rear. Still waiting, however. | [
"It can be seen that since formula_10 is fixed by the environment, the only way for a designer to increase the Carnot efficiency of an engine is to increase formula_9, the temperature at which the heat is added to the engine. The efficiency of ordinary heat engines also generally increases with operating temperatur... |
Do blind people have better short-term memory for auditory input? | I might just be spitballin' here, but i'm pretty sure when someone is blind/deaf, they compensate for it through neuroplasticity. As some parts of the brain are lacking input and just using space (ie neurons in the visual cortex that are not in use due to being blind), your brain will develop connections with neighboring subsystems based on the stimuli you need to get around in the environment (ie better auditory perception to compensate for blindness).
Back to the question, i think you are talking more about working memory; the memory system that best supports the relationship between ST and LT memory. Working memory is a constant feedback loop between auditory and visual stimuli that work together to encode information to LT memory based on ST memory inputs. If one of the stimuli isn't going to work (in the case of blind people, visual stimuli just isn't a thing), i believe that under the idea of neuroplasticity, blind people will not store information longer, but be able to attend to it longer and work with it longer due to the additional connections the brain made to compensate for being blind.
just vise-versa everything i said in the case for deaf people.
Hope this helps with your understanding. And i hope the reddit community will correct any mistakes i may have written. but i think this is the best explanation for your speculations. | [
"It has been suggested that blind individuals have an enhanced ability to hear and recall auditory information in order to compensate for a lack of vision. However, whilst blind adults' neural systems demonstrate heightened excitability and activity compared to sighted adults, it is still not exactly clear to what ... |
time signatures | Simply, a time signature is the number of beats in a measure.
Listen to a piece of popular modern music, and count the beats. You'll most likely notice that it goes BOOM dot dot dot BOOM dot dot dot or some variant on that. The most significant beat happens every fourth beat.
In music, these four beats define a measure, which is an organizational unit. The time signature tells you how many beats there are in a measure. A time signature of 4/4 means there are 4 beats (top 4), and each is a quarter note (which is the bottom 4). The quarter note part is only important for reading the music, as it identifies which note is the beat.
Now listen to a waltz. You'll notice that the main beat (aka the downbeat) comes every three beats: oom-pah pah, oom-pah pah, and so on. (Note: fast waltzes tend to sound like there's only one beat, but they are subdivided into three.) This is a time signature of 3/4: 3 beats, and the quarter note is the beat. Some waltzes are written in 3/8, which means the eighth note has the beat. This sounds identical, but the music is written differently (usually, this is done to make it easier to read).
Some pieces are in two. These often include marches (which are otherwise in 4) and polkas. Think of the oom-pah, oom-pah tuba beat that underlines a stereotypical march. This is written as 2/4 and sometimes 2/2 (which means the half note has the beat; this looks like a 4/4 measure but has 2 beats. This is done for clarity reasons too).
The next most common signature is 6/8. This means there are 6 notes to a beat, but it can also be subdivided into 2 groups of 3 notes or 3 groups of 2 notes. This signature is used for some marches and dances (for example, a march where three notes can happen per beat instead of two). [Example](_URL_5_)
These are the most common time signatures: others exist, but aren't used as frequently.
Some music is in 5, which means there are 5 beats to a measure. This can be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; or it can be subdivided into 1-2-3, 1-2 or 1-2, 1-2-3. [This piece](_URL_6_), which is in 5/8, mostly alternates between the latter two. [This one](_URL_2_) is in 5/4, and goes 1-2-3,1-2. This is more common for dances; a march isn't fun if you have to take an odd number of steps.
Some pieces are in 7/4 or 7/8, which can be subdivided in several ways ([here's](_URL_3_) an example). Time signatures like 9/8 and 12/8 can be used to divide a 3/4 or 4/4 measure into threes.
There are also pieces which switch time signature, which makes things even more fun. This can be done for a variety of reasons: the music switches from a march to a dance, for example, but sometimes, the melody doesn't really fit into a time signature, so assigning it one that isn't awkward creates some odd signatures. [This](_URL_4_) piece alternates between 5/4 and 6/4, because the melody is free-flowing and assigning any one signature would have interfered with the structure. Composers can use changes for notational reasons: [this](_URL_0_) section of this piece is in 7, but the composer wrote it in measures of 2/2, 2/2, and 3/2 alternating so it is easier to read. (If you listen further into this piece, you'll see the time signature change because the nature of the piece changes.)
These changes can get strange; [this piece](_URL_1_) starts out in "free time," where the conductor marks each chord, and then moves between 1/8, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, 3/8, 4/8, 5/8, 1.54, and 2.5/4. (Basically, this is because the composer, Grainger, was really weird.)
The odd and obscure time signatures are just that; you won't see them often, and the first few are the ones worth knowing. | [
"The time signature is written as a horizontal fraction: codice_6, codice_7, codice_8, codice_9, etc. It is usually placed after the key signature. Change of time signature within the piece of music may be marked in-line or above the line of music. Some pieces that start with cadenza passages are not marked with ti... |
Why was Alfred the great viewed positively by later kings when they only came to power by taking the country from his dynasty? | Alfred the Great was extremely popular. He established a model of kingship in England that was built upon by his successors, and copied by later conquerors. Alfred established fantastical roots both for his kingship, and for the Anglo-Saxon people, tying them together with Christianity as glue in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. He rallied all the petty kings in England under his own West Saxon aegis, and became the first king of the English. He began a campaign of literacy and literary production to bring England back to the glory days of 8th century scholarship, when England led the world in learning. He and his successors adopted Carolingian models both for kingship and for monasticism (i.e. the Benedictine Reform), tying politics and religion together into a theocratic form of rule. He was a genius, and his work was so far reaching that he set a course for what England would be that in some ways even withstood the flood of Norman politics and Anglo-Norman culture that would later come to dominate the island.
People tend to forget that Cnut the Great took the kingship before William the Conqueror. There were two instances of domination by an outside force, not one, and they came in relatively rapid succession. Cnut and William the Conqueror had very different ways of ruling the country though. Cnut modeled himself after the English kings, and prime among them was Alfred. He wrote laws in a form similar to what came before him, and styled himself after English kings in many ways. See [Cnut's Letter to the English](_URL_0_) to see how he reaches out to the English and connects back to Alfred's English lineage by saying that he will uphold the laws of Edgar. Cnut knew that Alfred and his successors were extremely popular, or at least some of them were, like Edgar, who was in many ways carried on Alfred's program of politics and culture better than any other English king, so its no wonder that Cnut singled him out as his model lawgiver.
William handled things quite differently. He dominated the English from afar and sent barons in his stead to rule the country. He built churches in a very different style overall, and changed the laws of the country dramatically. There are poems in the AS Chronicle that complain about his style of domination and note that he changed the landscaped entirely by building new buildings everywhere. This is an instance of one kind popular sentiment finding its way into the history books.
So why then would later kings take up Alfred as a positive figure? In my view, it is because they had no choice and it was advantageous for him. Alfred had long since become a figure in the popular imagination, and tales where told about him. He was a big enough figure that there are four MSS from the 13th century, in early Middle English, that preserve a text called *The Proverbs of Alfred*. He was such an important figure that he was seen as a font of gnomic proverbs even 250-300 years after his death in England. That's a tide you can't push back, no matter what. So later kings incorporated Alfred into their political and social programs.
Take a look at David Pratt's *The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great* for details about Alfred's political program, with special attention to the role of learning in his model of kingship. Elaine Treharne's *Living Through Conquest: The Politics of Early English* looks at the period of the conquests using the status of English to focus her discussion of the history of the period. | [
"Alfred the Great is dying, Rivals for his succession are poised to tear the kingdom apart. The country that Alfred had worked for thirty years to build is likely to disintegrate. Uhtred, a Saxon born warrior, who has been raised by the Danes, wants more than anything else to go and fight to reclaim his stolen Nort... |
how come i wake up a minute or two before my bus stop more or less like clockwork when i fall asleep on the bus? | It's probably a combination of a bunch of subtle clues that you subconsciously pick up on. It could be a pattern in the stops right before yours, subtle changes in the scent of the air near your stop, specific sounds that you only hear near your stop, the absence of the voice of a person who gets off right before your stop, or a combination of any or all of these and more. There are literally millions of variables that your brain can subconsciously pick up on, and wake you up at the perfect time to get off the bus. Having ridden the same route for 6 years, your brain will be excellent at picking up on subconscious clues that you may not even be able to notice consciously. | [
"Buses when late may experience a problem known as bus bunching. On some bus lines with a more frequent service, if one bus falls behind schedule passenger numbers waiting at bus stops may grow, required a longer layover time. One or more subsequent buses on the published schedule may pass these already cleared sto... |
How much urbanisation was there in South America, besides the Inca cities? | Hey there! Are you asking about urbanization in *regions* other than that which the Inca controlled, or are you interested in cultures that inhabited the same areas before them and whose own urbanisms developed into the Inca's? | [
"Industrial cities, such as Concepción and Talcahuano, began as colonial centers in the 1600s. Most of the large cities in Chile began as settlement locations for Spanish colonists living in homes constructed from adobe. They have grown to be the densely populated urban locations they are known for today.\n",
"In... |
why is brown rice so much dryer than white rice? | Brown rice is just white rice that hasn't been processed so it still has a thing called a bran layer.
The bran layer is a tough fiberous coating. It isn't very absorbent and it surrounds the outside of the rice grain, so when you feel it in your mouth, it feels drier and more coarse than regular rice which has that tough paprt removed so only the inner more absorbant and soft middle is there. | [
"Red rice is a variety of rice that is colored red by its anthocyanin content. It is usually eaten unhulled or partially hulled, and has a red husk, rather than the more common brown. Red rice has a nutty flavor. Compared to polished rice, it has the highest nutritional value of rices eaten with the germ intact.\n"... |
how do glow sticks light up when broken | The outside tube is made of flexible plastic and contains a solution of phenyl oxalate and fluorescent dye. Inside that is a glass tube containing hydrogen peroxide. When you bend the stick far enough, the glass tube breaks and the two chemical solutions can mix. The reaction between phenyl oxalate and hydrogen peroxide produces energy, which goes into the fluorescent dye. The dye then emits that energy as light. | [
"Glow sticks emit light when two chemicals are mixed. The reaction between the two chemicals is catalyzed by a base, usually sodium salicylate. The sticks consist of a tiny, brittle container within a flexible outer container. Each container holds a different solution. When the outer container is flexed, the inner ... |
What kind of programs or movements existed to assist the homeless between the 19th century and the Great Depression? | Unions, Churches and Ethnic clubs/General Community organizations.
Before Roosevelt, there was a strong mainstream belief that the poor should not rely on a government dole in order to get by. If they needed some help, then the community could help somebody when they were down. But this was temporary and it relied totally on the community for support. If the entire community was generally down (like during the depression) then this help could dry up completely.
Further, Union membership could help a person (usually a white man, but non-Chinese minorities and women were accepted into the Knights of Labor, and eventually this would happen in other Unions as well) get jobs. Further, organizations like the First International Workingmen's Association (a European Marxist organization) would often give money to people who were striking in order to prolong the strike. But that was only if your strike was important enough, and if the government (even the US!) didnt put you down first.
This doesnt really effectively change until the New Deal, when Roosevelt creates work programs like the WPA and the CCC which payed people to work. Note: it payed people *to work*. It wasnt until Roosevelt's second term that he passed the Social Security act which, in addition to giving money to grannies, created unemployment benefits and disability payments. This was essentially a government dole, you got paid for "nothing". But until the New Deal this idea of free money was looked down on as socialist(and even look at what people say about Well-fare and people on long-term unemployment). Even employing people (as opposed to hiring companies) was generally avoided by the government. | [
"In the early 1900s, the organization began an expansive philanthropic program that included employment bureaus, co-operative stores, medical dispensaries, distribution of clothes, women's sewing classes, Thanksgiving meals, reading rooms, fresh air camps and other establishments. During the advent of the Great Dep... |
how they change wedding rings size without cutting? | Hey, goldsmith here. The picture you linked is, like another user said, a device we call a "ring stretcher". There are various forms of it and it usually includes a compressor as already mentioned. This works only for rings of one color, and that are the same all the way around the band. Jewelers will not use this for a ring that has any stones in it, or rings that are two-toned, or that have areas that are thinner than others, because it causes "unexpected and/or undesired results".... As you have already guessed, the rings when compressed and stretched maintain their original weight, it is all the same material, but you are either stretching it out thinner to cover more area, or compressing it to cover smaller area. If you compress a ring a single ring size, it will not suddenly gain a whole millimeter's worth of thickness; it's much smaller and not very noticeable. You would need to stretch or compress a ring about 5 sizes or so to see a noticeable change in the ring. Usually in rings that are going down in many sizes that are not very thick you will see a concave depression happen on the inside of the band. If you stretch a ring that is two-toned, or white gold and yellow gold, you may cause the rings to separate, because the alloys to make karat yellow gold and karat white gold are different and stretch and compress differently; if you stretch a ring with stones set in it the areas removed to accommodate the stones will stretch faster and cause the settings to become weak and the metal to stretch irregularly, same with rings that have thin and thick design areas. Additionally, rings that have plain bottom shanks and elaborate crown and shoulder areas can also sometimes be stretched, but usually at the cost of the thickness of the shank- this can be done by placing the ring on a steel ring mandrel and "tapping" on the shank gently with a brass or steel hammer. There are many limitations to this but it can generally safely be done to a ring that has never been cut-sized and has been properly annealed 1/2 to 3/4 of a single size up. | [
"As of 2015, princess cut diamonds were the second most popular choice for an engagement ring. Approximately 30% of engagement rings use princess cut diamonds, behind round diamonds (50%) and ahead of cushions (8%). It saw its popularity at its peak in the 80s and 90s. The princess cut experienced a rise in popular... |
why do modern phones lack the soap opera effect of modern tvs? | I think they r referring to that hyper realistic quality in the picture.. i dont like it..it does remind me of a soap opera..I thought i was high the first time i saw it on someones tv.. | [
"BULLET::::- The visual quality of a soap opera is usually lower than prime time U.S. television drama series due to the lower budgets and quicker production times. This is also because soap operas are recorded on videotape using a multi-camera setup, unlike primetime productions that are usually shot on film and f... |
how do companies like primerica make you money? | Don't use Primerica. It's a scam, or at least as close you can legally be to a scam. Their fees are insanely high, and their products are way too expensive.
_URL_0_
_URL_1_
_URL_9_
_URL_2_
_URL_8_
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If you really want advice on things like retirement saving, IRAs etc. come ask at /r/personalfinance. They have had quite a large number of detailed discussions on these things if you search back, and the community is generally willing to help everyone out. | [
"In Primerica's eleven-tiered multilevel-marketing system, the company's sales representatives receive a commission for selling financial products, while a portion of the sale is also paid to the representative's recruiter, the recruiter's recruiter, and so on, up to eleven levels. Sales agents are tasked with sell... |
For a peasant/farmer, how onerous was Roman taxation? Was it good value for the services provided? | It really depended on where you were and when. Even in modern times there have been areas that could resist taxation with remoteness, despite modern states having considerably more coercive power. In general, however, taxation was collected by local authorities and folded into rent payment. This could be ruinous, or it could be light. Historical sources mention instances of peasant farmers successfully negotiating an advantageous payment, and others being ground down by extraction. | [
"Tax farming was originally a Roman practice whereby the burden of tax collection was reassigned by the Roman State to private individuals or groups. In essence, these individuals or groups paid the taxes for a certain area and for a certain period of time and then attempted to cover their outlay by collecting mone... |
If Mitochondria exist as almost separate entities from the cell, does it always divide perfectly during mitosis? | In mammals, mitochondria don't necessarily divide during mitosis; instead they divide when the host cell requires more energy and combine or die out when less energy is needed. During mitosis, the mitochondria present are split up between the two daughter cells. In single celled eukaryotes; the mitochondria divides with the cell cycle to ensure each daughter cell receives a mitochondria. That being said, mitochondria divide by [binary fission](_URL_2_) much like prokaryotes do. This process is simple, when compared to mitotic division, and is as close to perfect as possible, except the sizes might not be congruent.
Mitochondria are essentially a cell of their own. They have their own DNA, produce their own energy, but must acquire its nutrients from the host cell. In return, the host cell gets a healthy supply of energy. This symbiotic relationship makes it so that one cannot survive without the other. The mitochondria will starve due to lack of nutrients and the host cell will eventually die without a good source of energy. The [Endosymbiotic theory](_URL_1_) can help with understanding how this could have occurred. Not all eukaryotic cells require a mitochondria though (amitochondrial). A [RBC; Red Blood Cell](_URL_0_) is an example of this.
> If so, how frequent does this happen?
I'm not sure as to how frequent this happens but I will assume that it doesn't happen very often or that the cells do not last long enough for us to observe this happening enough.
Source: Biotechnology student.
TL;DR: Mitochondria divide pretty damn perfectly except for size sometimes. I assume it would be hard to gauge at how frequent cells are given no mitochondria. Someone else may be able to help with this point.
| [
"Most cells only have one centrosome for most of their cell cycle, however, right before mitosis, the centrosome duplicates, and the cell contains two centrosomes. Some of the microtubules that radiate from the centrosome grow directly away from the sister centrosome. These microtubules are called astral microtubul... |
why are fiber-optic connections faster? don't electrical signals move at the speed of light anyway, or close to it? | Individual signals inside both fiber and electrical cables do travel at similar speeds.
But you can send way more signals down a fiber cable at the same time as you can an electrical cable.
Think of each cable as a multi-lane road. Electrical cable is like a 5-lane highway.
Fiber cable is like a 200 lane highway.
So cars on both highway travel at 65 mph, but on the fiber highway you can send way more cars.
If you're trying to send a bunch of people from A to B, each car load of people will get there at the same speed, but you'll get everyone from A to B in less overall time on the fiber highway than you will on the electrical highway because you can send way more carloads at the same time.
**Bonus Info** This is the actual meaning of the term *bandwidth*. It's commonly used to describe the speed of an internet connection but it actually refers to the number of frequencies being used for a communications channel. A group of sequential frequencies is called a *band*. One way to describe a communications channel is to talk about how wide the band of frequencies is, otherwise called *bandwidth*. The wider your band is, the more data you can send at the same time and so the faster your *overall* transfer speed is.
**EDIT**
**COMMENTS** Many other contributors have pointed out that there is a lot more complexity just below the surface of my ELI5 explanation. The reason *why* fiber can have more lanes than electrical cables is an interesting albeit challenging topic and I encourage all of you to dig into the replies and other comments for a deeper understanding of this subject. | [
"The main benefits of fiber are its exceptionally low loss (allowing long distances between amplifiers/repeaters), its absence of ground currents and other parasite signal and power issues common to long parallel electric conductor runs (due to its reliance on light rather than electricity for transmission, and the... |
Has the privilege of knights to make knights ever been abolished? | Alternatively I'd question the premise. Did common knights (as opposed to Barons, Earls, or other titled nobility) ever have the right to bestow knighthood upon others - particularly with regard to England, Great Britain, or the UK? If not, where did this idea arise?
Today all knighthoods are bestowed by the Queen or by a member of the Royal family on her behalf. I have no idea with regard to the past. | [
"The Knights as a group were governed by the General Directorate (\"Generaldirektorium\"). This exercised the \"jus retractus\", the right to buy back any land sold to a non-knight for the original price within three years, and the \"just collectandi\", the right to collect taxes for the upkeep of the knightly orde... |
why do so many superhero origin stories involve parents dying? | It is a very common trope in fiction. It is frequently used because it can accomplish several things
- give the protagonist a motive. Why are they a superhero / chasing this villain / in this job. Easy answer: their parents died.
- if the crime was committed by the main antagonist, it's an easy way to establish that they are bad business. They are obviously evil cause they will just kill a kid's parents (or even try to kill them). It can also serve to show how incompetent law agencies / other people are in the story if this villain won't be caught for the crime until our hero gets involved.
- it clears the way for the protagonist engaging in things parents would normally stop you from.
- it gives the protagonist a source of angst (which, to be honest, some writers mistake as a fully-functioning personality) / helps create a dark and edge tone to the work. | [
"However, baby May and her parents were never reunited in Marvel's main continuity. Editors repeatedly stated that the baby died, or at the very least would never be seen again; the child was considered a major factor in the aging of the characters. In \"Marvel Knights Spider-Man\" issue No. 9, Mac Gargan, while sp... |
what's the difference between cables that send power and cables that send data? how come phone cables can do both? | At each end of every cable is a connector. Typically cables have a male connector that plugs into the female connector on a device. On every connector there are multiple "pins" or connection points. You solder a wire to each pin, and encase it into one cable.
For example, on an instrument/old telephone connector there are 2 pins, labeled signal and ground. Inside the cable are two wires of different colors, one soldered to signal and the other soldered to ground.
Now a USB connector has 4 pins. Vcc (+5V supply), D- (Data -), D+ (Data +) and Ground. There is also a more or less standard for color coding the wires inside the cable, where Vcc is red and Ground is black, D- is white and D+ is green. If you cut open an iPod charging cable you can see those four individual wires.
In some applications you have to have multiple pins on a connector for supplying power and signal, or multiple signals. In other applications you can send power and the signal on the same line (like telephones), or multiple signals together using a technique called multiplexing (which is how TV cables work). You generally need a different connector and cable for different applications because of the difference in power requirements, number of signals, size of the device, etc.
Hope this helps! | [
"Electrical cables are used to connect two or more devices, enabling the transfer of electrical signals or power from one device to the other. Cables are used for a wide range of purposes, and each must be tailored for that purpose. Cables are used extensively in electronic devices for power and signal circuits. Lo... |
Are artistic traits, such as being able to draw exceptionally or excelling in the musical arts, dependent on one's genes? | 'Artistic' is probably not a genetic trait. But if you break it down into its component parts, then each of the following things are at least PARTLY genetic: hand-eye coordination, fine motor movement, gross motor movement, depth perception, color perception, tonal perception, dexterity, muscle composition, flexibility, memory, etc.
If you have a genetic predisposition to a large number of those sub-traits then you may be well on your way to being genetically 'artistic.' | [
"A relationship between music and the strengthening of math, dance, reading, creative thinking and visual arts skills has also been reported in literature. (Winner, Hetland, Sanni, as reported in \"The Arts and Academic Achievement - What the Evidence Shows\", 2000) However recent findings by Dr. Levitin of McGill ... |
A question from my 4yo son | All from Wikipedia - _URL_0_
The core (25% of the radius) is up to 150 times the density of water.
The next layer, the radiative zone, (from 25% to 70% of the radius) has a density from 20 times the density of water (similar to gold) to one fifth the density of water (similar to cork).
The convective zone (from 70% to the visible surface) has a density that drops to 1/6,000th the density of air.
| [
"Sek-Lung, or Sekky the third son, is the youngest child of the Chen family and the second child born to Father and Stepmother. Because he tended to be sickly, he becomes close to Poh-Poh, who spends most of her time taking care of him. When she passes away, he becomes obsessed with the war games that have emerged ... |
how do public policy think-tanks work? | They get paid to think about problems and write reports of their conclusions. The analysts that work in these places combine expertise in the subject matter (economics, foreign policy, ...) with critical thinking and analysis skills to explore the problem, the solution space, and possible courses of action. | [
"A think tank or policy institute is a research institute which performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most policy institutes are non-profit organisations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada pro... |
Were the Persians and the Chinese empires aware of each other's existence and did they frequently interact? | The first known interaction was reported by Zhang Qian, a Chinese explorer. He wrote that they were an advanced civilization, and commented on their currency, wine, cultivation and walled cities and also of the amount of cities. This was in 126 BCE and the two people started trading embassies and missions and had a peaceful relationship.
As they entered the Sassanid Period the two civilizations benefited greatly from trade on the silk road and were very close. Both of them worked together to guard the trade routes, and they continued to send missions to each other. The Persians were noted to send great entertainers to the Chinese courts.
After Persia was conquered by Islam, the relations continued. However in 751, the Abbasid Caliphate and the Chinese had a border dispute. They proceeded to battle over Syr Dara at the Battle of Talas. The Persians won a great victory, and after the battle, relations returned to normal, trading envoys, goods and missions between the two, and working together. | [
"Sino-Persian relations (Chinese: 中国–波斯关系, Persian: [same as above]) refer to the historic diplomatic, cultural and economic relations between the cultures of China proper and Greater Iran, dating back to ancient times, since at least 200 B.C. The Parthians and Sassanid empires (occupying much of present Iran and C... |
When and how did pop culture associate all things Nuclear with the color green? | Radioactive materials are often portrayed as green because back in the mid 20th century, there was a trend of making glowing watch faces with radioactive paint mixed with phosphorus. As you say, radioactivity is impossible to see with the naked eye and if you have Cherenkov radiation, it's a visible blue. The phosphorus interacting with the radioactive decay is what makes a green glow. As time went on, the glow of the phosphorus was associated with radiation. As was the case with these watch faces. Some were even made with radium.
These sorts of watches were pretty popular and had to be hand painted. Sadly the women who made them had horrible amounts of cancer from working with all these radioactive materials.
Source: _URL_0_ | [
"\"Green\" was released on November 7, 1988, in the United Kingdom, and the following day in the United States. R.E.M. chose the American release date to coincide with the 1988 presidential election, and used its increased profile during the period to criticize Republican candidate George H. W. Bush while praising ... |
why do you need to pay to get a divorce and pay to get married? | Why does it cost money to get divorced?
Because it's worth it! | [
"In other jurisdictions such as United Kingdom and Singapore, divorce is granted on the basis of an irretrievable breakdown of marriage. Under current divorce law in England and Wales, a person has to prove in court that the marriage has broken down; there are five reasons for which a marriage can be considered to ... |
How common was the surname 'Hitler' in Germany/Austria prior to the 1930s? Did people later drop it because of its connotations? | This is some anecdotal evidence.
The name "Adolf" was a relatively common one in Belgium prior to World War II. One of the most famous 19th century Belgian politicians was [Adolf Daens](_URL_1_). After World War 2, the name died out. Parents stopped naming their babies Adolf, but I don't know if existing "Adolfs" changed their name. Nowadays the frst name is non-existant here.
Sidenote: post-WW2, a lot of Belgian names were based on American/English names such as Danny, Willy, Ronny, Michael, Daisy, Bettybut are uncommon these days for newborns.
Regarding the name "Hitler". His father, Alois Hitler, was actually born Alois Schicklgruber. He started (officially) using his stepfather's name, Hiedler, in the 1870's. That name got registered as Hitler for unknown reasons. So, Hitler's father was actually the first person to take on the name of Hitler. From there, it's relatively easy to track Hitler's (male) relatives after World War II. [William Patrick Hitler](_URL_0_). He was a British nephew of Hitler and joined the US Navy in 1941. He later changed his name to Stuart-Houston.
Hitler's half-nephew, Heinz Hitler, died in World War II leaving no children behind.
I couldn't find anything else on other male relatives of Hitler, so I think the name naturally went extinct after world war II with the exception of William Patrick Hitler.
I don't know about the name Schicklgruber however. | [
"\"Schicklgruber\" is the surname Adolf Hitler's father, Alois Hitler carried for the first 40 years of his life, until he took the name Hitler (Hiedler) from his stepfather. While Adolf Hitler himself never carried the surname, the British made use of it for propaganda purposes since even to Germans, the name is l... |
how can we drive for minutes, maybe even hours, without really paying attention to the road? i have daydreamed and come back and not known what has happened the past 15 minutes. | Not remembering what happened for the last 15 minutes doesn't mean you weren't reasonably alert during that period, it just means that you weren't forming long term memories of what happened. It is possible for that part of your brain to take a break because whatever is happening is so irrelevant that there is no need to store it beyond the short term. The result is you have no memory of that period but if something unexpected happened you would still be able to react to it. | [
"BULLET::::- Driving time is between 8:00 and 17:00 (from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.). In order to select a suitable place for the overnight stop (alongside the highway) it is possible to extend the driving period for a maximum of 10 minutes, which extra driving time will be compensated by a starting time delay the next day.... |
Would rain droplets on a lower gravity planet be larger, on average, compared to our own planet? | I'm by no means an expert, but my understanding as a mechanical engineer is that the shape and size of rain droplets depend on 3 sets of parameters:
1, the acceleration due to gravity (9.81 m/s^2 on earth)
2, the fluid dynamic properties of the atmosphere (namely density and viscosity of the air)
3, the fluid dynamic properties of the rain water (again density, viscosity, and other effects such as surface tension)
The size and shape of rain drops represents an equilibrium in the interaction between all of these parameters, so changing any of them will alter the result.
Now someone with more fluids experience than me can explain what would happen to the drops if they have less acceleration.
[edited for formatting] | [
"That latter statement necessitates, as Clement states in the story, that the surface pressure on Tenebra be 800 atmospheres, not 218. At 800 atmospheres of pressure the surface atmosphere, with its load of dissolved oxygen and sulphur oxides, is compressed to a density a little less than the density of liquid wate... |
How did Venice lose her maritime importance while the less-powerful Genoa maintained as Italy's largest port today? | I think you are conflating together some things that happened centuries apart. In fact Genoa's mercantile empire declined faster and more dramatically than the Venetian one. To the point that Genoa essentially lost political independence much earlier than Venice.
A first phase of relative decline of the Republic begun with the long conflict with Venice, culminating in the War of Chioggia in the 1380s. Genoa's expansion was ended and most of the resources of the Republic went into consolidation of its oligarchic structure and the former trading empire evolved into a prominent banking venture. The founding of the Bank of St. George in 1407 marked a turning point in the evolution of the Republic that, surrounded by more powerful nations, had to suffer repeated periods of French and Milanese occupation in the XV Century. The fall of Constantinoples - the Genoese had been traditional allies of the fading Bizantine Empire enjoying special trading privileges - was another blow to their trading ambitions.
It was in fact the Bank which helped the City survive and avoid permanent conquest: in the XVI Century the Genoese bankers became prominent lenders to the Crown of Spain. Under the rule of the Doria family, strong of the ties with the Spanish kingdom, the city saw a period of resurgence. Noetheless the absolute prominence of the Bank within the City meant a growing identification of the Administration with the Bank's "shareholders". Very few most renown families held control of the Bank, which was to say of the entire economy of the City, as the Bank also oversaw traffics, tariffs and taxes, held lands under direct or indirect control; it also brought a situation where the leadership was essentially extracting money by financing no longer the debt of foreign nations but the public debt of the city itself.
The decline of the Spanish finances during the late XVI early XVII Century marked therefore a new period of decline for the Genoese; again they were subject to political and military pressure from outside forces: the French and the Austrians took turns as major influences until, after the brief restoration of the Republic during the Napoleonic Campaign in Italy, Genoa ended up with the Kingdom of Sardinia. Which is also the moment when some resurgence of its trading nature begun, as it became the main port of the Kingdom under the reactionary Carlo Felice and his more progressive son Carlo Alberto.
In any case, despite the glorious parenthesis of the XVI Century, the Genoese decline was more marked than the Venetian one. Venice retained a larger trading influence for longer time, a larger degree of political independence and, despite being forced to abandon its policy of conquest on the mainland, roughly after the War of the League of Cambrai a the beginning of the XVI Century, a larger mainland crossed by some trading routes. The progressive erosion of their commercial empire under pressure by the Ottomans led Venice to a similar evolution in a conservative-oligarchic sense. Here though, having retained a significant portion of land, the Venetian leadership was heavily based on land possession and the public debt was therefore transofrmed in a series of concessions - at times very unfortunate - that developed a system of internal tariffs and borders, which ultimately resulted in a general backwardness of the agrarian and (almost non existent) industrial production of the main land in the late XVIII Century.
By the time of the Restoration, both Venice and Genoa were in deep economic and political decline; but Venice was perhaps in slightly better condition. Unfortunately for them - if the annexation to the Austro Hungarian Empire brought a progressive elimination of the internal borders, as the Austrians used the Venetian mainland as a pathway to their more advanced Lombard holdings - the Austrians already had a main port on the Adriatic sea: Trieste. And they saw no purpose in developing another one, despite the Venetian maritime tradition becoming important for the Empire.
By the way, the port of Genoa isn't necessarily the largest port of Italy by every indicator - for example Trieste carries more tonnage as you can see [here](_URL_0_) and Venice is far from a merely turistic city (you usally don't visit the port and industrial town of Mestre-Marghera because frankly they are desperately unpleasant to the eye).
The resurgence of Venice as an industrial pole is usually tied to the personal efforts of Giuseppe Volpi, who is famous for an infinite list of things: the Cinema Festival, being in charge of the finances under Fascism, the creation of the often renamed Adriatic Society of Energy, pioneering the Hydroelectric sector with the construction of Alpine dams, etc.
This process continued during the Italian economic boom in the post WW2 period and would bring us to cross the 20 years barrier.
Also it must be noted that there are geographical limitations to the access to the Venetian lagoon that have made harder to logistically accomodate large volumes of traffic; essentially the need to develop and maintain channels dug into the lagoon.
For sources I used G. Candeloro's *Storia dell'Italia moderna*.
I also used some data from [this publication of the City of Genoa](_URL_0_)
Edit: Added a couple of sentences that were left in my fingers when I posted.
Also I think I broke the record for the use of the adjective prominent...
Finally, this is a long, long subject to deal with and I am not entirely familiar with it, as Candeloro's work mostly focused on the condition of pre unitary Italy and the nature of the economical relations within the various states. I hope someone may fill in the gaps I left; also you may want to know more on the Venetian development process after WW1 but of that I know very little unfortunately. | [
"The two maritime powers, Genoa and Venice, had long been leading commercial powers with ties to Constantinople that had nurtured their growth during the Early Middle Ages. Their rivalry over trade with the Levant had generated a number of wars. Genoa, having suffered previous defeats at the hands of the Venetians,... |
Since DNA is an acid, is there such thing as DNA salts? | Not only can DNA exist as a salt, but this is pretty much its standard form in the solid state. In an aqueous medium, DNA exists as a conjugate base with negatively charged phosphate groups stabilized by a bunch of [counterions](_URL_1_) that are floating around in the solution such as Na^(+). When you precipitate the DNA (e.g. as is most commonly done through the [addition of ethanol](_URL_0_)), these cations will bind to the phosphate groups and the DNA will precipitate out as a salt. | [
"A further explanation of how DNA binds to silica is based on the action of guanidinium HCl (GuHCl), which acts as a chaotrope. A chaotrope denatures biomolecules by disrupting the shell of hydration around them. This allows positively charged ions to form a salt bridge between the negatively charged silica and the... |
why is it impossible to stop thinking? | Some kinds of meditation are the attempt to silence your thoughts. Through willpower and training you can silence the internal monologue of your thoughts. Of course your brain is still functioning and processing information, it does that even when you're asleep. | [
"Thought stopping is a cognitive intervention technique prescribed by therapists (psychologists and psychiatrists) with the goal of interrupting, removing, and replacing problematic recurring thoughts. It is considered a core cognitive intervention method that is distinct for the absence of analysis in the treatmen... |
During the American civil war Why weren't bayonet charges used often? | it appears to be inexperience by these armies. in the beginning of the war, the armies grew in size, many times their normal peacetime strength and so you have inexperienced leaders at every level; and large numbers of raw recruits. Frank Vizetelly an English war correspondent makes mention of this in a National Geographic article in April of 1961 (100th anniversary issue).
I seem to recall that as the war went on bayonet charges were used more, at Spotsylvania, the Crater, Ft. Pillow, etc. These are all in 1864. | [
"During the American Civil War (1861–1865) the bayonet was found to be responsible for less than 1% of battlefield casualties, a hallmark of modern warfare. The use of bayonet charges to force the enemy to retreat was very successful in numerous small unit engagements at short range in the American Civil War, as mo... |
caitlyn jenner in vanity fair and the big deal of it? | Caitlyn Jenner was formerly Bruce Jenner, an internationally renowned Olympic athlete who was the face of masculinity and athleticism in the 1970s. She recently came out as transgender. She is very likely the biggest celebrity in history to come out as trans. | [
"Bissinger's July 2015 Vanity Fair cover story \"Call Me Caitlyn,\" on the transition of former Olympic decathlete, businessperson, and television personality Bruce Jenner to Caitlyn Jenner star of E!'s \"Keeping Up With the Kardashians\" and \"I Am Cait\", with photographs by Annie Leibovitz, was one of the bigges... |
why is the credit card considered so secure if all the information required to make a purchase is on the card? | I work at Saks and we see significant credit card fraud at our store. For this reason we don't have a customer swipe or pin pad, you have to hand your card to the cashier, we frequently ask for ID as well. Banks and CC companies are getting more vigilant as well, we frequently have cards declined because people are traveling and our store is located in a high end outlet mall. So the bank will see charges from the Gucci outlet, the Armani store and Burberry and freeze the card because it's outside your normal spending habits. Even so, we lose money to fraud, although I don't know exactly how much. | [
"Credit card security relies on the physical security of the plastic card as well as the privacy of the credit card number. Therefore, whenever a person other than the card owner has access to the card or its number, security is potentially compromised. Once, merchants would often accept credit card numbers without... |
Is air indoors more polluted than outdoors? | I think it seriously depends on the situation but the EPA suggests that particle levels are the same or lower than outdoors in houses without smoking ([source](_URL_1_)). The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (discovered via Google, see [source](_URL_0_)) suggests that indoor levels could be a few times higher, and given some things I've read following links on these two websites, I think it comes down to mostly factors such as burning things (obviously) or heating systems and proper ventilation.
I'll add that in places with extreme outdoor pollution, such as smog, indoors is almost certainly lower, especially with simple filtration systems. | [
"Scientific evidence has indicated that indoor air pollution can be worse than outdoor pollutants in large and industrialized cities. Many products and chemicals used inside the home, for cooking and heating, and for appliances and home décor are primary sources of indoor air pollutants. Everything we use in the ho... |
why are most corporations considered evil? | Most corporations aren't evil and just do useful things like make your bread for your breakfast toast or make wires for your house.
Of those that are evil often their evilness can be often put down to either to outright corruption in management ranks, which is just the human condition.
And secondarily companies often do evil things because traditionally directors (CEOs etc) can be sued personally by the shareholders of that company if they don't act in such a way to make the most possible money. This leads them to make unethical decisions just to make larger profit. Because if they don't. They could potentially be sued by the shareholders for running the business improperly.
Some countries (recently the UK) have passed laws to try and allow the directors more leeway in how they run the company.
I believe in the UK directors of companies are now protected from shareholders sueing the director if the director acted in a fashion that was intended to benefit society or the environment.
A lot of other countries are passing similar laws
| [
"An evil corporation is a trope in popular culture that portrays a corporation as ignoring social responsibility in order to make money for its shareholders. According to Angela Allan writing in \"The Atlantic\", the notion is \"deeply embedded in the landscape of contemporary culture—populating films, novels, vide... |
Landing on Mars with a glider? | > Does it have something to do with the 100 times thinner atmosphere
Probably. NASA engineers are smart people and think of all the angles, and then go through rigorous math to compare the price and effectiveness of various techniques. When you're sending something up into space, often the most expensive part of it is sending it up on a rocket *into* space and to Mars. So, I suppose they realized that, in that particular case, a rocket would be lighter, cheaper, and less prone to failure than other alternatives. | [
"One application of a Mars flyby is for a human mission, where after landing and staying on the surface for some time the ascent stage has a space rendezvous with another, unmanned spacecraft, that was launched separately from Earth, flying by. This would mean the ascent stage of the lander to reach the speed neces... |
If you listen to music loudly (via earphones) in a very windy situation, where you can barely hear the music (for example in a convertible going fast), is the music still doing damage to your ears? | Yep. Same thing with being at a bar or loud concert and yelling into your friends' ears so that you can hear each other. No different then if someone was yelling into your ear in a quiet room. | [
"When exposed to a multitude of sounds from several different sources, sensory overload may occur. This overstimulation can result in general fatigue and loss of sensation in the ear. The associated mechanisms are explained in further detail down below. Sensory overload usually occurs with environmental stimuli and... |
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