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how would zimbabwe reintroduce its own currency | At the moment they've introduced bond coins which can only work in Zimbabwe as time goes they'll keep increasing the denominations until there's proper Zimbabwean currency then they'll ban foreign currency for selling in stores I think | [
"On February 2, 2009 a final denomination was implemented, cutting 12 zeroes, before the Zimbabwe dollar was officially abandoned on April 12, 2009. Pending economic recovery, Zimbabwe relied on foreign currency rather than introducing a new currency.\n",
"In October 2005, the head of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe... |
Why did Jimmy Carter, a Democratic candidate, win so many Southern states in the 1976 election? | Carter was from Georgia, and the South had voted Democrat from the end of Reconstruction until 1968. | [
"Carter won a majority of the popular and electoral vote. He carried most states in the South and the Northeast while Ford dominated the Western states. Carter remains the only Democratic candidate since 1964 to win a majority of the Southern states. Ford won 27 states, the most states ever carried by a losing cand... |
what makes someone a polyglot? is it something about the brain, or simply a learning technique that anyone can do? | It's just hard work and dedication. The more languages you know, the easier it is to learn new languages. The earlier you start studying, the sooner you can start practicing, the sooner you can achieve mastery.
It's like any field of study. Just hard work and practice. | [
"In Chomsky's opinion, in order for a linguistic theory to be justified on \"internal grounds\" and to achieve \"explanatory adequacy\", it has to show how a child's brain, when exposed to primary linguistic data, uses special innate abilities or strategies (described as a set of principles called \"Universal Gramm... |
why won't any of the arab nations take in and help the "palestinians"? | I'm not sure why you've got Palestinians in scare quotes. It suggests that you're not asking this question in good faith. However, I'll assume it's just a peculiar way of asking the question. As for the Arab states, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon all contain large numbers of Palestinian refugees and have done since the 1940s. Even in stable and prosperous countries, taking in large numbers of displaced peoples is disruptive and complicated. And you'll notice that most of the Arab states are not the most stable and prosperous of places. Finally, the Palestinians have agency here. They've not given up hope of settling the right to return question and many (most?) are unwilling to give up their claim to the lands they lost in '49 and '67 (since integrating as Egyptians, Lebanese, or Jordanians, were that easily accomplished, would mean giving up that hope). | [
"No Arab country except Jordan has to date assimilated a significant population of Palestinian refugees, nor given them full citizenship, and many rely on economic aid from the UN or persons in other countries. It is the position of most Arab governments not to grant citizenship to the Palestinian refugees born wit... |
Why does the Barrow Alaska have 15 more days where the sun does not set than rise? | In addition to the other answers, this is partially explained by how sunrise and sunset are defined. Sunrise is the moment the Sun's *upper edge* appears over the horizon, and similarly, sunset is the instant when its last visible sliver disappears below the horizon. Thus, when the Sun only partially dips below the horizon in the summer it's not counted as setting, but even if only a small piece of it peeks above the horizon in the winter it's counted as rising. Also helping is the fact that atmospheric refraction actually makes the image of the Sun visible slightly higher on the horizon than its actual position. | [
"The sun remains below the horizon during the polar night from about 26 November to 15 January, but owing to the mountains, the sun is not visible from 21 November to 21 January. The return of the sun is an occasion for celebration. However, because of the twilight, there is some daylight for a couple of hours even... |
in american high school, i learned virtually nothing at all about african or south american history. why isn't it part of the world history curriculum? | * Did you learn about the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, or Egyptians? Because those are in Africa.
* A world history course in any country is going to tend to focus on the history relevant to that country. For the US, that is Greece- > Rome- > Europe- > America.
* There is only so much you can fit into a high school level course, and not all geographic areas are of equal significance.
* Americans high school textbooks suck. Badly. The selection process is highly politicized, and the people selecting care more about the number of pictures of men vs. women or white faces vs. black faces than accuracy. | [
"The next chapter, “Political Education Neglected,” begins with some examples as to how African Americans have been previously kept from learning about American politics, one example being when a bill that would print the Constitution of the United States in all schools was turned down because “it would never do to... |
how do elites hide money successfully behind 'front' companies established in other countries? | So the first thing to understand is that a corporation is an independent legal entity from its owners.
So let's say I own a successful construction company. I make around $10,000,000 in profit every year. Now, I own a big company but I don't need that kind of money to live day to day. My expenses total only ("only") around $1,000,000 every year. So I have 9,000,000 leftovers.
Next thing to consider is taxes. Let's say my company pays a 25% corporate tax rate. So on our $10 mil profit, I lose $2.5 to the government, take out $1,000,000 for myself and have $6.5 million leftovers to save or invest back into my company.
Now, I want to engage in some tax avoidance. So I start a second company somewhere with favorable tax law. In some countries (for example) profits earned from assets that are not within that country are tax-free. So I come up with a plan. I'm going to sell ALL of my construction equipment from my main company to the second company for $1. The second company will then rent back all of that equipment to the first company and charge them $8,665,000 per year (that's an oddly specific number...).
Now, the rental company has $8,665,000 in its bank account, zero expenses and is not required to pay tax on that profit (since the equipment is in my country and the rental company is foreign).
Here in America, my construction company made WAY less profit, only $1,350,000. I pay a 25% tax rate, so send $333,750 to the government and take out my $1,000,000 that I need to live on. leaving only $1,250 in the construction company.
Now, I live the exact same lifestyle as before, I pay for my home and kids and vacations all out of that $1,000,000 that I take out personally. I have no personal problem with the IRS. My company pays the proper tax on its profits, so again no IRS problems.
My foreign company pays no tax, but that's allowed within the laws of that foreign country. So no problems there.
The only problem is this. If my foreign company pays any of that money to me (the owner) I'm supposed to pay American tax on it. That's a bummer since the whole fucking point was to avoid taxes. And if I spend any of that money in the US, the IRS will be all over me.
But if I spend that money while out of the country, the IRS will never know! So my little equipment rental company owns a villa in Italy, some exotic cars and sends it's shareholders (only me) on expensive "company retreats" all the time. Or I could just have my rental company invest that money in the markets (American or otherwise) and use the company as a kind of retirement account. | [
"Elite capture is a form of corruption whereby public resources are biased for the benefit of a few individuals of superior social status in detriment to the welfare of the larger population. Elites are groups of individuals who, because of self-ratifying factors such as social class, asset ownership, religious aff... |
why are car engine idles not lower? | I had a car that had problems with the idle adjustor. The engine would drop to 300-400 and would shake the whole car. I believe 800-1000 RPM is to keep the car from stalling as well as to keep the car from shaking.
Although, I did own a car for a bit that would actually shut the engine off while stopped and in neutral. It would restart once put into gear. That would be pretty cool as a standard feature but I believe the car needs some kind of secondary battery for that to work. | [
"Idle speed (or idle) is the rotational speed an engine runs at when the engine is idling, that is when the engine is uncoupled from the drivetrain and the throttle pedal is not depressed. In combustion engines, idle speed is generally measured in revolutions per minute (rpm) of the crankshaft. At idle speed, the e... |
how does apple slows down its phones? | A process in the background regularly checks the battery capacity, when it goes down a certain threshold set by Apple, that process kicks in and underclocks the CPU of the phone to 600 Mhz IIRC, so that means a slower phone but a slightly better battery life and prevents most unexpected shutdowns. | [
"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",
"In late 2017, users of... |
why is poor vision so much more prevalent across all age groups than other types of sensory loss, and why is it not viewed as a disability while others are? | My guess; vision is our most important sense. No one gets hearing aid if their left ear hears 10% less than the right, but if the left eye is 10% off-center...
On the other hand i think a lot of kids get glasses when they dont really need it. Parents are easy to sell to. I know i didn't need glasses, and stopped wearing them as soon as i got tired of bullies breaking them. | [
"Visual impairment has the ability to create consequences for health and well being. Visual impairment is increasing, especially among older people. It is recognized that those individuals with visual impairment are likely to have limited access to information and healthcare facilities, and may not receive the best... |
Why doesn't the human iris produce a red color? | Do you mean why aren't there red-eyed people? Simple:
There are two pigment proteins in humans, eumelanin (black) and pheomelanin (reddish). Usually people have more eu- than pheomelanin. In the iris, if you have mostly eumelanin the eye will look brown. If you have a lot less eumelanin, the eye might look hazel - with none, it will be blue.
So why no red, if pheomelanin is a reddish pigment? The answer is: the same reason the sky is blue. Light traveling through the stroma of the iris gets scattered - the shorter the wavelength, the more it scatters. Blue light scatters more, so the light that you see coming out of the eye will tend to be bluish. Redder hues will be shifted blue-ward, so they'll look greenish or hazel. | [
"The iris is usually strongly pigmented, with the color typically ranging between brown, hazel, green, gray, or blue. Occasionally, the color of the iris is due to a lack of pigmentation, as in the pinkish-white of oculo-cutaneous albinism, or to obscuration of its pigment by blood vessels, as in the red of an abno... |
how intelligent were prehistoric humans? | They were as intelligent as we are now. What they were able to expend that intelligence on was limited by a lack of knowledge, not cognitive ability. | [
"The main observations drawn by Wilson are that our ancient pre-\"Homo sapiens\" ancestors possessed intelligence equal to that of modern man, their apparent lack of technological achievement being explained by the needlessness of it based on their completely different, intuitive and all-embracing mentality. Over t... |
Is there a material that can absorb air or a specific kind of gas? | Well, they _all_ do, to some extent. All molecules attract, if only weakly. (though 'weakly' here can mean "so weak that the molecules won't 'stick' at a temperature higher than a fraction of a Kelvin")
More surface area means more adsorption, it was actually over 200 years ago they discovered that charcoal, which is very porous and thus has lots of surface, could adsorb measurable amounts of air.
Generally there are two ways this can happen - _adsorption_, which is the molecules 'sticking' to the surface through the various kinds of intermolecular bonds (hydrogen bonds, van der Waals forces) and _chemisorption_ where the molecules form proper covalent chemical bonds with the surface. It's a bit fluid (as the distinction between bonds is, as well), but generally the latter one is stronger, and also more specific to the actual compounds involved.
Generally things are absorbed better at lower temperatures when the kinetic energy of the molecules is smaller than the attraction and get released at higher temperatures, when the molecules are bouncing around with energy that far exceeds the attraction.
Air is a mixture of different compounds, several of which are chemically rather inert (e.g. N2 and Ar), so chemisorption doesn't work for air, as there's nothing that'll form bonds with all the different molecules in air, much less do so equally well. But you can chemisorb certain compounds (e.g. calcium hydroxide will absorb CO2 and form calcium carbonate and water, which can be turned back into the original compounds on heating).
So for air, you'd have to use adsorption. One way of creating a vacuum is to have a container with a [zeolite](_URL_0_) in it (a mineral with tons of nanoscale pores in it), and cool that with liquid nitrogen, causing the air to be adsorbed by the zeolite.
But in short, yes there are lots of them. The best choice depends on the gas you want to absorb, though. But since air is a mixture of compounds, and ones that are fairly inert, it'll tend to require low temperatures to do it.
| [
"The materials can produce gas by several mechanisms. Molecules of gases and water can be adsorbed on the material surface (therefore materials with low affinity to water have to be chosen, which eliminates many plastics). Materials may sublimate in vacuum (this includes some metals and their alloys, most notably c... |
why do soda contents not drop/settle to the bottom and need to be mixed up or stirred but other drinks like juice do? | Juice has solids in suspension. They're not actually chemically dissolved, just "stuck" in the water molecules like a microscopic ball pit. Over time they'll settle to the bottom.
Soft drinks don't have that many ingredients, and the few they do have are water soluble. Unlike the suspended solids in juice, these chemicals interact with the water molecules and will stay in liquid form indefinitely. | [
"The gas pressure in a siphon drives soda water up through a tube inside the siphon when a valve lever at the top is depressed. Commercial soda siphons came pre-charged with water and gas, and were returned to the retailer for exchange when empty. A deposit scheme ensured they were not otherwise thrown away.\n",
... |
'magic underwear' worn by mormons | Mormons believe that certain ordinances must be completed in order to enter the highest kingdom of heaven. One of those ordinances is called an endowment. It takes place in their temples. During an endowment worthy members are gifted certain signs and symbols needed to enter heaven. There are distinct markings on the garments that remind members of the signs they learned and promises they made to remain holy. On top of this the garments are supposed to keep one modest and virtuous. They are to remain hidden because they are seen sacred and they are to be worn almost always. Source: exmormon.
| [
"A temple garment, also referred to as garments, the garment of the holy priesthood, or Mormon underwear, is a type of underwear worn by adherents of the Latter Day Saint movement after they have taken part in the endowment ceremony. Garments are worn both day and night and are required for any adult who previously... |
why orgasms become more intense the more you have in a row? does this apply to all sexes? | This ain't funny OP. We know you girls have it good, no need to rub it in. | [
"Orgasm, or sexual climax, is the sudden discharge of accumulated sexual tension during the sexual response cycle, resulting in rhythmic muscular contractions in the pelvic region characterized by an intense sensation of pleasure. Women commonly find it difficult to experience orgasms during vaginal intercourse. Ma... |
interlaced display vs noninterlaced (progressive scan) display | Picture a paper notebook with lined paper. You are going to make a cool flipbook animation with it.
On the first page, start at the top line and draw your picture on every other line down the page.
On the second page, start at the second line and draw your picture on every other line down the page.
On the third page, start at the top line again and draw on every other line.
And so on until the animation is complete.
Now, when you flip through the notebook and see your animation, it will still look pretty good even though every page only contains half the information. This is *interlaced* display.
Progressive scan is like a regular flipbook where you draw the whole picture on every page. | [
"Progressive scanning (alternatively referred to as noninterlaced scanning) is a format of displaying, storing, or transmitting moving images in which all the lines of each frame are drawn in sequence. This is in contrast to interlaced video used in traditional analog television systems where only the odd lines, th... |
how do subways not collapse? | You can think of it as like a pipe, only with a tunnel the pressure is on the outside of the pipe instead of on the inside.
Just as the walls of a pipe need to be made strong enough to hold the pressure in the pipe without bursting, the walls of a subway tunnel need to be designed to take the pressure of the dirt and water surrounding them without collapsing.
Most tunnels are lined with something like stone or concrete that is strong in compression (i.e. something that can be "squeezed" a lot without crushing). But, sometimes in solid rock, a tunnel can be unlined as the rock is strong enough on its own.
Further, tunnels not in solid rock are usually round. Just like with pipes, round is a good shape for resisting pressure - whether the pressure is greater on the inside or on the outside.
If you are in a tunnel that appears round above and on the sides but has a flat bottom (like a roadway), it's a good bet that the tunnel was made round and then the bottom was filled in to make the road. | [
"Subway stations and tunnels are designed to resist ground shaking that could occur at a specific location, but there is no general magnitude of earthquake that the entire system is expected to withstand. The Metro Rail system has not suffered any damage due to earthquakes since its opening in 1993.\n",
"The stat... |
what is an interface in programming? | An interface is basically a class with no implementation that is intended to be subclassed so that a related set of classes all share a common set of methods. This lets you program parts of your code in a way where you don't have to worry about which of the subclasses you're working with, and anyone else using your code can implement their own subclass from that Interface that should work.
Using the common programming textbook example of classes representing different kinds of vehicles, we could imagine that we're creating a video game where you have different kinds of vehicles you can drive and pressing a button causes the vehicle to accelerate. So we want to make a Vehicle interface that defines an accelerate method, but there's no generic implementation for accelerate, since each vehicle accelerates differently. So then we'd subclass the Vehicle interface in a Car class, a Train class, an Airplane class, etc., and each would implement the accelerate function in the way that specific vehicle should accelerate.
Edit: In Java there's a specific keyword for defining an Interface, but any object-oriented language should support this type of design. Your interface would just be another Class that either doesn't implement the functions defined, if the language allows that, or implements dummy or placeholder functions that would be replaced by a subclass. | [
"In computer programming, a function is, in general, a piece of a computer program, which implements the abstract concept of function. That is, it is a program unit that produces an output for each input. However, in many programming languages every subroutine is called a function, even when there is no output, and... |
how are you supposed to know who to believe in political debates when both candidates just accuse the other of lying the whole time? | You could try doing your own research and coming to your own conclusions. This "thinking for yourself" is often superior to taking the word of people who are trying to persuade you of something that directly benefits them. Tasks such as essays or research projects during the various stages of formal schooling is intended to develop such skills in students. | [
"Political debate often abuses public confidence by one candidate attempting to sway voters, not by logical argument on given issues, but by personal diatribe that does not directly bear on the matter at hand.\n",
"One experimental study found that fact-checking during debates affected viewers' assessment of the ... |
What was the woman's role in Viking society, particularly but not limited to when men were out on conquest? | Jenny Jochens wrote the definitive treatise on women in Old Norse society in her creatively named, *Women in Old Norse Society*, where she examined what could be gleaned about approximately half of the human population in Scandinavia (though she focuses almost entirely on Iceland), from a few select texts including sagas and law codes (which explains her focus on Iceland).
Life for women in Norse society is not easy to describe in generalities. Women existed at every level of society from field hands, to sex slaves, to the wives of powerful chieftains, to important political figures and landowners in their own right. Christianity also brought many changed to the lives of women when it was adopted among the Norse during the 9th-11th centuries, and much of her book is focused on the relationship between women and the male dominated Church.
Jochens succinctly describes Norse women's life pre-Conversion as a mixture of rights and limitations. This might seem a little on the nose, but one need only glance around at pop-history available on any number of websites to come away with an incredibly skewed view of what life was like for women in Norse society. Popular media of today has further reinforced false ideas about the power and independence that Norse women were able to achieve. Her main focus is on the increasing legal and reproductive restrictions that accompanied the march of the Middle Ages in Scandinavia, however she is also quick to point out that many of the later Christian practices in Scandinavia likely had antecendents in pre-Christian life for most women.
For my examination, I'm going to work my way down the socioeconomic ladder of Norse women.
Jochens posits that the most powerful women in Iceland were independently wealthy women who were widowed, between marriages, or whose husbands were away, either in warfare, raiding, trading, or any combination of the above. These women would have been in control of the property they lived on, including animals, farms, businesses, slaves, and the people who were attendant. These could be related families, children, or just merely dependent families. However even these women had strict impairments in their ability to function in larger society. They could not function as witnesses in court, they could not give testimony, they could not initiate lawsuits, and their purchasing power of consumer goods was extremely limited. She did not have legal recourse to crimes or offenses committed against her, except those allowed and advanced by her male relatives, usually a father, brother, husband, or in some cases a son. Indeed were she to be assaulted, the crime technically would not be against her, but her male custodian, and every female, independently powerful or not, needed to have one. Female religious participation, even before conversion, was likewise extremely limited. After conversion Jochens posits that sexual crimes and offenses *by* free women became the subject of greater Church scrutiny, especially focusing on infanticide, a well attested pagan practice. Marriage restrictions also became much more stringent with divorce being severely restricted, (pre-conversion women could initiate divorce, post-conversion it still appears in certain law codes but seems to have become much rarer), and illegitimate births seem to have remained incredibly high among Icelandic society.
Post-conversion religious avenues for well to do women did expand to include some limited religious participation, however there were only two nunneries in operation in Iceland throughout the Middle Ages, so the number of women who were able to engage in this sort of lifestyle was likely extremely limited.
However what do other scholars have to say about the highest rungs of Norse society and the women who inhabited the most visible and influential parts of the Norse world? Judith Jesch makes a mistake by correlating furnished burials with paganism and unfurnished burials with Christianity, but her focus on archaeological evidence in the first part of her *Women in the Viking Age* makes her a useful counterpart to Jochens' literary focus. She posits the most well off women would have had access to luxury goods such as silk and metal and glass jewelry in greater amounts, though glass beads are a common burial item across socioeconomic status. Archaeological finds from preserved textiles also indicate that down and felted textiles were also used to make clothes more water resistant or warm.
Other archaeological evidence does lead us to some surprises. For example, sacrifices, of both people and animals, are commonly found in Norse burials pre-conversion. However even in graves where the "primary" occupant is female there are attested human sacrifices, often theorized to be slaves that are killed to accompany their master. Other burials of high status women feature horse sacrifices, another extremely high status good.
Free women who were not the heads of important and wealthy households, naturally had even fewer ways to express power and influence. Many of them would have remained as field workers, engaged in in agriculture, namely livestock (dairy, wool, and some limited meat) with some supplemental farming, and the preparation and storage of food (ie salting, smoking, and so on), or engaged in some limited enterprise, largely centered on textiles, following the proliferation of the textile industry across Iceland following conversion to Christianity, though its roots in Norway is attested. These women worked in the home and and had limited opportunities for their own advancement. Jochens also points to saga evidence that women were responsible for maintaining the cleanliness of the members of the household, overseeing the bathing of their husbands and children, before themselves. Women would have overseen the home in the absence of their husbands, including livestock, slaves, children, and so on, but their ability to operate indpendently was still ultimately reliant on their male relations.
Slave women would of course be expected to do all of the above as well, coupled with sexual exploitation, lack of legal status or protections (limited as they were), an inability to have legitimate children, and uncertain societal status following conversion to Christianity and official condemnations of concubinage (though the practice certainly persisted). These women could have been born to slaery, captured in raids, or ended up in slavery through various legal offenses. Slave women however were scarcely remarked upon in the extant sources detailing Norse life, both law codes and Sagas (problematic as sources as they are), so much of their life remains deeply obscured to us.
The ubiquity of sacrifices in popular culture around the Norse might lead one yo believe that at the end of a master's life the noose, knife, or sword awaited many of their former servants, however sacrifices are relatively rare in Norse burials when all is said and done. Judith Jesch posits that the "average" Norse woman would have no realistic expectation of ending her life as a sacrifice.
There is of course more to life than just working in the home or in the fields, legal rights (or lack thereof), and marriage/reproduction. What did women, who were able to engage in sport and leisure, do for fun, in the limited free time that they had? Jochens points to a few familiar practices, ball games, swimming, board games, drinking parties, storytelling (or as the sagas are often quick to call it, gossiping), and word games were all available and acceptable actions for women of various social standings to engage in. They almost certainly had more restricted free time than their male counterparts however.
In their day to day life most Norse women would wear an underdress/shift made of wool or linen with a strapped overdress over top of it, all held together with loops and brooches. Brooches are some of the most ubiquitous items that survive from the viking age and they are present in the vast majority of furnished burials for women. Post-conversion however one burial good remains very common, silver crosses.
Now there is one other expression of female life in Icelandic/Norse life, and that is of the literary exemplar/exceptional woman. The exceptional woman who transcended the boundaries of her gender and was able to win acclaim and praise for her own merits. Such examples are few and far between, even in the fantastical accounts of the sagas, and Jochens is quick to point out that even in these cases female virtues and still secondary and inferior to male ones. She points out that members of even the highest socioeconomic status in the real world might aspire to this sort of status, but in reality likely rarely attained such acclaim in their own lifetime.
These leaves the status of "shieldmaidens" or female warriors as a final possible category. Jochens in her books is extremely skeptical of such status being achieved by women in Iceland, even pre-Conversion. For one she points to the extremely limited ability of women to exercise their autonomy as legal individuals, she also posits that women were increasingly barred from even pagan religious authority pre-Conversion. She does not explicitly rule out the existence of women warriors elsewhere in Scandinavia, but she seems convinced of their absence in Icelandic life from the 9th to 13th centuries. Jesch is likewise skeptical of the actual presence of viking warrior women, and dismisses them as an object of mythological curiosity and male fantasy. | [
"The legal, civilian and cultural status of women in prehistoric society during the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age in Scandinavia are somewhat obscure, but from Viking Age sources we know that women were relatively free, compared to men, contemporary societies and the later Middle Ages. \n",
"Women enjoyed a ... |
when a dog or a cat's owner changes clothes or wears something out of the ordinary, do they think the attire is part of your body or can they tell that clothes are just something that we put on top of our bodies? | She probably realised you were the same person, but your hat scared or confused her.
It's hard to know what animals actually think, but whatever they do think, they get used to it. Animals go by more than just visual appearance, of course: smell, gait, voice -- all these are important. Your puppy can probably already tell you apart from other people just by hearing your footsteps.
One of my two cats doesn't like bare skin much, and will, for example, refuse to sit on my lap if I am wearing shorts. The first time she ever say my wife get undressed, she looked on in horror, and then carefully reached out with her paw to touch my wife's skin. | [
"The appearance of a dog reflects the status of the owner: dressing a dog is more about the owner than the animal. When an owner dresses up their dog they establish a unique bond with the dog that places them at an even more personal and intimate level.\n",
"Dog Clothing is a garment made by humans for their cani... |
When American troops liberated Dachau, they were so enraged that they summarily executed dozens of SS guards. Did similar events happen at other concentration camps? | I don't know about Allied soldiers killing guards at other camps, but liberated inmates killed guards at Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald and Gusen-Mauthausen. I am sure it happened in other camps as well but these are the ones I have read about.
You can read the accounts here:
Rudolf A. Haunschmied et al (2007) St. Georgen - Gusen - Mauthausen: Concentration Camp Mauthausen Reconsidered
Eberhard Kolb (2002) Bergen-Belsen: vom "Aufenthaltslager" zum Konzentrationslager, 1943-1945
David Wingeate Pike (2004) Spaniards in the Holocaust: Mauthausen, Horror on the Danube
Alan Axelrod (2007) Encyclopedia of World War II, Volume 1, p. 192 (Buchenwald)
| [
"An Inspector General report resulting from a US Army investigation conducted between 3 and 8 May 1945 and titled, \"American Army Investigation of Alleged Mistreatment of German Guards at Dachau,\" found that 21 plus \"a number\" of presumed SS men were killed with others being wounded after their surrender had be... |
what actually happens in our brain when we experience a heartbreak? | It works very similarly to withdrawal. I'm not a psych major and I can't get into all the chemicals involved in the process but I know that being in love is, to your mind at least, much like being on drugs (I think one study even showed that being in love activates the same parts of your brain as cocaine?). It activates reward centers and you start to want it more and more because, like drugs, the feelings you associate with the state can be very addicting. Also like drugs, the separation can be very taxing on the brain.
Tl;dr - I'm no expert, but being in a breakup is like being addicted to cocaine but then cocaine tells you that your hairline sucks and your life is going no where and then riding off to be snorted by someone- anyone else | [
"In severe cases, the depression of a broken heart can create a sustained type of stress that constitutes an emotional trauma which can be severe enough to leave an emotional imprint on individuals' psychobiological functioning, affecting future choices and responses to rejection, loss, or disconnection. A contribu... |
Was there any international outcry over the American coup in Hawaii and annexing it? | Just to start with the very last bit of the last question, there were *Japanese* internment camps on Hawaii.
If you read a bit on [the Hawaiian internment](_URL_0_), you might get a better sense of the context informing the rest of your question.
An excerpt from that page:
> Given its strategic location in the middle of Pacific Ocean, the Hawaiian Islands had long been seen as a key American military outpost. Not long after larger numbers of Japanese laborers began to migrate to Hawai‘i beginning in 1885, Japan began to emerge as a military threat to the United States. By the early years of the 20th century, many believed that Japan and the United States were on a collision course to war. At the same time, the Japanese population in Hawai‘i continued to grow; by 1920, Japanese immigrants and their descendants made up over 40% of the population of Hawai‘i. This combination of circumstances alarmed many: what would this large Japanese population in Hawai‘i do in the event of war between the United States and Japan?
>
> Beginning the late 1920s and continuing through the 1930s, various U.S. governmental bodies conducted studies and made plans to address this question. As a result of this planning, detailed lists were produced that allowed local authorities to swiftly arrest several hundred local Japanese within 48 hours of the attack, after the declaration of martial law.
So there'd been a Japanese population living and working there for a few decades. They weren't the only folks from elsewhere who were on the islands.
One of the lesser-known things about Hawaii was that in the early-to-mid 1800s, it was... well, not exactly *colonized*, but heavily under the influence of Russia, part of the same fur- and whale-trade that saw Russian colonies founded in Alaska. (I believe the Russians were getting fur from sea otters and seals in Hawaii.)
There was actually some talk of Tsar Aleksander I ["extending his protection" over the Hawaiian Islands](_URL_1_), but he never did.
Russia's fortunes in the New World, to a degree, turned on a misstep in Hawaii, when a [German doctor employed by the Russian-American Company](_URL_2_) tried to instigate a Russian conquest. He built [a few forts](_URL_3_) on Kaua'i... and that was about it.
Schaeffer signed an agreement with a king or high chief named Kaumualiʻi, who was a leader of Kuai'i but a rival of King Kamehameha, who was uniting all the islands, and who refused to sign anything giving Russians authority in Hawaii. Kaumuali'i had already more or less surrendered to Kamehameha, and might have hoped the Russians could help him get his island back. They couldn't, or didn't really want to.
In part, the Russians were losing interest in Hawaii - and in America in general - because of unsustainable hunting practices. Otters, whales and seals all went from really plentiful to quite hard to find at all over the course of the 19th century.
| [
"Following the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii, the forces behind the coup established the Provisional Government but with the hope of a speedy annexation by the United States. The provisional government sent a commission including Lorrin A. Thurston to the United States and negotiated a treaty with President Be... |
why does dental pain feel worse when lying down? | Your blood pressure increases in your head when you're horizontal. | [
"Non-dental sources of pain often cause multiple teeth to hurt and have an epicenter that is either above or below the jaws. For instance, cardiac pain (which can make the bottom teeth hurt) usually radiates up from the chest and neck, and sinusitis (which can make the back top teeth hurt) is worsened by bending ov... |
In the Revolutionary War, how did British troops lose Boston so quickly when they had an iron hold over New York? | The answer is actually fairly straight forward. The Continental Army managed to get artillery on the Dorchester heights above the city. Henry Knox and his men hauled them overland from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston. The position of the guns threatened the Navy in the harbor and was above the range of heavy guns on the ships. The British considered contesting the heights but the Americans outnumbered them by this point and there was a heavy snow storm. The British decided to leave, and pledged not to torch the city if the Americans didn't fire on the ships while they embarked.
The situation in New York, with two large rivers on both sides of the city and the Americans unable to prevent British landings in force, was quite different. | [
"The major event in the Boston area in the first year of the American Revolution was the Siege of Boston from 19 April 1775 to 17 March 1776. The Continental Army under George Washington besieged British forces in the city. The British built several forts as a result, notably on Governor's Island and Noddle's Islan... |
why are bricks stacked the way they are rather than just one directly on top of the other? | By staggering them the weak grout seams are minimized in the vertical direction, making the wall somewhat stronger. | [
"Bricks may also be classified as \"solid\" (less than 25% perforations by volume, although the brick may be \"frogged,\" having indentations on one of the longer faces), \"perforated\" (containing a pattern of small holes through the brick, removing no more than 25% of the volume), \"cellular\" (containing a patte... |
Are people with Congenital Insensitivity to Pain (CIP) unable to feel emotional pain in the same way they are unable to feel physical pain? | [Congenital analgesia](_URL_0_) is a disorder of the peripheral nervous system where the sodium channels in nociceptor cells have a mutation. So it’s an issue with the sensory input, not with the brain’s ability to process pain.
Also, can you link the Eisenberger study? I’m curious how emotional pain was operationally defined and what exactly they determined about its neurological similarity to physical pain. | [
"Young individuals who have callous and unemotional traits (CU) exhibit an overall lack of empathy. It has been thought that if a person experiences pain empathy they will be less likely to hurt others, since people that experience pain empathy have distress when another person is hurt.\n",
"There is evidence tha... |
the ellen show keeps showing "psychics." what makes it all bullshit? | The fact that psychics can't do what they say they can do is what makes it all bullshit. | [
"It is the opinion of scientific skeptics that mediumship is a con, and that what is portrayed in this TV show is no exception. After initially publicizing the local show, Onward State published an article, \"Psychic Mediums Like Monica Ten-Kate Are Lying Frauds: A Retraction\", which provided a detailed critique o... |
Do gravitational waves really all travel at the same speed? | From a bosonic point of view, the gravitational field quanta must be massless due to the infinite range of its force. It's harder to answer the question of speed in terms of stress-energy tensors (due to gravity being a specific geometry) but gauge field theory suggests that all massless particles (bosons/fermions) all travel at the speed of light, and so far we've found no exceptions to the postulates of Einstein's special relativity. | [
"In October 2017, the LIGO and Virgo detectors received gravitational wave signals within 2 seconds of gamma ray satellites and optical telescopes seeing signals from the same direction. This confirmed that the speed of gravitational waves was the same as the speed of light.\n",
"Gravitational waves exist and tra... |
Is the form of a galaxy influenced by the black hole in its middle? | There are many things that determine the morphology of a galaxy, one of them being the black hole at its core. There is a well known relationship between the mass of the black hole and the mass of a galactic bulge- namely a spherical conglomeration of stars in the middle of the Galaxy. Black hole mass is correlated with other aspects of the Galaxy too besides the bulge mass, namely the luminosity (and velocity dispersion but never mind).
Furthermore the black hole can also feed off nearby gas and grow. In the process of ingesting ambient material, the black hole can cause massive outflows of super hot relativistic gas - like a fountain - basically spraying plasma into the universe. This gas can heat the environment well beyond the Galaxy disc to millions of degrees inhibiting the future condensation of gas into stars. The effect of black hole heating can be to suppress the formation of new stars meaning that the Galaxy will appear older and redder lacking young newly formed young blue stars. Although this process (known as "feedback") can be short in duration, the effect can be dramatic and cause what's know as an active galactic nucleus or even quasars. | [
"The inner nucleus of this galaxy displays a rise in stellar orbital motion that indicates the presence of a central dark mass. The best fit model for the motion of molecular gas in the core region suggests there is a supermassive black hole with about (450 million) times the mass of the Sun. This is the first obje... |
why does cold water make razor blades last longer? | First of all, are we *sure* that this isn't just an urban legend?
That said, I can think of an idea: hot tap water contains more minerals, which can either deposit crud on the blade, or corrode it. | [
"Safety razors are usually made of razor steel which is a low chromium stainless steel which can be made extremely sharp, but corrodes relatively easily. Safety razor life may be extended by drying the blades after use. Salts from human skin also tend to corrode the blades, but washing and carefully drying them can... |
what the us holds against the palestinian state? | Well as usual with a question potentially related to the Israel Palestine conflict there are at least two answers to provide if we intend to be "textbook fair" I suppose the answer one would get from an American or Israeli official is that the USA doesn't have any problem with Palestine as long as Palestine respects Israel's right to exist and brings about peace with Israel through bilateral negotiations. Which would mean peace on Israel's terms.
The other answer would be that there are roughly thirteen and a half million Jewish people in the world and many of them hold very strong opinions on this issue. There are about five million in Israel, maybe five and a half, and about the same in America. The Jewish people in America have done very well in business and contribute a lot to the economy and as such they have very powerful lobby groups and hold many important positions in government. They're well connected is where I'm going with this I guess. So when they say "jump" to a US president, he either jumps or he doesn't win the next election so easily.
On top of being well connected in the media and in politics a lot of people have a lot of sympathy for the Jews seeing them as the victims of a great deal of terrible racism and persecution over the years and want to help them as much as they can, even if the Israeli Jews aren't in the right or are unnecessarily cruel to the Palestinians the world and the US in particular are used to thinking of the Jews as victims and anyone who disagrees with them as evil fascists, when this is of course not the case.
Edit: criticism taken on board, adding the words "so easily" after "he jumps or he doesn't win the election" | [
"A report Palestinian Media Watch presented to the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs in 2008 indicated that the Palestinian Authority was engaging with enemies of the United States on a shared platform of hatred toward the U.S. The report argued that under such circumstances the creation of an indepe... |
how do gut bacteria actually make it to your intestines with the hydrochloric acid produced by the stomach in the way? | The hydrochloric acid in your stomach is usually heavily diluted in the first place, and only long-term exposure can erode their membrane away. Most, however, reside in your gut lining, which has a nice, thick layer of mucus to protect then from your stomach fluids. Some of the mucus gets washed down when the contents of your stomach move from your stomach to the small intestine, where bile acts as a general transmitter for bacteria to your large intestine. Basically, your gut bacteria spreads throughout your GIT due to pure luck. Pretty good luck for the both of you, too, because you have a mutual symbiotic relationship. | [
"Intestinal bacteria convert the conjugated bilirubin that is excreted by the bile duct into the intestine into urobilinogen and stercobilinogen. Part of the urobilinogen is reabsorbed in the intestine then circulated in the blood to the liver where it is excreted. A small part of this recirculated urobilinogen is ... |
If we were in a nearby star system, would SETI be able to detect our radio waves? | If we take some directed emissions in the right direction and assume we are lucky to look in the right direction at the right wavelength at the right time, we could detect "ourselves" over something like tens of light years, maybe a bit more if we are really lucky. There are about 2000 stars less than 50 light years away, so it is not impossible, but very unlikely. Take the non-directed emissions and broader searches and we would miss "us". | [
"In October 2015, the SETI Institute used the Allen Telescope Array to look for radio emissions from possible intelligent extraterrestrial life in the vicinity of the star. After an initial two-week survey, the SETI Institute reported that it found no evidence of technology-related radio signals from the star syste... |
What does 'locality' mean in terms of quantum physics? | As is often the case in physics, locality is a concrete mathematical property which is always going to lose some accuracy/correctness when expressed in words and qualitatives, as physics is at its core nothing but a quantitative mathematical model.
So I don't know if one can express locality in a "100%-no-math" way while still being an accurate and correct description. But I think locality can be expressed, perhaps, in a "math-lite" way, so let's try to do that.
The principle of locality can be expressed in a few different - though quite related - ways, but I'm just going to explain the most straightforward way of expressing it. In this way, it amounts to a restriction on how and in what way a present state of a system is mathematically allowed to depend on the state of the same system at an earlier time.
Let's imagine how something like a scalar field behaves in time. A "scalar field" is just math talk for basically just a function f(x,y,z,t), meaning that for every point in space (x,y,z) and time (t) there is some number f assigned. It is a "field", i.e. something that assigns a mathematical object to every point x,y,z,t, and that mathematical object in this case is a "scalar", i.e. just a number (rather than a vector or tensor or whatever). Thus "scalar" "field". An example of a scalar field might be the temperature in the room you're in, we could call it a "the temperature scalar field" and for every point in your room and at a given time there's a defined temperature associated with that point in space and time (say 20 degrees Celsius). We might call this field, in math language: T(x,y,z,t) which means it's an object that you plug in an input of an "x", a "y", a "z" and a "t" and it returns the temperature "T" at that point and time.
So what does it mean for this temperature field to obey "local" laws of physics? Well let's imagine I want to determine what the temperature at a specific point (x0,y0,z0) will be at that same spot but at a time that is just the tiniest bit in the future. If we say the present is t0 then I want to know what "T" will be at the point (x0,y0,z0) but at the time t0+dt where "dt" just means "a small amount" (an infinitesimal time later, if you know calculus, if you don't it doesn't matter).
So this is the question, if I want to know T(x0,y0,z0,t0+dt) what do I need to know about T(x,y,z,t0). Now keep in mind what I mean here, T(x,y,z,t) (x,y,z,t are general variables, not specific values like x0,y0,z0,t0) means complete knowledge of "T" at all points in space and time, like I'm a temperature omniscient deity. But the question I'm asking if I only want to know the value of the temperature at ONE SPECIFIC point in space and time, how much do I need to know about T. Do I need to know the temperature everywhere at t0, i.e. do I need to know T at x0+2000 km or at z0-3,000,000 km, do I need to know T(x,y,z,t0) for ALL values of x,y and z that can exist? Everywhere at all times? Or only some places in t0? etc.
If the temperature scalar field obeys "locality" then what it means is that the laws of how temperature changes in time are such that if I want to know T(x0,y0,z0,t0+dt) I ONLY need to know the temperature at that same point a moment earlier T(x0,y0,z0,t0) AND the temperature at points that are immediately next to that point:T(x0+dx,y0,z0), T(x0-dx,y0,z0), T(x0,y0+dy,z0),T(x0,y0-dy,z0), and so on (where dx,dy,dz means a "tiny bit in that direction"). In a local theory, the value of at T(x,y,z,t) only depends on the value of T at the same point a moment before as well as its value in some very tiny neighbourhood in its vicinity. It doesn't depend on T anywhere else but that small neighbourhood.
That's what is meant by "locality". If you know your calculus it can be pretty succinctly be described as: the value of T(x0,y0,z0,t0) can only depend on derivatives of T(x,y,z,t) evaluated at (x0,y0,z0,t0) and on external functions (like an external potential) evaluated at (x0,y0,z0,t0). It can't depend on anything else.
So a non-local theory basically has laws dictating its dynamics such that T(x0,y0,z0,t0+dt) depend on the complete knowledge of T(x,y,z,t0) (i.e. you need to know the temperature everywhere in the universe at time t0 to calculate what "T" will be at the point x0,y0,z0 and a time t0+dt). If you know Calculus then T(x,y,z,t) might depend on term like integral(T(x,y,z,t)*g(x2,y2,z2,t), integrate over all (x2,y2,z2)) (you can safely ignore this if it means nothing to you).
So, in a local temperature theory, if I want to know the temperature in Paris in 1 second, I only need to know the temperature of the air at paris currently and maybe the immediate vicinity. Note that the point here is that 1 second is small, if I want to know the temperature of paris in 4 weeks the "neighbourhood" I need to consider may very well grow to be quite large, likely the whole planet, but that's fine and has to do with the FINITE SPEED with which two temperature points T(x0,y0,z0,t0) and T(x1,y1,z1,t0+ 4 weeks) can be causally linked. In a non-local temperature theory, in order to know the temperature of Paris in the next second I don't just need to know Paris' current temperature but also the temperature in Alpha Centauri and Delaware.
| [
"The word locality has several different meanings in physics. For example, in quantum field theory \"locality\" means that quantum fields at different points of space do not interact with one another. However, quantum field theories that are \"local\" in this sense \"appear\" to violate the principle of locality as... |
the point of volts, amps, ohms, etc... | Amps, ohms, and volts are all related to each other through the equation V = IR. r stands for resistance (measured in ohms), I stands for current (amps) and v for voltage (volts). If you increase voltage, your resistance or current must decrease proportionally to match, and so on for any other changes within a circuit. If you have a higher current, you need a larger diameter wire than an equivalent circuit with a lower current and higher resistance/voltage.
Generally you probably won't care about this stuff directly affecting you unless like, you're traveling to a different country that has outlets with different voltage outputs than where you live (you would need to find the proper adapter or new charger cables for your items), or if you're trying to replace a power cable for a laptop or anything else with a mini transformer in it.
Different pieces of equipment have different needs when it comes to these variables. Xray equipment needs high voltage transformers between the power company and the xray machine, for instance, but a regular TV or household appliance does just fine plugged into a normal outlet. You need to know what your equipment requires as far as power/electricity in order to make sure you don't irreparably damage it or the circuitry within your house/company/whatever. | [
"The volt (symbol: V) is the derived unit for electric potential, electric potential difference (voltage), and electromotive force. It is named after the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta (1745–1827).\n",
"The ampere ( or (UK), symbol: A), often shortened to \"amp\", is the base unit of electric current in the I... |
what do the numbers for my eye prescription mean. for example, my left eye is -6.0 and my right is -5.75 | The number is a measure of the optical power of the lenses in dioptres (the reciprocal of the focal length in meters). Essentially a positive number increases the optical power of your eye (which corrects for farsightedness) and a negative number decreases the optical power of your eye (which corrects for nearsightedness).
There are a few numbers that go along with the prescription:
- **Sphere** - This is the basic correction for your eye and what the bulk of the prescription is, measured in dioptres. If you just have a number listed for your prescription, it is almost certainly a measure of sphere. This effectively is a measure of what sort of spherical shape is added to the lens for correction.
- **Cylinder** - This is a correction for astigmatism present in your eye, measured in dioptres. Astigmatism is when light is focused at a different place vertically and horizontally, and results in shapes being blurred slightly in an oval. This effectively is a measure of any cylindrical shape added to the lens (which would add optical power in one direction but not for the other, rather than in every orientation like a sphere).
- **Axis** - This is a measure of the orientation of the cylinder part of your prescription, measured in degrees (0-180). Astigmatism can occur in any orientation in the eye, so this is always included with a cylinder prescription so the correction is in the right direction.
- **Prism** - This is a measure of a prism-like shape that would get added to the lens which would move the position of focus on the retina, and is measured in prism dioptres. This would be correction for if your eye focuses light offset from center of your retina, and is very rare to be included in a prescription (as it is only very rarely needed).
- **Base** - This is a measure of the direction that the prism corrects for, and would only be present when a prism prescription is present.
- **Add** - This is a measure of any additional optical power that is added to the lower part of the glasses when being used for bifocals, measured in optical power.
In your case if you only have a -6.0 and -5.75 on your prescription that means it is spherical power, and it is correcting for nearsightedness in both eyes (meaning without correction you can see things up close fine but things are blurry far away). | [
"The largest letter on an eye chart often represents an acuity of 6/60 (20/200), the value that is considered \"legally blind\" in the US. Some individuals with moderate myopia may not be able to read the large E without glasses, but have no problem reading the 6/6 (20/20) line or 6/4.5 (20/15) line with glasses. B... |
us army camouflage | Look at the camoflage on a zebra. They're black and white striped. The grass/environment they live in isn't black and white, its mainly yellow. You'd be surprised how difficult to spot they can be though!
The point of camoflage isn't to make you look exactly like the background, but to break up your body shape/silouette, to make you blend in.
Plus, if an enemy is close enough to tell your camoflage is pixelated, you're probably in trouble already. | [
"Operational Camouflage Pattern (OCP), originally codenamed Scorpion W2, is a military camouflage pattern adopted in the mid-2010s by the United States Army for use as the U.S. Army's main camouflage pattern on uniforms. This pattern is in the process of replacing the U.S. Army's previous Universal Camouflage Patte... |
Why was Pompey described as 'the new Alexander the Great'? | Pompey certainly earned the comparison to Alexander, especially with the Pirate Command, but the title "the Great" popped up very early and in a not exactly flattering way.
When Sulla returned from his war against Mithridates in the East (82 BCE), he marched from Brundisium north to Rome, displacing the generals of (the now dead) Marius' party and gathering his own supporters along the way. Among these supporters was a young Pompey who raised troops himself and put them at Sulla's service. Sulla sent Pompey first to Sicily and then Africa to displace Marian forces in the provinces (exterminating the Marian party would take until 72 - Sertorius was a slippery opponent in Spain and only done away with by conspiracy of his own officers, even though Pompey got the credit). After Pompey dispatched the Marians in Africa, Sulla ordered the return of the army, but not the general, who was to wait for his replacement. Plutarch says Pompey's troops didn't take that well (we can guess who really didn't take it well) and would only return with Pompey. Sulla, according to Plutarch, who had the man's memoirs so is as well informed as anyone could be expected to be, thought Pompey might have been in rebellion himself. Sulla had also had trouble with Marius' nephew Marius Gratidianus, and Sulla was joking about being an old man fighting young mens' wars (the young men being Pompey and the younger Marius). When Pompey returned from Africa with his troops instead of remaining as ordered, Sulla greeted him as "Magnus" "the Great" in what seems to me (I think that's an honest reading of what Plutarch presents) an attempt to diffuse both the possible insurrection and what we might call the "optics" of the situation.
[Here's](_URL_0_) Plutarch on that moment:
> Sulla's first tidings of the affair were that Pompey was in revolt, and he told his friends that it was evidently his fate, now that he was an old man, to have his contests with boys. This he said because Marius also, who was quite a young man, had given him very great trouble and involved him in the most extreme perils. But when he learned the truth, and perceived that everybody was sallying forth to welcome Pompey and accompany him home with marks of goodwill, he was eager to outdo them. So he went out and met him, and after giving him the warmest welcome, saluted him in a loud voice as "Magnus," or The Great, and ordered those who were by to give him this surname. Others, however, say that this title was first given him in Africa by the whole army, but received authority and weight when thus confirmed by Sulla. Pompey himself, however, was last of all to use it, and it was only after a long time, when he was sent as pro-consul to Spain against Sertorius, that he began to subscribe himself in his letters and ordinances "Pompeius Magnus"; for the name had become familiar and was no longer invidious.
There are some other interesting comments made at that meeting. Pompey asked for a triumph, which was a shocking request for a fucking 20-something kid that hadn't even held elected office. Sulla said no, and Pompey said something about more people worshipping the rising than the setting sun, and Sulla changed his mind. Tacitus reports that Tiberius and Caligula repeated nearly this conversation with that exact phrase involved, and I'm not sure what to think about that yet, but the moment seems to have had significant cultural weight. Pompey did celebrate his triumph, and had his triumphal chariots drawn by ele-fucking-phants, which didn't fit through the gate of the city and he had to resort to horses. [Profanity is completely appropriate for what Pompey was up to]
Plutarch goes out of his way to point out that "Magnus" was a ROMAN and not GREEK honorific, indicating the precedents of Valerius and Fabius who earned the name "Maximus" and not necessarily for only martial virtues. So not only was the comparison to Alexander first made as something of a joke, but the ancients knew it wasn't fitting when it was made and attempted to justify the title by comparisons to other people.
Many years later Pompey did conquer the East after Rome fought a number of wars with Mithridates of Pontus, and he reorganized eastern political geography, including entering the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem. By the time Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 Pompey was by far Rome's most accomplished general since Scipio, and probably deserved to be ranked with Alexander as a great commander. | [
"Alexander earned the epithet \"the Great\" due to his unparalleled success as a military commander. He never lost a battle, despite typically being outnumbered. This was due to use of terrain, phalanx and cavalry tactics, bold strategy, and the fierce loyalty of his troops. The Macedonian phalanx, armed with the s... |
Happy New Year! As it is now 2014, the outward limit of the 'twenty-year rule' in AskHistorians has ticked ahead once more -- let's talk about 1994. | 1994 was a good year for movies. Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, The Shawshank Redemption, Leon: The Professional and Lion King came out that year. | [
"BULLET::::- \"18 Months\" re-entered the top 10 at number 7 on 5 January 2013 (week ending) for 7 weeks, at number 8 on 4 May 2013 (week ending) for 2 weeks, at number 8 on 27 July 2013 (week ending) and at number 8 on 24 August 2013 (week ending) for 2 weeks.\n",
"BULLET::::- \"18 Months\" re-entered the top 10... |
why do cameras “freak out” when they are recording someone with a striped pattern on their clothing? | I'm not sure what you mean, exactly. If you're talking about that trippy pattern that shimmers and moves over a striped pattern as the camera moves, that's a [Moiré pattern](_URL_0_). It's a sort of optical illusion that happens when you look at a striped pattern through some material that is also striped, and the stripes are at an angle to each other. For instance, if you have two bits of window screen and place one over the other, you'll see this pattern. The reason that you sometimes see it on TV is that TV images are made up of colored dots ("pixels") in a grid. Looking at an image on TV is like looking at a scene through a fine window-screen... so when there is a striped pattern in the scene, you can get that Moiré pattern. | [
"Photographs of a TV screen taken with a digital camera often exhibit moiré patterns. Since both the TV screen and the digital camera use a scanning technique to produce or to capture pictures with horizontal scan lines, the conflicting sets of lines cause the moiré patterns. To avoid the effect, the digital camera... |
Is there a limit with telescopes? | The biggest intrinsic limitation of a telescope's resolving power is the angular resolution that its optical components are capable of. The [angular resolution](_URL_0_) is the smallest angular distance between two sources of light, for which the system will see two distinct sources rather than one blob. In principle the resolution can be increased by increasing the size of the collecting lens in the telescope, however in practice you will be limited by [optical aberrations](_URL_1_) (i.e. imperfections in the imaging system), as well as the sheer physical size of the system.
[This cartoon](_URL_3_) helps to visualize what angular distance is and how it is related to angular size. In short the idea is that what determines whether you can resolve two features (and how well you can see them) is not just their actual separation in terms of distance, but the angle that separates them. For large separations, the angular distance (A) between two features is A=r/R, where r is the physical separation of the objects and R is the distance between the observer and the object.
This angular resolution (a) of a telescope in turn is limited by [diffraction](_URL_2_) and can be expressed as a=1.22\*l/D, where l is the wavelength of the light and D is the diameter of the lens. In other words, the angular resolution of the telescope is fixed by its physical parameters, especially the size of an aperture. So putting the two ideas together, if you are looking at a faraway object then its features will have an angular size A=r/R, and the smallest angular distance between two objects that your system can detect is a=1.22\*l/D. So in order to see what diameter of a lens you would need to observe a feature of size r at a distance R away, you would set a equal to A and solve for D giving:
D = 1.22l\*R/r
So let's take your example of sand on Mars. Let us say you are trying to observe grains of sand that have a center to center distance of abut 1mm and let's say we are detecting visible light (e.g. 500nm). The last thing we need is the distance from Earth to Mars, for which we can take the most optimistic scenario of closest approach, which is a separation of 50 million km. Going through the math, you get a lens diameter of 30,000km, which is more than twice the diameter of the entire Earth. | [
"For large ground-based telescopes, the resolution is limited by atmospheric seeing. This limit can be overcome by placing the telescopes above the atmosphere, e.g., on the summits of high mountains, on balloon and high-flying airplanes, or in space. Resolution limits can also be overcome by adaptive optics, speckl... |
Is it worth it to get higher quality gas? | Higher octanes don't exist because they are "better". They are just different. You should use the octane that is recommended for your engine, which it will say in your manual. Using a higher octane fuel than what is recommended for your engine won't be beneficial.
source with more detail: _URL_0_ | [
"The impurities need to be removed before this lower-quality crude can be refined into petrol, thereby increasing the cost of processing. This results in a higher-priced gasoline than that made from sweet crude oil. \n",
"Sales of gas liquids were seldom difficult because of their ready use in oil refining. Refin... |
Is it true that the bible was not translated into different langauges for most of the middle ages? | As Frans van Liere succinctly puts it in *An Introduction to the Medieval Bible* (Cambridge 2014),
> Contrary to popular perception, there was no blanket prohibition against biblical translation in the vernacular in the middle ages. (p 203)
I've [written on this subject a bit before](_URL_0_), the relevant part here:
> > Why was translating the bible considered heretical in the middle ages?
>
> It wasn't. For the most part translation of bibles into vernacular - whether French, German, Dutch, English, etc - was carried on without comment from ecclesiastics during the middle ages. When it *did* become an issue we find that it is results *from* accusations of heresy (or heretical interpretation contained therein), and not production as a heresy in and of itself. So, prohibitions on vernacular bibles in Toulouse and other places in southern France during the 13th century were related to stamping out heresy there; likewise, the German Emperor of the 14th century Charles IV in his famous outlawing of vernacular literature was aimed at heretical sermonizing and pamphletizing; and again, edicts against literature of the Beguines in the Lowlands and the Lollards in England in the late middle ages had to do with the *content* of preaching and not being in vernacular per se. In fact in 1199 Pope Innocent III instructed (although it was not always followed) the following to priests and bishops when there is suspicion of 'troubling behaviour' due to heretical beliefs incorporated in vernacular writings:
>
> > Inquire and find out the truth: who was the translator of that translation, what was the intention of the translator, what do its users believe, why do they teach, and do they uphold the apostolic see and the catholic faith?
Answering further, we should also dispose of the idea that the bible was always presented and used as one book, or even in a form close to what we would recognize today. Most experiences of the bible, in particular in the vernacular, were fragmentary or paraphrased, whether latin or vernacular. They could even have been rewritten in prose or poetry. 'Christianity' and 'the Bible' were not static objects of worship as they are now, they were the basis of culture, the stories people grew up with hearing and telling. Mileage may vary on the accuracy of the stories told, or of how much they mix with other parts of culture. | [
"The Latin Vulgate was dominant in Western Christianity through the Middle Ages. Since then, the Bible has been translated into many more languages. English Bible translations also have a rich and varied history of more than a millennium.\n",
"The most notable Middle English Bible translation, Wycliffe's Bible (1... |
Did historians know of Tutankhamun before the discovery of his tomb? | Carl Richard Lepsius, an German Egyptologist who was in Egypt 1843-46 on a scientific expedition, and documented well it with hundreds of line drawings of incriptions, papyrii, maps etc. in *Denkmaeler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien*, an outstanding work, still relevant to this day as there are many incriptions that has been lost since then.
Tutankhamun's name can be found in a couple places, like this: [III, 115](_URL_0_)
So yeah, his name was known some 170 years ago, but probably not much else. | [
"Theodore M. Davis's team uncovered a small site containing funerary artifacts with Tutankhamun's name and some embalming parts in 1907, just before his discovery of the tomb of Horemheb. Davis erroneously assumed that this site was Tutankhamun's complete tomb and concluded the dig. The details of both findings are... |
Why was Russia never able to build a great automobile industry? | Some clarification in this question is needed here. Are you asking why the Soviet Union did not create its own automobile industry or are you inquiring about the automobile industry of the Russian federation after the breakup of the USSR?
The answers to either question are going to be very different and in the latter case, bump up against the twenty-year rule a little. | [
"However, another automotive manufacturing project of late 1920s & early 30s – the GAZ plant, built with the assistance of Ford Motor Company – proved to be a success, with a designed capacity to produce up to 250...300 thousand cars and trucks annually. The use of a readily available foreign technology allowed Rus... |
why do presidents seem to dissappear from politics after their term ends? | US President is the highest office in the nation. Once you've been President, you can command many thousands of dollars in speaking fees, you can open your library, you can publish your memoirs and make more money, you receive a pension of $200,000 per year - why would you want to stay in politics?
Anyways, they don't all retire from politics. Harry Truman stayed active for years, campaigning for Democrat Senate candidates. | [
"A president elected to a second term is sometimes seen as a lame duck from early in the second term, since term limits prevent them from contesting re-election four years later. However, not personally having to face the electorate again makes a second-term president more powerful than they were in their first ter... |
the ending of the movie 2001: a space odyssey | Here it is straight from the mouth of the director:
_URL_0_
**GELMIS: The final scenes of the film seemed more metaphorical than realistic. Will you discuss them -- or would that be part of the "road map" you're trying to avoid?**
> KUBRICK: No, I don't mind discussing it, on the lowest level, that is, straightforward explanation of the plot. You begin with an artifact left on earth four million years ago by extraterrestrial explorers who observed the behavior of the man-apes of the time and decided to influence their evolutionary progression. Then you have a second artifact buried deep on the lunar surface and programmed to signal word of man's first baby steps into the universe -- a kind of cosmic burglar alarm. And finally there's a third artifact placed in orbit around Jupiter and waiting for the time when man has reached the outer rim of his own solar system. When the surviving astronaut, Bowman, ultimately reaches Jupiter, this artifact sweeps him into a force field or star gate that hurls him on a journey through inner and outer space and finally transports him to another part of the galaxy, where he's placed in a human zoo approximating a hospital terrestrial environment drawn out of his own dreams and imagination. In a timeless state, his life passes from middle age to senescence to death. He is reborn, an enhanced being, a star child, an angel, a superman, if you like, and returns to earth prepared for the next leap forward of man's evolutionary destiny. That is what happens on the film's simplest level. Since an encounter with an advanced interstellar intelligence would be incomprehensible within our present earthbound frames of reference, reactions to it will have elements of philosophy and metaphysics that have nothing to do with the bare plot outline itself.
**GELMIS: What are those areas of meaning?**
> KUBRICK: They are the areas I prefer not to discuss because they are highly subjective and will differ from viewer to viewer. In this sense, the film becomes anything the viewer sees in it. If the film stirs the emotions and penetrates the subconscious of the viewer, if it stimulates, however inchoately, his mythological and religious yearnings and impulses, then it has succeeded. (Gelmis, The Film Director as Superstar, 1970, p. 304.) | [
"2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The screenplay was written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, and was inspired by Clarke's short story \"The Sentinel\". An , written concurrently with the screenplay, was published soon after the film was released. T... |
how people are so distracted from space exploration and technologies? | There are many, many interesting things in the world. Space exploration is just one of them. Lots of very clever people are busy working on different problems.
The majority of the population, though, just isn't interested in science and space, and would rather sit at home watching soap operas.
As for the few people left who *are* interested in space exploration, money is the biggest problem. Space exploration is expensive, and unlikely to provide any return for an investor for the foreseeable future. | [
"BULLET::::- \"Yoshio Itagaki makes us aware of a shift in public attitude toward space science and exploration that you might not have noticed, because it occurred gradually. Thirty years ago, space travel was still adventurous and even heroic. Now it's so routine that we hardly notice when a space shuttle takes o... |
What effect did the Nuremberg trials have on the U.S. Supreme Court during that period? | They heard cases without him, using the same procedures for cases when a justice recuses him/herself. For instance, Girouard v. United States (1946) was argued and decided (5-3) without Jackson's participation since he missed the entire October 1945 term. I don't have a list of cases from that term, but Supreme Court deadlocks at 4-4 mean the decision of the next lowest court is upheld.
From [the Robert H. Jackson Center:](_URL_0_)
"Jackson’s acceptance of President Truman’s request in 1945 to become the U.S. chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Nazi War Crimes Trials, and his subsequent absence from the Court for an entire term, compounded his difficulties with his colleagues – not to mention the business of the Court, which had to operate with eight justices and the attendant all-too-present danger of 4:4 tie votes of which were a score." | [
"The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany.\n",
"The Nuremberg trials () were a series of military tribunals ... |
Since pi is and irrational number, it goes on forever. How do we know the sequence of pi beyond what current technology computes? | Here's an algorithm that can compute the n-th digit of pi without computing the preceding digits.
[_URL_0_](_URL_1_) | [
"Pi certainly seems to behave this way. In the first six billion decimal places of pi, each of the digits from 0 through 9 shows up about six hundred million times. Yet such results, conceivably accidental, do not prove normality even in base 10, much less normality in other number bases.\n",
"In August 1995, the... |
why are the conservative republicans afraid of the the tea party republicans? | For several years now the Republican Party has been dividing into two groups, Establishment and Tea Party (it's a bit of an oversimplification, but it gets the point across). The Establishment is guys like John McCain, John Beohner, etc. that have money, power, sat on the Hill for a while, and like the way they do business.
The Tea Party candidates are mostly people who are new to politics, do not want to do business the way the Establishment does. They're usually younger, less willing to compromise, and more conservative (especially on issues like taxes and border security).
The Establishment (what you call Conservative Republicans in your question) doesn't like the Tea Party because they don't fall in line when voting comes around. Boehner wants to pass an immigration reform bill that compromises with the President so Republicans can possibly drum up some support among Latino voters. The Tea Party candidates don't care whether they get more support from Latino voters, they don't want an immigration reform compromise that that doesn't start with enforcement of current laws and border security.
And the Tea Party (which should be noted are simply a faction of the Republican Party) has gotten big enough that they can actually stop a bill from passing. Even more than that, they don't care about Republican seats on the House and Senate, they'll run agains fellow Republicans...and they topple VERY powerful guys like Eric Cantor. | [
"The party mood was glum in 2013 and one conservative analyst concluded: It would be no exaggeration to say that the Republican Party has been in a state of panic since the defeat of Mitt Romney, not least because the election highlighted American demographic shifts and, relatedly, the party's failure to appeal to ... |
what causes the occasionally visible electricity when you plug things in? | If the thing you're plugging in draws a lot of current, then there will be a brief spark where there's enough connection to transfer electricity but there's not enough metal-metal contact to make it a efficient, low resistance connection. The metal right at the connection point gets hot and you get a little bit of a spark.
This is common in things like laptop power supplies that have big filter capacitors in them that draw a lot of current when first plugged in. You'd see the same if you plugged in a big resistive heater while it the power switch was on. That's why i'ts recommended to make sure things like that are off before you plug them in to help eliminate sparking and arcing and power surges. | [
"Because the surface of the material is now electrically charged, either negatively or positively, any contact with an uncharged conductive object or with an object having substantially different charge may cause an electrical discharge of the built-up static electricity: a spark. A person simply walking across a c... |
Is the average life expectancy thought to cap off at some point? | Some say that average longevity and outlier maximal longevity can grow indefinitely with future technology. I think it would be foolish to predict that eventual scientific discoveries *cannot* find ways to repair and replace body parts allowing extraordinary longevity. Already we do see evidence for an increase in outliers (at least in terms of numbers with age at death over 100 or 110), although in most parts of the world we don't have very good birth/death records for a long period of time to see if the rate of supercentenarians is indeed increasing. It's hard to do statistics on the record age because there are so few data points and many are unreliable, especially as one goes back in time. It could go to the point where humans are like plants, replacing parts and keeping on growing indefinitely, but I don't believe the folks who say our generation will be the first to achieve it. | [
"Some of the authors of the 2004 UN report say that life expectancy is assumed to rise slowly and continuously. The projections in the report assume this with no upper limit, though at a slowing pace depending on circumstances in individual countries. By 2100, the report assumed life expectancy to be from 66 to 97 ... |
What population impacts were observed from adding iodine to table salt? | The sudden bioavailability of normal iodine levels in some individuals with chronic iodine deficiency and the resultant nodular goiter caused overproduction of thyroxin leading to hyperthyroidism – a condition called iodine-induced thyrotoxicosis.
There is a downloadable version of the paper at [this link](_URL_0_). | [
"A 2017 study found that the introduction of iodized salt in 1924 raised the IQ for the one-quarter of the population most deficient in iodine. These findings \"can explain roughly one decade’s worth of the upward trend in IQ in the United States (the Flynn effect)\". The study also found \"a large increase in thyr... |
why don't they put high quality microphones/speakers in air planes? i've never been able to hear what the pilot is saying clearly. | A couple reasons:
1) Financial - If the current stuff works "well enough" that information is communicated between the tower and the plane, then it's enough to hear "Brace for impact" or something similar.
2) Noise! - Airplanes vibrate...a lot. The vibrations cause the microphones and speakers to become somewhat distorted, and those speakers are just good enough to relay critical information. They're not sending high quality radio through them :P
If you plug headphones into the plane you should hear the pilot "somewhat" more clearly. | [
"Microphones that work much like a stenomask are used by aircraft ground crews to communicate with cockpit crews in airport environments with extreme engine noise, and are usually part of their headsets.\n",
"In aviation audio systems the loudness of the sidetone heard in a helmet or headset may be adjusted to su... |
how the does a printer work? | There are a few different ways printers work.
Ink jet printers work by placing small drops of ink onto the paper. That's why when you print something like a color photo that the paper seems a bit damp when it comes out of the printer.
Laser printers work on a principal of static electricity. An actual laser shines in the drum on the toner cartridge creating a static electric charge. The drum turns, and toner sticks to the spots the laser hit on the toner drum. The toner then gets transferred from the drum to the paper using static electricity again. Finally goes through a part of the printer called the fuser that actually melts the toner onto the paper. That's why freshly printed pages from a laser printer feel a bit warm.
Finally there are plotters. These are printers that have actual ink pens in them. An apparatus grabs a pen and draws lines on the paper. Plotters used to be used quite a bit for line drawings, like schematics or building plans. They have been replaced by large ink jet printers for the most part. | [
"The printer commences by drawing a length of cloth, from the roll, over the table, and marks it with a piece of coloured chalk and a ruler to indicate where the first impression of the block is to be applied.\n",
"A print server, or printer server, is a device that connects printers to client computers over a ne... |
why are drugs that have no recreational use, such as a drug that you would get to treat a sinus infection, only available through prescription. | Im guessing youre talking about antibiotics. It would become a real issue if anyone at anytime could buy antibiotics when they have the sniffles. You see antibiotics ONLY work against bacteria, so if you dont have a bacterial infection they would be useless. Now it wouldnt be an issue if you were swallowing antibiotics and they wouldnt do anything but that is not the case. If you take antibiotics for shorter than your doctor recommended (even if youre feeling better take them as long as he/she told you) you increase the chance of basically breeding resistant bacteria in your body. | [
"Treatment with drugs that are extracts or synthetic variants of cannabis are not legal to use in health care with one small exception. Nabiximols, trade name Sativex, a cannabinoid oromucosal mouth spray, was approved in December 2011, for multiple sclerosis (MS); only on prescription as a third alternative to two... |
why is their so much abuse on online gaming? | One of the key factors is anonymity, just the fact that nobody knows you, unless you are playing with friends. People are much more likely to lash out at people and even verbally attack them when they know the other person more than likely can't do anything about it. It's even a way for shy people to become, at least somewhat, social. | [
"A further issue that can occur through gaming is online harassment or bullying behaviors. A specific example of harassing behavior occurring within a game can be found in Xbox Live services. With its online chat and party system, this leaves the service open to unwanted harassment, trolling, or bullying to occur b... |
why are many important historical artefacts locked away and rarely displayed even though they are very well protected (climate control boxes etc)? | The space to safely display important artifacts is much smaller than would be required to display all the archived artifacts. It's just too expensive to put everything on display and take care of it. | [
"Museum storage conditions are meant to protect the object and to minimize any deterioration. This often means keeping objects in a stable climate, preventing exposure to pests, minimizing any handling, and using only archival materials that will not deteriorate or harm the objects. Object safety also include provi... |
In the middle ages did people really have gold coins? | The mainstay of the early medieval English economy wasn't gold, but rather the silver penny. Gold coins *did* exist, but they were largely symbolic propaganda pieces like the [gold *mancus* of Ceolwulf](_URL_0_), one of only eight extant gold coins from prior to 1250. The *mancus* was part of a wider issue but one that was most likely given as a token of patronage to leading nobles and bishops in Ceolwulf's Mercia. On the other hand, English pennies were famed across Europe for the consistency of their silver content and their reliability. Coinage production was tightly regulated, and minting was regularly controlled to make sure the value of coinage remained consistent.
The day-to-day economy of early medieval England was actually monetised to a fairly extensive degree (see Keynes, *Kings, Currency and Alliances* and Naismith, *Money and Power in Anglo-Saxon England*); while barter was certainly still used to some extent, pennies were actively used for daily transactions. Many issues of coin were actually specifically designed so that they could be split into halfpennies and farthings to be used in transactions of a lesser value. The Grately law codes of Æthelstan from the 920s actually set a number of prices for livestock, although of course these are normative rather than necessarily actual values.
The numismatic evidence of coin finds across the country seen through databases like the Portable Antiquities Scheme and the Syllogue of English Medieval Coins also posits regular coin usage; while the majority of finds are from major hoards, there's a broad spread of single finds or 2-3 coin hoards (i.e. coins that could be expected to have been dropped accidentally, lost from a pocket or a dropped purse) across the country, and clustered around known early medieval settlements, that suggests people were carrying - and losing - coins as a matter of course.
E: As of Æthelstan's London (V) codex, a cow is valued at 20d, a pig at 10d and a sheep at 1 shilling (12d). An ox is valued at a *mancus* (approx. 120d), and a horse at also 10 shillings (120d). | [
"Gold coins were rarely minted in early medieval Western Europe, up until the later 13th century; silver and bronze were the metals of choice for money. Gold coins were almost continually produced by the Byzantines and medieval Arabs. These circulated in Western European trade in smallish numbers, originating from ... |
why is there a border crossing between hong kong and china since the british relinquished to the people's republic on china in 1997? | Hong Kong is considered a "special economic zone" by the Chinese government. Things which are illegal in China are often legal in Hong Kong. This legal barrier is somewhat of a propaganda problem for the Chinese government, as the special economic zones (Macau is also one) are in general more prosperous than most of the rest of the country.
So, to prevent ordinary Chinese citizens from being...peeved...at government restrictions, China just doesn't allow mainland Chinese folks to live or work in either of the SEZs. They have customs officials, different passports, their own governments with surprisingly large amounts of autonomy considering China's history, and even their own diplomatic missions from foreign countries. The American Consulate in Hong Kong is actually larger than the official Embassy in Beijing.
The end result? China benefits from the economic strength of the SEZs even though both of them function more like their own countries than like regions of the same country. It's a very bizarre situation, but it came about through political necessity. | [
"The border between Hong Kong and mainland China was not regulated for over 100 years after establishment of the colony. Border controls did not exist until 1950, after communist victory in the Chinese Civil War. Although the border was guarded, the Hong Kong government was relatively lax on deporting illegal immig... |
how large corporations recover once they have been infected by ransom ware. | Any corporation with a competent IT department does regular system-wide backups on a daily basis. They also have a disaster recovery plan that allows them to stand up new instances of their critical systems on short notice.
And sometimes, they just pay the ransom. They routinely put thousands of dollars worth of software on every desktop, paying $500 a pop to free them up is painful, but not undoable. | [
"In January 2016, Malwarebytes unveiled Malwarebytes Endpoint Security, advanced anti-ransomware technology which is described as the \"first solution to offer multiple layers of protection against unknown ransomware\". The company sponsored a survey with Osterman Research into 540 firms in the United States, Unite... |
Do we have any surviving primary sources from ancient rome? | First off I assume you mean primary “written” sources since you refer to copying.
Non-written primary sources would include paintings, mosaics, architecture, statues all of which have are essential primary sources to understanding the the ancient world.
Primary written sources from antiquity are everywhere: inscriptions are common. Mostly fragmentary, but they’re abundant. Tombs, memorials, temples even scratched graffiti.
Some papyri survive, famously the Oxyrhynchus Papyri found in an ancient garbage dump in Egypt.
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Project at Oxford has lots more: _URL_0_
Writers represented there include Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and many more. While fragmentary these are still invaluable sources. | [
"Ancient historians' accounts of the history of Rome before it was destroyed by the Gauls in 390 BC are regarded as highly unreliable by modern historians. Livy, the main surviving ancient source on the early period, himself admits that the earlier period is very obscure and that his own account is based on legend ... |
How has the "choreography" of opera changed? | Cool question! This is one of those aspects of opera that’s not too popular to write about actually, now with scholars, or then with contemporaries. You’ll get contemporary opera viewers writing things like Farinelli can’t act, or that Gaetano Guadagni is a beautiful actor, but no one bothers to mention what on earth makes them a good or a bad actor. So I know a little from my studies but not too much to be honest! I’ll do my best and maybe one of the theater historians can add in.
Opera acting was pretty stiff from its birth through maybe the 1750s when things started to get a bit feistier. Opera acting also tended to drag behind developments in spoken drama by a decade or two, so you can kinda take a history overview on conventional acting and do a +20 on the dates for an excellent start at opera’s acting evolution.
One thing to consider is that theaters still used “raked” theaters in the early modern period, which are angled down towards the audience. On top of that [forced-perspective staging](_URL_2_) was really hot back then, so you’d have this angled stage, and then in the background you’d have these really neat little scenes for forests and fountains and such that looked really cool from the audience’s perspective. Scene making was a highly skilled trade at the time, and getting new scenery was a pretty major expense for the impresario. (They reused old stagings if they could!) Scenery was more important then, you’d never have a “minimalist” staging like we do now with cheap shit like 4 chairs and a torn curtain standing in for Rome. Opera was (theoretically) the full integration of all the fine arts, visual, musical, and poetic. So back then you built a tiny Rome, or it wasn’t proper opera.
So if you, the singer, moved to far upstage while performing you’d completely spoil the cool forced-perspective effect, you’d increasingly look gigantic as you moved upstage and consequently look really stupid and spoil the staging and get laughed at from the audience. (There are contemporaries mocking singers who didn’t properly work with the forced perspective and entered upstage with the columns starting at their knees and such.) So you stay put downstage or look like a giant monster. Drawings of singers from the time usually show them hanging out on the proscenium.
In the first half of the 18th century arm movements were formulaic, and the primary function was to look pretty, not necessarily to match the mood or actually convey any emotion. You were also only “allowed” to do vigorous hand-movements during recitative; during an aria you struck a pose and stuck to it for the whole song. Facial acting was also formalized. There is an oft-quoted description of Farinelli’s acting that I shall quote once again, because it is hilarious:
> I shall therefore, in my further Remarks upon this Article, go back to the Old Italian Theatre, when Farinelli drew every Body to the Haymarket. What a Pipe ! What Modulation ! What Extasy to the Ear ! But, Heavens ! What Clumsiness ! What Stupidity ! What Offence to the Eye ! Reader, if of the City, thou mayest probably have feen in the Fields of Islington or Mile-End or, if thou art within the Environs of St. James's, thou must have observed in the Park, with what Ease and Agility a Cow, heavy with Calf, has rose up at the Command of the Milk-woman's Foot : Thus from the mossy Bank sprung up the Divine Farinelli.
> [...]
> Then with long strides advancing a few Paces, his left Hand fettled upon his Hip, in a beautiful Bend, like that of the Handle of an oldfashioned Caudle-Cap, his Right remained immoveable across his manly Breast, 'till Numbness called its Partner to supply the Place ; when, it relieved itself in the Position of the other
Handle to the Caudle-Cup. [source](_URL_0_)
This person is writing in 1755, by the 1750s things had gotten a little closer to what we are used to now, so he’s probably harsher than people were in the 1720s-30s when Farinelli was working. The rise of opera buffa in the 1750s-60s also had good influences on opera seria: opera buffa had much more natural acting (hard to be funny when you’re limited to doing I’m-a-little-teapot poses and making formalized facial movements) as well as more performers who were actors first and singers second so they had experience in spoken drama where acting was evolving faster.
This is based on Ch. 4 of [The Modern Castrato: Gaetano Guadagni and the Coming of a New Operatic Age](_URL_1_), the author is writing specifically about Gaetano Guadagni’s acting in this chapter, as he was an early leader in the mid-century transitory period of opera acting, but it has a concise overview of the before-and-after that he straddled. | [
"Concert dance, like opera, generally depends for its large-scale form upon a narrative dramatic structure. The movements and gestures of the choreography are primarily intended to mime the personality and aims of the characters and their part in the plot. Such theatrical requirements tend towards longer, freer mov... |
How are Bi Elliptical Transfers More Efficient Than Hohmann Transfers? | [This past answer](_URL_1_) by /u/ThePsuedoMonkey might help:
> Think of an orbit as an energy system; at periapsis your orbital velocity is the highest (high kinetic energy) while at apoapsis your elevation is the highest (high potential energy), so a higher orbit requires more energy to get to. The Bi-Elliptic transfer exploits the Oberth Effect by using more ΔV in a lower orbit, which causes the propellant used during that burn to provide much more kinetic energy (KE=0.5mv2) than that of the first burn of a Hohmann transfer. If that gain in kinetic energy is greater than the additional energy needed for the other two burns (relative to the second burn of the Hohmann transfer) you will save a bit of your overall ΔV, but for that to happen your orbital velocity must be much lower during those two final burns, which requires a substantially higher transfer orbit.
> [Apparently](_URL_0_), the minimum theoretical orbital increase that the Bi-Elliptic is more efficient for would be a factor of just under 12 times higher (with an infinite transfer orbit), and closer to 13 times higher with a transfer orbit 40 times higher than the initial one (check page 318 for a cool graph). Keep in mind that the altitude that KSP gives you is relative to sea-level so you need to add the planetary radius to get your true orbit: e.g. starting at a 70km orbit above sea level on Kerbin (+600km radius) the lowest orbit a Bi-Elliptic would be more efficient for would be 8000km and the maximum transfer orbit ratio is 110 for that transfer (going to the very edge of Kerbins sphere of influence), so you can see that the Bi-Elliptic will not be frequently used in KSP.
| [
"BULLET::::- A bi-elliptic transfer can require less energy than the Hohmann transfer, if the ratio of orbits is 11.94 or greater, but comes at the cost of increased trip time over the Hohmann transfer.\n",
"As coenzyme Q is reduced to ubiquinol on the inner side of the membrane and oxidized to ubiquinone on the ... |
Suppose I'm falling at terminal velocity with a large object near me. I positioned myself on top of said object and pushed up with my legs as hard as I can before hitting the ground. Under what parameters would I survive the fall? | Let's say you're falling on top of the object. In the reference frame of the object, you jump and give yourself a vertical speed of 4 meters per second. Then consider the reference frame of the ground. Instead of crashing at 50 m/s, you crash at 46 m/s, and are still dead. | [
"BULLET::::- Terminal velocity (An object dropped through air from a sufficient height will reach a steady speed, called the terminal velocity, when the aerodynamic drag force pushing up on the body balances the gravitational force (weight) pulling the body down.)\n",
"Technically, an object is in free fall even ... |
[meta] A modest proposal to further improve this subreddit. | This is indeed a great community, but it feels like it could use an additional moderator, perhaps. There's an enormous backlog in the tag application process (as Daeres notes in his comment already), and having the tags isn't exactly useful if nobody new can get them. | [
"Online discussion platforms may be designed and improved to streamline discussions for efficiency, usefulness and quality. For instance voting, targeted notifications, user levels, gamification, subscriptions, bots, discussion requirements, structurization, layout, sorting, linking, feedback-mechanisms, reputation... |
why do two transits of venus occur every hundred or so years, but the transits of mercury occur more frequently than venus? | Mercury orbits the sun much quicker than Venus. And Venus and Earth's orbit time are closer. That means Mercury is going to "lap" the earth far more often which gives opportunity for a transit.
(Imagine a track race where you're on the outer track and the person next track in is running only slightly faster. They'd lap you every 10 laps or so. That's Venus. Mercury is on the inner most track on a motorbike and laps you both far more frequently) | [
"Transits of Venus are among the rarest of predictable astronomical phenomena. They occur in a pattern that generally repeats every 243 years, with pairs of transits eight years apart separated by long gaps of 121.5 years and 105.5 years. The periodicity is a reflection of the fact that the orbital periods of Earth... |
why do states seem to carry out executions in the middle of the night rather than during the day? | If someone is due to be executed on October 1st, they do it right when it turns october 1st, right after midnight. | [
"Hangings always take place at dawn on Friday and are by the long drop method developed in the United Kingdom by William Marwood. The executioner refers to the Official Table of Drops. The government have said that they:\n",
"Several states also allow victims' families and relatives selected by the prisoner to wa... |
how lottery cards are made? | The non playing areas are all the same and made by standard off-set printing methods. A special printer based on the same technology as ink jet printers selects numbers at random from a computer bank and prints them on the playing area, along with the unique bar code. Then off-set printing is used to cover the numbers with scratchable ink. | [
"The classic lottery is a drawing in which each contestant buys a combination of numbers. Each combination of numbers, or \"play\", is usually priced at $1. Plays are usually non-exclusive, meaning that two or more ticket holders may buy the same combination. The lottery organization then draws the winning combinat... |
Did Living Standards Decline After the Fall of Rome? | Hello there. This is not the answer you are waiting for, but I am going to try help you framing it differently so it can be answered by more knowledgeable people.
Because the question, as it is, is very very difficult to answer, for several reasons:
& #x200B;
* The processes you are asquing about happened very differently and with very different dinamics and consequences depending on the area of the west you are refering to: the process was totally different in places like England to what happened in the mediterranean coast. There just wasn't a "universal, suddden fall into obscurity" as the classical narrative repeated on and on. Plus, the political system in that era implied so much "subcontrating" that almost every city of the Empire had its own specific relationship with the State: generalizing is impossible even if you focus on one specific area, because it was a political process and, understandably, politics played differently in different places, if only for contingent reasons.
& #x200B;
* It assumes a narrative of "decline and fall" of "Rome" in the V Century that is basically wrong. The V Century was not an era of decline, but the opposite: the fact that what happened in the IC in terms of growth wasn't repeated in subsequent centuries doesn't point to a "decline" in those centuries but to the exceptional nature of that said I Century. In fact, the IV and V Centuries were a time of consolidation and growth: the new monetary system created by Constantine remonetized the empire, and the new political rules laid by him made access to the elites easier for "middle class" rural citizens. The "fall" of "Rome" (AKA: when the city of Rome went from having a Roman representative ruling in the name of the Emperor in Constantinople to having a barbarian representative ruling in the name of the Emperor of Constantinople) had very little economic or material impact for the bigger part of the population: it's only the super rich class, having diversified land owning so much, that suffered the consequences of the "de-globalization" of the system.
& #x200B;
* What happend in 476 was not the "total fall of a whole civilization by failure", it was just a political affair. Things didn't really change much for the bigger part of the population. What REALLY destroyed the Italian Peninsula was in fact another political happening: the Gothic Wars, when the Romans started a war of reconquering that left the whole area decimated, and the city of Rome destroyed; It remained in roman hands, actually (meaning,it was ruled from Constantinple, thru Ravenna), but the destruction caused by the gothic wars, and the Plage of Justinian gave the definitive hit by killing up to 1/3 of the population.
& #x200B;
* More generally, it's imposible, and a big mistake, to analyze the past using modern theoretical frames and concepts. It's not really possible to study the "standard of living" in Rome without having a clear understanding of what "standard of living means" and, more importantly, whom it applies to. Rome was built, sustained and expanded on the backs of a HUGE slave population. Do they count when we meassure the "living standards"? Romans didn't, they weren't "people" in the same category, so what model do we follow, ours, that can't be applied to that kind of society, or theirs, that doesn't apply to our measssures? What about women, do we count them? Becase Romans did't.
& #x200B;
* But even if we could compare both socioeconomic models: What are the indicatives of a "good" living standard? Does avoiding war count? Does avoiding anhilation of your whole culture count? Do we value more acces to matrial resources (a slave would have those) or do we value more not being a slave (thus, by yourself and having to look for work on a daily basis just to survive?), thus being free? Is being a citizen better than being a foreigner? Was being part of the council (free from the worst state humillations, but with the new job of cohercing your community and the responsability of paying up yourself if you didn't) better than being a soldier? Those questions need to be answered not from our contemporary frame, it's like trying to write a symphony with chiken wings: two different universes.
& #x200B;
And, on a more general persspective, I've come to realize that this kind of questions (please, say YES or NO to this very simplistic economic theory on the past that I will then use to make maximalist, sometimes ideologically charged statements about the present) don't do very well in this sub, for the reasons I explained at the beginning: the question is framed on such a way that none of the two answers you proppose (YES/NO) is really accurate.
& #x200B;
Tips for reframing the question:
& #x200B;
Focus on some specific geographic area, or ask for how the process worked in a geographic area that serves as a good example; that way someone who is specialized in that area can chime in and flood you with nice, more specific information.
& #x200B;
Try to write it in such a way the the answer is open. forcing a boolean conclusion (yes/no) on such a complicated topic makes it really impossible to answer in an in depth-way.
& #x200B;
Maybe its a good idea to conceptualize your question in a specific scenario and ask about that, those questions always work around here. For example: "I am Clodovert from "X", living in the year 1000 (whenever middleagish enough for you), and I'm quite happy with my life. This traveller came thru the village the other day and started talking about "romans". He told us of great deeds and richness so big everybody lived a wonderful life: he told us that life with the ancients was more pleasant, as their might allowed them to make every country on earth work for them so they could be iddle". Is that true? | [
"We often assume that the collapse of the Roman Empire was a catastrophe for everyone involved. Tainter points out that it can be seen as a very rational preference of individuals at the time, many of whom were better off (all but the elite, presumably.) Archeological evidence from human bones indicates that averag... |
How did Zhenjin die? (the father of Temür Khan and son of Kublai khan) | According to the **History of Yuan**, he died of alcoholism. However, it may not have been as simple as merely drinking too much. It also states that shortly before his death, some ministers of the court wanted to propose that Kublai Khan abdicate his throne to Zhenjin on account of old age and because Prince Zhenjin was highly respected throughout the empire. However, Prince Zhenjin tried to prevent this from happening. Unfortunately, Kublai Khan found out anyways and was furious, which terrified Zhenjin and may have led him to overdrink
Song Lian, Wang Yi, et al. 宋濂 王禕 等撰. "Yuan Shi" 元史 [History of Yuan]. Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan 臺灣商務印書館 "The Commercial Press, Ltd.", 2010. | [
"Nurhaci succumbed to his wounds and died in Mukden eight months later. His eighth son, the fourth Beile, Hong Taiji, assumed the title of the Great Khan of the Later Jin. Hong Taiji, like his father, was defeated in the Battle of Ning-Jin a year later. While the failure to take Ningyuan temporarily halted the Jurc... |
If you bring a bucket big enough to put over your head underwater, can you breathe in the bucket, being able to stay underwater longer? | I did this in our pool, using a small 3gal bucket and a big rock. (Tried cinderblock, but it wasn't heavy enough.)
But unfortunately the CO2 builds up quickly. With my head in the bucket, most of the volume of the bucket is full of head, not full of air. I could only stay down for less than a minute before the air in the small pocket "went bad."
Go see [underwater room in a swimming pool, needs 5,600lbs of weights](_URL_1_)
Also search [youtube for those clear plexiglas buckets used by tourists "underwater helmet"](_URL_0_) | [
"In the Drownproofing survival technique, the subject floats in a relaxed, near-vertical posture, with the top of the head just above the surface. Using the arms or legs to exert a downward pressure, the subject raises himself sufficiently so that the mouth is above the surface and a breath is taken, before droppin... |
why do islands come in chains? | The Earth is divided into layers of what it's made of. The crust on the outside, about 5 to 50 miles thick, is solid rock that was originally made from volcanic eruptions. Then there's the mantle which is about 1800 miles thick, also solid rock but is primordial having been mostly solid since the Earth was formed. Then the outer core which is liquid iron, then the inner core solid iron.
The Earth can also be divided into layers of how it acts. The outside layer, called the 'lithosphere', is made of the crust and uppermost mantle and it's cooler which makes it rigid. It's broken into a number of pieces called 'tectonic plates' which move around sideways. Below that is the hotter asthenosphere, part of the mantle which flows in super slow motion; it's solid, remember, but think 'solid like plasticine'. The plates mostly correspond to continents or oceans, for example there's a Eurasian plate and a Pacific plate and many others.
If a part of the upper asthenosphere or lithosphere melts, it creates some magma. Rock doesn't melt all at once like ice, it 'partially melts', so you get a bit of magma and some residual solid rock mixed together. The magma rises because it's less dense than the solid residue, and then either stops and freezes again in the crust somewhere or erupts through the surface and makes a volcano.
How to melt some asthenosphere? Three ways. One, simply make it hotter, naturally. Two, let it rise closer to the surface while retaining its heat, it's under less pressure and that makes it melt. Or three, get some water into it, which lowers the melting point.
In Hawaii it's the first one. There's a 'hotspot' which makes some magma which then makes a volcano. Over a long enough time the volcano builds above the sea surface. But the tectonic plate is moving, compared to the hotspot, which means after a while the island is too far from the source of magma. Its volcanoes stop erupting, and new ones form. This processes repeated over and over gives a chain of islands, their ages increasing along the chain from the newest one. The old islands get eroded, eventually down to below sea level. So the Big Island is the largest and the youngest, with the volcanoes still erupting, at the east end of the chain and they get older and smaller as you go west.
For the mid ocean ridges, it's the second one. The plates are pulling apart, stretching the lithosphere thin to breaking point, the asthenosphere fills the gap and melts and the magma then freezes again into new oceanic crust.
For "island arc" volcanoes such as the Aleutian Islands, it's the third one. There's a subduction zone near the island chain, where one tectonic plate crashes into another and is forced underneath. This carries water down into the asthenosphere, making it melt, and forming a bunch of volcanic islands. Unlike Hawaii where the island at the end is youngest and the ages increase systematically down the chain, island arc chains have no pattern to their ages.
And just for good measure, Iceland is a combination of 1 and 2. It's a mid ocean ridge over a hotspot, which means extra magma so the new oceanic crust builds thicker and rises above the sea surface.
_URL_0_ | [
"The chain consists of two large islands (Tawhiti Rahi, the larger at , and Aorangi () to the south), and several smaller islands. Aorangaia and Archway Island lie to the southwest of Aorangi Island, and there is also a group of smaller rocky islets between the two main islands, the largest of which is Motu Kapiti.... |
my poop floats sometimes, and sinks others. what gives? | The density can vary based on things like fat content; having too much fat in it can make it float for example. | [
"An object that sinks displaces an amount of fluid equal to the object's volume. Thus buoyancy is expressed through Archimedes' principle, which states that the weight of the object is reduced by its volume multiplied by the density of the fluid. If the weight of the object is less than this displaced quantity, the... |
why are whites and yolks mixed in separately while baking cakes? sometimes extra yolk is also added. how does that affect the cake? | They aren’t always separate. More often than not the whole egg goes in. Yolks the fattiest most flavorful part so they extra yolks being more moisture and depth to taste. Whites are comparatively less so but whip well to being structure and solidify cakes (binder). | [
"Angel food cake requires egg whites whipped until they are stiff. Cream of tartar is added to the mixture to stabilize the egg whites. Remaining ingredients are gently folded into the egg white mixture. For this method of leavening to work well, it is useful to have flour that has been made of softer wheat. Cake f... |
how does the us democratic party's rule of proportional representation work? | All candidates who get 15% or more of the vote in a certain state get delegates. How many delegates they get depends on the number of people who voted for them: if candidate A gets twice as many votes as candidate B, then candidate A gets twice as many delegates (up to some rounding).
As an example, suppose we had three people running: Alice gets 10% of the vote, Bob gets 30%, and Charlie gets 60% in a state with 30 delegates. Alice didn't get more than 15%, so she doesn't get any delegates. Bob and Charlie split the state's total of 30, and Charlie gets twice as many (20) as Bob does (10). | [
"A party-line vote in a deliberative assembly (such as a constituent assembly, parliament, or legislature) is a vote in which a substantial majority of members of a political party vote the same way (usually in opposition to the other political party(ies) whose members vote the opposite way). The term implies that ... |
spanning tree network? | I assume you have a basic understanding of networking to be asking this question. But essentially, if you have a layer 2 network without spanning tree or some other means enabled what happens is the broadcasts/traffic would propagate throughout the network forever. Spanning tree stops loops by disabling one of the links between switches. If the primary link goes down for some reason the backup link comes online. There's a lot more to it, but that's the basics. It's a means to disable a port between two switches that have multiple connections to stop broadcasts and such from continuously being sent throughout the network. | [
"The role of the Common Spanning Tree (CST) in a network, and the Common and Internal Spanning Tree (CIST) configured on each device, is to prevent loops within a wider network that may span more than one MSTP Region and parts of the network running in legacy STP or RSTP mode.\n",
"Minimum spanning trees have dir... |
What invasive species invaded and destroyed ecosystems without the help of humans? | This can occur when previously isolated ecosystems become connected in some way. Check out the Great American Interchange, when North and South America became connected by a land bridge. A lot of South American animal species became extinct shortly after, likely being outcompeted by Invaders from the north.
[
PBS Eons did an episode on the Great American Interchange](_URL_0_) | [
"Invaded ecosystems may have experienced disturbance, typically human-induced. Such a disturbance may give invasive species a chance to establish themselves with less competition from natives less able to adapt to a disturbed ecosystem.\n",
"In Mexico the effects of invasive species has been documented since the ... |
How did the Haudenosaunee/Iroquois Confederacy form? | > How accurate is the story of Hiawatha and Great Peacemaker?
To start out with, there isn't a singular concerning the efforts of the Peacemaker, Hiawatha, and Jigonsaseh (the third major founder that is often neglected in these conversations). There are several different traditions, each with some slight variations. In particular, the Peacemaker's origins can vary. While he's commonly presented as having come from an Iroquoian group outside the Five Nations, other times he's from one of the five. Most founding narratives for the confederacy also contain a number of supernatural elements - from the Peacemaker's miraculous birth (which may be a post-colonial insertion into the story), or his preternatural stone canoe, or the violent sorcery of Tadodaho - which historians that favor a more naturalistic approach would view skeptically.
By and large though, the Peacemaker, Hiawatha, Jigonsaseh, and Tadodaho are accepted as historical figures and the broad strokes - at the very least - of the founding narrative is seen as legitimate.
> What are some good books on the history of the Iroquois from a Native perspective?
I'd recommend [The Rotinonshonni
A Traditional Iroquoian History Through the Eyes of Teharonhia:wako and Sawiskera](_URL_0_) by Brian Rice and [Iroquoian Women:
The Gantowisas](_URL_1_) by Barbara Alice Mann. Rice is Nottoway - an Algonquian tribe that migrated north with the Tuscarora and were integrated into the Haudenosaunee back in the 1700s. He pulls from several different Iroquoian sources for his work, but Mohawk sources are of particular importance here. Mann is Wendat-Seneca, and Seneca sources get more time in the spotlight for her work. She also spends a considerable amount of time on Jigonsaseh's role in the founding. | [
"The Iroquois Confederacy was an alliance of tribes, originally from the upstate New York area consisting of the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and, later, Tuscarora. In pre-revolutionary war days, their confederacy expanded to areas from Kentucky and Virginia north. All of the members of the Confederacy... |
Would someone with anaemia get intoxicated easier? | First, anemia is not decreased blood volume but rather low red blood cells or hemoglobin in the blood. This is due to, as you said, a variety of reasons.
Alcohol is metabolized in the liver by three primary systems: alcohol dehydrogenase, CYP2E1, and a catalase. Each of these metabolize ethanol to acetaldehyde which is then metabolized to acetate by acetaldehyde dehydrogenase and excreted. These systems are not affected by anemia (unless they receive inadequate O2).
One's level of intoxication is correlated by their BAC (blood alcohol level), which is the concentration of ethanol in the blood. This percentage would not be shifted enough by anemia and so an anemic person would not get intoxicated faster than someone with normal RBC/hemoglobin levels.
However, your original understanding of "anemia," a low blood volume(hypovolemia) *would* cause a person to get intoxicated faster than normal. The same amount of ethanol would be absorbed but it would be distributed into a lower volume and your BAC would therefore rise more rapidly, leading to a faster intoxication.
I cant find specific papers right now, but my answer is based on the education I have received in pharmacokinetics and ethanol pharmacokinetics/metabolism | [
"In addition to respiratory failure and accidents caused by effects on the central nervous system, alcohol causes significant metabolic derangements. Hypoglycaemia occurs due to ethanol's inhibition of gluconeogenesis, especially in children, and may cause lactic acidosis, ketoacidosis, and acute renal failure. Met... |
Was there any serious opposition to the Habsburg dynasty for the Imperial throne between the death of Frederick III and the War of the Austrian Succession (1493-1740)? | You might enjoy my earlier answer on the [crazy negotiations behind the election of 1519](_URL_0_) (Charles V). And, er, "negotiations." | [
"The heir apparent to the throne bore the title of Crown Prince (\"Kronprinz\"); heirs presumptive were called \"Thronfolger\", in addition to their title of Archduke. Francis I was followed by Ferdinand Charles, (later Ferdinand I). In the wake of the 1848 revolutions, the empire's existence was in danger. The Hab... |
i know who takes over if a u.s. president were to die in office, but who would take over if a presidential candidate were to die of a heart attack or such? they're running mate or would their party nominate another candidate? what would happen? | If it's a presidential candidate (and not the president elect), then I think it's in the hands of the party to decide. I can't think of an instance of a presidential candidate having to withdraw, but there are examples of that at other levels.
For example, back in 2004 for the Illinois Senate race, Jack Ryan won the Republican primary, but ended his campaign before the election due to a scandal. The Illinois Republican committee selected Alan Keyes to replace him. Keyes went on to lose 70%-27% to Barack Obama. | [
"If the president dies, resigns, or is otherwise made permanently unable to carry out their duties, then the duties of the president are carried out by the president of the National Assembly. If the president of the National Assembly is not able to act as president, then the vice-presidents, with assistance from th... |
There has been some claim that the Dalai Lama presided over a feudalistic/slave Tibet until Chinese Communism abolished the system. How accurate is this? | Using the term 'feudalistic' and 'slavery' as a comparative isn't a very appropriate way to view either system. Feudalism implies an aristocracy who owns land by inherited right, but also have a duty to the bonded serfs who work the land and recognition of a greater authority. Slavery implies the use of people as liquid capital, buying and selling their labor as capital and complete subservience to the owner. Serfs had the right to justice, allowed limited mobility, and could accumulate personal wealth (if circumstances allowed).
In terms of Tibet, the argument that it was a religious society based on a feudal system is accurate -- but it was accurate for a large number of nations in that region at that time, and was not out of the ordinary. Russia was, to a certain extent, a feudal society until 1917 as an example. Tibet was in a process of modernization starting in the 1930s; partly due to the external pressures of Nepal, India, and China encroaching on their territory. Due to their geographic remoteness, sustained trade was difficult, and the federal government had problems both with ensuring taxation and maintaining relations with Britain as a primary trading partner in the 1920s and 30s.
In short, Tibet effectively had a series of regional overlords who were accountable for local administration and governance. But there was a recognized federal authority and at the time of occupation Tibet was undergoing a series of initiatives to modernize and open their economy. Tradition, religion, geographic remoteness, and a weak economy all contributed to a slow transition away from a feudal government.
Reference material:
A History of Modern Tibet, 1913-1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State, By Melvyn C. Goldstein
| [
"China took full control of Tibet in 1959. In the wake of the takeover and especially during the cultural revolution many monasteries were destroyed and many monks and laypeople killed. The 14th Dalai Lama fled to India and has since ceded temporal power to an elected government-in-exile. The current Dalai Lama has... |
What was "Viking" ale? | First of all, we must remember than unlike today, "ale" and "beer" were not the same type of drink in early medieval times.
"Beer" or björr might refer to ale-type beer, but also to mead or even cider. Its not exactly clear if this is supposed to be a catch-all term for fermented drinks, or just misstranslation of the sagas.
the viking öl or ale, was made of spruced and malted barley. The brew was flitered crudely through a mesh of branches (probably juniper, to add to the flavor). The yeast used to make ale were cultivated and grandfathered from one batch to the other continuously.
The resulting brew was syrupy, mostly unfiltered, not pasteurised, and would have a yeast-ish taste, only countered by the taste of juniper berries and herbs added to it (hops might also be used, but were not the primary flavor as they are today).
The addition of juniper and other herbs would also have minor anti-bacterial properties, and thus extend the time ale could be stored.
Ale was most likely only weakly alcoholic, but would have a high caloric content, almost counting as a meal by itself. Because of this, ale was drank by all classes and children as well.
Ale was a very important part of viking culture and features prominently in viking mythology (the heavenly goat Heidrun produces ale/beer/mead instead of milk) as well as a staple drink of most festivities.
Ann Hagen, . Anglo-Saxon Food and Drink: Production and Distribution.
Clive La Pensee, The Historical Companion to House-Brewing
Elsa Roesdahl, Viking Age Denmark. | [
"The brewery's literature says this pale ale takes its name from the castle built by King John in 1207 less than one mile from the brewery, from where King John rode out to Runnymede to sign the Magna Carta. The beer is deep amber in colour with a blend of pale ale and crystal malt, the bitterness and fruity aroma ... |
Why did the Red Army in WW2 allow itself to be encircled time and again? Bad leadership, arrogance, or other factors? | A number of factors. First of all, encirclements in general were a product of the highly mobile warfare of WWII. It was easy for the side that had the initiative to mass their forces in a small area, achieve a breakthrough, and then use their mobility to quickly dash deep behind enemy lines. Envelopments didn't just happen to the Soviets. The French and the British forces got surrounded in 1940, though some of them managed to escape across the Channel. The Germans got surrounded most famously at Stalingrad but also in Falaise pocket, and a number of other encirclements in the east.
Now, regarding specifically the Soviets, you will notice that the majority of their encirclements happened in 1941. This is because they were simply not ready for war at that time. The Red Army did not have time to mobilize and deploy. The Germans had a considerable advantage both in power and mobility. This was especially so after the Red Army lost most of its armor and air force early in the campaign. It became very difficult to anticipate what the Germans would do next, and then to react in time once the Germans made their move.
In some situations, particularly in 1942, the Soviets did overestimate their capabilities and were punished as a result. That could in part be explained by their desire to remain on the offensive and not give up strategic initiative. In a mobile, dynamic warfare, you want to force your enemy to react to your moves as opposed to be reactive (which was a big problem the previous year). But in early 1942, the Red Army wasn't strong enough yet to be able to maintain being aggressive. | [
"German troops reached the outskirts of Moscow in December 1941, but failed to capture it, due to staunch Soviet defence and counterattacks. At the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942–43, the Red Army inflicted a crushing defeat on the German army. Due to the unwillingness of the Japanese to open a second front in Manchur... |
why when you look in a mirror with a mirror oppisite that it goes on forever, but seems to get darker the further in it gets? | Mirrors aren't perfect - not all of the light that hits a mirror is reflected back out again.
If, for instance, a mirror reflects 90% of the light that hits it, that means 10% will be lost.
So on the first reflection, you'll be down to 90% of the original light intensity.
It hits the second mirror, and we drop 10% from the 90% we've already got - 81% of the original.
Reflect it again, another 10% off the 81%, 73%... 64%... 56%... 50%...
So each time we've got less and less light being reflected, so the reflections get darker and darker until they're impossible to make out. | [
"The reflection in the mirror is distorted and discolored, possibly representing the woman's dislike for herself. The colors used here are dark and make her look very old. Instead of the happiness reflected in the real girl, the reflected girl seems distraught. \n",
"In a classic self-contained infinity mirror, a... |
What limited the hunter-gatherer population in comparison to agricultural societies? | Whenever food production capability jumps, like what happened in southern China after the advent of high-yield rice or what happened recently with fertilisers, population soon follows. Agricultural societies tend to make children more frequently. Studies in modern and ancient nomadic populations showed that with various means they limited their birth rate to one child per woman every 4 years or more, while we know that for agricultural societies it is clearly more frequent.
Infanticide is applied, of course, but mostly couples exercise birth control. It has been suggested that the reason for this ~4 year interval is due to the inability of the woman to carry along two children or one child while pregnant. The child has to grow up enough to be able to follow the team on foot during their long trips. A woman cannot take care of two careless little children simultaneously, the man is carrying heavy load and cannot contribute well.
The effect of all the agents you mentioned is significant, someone could perhaps list proper sources. I had read a couple great books but I can't find them now. | [
"Many groups continued their hunter-gatherer ways of life, although their numbers have continually declined, partly as a result of pressure from growing agricultural and pastoral communities. Many of them reside in the developing world, either in arid regions or tropical forests. Areas that were formerly available ... |
If comets are losing mass as they get closer to the sun, how are we able to accurately predict Halley's Comet's trajectory? | We cannot accurately predict it in the sense of being 100% accurate, it's a ball park figure based on intelligent assumptions being made & then plugging in those figures to work out the path of the comet. Done often enough (i.e. via a computer) you can start to model trajectories & work out the most likely path. | [
"On 27 June 2018, astronomers reported a non-gravitational acceleration to ʻOumuamua's trajectory, potentially consistent with a push from solar radiation pressure. Initial speculation as to the cause of this acceleration pointed to comet off-gassing, whereby portions of the object are ejected as the Sun heats the ... |
How Did Newfoundland Interact With Slavery in the Americas & Carribbean? | They were indeed, and the trade relationship between Newfoundland and the Caribbean has had a lasting effect on the culture that can be seen to this day.
Since the first [livyers](_URL_0_) started staying in Newfoundland around 1610 till about the 1960's the only industry was based around the cod fishery. This cod was caught, salted, cured, and when the time came was sold all around the Atlantic. Newfoundland cod was sold to the US, Canada or British North America, England, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece and yes the Caribbean. With this, I would call global trade there were many factors that would effect the price of a [quintal](_URL_1_) of fish. War would drive up the price of foodstuffs, tariffs would also make product more appealing to some markets to others, competition from other markets, and lastly the most obvious factor was the quality of fish. Quality of the fish was based on where it was caught, size, how quickly it got to shore to be dried, the weather when it was dried, and the ability of the men and women drying it. This quality gets us to the relationship with the Caribbean. In Newfoundland there were three categories of salt fish, merchantable and merchantable number two (the best category), Madeira (second best), and West India.
The Caribbean market needed cheap protein for their slave labour, and later cheap food for their labourers. Without having fishing grounds of their own at the scale or other cheap protein West India quality salt fish met their needs. Merchants from Newfoundland would buy the fish from fishermen and then transport it to the Caribbean to be sold either for cash, or for products that Newfoundland could produce. From the Caribbean the return would be as expected sugar, molasses, and rum.
This was a huge trade, a quintal of fish is 112 pounds, in 1810 and 1811 there was over 150,000 quintals of fish sold to the British West Indies. 176,000 quintals was the peak in 1816 and after that exports were about 127,000 quintals and through the 1840's to 1860's numbers were about 140,000 to 160,000 quintals per year.
Now. How this has held over to today? there is a great book called "And a bottle of Rum, the history of the new world in ten cocktails". The book does a great job of talking about the Caribbean, how the rum industry started and how it had an effect on places like Newfoundland and New England. In New England they used to buy the molasses and built an industry of distilling the product and making rum themselves, in Newfoundland we just took the rum. In Canada 50% of the rum consumed is in Newfoundland... 500,000 people are responsible for 50% of the rum sales in a country of 36,000,000. Also, one of the most interesting things is the world rum awards only take place in the Caribbean, the one exception is Newfoundland.
Hope that helps! | [
"The waters surrounding Newfoundland in the early 19th century were frequented by large merchant ships employed in the seal and codfish trade in Brazil, Italy, Cuba, Mexico, the United States, and those transporting coal, lumber and vegetables from the Maritimes islands, molasses from Barbados, salt from Spain, and... |
Is there any meaning to the phrase "twice as hot" or "twice as cold" as 0 degrees? | **tl;dr: Yes you can double or half the temperature of something, but not in the way you're probably thinking.**
The confusing part of this topic for most people is that the temperature scales that we use in day-to-day life are kind of...arbitrary. The "zero" on the Fahrenheit scale was based on [the temperature of a mixture of ice, water, and ammonium chloride](_URL_17_), while the "zero" on the Celsius scale is based on the melting point of pure water. While both of these are solid reference points that anyone can measure, they really don't have any deeper physical meaning relating to the nature of temperature.
When we measure things, we tend to start at 0 and work up. A ruler starts at zero length no matter what units you use, a speed of zero mph or kph always means you're standing still, the pressure of outer space is zero[^^\(not ^^exactly)](_URL_15_) whether you're using [PSI](_URL_2_) or [millibars](_URL_6_) or [inches](_URL_14_) or [torr](_URL_21_) or [atmospheres](_URL_12_), etc. But what about temperature?
Temperature is, in rough terms, a measure of the amount of random "motion" atoms and molecules have at extremely small scales. For a gas, this essentially means [the average speed of a given molecule in the gas](_URL_5_). For solids and liquids, it roughly corresponds to the amount of "jiggling" the molecules do on a microscopic level. More motion/jiggling means higher temperature, less motion/jiggling means lower temperature. Many of us learned this from high school chemistry. So what would you think a proper "zero" for temperature would be? Naturally, you would think that "zero" temperature would be the temperature at which there is no motion/jiggling at all. And that's exactly what we see in physics and chemistry: [absolute zero](_URL_18_) is the temperature at which atoms would ([theoretically](_URL_13_)) have no random "jiggling" at all.
So if you measure the temperature of something on a temperature scale that starts at absolute zero, then you can properly talk about "doubling" or "halving" the temperature. By far the most common scale that fits this definition is the [Kelvin](_URL_7_) scale, which is basically the Celsius scale but it starts at absolute zero. So while absolute zero is -273.15C, on the Kelvin scale it's just 0 (and, conversely, the melting point of ice is 273.15 Kelvin). 2000K truly is twice as hot as 1000K, and 50K truly is twice as cold as 100K. Using our day-to-day scales like Fahrenheit and Celsius, this wouldn't be true: it would be like measuring things with a ruler that starts at -4 "blinches", which is the same as inches but it starts at -4. We know that something that's [10 inches long](_URL_20_) is twice as long as something that's [5 inches long](_URL_0_), but if we used our strange ruler then something that was 6 blinches long would actually be twice as long as something 1 blinch long, which really doesn't make any sense if we're just doing simple calculations!
Now that you have the background, we can finally get a proper answer to your question. If it was 0F today, and tomorrow it were going to be twice as hot, you might want to consider evacuating you and your loved ones, because [0F is 255.4K](_URL_10_), and [2×255.4K=460F](_URL_8_), which is pretty close to the [autoignition temperature of paper](_URL_16_). If it was 0C today, then tomorrow's doubly-hot weather will be even more unbearable: [2×273.15K=273C](_URL_9_), which is getting close to the [melting point of lead](_URL_4_).
Interestingly, if you doubled the [lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth](_URL_1_) (184K, which is −89.2 °C or −128.6 °F), you would get [368K, which is 95 °C or 202 °F](_URL_3_), which is close to the boiling point of water, and way above the [hottest natural temperature recorded anywhere on Earth](_URL_11_) (outside of a volcano or a forest fire). So, in practice, it's never possible for today to be "twice as hot" or "twice as cold" as tomorrow. Unless, of course, [set up a homestead on Mercury](_URL_19_).
Let me know if you have any follow-up questions! | [
"According to the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown commentary, \"cold\" must mean \"more than negatively cold\", i.e. not warm: it must mean \"positively, icy cold: never warmed\", while \"hot\" literally means \"boiling\" or \"fervent\". They comment that \"the lukewarm state (verse 16), if it be the transitional stage to a... |
How can TSA/Airport security workers stand next to X and T ray machines all day everyday without any ill effects? | Like any radiation worker, they apply ALARA. That means that you should take steps to make your radiation exposure "As Low As Reasonably Achievable". The ways to do this are the maximize distance from the source, minimize time near it, and use shielding when possible.
If you pay close attention when passing through security, you'll see that they rotate between positions throughout the day. So the people operating the x-ray machines rotate around to other positions as well.
You may also notice that some employees are wearing badge dosimeters. These are little badges that you wear on your body. Over time they will accumulate on average the same exposure density to radiation that your body does. Every few months you send them in for testing to see if you had an abnormally high exposure within that time.
I don't know much about the manufacture of their machines (I'd guess it's not something they want the public to know much about), but it's not hard to add some shielding to strongly attenuate x-rays. | [
"The UK trialed a controversial new method of screening passengers to further improve airport security using backscatter X-ray machines that provide a 360-degree view of a person, as well as \"see\" under clothes, right down to the skin and bones. They are no longer used and were replaced by millimeter wave scanner... |
could someone get in trouble for accidentally stumbling upon child porn | Theoretically yes, practically no. Firstly law enforcement are not tracking those who on a single occasion saw something for a few seconds. Secondly if you accidentally clicked on something innocent then it is likely that hundreds of other people would have done the same and law enforcement can track back on your device to see how you came to the location. | [
"If the video or images in question are of individuals who are minors, including material created by the subject (ex. selfies, etc.), investigation by law enforcement can lead to charges for child pornography as has happened in cases involving sexting.\n",
"According to the Mayo Clinic of the U.S.A., studies and ... |
If something huge hit the Earth, would humans and objects on the opposite side of the planet go flying up in the air? | The earth is quite squishy on the big scale. It would be like hitting a water balloon i think. A gigantic shock wave would propagate around the earth from the impact location. If the object is big enough, the earth's crust would be thrown into space and the earth would turn into a giant ball of lava. | [
"When a near-Earth object impacts Earth, objects up to a few tens of metres across ordinarily explode in the upper atmosphere (usually harmlessly), with most or all of the solids vaporized, while larger objects hit the water surface, forming waves, or the solid surface, forming impact craters.\n",
"Each year, the... |
If I shot a lazer that went forever in a straight line through space, what are the odds it would hit an object - star, planet, nebula etc..? | All lasers (and all photons in general) do go in straight lines through space.
Edit: Removed my answer which presumed a static universe. BarnardPancake is correct. | [
"BULLET::::- The odds of getting none of the 50 main balls but getting both lucky stars is approximately 1 in 115. This means that it is less likely than getting 2 main balls and one lucky star (1 in 49). However, there is no prize for only getting 2 lucky stars.\n",
"BULLET::::- 2008 XK (~12 meters in diameter) ... |
why is there so much down time in professional football games? | I'm assuming you mean American football. There are a couple reasons:
* It provides ample time to include commercials
* Football is an extremely brutal and tiring sport; the downtime gives players a chance to recover between plays
* Oftentimes there are a lot of things that have to happen between plays; the ball needs to be spotted, teams need to decide on their plays, chains may need to be moved, the line needs to be set, etc. All of this takes time. | [
"Generally, American football games last much longer than 80-minute rugby league matches. Because the field is reset after each tackle in American football, it is much slower-paced than the more hectic rugby league, in which play stops for only as long as it takes the tackled player to get back to his feet and retu... |
why does rain make us feel cozy? | Let's be a bit more specific and talk about gentle rains with maybe a bit of thunder in the distance while you're inside or under shelter. There's a big number of things that contribute.
First, the *soft white noise*. A gentle rain creates tons of mildly distracting pleasant white noise. This helps reduce stress.
It *amplifies positive feelings of comfort, shelter and safety*. You don't get these positive feelings when you're outside doing stuff in it, you get them when they're not drenching you. So there's a bigger difference between INSIDE (where you're comfortable) and OUTSIDE (where you wouldn't be), so you notice that you're in a positive state a bit more. And this contrast can be bigger if there's thunder off in the distance somewhere. And such rains comes when it's usually comfortably humid and cool, rather than sticky and too hot.
Gentle rains are tied to an emotional state of calmness too because they're *associated with a history of calm activities and "me time"*, relaxing and not working. The last time there was a day like this you pampered yourself a little with a good book on a comfortable couch... so you look forward to the next time.
Rain *symbolizes renewal and cleanliness*. It's a positive source of growth for plants and it often produces a nice clean smell as it washes dust away. So there's a mental association with a few positives there.
And for those of us who live in temperate zones, this type of pleasant rain means it's not snowing and there are leaves on the trees... and so it's what most of us consider to be *the better time of the year*. | [
"Cultural attitudes towards rain differ across the world. In temperate climates, people tend to be more stressed when the weather is unstable or cloudy, with its impact greater on men than women. Rain can also bring joy, as some consider it to be soothing or enjoy the aesthetic appeal of it. In dry places, such as ... |
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