question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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Why don’t fermented foods (kimchi, sauerkraut, etc.) not have lots of alcohol? | There are different kinds of fermentation, and not all produce alcohol. For kimchi and sauerkraut, lactic acid is the main product. | [
"BULLET::::- Jains do not consume fermented foods (beer, wine and other alcohols) to avoid killing of a large number of microorganisms associated with the fermenting process. According to \"Puruṣārthasiddhyupāya\":\n",
"BULLET::::- For a substance to be halal, it must not contain alcohol of any kind. However, the... |
why do we measure the energy in food in calories? | We measure energy in calories because both our cells and a fire are doing the same thing - releasing energy by breaking apart molecules. The basic principle in a fire is that the bonds holding the atoms together are rapidly broken, releasing a certain amount of energy. We can harness the energy in heat to do work (basic thermodynamics, if you're interested), but it usually comes minus a small penalty - entropy and all that.
However, The simple answer is that our bodies are roughly doing the same thing: converting the chemicals in our food into energy by breaking the same bonds and harnessing the energy. Of course, this is where you start to get into the wonderful biochemistry of it all in which you can look at exactly how energy from bonds is used to power the body.
To make a long story short, cells generally use a single molecule called ATP (adenosine triphosphate) to store this energy, so each time a bond in your food is broken, you produce some amount of ATP. (If you really want to know, you're using a high-energy phosphorus-phosphorus bond, converting ADP (a molecule containing 2 phosphates) to ATP (a molecule containing three phosphates).
Later on, the body can break off that extra phosphate and use that energy for whatever purpose it needs - muscle contractions, making proteins, etc etc etc.
The only real difference between the fire and your cells processing food is the rate at which the bonds are broken. In the food in a fire, it happens REALLY quickly, and the energy is released as light and heat. In the body, the energy is harnessed and stored for later use.
Thus, using calorie, a measure of energy, for both is pretty much the only way to do it. (Of course, most of the world uses metric and the unit for that is Joules.) And that does mean that yes, we are little fires - but VASTLY more controlled than the flame you're referring to. (We even ex-hale CO2 like a fire... we essentially burn carbohydrates, but that's another post for another day.)
For the last parts: no, there's not much more to calories than the number - however, there's much more to nutrition than the calories would tell you. Not everything we eat is broken down to basic components. And some foods aren't even broken down completely to ATP... some get stored as fats, some get used "as is" (vitamins) and others don't even get into our body, as they're eaten by our gut flora. (Isn't biology interesting?)
Don't confuse calories with nutrition - calories are just a measure of how much energy is available in a certain item, not an indication of how your body uses it.
So, yes, our bodies are pretty highly evolved to make use of some foods and not others. Olestra is a great example of that. It's a manmade fat substitute, and our bodies have absolutely no way of breaking it down - consequently, it just passes right through and you get zero calories out of it.
However, most actual "food" is pretty well used by the human body. There's some interesting information on how different sugars are used differently by the body - and one of my favorite lectures is this one : _URL_0_. It's pretty accessible to everyone. tl;dr: Fructose turns into fat, glucose is used as energy. Don't eat too much fructose.
Honestly, despite being a long rant, this is a fascinating subject and I've only scratched the surface of it. Biochemistry is an incredible and rich field and it's hard to not follow up on the millions of tangents that I could have above.
Cheers.
| [
"BULLET::::- calorie – a basic measure of energy that has been replaced by the SI unit the joule; in physics it approximates the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 °C which is about 4.184 joules. The Calories in food ratings (spelled with a capital C) and nutrition are ‘big C’ Calorie... |
Legality of political paramilitary organizations in the Weimar Republic | Hey there, I wrote an answer which goes into more detail about the paramilitary organisations which you can find [here](_URL_0_).
In terms of legality, the organisations were broadly tolerated until they stepped over the line. Smaller groups such as Organisation Consul or the killers of Rosa Luxemburg who carried out political assassinations were pursued by the police, although the right wing bias of the judiciary meant that the trials themselves were often not conducted to the highest standard. Similarly, the SA were banned in Bavaria after the Beer Hall Putsch.
The prevalence of the paramilitary groups would have made it difficult to fully outlaw them. Anywhere up to six million Germans were members by 1933 so the scale of outlawing and enforcing the ban would have been huge. Since these paramilitary groups were linked to political parties (the SPD, KPD and NSDAP had the largest) there was no political appetite to ban them. | [
"Paramilitary groups were formed throughout the Weimar Republic in the wake of Germany's defeat in World War I and the ensuing German Revolution. Some were created by political parties to help in recruiting, discipline and in preparation for seizing power. Some were created before World War I. Others were formed by... |
Why couldn't Austria-Hungary take Russia during the WWI? | Your chronology and facts are off here. Although it is difficult to pin down an *exact* start date for the Russian Civil War, it roughly started in November/December 1917 and only really began in earnest the following year. The Russian Army had begun a process of desertion and demobilization (sanctioned and unsanctioned) in the aftermath of the earlier February Revolution in 1917. But for all of the problems of tsarist Russia in the war, the army really was the last Romanov institution to break in the tumultuous revolutionary year of 1917. The Duma, the peasantry, the urban workers, and a myriad other social groups and institutions turned against tsardom before the military began its protracted disintegration.
In the meantime, the political health of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was not that much better than that of tsarist Russia. The Dual Monarchy's military suffered a series of reverses, such as the Siege of Przemyśl in which the failure of the relief effort and the surrender of the garrison severely damaged the Empire's morale. The Austro-Hungarian war economy was sputtering as well, especially as fighting on the frontiers of the Empire created an internal refugee crisis. Food became quite scarce in the Empire's cities, and when the Austrian Minister-President Karl von Stürgkh was assassinated while at lunch in 1916 there was very little public sympathy for a man that many blamed for the Empire's food crisis. Ethnic relations within the Empire, never the most stable to begin with, began to fall apart with the spectre of national separatism emerging.
Germany did not nearly have so many problems as its Habsburg ally, and many on the German military and government saw the Russian Revolution and the makings of the Civil War as a godsend. In negotiations with the Bolsheviks, a faction willing to negotiate the end of the war, the Germans dictated the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk which would have reduced much of the western Russian Empire into independent vassal states dependent upon Germany. Although the negotiations for Brest-Litovsk were complex, Lenin agreed to them in the gamble that Germany lacked the manpower and resources to enforce this Carthaginian peace and would likely lose the war in the Western Front. Lenin's calculated risk proved correct. Although the Germans and their Central Power allies did try to carve out their own fiefdoms out of the corpse of the Russian Empire, they really could not keep this territory. The relative freedom of movement of the wartime German *Ober Ost* troops and the postwar *Freikorps* does testify to the overall collapse of Russian authority during the Civil War. Many of the German paramilitary formations used wartime stocks of materials and offered themselves up as freebooter companies to the Whites while their leadership toyed with carving out a neo-Germanic state on the Baltics. Such dreams were unrealistic and these German military units could not form a lasting political order or government over this largely non-German population. Many of the *Freikorps* ended up ejected from their would-be conquests. If it was impractical to occupy the Baltics, then Moscow, where the Bolsheviks had relocated the capital to in 1918 because of Petrograd's proximity to the fighting, was simply out of reach. | [
"On January 15, 1877, Russia and Austria-Hungary signed a written agreement confirming the results of an earlier Reichstadt Agreement in July 1876. This assured Russia of the benevolent neutrality of Austria-Hungary in the impending war. These terms meant that in case of war Russia would do the fighting and Austria... |
Is it possible to control a nuclear explosion? | > I don't mean in terms of a bomb, but could you create some sort of chamber to control a nuclear explosion and focus all the energy in one direction creating a thrust ...
Yes, this is possible, in fact there was a program to develop this kind of thruster ([Project Orion](_URL_0_)). The only reason it's not being done is public concern over safety. And, since Fukushima and Chernobyl, that concern seems justified.
Nevertheless, in the future, I think this idea will be reconsidered. And I think it ought to be.
| [
"The use of nuclear explosive devices is an international issue and will need to be addressed by the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. The 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty technically bans nuclear weapons in space. However, it is unlikely that a nuclear explosive device, fuzed ... |
the egg grading system, ie are there grade b eggs? | the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) provides a voluntary grading service for eggs. See [Haugh Units](_URL_0_). They established certain formal egg grade standards and weight classes. *Other countries have other standards.* That said, there are no government standards yet for some terms, like "free range" or "organic".
Grade AA
* whites are firm, yolks are round, shells are pristine.
* are beautiful, and best for frying, where appearance is important.
Grade A
* everyday grocery eggs.
Grade B eggs
* are used for commercial baking and restaurants, rarely sold in retail.
* white is thinner, yolk is flatter. shells are rough, dirty or both.
Grade C eggs (lowest)
* are used in manufacturing, never sold in retail
* white is thinnest, yolk is flattest. shell is cracked. | [
"In the United States, egg grading is performed by the USDA, and is based upon the interior quality of the egg (see Haugh unit) and the appearance and condition of the egg shell. Eggs of any quality grade may differ in weight (size). Egg grading is performed by candling, which involves observing the interior of egg... |
How did people live in a barter system? | Yes, debt was the main method of paying for services, just like it is today. In barter economies, debts are integral to the fabric of the society; less so today because we tend to pay our debts shortly after incurring them with money, so the social component is mostly lost. | [
"The use of barter-like methods may date back to at least 100,000 years ago, though there is no evidence of a society or economy that relied primarily on barter. Instead, non-monetary societies operated largely along the principles of gift economy and debt. When barter did in fact occur, it was usually between eith... |
how were measuring systems created? why are less convenient methods still being used? | A lot of the imperial meausres are derived from what was practical..
For example in the middle ages, an Acre was the area that could be plowed in a day with a single yoke of an oxen...
Check out [this article](_URL_0_) on the history of measurement. | [
"The use of a single unit of measurement for some quantity has obvious drawbacks. For example, it is impractical to use the same unit for the distance between two cities and the length of a needle. Thus, historically they would develop independently. One way to make large numbers or small fractions easier to read, ... |
If a history textbook does not include sources/citations for it's claims, how much credit and reliability can it be given? | Most textbooks don't give footnotes, actually. There's a widespread belief among publishers that footnotes make a book look difficult to read, and scare away students. As a result, many popular press books - and almost every textbook - don't provide notes for its arguments. (Though there's often a For Further Reading... section at the end.) This lack of citations is further justified by the perception (whether accurate or not) that overview textbooks are giving you the story upon which everyone agrees; hence their contents are essentially 'common knowledge'.
This isn't an approach you want to follow in your own writing, and I'm personally not entirely comfortable with it in textbooks myself. But, for better or worse, it's how publishers encourage textbook writers to write.
So you're correct to question to this, but ultimately it's not a direct reflection of the author's credibility. It's, instead, a statement about how textbook publishers underestimated your intelligence by assuming that you *wouldn't* want to see sources cited. | [
"Schnell noted that in some cases the book misquotes authors regarding their conclusions and that one should therefore \"not use [it] as a secondary citation source\". Schnell also commented on the book's original price of US$150, which he considered high given its print quality. He concluded by writing:\n",
"On ... |
How do quantum computers perform calculations without disturbing the superposition of the qubit? | It seems to me you are asking two distinct questions
> How do quantum computers perform calculations?
Calculations are achieved by the application of [operators](_URL_0_) on quantum states. These can be applied to the entire superposition at once without breaking it.
> How can you retrieve information without collapsing the superposition?
As has been correctly answered by /u/Gigazwiebel below, you cannot retrieve information without collapsing the superposition. This is why quantum algorithms are so clever and so hard to design, by the time of measurement your superposition should be in a state so that it gives the correct answer some high probability of the time when measured.
& #x200B;
Even if somehow you managed to measure the whole superposition without breaking it (which of course is against the laws of quantum mechanics), you would be restricted by [Holevo's bound](_URL_1_), which says you can only retrieve n classical bits of information from n qubits.
& #x200B; | [
"Quantum computers need qubits (quantum bits) on which they operate. Generally, in order to make the computation more reliable, the qubits must be as pure as possible, minimizing possible fluctuations. Since the purity of a qubit is related to von Neumann entropy and to temperature, making the qubits as pure as pos... |
Monday Mysteries | Local History Mysteries | I live in Tampa and one that I can think of is the whole controversy surrounding the Dozier School for Boys. It was a boarding school where families would send their unruly, troublesome, and delinquent boys. Its history is FILLED with tales of abuse, sexual abuse, murder, fishy deaths etc., it basically functioned like a prison and had its own cemetery. Recently the archeology department at the University of South Florida wanted to exhume bodies at the graveyard for analysis and the like. The current owners of the property are trying to prohibit them for various reasons that sound awful suspicious "let sleeping dogs lie" or "boys will be boys" and "nothing good can come from digging up the past". The thing is, it's extremely likely that a significant number of bodies are there because of foul play and the school has only been closed for a relatively short amount of time meaning any evidence of nefarious wrongdoings could still have consequences for those involved. I believe it's in the court system right now whether Usf will be allowed to examine the site or not. | [
"The Lake District Mysteries are a series of detective novels by British crime writer Martin Edwards. The books feature Hannah Scarlett and the historian Daniel Kind, and are the first series of crime novels by a British detective novelist to be set in the Lake District, a region in North-West England.\n",
"North... |
What kinds of evidence have to be, or should be, present if we are to determine the existence of a certain disease in the past? | If you're going to be strict about this, you require molecular genetic evidence. Diseases rarely have a set of symptoms that are unique and therefore unmistakable, and due to evolution it's hard to be certain that a given condition isn't due to microbes that have either mutated or otherwise since gone into hiding.
Without the molecular evidence, the best that can be said is that symptoms are consistent with the historical sources. | [
"Several diseases are present in the archaeological record. Through archaeological evaluation these diseases can be identified and sometimes can explain the cause of death for certain individuals. Aside from looking at sex, age, etc. of a skeleton, a paleopathologist may analyze the condition of the bones to determ... |
why do i look skinnier/more attractive when i wake up in the morning? | You're on avarage taller in the morning and you often have an empty stomach. It should be that simple. | [
"Studies have shown that due to societal influences, people associate beauty with lighter skin. This is especially evident in children. This belief has led dark-skinned children to feel inadequate in who they are and inferior when compared to people with lighter skin. African American women believe they would have ... |
How does a nerve gas mask differ from other gas mask? | So i actually do this for a living, and the other comments have partially correct info but not the whole story. Firstly, nerve agents are not the only threat, they do however have alot of notoriety. There are other things to also consider such as blister, blood, and choking agents and biological agents (like anthrax) to consider as well.
A gask mask is meant to stop these from entering your body via inhalation, however there are many different agents that can seep through your skin or light clothing, and thats where other methods of protection come in such as JSLIST suits or level A/B suits that you often see in movies but since your question was about the masks, we will start with those.
What they do in most cases is filter your air through filters (sometimes only one) while providing an air tight seal around your face to prevent chem/bio agents from being inhaled. They cannot however filter our Volitile Organic Compounds (VOCs) such as carbon monoxide as these particles are often similar in size to oxygen and are therefore still deadly. In such conpromised environments, what is usually then used is a level A/B suit with an oxygen supply to prevent you from being exposed to the hazardous agents/VOCs.
As to your question about modifications, gas mask technology evolves to meet new threats, and usually the only "improvements" revolve around filter technology, materials used in the mask itself, or the shape/usage of the mask as it affects combat readiness.
Edit: also, nerve agents hadnt been invented yet so naturally they would not have been used in testing. | [
"A gas mask is worn over the face to protect the wearer from inhaling \"airborne pollutants\" and toxic gases. The mask forms a sealed cover over the nose and mouth, but may also cover the eyes and other vulnerable soft tissues of the face. Airborne toxic materials may be gaseous or particulate. Many gas masks incl... |
why bus fare (for example) keeps going up | Simple answer is inflation. The price of petrol is always going up, leading to everything that relies on it having to spend more. Buses are directly affected by this as they use petrol obviously. Other energy sources like gas are always increasing in price too, costing companies even more money. This leads them to increase prices to cover the higher costs. I believe the rate of these rises is the rate of inflation? To combat this workers are usually given a pay rise above the rate of inflation, but this also leads to the company having higher costs! | [
"One of the benefits of this change is that it has helped speed passengers on to the bus. People no longer had to wait to be issued a printed receipt as they each enter the bus. Environmentally this should help reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen because buses don't have to idle as long while passengers... |
is our perception of time relative to our mass? eg: an ants lifetime seems to them, the same amount of time as what our lifetime seems to us? | There's no particular evidence to support this idea, although since it regards perception, I don't know that you could absolutely rule it out. I'd just say 'Probably not.' There are, after all, humans more than twice the mass of other humans, and we don't see much reporting of this discrepancy. | [
"The perception of time seems to be modulated by our recent experiences. Humans typically overestimate the perceived duration of the initial event in a stream of identical events. Initial studies suggested that this oddball-induced “subjective time dilation” expanded the perceived duration of oddball stimuli by 30–... |
what is the difference between daydreaming and psychosis? | Daydreaming is mostly controlled, Psychosis is mostly uncontrolled.
Daydreaming you still understand what is reality and what is not. Psychosis and other mental disturbances can make those distinctions much more difficult.
| [
"In psychiatry, onirism refers to a mental state in which visual hallucinations occur while fully awake. It is a symptom of some parasomnias (such as REM sleep behavior disorder and breakdown syndromes), but is more often associated with drug abuse. \n",
"Other recent research has also shown that daydreaming, muc... |
How exactly does a short-circuit damage a device? | First it is important to understand how electricity works. The rate at which electricity flows through a circuit is determined by its resistance. In fact, resistors are extremely important in circuits for this very reason, because they place limits on how much electricity can travel through a given part of the circuit.
For instance, if a given circuit, at 18v, has a resistance of 180 ohms, then it doesn't matter of the power source can supply 100mA (all that is required for the circuit) or 20A (which is a lot of power).
However, at 18v, a .9ohm circuit can handle 20A. This means that it depends on the power source whether it can provide that full 20A or not. 20A is enough to melt metal very quickly, so if the circuit wasn't made to handle 20A (really thick metal plates, etc), and the power source can supply it, then 20A will simply melt it.
So if that all makes sense, then you see that if the battery in the iphone can provide much more power than the circuits can handle (and it can), when you give an ultra-low resistance path like water directly connecting components that were never meant to handle that much juice, that it can quickly blow those components or even melt the plastic / metal used.
| [
"Protective devices such as circuit breakers and fuses must be selected with an interrupting rating that exceeds the prospective short-circuit current, if they are to safely protect the circuit from a fault. When a large electric current is interrupted an arc forms, and if the breaking capacity of a fuse or circuit... |
how does a company know how many shares to make public? | How many shares to make.public is based on what a company wants their stock price to be.
So the two biggest reasons that different companies have different numbers of shares when going public is that 1) not all companies have the same valuation and 2) some companies want different levels of liquidity than others.
Some companies don't want it to be easy to buy or sell their stock. They want the stock price to remain stable, they don't want people trading it very often, and sometimes they really don't want individual investors to have any, as opposed to institutional investors. Also, remember that the corporation is accountable to shareholders, and shareholders get to vote on things, and the company may not want to have to answer to random jackasses who bought stock. So, they make it too expensive for regular trading. BRK.A, Warren Buffett's firm, costs something like $300,000 *per share*.
So let's say you think your company is worth $5 billion and you want your stock price to be about $100 per share. You'd issue 50 million shares of stock at $100 a piece. But what if you want your stock to be $500 per share to cut down the trading volatility? Then you'd only issue 10 million shares.
As far as how many to keep, generally the founder is going to keep at least 51% so they can still be in control of the company. Some founders are playing for the long term and are only going public to raise funds for their company. They'll only release as many shares as it takes to raise the amount of money they think their company needs. Some founders just want to cash in so they'll release as much as they think the market will buy and take the payout. | [
"While this information is usually available through Internet search engines, it must still be disclosed in detail. This disclosure is especially important for smaller companies whose stocks trade infrequently and for companies trading on multiple markets (including more than one market per type of common stock). T... |
with bee populations being decimated why haven't we seen major shortages of any produce? | It's not the general bee population that's collapsing, it was the wild bee population that collapsed. Commercial beekeeping is what keeps them alive at this point. | [
"Bees play in a significant role in pollinating crops. A decline in bee population leads to a decline in crop yield, which will then result in a reduction in the food supply and cause economic hardships for farmers. Commercially produced \"B. impatiens\" is one of the most important species of pollinator bees that ... |
Was the cursive script a product of the quill and inkwell system of writing? | Someone who knows how to use a quill can use it pretty skillfully, and if it's kept in good condition and properly blotted, it won't drip. A manuscript written by a skilled scribe usually looks pretty clean. Of course, we might expect to see different things depending on the type of manuscript. Something like the Ostromir Gospels, a luxury item created for a mayor of Novgorod, is going to look much cleaner than a book of homilies for personal use in a monastery or home. We have a ton of clean-looking manuscripts written in uncial or semi-uncial.
That said, I think there's to the idea that cursive script required something like a quill to happen, but the reverse (a quill requires cursive) is definitely not true. Cursive, at least in the (East) Slavic regions, seems to have grown as a time/space-saving device. *Skoropis'* 'quick-writing' developed over the course of the 15th-19th centuries, and you need a bit of specialist training to actually read it. You can see a table of [letter-forms from the 18th century here](_URL_1_). The left-most forms are (usually) the most uncial or semi-uncial ones, and then they sort of go from there to become progressively less-recognizable. Special letter forms developed for certain positions in a word or on the line. [Here's an image](_URL_0_) of 17th century *skoropis'* in use. The script was mostly about saving time and space. In certain contexts, things get even more difficult to read, especially when the people writing the records are the only ones who expect to be reading them. | [
"Cursive script originated in China during the Han dynasty through the Jin period, in two phases. First, an early form of cursive developed as a cursory way to write the popular and not-yet-mature clerical script. Faster ways to write characters developed through four mechanisms: omitting part of a graph, merging s... |
if a baby is born on the iis, and the mother and father are astronauts/cosmonauts from different countries (usa+russia), what is the citizenship of the baby? | Citizenship is determined by the citizenship of the parents rather than the location. A person born in Germany to two English parents would get English citizenship by birth. So in your example the baby would have duel US + Russian Citizenship. | [
"All Soviet and RKA cosmonauts have been born within the borders of the U.S.S.R.; no cosmonaut who was born in independent Russia has yet flown. Many cosmonauts, however, were born in Soviet territories outside the boundaries of Russia, and may be claimed by various Soviet successor states as nationals of those sta... |
what causes chromosome abnormalities? | There are lots, but one *major* issue that contributes to many cancers is recombination.
Normally recombination isn't really a bad thing, and gives us genetic diversity. When your cells are dividing to make sperm or eggs, the chromosome you have from both mom and dad line up. Because they are structurally similar, it is possible for them to "swap" segments, [like this](_URL_0_). This means you could pass on one of your dad's chromosomes, but with your mom's "blue eyes" gene inside of it.
The problem comes in when the swap doesn't work very neatly. Instead of having Chromosome 9 swap with another Chromosome 9, it might swap with Chromosome 22. Sometimes this is fine because the DNA is *still there*, but in different places. However, it often turns out that DNA is lost, or gets coupled to another segment of DNA that makes it inappropriately active. | [
"The most commonly reported abnormalities have occurred at chromosome 14, specifically in a region of the chromosome called band q23 (14q23). Translocations to this location lead to overexpression of the cyclin D1 gene which has been linked to both the development and progression of a number of cancers. Other chrom... |
everyone in the world raises their arms/fists to represent success and victory. why is that? | It is just a human reaction. Recently, saw a video on TEd talks about body language. It said there was a study done and when someone who was blind and has always been blind won a challenge they raised thier hands up in the air, in victory. Even people who have never seen that done, react that way. | [
"\"I believe that we will win!\" is a chant commonly performed at sporting events. Originating in the Naval Academy Preparatory School, it became a tradition among fans and students of the United States Naval Academy. In 2014, the chant gained national recognition as a rallying call among United States men's nation... |
slow charge vs fast charge overnight | It doesn't matter. It automatically regulates power supply to prevent anything from damaging the battery; for instance, when the phone reaches 100% it stops charging, and only starts charging when it falls below like 98%-95%. | [
"A typical intelligent charger fast-charges a battery up to about 85% of its maximum capacity in less than an hour, then switches to trickle charging, which takes several hours to top off the battery to its full capacity.\n",
"The charging time depends on the battery capacity and the charging power. In simple ter... |
what is the significance of splitting an atom, and how does it make nuclear weapons so much more devastating than conventional ones? | When you "split" an atom, what you're doing is making the big, heavy atom into two lighter ones.
The curious thing is that the two lighter ones combined weigh less than the original.
Where did the mass go?
It went into E=mc^2
Now, keep in mind that c is a *huge* number. It's the speed of light. Which is really fast.
Even a little tiny mass converted directly into energy yields a tremendous amount of energy.
In "conventional" explosives, you put some energy into making the molecules that decompose when they explode, and you're not getting anywhere near the speed of light in those equations. | [
"The very idea of splitting the atom had an almost magical grip on the imaginations of inventors and policymakers. As soon as someone said – in an even mildly credible way – that these things \"could\" be done, then people quickly convinced themselves ... that they \"would\" be done.\n",
"Nuclear fission products... |
Did slave traders struggle with morality? Did they ever question themselves, their practice and the people they were killing and enslaving? | You may be familiar with the famous Christian hymn *Amazing Grace*. This hymn was written in 1779 by the poet, Anglican priest, and slave ship captain John Newton.
Newton was a seaman who prayed for deliverance from a storm in 1748, and found his prayer answered. This marked the beginning of a long and gradual conversion to evangelical Christianity, but was immediately followed by his entry into the slave trade. He continued in the trade until 1754, and continued investing in slaving trips after. He began serving as an Anglican priest in 1764, and became a close friend and confidant of William Wilberforce and Hannah Moore, major abolitionist figures.
In 1788, Newton wrote a pamphlet called ["Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade."](_URL_0_) This quote perhaps best speaks to your question:
> Thus I was unexpectedly freed from this disagreeable service. Disagreeable I had long found it; but I think I should have quitted it sooner, had I considered it as I now do, to be unlawful and wrong. But I never had a scruple upon this head at the time ; nor was such a thought once suggested to me by any friend. What I did I did ignorantly • considering it as the line of life which Divine Providence had allotted me, and having no concern, in point of conscience, but to treat the slaves, while under my care, with as much humanity as a regard to my own safety would admit.
It seems he had some misgivings, but they were largely blunted by his desperation for work, and the general acceptance of the practice around him. The whole piece is worth reading, and does an excellent job of viscerely portraying the horrors of the slave trade. | [
"This was a risky activity: the ephemeral character of such profession was explained by the fact that officially outlawed slave traders were often no longer able to secure their business by simply bribing the authorities or buying the silence of associates who proved to be too greedy or ambitious.\n",
"The violen... |
how do solid state devices store information | [This](_URL_0_) pretty much explains it. | [
"Solid-state storage (sometimes abbreviated as SSS) is a type of non-volatile computer storage that stores and retrieves digital information using only electronic circuits, without any involvement of moving mechanical parts. This differs fundamentally from the traditional electromechanical storage, which records da... |
if george washington warned us about the power of parties, how was he imagining the government to work? | A multiple party system is fine. The more groups there are, the more they have to work together as a team to meet the majority set in the rules and pass a law. Thus, the things that get passed are generally what the majority approves of.
A two party system leads to black-or-white, zero sum thinking. If my team didn't win, then we lost. All ideas are boiled down to three options: agree with group A, with group B, or just don't participate because you don't agree with either. That leads to us vs. them mentalities, or voter apathy.
Washington's famous quote about this starts: "The alternate domination of one faction over another". He's really saying when two parties trade off, alternating running a country, this is a Bad Thing. | [
"One of Washington's most important contributions as commander-in-chief was to establish the precedent that civilian-elected officials, rather than military officers, possessed ultimate authority over the military. This was a key principle of Republicanism, but could easily have been violated by Washington. Through... |
how do products like static guard work to reduce static cling? | When two objects bump against each other, there is a chance that electrons will jump from one object to the other. If the two objects are made from a different material, it is possible that one holds on to its electrons more tightly, so it is more likely to receive electrons in such an event. When your clothes are in a dryer, they are rubbing against each other a lot, making this transfer happen a lot.
Static guard works by coating all of your clothes in a thin layer of the same stuff. Now that everything has the same stuff on its surface, the electrons are as likely to stick to one as to the other, so nothing generally accumulates a significant enough charge to be noticeable. | [
"Items that are particularly sensitive to static discharge may be treated with the application of an antistatic agent, which adds a conducting surface layer that ensures any excess charge is evenly distributed. Fabric softeners and dryer sheets used in washing machines and clothes dryers are an example of an antist... |
Is it possible for an object to have zero kinetic energy? | > Is it possible for an object to have zero kinetic energy?
Yes. The kinetic energy of an object is relative to the reference frame in which it is measured. This is because motion is relative to the reference frame, and [kinetic energy is the energy an object possesses due to motion](_URL_0_).
If you measure the energy in an object's center-of-momentum frame (where its momentum is zero), it will have zero kinetic energy. This is actually how we define the rest mass of systems -- the rest mass of a system is the sum of its energies in its center-of-momentum frame.
> Is there a way to determine simply how fast a galaxy is traveling?
The speed of a galaxy will be dependent on the reference frame you are measuring from, but in reference frames where a galaxy is moving, we can determine how fast it is travelling by measuring the redshift of photons that are emitted by well-known electronic transitions of common molecules, such as hydrogen. When the electron in a hydrogen atom is excited, it emits electromagnetic radiation of specific frequencies, and by measuring the redshift of those frequencies, we can determine the speed.
> Can we approximate the location of the big bang and use this as an origin?
No, we cannot. This is because the big bang *did not have* an origin; the universe's expansion occured (and is still occurring) at all points simultaneously. This is actually a common misconception about the big bang; you may want to search through the FAQ for more information.
Hope that helps! | [
"The speed, and thus the kinetic energy of a single object is frame-dependent (relative): it can take any non-negative value, by choosing a suitable inertial frame of reference. For example, a bullet passing an observer has kinetic energy in the reference frame of this observer. The same bullet is stationary to an ... |
Why do we need large rockets like the Saturn V and Falcon Heavy to travel to the moon? | I don't know what you mean by a S-IVB as that's a stage of the Saturn IV.
We could use existing rockets like a Atlas V or Delta IV Heavy (both can be man rated btw). You'd probably need a handful of launches to get everything up there. After assembling in LEO you'd go to the moon.
> Would this be more costly then having to redesign a new type of heavy rocket?
First, rebuilding the Saturn V would be much more expensive then using current EELV rockets. Why do that?
With respect to the Falcon Heavy, look at the projected cost per launch. It's [80-125 million](_URL_0_) vs [250 million](_URL_2_) for the Delta IV Heavy. On top of that, a single Falcon Heavy launch can lift twice the payload to LEO as a Delta IV Heavy launch. So, per kg, the Falcon 9 Heavy is about 4x cheaper. Furthermore your point about redesign costs is irrelevant here: SpaceX is a private company. The government isn't paying for the development like they did for the shuttle. In response to your question: No, the Falcon Heavy is cheaper.
> I'm surprised that even when missions to Mars are discussed the mission profiles all seem to stem from one launch vehicle on Earth.
I have no idea what you are talking about. All mission profiles involve assembling a vehicle in LEO.
Here a study done at MIT when Constellation was being discussed. I'm sure there are other studies but I am personally familiar with this one: _URL_1_
_URL_3_ | [
"Finally the US Air Force required a booster rocket that could launch heavier satellites than either the Titan IIIE or the Space Shuttle. The Martin Company responded with its extremely large Titan IV series of rockets. When the Titan IV came into service, it could carry a heavier payload to orbit than any other ro... |
Why does vacuum-energy exist? How can nothing have some energy? | Well any theory that predicts a non-zero vacuum energy also predicts that the vacuum itself has a complex non-trivial structure. Like the vacuum of quantum electrodynamics for example. It can fluctuate, it can interact, it can become polarized.
It is also worth pointing out that from this perspective the vacuum isn't "nothing" but rather the situation where all quantum fields are in their lowest energy state. These vacuum states of fields have both energy and fluctuations. | [
"The vacuum has, implicitly, all of the properties that a particle may have: spin, or polarization in the case of light, energy, and so on. On average, most of these properties cancel out: the vacuum is, after all, \"empty\" in this sense. One important exception is the vacuum energy or the vacuum expectation value... |
how come you can have a good or bad sleep? | Simplest answer: variance.
Better answer: there are multiple factors involved. Light sources in the room or before you go to bed mess with melatonin production, which signals your body to sleep. If you wake up in certain parts of your REM cycle, you'll feel groggy instead of rested. Nightmares can make you tense during sleep, which makes some people less rested. Alcohol interferes with sleep quality. And I've heard that sleep you get before midnight is twice as restful as sleep you get after midnight. The effects of stimulants shouldn't be underestimated. The half-life of caffeine is about 6 hours. This means that if you have a cup of coffee at 2 or 3 in the afternoon and go to bed at 8 or 9, half the caffeine from your afternoon coffee is still in your system, interfering with your sleep.
And the list goes on... | [
"Poor sleep quality can occur as a result of, for example, restless legs, sleep apnea or major depression. Poor sleep quality is defined as the individual not reaching stage 3 or delta sleep which has restorative properties.\n",
"If sleeping is disturbed, the symptoms can occur. Sleep disruption may actually exac... |
why google+ has so much fewer users than facebook. | There's a concept called the "network effect". Basically, the more people you have using something, the more useful it becomes. To be dead simple, people use Facebook because their friends are on Facebook. Google+ didn't offer enough of a benefit to get people to move over en masse and without enough people moved over, you won't get people following their friends. | [
"Google+'s user engagement was lower than that of its competitors; ComScore estimated that users averaged 3.3 minutes on the site in January 2012, and 7.5 hours on Facebook. In March 2013, average time spent on the site remained low: about 7 minutes, according to Nielsen, not including traffic from apps. In Februar... |
Would a lower class soldier in a medieval army be rewarded or punished for killing a noble or royal? | There is no hard and fast answer to this question. Medieval warfare is difficult to define and as chaotic as warfare in any other era. Individual commanders had their own ideas about how to treat enemy combatants, or made decisions based on the circumstances.
Before he died Richard I pardoned Pierre Basile and according to some accounts even paid the boy a stipend. Basile was reportedly executed after Richard’s death by a mercenary.
Sticking with the English army the longbow was a weapon which would allow a peasant to kill a nobleman and this has been credited with producing an egalitarian spirit amongst the English ranks. Geoffrey the Baker reported Edward of Woodstock, the Prince of Wales, referring to his archers as “descended from the blood of… Kings of England…” ahead of the Battle of Poitiers in 1356 which is very high praise indeed. For fighting in close quarters, longbowmen might use a small sword or a hammer to enable them to pick out week spots in an enemy’s armour and reportedly after a battle they would be allowed to patrol the battlefield putting enemy soldiers out of their misery. In this sense there were no issues on the English side with a peasant killing noblemen and although there are reports of longbowmen being held in contempt by the French, this is probably more to do with their general effectiveness rather than their ability to stick it to the aristocracy.
As for taking prisoners there can be no doubt that an imprisoned nobleman is a valuable asset as long as the cost of housing and feeding them is not greater than the potential ransom. I have found no evidence that anyone in fear of their life would be expected to try and capture an enemy nobleman rather than kill them. At Agincourt in 1415, Henry V took the unusual step of having a large number of prisoners executed (possibly over a thousand), probably because he was concerned that they might be able to overwhelm his small army. It is reported that English knights refused the order and so a company of longbowman carried out the King’s wishes.
As /u/CopperRoyce has alluded to, a soldier’s fate is most likely to depend on whether he wins or loses the battle. I’m not aware of any soldier on the winning side being punished for killing an enemy nobleman and retributions against the losing side were always likely regardless of individual soldier’s actions.
Apologies for not being able to give a definitive answer, but hopefully this gives you an idea of the complexity of the subject, the wide variety in medieval warfare and the role that circumstance has in influencing commanders’ decisions. Hopefully there will be plenty of other answers from users familiar with other areas of medieval warfare. | [
"It was often claimed that the nobles faced greater risks than the ordinary soldiers as there was little incentive for anyone to take prisoner any high-ranking noble during or immediately after a battle. During the Hundred Years' War against France, a captured noble would be able to ransom himself for a large sum b... |
why does dirt on my glasses always show as a perfect circle when my eyes don't focus on them? | That's an effect you get from point light sources (or shadows) being out of focus, and the shape is down to the shape of your own [pupil](_URL_0_).
Photographers use that same phenomenon in cameras, to artistic effect, and they call it "Bokeh". [As you can see](_URL_1_) in this picture, the camera this was taken on had a non-circular artificial 'pupil', or aperture, as it's called in photography-speak.
The aperture in the camera would've looked something like [this](_URL_2_) and if your eye's iris was that shape, you'd perceive that shape in out of focus dirt on your glasses. As it is, your pupil is circular, so you see circles.
| [
"Traditional curved glass lenses can bend light coming from many angles to end up at the same focal point on a piece of photographic film or an electronic sensor. Light captured at the very edges of a curved glass lens does not line up correctly with the rest of the light, creating a fuzzy image at the edge of the ... |
What happened to people whose homes were bombed in WWII? | In Britain insurance did not cover bomb damage. Though Lloyd's had insured against Zeppelin (and other aircraft) attack during the First World War the increase in destructive potential of bombers between the wars led to fears of a "knock-out blow", a massive, devastating bombing attack using explosive, incendiary and poison gas bombs to cause such catastrophic damage as to render a country unable to fight. Such fears led to insurance companies excluding war damage from 1937; the government announced, prior to the declaration of hostilities, that it would pay compensation for buildings, furniture and clothing, but due to the pre-war estimates of catastrophic levels of damage and the more pressing requirement to prosecute the war the precise terms of compensation were left for post-war settlement.
The Blitz, though awful, proved to be less destructive than feared. With no obvious end to the war in sight and people in desperate need for assistance the chancellor first agreed to make advanced payments of compensation to families with an income of less than £400 per year then introduced a War Damages Bill in 1940, a collective scheme of insurance in which all property owners paid a premium to cover compensation.
Around two thirds of people did not own their own homes, so property insurance was not an immediate concern for many rendered homeless, and outright destruction of houses was comparatively rare; in the first six weeks of attacks around 16,000 houses were destroyed, 60,000 seriously damaged but repairable, and 130,000 slightly damaged. Unexploded bombs also forced many houses to be evacuated, with over 3,000 UXBs by the end of November 1940 awaiting disposal. Repair of damaged houses was therefore a priority, with empty houses requisitioned for those who required rehoming.
There was compensation for possessions, but only "essentials" - furniture, clothing, tools that were vital for employment. Luxuries were not covered, though what constituted a luxury for one may have been essential to another - a music teacher's piano, for example - so judgements were made by the Assistance Board who administered compensation schemes. This could be an area of friction as the Board was established in 1934 as the Unemployment Assistance Board and its officers "had not been trained to develop skill in the treatment of applicants" with the shift to dealing with bombed-out civilians and "When they erred in the interpretation of instructions, they usually erred on the side of parsimony." (*Problems of Social Policy*, Richard M. Titmuss)
Inevitably not all claims were genuine; Joshua Levine's *Secret History of the Blitz* notes the case of Wallace Handy who, in 1940/41, made no less than 19 applications for the £500 lump sum awarded to those who had lost their homes. He was sentenced to three years imprisonment with hard labour, but many smaller scale claims doubtless were made - Levine also quotes Mary Brown who staffed an emergency assistance centre, where they had details of the exact location of bomb damage:
"Somebody would say 'I was bombed out last night.'
I'd say, 'Where did you live, dear?'
She'd say wherever it was.
I'd say, 'Well, that was at least five streets away from where it happened, wasn't it?'
'Oh, well, I got me windows blown in!'
'That's not quite the same...'"
The [War Damages Bill](_URL_0_) was passed in 1941 and ultimately some 4 million claims were made under the resulting Act, payments totalling more than £1,300 million and continuing [into the 1960s](_URL_1_).
Further reading:
*Britain's War: Into Battle, 1937-1941*, Daniel Todman
*The People's War: Britain, 1939-1945*, Angus Calder
*The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945*, Richard Overy | [
"A number of houses were damaged by enemy bombing in the early years of the Second World War. Before 1944, 86 Hounslow Road received a direct hit from a German bomb and was badly damaged, though not destroyed. In June 1944, 81 High Street received a direct hit from a V1 flying bomb. Part of the parade of shops and ... |
eli 5: why does my iphone get slower each time a new iphone or software update comes out? | Because each new update uses more and more power that your phone does not have. They do this A: to advance technology and compete with other companies and B: to make you feel like your phone is slow so you go buy another | [
"In December 2017, there were reports that Apple has been using a policy of slowing down the speed of its older iPhones when issuing operating system upgrades. It has spurred allegations that the firm has been using this as a tactic to prompt users of older iPhones to buy newer models.\n",
"With iOS 10.2.1, Apple... |
How Did the Myth Surrounding the Boston Tea Party Start? | This is a truly interesting question!
**Background:**
First, to verify what you said, The Boston Tea Party was a response to a tax being lifted off of tea, not a new tax that was imposed on it. American Colonists had been paying taxes on tea for years before the Boston Tea Party happened. [When the Townsend Acts were put into effect in 1767, it taxed tea and many other imports](_URL_0_). Colonists revolted, and most of the taxes were lifted except for the tax on tea. However, this really didn't matter to most colonists. Why? Because many colonists couldn't afford tea nor did they want to drink it. So for years, tea remained a taxable item and Americans largely accepted it. It simply wasn't worth fighting over it when there were many more pressing issues. Plus, smugglers began working their way around the system by sneaking in tea from foreign ports (which was incredibly illegal), such as Holland (where much of the smuggled tea came from), enabling them to sell their tea without a tax on it. However, all of this would change in 1773.
In May of 1773, the British Parliament decided to help the British East India Company -- one of the two largest corporations of its day -- with a piece of legislation. It was [known as the Tea Act](_URL_3_) and it was designed to help boost the sales of the financially-struggling East India Company which had massive stores of tea. The Tea Act, as you might have guessed, eliminated tax on the EIC’s tea, and ***only*** the EIC’s tea, enabling them to sell their tea at a lower price than the other competition. It also gave them several other advantages that no other businesses were granted. This infuriated the colonists, to say the least. Robert J. Allison explains some of their fury much better than I can, so check out this excerpt from his book below:
> [*The "Day is at length arrived," a committee of Philadelphia merchants declared when they learned of the Tea Act, "in which we must determine to live as Freeman--or as Slaves to linger out a miserable existence." The Tea Act would make Americans subservient to the "corrupt and designing Ministry" and change their "invaluable Title of American Freemen to that of Slaves." Americans must not give Parliament the power to control their lives. The Philadelphians insisted that no tea be landed.*](_URL_4_)
At first, the rejection of the tax was simple. Ports across America, including those in Boston, Annapolis, Philadelphia and many more, simply refused to unload imported tea. But this created tension between merchants, customers, officials, representatives from the British East India Company, and, of course, the American population themselves. And when these officials started to really push for the unloading of their imported tea, well, the colonists in Boston took matters into their own hands.
The citizens of Boston had grown tired of the British being in their city and the local gentry were ready to start capitalizing on their frustrations. They organized and decided they would storm the British East India Company ship that was in their harbor and destroy the tea. On December 17th, 1773, they did just that. They dressed up like Native Americans (most likely intended to have a more comedic or satirical effect) and destroyed a massive amount of tea -worth over $3.5 million in today's currency. The effects were echoed throughout the colonies. Soon, cities everywhere would be following through with similar tea parties and infuriating British businessmen and politicians across the ocean. The losses of the tea in Boston also directly led to the British sending more military units to the city when the British government decided they wanted to tighten their grip around Boston.
Some leaders, like John Adams (a Boston Native), immediately wrote in praise of the Tea Party the very next day:
> [*This is the most magnificent Movement of all. There is a Dignity, a Majesty, a Sublimity, in this last Effort of the Patriots, that I greatly admire. The People should never rise, without doing something to be remembered—something notable And striking. This Destruction of the Tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and inflexible, and it must have so important Consequences, and so lasting, that I cant but consider it as an Epocha in History.*](_URL_2_)
The consequences that he spoke of were farther reaching than he probably could have imagined. Newspapers, like the Boston Gazette, favorably reported on the Tea Party and soon, all across America, Tea Parties were repeated in Philadelphia, Charleston, and many other American cities.
**Why it's remembered differently:**
This is a question that historians have asked for quite some time. The problem, overwhelmingly has to do with the rise of public education in America, especially in the early 1900s. The issues seem to be linked to early school textbooks that were printed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Strangely, the story seems to have changed in popular memory from 1773 to 1900, where the outrage expressed from a tax being lifted off tea to empower a corporation, simply changed to outrage over taxes. I think there's several reasons this likely happened.
First, the actual context of the issue itself is complicated. As you can see from the first part of my answer, the subject isn't easily explained. I also think that it was easier for early authors, who were more concerned over writing history to reflect the morals of the time instead of historical accuracy, found it much easier to describe the tea party as a revolt against taxes than explaining that it was about pushing back against governments favoring corporations. This similar type of misremembering history isn't new in America. [Parson/Mason Weem](_URL_1_)'s biography of George Washington, published just after Washington's death, is an early example of authors changing or simply inventing history to match up with their overall goals of their day. | [
"The Boston Tea Party has been called a \"public relations event\" or pseudo event in that it was a staged event intended to influence the public. Pamphlets such as \"Common Sense\" (1775–76) and \"The American Crisis\" (1776 to 1783) were used to spread anti-British propaganda in the United States, as well as the ... |
standard shift... why does shifting into second gear before first make going into first gear easier? | It won't if the gearbox isn't worn.
In the gearbox is a mechanism called the [synchromesh](_URL_0_). This brings the gears you're going to engage together up to the same speed before allowing them to slide together.
The synchromesh has things called baulk rings which prevent the gears sliding into place if they're not up to speed.
When the synchromesh is worn the gears can't readily get up to speed, and the baulk rings won't retract. You can help things along by shifting into another gear first which sets the whole pack of gear spinning, saving the worn synchromesh from having to work so hard.
The synchro is often the first part of a box to wear out because many drivers lack the mechanical sympathy to wait for the synchro to do its job and jamming the lever into place regardless. "Beating the synchro" knackers boxes. | [
"Another problem of changing from first to second gear is that two bands must actuate in synchronism: the planet support of the second gearset must release at the same time as the sun band is actuated. As a result, this is a gear change that tends to be rougher than the others, where just one band is released or ac... |
why can the potus be caught blatantly lying, red handed, time after time, without any consequences. | Because (last I checked) **lying isn't a crime**. Well.. lying under oath is, but President Trump is not under oath and the only people who could try him in any case is Congress.
| [
"\"Lock them in, do not let them go out, and they will not post anything\", Mr. Kadyrov said in a video to a sheepish group of men and women who kept their arms folded across their chests and their eyes firmly on the ground during the harangue.\n",
"\"Infamy of fact\" is the result of a widespread opinion, by whi... |
Are there any materials that exist at a Plasma Phase at the same Temp/Pressure that any other material is a Solid? | There is a technique called [plasma cleaning](_URL_1_) where a plasma and a solid are allowed to interact, and it is very useful for removing impurities from the solid. If you ionize a gas, it takes a bit of time for the ions to recombine. So continuous ionization of a gas can produce a steady state plasma at reasonable temperatures. This is happening inside a [fluorescent bulb or in a neon lamp](_URL_0_) as well, so you have a plasma and the glass wall existing side by side in that case. | [
"If both materials are typical solids, the degree of reflection will be moderate, and a significant portion of the pulse will travel deeper into the sample, where it may be in part reflected by deeper material interfaces. If one of the materials is a gas such as air – as in the case with delaminations, cracks and v... |
Who led the US mobilization of its economy for war during & before World War II? | The Roosevelt Administration and Congress created a plethora of bureaus and offices designed to coordinate and liaise with already existing departments and bureaus of the government. The important ones were the Office for Emergency Management, the Office of Economic Stabilization, the Office of Price Administration, and the War Labor Board. The War, Navy, and Treasury Departments also had their own procurement divisions, such as the Army Quartermaster and the Navy Bureau of Ships, which would have been responsible for awarding contracts and delivering the necessary specifications to the contractors. The private sector itself would have responded to the incentive of massive federal war contracts and retooled for war production, though there were grants and loans given out through government programs such as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which targeted specific fields in need of development (such as synthetic rubber). The most well known oversight body was the Truman Committee, otherwise known as the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program; it was run by Senator Harry S. Truman (yes, that Harry Truman) in order to prevent war profiteering. | [
"The American mobilization for World War II at the end of 1941 moved approximately ten million people out of the civilian labor force and into the war. World War II had a dramatic effect on many parts of the economy, and may have hastened the end of the Great Depression in the United States. Government-financed cap... |
What did the Romans know about the Chinese? | There is this [wikipedia](_URL_0_) article, for what it's worth. | [
"In classical sources, the problem of identifying references to ancient China is exacerbated by the interpretation of the Latin term \"Seres\", whose meaning fluctuated and could refer to several Asian peoples in a wide arc from India over Central Asia to China. In Chinese records, the Roman Empire came to be known... |
what aol actually does, in 2015? | They're a lot like Yahoo, they produce web content for people to enjoy. They don't really DO much of anything under their own name anymore (other than maintain a disappearing, antique dial-up system that I can't imagine is making them much money anymore) but they own a lot of websites you probably use. Engadget, TUAW (RIP dudes), etc...
Just like Yahoo owns Flickr, for example. Or Google owns pretty much everything else. It's all the same basic business model, start with the search site, and purchase/design supporting products to go along with it.
The reason you didn't know that is because AOL continues to do everything both badly AND much later than everyone else. They were years late to the web content game because they...I really don't know what they thought was going to happen. I guess someone was banking that broadband internet would just be a fad. So they kept AOL the service provider going, like some kind of horribly slow, buggy ISP version of Weekend at Bernies. Finally, years later, they snapped out of it and went "Wait, what? Where is everyone?" and got with the program.
They only run 1.3% of all web searches, and they've tried to make inferior versions of pretty much every other web service out there. Well, I say they try to "make" crappier versions of things, whereas what they really did was WILDLY succeed at BUYING crappier versions of things everyone else had perfected years ago.
Remember the smash-hit social media website Bebo? Of course you don't, no one outside of Ireland (where they briefly actually did pretty good) does. That didn't stop AOL from buying them for 850 million in 2008, only to sheepishly sell it to a hedge fund operator in 2010 for a whopping 10 million dollars. That doesn't include the cost of flying in the world's greatest sad-trombone-sound-making-guy to really call attention to how idiotic that move was. For those of you playing at home, that is a *staggering* ROI of -98.8%. It directly cost the CEO at the time his job, apparently.
Lest you think the hedge fund managers scored some kind of killer deal, Bebo then went bankrupt in 2013. I know, I know, how the heck could that have happened, right?! Nothing makes sense for me anymore either, after I learned that. Calculating the overall ROI various Bebo owners have combined for now breaks math as we know it, so later in 2013 someone picked up Bebo's former shell of itself for a song and dance. Who was this? THE FOUNDERS OF THE SITE WHO SOLD IT FOR 850 MILLION TO AOL FIVE YEARS PRIOR. They just restarted it in 2015 and with AOL's luck it will cure cancer.
So currently, in 2015, AOL spends its days handling a tiny percentage of the world's search traffic, paying some guy named Rusty 10 bucks an hour to watch over the cobweb infested shack that houses AOL's dial up network, and watching "You've Got Mail" while it cries cheap tears and drinks Popov, thinking of the good old days.
**edit**: re-reading this just now, I feel like I may have momentarily veered off on a slight tangent. I'm not re-writing it because I used to work for AOL and OH MY GOD they are the just the worst, you have no idea. Hopefully it still answers your question.
**edit 2**: Whoever gilded this post, seriously, that was really really nice of you and it's really appreciated.
I also wanted to make this link a little more visible than it would be if I put it in the comments:
_URL_0_
I see a LOT of people mentioning friends or relatives are keeping AOL service just for the e-mail address. AOL never did a good job at advertising it (go figure!) but there is definitely an easy, straightforward way to cancel the service and keep your @aol.com e-mail. You can even get the E-mail back if you cancelled the service previously but miss having the old address! (Click the section that says "How do I reactivate a cancelled AOL Account? (web users)"). Don't worry, you can reactivate it as a free account, you won't have to pay!
Don't get me wrong, some people just want to stick with AOL, and more power to them. But if you know anyone stuck paying money just to keep an e-mail address they love, set them free! | [
"On March 12, 2009, Tim Armstrong, formerly with Google, was named Chairman and CEO of AOL. Shortly thereafter, on May 28, Time Warner announced it would spin off AOL as an independent company once Google's shares ceased at the end of the fiscal year. On November 23, AOL unveiled a sneak preview of a new brand iden... |
why are there security levels higher than the one the president of the usa has? | Well... Number one, don't believe everything you read or hear. Most likely, this is not entirely accurate information. 21 levels above the President? That seems highly unlikely. So many levels? What would you need that for? Think about it from a practical standpoint. And misinformation is a cornerstone of governmental secrecy.
On the other hand, it is very likely that many government officials know a lot of very high-security things that the President does not know. The President of the US is a high-profile target. You would not WANT him to know certain things. HE would not want to know certain things. They can't be extracted from him if he does not know them. And he only gets 4 or 8 years, and then he just goes home, and he knows all that stuff? Some things they can't just change when a new President is elected and sworn in.
Most likely, there is quite a bit of Compartmentalized information in the US government. That is to say, there is a lot of seriously top-level information, and no one knows all of it, and they don't want to. Terrorist organization understands this concept, that's why they have "cells". How much more so the most powerful nations in the world would want their governments to be compartmented.
As far as who MIGHT know the most top-level information, probably somebody who nobody has ever heard of. Not some men-in-black guy living in a bunker somewhere, but some seemingly ordinary and mundane guy. Maybe a military officer? Maybe a CIA employee? Maybe a White House staffer? Somebody with years of experience and a mid to high level rank/authority? | [
"The influence and role of the National Security Advisor varies from administration to administration and depends not only on the qualities of the person appointed to the position, but also on the style and management philosophy of the incumbent President. Ideally, the National Security Advisor serves as an honest ... |
When speaking why do we sometimes jumble the words of a sentence? | This is called metathesis if you want to just like google search and find shit.
But basically there are a lot of theories about how exactly sentences get made, but there's a general pattern of - > vague nebulous meaning area - > get words that have those meanings - > make those words into an english sentence - > send english sentence to articulators. So basically most speech errors actually occur on the level between word retrieval and grammaticalization (I just made that word up don't search for it). Your muscles are doing what they're supposed to be doing, it's just that their orders are shitty and dumb. So your brain has retrieved all the English words it needs to communicate this sentence, but when it goes to set it up grammatically it's statistically prone to making an error every now and then. One of these errors is just switching two words of similar nature, like notice that you almost never say "That was the she pregnant got weekend."
So it's like after your brain retrieves all the words it doesn't have all the data attached to those words about what it retrieved those ones. So it's possible to switch up two nouns in this sentence, because your brain only has so much information really quite there and it just obeys this as it constructs the sentence. Usually this doesn't happen because your brain is pretty well made, but it's not impossible for the brain to lose all of the semantic value of a word for a second and only have some vague categorization, and which point it takes a stab at word order and goes for it. So your grammaticalization center fucked up something fierce and sent it to your poor motor cortex to tell the mouth to say it.
I don't know how interested you are but there are a lot of interesting things about speech errors that show how our brains process languages. For instance, if I switch the words "The dogs ate the shit" to "The shits ate the dog," I change the "s" sound from actually a z sound in dogs to the s sound in shit. This is because that's a rule in English and we construct plurality at a certain point blah blah blah. But you can read about this if you look up stuff like "neurolinguistics sentence production" or "slip of the tongue" or "speech error" and so on. | [
"When we unscrew a sentence, figure out what makes it tick and reassemble it, we interact with our old familiar language differently, more deeply, responding to the way its individual components fit together. Once we understand how sentences work (what’s going on? what action is taking place? who is doing it and to... |
What about rabies makes it to where a blood test cannot determine if an animal or person is infected? | The rabies virus does not circulate in the blood. It takes hold in muscle tissue, and from there goes to the nerves, and starts working along the nerve tissues. No detectable amount breaks loose to float around in the bloodstream. | [
"The differential diagnosis in a case of suspected human rabies may initially include any cause of encephalitis, in particular infection with viruses such as herpesviruses, enteroviruses, and arboviruses such as West Nile virus. The most important viruses to rule out are herpes simplex virus type one, varicella zos... |
Why does sand on a surface create patterns when subjected to sound waves? | 1. For these patterns to emerge, the sound has to be confined. What you're seeing are standing waves.
The sound wave emerges from a speaker, travels through a material, encounters a boundary and is bounced back into the material (an echo). When it goes back, it encounters itself so to speak. Then an effect called interference happens. This gif explains it: _URL_0_
Remember, waves are travelling displacements of the molecules in the material. The horizontal axis in that graph is the location in the material (in one dimension for clarity). The vertical axis is the displacement that the molecules undergo (usually up and down, but their location on the material doesn't change a lot) when the wave passes by.
The first wave is the original sound wave originating from the speakers. The second wave is the same wave after it bounced back on the edge of the material. Since the sound is continuous the first wave is still present when the second wave comes along. Molecules can't be in two locations at the same time, so instead the actual displacement is the sum of the two waves. This is visualised in the third wave. As you can see, this wave is not moving, it is standing still: a standing wave. It is going up and down (amplitude change) but not moving in space. Some points on this wave don't move at all (like the first bold dot). Others move a lot (the second bold dot), but they only move up and down. This is in only one dimension, but the principle is the same in two and three dimensions, only slightly more complicated patterns arise.
So when sand sits on that material, the grains that are on locations that move heavily will be pushed away to locations without any movement as they are "left alone". The results are interesting patterns.
2\. Yes, as long as the material it is bouncing on doesn't change. Or the frequency of the sound wave. | [
"Under the same circumstances, it is also possible to generate another acoustic phenomenon. By moving a hand gently through the dry sand of a \"booming sand dune\", this will shear the upper layer of sand off the slope and generate a burping sound emission (pulse-like, short bursts of sound).\n",
"On some beaches... |
Were there successful labor strikes among miners? | The Comstock Mining District in Nevada had what appears to be the [first miners union](_URL_0_) west of the Mississippi (1863). The first attempt was broken by the territorial governor, but with statehood in 1864, the miners unionized again, and controlled the apparatus of state government. This ensured that miners only had to imply they might strike, and management had to accede to demands, which included a minimum of $4 per day for underground work, 8 hour shifts, and extensive concessions when it came to safety. | [
"Widespread strikes marked 1922, as labor sought redress for falling wages and increased unemployment. In April, 500,000 coal miners, led by John L. Lewis, struck over wage cuts. Mining executives argued that the industry was seeing hard times; Lewis accused them of trying to break the union. As the strike became p... |
Since Alan Turing's time, how much closer are we to making machines "think"? | Not very, by that definition. We've made lots of progress in artificial intelligence, but to my knowledge no computer has ever successfully passed a Turing test. | [
"Alan Turing reduced the problem of defining intelligence to a simple question about conversation. He suggests that: if a machine can answer \"any\" question put to it, using the same words that an ordinary person would, then we may call that machine intelligent. A modern version of his experimental design would us... |
Why did so many people move to Rhodesia after UDI and during the war? | There are a number of assumptions to address in the question, so there are a variety of points to make in an answer.
Friction with Britain and the breakup of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was in the early 1960s. The Unilateral Declaration of Independence was 1965, but the bush war didn't started to heat up until winter 1972, and military callups really got strong in 1976. I see them as different periods, and looking at the numbers, apparently so did the immigrants.
I wouldn't say that it could be called "so many people" without qualification. In the late 1950s, the average migration was some 14K per year, but in the early 1960s, it averaged 8K per year. The largest number of immigrants after UDI in 1965 was a sharp spike to about 15K in 1971. True, all these numbers were large in proportion to the white population, which was in the 200K range (finding housing and services for immigrants was a government concern), but of course not that large in absolute numbers. In 1973-4, it was down to 9Kish; there was a spike in 1975 to 12K, due to the collapse of the Portuguese empire; it trailed off down from 8K in 1976 to 3K in 1979.
As for who was coming, it wasn't just England. Yes, post-World War 2, there was a boom in British immigration, but it was a small majority of immigrants, and after that, South Africa's share increased and the UK's share decreased. Rhodesia relaxed or abandoned restrictions on immigration from the 1960s. More southern Europeans came in, and some Portuguese entered in 1975-6 with the collapse of their colonial rule (the final spike). Immigration and emigration details were to some extent secret, and to some extent records weren't kept, so I don't have great data for details. As for their attitudes, later in the 1970s, there were more criminals (after UDI and sanctions, there weren't Rhodesian immigration offices abroad to vet immigrants) and white nationalists (local chapters of the John Birch Society and the American Nazi Party starting in 1977).
Why immigrate to Rhodesia? The economy was a big factor. This was an advertisement in a Dublin newspaper (later 1960s, I'm guessing from context):
> the weather ... If you want a spacious home, good wages, reasonable taxation, first-class school, expert medical attention, help for the missus in the house [meaning cheap black domestic servants] and a bright sunny future for all. If you want assisted passages for yourself and your family if you qualify, and a two year special concession, where a family with two children can earn up to £1748 (£200 Sterling) tax-free, ...
A *Newsweek* (U.S. magazine) ad in 1970 more focused on the economy. It wasn't a "bit better" living standard. In 1970, a sixth of all whites had a swimming pool. In 1952, Rhodesian whites had car ownership rates not seen in the U. S. until 1977.
Rhodesia was not the Hotel California -- you could get out without much trouble, even late when there could be issues with call-ups or financial penalties. Rhodesia had always had a significant percentage of immigration (I'm not sure non-whites were allowed in) and emigration, and people staying for only a few years -- from 1955 through 1979, immigration and emigration each averaged roughly 4% *per year*; over that period, there were more total immigrants and more total emigrants than the maximum population! Ian Smith was the only prime minister of Rhodesia (or Southern Rhodesia, as it was called before UDI) to be actually born in Rhodesia [1]. In 1971, about 1/4 of all whites in Rhodesia hadn't bothered to become citizens. Brownell writes,
> The 1969 census revealed that three-quarters of Rhodesia’s white population over the age of 16 were born outside Rhodesia, of whom 59 per cent were born in either South Africa or Britain.... Of 1,460 people surveyed in the Rhodesian diaspora in the 1990s, only 36 per cent were born in Rhodesia, 39 per cent went to Rhodesia for jobs, and 22 per cent went as children.... In 1969, only 40 per cent of Rhodesians were born inside of Rhodesia. Among adults it was only 25.5 per cent.... In 1975, 45 per cent of the white population had been in Rhodesia for under ten years
The military callups: as I mentioned, the bush war was really starting in 1973, and ramped up in 1976. But in 1973 the callup was just 3,000, and half of them evaded it. In 1978, the Army said it needed at least 1K, but only 570 reported.
And until 1976, immigrants were exempt from conscription for 5 years. In that year, it was reduced to 2 years.
Summary: it was the economy, mostly. There was a long-standing culture of nipping in for a few years to make some money in a sunny land and then heading off somewhere else.
My major source is Josiah Brownell, *The Collapse of Rhodesia: Population Demographics and the Politics of Race*, I. B. Tauris, 2011. I've seen a review criticizing his conclusions, and his lack of opinions from Rhodesians and Zimbabweans, so I aimed to use mostly his primary quotations and figures. Barry M. Schutz, "European Population Patterns, Cultural Persistence, and Political Change in Rhodesia", *Canadian Journal of African Studies*, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1973), _URL_0_, gave me some data for previous years.
[1] Using modern country names for the 8 prime ministers in order: South Africa, Botswana, UK, UK, New Zealand, British Embassy in Berlin, UK, Zimbabwe (Ian Smith).
| [
"The Rhodesian government, which mostly comprised members of the country's white minority of about 5%, was indignant when, amid the UK colonial government's \"Wind of Change\" policies of decolonisation, less developed African colonies to the north without comparable experience of self-rule quickly advanced to inde... |
how do celebrities manage social media accounts with millions of followers? | You can turn notifications off. | [
"Most high-profile celebrities participate in social networking and photo or video hosting platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. Social networking sites allow celebrities to communicate directly with their fans, removing the middle-man known as traditional media. Social media humani... |
why does mega download your file into your local cache and then save it, as opposed to downloading through your browser's download manager? | It is *probably* because the file stays encrypted on the server. Mega downloads the file onto your computer and at the same time it is decrypting the file so when it is done downloading/decrypting, You can tell the browser where you want it saved. Then the browser simply moves the file.
If you simply download the file from the server as is with your browser, you would probably have an encrypted file and would otherwise have to decrypt it with the key that goes along with the url of said file.
Edit: The file on the server is always encrypted. It is always encrypted/decrypted on the client browser before it is uploaded/downloaded to and from the server. The server never has decrypted files. | [
"The Download Cache, or downloaded files cache, is a component of Microsoft's .NET Framework that is similar to the Global Assembly Cache except that it caches assemblies that have been downloaded from the Internet.\n",
"The browser cache can also be used to store information that can be used to track individual ... |
How absolute was the reign of kings during the Middle Ages? | Hello !
I'll try to answer the question, even though it's a very broad one. As a French who studied medieval French politics and warfare, I'll be mainly focused on France.
Short answer is : it depends. It depends on both time and place. The power of the French kings was not the same as the English king, nor of the Holy Roman Emperor. It evolved a lot through time, too. The period called Middle Ages covers more or less a thousand years, and things changed quite a bit.
Nevertheless, their power was, in general, far less absolute that it came to be in the XVII-XVIIIth centuries, with the rise of Absolute Monarchy. I'll give a few exemples.
First one, and quite a significant one, is about taxes. In France, kings basically relied on two sources of taxes : ordinary and exceptional taxes. Ordinary taxes were "all the time active" taxes, enforced by customs, ancient laws, privileges or deals. They generally took the form of indirect taxes that could be compared to our modern VAT, for instance.
Extraordinary taxes were special taxes which were to be collected by the king in times of need. Those needed consent from the local population. It was nearly impossible for the king to ask for such contribution against the will of the "people". Those taxes were generally adopted by representative of local elites and bourgeoisie, but seldom for free. The demanded local privileges or the re-validation of old rights. The most common demand was that the taxes were to be collected by the representatives in the name of the king, the representatives being responsible for division and effective collect, the money then being delivered to the king, sometimes months or even years later.
This shows that even for such important and central things as taxes, French kings did not wield absolute power.
Second thing is military service. Noblemen were, theoretically and practically bound to military service to their liege. The king, in particular, could summon is Ost, his feodal army of lords, to assist him in his wars.
However, things were not that simple. First of all, nobles did not always heed the call and answered. If you take the exemple of the English campaign in France of 1415, which ended with the battle of Agincourt and the siege of Calais, the French king, Charles VI, summoned is nobles many times, which is a sign of inefficacy (if you need to call them twice, that's because they didn't show up the first time). It took months for them to gather and answer the call, some coming with only few knights, or very late.
They were to be paid, moreover, if the time of service exceeded 40 days a year (I'm talking about the period of 1350-1450, that I know best. Rules evolved and so did indemnification of knights summoned to the king's host). Past that time, they were paid for their service, according to their dignity (squire, knight, banner lord) and the amount of fighters they brought with them.
This shows too that the kings couldn't, in reality, muster their Ost for a large amount of time, nor quickly. Furthermore, the influence of great lords was important. If you look at the battle of Agincourt you will see that many Burgundian knights were missing (even though a great deal fought - and died -). The reason is linked to the great rivalry between the Duke of Burgundy and the king's most prominent ministers at the time (France was on the verge of open civil war). The Duke himself was asked not to come in person and therefore forbade his knights to answer the call to arms. Some still went to the ost, but many didn't and that leads to my third point.
Third point, then : the influence of prominent lords. The biggest (most powerful, rich and influential) nobles had a great amout of political power in medieval France. Some of them were part of the king's Private Council. They also had their say in the collection of extraordinary taxes within their lands (which constituted the biggest part of the realm until late XVth century). At times, and especially in the earlier period, they could be a match, or even superior, to the might and power of the king.
For instance, Duke William of Normandy, remembered for his conquest of England (1066), first fought against his king and liege, king of France (1052 - 1054 primarily). The king Louis VI (the Fat) is mainly remembered for his numerous wars against his vassals to increase the royal autority.
The greatest nobles also had some extraordinary power, such as the right of justice on their lands, were they were the main source of justice and judgement, even though the kings tried to limit this with time.
All this taken into account, it is necessary to talk a bit about the evolution of the situation. It is generally considered that Medieval France experimented an ongoing centralization and increase of power of the kings. They strengthened the administration, increased its number. This was a very long and progressive process, that had to face the opposition of lords and population alike.
The great turning point, however, was the Hundred Years War. Before it started, Philipp VI (le Bel, the Fair), seriously reinforced the power of the royal administration (which is one of the elements that increased the tensions with the English, the king of England, duke of Normandy, was therefore a vassal to the king of France, a situation made difficult with the increase of royal power and control over his subjects).
After him, the French kings, confronted with repeted wars, devastation and challenge of their authority, managed to increase their grip over the vassals. Things were allowed due to necessity of war : exceptional taxes were more easily conceded, the idea of a permanent, professional army was accepted, the local autonomy of great nobles was reduced (many of them being relatives, sons, brothers or uncles of the king himself).
The defeat of Burgundy, last great feodal challenge to the authority of the French king, was a signal for strengthened royal power and administration. Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, was unable to preserve the status of quasi-independence his father, Philipp the Good, was able to establish, leading to the reintegration of Burgundy into the king's privy domain.
It would be bold to assume that late medieval (Charles the Bold died in 1477) kings of France had absolute powers. Their power was certainly stronger and more easily enforced than their predecessors, yet they were very far from total control. Their incapacity to avoid or overcome swiftly the great religious turmoils of XVIth - XVIIth centuries shows that even despite their efforts, they could not enforce their religion and their will easily over the whole kingdom of France. You'll have to wait until Louis XIV, whose personal reign was 1661 - 1715, to see a real "absolute monarch".
I hope this answer your question, feel free to ask for follow up question or details, I'll try to keep an eye on this subject. | [
"During the century of the \"rois fainéants\", the Merovingian kings were increasingly dominated by their mayors of the palace, in the 6th century the office of the manager of the royal household, but in the 7th increasingly the real \"power behind the throne\" who limited the role of the king to an essentially cer... |
why is the uk parliament being dissolved ahead of the general election? | It's a formality that signifies that each seat is now vacant and every seat is up for election. The ministers still do their respective jobs until the election results come in, they just have to put themselves forward for re-election. | [
"The last dissolution of Parliament was on 3 May 2017, to make way for the general election to be held on 8 June 2017. It dissolved after a two-thirds majority vote by the House of Commons, as required by the Fixed-term Parliaments Act.\n",
"Removing the power of the monarch, on advice of the prime minister, to d... |
what, why, and from whence are these super tiny flies that congregate in tiny swarms at face-level? | I believe they're basically gnat orgies. They all come together in big swarms to fertilize each other. Not sure what they're doing for the rest of their time when they're not having a root. Not a gnat expert but last time I asked someone wtf was with all the bug clouds that's what I was told. | [
"In many dipteran groups, swarming is a feature of adult life, with clouds of insects gathering in certain locations. These swarming insects are mostly males, and the swarm may serve the purpose of making their location more visible to females.\n",
"\"S. surinama, \"like many other related wasp species, exhibit s... |
if water makes up 70% of our earth and we have things such as water purifiers, why are we running out of drinking water on our planet? | We're *not* running out.
The problem isn't the amount of drinking water, it's the *distribution* of the water.
Most developed countries could probably hydrate their population 50 times over, if they wanted (assuming there's no drought). Whereas, for example, in hot African countries where water is scarce, contains diseases and there is little technology available to purify the water, *then* you get dehydration problems.. | [
"Lawrence Smith, the president of the population institute, asserts that although an overwhelming majority of the planet's surface is composed of water, 97% of this water is constituted of saltwater; the fresh water used to sustain humans is only 3% of the total amount of water on Earth. Therefore, Smith believes t... |
What were NATO's defensive plans for a conventional invasion from the Soviet Union in the 80s? | Ok, so...
1) NATO would probably *not* have considered the user of tactical nukes until it looked like it was completely over for them. There are only three nuclear states in NATO; the U.S., Britain, and France. France might have gone nuclear first at Germany's expense, but that's only if they actually fully participated in the war (France's membership is weird). Britain was the least likely to go nuke due to the fact that even if NATO lost, they could still hold out as a U.S. ally. The U.S. might have gone nuclear but it wouldn't have done so without probably the approval of NATO allies. The Germans, French, English, etc. wouldn't have been keen on getting irradiated.
2) Only France would have been an obstacle in the war. [Like I said, their membership is weird](_URL_4_). It would have depended upon the internal political climate of France, and the cause of the war for them to participate fully. Without their assistance, the logistics of trying to land NATO reinforcements from the U.S., Brittan, and Canada would have had to be funneled through the Dutch Chanel ports. This is why the WARSAW Pact would have rushed through Northern Germany, cut off Denmark, and overrun Belgium and Holland to cut the ports. If France played along, they probably still would have rushed the Low Countries because of the logistical difficulties of shipping across France.
3) Norway would have helped close the Baltic Straights and performed overwatch for the Arctic passes for the Soviet fleets out of Arkhangelsk. Iceland would have served as a big aircraft carrier in the North Atlantic which would have kept the Soviet sub fleets off guard and allowed refueling to fighters and cargo flights to Europe. If there was going to be a big WWIII style naval battle, it would have been near Iceland. Greece and Turkey would have closed the Black Sea at the Bosporus and, while Span shut down the Straights of Gibraltar. All of these countries would likely face minimal Warsaw Pact attacks as their main focus would have been to defeat NATO in Germany.
4) It would vary. While the Soviet Army was massive, it's reliability in many divisions would be questionable. The Soviets used a grade scale for their units sort of like A through F. A was the top of the line units, while F would have been 55 year old reservists and 30 year old tanks. The Pact would have actually sent its C and B teams in first to wear out NATO forces and then hit them with the A's. The D's, C's, and F's, would have been the rear support and home security forces. F's would have been the ones loading ammo onto trains in Minsk.
The rest of Warsaw was a mixed bag. Probably only the East Germans would have been the most reliable, followed by probably the Czechs. Hungarians, and Poles. The Poles probably would have had Soviet units nearby to keep the in check in case they got uppity. Poland had always been unreliable in Soviet eyes. Only the East Germans would have been able to operate on their own. The Hungarians, Poles, and Czechs would have been used as either fodder or as diversionary forces in non-critical engagements. the Romanians, Bulgarians, and Albanians would have probably tried to tie down the Greeks, Turks, and Italians to keep them busy.
As for NATO forces, their equipment was pretty standardized. While each nation had its own gear, you pretty much could grab ammo from a German crate and load it into a British rifle. The American M1 Abrahms uses a German cannon, so the NATO equipment was pretty interchangeable. The difference would have been in training and discipline. All would have been pretty high, with the Greeks, Turks, Spanish, Italians, being on the low end. The top tier would have been the US, Britain, France, Germany. The mid players would have been the Dutch, Belgians, and Norwegians.
At almost all times Warsaw would have outnumbered NATO by the magnitude of 2 or 3 to 1. However, Soviet battle doctrine lacked a lot of finesse and relied on fighting like Mike Tyson....get in there and hit hard, fast, and often, we have plenty of troops and tanks. NATO would have been Muhammad Ali, duck and move and wear them out then beat the crap out of them.
5) NATO in all likelihood would have never struck first. They lacked the manpower reserves and strength in Europe to launch a major offensive against Warsaw, and if they tried to build it up, the Soviets would have attacked first anyway to negate any attempts at a NATO build up and to keep the initiative. Additionally, with the political climate of Western Europe and the US (for all of its bluster) it would have run into a lot of political conflict on the domestic front in trying to instigate the war. There probably would have been riots in London, Paris, Bonn, San Francisco, L.A., and New York if NATO tried to instigate.
6) For the U.S., who's area of operations in Germany was [the Fulda Gap](_URL_1_), they would have wanted to funnel the Soviet thrust into a pocket along the plain which they would have attempted to counter attack and cut off. They at most would have tried to make their stand at the Maine River. You had the [North German Plain](_URL_3_), where NATO would have tried to hold Bremmerhaven, but probably would have gotten pocketed, but would have tried to slow them down at the Elbe, then Wesser.
Unfortunately all the really good theory books about WWIII in Europe have been culled from the shelves of libraries these days to make space for newer books. Classics like ["The Third World War"](_URL_0_), [Red Army](_URL_6_), [Team Yankee](_URL_2_), and [Red Storm Rising](_URL_5_), are actually hard to come by these days. These books are of course fictional adventure books but the homework involved by the authors is immaculate. You will probably only be able to find works about WWIII scenarios and military science in college libraries at this point. | [
"The atomic blitz war, targeting high population Soviet Union cities was noted as the wrong approach to defend Europe in Project Vista, as it would most likely not stop an ongoing invasion but rather provoke retaliation against European and American cities. Project Vista instead, recommended that NATO should focus ... |
What was the truth behind the Allies' accusations that the German Army committed horrific war crimes/atrocities in Belgium during World War One? | This is an important and complex question. The **TL;DR** on it is "yes, more or less, but it gets complicated."
To begin with, [here is a proclamation](_URL_3_) by the German General Otto von Emmich, distributed widely in Belgium in the autumn of 1914 as the German army crossed the tiny nation’s borders and began its slow march south. The declaration it makes is rather incredible:
> It is to my very great regret that the German troops find themselves compelled to cross the Belgian frontier. They are acting under the constraints of an unavoidable necessity, Belgium’s neutrality having been violated by French officers who, in disguise, crossed Belgian territory by motor-car in order to make their way into Germany.
It goes on to insist that the Belgian people should look upon the soldiers of the German army as “the best of friends,” that those soldiers would “pay in gold” for anything requisitioned by that army in the course of its uneventful passage through Belgium, and closes with von Emmich’s “formal pledges to the Belgian population that it will have nothing to suffer from the horrors of war.” The document carries an ominous tone throughout, however; the reader is coolly informed that von Emmich “hope[s] the German army of the Meuse will not be forced to fight you,” and that any Belgian destruction of their own bridges, tunnels and railways “will have to be looked upon as hostile acts.” The Belgian reader could be forgiven, perhaps, for looking upon the above assurances with a degree of skepticism.
This skepticism was more than borne out by the course of events.
On August 4th, 1914, the German army began crossing the border into Belgium. The Belgians, understandably unwilling to allow such a thing to occur without offering firm protest, chose to stand and fight. Bridges were indeed destroyed. Roads were blocked. Barricades were put up — and, while the nation’s small and ill-equipped army could not hope to defeat the German invaders, it did manage to slow them down to such an extent that the carefully drafted timetables of the planned invasion had to be rewritten from scratch, and the British Expeditionary Force was able to arrive in time to further delay the attempted conquest of Belgium and passage into France. In an abstract sense, the First Battle of the Marne was won in the fields outside of Liège.
When the dust had settled, only a small sliver of Belgium south of the inundated Yser remained unoccupied — the rest of the kingdom, including the great cities of Namur, Liège, Antwerp, and the capital Brussels, had been taken. The popular Belgian King, Albert I, remained at liberty and in command of the ~150,000-strong army that held the ground from Nieuwpoort through to Ypres.
All of this is fairly straightforward, but a peculiar thing has happened when it comes to the popular Anglo-American memory of the events that transpired in Belgium during the autumn of 1914: once the narrative of the war reaches the establishment of the trench system and the commencement of the long-standing stalemate that is viewed as such an essential aspect of the war in the West, Belgium and its people seem to vanish from the story entirely. Why might this be?
The answer to this question is the one your post here suggests: the troubled history of “propaganda” and its complex role in the war. I've [written elsewhere](_URL_5_) about the roots of modern propaganda in the First World War, but in the meantime let it suffice to say that a great deal of propagandistic hay was made of the sufferings of Belgium in the war’s early stages — especially by British journalists, statesmen and public intellectuals. The most notorious example of this is likely the *Bryce Report* (or, more extensively, the [*Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages*](_URL_4_)), first released in 1915. The report has long been a bête noire for those cultural historians examining popular attitudes during the war, it having been concluded by some very emphatic commentators in the 1920s and 1930s (such as Arthur Ponsonby in *Falsehood in War-Time* and Irene Cooper Willis in *England’s Holy War*) that the Report was simply a tissue of lies. Modern research, as we shall see, has confirmed that the *Report*’s conclusions were substantially correct.
As a consequence of this and other dismissals, the quite real sufferings of this nation and her people have since (in my view) been unjustly swept away along with everything else that now smacks of the sensationalism, hate-mongering and outright invention that are believed to have been the propagandists’ stock in trade. This would be a too-simple evaluation of the situation in general terms, but, in the case of the plight of Belgium, it is a very serious error indeed.
As we approach the beginning of the war’s centenaries, it is only fitting that pieces of the puzzle that have hitherto been missing finally be put back into place. So:
It is true that many of the more sensational stories of German “outrages” perpetrated in Belgium during the course of the invasion and ensuing occupation are very hard to believe, much less corroborate. German soldiers eating Belgian babies; German soldiers hanging Belgian nuns between church bells and ringing them to death; German soldiers crucifying dozens of farmers by the roadside; and so on — these are stories that are familiar to us through the fact of them having now become standard examples of why “propaganda” is not to be trusted. Claims like these (it is said) poisoned the home front’s understanding of the war; works that made such claims disgusted the war poets and memoirists so much that they rose up in reaction against them; stories of this sort caused the English-speaking peoples to be so skeptical of atrocity reports that they were too late in reacting to the events of the years leading up to 1939. All of this is considerably more complicated than these summaries suggest, but that's more than I wish to get into just at the moment.
The point is that we need not dwell on such extreme suggestions to see much in the German occupation of Belgium worth acknowledging. Let us consider some numbers:
- The total Belgian deaths during the war amount to some 100,000 — 40,000 military deaths and 60,000 civilian deaths.
- Of those civilians who died as a direct result of the war, some 6,000 were deliberately and premeditatedly executed. More on this below.
- Nearly 1.5 million Belgians were displaced by the German occupation of their land, with impoverished refugees fleeing in every direction. Some 200,000 ended up in Britain, and another 300,000 in France. The most, by far — nearly a million — fled to the Netherlands, but did not always have an easy time in doing so. The German army constructed a 200km-long [electrified fence](_URL_0_), called the *Dodendraad* by the Dutch, that claimed the lives of around 3,000 attempted escapees during the course of the war.
- Some 120,000 Belgian civilians (of both sexes) were used as forced labour during the war, with roughly half being deported to Germany to toil in prison factories and camps, and half being sent to work just behind the front lines. Anguished Belgian letters and diaries from the period tell of being forced to work for the Zivilarbeiter-Bataillone, repairing damaged infrastructure, laying railway tracks, even manufacturing weapons and other war materiel for their enemies. Some were even forced to work in the support lines at the Front itself, digging secondary and tertiary trenches as Allied artillery fire exploded around them. I've gone into some more detail on this subject [here](_URL_2_), though some of what I've already provided above draws on that content already.
In all of this, then, it would seem that there is plenty that deserves the benefit of modern memory and which cannot easily be dismissed as mere invention for Allied propaganda.
How, then, might it be best to remember this suffering? What place might it play in the ongoing debate over just what tone and tenor the upcoming centenaries should take? The advent of the hundredth anniversaries of so many events provides an ideal moment for reflection and re-evaluation — particularly when it comes to things that “everyone knows.” It is now a commonplace that “everyone knows” the British state and news media lied about German atrocities in Belgium to maintain popular support for the British war effort, but it is well past time to re-examine what is commonly said about those lies and that support.
Alan Kramer and John Horne, in their magisterial volume on this subject (*German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial*; 2001), have painstakingly reconstructed the reality behind the propaganda in a way that should leave no reader in doubt. Through years of careful archival research they have reached the conclusion that there was indeed a systematic program of civilian executions — sometimes en masse — conducted in Belgium, by the German army, with the purpose of breaking the spirit of resistance and striking terror into the heart of the population. The anniversaries of the worst of these catastrophes are upon us; on August 23rd, 1914, the German army took revenge upon the Belgian city of Dinant for what it falsely believed to be the actions of Belgian *francs-tireurs* (“free-shooters”, or non-military partisans). This revenge took the form of the burning of over a 1,000 buildings and the execution of some 674 civilians. The oldest among them was in his 90s; the youngest was barely a month old. These civilians were killed in a variety of ways. Some were bayoneted, others burned alive; most were bound, put up against walls, and then executed by a volley of rifle fire — all in reprisal for something that had not actually happened. Two days later (August 25th), the same spirit of reprisal played out again elsewhere — [in Leuven](_URL_6_).
It is important to note, in closing, that we need not examine events such as those described above and come away with nothing but a “[Blame Germany](_URL_1_)” perspective. Alan Kramer has convincingly shown in his 2007 follow-up volume, *Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War*, that the increasing radicalization of military occupation was a feature of the war to be found in numerous theatres, not solely in Belgium or solely at the end of a German gun. As ever, it is very hard for anyone involved in the war to come away with their hands clean.
Nevertheless, with the transnational turn that has been taken by much of First World War historiography in recent decades and the centenary-inspired willingness to re-evaluate long-held assumptions about the war’s meaning and conduct, it is perhaps well past time for the wartime sufferings of Belgium and her people to move out of the realm of convenient fiction and back into that of uncomfortable fact.
All of this is a very long-winded way of saying, to conclude, that -- yes -- the German army did indeed do some pretty nasty stuff in Belgium. It was not alone in doing so in occupied territory, and some stories about its activities are certainly inventions or exaggerations, but what it did do should probably be enough to give the reader pause.
**Suggested Readings**
- Kramer, Alan and John Horne. *German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial* (2001).
- Kramer, Alan. *Dynamics of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War* (2007).
- Stibbe, Matthew ed. *Captivity, Forced Labour and Forced Migration in Europe During the First World War* (2009).
- Thiel, Jens. *‘Menschenbassin Belgien’: Anwerbung, Deportation und Zwangsarbeit in Ersten Weltkrieg* (2007).
- Hull, Isabel V. *Absolute destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany* (2005).
- Becker, Annette. *Oubliés de la Grande guerre* (1998).
- Jones, Heather. *Violence Against Prisoners of War in the First World War: Britain, France, and Germany, 1914-1920* (2011). | [
"The German argument for many years was that the actions in Belgium were the result of civilian resistance. The Belgian government was to blame for this \"illegal warfare\". Echoes of this can be found as late as the 1990s in such works as \"Deutsche Geschichte\" of Thomas Nipperdey and in the 1996 edition of the \... |
why has hdr been so common in cameras for so long but is only now beginning to move into mainstream tvs, smartphones and games consoles? | They're different technologies. The HDR in cameras involves taking two shots at high/low exposure, then merging them to a single photo. The HDR in video displays refers to the ability to show a wide range of brightness. | [
"In the late 1990s, as HDTV broadcasting commenced, HDTV cameras suitable for news and general purpose work were introduced. Though they delivered much better image quality, their overall operation was identical to their standard definition predecessors. New methods of recording for cameras were introduced to suppl... |
if a country has birthright citizenship i.e. all those born there are automatically citizens, couldn't a woman go there on vacation/business/illegally, give birth, then the child would be a citizen giving the parent rights to stay/move there too? | Contrary to popular belief, if an illegal immigrant has a kid in the US, they're still at risk for deportation if caught, in which case the child is sent back with them.
Also, pregnant women sometimes have difficulties getting Visas (particularly tourist Visas) in order to dissuade people from trying in the first place. | [
"BULLET::::- Citizenship by birth on the country's territory (\"jus soli\"). The United States, Canada, and many Latin American countries grant unconditional birthright citizenship. To stop birth tourism, most countries have abolished it; while Australia, France, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the... |
how do professional sports teams turn a profit? | You forget money from licensing, clothes, hats, figurines, etc. Plus advertising at the stadium. Sales of the private booths, Revenue from renting out the stadium to other venues, like concerts. And of course revenue from showing the games on TV. Plus I'm sure I'm missing a few other revenue sources for them. | [
"Making a profit in gambling involves predicting the relationship of the true probabilities to the payout odds. Sports information services are often used by professional and semi-professional sports bettors to help achieve this goal.\n",
"BULLET::::- Involvement of those companies leads to the professionalizatio... |
Why have Jews been expelled in so many countries? | Let's start at the beginning. In 722 BCE, the Northern Kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians and the majority of its population was apparently expelled. These are the "Ten Lost Tribes". This sort of forced migration seems to be part of standard part of Assyrian management of newly conquered territories. In about 586 BCE, the Southern Kingdom of Judah (remember, that Israel had been divided into two distinct kingdoms) was conquered by Babylon, and only the notables led off (the "Babylonian exile"). In neither of these cases do the Hebrew/Jews seems to be particularly singled out.
Lets skip to the Roman Era. Here, the Jews are unique. Roman policy granted wide religious freedom--however, there were two exceptions. 1) secret "mystery cults" were widely suspected, 2) groups that refused to sacrifice to the emperor (first Jews, later also Christians) were treated as suspect. The Jews led a series of wars against the Empire called the "[Jewish Wars](_URL_0_)" that ended up with the destruction of the Temple after the First Jewish–Roman War (67-70 CE) and ultimately the majority of the Jewish population of Roman Province of Judea being killed, exiled, or sold into slavery in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132 – 136 CE). These are exemplary of the unique relationship Jews have within the Roman Empire, but is likely not what you're asking about.
Most of what people think of are the Medieval and Early Modern expulsions from states in Christian Europe. One thing to note is that Jews existed in these places at all. No other religion besides Christianity existed in these states at all. Judaism had a special status that, say, Roman Paganism did not, and therefore they (often) were the only religious minority allowed to exist. So, it's important to note, they were the only religious minority that *could* be expelled from Europe (besides various Christian "heretics"). It's worth noting that the vast majority of expulsions of Jews were done by Christians, with a few isolated (and generally late) cases of expulsion by Muslim rulers.
Karen Barkey and Ira Katznelson have an interesting article, whose name I forgot, that argues that the expulsion of the Jews by England in 1290 and France around the same time were the result of "state formation"/"state making". Remember, for most of post-Roman history the centralized state as we imagine didn't exist. It was an overlapping series of domains where rulers claimed varying levels of sovereignty. Katznelson and Barkey argue that the Jews were expelled in England as a compromise between the royalty and the nobility in the process of state formation (primarily, the nobility owned Jewish bankers a tremendous amount of money, as Jews often formed the only source of credit). In France, they argue that they were expelled for a different reason (I believe because the King owed them money, but I can't be sure). But in both cases, though the exact reasons were different, the expulsion of the Jews was part of the same process of state formation, a result of negotiations around the clashing interests of royalty and nobility. This pattern, they argue, is repeated in other states (Western and Northern Europe is generally seen at the vanguard of modern state formation in Europe--see Charles Tilly's epic *Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1992*).
It's also worth mentioning that Jews were often the only available scapegoats. Many of the expulsions took place during plagues, especially in Germany, where Jews were often accused of poisoning wells. They were also often occurred after an accusation of [blood libel](_URL_1_). Historically, it's worth noting that blood libel accusation (which date back to at least the 12th century in Christian Europe) never occurred in the Islamic World until the 19th century, and even there, not coincidentally, the first several cases accusation were brought by Christians living under Ottoman Rule at the same there was expanding European influence in the Ottoman. But in general, the relationship with minority communities was different in the Ottoman World (much is made of "dhimmi" status, but there's a reason for that--especially in the Ottoman Empire, the "millet system" in both formal and informal forms was an important strategy for rule). In the Muslim World, Jews and Christians were often included alongside Muslims as (unequal) subjects in a way that they were not in Europe. Granted, even these limited rights were frequently violated, but this legal framework of (unequal) belonging provided the Jews (and minority Christians) with much more stability than they had in most of Europe of the same period. This situation remains essentially until nationalism arrives in the 19th century century.
Nationalism, the idea that the legitimacy of the state comes from its relationship with a titular "nation" (France is for the French, Germany for the Germans), generally dates only back to the French Revolution (this is the traditional starting date). There were of course other forms identity underlying the legitimacy of states before this--especially religion, as John Armstrong argues in *Nations Before Nationalism*, but this wasn't really nationalism in the sense that we see (a political demand for a Christian state for all the Christian, etc.). A few scholars--Philip Gorski, Liah Greenfeld, Anthony Marx--have argued, convincingly I think, that we should see nationalism as an Early Modern phenomenon, rather than entirely a Modern one (remembering that "the Modern Era" for political history is conventionally dated to around the French Revolution). Among these, Marx argues most convincingly that nationalism comes not just from union--gathering all the Rutherians into the Rutherian state--but from exclusion. He engages with three main examples (England, Spain, and France). In Spain, we see this process of expulsion--this Proto-Spanish nationalism--in the form of the expulsion of Muslims and Jews from Spain in 1492 (and from Portugal in 1496). This sets the ground for the later Spanish nation state. Similarly, in France we see expulsions, but not of Jews. Rather, we see France kill and expel *Protestants* to create a purely Catholic realm (cf. St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572). These sorts of expulsions were common during the European "Wars of Religion". So nationalism, and the drive to create in theory culturally homogenous states, wasn't merely a process that affected the Jews, though it was a process that often affected the Jews. It's also worth noting that "Jewish emancipation"--Jew being able function as equal citizens--doesn't emerge until the French Revolution, and the question of whether Jews can *really* be members of the nation-state isn't settled until the 19th and 20th centuries (cf. the Dreyfus Affair in France, or the Nazi stripping of the rights of German Jews). Many of the expulsions of Jews (and Catholics and Protestants, etc.) that occur during the early Modern Period, Anthony Marx argues, should be seen as examples of emerging nationalism where cultural identity becomes tied to the polity (compare this to earlier empires which were inherently diverse).
So, therefore, recent social science works argues that 1) since Jews were the most common religious minority in Christian Europe, they were the ones most commonly persecuted against, 2) that a lot of the Medieval struggles around nationalism have to do with negotiations of elites around the beginnings of modern state formation/centralization, 3) I forgot to mention also the traditional answer of the late Medieval religious revival, including the Crusades, that ultimately led to the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, which mattered in some places (especially when tied to Blood Libel), just not the French and English cases I mentioned, 4) eventually the goal of religious homogeneity presaged the overall goal of cultural homogeneity of nationalism. Again, this is all primarily in Europe until the 19th century, though there were large populations of Jews in Anatolia, North Africa, Mesopotamia, Arabia, and Persia who were mostly unmolested. This, I think, is evidence that the repeated expulsion of the Jews is not necessarily something inherent in the Jews, but something (or several things) that characterized the relationship between Jewish minorities and Christian rulers during this period.
Edit: One final note. In the video, they often repeat the names of territories in a relatively short period. The reason for this is Jews were expelled, here for either reasons related to Christian religious revival or debts due to state formation, and then were at times often quickly let back in for economic reasons (i.e. the state needed lines of credit that only the Jews could provide in this period), and then quickly expelled either for economic reasons again (rulers had quickly racked up debt) or because of a deal with religious revivalists. But the reasons they were let back in hints at one of the reasons they were expelled. | [
"In Jewish history, Jews have experienced numerous mass expulsions and they have also fled from areas after experiencing ostracism and threats of various kinds by various local authorities seeking refuge in other countries.\n",
"There are multiple reasons for this mass emigration from Eastern Europe and the most ... |
why is it legal to drink 1 beer and then drive, but illegal to drink 1 beer while driving? | I always figured it was because it's not very practical to pull someone over and ask,"Is that your first beer? Okay good, just checking. Have a nice day."
Easiest way to enforce that law is to have a 0 tolerance policy on open containers/drinking & driving. | [
"In the UK \"drink driving\" is against the law, while in the US, where the action is also outlawed, the term is \"drunk driving\". The legal term in the US is \"driving while intoxicated\" (DWI) or \"driving under the influence (of alcohol)\" (DUI). The equivalent legal phrase in the UK is \"drunk in charge of a m... |
why do dogs (and foxes) like balls so much? | It's part of an old instinct to chase small quick animals. They are naturally attracted to things that are small and move quickly and their natural instinct is to chase them | [
"Like others of their group, they had a peculiar yodel. Foxy in appearance, their main distinction among dogs is their novel tail. Short, bushy and carried erect, it has been described variously as a shaving brush or a whisk broom.\n",
"Fox hunting with hounds has been happening in Europe since at least the sixte... |
please. how do you milk an almond to make almond milk? | With a screw press. Roughly chop, then sqeeze them like olives or peanuts to get the moister out. The remaining paste can be used as a thickening agent. | [
"The basic method of modern domestic almond milk production is to grind almonds in a blender with water, then strain out the almond pulp (flesh) with a strainer or cheesecloth. Almond milk can also be made by adding water to almond butter.\n",
"Almond milk is a plant milk manufactured from almonds with a creamy t... |
how does gps jamming work? like what the russians did during the recent nato exercise. | The same as normal jamming, they sent out a bunch of signals on the frequency that GPS satellites use to confuse the receivers- like trying to hear a code someone is telling you(The GPS signal) when someone is shouting in your ear(The Russian Jamming.)
01001 01100 01001 01011 00101 10100 10010 00001 01001 01110 10011...
#I LIKE TRAINS, VARIABLE-SPEED CORN MUFFINS, HI GUYS WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, ARE YOU HAVING A CONVERSATION, AM I INTRUDING? | [
"GPS's vulnerability to jamming is a threat that continues to grow as jamming equipment and experience grows. GPS signals have been reported to have been jammed many times over the years for military purposes. Russia seems to have several objectives for this behavior, such as intimidating neighbors while underminin... |
what is wireless spectrum scarcity and why is it a problem now? | [this](_URL_1_) gives you a great explanation, but i'll give you the TLDR
Spectrum is allocated from 3 kHz to 300 GHz. Basically different devices require a certain amount of bandwidth to send signal. When you create 4G (or even faster forms) you need more assigned spectrum.
> What puts strains on this spectrum and why is it so scarce right now?
more electronic devices that require a radio frequency, any technology really...
> Is wireless spectrum the same thing as the frequency bands (like AT & T running on 850 MHz, 1900 MHz, etc.)
same thing, just at different ends of the range. Scroll down to the bottom of [this](_URL_0_)
> Why doesn't the government just release more spectrum?
its already clogged up, they need to sell/take over more spectrum, but that usually involves pissing somebody else off.
ELI5: Think of it like you're in a class, and the teacher asks you to paint a mural, gives you 30cm (1ft) each within the long sheet. Then another 30 kids walk into the classroom halfway through and want to paint too. So the teacher tells you to give them half. You've already started your 30cm masterpiece, why the fuck would you surrender it? | [
"Spectrum scarcity has emerged as a primary problem encountered when trying to launch new wireless services. The effects of this scarcity is most noticeable in the spectrum auctions where the operators often need to invest billions of dollars to secure access to specified bands in the available spectrum.\n",
"Wir... |
why does my back itch if i'm not wearing a shirt, but nothing else on my bare body does? | > Looked it up and didn't really find anything
Obviously you didn't try WebMD... it's cancer, definitely cancer. | [
"The exact mechanism of the condition is unknown. Some studies have suggested the itching occurs in response to increased fibrinolytic activity in the skin, inappropriate activation of the sympathetic nervous system, or increased activity of Acetylcholinesterase.\n",
"The T-shirt was an expression of the scriptur... |
Are Pharma companies evil like everyone says? | You are asking a loaded question. A company is a group of people, policies, etc. I'm curious as to what criteria you would weigh in making a determination if a company is 'evil'? | [
"Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients is a book by the British physician and academic Ben Goldacre about the pharmaceutical industry, its relationship with the medical profession, and the extent to which it controls academic research into its own products. It was published in the UK in S... |
why can we see faraway light source (e.g. cars, lamps, stars) clearly when it doesn't seem to illuminate my position? | The difference is this: For you to see light, the light has to be strong enough to reach your eye and produce a reaction there. For it to illuminate you, it would have to reach you, scatter off you, reach someone else's eye, and produce a reaction there. During the scattering, the light is spread out more, so it becomes fainter.
Let's look at the case of a laser pointer. Point the laser at the wall, and the scattered light is comfortably visible. Point it at your eye, and you're looking at serious eye damage. | [
"A modest steady light at the intersection of two roads is an aid to navigation because it helps a driver see the location of a side road as they come closer to it and they can adjust their braking and know exactly where to turn if they intend to leave the main road or see vehicles or pedestrians. A beacon light's ... |
Were the pyramids really gold capped? | When it first came out, someone asked if the pyramids would still have caps at that time. [So I hope this answer is at least partially useful, though no doubt we have other ancient accounts that are older.] (_URL_0_) I'm not sure what the last mention of the gold caps would be,
though. | [
"Wheeler argues that the claims of an extraordinary origin for the pyramid are unfounded, writing, \"The facts are (probably) that the Gympie \"Golden\" pyramid is actually an ordinary hill terraced by early Italian immigrants for viticulture that has been disfigured by erosion and the removal of stone from the ret... |
do people who hear for the first time, after something like getting hearing implants, know what the other people are saying? | When the senses are developing there is a time called the [critical period](_URL_0_) in which sensory neurons physically become associated with certain parts of the brain, with the result being that different functions can be mapped to distinct regions of the brain. This is called topography. If there isn't any sensory input during this critical period, then the topography will not develop properly, and it may be impossible for it to develop once the critical period has ended. One example is babies born with cataracts. If they don't get them removed right away, then they won't be receiving any visual stimulus during the critical period, and even if they get the cataracts removed in the future, they will still be blind for live. A similar thing happens with people who are born deaf. Hearing implants in someone who has never heard before may give them some auditory function, like they may be able to detect that there is a noise and where it is coming from, but they won't be able understand speech or language, which is a very complex neurological process. Their ability might improve over time, but it will probably never get to the point of a non-hearing impaired person. | [
"Jennifer Winter (Marlee Matlin), deaf since birth, has had a revolutionary implant placed in her ear, to help her hear for the first time. The device doesn't help her to hear normal conversation and sounds, but she does hear something, and no one believes her.\n",
"Speech perception can be corrected prior to lan... |
How successful were the programs of forced sterilization of Native American women? | So from the context of your post, I feel like you're asking this sincerely. I'd like to start out by saying "successful" isn't a good word to use. Perhaps it wasn't your intention, but using the word "success" carries with it a connotation of justification. These types of programs are never justified. A brief discussion about this was had just the other day about the Nazi eugenics programs.
Aight, let's break it down now...
##U.S. Eugenics Programs
The term "eugenics" was coined in 1883 by Francis Galton. It is closely related to Darwinism and essentially advocates the framework of ideas that genes can be manipulated to produce a "better" population by controlled breeding. This notion became popular in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, lasting even up through the 1970s. People ranging from political figures and scientists to your average individual adopted this ideology,^[1] one that was grounded in the [perceived conceptions of race.](_URL_3_)
As noted in the first cited reference, this was the thought on eugenics by Henry F. Osborn, then president of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, in 1921:
> In the US we are slowly waking to the consciousness that education and environment do not fundamentally alter racial values. We are engaged in a serious struggle to maintain our historic republican institutions through barring the entrance of those unfit to share in the duties and responsibilities of our well-founded government. … In the matter of racial virtues, my opinion is that from biological principles there is little promise in the melting-pot theory. Put three races together (Caucasian, Mongolian, and the Negroid) you are likely to unite the vices of all three as the virtues. … For the worlds work give me a pure-blooded … ascertain through observation and experiment what each race is best fitted to accomplish. … If the Negro fails in government, he may become a fine agriculturist or a fine mechanic. … The right of the state to safeguard the character and integrity of the race or races on which its future depends is, to my mind, as incontestable as the right of the state to safeguard the health and morals of its peoples.^[1]
Programs of eugenics in the United States became a big deal. Compulsory sterilization laws adopted by over 30 states and there is evidence of eugenics in all 50.^[2]
The renown of the U.S. eugenics program was widespread. It was even commented on by Hitler in his book *Mein Kampf,* where he notes in his chapter denoting the importance of race to citizenship (bold mine):
> [**At present there exists one State which manifests at least some modest attempts that show a better appreciation of how things ought to be done in this matter.** It is not, however, in our model German Republic but in **the U.S.A.** that efforts are made to conform at least partly to the counsels of commonsense. By refusing immigrants to enter there if they are in a bad state of health, and by **excluding certain races from the right to become naturalized as citizens,** they have begun to introduce principles similar to those on which we wish to ground the People's State (p. 315).](_URL_2_)
Paul Popenoe comments in volume 25 of the *Journal of Heredity* under "The German Sterilization Law" by saying:
> [While the German law is well drawn and, in form, may be considered better than the sterilization laws of most American states, the success of any such measure naturally depends on conservative, sympathetic, and intelligent administration (p. 259).](_URL_5_)
[The American College of Physicians denotes the similarities between the Nazi and American eugenic/sterilization programs.](_URL_6_)
##Sterilization of American Indians
The programs run by the United States specifically targeted multiple groups of people, ranging from the mentally ill and disabled to those of disadvantaged and marginalized social groups.^[2] One of those groups included the one group of people the United States had, and still has, an obligation of the highest degree toward: the American Indians.
The Indian Health Service (IHS) is a federally run service for American Indians and Alaska Natives. It is, obviously, responsible for providing proper health care for native peoples as established via the treaties and trust relationship between tribes and the U.S. Government. However, on November 6, 1976, the Government Accounting Office (GAO) released the results of an investigation that concluded that [between 1973 and 1976, IHS performed 3,406 sterilizations on Native American women.](_URL_1_) Per capita, this figure would be equivalent to sterilizing 452,000 non-Native American women.
According to the above article, many of these sterilizations were conducted **without the consent of the women being sterilized or under coercion.** [Table 1 on page 403 of this article from the *American Indian Quarterly*](_URL_0_) shows a steep decline in birthrates among several Native American tribes. This journal denotes many of the issues that arose in the IHS protocol for administering these sterilizations. It says:
> The report stated that the violations occurred because "(1) some Indian Health Service physicians did not completely understand the regulations and (2) contract physicians were not required to adhere to the regulations." The GAO discovered that the sterilization consent forms used did not comply with HEW regulations and that IHS medical providers used several different forms. The majority of the forms "did not (I) indicate that the basic elements of in- formed consent had been presented orally to the patient, (2) contain written summaries of the oral presentation, and (3) contain a statement at the top of the form notifying the subjects of their right to withdraw consent" (p. 407).
And that's just the summation. The following pages detail how jacked up the IHS procedures were. While the journal notes that the GAO did not verify if the sterilizations were truly performed without consent, there were certainly many circumstances that would've let to that result. The sterilized women were not even interviewed (noted on page 407 as well).
The journal continues by examining the aftermath of these programs:
> The IHS damaged tribal communities in several ways. Tribal communities lost much of their ability to reproduce, the respect of other tribal entities, and political power in the tribal councils. Tribal communities represent sections of the entire tribe, much as counties represent specific areas within a state. The population of a community reflects the number of representatives it can elect to the tribal council and to national pan-Indian organizations. Therefore, a community's level of power within the tribal government is affected by the number of people in the community. A lowered census number might also affect federal services a tribal community receives. Finally, a tribal community that suffers a great number of sterilizations can lose the respect of other tribal communities because of its inability to protect its women (p. 411).
The point being that these sterilizations had grave impacts on the tribal communities that suffered them. However, this might not be the answer to your main thought: where are all the Indians?
Depending on where you live, your area could have also been hit by all the relocation programs. From the 1950s to the late 1960s, the federal government launched "relocation programs" in an attempt to move Indians off the reservations and into more urban centers in an attempt to solve the high poverty rates among the American Indian populations. These attempts often amounted little success for Indians who failed to receive further assistance after being forced from their homes with the goal of assimilating them. What it did do, however, is significantly disperse the Indian population around the country from their reservations.^[3] But the sterilization programs could easily have played a part.
[Despite what might appear as an initial "success," the American Indian population has actually been increasing since the beginning of the 20th Century.](_URL_8_) These numbers will fluctuate based on how "American Indian" is defined and counted, but in general, we can consider there to be an increase.
As for why you haven't really heard about it, the connection to Nazi Germany is something that could impact that. Obviously after World War 2, the United States wasn't too keen on many things related to Nazism, socialism, communism, fascism. Additionally, American Indians are still largely marginalized in today's world. The historical interactions between tribes and the U.S. isn't taught accurately in schools, if at all besides the stereotypical lessons in the curriculum. I am actually a bit surprised to see a question about these sterilizations, for it is one of the more obscure things that many Americans are unaware of, from my own experiences. Any other reasons really depend on your specific geographical location and its politics.
___
References
[1] - [U.S. Scientists' Role in the Eugenics Movement (1907–1939): A Contemporary Biologist's Perspective by
Steven A. Farber.](_URL_7_)
[2] - [Eugenics: Compulsory Sterilization in 50 American States by Lutz Kaelber, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Vermont.](_URL_4_)
[3] - *Rights of Indians and Tribes* by Stephen L. Pevar (2012). | [
"Forced sterilization was a procedure done by the Indian Health Service [IHS] and corroborating physicians on Native Americans in the 1960s and 1970s. The IHS doctors sterilized Native American women through coercion or sterilized them without consent using a variety of tactics. The tactics included failure to prov... |
Why were guns created in Europe, instead of Asia? | > Why did these innovations not take place in Asia?
They did. It isn't that gunpowder made it to the West, and then cannons and handguns were invented in the West, but gunpowder made it to the West because it was already being used in guns.
For example, in the Mongol siege of Jin Kaifeng in 1232, guns were being used, and appear to already be a mature and effective technology.^1 The early development of gunpowder weapons is covered in vol 5 part 7 of *Science and Civilisation in China*.^2
> In general it appears that most Asian cultures developed gunpowder weapons more slowly than their European counterparts, despite being closer to it's birthplace (China). Why?
The usual explanation is that Chinese development of firearms was slow due to China already being dominant in the region and not needing new and better weapons, and conservativeness of Chinese society, and Confucian disdain for practical and military matters on the one hand, and Europe being divided into small states constantly at war with each other and seeking any advantage they can get. There are some elements of the real story in this version, but this shouldn't be mistaken for the real story.
First, it is important to know when European firearm technology was ahead of Asian firearm technology. Initially, China led firearms technology. By the late Ming, Western and Ottoman firearms technology was ahead, with the western technology pulling ahead in about 1450. After that, Western gun technology tended to stay ahead of East Asian gun technology, but the difference stayed relatively small (in part due to rapid adoption of Western improvements by China and other East Asian states) until the late 18th century, when developments driven by the scientific revolution such as the adoption of the carronade by the British Royal Navy in 1779 greatly improved the performance of Western artillery. The gap grew, and there was a decisive qualitative difference in the 19th century, which remained until the modernisation of Asian armies (beginning in the mid 19th century, and continuing into the 20th century). One should not be misled by this late gap in firearms technology into thinking that a large gap was the normal historical condition. The normal historical conditions were (a) Asia ahead, until about 1450, and (b) Asia behind, with a small gap, until the late 18th century.
Second, the rate of development of military technology does depend on the frequency of warfare, the military technology of the opponents, and the threat to the state posed by the warfare. The "Europe at war" part of the usual story does explain why there was rapid development of gun technology by European states and the Ottomans. It also explains why Chinese development slowed down about 1400. The gun was developed in China and continued to develop in a period of extensive warfare: war between the Song Chinese, Liao/Khitans, Jin/Jurchen, and Mongols for control of China, followed by fighting between various rebel groups for control of China as the Yuan (Mongol) Dynasty collapsed, which was won by the Ming, followed by expansionist wars during the early part of the Ming Dynasty. The story of the development of firearms over this time is told in many sources.^3,4,5
The mid-Ming period of relative peace resulted in slower development in China; this is when the West pulled ahead. Chinese development didn't halt, though a key part of Chinese development in this period was the adoption of Western improvements.^3,4 At the same time, other states like Japan also adopted European-style firearms (some of the adoption of "European" weapons was directly from Europeans, and some was from other Asian states).
One key element of early Western (and Ottoman) cannon technology that didn't occur in China was the development of wall-breaking cannon. In the West, this led to major changes in fortress construction to better resist artillery. There were many fortified cities, and other fortifications, in China, in a period when guns were available, and multiple states were fighting for control of China (and those fortified cities and other fortresses). Why weren't wall-breaking cannon developed for the purpose? Because Chinese fortifications were already cannon-proof. Western fortifications typically consisted of tall (to resist escalade) but fairly thin walls. The Theodosian walls at Constantinople were extremely thick by European standards - the inner walls were up to 6m thick. However, Chinese walls, typically stone or brick faced rammed earth, were often 10-20m thick. This is the style of wall that was adopted in Europe to resist cannons. Since existing walls were effectively already cannon-proof, there was little incentive to develop cannon to unsuccessfully try to breach such walls.
Korea provides a compact example - early adoption of guns as the Joseon Dynasty rose from the wreckage of Mongol rule, followed by a long period of peace until the Japanese invasions of 1592-1598, followed by wars with the Manchus. The Koreans entered this period of warfare around 1600 with very few handguns, and 14th century cannon, and emerged with perhaps the best musket-armed forces in the world - the Korean force (mostly (80%) musketeers - about 10,000 musketeers) sent to aid the Ming against the Manchus performed very well in the Battle of Sarhū, 1619.
References:
1. G. Schlegel, On the invention and use of fire-arms and gunpowder in China, prior to the arrival of Europeans, *T'oung Pao*, vol. 3, pp. 1-11, 1902.
2. Joseph Needham and Ho Ping-Yü, *Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part 7, Military Technology: The Gunpowder Epic*, Cambridge University Press, 1987.
3. Peter A. Lorge, *The Asian Military Revolution: From Gunpowder to the Bomb*, Cambridge University Press, 2008.
4. Tonio Andrade, *The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History*, Princeton University Press, 2016.
5. James Waterson, *Defending Heaven: China's Mongol Wars, 1209-1370*, Frontline, 2013. | [
"The evolution of guns led to the development of artillery during the 15th century, pioneered by states such as the Duchy of Burgundy. Firearms came to dominate early modern warfare in Europe by the 17th century. The gradual improvement of cannons firing heavier rounds for a greater impact against fortifications le... |
Why are math and physics considered liberal arts subjects? | Liberal arts does not mean "humanities" as opposed to "sciences." The term, for one thing, long predates the entry of "science" into the western vocabulary. The *artes liberales*, where *ars* means "skill" (as is usual; Hogwarts isn't teaching students Defense Against Dark Paintings and Statuary), were and are a series of seven disciplines subdivided into two groups, one of three (the *trivium*) and one of four (the *quadrivium*). They are called *liberales* because they are the skills required for a free person to be considered educated. The first reference to them is in Cicero, *de oratore* 1.16: *[artes] quae libero dignae*, "the arts which befit a free person." The liberal arts were entirely intellectual, requiring no manual labor, unlike the *artes serviles* or *vulgares*, essentially trades and crafts. Originating in Greek thought and passed to medieval society by the Romans, the *artes liberales* consisted of rhetoric, grammar, arithmetic, logic, astronomy, music, and geometry. These were further subdivided into the *trivium* (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and the *quadrivium* (arithmetic, astronomy, music, geometry). The intellectual path from the *quadrivium* in particular to modern mathematics and physics is not a hard one to work out, but its historical development should be outlined. Already by the later Middle Ages Thomas Aquinas was noting that the *trivium* and *quadrivium* together were insufficient as a framework of education regarding certain philosophical studies. The *artes liberales*, always conceived of as a set unit that must be taught together, were by the late Middle Ages being broken up into independent disciplines. The *trivium* was more neatly organized--all three of its subjects dealt with language--and held out somewhat better, and instead of being preliminary to the *quadrivium* was transferred into the universities alongside it, especially by the humanists. The Renaissance saw changes to the framework even of the *trivium*, however: grammar became more generally philology, and added were poetry, moralizing philosophy, and history. The *quadrivium* had already been dying in the Renaissance, but to the *trivium* humanist scholars added physics and metaphysics. | [
"The BA in Liberal arts is a four-year program that combines classical texts from both Eastern and Western traditions, as well as courses in mathematics, natural science, and music. Students also study Classical Chinese and Sanskrit, thereby familiarizing themselves with the original languages of many of the texts ... |
How do we know how organic molecules look like, and how do we also know how reaction mechanisms proceed? | Okay, I'll try to explain it the best way I can without going through the meticulous details of how analytical instruments work. Basically, if you propose a structure for a molecule, you imply certain physical relationships. In an NMR, those relationships are proton couplings and with a COSY spectrum, you can tell which ones are coupled to which other ones. In a complex molecule, the NMR is characteristic of a particular structure and the chance of you finding another molecule that has the exact same NMR peaks with the same splitting pattern approaches zero. But NMR usually isn't the only thing reported in synthesis papers. People also report IR spectra and mass spec. IR spectra help to confirm structures the same way NMR does - via characteristic peaks that would be predicted from a given structure. Finally, our mass spec instruments have gotten to the point where we can actually get the mass of a sample with accuracy down to four+ decimal places. So if the mass of your sample doesn't match the predicted mass to four decimal places, it's not the molecule you predicted. So I like to think of this whole process as not completely eliminating the chance occurrence that two complex molecules with different molecular structures could generate the exact spectral pattern but rather reducing that chance to near zero. Kind of like how you can say with 99.999% certainty that somebody is somebody else's child using DNA analysis.
Second, mechanisms are another story. It is usually very difficult to prove a mechanism and in modern organic synthesis methodology papers, people generally don't go through a vigorous process of proving the mechanism. They usually report "proposed" mechanisms and show some rate data, etc. that give support to the mechanism. But in terms of the classical organic mechanisms, most have been studied enough that it is functionally certain that that is how they proceed. | [
"In determining structures of chemical compounds, one generally aims to obtain, minimally, the pattern and multiplicity of bonding between all atoms in the molecule; when possible, one seeks the three dimensional spatial coordinates of the atoms in the molecule (or other solid). The methods by which one can elucida... |
why do some men's button-up shirts have the last buttonhole horizontal while the rest are vertical? | Stress concentration.
Buttonholes are weakest along their long dimension. If you pull on that vertical buttonhole, it will want to rip in the corner of the buttonhole. The lowest button is usually the one under the most stress due to trousers, [shirt garters](_URL_0_), and beer bellies, and it doesn't have neighbor buttons on both sides to help share the load. Going horizontal with that button lets the fabric spread the load better. | [
"A high quality traditional shirt has long tails, extending almost to the knees at the back, and so has seven or eight buttons. The vertical strip of fabric running down the front opening is called the placket, and gives a more symmetrical appearance to the joint between the left side, on top, and the right. This l... |
How important were Special Forces in WW2? | Black and Green Ops are really hard to rate in such a manner. In WWII in specific, the line between Black/Green/Regular Operations became intensely blurred as well. Many formations that could conduct a stereotypical, independent raid or sortie were also used, by design or necessity, as larger combat formations in a traditional role.
Units that are now considered to be the forebearers of Special Forces operations in North America, such as the mixed Special Service unit, the Ranger Battalions, the Commandos and the "Specials", were large formations that often fought conventionally as often if not more so than conduct our stereotypical view of a "Special Forces" mission. The British Commandos and their nearest equivalents - in my mind - among their enemies; the Brandenburg regiment, are prime examples of this.
Both units were used in relatively small-unit actions of mixed success early war. The British commandos often conducting high-risk descents upon occupied Europe to actively sabotage or raid enemy facilities. The Brandenburgers were originally conceived as a sort of armed branch of the Abwehr, and their early missions are imaginative, to say the least. Often attempting to secure bridges along the route of advance through a mix of subterfuge (wearing enemy fatigues, for example) and active and traditional infantry combat. As the war progressed, both became increasingly more conventional, with the British Commandos committing combat units to the Normandy landings and the Brandenburgers acting as a Panzergrenadier division in name during the final fights on Germany's eastern frontier.
The positive experiences of having small, well trained, rapidly deployable forces of infantry meant that the concept of Special Forces expanded rapidly post-war.
More traditional intelligence agencies, like the O.S.S and SOE were *paramount* to Allied success. The British intelligence community in particular were quite systematic in the training of foreign resistance movements and most famously the turning of all German agents in the British home islands. The success of the O.S.S, SOE et al. truly shines in their counter-intelligence. I'll provide an example given by Bill Yenne in his exploration of early Japanese successes and failures. In his book he notes that the Japanese intelligence efforts in the USA and North America were as botched as their German counterparts; with OSS and FBI planted agents in the armed forces able to root out in particular one effort to turn a US Seaman into an informant for the Japanese government.
| [
"Special forces emerged in the early 20th century, with a significant growth in the field during the Second World War, when \"every major army involved in the fighting\" created formations devoted to special operations behind enemy lines. Depending on the country, special forces may perform functions including airb... |
How is a Damping Coefficient Interpreted in Equations Concerning Harmonic Motion? | I think the phrase should be "with resistance proportional to instantaneous velocity".
One way of commonly modelling drag or resistance is to assume that the resistance an object feels is linearly proportional to it's velocity at any given moment. This is sometimes called [Stokes drag](_URL_0_).
The idea behind it is that the faster an object is moving the more drag it feels. This is unlike something like rolling friction, which is always the same (to a good approximation) no matter how fast you're going.
If you want some practical experience, walk around in a pool. It's quite easy to move slowly, but in order to walk faster you need to exert even more force.
| [
"The equation describes the motion of a damped oscillator with a more complex potential than in simple harmonic motion (which corresponds to the case formula_13); in physical terms, it models, for example, a spring pendulum whose spring's stiffness does not exactly obey Hooke's law.\n",
"Damped harmonic motion is... |
How does Morocco get the honor of being America's first ally, yet we were in cahoots with France during the Revolutionary war? | Morocco's early relations with the US were actually somewhat mixed. [Michael Oren writes](_URL_2_) that the ruler of Morocco at the time, Sidi Muhammad bin `Abdallah,
> claimed to have been the first monarch to have recognized American independence and the first Muslim leader to seek a formal treaty with the young Republic. Congress dallied, however, and managed to offend the emperor. In relatiation, the Moroccans began seizing American ships (28).
Peace came at a price, and for $20,000 the US was able to buy back its ships and secure [the longest-standing treaty in US diplomatic history](_URL_1_). [The US consulate in Tangier](_URL_0_) would also become the US's oldest legation building and its first piece of property owned beyond its borders.
The concessions that the nascent US paid to Morocco set a costly precedent and other North African states picked up on how they could also extract money from the US. The US did not have a navy and so its merchant ships were easy prey. It was not until 1815 that the US was able to put together a navy and force a peace with the `barbary states,' putting an end to the concessions that at times accounted for 20% of the US's annual budget. | [
"During the American Revolutionary War, the pirates attacked American ships. On December 20, 1777, Morocco's sultan Mohammed III declared that merchant ships of the new American nation would be under the protection of the sultanate and could thus enjoy safe passage into the Mediterranean and along the coast. The Mo... |
how do herbivorous animals that birth only one offspring at a time, maintain higher populations than their predatory counterparts that birth multiples in a litter? | because plants are a more common form of food and requires less energy to collect. predators have to compete with eachother to survive and most of the time an entire litter doesn't survive | [
"Larger herbivores like pronghorn and deer are also known to exhibit irruptive growth; this occurs in populations with high reproduction and delayed density dependent inhibition. The time that a species is most likely to irrupt in population growth is when a population is first inhabiting an area or when predators ... |
What happens to the movement areas in the brains of paralyzed individuals? | Also what are the movement areas apart from the motor cortex? | [
"The upper motor neuron syndrome signs are seen in conditions where motor areas in the brain and/or spinal cord are damaged or fail to develop normally. These include spinal cord injury, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis and acquired brain injury including stroke. The impact of impairment of muscles for an individ... |
Where did the sugar molecules in DNA and RNA come from originally? | Good question. These days, the sugar molecules in DNA and RNA (called ribose in the case of RNA; deoxyribose in the case of DNA) come from the human body. They are produced inside our cells using energy from food.
Before there were human bodies or cells to manufacture ribose, it could be produced chemically from formaldehyde (H2CO) in a non-reducing atmosphere, with the help of some energy (lightning discharge, UV radiation, etc). This is called the [formose reaction](_URL_0_). | [
"Glycolaldehyde, the first example of an interstellar sugar molecule, was detected in the star-forming region near the centre of our galaxy. It was discovered in 2000 by Jes Jørgensen and Jan M. Hollis. In 2012, Jørgensen's team reported the detection of glycolaldehyde in a distant star system. The molecule was fou... |
What would need to change or evolve in order for us to be able to see light outside of the visible spectrum with our naked eye? | The molecules that absorb specific colors/wavelengths of light are found in the cone and rod cells of the retina. They are called opsins or [photopsins](_URL_0_) for the color proteins in the cone cells and [rhodopsins](_URL_3_) for the black/white night vision in the rod cells.
Really all that would need to happen would be mutation to alter the protein so that it absorbed a photon in the UV or the IR range. There are plenty of examples of this already in nature -- salmon have a [UV opsin](_URL_2_) and snakes have an [IR opsin](_URL_1_). The salmon story is actually pretty interesting -- their ability to detect UV (and polarized) light is pretty nifty in the world of vertebrates, and actually changes when they go from fresh - > salt water and back when they go back from salt - > fresh water.
Anyway, "all" you would need is a gene duplication and/or some sort of mutation to broaden the absorption characteristics of the human opsin. Rhodopsin would be a good one to start with. That would leave you with an expansion of the monochrome sensitivity and you could see more light in the dark. Kind of like black and white film, which has more UV sensitivity than the human eye.
A more complicated question is "What would have to happen for us to perceive this light differently?" like an additional color for vision. That's more complicated, as different colors (and monochrome from rods) are processed differently from the photoreceptor all the way down the visual system to the cortex. | [
"Wavelengths of light outside of the visible spectrum are not useful for illumination because they cannot be seen by the human eye. Furthermore, the eye responds more to some wavelengths of light than others, even within the visible spectrum. This response of the eye is represented by the luminosity function. This ... |
what is actually going on when water "opens up" whiskey? | It's dilution, pure and simple.
Because most whiskey has high alcoholic content, there is likely to be some "burn" in the taste or smell. By adding some water, you dilute that, which allows some of the more subtle flavor to emerge (because the more aggressive flavors are lessened).
In theory, you could dilute an entire bottle to the same effect. However, as taste is a purely personal experience, it would be highly impolite. | [
"\"Whiskey in My Water\" is a song recorded by American country music artist Tyler Farr. It was released on November 2013 by Columbia Nashville as the fourth and final single from his debut album \"Redneck Crazy\". Farr wrote the song with Phillip LaRue and Jon Ozier. The song garnered mixed reviews from critics wh... |
Why Delta-V and not Acceleration? | Acceleration is the measure of how quickly your velocity is changing, whereas delta-v is the total required change in velocity in order to complete a maneuver. So if in order to get to a certain orbit you will need to increase your velocity by 1000 m/s, an acceleration of 10 m/s/s will allow you to complete the maneuver in 100 seconds.
Delta-v: A change of 1000 m/s.
Acceleration: 10 m/s/s.
The reason why delta-v is useful is because typically fuel gives you a specific impulse (for every unit of fuel you get so much change in momentum), so it is a more useful figure when talking about fuel consumption. | [
"formula_37 (delta v) is the integration over time of the magnitude of the acceleration produced by using the rocket engine (what would be the actual acceleration if external forces were absent). In free space, for the case of acceleration in the direction of the velocity, this is the increase of the speed. In the ... |
On the day of the Berlin Wall's construction, were citizens who were visiting the other side stuck there? | No, because they were legally citizens of West Germany, and could therefore leave at will.
Some East Germans who were in the West at the time decided to stay there, though.
See [here](_URL_1_), [here](_URL_3_) and [here](_URL_0_).
Edit: also [here](_URL_2_) | [
"BULLET::::- On the final day that the Berlin Wall was open to visitors traveling from West Berlin to East Berlin, 70,000 people came over from West Germany to see their relatives. For two weeks, under an agreement between East Germany and West Germany on September 24, 1964, West Berliners were allowed to travel pa... |
why does an orchestra need a chief to perform? what is the man with a stick doing? | The conductor (person with the stick) sets the pace for all the different areas of instruments, to keep the whole group playing at the same tempo/timing. He or she also directs each instrument section in how loud or quietly they should play their part.
The conductor of an orchestra is similar to the director for a movie in that they have an idea in their head of how everything should go, and then they coordinate everyone in how to play their part so that it fits together seamlessly. | [
"Orchestras are usually led by a conductor who directs the performance with movements of the hands and arms, often made easier for the musicians to see by use of a conductor's baton. The conductor unifies the orchestra, sets the tempo and shapes the sound of the ensemble. The conductor also prepares the orchestra b... |
why does corn pop and expand into yummy cinema treats? | The hard kernel provides resistance, allowing pressure to build then pop.
The pressure is caused by the moisture content creating steam.
The resulting airy foam is the starchy inside of the kernal, which is very briefly exploded then solidifies into an airy mass.
Other grains will puff (see: puffed wheat cereal) but corn's harder outer shell allows for more pressure and a larger release of energy giving a large fluffy popped corn. | [
"Since 1854, the ancestors of Richard Kelty (1936-2015) had been growing a heirloom popcorn variety out of small kernels, whose hulls would disintegrate after being popped, resulting in a richer taste. The popcorn had been introduced to the Kelty family by Native Americans, who shared it with them. The Kelty family... |
Could salt water be chemically desalinized? | sure, there is no reason *a priori* that this couldn't be done. In fact, *salt metathesis* reactions are an example of this.
I don't know of any practical method for doing this, however.
_URL_0_
| [
"BULLET::::- US and German scientists develop a simple and efficient new method for desalinating seawater, using a small electric field to separate salt from water without needing complex filter membranes.\n",
"Saltwater is desalinated to produce water suitable for human consumption or irrigation. One by-product ... |
If a magnetic field requires a moving electric charge, how does a permanent magnet work? | First of all, a magnetic field doesn't necessarily require a movement of charge. All it needs is a change in electric flux with time.
Second of all in an atom, the electrons are "spinning" around the nucleus, usually in random directions. Every single one of them is like a tiny bar magnet (the more technical term is dipole). In an object where the electrons are mostly "spinning" in the same direction, all the dipole moments sum together and make one big dipole. | [
"The magnetostatic field produced by any arrangement of stationary permanent magnets is a conservative field. This means any magnetic object which moves in a closed-loop path in the field, like the ball in this device, gains no energy from the field, and in the absence of friction ends with the same total energy (k... |
why is piracy and copyright law such a derisive issue on the internet? shouldn't artists be entitled to distribute how they want and charge what they feel is appropriate? | It's considered OK because people like their free stuff and they're willing to do mental gymnastics in order to justify their actions. It really is immoral to just download content without compensating the creator.
There is something of an exception when it's not reasonably possible to buy the content through normal channels, and definitely an exception when you already purchased the content in a different format, and just need a particular format you can't convert to on your own. | [
"Fair use is a limitation and exception to the copyright law. According to the \"Hofstra Law Review\", “If mashup artists could prove that they use others’ songs or clips to criticize, comment, or teach, then mashup artists might be able to use the copyrighted material without authorization.\" \n",
"There is stil... |
What are the benefits or detriments of using Asphalt covered concrete highways? | Asphalt is like a protective glove on the top of the concrete. In Chicago you will notice that on the strictly concrete roadway the concrete has been worn into channels where the cars drive all day everyday. Concrete has the ability to last a long time which allows for the material to breakdown through tire erosion versus other physical means. Retaining a layer of blacktop allows for that road to be refurished while mainting the structure of the concrete underneath the asphalt layer. A roadway that has channels is harder to clear of snow during the winter becasue the blade of the plow cant get into the channels. If those channels are not clear of snow and ice, cars will be traveling on that dangerous surface. | [
"An asphalt concrete surface will generally be constructed for high-volume primary highways having an average annual daily traffic load greater than 1200 vehicles per day. Advantages of asphalt roadways include relatively low noise, relatively low cost compared with other paving methods, and perceived ease of repai... |
Just finished making a high temperature superconductor for solids lab. How exactly does the Meissner effect (pic inside) work? | Although no dynamical explanation yet exist it's not actually a repulsion in the usual sense that keeps the magnet suspended. Because magnetic fields are excluded from the superconductor it locks into position. You can push the superconductor closer to the magnet, or further away, and it will stay there to. You can also suspend the superconductor under the magnet and it also stays there.
_URL_0_ | [
"The combination of the superconductor-thermocouple technique up to 18 K, with the Thomson-coefficient-integration technique above 18 K, allowed determination of the absolute Seebeck coefficient of lead up to room temperature. By proxy, these measurements led to the determination of absolute Seebeck coefficients fo... |
How was the clean up of the Dunkirk beach done? | The Germans cleaned up, hardworking as ever.
As in need of new equipment as Germans were, they practically pressed anything intact into service. The British left behind eight divisions' worth of equipment in Dunkirk, including nearly 900 field guns, about as many AT guns, 300 heavy artillery pieces, 700 tanks, 500 anti-aircraft guns, 11.000 machine guns, 20.000 motorcycles and Bren carriers, and a whooping 45.000 trucks and lorries.
The amount of mileage Germans got from Dunkirk equipment is nothing short of extraordinary. Due to the finiteness of ammunition, artillery mainly went to coastal defense and other fixed duties, as well as reserve and rear line units. The 2-pounder AT gun became the 40mm PaK 192(e). The 25-pounder became the 114mm leFH 361(e). Several of the BL 60-pounders went to coastal batteries. The 94mm FlaK M 39(e), the designation for the 3.7'' heavy AA gun, was so liked that the Germans started producing ammo for it. Thousands of Bren guns were modified to fire the 8x57 and used by occupation forces, designated LeMG 138(e).
The vehicles were used even more. SdKfz 731(e), aka the Bren carriers, were used to an immense degree. Germans put anything from MG 34's to light AT cannons on them. Cruiser tanks were converted to flamethrower vehicles and issued to the 18th Panzer Division in Soviet Union. Tens of thousands of Bedford trucks, already similar to the German Opels, were used to motorize the Wehrmacht.
Then there is Major Alfred Becker, Wehrmacht's tank chopper par excellence, who made something out of any Allied vehicle available. Vickers Mk VI tanks became self propelled guns armed with the 105mm leFH 16, along with munition carrier and command version: Becker's 227th Infantry Division whose artillery was armed by these had the only self-propelled artillery unit in Barbarossa. French Lorraine 37L's were made into tank destroyers(Marder I) or self-propelled artillery pieces armed with 105 and 150 milimeter guns. Hotchkiss tanks were turned into tank destroyers, self propelled artillery, or even were armed with the Wurfrahmen rocket artillery. Baukommando Becker, formed in 1942 and headed by Major Becker and staffed by many of his Krefeld comrades from his old artillery battery, was literally forming combat-worthy converted vehicles from even battle wrecks left over from two years ago left exposed to the elements, using the Hotchkiss plants near Paris. More than two thousand battle-worthy vehicles were created by Becker in France using nothing but Allied scrap and armor plates from Alkett. | [
"Cleanup crews used salt water from a fireboat to wash away the molasses and sand to absorb it, and the harbor was brown with molasses until summer. The cleanup in the immediate area took weeks, with several hundred people contributing to the effort, and it took longer to clean the rest of Greater Boston and its su... |
why does the engine of this plane rumble? | Resonance frequency, basically the structure is receiving a little push in step with how the material normally flexes since each push is perfectly timed it is like pushing someone on a swing at the perfect time when the swing has reached its peak. _URL_0_ | [
"Aircraft gas turbine engines (jet engines) are responsible for much of the aircraft noise during takeoff and climb, such as the \"buzzsaw noise\" generated when the tips of the fan blades reach supersonic speeds. However, with advances in noise reduction technologies—the airframe is typically more noisy during lan... |
Is the super-massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way spinning in the plane of the rest of our galaxy? Would this just be a coincidence, or does one or the other have ability to influence the other into matching it? | A black hole's spin is determined by the matter which has fallen into it (and by its initial spin, for example when a stellar core collapses to form a BH, it has some spin). Since most of the matter which has fallen in came from the plane of the galaxy, we tend to assume that the SMBH's axis of spin is roughly aligned with the axis of spin of the Milky Way. The SMBH's spin does **not**, however, determine the spin of the rest of the galaxy. | [
"Stars at the centre of the Milky Way are so densely packed that special imaging techniques (such as adaptive optics) were needed to boost the resolution of the VLT. Thanks to these techniques, astronomers were able to watch individual stars with unprecedented accuracy as they circled the Galactic Center. Their pat... |
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