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When things fall into a black hole, why does it not built up enough kinetic energy to come back to the original position? | There are a couple of ways to look at it. One way is that the potential well for say, a pendulum has finite depth. A black hole is has a singularity, the potential well has infinite depth so you will never cross it and go back up. | [
"At first sight this seems like a \"bad\" result as it allows energy to apparently be obtained \"for free\", because we can surround the black hole with a circular track, and allow an object to repeatedly fall \"downhill\" around the track from A to B and back again, extracting energy each time, and thus violating ... |
what is the difference between the anti-inflammatory effects of chemicals like curcumin versus nsaids like ibuprofen? | I think they both lead to the same thing. You can just increase your turmeric intake in your food for the same effect that you'd have in a supplement or a pill. The pill is a specific, calculated, dose whereas you don't know the exact quantity of chemical you're getting in the food. | [
"Ibuprofen is sometimes used for the treatment of acne because of its anti-inflammatory properties, and has been sold in Japan in topical form for adult acne. As with other NSAIDs, ibuprofen may be useful in the treatment of severe orthostatic hypotension (low blood pressure when standing up). NSAIDs are of unclear... |
When you look at a star in the sky, is it in the actual location you see, or is it really in a different position due to the time it takes light to travel to Earth? | Just think of it this way. You aren't seeing the star, you're seeing the light the star gave off. However many thousand/million years ago that light left the star is what you're seeing.
And as long as the universe is expanding and moving as the doppler effect shows, then yeah, that star is in a different position now than when the light left it. If it's even still there. | [
"Viewed from the same location, a star seen at one position in the sky will be seen at the same position on another night at the same sidereal time. This is similar to how the time kept by a sundial can be used to find the location of the Sun. Just as the Sun and Moon appear to rise in the east and set in the west ... |
What is the maximum achievable Data transfer rate from Mars to Earth? | [500 To 32000 bits per second, according to the nasa website.](_URL_2_)
The variance is primarily because, the distance between mars and earth varies. In more detail, [the communications channel between earth and mars is essentially modeled by an AWGN channel (PDF, great read on the history of deep space communications).](_URL_0_) Because of this, it is actually one of the very few channels for which the [Shannon-Hartley theorem](_URL_1_) is applicable. The shannon hartley theorem states the maximum data for a linear time invariant additive white gaussian noise channel and an infinite transmission time is B log(1+SNR) where B is the bandwidth and SNR is the signal to noise ratio. Because SNR is a distance of function (see [friis transmission equation](_URL_4_)), the variation of distance between earth and mars causes a fluctuantion in the data rate.
What can we do to improve the data rate? Considering that channel capacity is inescapable fundamental law, we are limited to three real options, up the power, up the bandwidth, or change the channel. The first two are self explanatory, but have some major drawbacks. For power, note the return on investment in power is pretty poor (only scales with log(Power) after all). Furthermore power is usually at a premium in interstellar items, so while this may be easy earth side, it would not be so mars side. Usually a few simple tricks are used to gain some power such as using [directional antennas](_URL_5_) which concentrate the signal power as much as possible. On the other end we can increase the bandwidth, where the only drawback is having to design antennas which capture a large range of frequencies, and having to deal with higher and higher frequencies for communications.
The other option is to change the channel. Specifically, another qualifier to the Shannon Hartley theorem is that it is only for the case when there is a single transmitter and single receiver. You can change the channel into a MIMO channel by simply adding more transmitters and more receivers. [Describing the capacity of a MIMO system is a little more complicated, and I will instead refer you to equations 5 and 7 here (PDF).](_URL_3_) In particular for equation 5, **H** is the channel state matrix, and Q is an optimization parameter used to control the power to the input. It is not hard to see that relatively cheap gains are to be had this way, and is probably the most promising way. Although to be clear, it is not a linear problem and 5 transmitters does not equal 5 times the data rate.
| [
"NASA published the Design Reference Architecture 5.0 for Mars in 2009, advocating a 174-day transfer to Mars, which is close to Zubrin's proposed trajectory. It cites a delta-v requirement of approximately 4 km/s for the trans-Mars injection, but does not mention the duration of a free return to Earth.\n",
"On M... |
why does the brain tend to constantly play music on its own ? | From the experience of a musician, it's always there. It never leaves. But then again, we want it there. There's no "Maybe if I complete the song instead of turning it off in between, it will stop." I guess we have to always make sure it's something we like.
It can be bad though, like when you are talking to people. They're telling about their petty, melodramatic life and you're zoning out thinking about that sick part you just heard, muttering the drum rudiment under your breath. | [
"Neuroplasticity allows the brain to grow and change, especially in the auditory and motor cortex. Listening and playing music helps both of these areas of the brain to develop more, which was found to be correlated to having an improves auditory imagery in many performers in a study conducted at Utrecht University... |
Do cold/flu viruses mutate during a cold? | Cold(family: *picornaviridae* genus: *rhinovirus*)and flu viruses(family: *orthomyxoviridae* genera: *influenzavirus A*, *B* and *C*)are dramatically different in mutability and genome organization, so the means by which one mutates will not be the same as the other.
Recombination events from being infected by two flu strains can cause encapsidation(packing into virus particles) of parts of each strain to be put into a single particle. This can increase or decrease transmission. In cases where there is an increase, the strain will proliferate and infect more people. This doesn’t equal deadlier, however. Some genes are responsible for the ability to infect the upper respiratory tract(transmission potential) and others for the lower(deadliness). The worry comes from a strain acquiring both traits, as suspected of the 1918 pandemic.
It’s also worth mentioning that were you to culture flu viruses(spherical-ish particles), their morphology would be different than if you isolated them directly from a patient(filamentous particles).
In short, no, it doesn’t mutate *because* of the battle, but by chance infection by multiple strains.
I’m no doctor, but I would suspect that it’s unlikely a flu virus would change enough in a single infection to be able to get the person who got you sick, sick.
Don’t really know much about the cold, specifically, but it’s a substantially simpler virus, so I’d have to guess it doesn’t mutate much. Our inability to find an adequate vaccine is more related to the shape of its capsid being difficult to fit an antigen to, and thus get the immune system to clear it. | [
"Well over 200 virus strains are implicated in causing the common cold, with rhinoviruses being the most common. They spread through the air during close contact with infected people or indirectly through contact with objects in the environment, followed by transfer to the mouth or nose. Risk factors include going ... |
in artist collaborations, what's the difference between featuring, versus, and with? | Versus: is usually a head to head battle. Real time call and response. A guitar head cutting duel or quite simply a mashup remix.
Featuring: Usually involves song composed and recorded by one artist and they call out to a friend to do a bit of sessions. If the artist good enough its a feature. Or while giving young ones a chance.
With: means collaboration. Artists may have composed a bit together. Or maybe performing together on stage.
all of these can also be used great for publicity reasons. | [
"There are many variations, both broader and narrower than \"all the works\" or \"one artist\". The parameters may be restricted to one type of art work by one artist or widened to all the works by a group of artists.\n",
"A combine painting is an artwork that incorporates various objects into a painted canvas su... |
Is there a school of historical thought that disagrees that the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan were necessary? | Yes, there are plenty of people who have argued this since at least 1946.* It comes down to what you define as "necessary," but there are, and have been for decades, people who have argued, from various points of view, that the war with Japan would have ended soon anyway, that Japan was essentially defeated, and that a land invasion would not have been necessary to secure an adequate surrender. There are several different variations on this argument, such as the idea that the Soviet declaration of war by itself would have been a big enough "shock" to induce surrender. Another is that the US could have sought to lessen the "unconditional surrender" requirement to better meet Japanese cultural/political needs. Another is that the first bomb could have been "demonstrated" or used in such a way that would have made its power clear but had minimal casualties. Another is simply that only one bomb could have been used — there are many who believe that Hiroshima might have been justified and necessary, but that Nagasaki was simply excessive and unjustified, coming so close on the heels of Hiroshima.
There have been various motivations for people to make this argument. To just give an example, the US Strategic Bombing Survey in 1946 [famously concluded](_URL_1_):
> _Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated._
Now, why would the USSBS conclude such a thing? In part because they resented that the work in conventional bombardment had been overshadowed by the atomic bomb. In their view, [the atomic bombings were only a small, final part of a much bigger operation](_URL_4_), one that destroyed Japan's ability and willingness to make war.
At about the same time, there was a separate line of thinking (pioneered in print by P.M.S. Blackett, a British physicist) that the bomb was unnecessary and used only to rattle the Soviets. This has been carried forward in time by "revisionist" (I hate the term) historians like Gar Alperovitz. I think most historians today think this is an overly simplistic way to look at the decisions that led to the bombing; the use of the bomb as a diplomatic tool was in the minds of a few statesmen (Byrnes and maybe Truman) at Potsdam, but there were so many other motivations for using it that this looks just like a "bonus" motivation.
And one can argue against that, as well. I think today most historians would agree with Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's sentiment that a _combination_ of the bombing of Hiroshima and the Soviet declaration of war/invasion of Manchuria is what pushed the Japanese to their final agreement on surrender. That does not mean that you could remove one or both of those and not get the same result — that's very uncertain, a complicated counterfactual, and these two events are so entangled in time that it is hard to really imagine them being separated. But that the bombing _and_ the Soviets played some role in the Japanese deliberations seems somewhat clear, though the question of which one to apportion the greater weight to is not. (This is in his _Racing the Enemy_, esp. the conclusion on counterfactuals; he puts more emphasis on the Soviet invasion, but does not claim that the bombs played no role.)
But there are certainly others, today from a more liberal bent, who think the atomic bombs were not only not necessary, but didn't end the war. Ward Wilson, in his _Five Myths about Nuclear Weapons_, argues that the Soviet invasion, full stop, is what did it. He argues that if the atomic bombs compelled surrender they would be the first and only aerial bombardment to have done such a thing — that the trope of "boots on the ground" being necessary to compel surrender was a real one (Russian boots, in this case). I don't find that argument entirely persuasive (the atomic bombings were, for a lot of reasons, unusual, and so if you were going to find an exception to that rule, maybe they'd be it), but it gives you an example of the kind of argumentation used in this sort of thing. For Wilson, his goal is pretty clear: he thinks "myths" like this (that the atomic bombs ended the war) contributed to wrong-thinking about nuclear weapons in general, and that once you dispense with the myths, you can dispense with the weapons.
Separately, it is just worth noting that the "other side" has its own political motivations for making its political claims as well during all of these times; politics goes both ways, it is not one side being "political" and the other side being "apolitical." A quick example is that the "millions of Americans" dead claim is surely exaggerated — even using Okinawa casualty rates, which would be a big assumption, you have a hard time getting above 100,000 dead ([I wrote a recent comment about this here](_URL_3_) and [here](_URL_0_), the latter with a citation). Inflating the invasion casualties is one method of trying to argue for the bombing's necessity, even arguing that it was "humane." The actual casualties being discussed at the time were high in objective terms (tens of thousands), and surely were taken seriously at the time, but at least an order of magnitude, sometimes two, lower than these inflated postwar numbers. (And, of course, literally _nobody_ who argues that the atomic bombs shouldn't have been used has ever argued that a land invasion was the preferred alternative; it is a false choice, the "two atomic bombs on two cities vs. a land invasion.")
\* Indeed, criticism of the need to use the bomb in 1946 was acute enough that it spurred many of the participants in the bombing question (notably Truman, Stimson, Groves, and Conant) to actively pursue measures at "correcting the record," at making sure their position was presented strongly. This was the genesis of Stimson's famous _Harper's_ article, "[The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb](_URL_2_)" (February 1947) which is the origin of what we today think of as the "orthodox" account of the bombing (e.g., there was a deliberation, it was bombing vs. invasion, Truman made the final call, and the bombs ended the war). It is a very slanted view of things, presented by people with huge stakes in the public perception. I bring it up only to indicate that the narrative one thinks of as "default" had to come from somewhere as well, and the context in which it emerged was not "apolitical" in the slightest (much the contrary). On the genesis of this article and its many elusions, the final parts of Alperovitz's _The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb_ are very good (even if many of Alperovitz's other interpretations on the bombing are quite debatable). | [
"Japanese historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa argued that the entry of the Soviet Union into the war against Japan \"played a much greater role than the atomic bombs in inducing Japan to surrender because it dashed any hope that Japan could terminate the war through Moscow's mediation\". A view among critics of the bombing... |
what exactly is happening when you run games/media at 1080p on a 4k tv? | Your 4K TV is 3840 pixels wide and 2160 pixels high. The image you're feeding it is only 1920 pixels wide and 1080 pixels high. If three quarters of your screen isn't black bars, then that image is being upscaled somewhere.
Typically what's happening is your output device (PC, streaming box etc) is sending a 1080p signal, and the processors inside the TV are doing all the work of converting that to a 4K image. It's rarely just a simple mathematical conversion, there's all sorts of processing that takes place to make it look good - noise reduction, image sharpening, databases of ideal conversions etc.
Generally speaking the better the TV, the better this conversion takes place. Cheap 4K TVs will probably look no better than 1080p, maybe even slightly worse in some cases depending on the content. But usually they will look better than a 1080p TV. The size of the TV and your viewing distance are also factors.
If your output device is a PC, depending on your graphics card you could instead use AMD Virtual Super Resolution (VSR) or Nvidia Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR). Both are technologies that will perform the upscaling on the PC/GPU side, but again it's going to depend on the content and the quality of the TV/monitor as to whether they are the better option. | [
"While only a small number of games render video in native 1080p, many games can be automatically scaled to output this resolution. The Wii is capable of outputting 480p for the Wii Menu and most games through a component cable, which must be purchased separately.\n",
"BULLET::::- Increased Resolution - The title... |
Why doesn't the Earth's elliptical orbit affect its temperature (Cause Seasons)? | There are a few reasons:
First, 5 million km seems like a lot, but it's not that much compared to the average orbital radius of about 150 million km.
Second, the effect of the planet's tilt isn't related to one side being further away as much as it is one side being at more of an angle with respect to the sun:
Days are shorter on the hemisphere that's further from the sun, so the sun is heating that hemisphere for less time every day. Sunlight is also hitting the surface at a more oblique angle, so it is less intense. At middle latitudes, the sun is adding about twice as much energy per square meter per second in the summer than in the winter, and the sun is shining for longer. | [
"Compared to axial tilt, other factors contribute little to seasonal temperature changes. The seasons are not the result of the variation in Earth's distance to the Sun because of its elliptical orbit. In fact, Earth reaches perihelion (the point in its orbit closest to the Sun) in January, and it reaches aphelion ... |
why do third world countries often seem to have such low costs of living? | The largest cost we have in 1st worod countries generally is labor. Things are very expensive in comparison because you have to pay workers more so production, transportation, and distribution all costs significantly more. | [
"Third World countries are especially interested in international tourism, and many believe it brings countries a large selection of economic benefits including employment opportunities, small business development, and increased in payments of foreign exchange. Many assume that more money is gained through developi... |
how do smartphones have the whole screen light up? | The screen is composed of multiple layers. The top layer is the glass. Below that is the pixel array that creates the colors you see on screen. Below that is what's called a diffuse layer, which is usually a piece of semi-transparent plastic with a texture kind of like frosted glass. Behind that is a light, called the backlight. The backlight shines onto the diffuse layer, which diffuses the light over its entire surface. That's what makes it look like there's just one solid light behind the screen when in fact it's usually an array of many lights. | [
"It also has 2 mini lights, located at either side of the Motorola logo above the screen. The mini light on the left (from the user's point of view) is a green charging light, which displays when the phone is charging and the mini light on the right (again also from the POV) is a blue bluetooth light displayed in p... |
why have built-in webcam covers not surged in popularity yet? | I think offering a built-in cover would be perceived as an acknowledgement that the product is not entirely secure in its own right.
It's like selling a house with bars on the windows. Makes you wonder what's wrong with the neighborhood. | [
"Around the turn of the 21st century, computer hardware manufacturers began building webcams directly into laptop and desktop screens, thus eliminating the need to use an external USB or FireWire camera. Gradually webcams came to be used more for telecommunications, or videotelephony, between two people, or among s... |
How is an SD card a limiting factor for transfer speed? | An SD card is composed broadly of flash memory (an array of transistor-pairs) and a controller. Both of those can impose limitations on transfer speed.
As for the flash memory itself, because its storing the data in transistors, the frequency of switching for a transistor depends on the construction and quality of the transistor. This is one reason why faster SD cards tend to be more expensive: transistor manufacturing technology can be more costly when making better transistors.
The controller is often a limiting factor, as well, especially for write operations. The controller is an IC (miniature processor, really) which satisfies requests from the host computer. When you're trying to read or write with an SD card, in some sense, your computer is really communicating with another computer (the controller), and how the logic in that controller is implemented can affect performance with an SD card. | [
"SD card speed is customarily rated by its sequential read or write speed. The sequential performance aspect is the most relevant for storing and retrieving large files (relative to block sizes internal to the flash memory), such as images and multimedia. Small data (such as file names, sizes and timestamps) falls ... |
why doesn't the world get rid of borders? | Sure, let's start by following my rules. Oh, you want to make rules too? Well I don't like your ideas so we will never merge.
Now try integrating a country ruled by a religious dictator who's citizens believe (under penalty of death) that his dictates are authorized by God? How about a country that believes your ethnic group is subhuman and the only ethical course is to exterminate your entire culture? How about giving a country with three times your population yet commonly believes eating albino humans will cure various ailments an equal vote with you?
It just won't work, no matter how much weed you smoke. | [
"There have been sporadic attempts to promote global open borders as a viable policy option. Open borders quickly became popular after 1889. The International Emigration Conference held in Rome in May 1924 stated that anybody has the right to immigrate to a different country if they wanted to. Before the 1880s, mig... |
medieval nobility | > How did the system of nobility and peasanthood arise?
It arose in many, many places and even in the same places many times again and again over history. There's no one answer other than something general like: "The guy with the most weapons and folks to hold them said it'd be like that."
The isle of Great Britain alone has had more kingdoms on it than you could shake a stick at in the past 1500 years, never-mind Europe generally or the whole world.
> How did a family establish itself as 'noble?'
Depends on the realm in question. In some cases the nobility was just about as good as locked down - it was basically never the case that a commoner could become a landowner or holder of titles.
In some realms a noble might grant nobility to some degree or another for military accomplishments, or simply because they liked that person.
> What powers and responsibilities were granted to those of noble families?
Again, varies realm to realm. A duke, count or whatever might be charged with defending the realm from the other kingdom that bordered their lands. Some were charged with meeting quotas for food harvested or for providing soldiers.
Some held the power to, along with the other gentry, select the king or depose him. Some realms had - at least on paper - royal families for all time that could never be deposed or overruled.
There have been kingdoms, empires and other realms beyond counting in history, and no two exactly the same. | [
"European nobility originated in the feudal/seignorial system that arose in Europe during the Middle Ages. Originally, knights or nobles were mounted warriors who swore allegiance to their sovereign and promised to fight for him in exchange for an allocation of land (usually together with serfs living thereon). Dur... |
Why do we refer to China as "Song", "Han", and others instead of the "Chinese Empire"? | This is because the naming comes from Chinese historiography, rather than the western one, and that is just how the Chinese name their political history. There is also the fact that unlike the "Byzantine Empire", "British Empire" or "German Empire", there's only one Chinese Empire, ruled by multiple dynasties who ruled the very same spot for more or less 3000 years in continuance, and then there's the relative longetivity of Chinese dynasties, and hence one dynasty can encompass periods up to 400 years, and each dynasty marks a very different geopolitical and cultural landscape, and such it is necessary to mark the history of the Chinese according to the dynasties, or more recently, the form of the republics.
Another fun fact, the name "Middle Kingdom" assigned to China is as old as the Chinese writings itself, which is more than 3000 years old, so calling China simply "Chinese Empire" in context of history can be extremely confusing. | [
"The name \"Han\" was derived from the name of the eponymous dynasty, which succeeded the short-lived Qin dynasty, and is historically considered to be the first golden age of China's Imperial era due to the power and influence it projected over much of East Asia. As a result of the dynasty's prominence in inter-et... |
how do we synchronize our pace when walking next to someone? | I'm pretty sure that's only true for people of similar height.
My girlfriend is a good 10 inches shorter than me, and so when we walk "together", she takes many short steps and I take longer steps. | [
"Synchronization of movement is defined as similar movements between two or more people who are temporally aligned. This is different to mimicry, as these movements occur after a short delay. Muscular bonding is the idea that moving in time evokes particular emotions. This sparked some of the first research into mo... |
can animals get concussions like humans? and if so are the consequences similar? | Yes, they can and do. It can be harder to tell, and we don't usually send them for MRI/CT to confirm, so a lot of them go misdiagnosed. But animals with head trauma will become nauseous, lose consciousness, loss of balance, signs of partial blindness, etc, all the same kind of signs we'd expect in a human.
Rest and exercise restriction are important. Obviously its hard to prevent intense cognitive workouts in a dog or cat, but keeping them "unstimulated" is important.
We do also see cumulative concussion effects like tremors, seizures, cognitive dysfunction, etc in animals with a (suspected) history of repeated concussions, such as victims of animal abuse or bloodsports. | [
"The debate over whether concussion is a functional or structural phenomenon is ongoing. Structural damage has been found in the mildly traumatically injured brains of animals, but it is not clear whether these findings would apply to humans. Such changes in brain structure could be responsible for certain symptoms... |
Is it possible to un-polarize polarized light? | In optical measurement instruments, a "diffuser" is sometimes inserted into the light path; think a rough piece of aluminum or some such. This has the explicit goal to get rid of the polarization in the incoming light (to be more exact: to have all possible polarizations represented equally).
This is done because e.g. optical sensor response may be highly polarization-dependent, and you want to make sure that does not affect your measurement.
(Disclaimer: I' a humble software guy, but I have worked in a project where an optical remote sensing instrument was calibrated). | [
"In many applications it is possible to use a quarter-wave plate to produce circularly polarized light, but this is only possible for light of a limited range of wavelengths which is linearly polarized to start with. Other methods have been demonstrated, such as the use of Faraday rotators and liquid crystals. It i... |
how does orajel and other numbing gels work? | Orajel is actually made up of a substance called Benzocaine, which interacts with open nerve endings that sense pain. Benzocaine will basically stops the nerve from sending those impulses of pain by blocking something called a Voltage Dependant Sodium Channel, something important to block because as soon as sodium enters the neuron from the nerve endings to cause depolarization and then causes an action potential.
Dumbed down a little bit, this basically means that Benzocaine latches onto the nerve membrane and stops those sodium channels from sending that signal of pain. | [
"As a liquid or semisolid dosage, gels are typically used where a solid form would affect the patient’s comfort. As a trade-off, conventional gels have poor retention rates. This results in unpredictable losses of the drug, as the non-solid dosage is unable to maintain its position at the site of administration. Mu... |
When I pour cream into my coffee, a small amount skates across the surface away from the point of entry. What causes this? | Argh, this is frustrating! I saw a great talk on this phenomenon at a scientific conference a couple of years ago, but I can't remember the name of the author and a literature search is coming up empty, so I can't cite my sources as required by /r/askscience. I'm going to give the story as I remember it, and hopefully someone else can chime in with a citation and more details.
Droplets bounce off water surfaces all the time -- another example is raindrops on a lake -- and the usual explanation given is just "surface tension". But that's only part of the story, because the **temperature difference between drop and surface** matters. Try your experiment with cold coffee: you won't see skating droplets. It only happens when the drops are colder than the liquid they're falling into.
The speaker I heard at this conference did a bunch of experiments and computer models to show that the temperature difference creates an air flow beneath the droplet that pushes the drop upward, kind of like a hovercraft! The effect is similar to, but not the same as, the [Leidenfrost effect](_URL_0_). | [
"Interaction of the particles suspended in a droplet with the free surface of the droplet is important in creating a coffee ring. \"When the drop evaporates, the free surface collapses and traps the suspended particles .. eventually all the particles are captured by the free surface and stay there for the rest of t... |
birds in the northern hemisphere migrate south for the winter. are there birds from the southern hemisphere that migrate north for the summer? what species are they? | Many species of migratory birds breed in Alaska. That's why that proposal to drill for oil in that wildlife refuge was such a big deal.
Edit: The Whimbrel is a good example. It breeds in Alaska and winters as far south as Africa and South America. | [
"These birds do migrate out of North America after the breeding season. It remains unclear where most of the birds spend the winter, although some of the birds have been tracked as far south as Brazil, migrating there from Colorado. Some of the birds in the West Indies appear to be permanent residents. They are lat... |
why does it seem like there are 'cycles' of terrorism? | Your question is really about perception. Terrorism, to a large extent, has become less about gigantic coordinated attacks like 9/11 and the Madrid train bombings, and generally gotten simpler and simpler until it is an individual or a handful of guys with guns shooting everyone in a confined space. That is not to minimize the horror of those situations when they happen, but it shows that it is moving from a model where you have trained and coordinated cells to small groups improvising whatever violence they can. | [
"Conflict theorists view terrorism as a reaction to injustice, which is probably created in the minds of terrorists due to misguidance, illiteracy, or unrealistic goals, and that violent behaviors expressed by terrorist organizations are the result of individual frustration, aggression or showing a readiness to fig... |
why are people attracted to furries? | People are funny. different strokes for different folks. It's theoretically possible to be attracted to literally anything. Some people just happen to be attracted to furries. | [
"According to \"Furry survey\", about half of furries perceive public reaction to the fandom as negative; less than a fifth stated that the public responded to them more negatively than they did most furries. Furry fans' belief that they will be portrayed as \"mainly obsessed with sex\" has led to mistrust of the m... |
Black Hole Escape Velocity and the "Graviton" | The escape velocity angle on why black holes are inescapable is slightly misleading. The Earth's escape velocity is about 11km/s but an object can escape from Earth at any speed if it has some mechanism for generating thrust during its journey.
Black holes are inescapable because gravity curves spacetime. Inside the event horizon of a black hole, spacetime is so curved that *any* path through spacetime heads towards the singularity. Even if you cross the event horizon, turn 180 degrees, and accelerate, you'll still find that you're heading towards the singularity. What you think of as a straight path has been warped by the black hole's extreme gravity. | [
"Defined a little more formally, \"escape velocity\" is the initial speed required to go from an initial point in a gravitational potential field to infinity and end at infinity with a residual speed of zero, without any additional acceleration. All speeds and velocities are measured with respect to the field. Addi... |
will they ever go after the actual person(s) who wrote and built the code for volkswagen to cheat the emissions testing? | When a company does something wrong, you sue the company, not the CEO, or the manager, or the engineer. This is what's called corporate personhood. So no, they won't go after the person who wrote the code. | [
"In 2015 Volkswagen abused the DMCA to hide their vehicles emissions cheat. It has been suggested that had the DMCA not prevented access to the software \"..a researcher with legal access to Volkswagen's software could have discovered the code that changed how the cars behave in testing..\"\n",
"In 2006, Volkswag... |
When did humans start falling in love? | It's an interesting question, but I believe the vagueness of it is why it didn't get answered. First you have to define what love is, then you have to define what monogamy is. I'll put my own answer at the bottom if you don't want to read everything in between.
Is love a deep rooted emotion of the soul, a set of chemical changes in the body and brain that induce an individual to take a mate, or a choice of commitment to another person? In the third case, does that dedication require exclusivity? Under any of these definitions, is it possible to love, and be loved by, more than one person at once?
What about monogamy? Where does serial monogamy (i.e. the mating systems currently practiced in most Western countries) fit in? Is it the most common definition of having only a single sexual partner at once, or can the concept of monogamy only exist within the institution of marriage? Can a person that has had more than one sexual partner in their lives be called monogamous? Can a person who has been divorced be called monogamous within their next marriage?
What about people who have sexual relations outside of wedlock? What about those who only have one sexual partner at a time but tend to frequently fall into and out of non-marriage relationships? Any STI-preventing properties of monogamy are substantially weakened when a strict monogamy of one sexual partner for life is not observed, and I don't think I have to explain how extremely rare that is, from unmarried teenagers sneaking off to have a roll in the bushes to young "on again, off again" couples to divorcees to unfaithful spouses frequenting brothels or "visiting" the shopkeeper in the village center.
Further muddying the waters, there are non-Western (Western being influenced by modern Western European culture; this did not functionally exist prior to the Colonial period) cultural marriage systems going back thousands of years that don't fit neatly into one category. Some were polygamous, or in other words, "poly monogamous," either through one male and multiple females (polygyny) or one female and multiple males (polyandry). All of these arrangements still exist today, just not as commonly. In this system, a single member of one sex is paired with multiple members of the other, but all of the relationships exist as discrete pairs without any sexual relationships happening outside of each pair, and the members of the multiplied sex have no relations with one another. So in a polygynous relationship, which is the most common arrangement, the females are strictly monogamous while the male is not strictly monogamous but is tightly constrained to sexual relationships within the same small pool of partners as one pair at a time.
This has already gotten extremely complicated and we haven't yet included same-sex relationships, multi-lateral marriage, or polyamory, all of which have existed in varying forms with varying rarity and varying cultural acceptance going clear back to the invention of writing, and probably well before that.
So to answer the question at all, one has to impose definitions of love, monogamy, and marriage that vary wildly depending on the cultural background in which one was raised. Further, applying modern sexual definitions to historical arrangements is both effectively impossible and one of the highest orders of folly in anyone studying the past.
So to take it all back to the beginning: did love exist before monogamy? If it's a deep-seated emotion, then it almost certainly existed at the dawn of our species. If it's the chemical change in the brain telling someone to take a mate, then it not only existed before monogamy, it's very likely to have existed clear back to the point that our genus branched off of the evolutionary path of the other great apes, and then a couple million years before that. Depending on how loose you are with the definition, back to the origin of sexually reproducing life, although I would stop at the great apes since anything less closely related to us than that probably wouldn't experience it anywhere near the same way. If it's a commitment to another person, then we can be certain it existed at least as long as institutionalized marriage if one takes marriage as concrete proof of such a commitment. The oldest evidence of institutionalized marriage is about 4500 years old, but it probably existed a long time before that, and the actual dedication to other people is very likely to be older still.
Ultra TL;DR: Probably at the origin of *homo sapiens*, yes, no. | [
"The twentieth-century saw the concept of love-sickness reconceptualised by psychoanalysis. As early as 1915, Freud asked rhetorically, \"Isn't what we mean by 'falling in love' a kind of sickness and craziness, an illusion, a blindness to what the loved person is really like?\" Half a century later, in 1971, Hans ... |
how do trees start out as flimsy sprouts but then change into hard wood? | You have heard the saying that if you cut down a tree, you can count the rings to see how old it is.
Every year the tree builds another layer onto itself, creating a new ring, thus getting taller, thicker and more sturdy as time goes on. | [
"Wood is primarily composed of xylem cells with cell walls made of cellulose and lignin. Xylem is a vascular tissue which moves water and nutrients from the roots to the leaves. Most woody plants form new layers of woody tissue each year, and so increase their stem diameter from year to year, with new wood deposite... |
how do tuning forks stay in tune, and can they ever go out of tune? | Tuning forks are meant to be struck on a certain type of material which is like a hard rubber in the form of a small block or mallet. If you strike it on something else you risk deforming it and changing its pitch.
that’s what I was told in choir. | [
"Tuning forks have traditionally been used to tune musical instruments, though electronic tuners have largely replaced them. Forks can be driven electrically by placing electronic oscillator-driven electromagnets close to the prongs.\n",
"Commercial tuning forks are tuned to the correct pitch at the factory, and ... |
What was the role of the U.K. within the Cold War? | In the very funny and insightful British show "Yes, Minister" Jim Hacker, MP, says "We don't really have a foreign policy. More of an American missile base." | [
"In the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. government struggled with the Soviet Union for global leadership and influence within the context of the Cold War. It expanded the geographic scope of its actions beyond its traditional area of operations, Central America and the Caribbean. Significant operations included... |
how did cantonese and mandarin end up with the same characters, but completely different spoken languages? | Short answer: The Beijing Mandarin way of writing was forced on all of China. There's actually a form of written Cantonese that's basically incomprehensible to a Mandarin speaker.
Long answer:
A long time ago, there was a single Chinese language, now called Classical Chinese. Think of it like Latin.
Written languages tend to diverge more slowly than spoken languages.
Latin spawned French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian. These languages use largely the same alphabets, and speakers of one language can often stumble through written texts in the other languages: Lait, Leche, Laite, Latte, Lapte are the respective words for "milk," for instance.
However, a speaker of French will have a much harder time understanding spoken Spanish.
With regards to Chinese, the same thing happened. Classical Chinese changed in both written and verbal forms, but the verbal forms changed more. Linguists identify around 10 major varieties of Chinese, with hundreds of mutually unintelligible dialects.
(By the way, Mandarin is the largest variety, while Cantonese is a dialect of the fourth largest variety. Cantonese is familiar to Americans because they speak it in and around Hong Kong, where many early Chinese immigrants were from).
The written varieties changed, but because they (as a whole) changed less than the spoken language, it was achievable to force a single written language on the entire population. This happened within the last century or so: The Beijing Mandarin way of writing was forced on all of China. Beijing Mandarin is the basis of Standard Chinese, which is the official and common language of the PRC. But among fellow Shanghai residents, they will still speak Shanghainese, a dialect of the third largest Chinese variety.
Since the characters are not based on sounds like our language, it's entirely possible for speakers of different varieties to speak the same character multiple ways.
For instance, 好 roughly sounds like "how" in Mandarin, "ho" in Cantonese, etc.; It's also used in Japanese as a kanji character, and is pronounced "ko".
Of course, this character gives no clue to its pronunciation. But if you're curious, it's constructed from a combination of 女 and 子, roughly pronounced in Mandarin as "nü" and "dzih," which respectively mean "woman" and "child." But in one character? It means "good." | [
"Like most other variants of Chinese, Cantonese has changed initial voiced stops, affricates and fricatives of Middle Chinese to their voiceless counterparts. To compensate for the loss of that difference, Cantonese has split each of the Middle Chinese tones into two, one for Middle Chinese voiced initial consonant... |
does the brain use more energy while dreaming due to the fact that it's synthesizing sensations, characters, locations etc.? | No. Even though it might work on the things you mention, it stops worrying about all motor control, doesn't have to worry about sensory input to the same degree, doesn't need to process nearly as much information, it's very quiet up there. | [
"According to Revonsuo, the dreaming brain is particularly suitable model system for the study of consciousness because it generates a conscious experience while being isolated from both sensory input and motor output. Regarding the rival paradigm of visual awareness, Revonsuo argues that it does not allow one to d... |
what happened to the simpsons? why do people talk about it going downhill? what changed? | This is my opinion, not sure if it is shared with others. Simpsons used to have good plots. Even without the jokes, the plot made it interesting. The jokes, they were often witty and always fresh. Celebrities made appearances once in a while and it enhanced the experience.
After season 12 or so, the writers just got tired it seemed. The jokes have all been done. Now the writers were relying mostly on slapstick. They were also changing the personalities and histories of time-tested characters we've gotten to know to fit each episode. Then the episodes began to revolve around celebrities. It seemed they were round-peg-into-square-holing-celebrity roles with just terrible terrible voice acting.
I don't believe people have changed, because to this day I watch Simpsons episodes every night before I sleep. I still find seasons 3-12 hilarious, but don't find much appeal in subsequent seasons. Try it for yourself, piratebay season 6 or so and compare it to season 18. You'll see. | [
"The authors of the book \"I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide\", Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, called it \"one of the most dismally unfunny episodes ever, lifted only by the brief appearance of a talking camel and Homer's clever way of getting Cooder and Spud out of his home... |
how do opiates like heroin work? | in the central nervous system (brain and spinal chord) as well as the enteric system (intestinal) there are receptors that bind to normal chemicals (endogenous substances called enkaphalins, which are involved in pain pathways and emotion) in the body. Opioids bind to subtype of these receptors (mu receptors) and induce a conformational change in that receptor, which activates the receptor to send signals to other parts of the cell. the two things that it does, in respect to neurons, is decrease calcium entry into the cell and increase potassium exit from the cell. This brings the cell farther away from threshold (hyperpolarized) meaning that cell is less likely to be able to communicate with the next neuron. (i.e. it elevates the pain threshold by activating the descending-inhibitory pain pathway in the spinothalamic tract and deactivating the ascending pain pathway). Also, these receptors are in a part of the brain called the limbic system, which when activated blunt emotional responses. Other effects include decreased respiration by receptors in the respiratory center of the brain, nausea by receptors in a part of the brain called the area of postrema, couch suppression, and decreased gastrointestinal activity by activation of receptors in the enteric system. | [
"The opiate drugs are extracted from opium. The latex oozes from incisions made on the green seed pods and is collected once dry. Tincture of opium or laudanum, consisting of opium dissolved in alcohol or a mixture of alcohol and water, is one of many unapproved drugs regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administrat... |
why are some children so resistant to eating? | There are a LOT of potential answers to this, and I expect that others will have better explanations. However:
\- A major and important point of child development is learning to say "no" -- essentially, learning that you have control over your own body and are that you are capable of setting boundaries. Because eating is such an important part of most human communities, saying "no" to food is one of the universal ways that a 2- or 3-year-old begins to assert their own individual identity.
\- There's also (IIRC) some research showing that children have more sensitive taste receptors, and thus are more likely to push food away. | [
"Children attempting to swallow different food textures often vomit, gag, or choke while eating. At feeding times they may react negatively to attempts to feed them, and refuse to eat. Other symptoms include head turns, crying, difficulty in chewing or vomiting and spitting whilst eating. Many children may have fee... |
If you had a 343 meter long pole, and pushed one end, would it take one second for the other side to move? | No, it will actually be a much shorter time, but the exact time depends on the speed of sound through the material of the pole.
For example, a pole made of steel would have to be about 6100 meters long for it to take one second for the other end to move. This is because of how quickly a wave can propagate through a medium.
A wave can (generally) move faster through a solid than through either a gas or liquid.
[Here is a handy table that includes some common materials and their respective ~~speed of sound's~~ speeds of sound.](_URL_0_)
*edit:
We call it "the speed of sound" because that is how most people conceptualize what is going on, but in actuality sound is just a wave that is propagating through the air.
We don't have to be able to perceive a sound for a wave to actually be present. A more accurate way of thinking about the speed of sound would be how quickly a wave travels through a medium at a given temperature and pressure. | [
"With a short secondary, the behaviour is almost identical to a rotary machine, provided it is at least two poles long but with a short primary reduction in thrust that occurs at low slip (below about 0.3) until it is eight poles or longer.\n",
"However, the use of \"poles\" is also now widespread. Here, the line... |
In the pre-modern era, did armies really stop fighting in the winter? | Generally, war did stop in the winter mainly due to the problems involving health and logistics.
During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, troops were sent to barracks or quartered in villages to rest and train as marching would have been difficult due to the problems with weather.[^\[1\]](_URL_0_ "'Swords Around A Throne' by John R. Elting (1997)") Troop movement would be restricted by cold weather (in terms of moving across ground and also physical limitations from stiff limbs) and health would fall apart during aggressive movement, and that couldn't be properly checked without modern medicine.
However, that doesn't mean that battles couldn't take place during the winter. The battles of Eylau and Hohenlinden took place during the dead of winter, each seeing success for French armies. The disastrous retreat of 1812 is a rare even when an army moved in the winter without the convenience of their logistical system.
With all of this, the time of the year does not restrict an army but rather the weather. The armies in Spain fought year round, such as the Battle of Corunna, which was a British victory except for the loss of Sir John Moore.
Before the Revolution, wars tended to be focused during the 'campaign season' as a result of logistical and pre-modern army builds.[^\[2\]](_URL_1_ "'The Art of War in the Western World" by Archer Jones (2001) | [
"Armies in the Seventeenth Century generally campaigned between April and October and avoided combat during the winter. Bad weather made movement of artillery and supplies difficult as autumn rains and spring floods turned roads to mud. Food and kindling for the men were hard to come by in the winter, as was fodder... |
how do targeted ads from things you've searched on a computer get to your phone? how does the tracking process work? | Is your email attached to both devices? Do you have similar accounts between the two? That's how they do it. It's just spamming the devices attached to your accounts. | [
"This form of tracking is utilized primarily by technology companies and advertisers who use this information to piece together a cohesive profile of the user. These profiles inform and predict the type of advertisements the user receives.\n",
"Using such beacons, companies and organizations can track the online ... |
How do we convert potential and kinetic energy into electricity? | You can spin a magnet (kinetic energy) in a coil of electrically conductive wire and generate an electric current (electricity) through the coil of wire. | [
"A spontaneous electrochemical reaction (change in Gibbs free energy less than zero) can be used to generate an electric current in electrochemical cells. This is the basis of all batteries and fuel cells. For example, gaseous oxygen (O) and\n",
"Electrostatic direct conversion uses charged particles’ motion to c... |
what is the importance of 7nm processors? | it's self explanatory. fit more transistors on a wafer and you can make more chips per wafer (each one becomes cheaper) or you can put more transistors on each chip and thus increase processing power while passively reducing heat production and energy consumption (by means of ykno, smaller transistors that require less power).
The term 7nm is a myth, though. It refers to nothing on the transistor itself. 7nm AMD is not the same as 7nm Intel which is not the same as 7nm qualcomm. It's just a corporate simplification to sell shit. | [
"The 74H family is the same basic design as the 7400 family with resistor values reduced. This reduced the typical propagation delay from 9 ns to 6 ns but increased the power consumption. The 74H family provided a number of unique devices for CPU designs in the 1970s. Many designers of military and aerospace equipm... |
why am i so hungry since i've stopped smoking weed? | Did you smoke the weed with tobacco?
If so, maybe these are the withdrawal symptoms of the nicotine.
Please visit a doctor if you have serious concerns. | [
"The feeling of increased appetite following the use of cannabis has been documented for hundreds of years, and is known colloquially as \"the munchies\" in the English-speaking world. Clinical studies and survey data have found that cannabis increases food enjoyment and interest in food. A 2015 study suggests that... |
what's happening with the atoms on a mirror when i step in front of it? | Nothing is happening to the mirror itself. A mirror just bounces photons (light) off of it. If you throw a tennis ball at a wall and it bounces off the wall, the wall hasn't changed at all because the ball bounced off of it. | [
"At the appropriate ellipsoidal profile, such a mirror could be used for focusing of an atomic beam into a spot of some tens of nanometers; the scattering of atoms from this spot brings the image of the object, like in the scanning confocal microscope, scanning electron microscope, or scanning probe microscopy.\n",... |
Are there instances of musicians or music playing an instrumental role in the success of a military battle? | You're thinking of the Battle of Gaixia, the end of the Chu-Han civil(?) war. The Han forces surrounded the Chu, and played Chu music to remind the weary soldiers of their families. The Chinese idiom 四面楚歌 (literally, "Chu music on all sides") is now used to indicate being stuck in a terrible situation.
Our source for this is Records of the Grand Historian (史記) by Sima Qian (司馬遷). It is the "official" history of China up until that point, so to speak. How reliable a single source can be is of course, up for debate. I am unfamiliar with the historian's opinions of this work, but it has been treated as reliable by centuries of Chinese scholars. | [
"During the American Civil War, military leaders with the Union and Confederate Armies relied on military musicians to entertain troops, position troops in battle, and stir them on to victory — some actually performing concerts in forward positions during the fighting. \n",
"Battle has continued to pursue a numbe... |
How much would various medieval items/buildings cost to make/procure in todays money? I.E building a castle, A suit of armor, a sword, chainmail and the padded fabric armors | A few pieces from *The Knight and the Blast Furnace*.
A 9th century Frankish warrior would pay 12 Solidi (an ox was worth about 2 solidi) for his mail armour and another 12 for the rest of his arms (helmet, shield, sword and spear).
An early 14th century Flemish knight would pay 10-20 pounds (60-120 days wages for a craftsman) for mail armour, depending on length.
15th century plate armour seemed to start at about £5 (about 100 days wages) in England, with better sets costing more (one being priced at £8 6/8d for a 'professional soldier). These are imported from Italy.
Prices varied wildly based on quality. A common soldier's armour in 16th century Spain was only about 5 Florins, but royalty wore armour costing forty times that. At this time an average wage was apparently about 5 florins a month and an ox cost around 15 florins.
| [
"The cost of building a castle varied according to factors such as their complexity and transport costs for material. It is certain that stone castles cost a great deal more than those built from earth and timber. Even a very small tower, such as Peveril Castle, would have cost around £200. In the middle were castl... |
Is there a limit to the amplitude of sound waves? | The determining factor of the "amplitude" of a sound wave on Earth is atmospheric pressure. Sound is a longitudinal wave- that is the wave moves along the direction of propagation, like a slinky (an ocean wave is a transverse wave, where the wave motion is perpendicular to the direction of travel). Thus, really a sound wave is low and high pressure patterns.
Therefore, the loudest a sound wave can be on Earth (here talking about being on land) is when the pressure difference goes from a vacuum to 2 atmospheres (to remain averaged out at 1 atmosphere). This means that standing outside, the loudest sound you could hear is [~194 dB](_URL_0_).
**Edit:** In response to a lot of (valid) responses below: yes, there can be shock waves in which have a greater atmospheric pressure difference than 2 atmospheres. I do not classify shock waves as sound waves, but they do produce a sound- which sounds like a single "crack" in the air. If this question is not limited to sinusoidal waves (undistorted sound), then the answer is sound much louder than the answer described here. | [
"The below discussion is from Landau and Lifshitz. If the amplitude and the direction of propagation varies slowly over the distances of wavelength, then an arbitrary sound wave can be approximated locally as a plane wave. In this case, the velocity potential can be written as\n",
"The discussion above assumes th... |
Was there notable opposition to allowing James VI to ascend to the English throne | Right. Allow me to first contextualize the situation relating to the two countries' 'go[ing] to war several times over the past centuries' just to start. You're probably aware of the English kings' claim to feudal overlordship of Scotland which resulted in the Wars of Scottish Independence against Edward I, Edward II, and Edward III. When James IV invaded England in 1513, this was in response, first, to Henry VIII's renewed claim of English overlordship and in response to his obligations vis-à-vis the Auld Alliance since Henry VIII was at that time, at war with France. When the Scots and the English clashed again in 1543-1551, this was due to the 'Rough Wooing' instigated by Henry VIII in his attempt to force a union of the two kingdoms by marrying his son, Edward, to the infant Mary, Queen of Scots.
It was the English, then, who had, since the thirteenth century at least, a very strong desire for the unification of the entire island of Britain. Whenever the Scots and the English clashed, it was ultimately motivated by the Scottish desire for English recognition of their independence and the equal status of their king to the king of England.
Thus, the English couldn't really justify opposition to James's ascension; that is, it allowed them to accomplish that unification that had been such a longstanding political desire and, the political and diplomatic headaches of neighborly hostilities. You mention border clashes during James VI/I's reign and I'm assuming you're referring to the border reivers. One shouldn't look at these as having clear nationalistic motivations as the reivers were just sort of border brigands of both nationalities that raided families on both sides of the border regardless of their victims' nationalities. That is, Scottish reivers were just as likely to raid Scottish villages and towns and English reivers were just as likely to do the same to English villages and towns.
But onto the actual mechanics of James's English succession. As you know, James VI/I was Elizabeth I's closest royal male relative. His grandmother had been Elizabeth's aunt; in fact, Margaret Tudor was James's great-grandmother twice over - both his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, and his father, Henry, Lord Darnley, were grandchildren of Margaret Tudor. Mary was the daughter of Margaret's son James by her first husband, James IV, and Henry was the son of Margaret Douglas, who was Margaret Tudor's daughter by her second husband, Archibald Douglas, the sixth earl of Angus. If we want to discuss the legitimacy of James's English descent further, we can talk about the fact that he was also descended from Joan Beaufort who was the great-granddaughter of Edward III of England. In this way, he had a strong blood claim to the throne of England but you are right to suggest that there might have been some legal opposition to the inheritance of the throne by a foreign prince.
Since 1351, there was a statute on the books in England that forbade a foreigner (a monarch not born in England) from inheriting the English crown. Moreover, the succession statute of 1541 failed to name any heir after Elizabeth I and her children (if any). Technically, under the terms of Henry VIII's will, the English crown should have passed to Edward Seymour, viscount Beauchamp, though there were those that argued that the true heir was Lady Anne Stanley whose great-grandmother had been Mary Tudor, the sister of Henry VIII who married, first, the king of France, and then Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk. Moreover, a statute of 1585 stated that if any claimants to the throne of England plotted against the life of Queen Elizabeth, all of their legal rights to that inheritance were forfeited. When Mary, Queen of Scots, was found guilty of involvement with the Catholic assassination plots against Elizabeth I, it followed that her son, James, should have been excluded from inheritance as well. Finally, James VI/I had a cousin - Lady Arbella Stuart - who was another descendant of Margaret Tudor, though Arbella was English-born and therefore exempt from the 1351 statute. There was also the Infanta Isabella of Spain, daughter of Philip II. In 1588, Philip proclaimed that his daughter's descent from Edward III made her the rightful *Catholic* queen of England.
James's great advantage, then, was the fact that he was a Protestant king with a great deal of experience ruling who had also managed to gain control over both the Scottish Kirk and his often unruly Scottish nobles.
Given that Scotland was one of the poorest nations in early modern Europe, James VI was always short of cash, which in that age of renaissance princes, was important for the dispensing of patronage to favorites and the furthering of one's magnificence by building palaces and other such projects. In 1586, though, a treaty was signed between Scotland and England and as the result of this treaty, Elizabeth I agreed to pay James an annual subsidy. James received £4000 sterling as his first payment but Elizabeth was wily and had avoided committing herself to any fixed annual sum. Though James received regular payments from England until shortly before the queen's death, it was clear that Elizabeth expected him to 'earn' them and she modified the amount that she paid to him according to how pleased she was with his behavior. Thus, in 1594, James received another £4000 when Elizabeth heard that Huntly and the Catholic earls had received gold from the Spanish to subsidize their rebellion but no payment was made at all in 1587 when Mary, Queen of Scots was found guilty of treason and subsequently executed.
The English called this payment a 'gratuity' or a 'pension' while the Scots called it an 'annuity', claiming that James VI was entited to an income from his grandmother's estates in England (that grandmother being the mother of his father, Margaret Douglas, Lady Lennox).
Between 1586 and 1602, James VI received a total of £58,500 sterling from the English treasury and much of it was spent paying off debts in England, buying English goods, paying for a royal guard, financing military action against the Catholic earls in Scotland, and providing gifts for royal favorites. The English subsidy contributed to the unequal relationship between James VI and Elizabeth I. So long as he hoped to succeed the English queen, he had to maintain good relations between the two kingdoms.
In 1596, James's efforts culminated in the Treaty of Berwick yet it was made clear that he was still expected to 'earn' his subsidy. The money that James received from the English, though, allowed him to support a royal court in Scotland filled with nobles and courtiers who were supportive of his claim to the English throne. | [
"It is possible that they planned to depose Richard III and place Edward V back on the throne, and that when rumours arose that Edward and his brother were dead, Buckingham proposed that Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond should return from exile, take the throne and marry Elizabeth of York, elder sister of the Tower Pr... |
how do you create a new dog breed in the lapse of a human lifespan? | First of all, humans didn't create a doberman out of thin air. The doberman was bred from several existing breeds of dogs:
> The breed is believed to have been created from several different breeds of dogs that had the characteristics that Dobermann was looking for, including the German Pinscher, the Beauceron, the Rottweiler, the Thuringian Sylvan Dog, the Greyhound, the Great Dane, the Weimaraner, the German Shorthaired Pointer, the Manchester Terrier, the Old German Shepherd Dog, the Thuringian Shepherd Dog.
Secondly, dog breeding is a guided process, unlike evolution which is far more random. | [
"Dogs have been selectively bred for thousands of years, sometimes by inbreeding dogs from the same ancestral lines, while at other times by mixing dogs from very different lines. The process continues today, resulting in a widening in appearance without speciation, \"from the Chihuahua to the Great Dane\".\n",
"... |
how is it possible for people with anxiety to express physical symptoms like shaking or imagining chest pain that isn't there? | First off... the physical symptoms are really there. THe cause of those symptoms might be neurological or hormonal, but that doesn't make the experience of them any different than if someone got stabbed in the chest and the body reacted the same way.
So that hints as to the how... we experience those feelings with our brains, and all the brain bits are interconnected. So if you trigger the bit that says your muscles around your heart are contracting uncomfortably, it really doesn't matter to the person experiencing the pain what triggered the feeling in the first place.
Also, the same methods are used to decrease the pain for people having an anxiety attack that are used for a person having a heart attack or a stabbing. Calm down, use steady slow breathing, and remove stress from the area. | [
"Somatic anxiety is often pushed to the side and is not being treated as seriously as other forms of anxiety. Although not recognized, the most common way people express anxiety is through physical pain. This is including sayings like \"butterflies in my stomach.\" A lot of people someway relate their pain to the c... |
why are amino acids in living things "left-handed" in their chirality? | We honestly don't know, it's one of the open questions in the field of biology. One possibility is that a supernovae sometime in our planet's past produced radiation with a certain rotation to it, which selectively destroyed right handed amino acids before life even got started here. Since there would have only been left handed ones to work with, that's what proteins are built out of. | [
"Organic molecules often come in two mirror-image forms, often referred to as \"right-handed\" and \"left-handed\". This handedness is called chirality. For example, the amino acid alanine comes in a right-handed (D-alanine) and a left-handed (L-alanine) form. Living cells are very selective, choosing amino acids o... |
How many employees did Pablo Escobar have? | It's really difficult to pin a number on how many "employees" were under Escobar's control due to the nature of the Mendellin (Escobar's organization) and Cali cartels. Although these cartels are what are generally described as "vertical organizations," meaning that the manufacture, and distribution of drugs were all under the control of the cartels themselves, much of the violence within Colombia were contracted out, often to young men in the shantytowns of Colombian cities known as sicarios.
Before Escobar and the major cartels began to be a huge player in Colombian politics, the country had been in a long period of political violence and instability known as la Violencia (if you have read One Hundred Years of Solitude, the political wars in the novel refer to this period). The generally accepted beginning of la Violencia in 1948, when the Liberal leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan was assassinated amidst the in-power Conservative Party's fear that they might lose the presidency in the next election due to the economic issues that were occurring under their time in power.
After the 1948 assassination, violence in Colombia increased dramatically, and the Liberal Party employed the help of local guerrilla groups and rogue "bandits," often based in the major cities, to help them fight the Conservative military. Although the Liberal Party had used guerrilla groups previously during their rise to power in the 1930s, the guerrilla groups during la Violencia were larger, more structured, and more violent. In 1948 alone, Colombia saw 43,557 deaths.
Not only did the two major political groups engage in extreme violence against one another, but local politicians often hired peasants and poor city-dwellers to carry out violent deeds against political opponents and individuals that they had grudges against. Furthermore, many peasants rose against their hacienda owners, and hacienda owners often incited violence amongst their peasants in order to divert any violence that could end their own economic stature. With the combination of both national and local political violence, Colombia was in shambles, and the death toll from 1948-1953 reached approximately 144,370 bodies.
In 1953, Army Commander Gustavo Rojas Pinilla lead a military coup against the current conservative president and granted amnesty to the Liberal guerrilla fighters; however, not all of the fighters accepted this amnesty and some fighting between the government and radicalized guerrilla and bandit groups continued into the mid-1950s. By 1957 the majority of political violence had disappeared under the establishment of the bipartisan National Front group, which would alternate between Conservative and Liberal control as an attempt to quell partisan violence and cut off political and economic resources to any guerrilla groups still associated with the Liberal Party. Not all guerrilla groups were eradicated, however, and many communist groups joined together to form the fuerzas armadas revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) in the 1960s.
So, by the rise of the cartels in the mid-1970s, Colombian violence was often associated with rogue guerrilla and bandit groups that were loosely-affiliated with the major party that they were working for. Thus, it made sense for the cartels to often outsource their violence to individuals that were not officially part of the cartel, and the use of sicarios became especially prominent after 1984, when Pablo Escobar hired two young motorcyclists from the slums of Mendellin to assassinate the Colombian Secretary of Justice, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, who, at the time, was working with the United States government to extradite Escobar. It is after the assassination of Lara Bonilla that much of the random and chaotic violence associated with the Cartels occurred, as the sicarios offered their services to anyone who could pay their price, whether that be narcotraficantes looking to eliminate a political enemy or a hurt lover looking to eliminate their cheating partner.
Sicarios definitely weren't the only individuals involved in cartel violence, as there were many individuals that actually had proper affiliations with the organizations, but a lot of the violence in Colombia during the 1980s can be traced back to these hitmen. | [
"In 1992 Pablo Escobar escaped from his luxury prison, La Catedral. Shortly after, the Calí Cartel, dissidents within the Medellín Cartel, and the MAS worked together to create a new paramilitary organization known as \"Perseguidos Por Pablo Escobar\" (\"People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar\", Los Pepes) with the pur... |
Do artificial sweeteners stimulate the brain's reward pathways like sugar does? | Yes and no.
If you feed an animal saccharine, or sham-feed sucrose (they eat it, but it doesn't make it to the stomach), you'll get a response in the dopamine "reward pathway." Saccharine-water is tasty to animals, and they prefer it to water.
However, when it comes to behavior, things get more complicated. Researchers have come up with ways of dissociating taste and the nutritional content of food, such as letting an animal drink a solution with saccharine, then infusing sugar directly into the stomach (or not). In all cases I know of, the nutrition of sugar trumps sweet taste. That is, animals will choose a plain-tasting substance that is associated with infused sugar in the stomach over a sweet-tasting substance with no nutritional content. The exact mechanisms by which this works is an active area of research (including my own).
[This is a paper on the topic that should be accessible directly from the author](_URL_0_). The first two paragraphs are a good review of the subject and provide further reference. | [
"One study suggests that artificial sweeteners may not fully activate the brain's \"food reward pathways\" as sugar does, stating that, because sweetener does not provide full satisfaction, the user may search for, and then eat, additional high-calorie foods leading to weight gain.\n",
"Sugar addiction has been e... |
how can someone find me on reddit without my username? | Clarification. Given your verb tense, are we to understand that you've been ID'd in some way? That this happened? | [
"The users themselves determine their name, birthday, contacts, and address, and can choose who may see this information: everyone, registered users, only their contacts, or nobody. The username (first name and nickname) is for \"everyone\", \"contacts\" or \"nobody\" visible. Each user is informed about who has vi... |
when i breath in is it the air that enters my lung that expands it or is the air entering because i have expanded my lungs by some muscle activity. | Muscles pull down to expand your lungs, creating a vacuum and pulling air in. When those muscles relax, the lungs collapse back to normal atmospheric pressure and all the bonus air leaves. | [
"The lungs are expanded with the help of the diaphragm, a muscular sheet of tissue which contracts away from the thoracic cavity, thereby decreasing the pressure and pulling air into the lungs. When fully expanded, the lungs can reach to the 16th rib of the horse.\n",
"Inhalation begins with the contraction of th... |
if uranium is radioactive for millions of years, why do nuclear reactors go through spent rods so quickly? | think of it like burning wood vs burning cordite(gunpowder). One is a raw material which releases its chemical energy slowly, the other is a well refined, chemically similar product (carbon) which burns very quickly.
Uranium decaying naturally releases its energy very slowly. Refined into nuclear fuel it releases its energy much faster (though still in a controllable way, unlike in a nuclear weapon)
Whilst theoretically possible, there is a very low chance of finding naturally-occuring uranium which wouldn't need refinement. Similar to the unlikelihood of finding naturally occurring cordite.
TL:DR, We make the Uranium get "burnt" much faster than would happen naturally. | [
"In modern light-water reactors the fuel rods will spend about 3 operational cycles (typically 6 years total now) inside the reactor, generally until about 3% of their uranium has been fissioned, then they will be moved to a spent fuel pool where the short lived isotopes generated by fission can decay away.\n",
"... |
the charlie charlie challenge. | _URL_0_
Here's an explanation for the Ouija board. I imagine that this is very similar. If you're playing the six pencil game then you're actually moving the pencils yourself.
As for the version with two pencils in a cross shape, it's just simply someone blowing on it - again not on purpose. Try it yourself, get two pencils on top of each other and see how little effort it takes to blow on one to make it spin. Now imagine 5 or 6 people sitting around scared shitless, holding their breath in anticipation, then one breathes out and bam! Everyone loses their shit.
Edit: Spellngs not so gud | [
"Charlie Bucket is a poor boy who lives near the Wonka Candy Company. The company's owner, Willy Wonka, has for long closed access to his factory due to problems concerning industrial espionage that led him to fire all his employees, among them Charlie's Grandpa Joe. One day, Wonka announces a contest, in which Gol... |
What was the favored weapons of Native Americans around the time that the English in the Jamestown colony arrived. | This answer is specifically for the Powhatan in Virginia, rather than Native Americans as a whole:
To start with the bows, they were made of locust or witch hazel and were nearly as tall as the archer himself. Contemporary illustrations usually, but not always, depict them with a slight recurve, such as in this illustration of [Eiakintomino](_URL_2_), an early Powhatan diplomat to England in 1608. You might notice that the bow appears to have some sort of backing, but colonial records don't mention what that might have been or if that was just an artistic flourish. The arrows, on average, were about 45 inches long, fletched with turkey feathers, and made of wood or reeds. They were tipped with a variety of materials, from simply sharpening the tip of the shaft, to bone, to turkey spurs, to beaks, to stone, depending on what was on hand and what the arrow was intended for. Stone points were generally small and triangular. The hunter kept a tool made from antler hanging on his wrist guard, which he could use to re-sharpen the arrowhead or add a few final touches to a new one while on the move. Powhatan bows were accurate at 40 yards, and while they were considerably less accurate at longer ranges, if they happened to hit you, they were still lethal at 120 yards, assuming you weren’t wearing plate armor. They would penetrate the small wooden shields the English were using at the time, but not the thick bark shields that the Powhatan themselves carried.
Melee weapons include the monacock / monohacan, the tomahawk, and something akin to the ball-headed club. The English often referred to the monacock as “swords,” and there were a few different varieties. The common feature is that they’re flatten batons or clubs with at least one edge sharpened. In [this illustration](_URL_8_) by Robert Beverley, you can see a single-edged monacock labeled as “3.” Some monacocks had stone blades set into them, a bit like the more famous [macuahuitls](_URL_6_) of Mesoamerica. Tomahawks were generally socketed ground stone axes like [this one](_URL_3_). Sometimes the English would use the word tomahawk (which comes from the Powhatan originally) to refer to antler pick-axes as well. Some tomahawks were described as being very long and sharpened at both ends, so their blades might have been more similar to [these earlier Mississippian “spuds”](_URL_7_), through without the flair at the end which is rather specific to that style. Regardless of what style the Powhatan tomahawk actually was, the stone used to make it would have come largely by trade from the west, since the Tsenacommacah (the Virginia Tidewater region) didn’t have ready access to suitable stone. Since they were mostly made from non-local material anyway, they were quickly replaced with iron axes imported from the English. Not much is known about the ball-headed clubs in the area, if they were even in the area at all. There’s a hammer-like weapon mentioned in colonial records that seems suggestive of ball-headed clubs, but they were more common to the north than in the south, with Powhatans straddling the zone in between. They could be [simple in design](_URL_4_) or [more elaborate](_URL_0_) (both examples are modern reproductions, for the record). What sort of ball-headed club the Powhatans might have used is unknown.
For more information, you’ll probably be interested in Helen Rountree’s [The Powhatan Indians of Virginia: Their Traditional Culture](_URL_1_) and David Jones’ [Native North American Armor, Shields, and Fortifications](_URL_5_) | [
"Mann first treats New England in the 17th century. He disagrees with the popular idea that European technologies were superior to those of Native Americans, using guns as a specific example. The Native Americans considered them little more than \"noisemakers\", and concluded they were more difficult to aim than ar... |
why are most holidays in the fall and winter seasons compared to the spring and summer seasons? | Both of those seasons have a different reason. All of our modern major holidays line up with the old pagan holidays. A few were just thrown in later (looking at you, family day) But most of the established ones have been around for millennia. Autumn has many holidays because of the harvest. Communities wanted to celebrate all of their hard work growing food and such during the year so they threw a big party.
Winter holidays are more of a pick-me-up. Back when people would routinely freeze to death in the middle of winter it was common to get pretty depressed so people would throw a big party to make it easier to get through the winter. | [
"In the Southern Hemisphere, seasons are in reverse to the Northern Hemisphere, with summer falling in December, January, and February, and with winter falling in June, July, and August. Therefore, in some southern hemisphere countries, such as Australia, Comoros, Madagascar, Bolivia, Angola, French Polynesia, Papu... |
why are headaches the symptoms of so many illnesses? | Your brain has very specific needs regarding oxygen and sugar in the blood as well as blood pressure, etc. It is more vulnerable when things begin to go wrong than muscles, bones, etc in the rest of the body are.
Not only is it vulnerable, the brain is important, so we feel pain when things start to go wrong sooner in our head than we do elsewhere.
This is a big contributing factor to why headaches are so common. The actual causes of a headache are in many cases the same causes that lead to other symptoms. Many sicknesses will cause soreness and muscle cramps. Things like dehydration that cause headaches but aren't traditional "illnesses" will ALSO causes soreness and muscle cramps. So there isn't one single thing happening to your body with all illnesses that causes headaches. The head is just the first thing to be affected when pretty much anything goes wrong. | [
"Headaches can be attributed to many different substances. Some of these include alcohol, NO, carbon monoxide poisoning, cocaine, caffeine and monosodium glutamate. Chronic use of certain medications used to treat headaches can also start causing headaches, known as medication overuse headaches. Headaches may also ... |
Has there ever been scientifically observed heightened sensory activity in people who are blind/deaf etc.? | [Random example of said observation](_URL_0_) | [
"New studies have adapted this hypothesis to explain cross modal plasticity which seems to occur in blind people. This is the fact that other senses in blind people seem to be heightened as a result of the loss of vision. Since blind patients are not exposed to the novel function of visual reading, the cortical are... |
how does the internal architecture of a cpu effect the speed it can process things? | I'll start with the nm size. At a very basic level, your CPU is built of billions of little switches, grouped together to perform logical functions (AND, OR, NOR etc.). The way these switches are built are basically two pools of electrons, separated by a non-conducting bridge. On top of that bridge is a gate, which is basically a plate of silicon. When they apply a poisitive voltage to that plate, the electrons are dragged into the bridge, and form a channel between the two pools, as they are attracted to the positive voltage, and can't leave the non-conducting bridge. When this channel reaches the other pool, a channel is formed between them, and current can flow, effectively turning the switch on. The nm size references the distance between the two pools, or the length of the bridge. Having a smaller length means two things, a smaller voltage is needed, as less electrons are needed to establish this channel, meaning less power; and more importantly, there is less distance for the channel to cover, meaning that it can appear and disappear quicker, meaning faster ons and offs.
Now depending on how these switches are laid out within the CPU, it determines how your CPU can handle instructions. Basically, the shorter the wire that there is between different logic elements, the faster the signal can travel, because wires are non-ideal have resistance and capacitance, parameters that slow the progress of current through them. If the switches are smaller, and can therefore be placed closer together, there is less wire needed, and the current can travel faster. VLSI designers analyse which operations are used the most, and prioritise the time of those, placing them closer together so they take less time. | [
"BULLET::::- The CPU (central processing unit), which performs most of the calculations which enable a computer to function, and is sometimes referred to as the brain of the computer. It is usually cooled by a heatsink and fan, or water-cooling system. Most newer CPUs include an on-die graphics processing unit (GPU... |
why at a sports game (football, baseball, basketball, etc.) is the away team affected by noise more than the home team? | The fans (ideally) will only be loud when it's advantageous for their team. For instance, in football it's generally considered that the offense needs to communicate a lot more through audibles and the like, so fans will be loud when the opposing team is on offense, quiet when their team is. | [
"Several sports stadiums pride themselves in having louder stadiums than their opponents because it may create a more difficult environment for opposing teams to play in. Currently, there are few studies on noise in sports stadiums, but some preliminary measurements show noise levels reaching 120 dB, and informal s... |
How many dresses did a medieval woman have? | I'm sorry, but I don't believe this question is answerable. We simply don't have enough extensive wardrobe records left from queens and princesses of this era, let alone peasants, to be able to determine averages for various levels of society. (Edited for clarity.)
What we can say is that people would have had much less clothing than they do today. Pre-industrially, cloth production was a more laborious process, which was reflected in the price, and most of the fabric ordinary people wore was made relatively locally. Sewing was, of course, done by hand, and little was sold ready-made. Clothing represented something of an investment, as it cost a proportionally larger amount of one's income compared to today.
If you want to know about styles of dress or materials available in a particular area, you can probably get a more specific answer. | [
"The basic garments for women consisted of the smock, hose, kirtle, dress, bra, belt, surcoat, girdle, cape, hood, and bonnet. Each piece had designated colours and fabrics, for example “Materials used in the middle ages were woolen cloth, fur, linen, cambric, silk, and the cloth of silver or gold…the richer Middle... |
How effective is the rabies vaccine? Does it confer long-term immunity? | Not all vaccines are protective, some just slow the progression or reduce the signs to reduce transmission or to reduce morbidity/mortality.
Rabies is sort of like that. The vaccine does result in serum antibody; however do to the lethality of rabies and studies on the vaccine in animals it’s generally not considered 100% protective, so you still need post-exposure prophylaxis.
However, if you’re vaccinated your PEP protocol is less involved. PEP for those not vaccinated is currently Human Rabies Immunoglobin and Vaccination after exposure, then vaccines on day 3, 7, and 14 after that. If you’re vaccinated you get a vaccine after exposure and 3 days later.
I’m currently vaccinated, and you’re supposed to get titers checked every two years. Anecdotally I know other people who have their titers checked and levels remain high for years, so it probably generally lasts awhile. | [
"Rabies vaccine is a vaccine used to prevent rabies. There are a number of vaccines available that are both safe and effective. They can be used to prevent rabies before and for a period of time after exposure to the virus such as by a dog or bat bite. The immunity that develops is long lasting after a full course.... |
What did pirates and imperial naval armies do for sun block? Surely skin cancer was rife? | This has been asked a couple of times before, but the short answer is that most sailors would have worn clothes that covered nearly all their body, even in tropical latitudes, including broad-brimmed hats. Their feet and hands would have been bare, and certainly their faces would have tanned fairly deeply, but for the most part their working clothes kept them covered and served as sunblock. For cases of sunburn, slush or grease could be made into an ointment that would provide at least a bit of relief.
Here's a previous thread on the issue of sunblock:
_URL_3_
and one with a nice answer from u/kentonj about cancer specifically:
_URL_5_
**EDIT:** I'm actually going to drop in here a response to a follow up from that top thread, about what sailors wore:
> Depends a bit on what your average pop culture perception is, but if you mean generally the image of pirates in billowy sleeves and striped pants, that has at least some basis in reality. /u/davidaop may be able to speak more specifically to pirate dress, but the major inaccuracies in say *Pirates of the Caribbean* tend to be the boots. Sailors worked barefoot, and when on land had a tendency toward cute little pumps with bows or buckles, not boots.
> Check this out for more on sailor clothes and how the sailor suit developed: _URL_2_
> [This is an image](_URL_4_) of the wounding of Horatio Nelson during Trafalgar -- it's not the most accurate depiction of the battle (the boats would be towing overboard, nasty tendency to turn into splinters if hit) but you can see a wide variety of dress among the ordinary sailors, as well as officers in blue coats and Marines in red. [This is a sailor from the 1820s](_URL_0_), so obviously later than the GAOP, but wearing shore-going rig including those cute little pumps, as is [this petty officer](_URL_1_). | [
"There are a multiple ways to treat Gunther's diseases, but one of the most crucial things that a person with this disease can do is limit themselves from sun exposure or eliminate sun exposure altogether. There are some sunscreens that have undesirable effects such as tropical sunscreens, but other sunscreens that... |
What is the cumulative difference in time between Earth and either voyager spacecraft? | [This](_URL_0_) is a related past discussion.
[This](_URL_1_) has some math to give a general idea of how much time dilation the Voyager probes will have experienced.
Voyager I's been travelling for about 35.5 years at about 57,500 km/h, which gives a time dilation ratio of about 0.9999999985778. So that 35.5 years has been 35.4999999495119 for Voyager, which I think comes out to a difference of about 1.6 seconds. | [
"In 2013 \"Voyager 1\" was exiting the Solar System at a speed of about 3.6 AU per year, while \"Voyager 2\" is going slower, leaving the Solar System at 3.3 AU per year. Each year \"Voyager 1\" increases its lead over \"Voyager 2\".\n",
"These jumps decreased the time needed to return by ~59 years. Counting elap... |
The American Civil War is Usually Thought of as Kin vs Kin, Brother vs Brother, Why Don't We Hear This Aspect of other Civil Wars? | > We don't hear this aspect of other Civil Wars
We do hear about this for other civil wars. A brief superficial basic-facts-only coverage might well not include it, but a more detailed treatment often will. For example, one can read about this in the English Civil War, and in the Thirty Years War. Notably, in the Thirty Years War, some families deliberately supported both sides, partly to make sure that they supported the winning side, partly to protect the loss of family lands to the Emperor (for supporting the other side), partly for ideological reasons, and partly for money or rank.
Moving to the 20th century, the Spanish Civil War and the Finnish Civil War were noted for brother vs brother (and one of the Finnish names used for the civil war is "veljessota", "brother's war"). Brother vs brother has appeared in popular culture for some civil wars, such as the Greek Civil War (the movie *Deep Soul* (2009) (Ψυχή Βαθιά)) and the almost-civil-war Korean War (*Taegukgi: The Brotherhood of War* (2004)), both of which feature brothers on both sides of the war. | [
"\"Brother against brother\" is a slogan used in histories of the American Civil War, describing the predicament faced in families (primarily, but not exclusively, residents of border states) in which their loyalties and military service were divided between the Union and the Confederacy. There are a number of stor... |
Machiavelli. Anybody enjoy talking about "the Prince" and its author? I'm eager to hear from someone who loves the political figure or hates how he's been inaccurately represented. | Sorry, your question was removed for being out of scope here. From our rules:
> Submissions to /r/AskHistorians must be either:
> * A **question** about the human past
> * A **meta post** about the state of the subreddit. Anyone may start a meta post, but please [check with the moderators](_URL_0_) if you aren't sure you're using the label correctly. Short questions (e.g. clarification of moderation policy) that don't require discussion are better sent to the mods directly.
> * An **AMA** ("Ask Me Anything") with a historical expert or panel of experts. These should be arranged with the moderators beforehand – please [message us](_URL_0_) if you're interested.
> The moderators also post weekly [feature posts](_URL_1_) on a variety of themes.
Thanks! | [
"\"The Prince\" politically defines “Virtu”—as any quality that helps a prince rule his state effectively. Machiavelli is aware of the irony of good results coming from evil actions, and because of this, the Catholic Church proscribed \"The Prince\", registering it to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, moreover, the ... |
How authoritarian Central Asian regimes have managed to maintain power since the 1990s | The Central Asian countries are pretty much the epitome of what I like to think of as "modern dictators." Formerly, dictators relied on ideology to stay in power--either communism or anti-communism, for example. The Central Asian dictators rely on extensive networks of patronage and corruption. These networks (which extend to the lowest reaches of society, which is why the public sector of such countries is so bloated) are in turn funded by both the massive resource wealth in the region--Kazakhstan has extensive fuel deposits, as well as enormous mineral wealth, for example--and the "aid" given by foreign countries. This aid is freely given because the Central Asian countries occupy an extremely strategic location, and is of great interest to Russia, China, and the US. Their rule is also tinged with nationalism, of course
Your instincts are good on this. Obama has initiated a much ballyhooed "pivot" in his foreign policy towards Asia. This will necessarily involve much deeper interaction with the Central Asian states. | [
"The Aquino administration took over an economy that had gone through socio-political disasters during the People Power revolution, where there was financial and commodity collapse caused by an overall consumer cynicism, a result of the propaganda against cronies, social economic unrest resulting from numerous glob... |
How are all of the fossil fuels condensed into certain large areas around the world and not small pools everywhere? | Simplistically speaking, it's because organisms did die in one spot (or a few spots, rather).
To be more precise - there are tiny pools of oil all over. What we extract is the economically viable ones - the places where there's a relatively large volume in a relatively easy-to-extract situation. Why is it not uniform around the globe? Because life forms haven't been distributed uniformly around the globe. Consider the amount of organic matter in, say, the Amazon Rainforest vs. the Arizona desert. If the two convert to oil at an equal rate, the Amazon is going to turn into a really big oil deposit, whereas Arizona is going to be a nearly useless oil deposit.
There are also details about how the geological circumstances of an area influenced oil creation - some circumstances are very conducive to conversion of organic matter to oil, some circumstances aren't. | [
"Fossil water is groundwater that has remained in an aquifer for several millennia and occurs mainly in deserts. It is non-renewable by present-day rainfall due to its depth below the surface, and any extraction causes a permanent change in the water table in such regions.\n",
"Fossil-fuel companies currently hav... |
Why does peanut butter turn whitish under water? | The oil in the peanut butter is hydrophobic, and thus thin layers of water and oxygen form on the surface where the water gets repelled. | [
"Both crunchy/chunky and smooth peanut butter are sources of saturated (primarily palmitic acid, 21% of total fat) and monounsaturated fats, mainly oleic acid as 47% of total fat, and polyunsaturated fat (28% of total fat), primarily as linoleic acid).\n",
"Butter is a water-in-oil emulsion resulting from an inve... |
Is it seen as acceptable for historians to describe historical relationships between men and boys as homosexual or gay? | There's a lot of contention about whether it's even acceptable to describe historical relationships between adult men (or, I guess, same-aged boys) as gay or homosexual. or whether those terms are anachronistic/ahistorical/imprecise. This isn't something you're likely to get one answer on. For me, I balk at authors identifying men who had sexual relationships with boys as "homosexuals" -- those relationships are homosexual in the adjectival sense that they're between individuals of the same sex, but there's almost always a better term that doesn't conjure associations with 19th and 20th century homosexual identity or modern gay identity, or conflate sexual relations between adults with sexual relations between men and children. The terminology of pederasty is still used, especially in a Classical context, but my personal preference is for either historical identifying terms (whether that's "pederasty", "sodomy" with a qualifier making clear *which* kind of sodomy the author means, since the term encompasses a lot at different times and in different places, or something else) or descriptive language that echoes the way such relationships were described by contemporary authors.
Hadrian is an unusual case -- there are a number of same-gender relationships (real and fictional) from antiquity that don't necessarily bear a resemblance to modern gay identities/relationships but that were historically considered part of the history and heritage of same-gender love and relationships. In light of that, I'd say Hadrian and *especially* Antinous have a place in "gay history", but as a 21st century gay scholar I would criticize any serious academic author who put a heavy stress on describing both men in a historical context as "gay men" or "homosexuals". | [
"In contrast to the Greeks, evidence for homosexual relationships between men of the same age exists for the Romans. These sources are diverse and include such things as the Roman novel Satyricon, graffiti and paintings found at Pompeii as well as inscriptions left on tombs and papyri found in Egypt. Generally spea... |
how can lego and other animated movies that i see all over netflix use spiderman and other characters in their films with the avengers characters when it's a "rights" issue for live action films? | Because it's not a matter of ownership, it's a matter of licensing. Disney/Marvel "owns" the rights, and they license them out to various entities that allow them to do various things. Licensing out the rights doesn't give the other person absolute right to do anything they want, nor does it prevent other people from also getting rights to do stuff.
Though they are referencing characters from the Marvel universe, the LEGO Characters are very much novel creations as are those in the Super Squad Universe and other animated series. Lego worked out a deal with Marvel to create the LEGO versions of the characters and no doubt part of that agreement was to be allowed to create games and animation based on them as well. | [
"Unlike \"Lego Marvel Super Heroes\", which used original voice acting, \"Lego Marvel's Avengers\" utilizes audio from the six films being adapted for the game, including voice and music, similar to \"Lego The Lord of the Rings\", \"The Lego Movie Videogame\", \"Lego The Hobbit\", and \"Lego Jurassic World\". The g... |
How are "itch" and "pain" perceived differently? | Both pain and itch sensation use the same pathway and are processed in the same center(primary somatosensory cortex). The scratch response and withdrawal response are also processed by the same pre-motor and supplementary cortices.The differences between pain and itch processing do not result from activation of distinct brain centers, but occur due to a different activation pattern of basically identical centers.
For example, itch processing may be characterized by weaker activation of primary and secondary somatosensory cortices but relatively stronger activation of ipsilateral motor areas and anterior cingulate compared with pain sensation.
This article gives a basic idea about the differences:
_URL_0_ | [
"An itch, also known as pruritus, is classified as a sensory stimulation to scratch a certain area of the skin. An itch can be a fleeting sensation, as with a random tickle or prick, or persistent, as with a rash such as eczema or other skin irritant such as an allergen. Itch has been demonstrated to be closely rel... |
how do you determine the terminal velocity of oddly shaped objects? | It is very difficult to compute, requiring a supercomputer or more commonly simply using a wind tunnel to directly measure. Turbulence of air or other fluids are not simple to figure out. | [
"The terminal velocity of the particle is affected by many parameters, i.e. anything that will alter the particle's drag. Hence the terminal velocity is most notably dependent upon grain size, the shape (roundness and sphericity) and density of the grains, as well as to the viscosity and density of the fluid.\n",
... |
What enabled the British to defeat the Marathas so easily during the second Anglo Maratha war, despite being heavily outnumbered in almost every battle?? | When you strip back the raw numbers and start looking at quality of the troops on both sides in conflicts between company forces and Indian armies they are roughly similar. At Assaye the Marathas had 10,000 infantry trained in the European style of warfare. The company had 9000. The rest of the Maratha army was made up 10-20 thousand of irregular infantry, largely armed with melee weapons with no command and control. The cavalry was 30-40 thousand strong but again no training or organisation.
In this period morale was the key factor in victory. Napoleon said "In war, three-quarters turns on personal character and relations; the balance of manpower and materials counts only for the remaining quarter." The company army had developed a reputation for winning and paying their troops regularly. Company armies were confident of victory, well trained, well supplied and regularly paid. Maratha armies were the opposite. Fundamentally when company infantry attacked the Maratha line, the Marathas would break. Company lead regiments would take heavy losses in the approach but when in musket range the whole line collapse. | [
"The Second Anglo-Maratha War represents the military high-water mark of the Marathas who posed the last serious opposition to the formation of the British Raj. The real contest for India was never a single decisive battle for the subcontinent. Rather it turned on a complex social and political struggle for control... |
Which period of time were people most promiscuous? | Sorry, we don't allow ["example seeking" questions](_URL_1_). It's not that your question was bad; it's that these kinds of questions tend to produce threads that are collections of disjointed, partial, inadequate responses. If you have a question about a specific historical event, period, or person, feel free to rewrite your question and submit it again. If you don't want to rewrite it, you might try submitting it to /r/history, /r/askhistory, or /r/tellmeafact.
For further explanation of the rule, feel free to consult [this META thread](_URL_0_). | [
"Primitive promiscuity or original promiscuity was the 19th-century hypothesis that humans originally lived in a state of promiscuity or \"hetaerism\" prior to the advent of society as we understand it. Hetaerism is a theoretical early state of human society, as postulated by 19th-century anthropologists, which was... |
If I fell from a plane and reached terminal velocity over a large body of water, is there any position and/or angle at which I should try to hit water so as to increase my chances for survival? | Follow up question, based on an absurd idea I had recently - what if you jumped out on top of a [massive wedge](_URL_0_)?
Assuming no wind, rigid construction, perfectly perpendicular landing, etc., how long would this sea spike have to be break the surface tension of the water and convey me safely into the abyss?
Or better yet, assume the sea spike is positively buoyant. I want to jump out of a plane with my sea spike, but I don't want to get wet. As the sea spike enters the water, I want to gently decelerate until stopping with my feet approximately 10 feet above water. | [
"BULLET::::- According to the website Hyper Physics (impact force of falling object generator), if a fully kitted up pilot with the weight of 75 kg fell from a full height of 16 meters (without the help of forward momentum or the force of the jets pushing them) he would hit the water at approximately 63 km/h. Yet m... |
what is that distinct smell that happens when using a vacuum cleaner? | It's ozone (O*_3_*)
Electric motors use wire brushes/threads to keep electricity flowing through the moving motor and the stationary frame. They generate sparks, which can disrupt oxygen molecules (O*_2_*) and cause them to gain an extra oxygen atom.
Ozone is poisonous but also unstable so unless you have 100 vacuum cleaners running at once in a small room, you won't have to worry about it building up and becoming dangerous. | [
"BULLET::::- Complete removal of allergens and noxious odors — Central vacuums generally do not recirculate exhaust air back into the space being cleaned. This contrasts with the well-known acrid \"vacuum smell\" of fine dust and hot air exhausted from a portable vacuum. Instead, central vacuums exhaust spent air i... |
Does cauterization of open surface wounds reduce or increase the risk of infection in the long run? | > What I'm looking for an answer to is whether the initial benefits of the heat killing of microorganisms is offset by the increased long-term risk of infection
In terms of infection, deeply burned skin is nearly as vulnerable to infection as an open wound, and the "benefit" of heat sterilizing the area is so short term as to be meaningless.
When cauterizing the skin you would kill bacteria on that specific area, but there are still plenty of germs all over the surrounding intact skin. Careful cleaning of the wound and surroundings are necessary to prevent recontamination. And if you were going to cleanse it with water and disinfectant anyway, you don't get any more benefit from having burned the bacteria with heat.
But if you're in some situation where the wound was contaminated and you couldn't clean it any other way, cauterizing could be better than leaving it alone.
> what would be recommended in a hypothetical case where such trauma occurred during a prolonged expedition, with medical evacuation demanding several days of travel
That depends on the details of the situation and on available resources. In general, the first priority is to save the patient's life in the short term, and do it with as little additional harm as possible
Are we still talking about medieval times? Cauterization might be the only available way to stop the bleeding and preserve the patient's life in the short term. He doesn't have a great chance of surviving for the long term, because antibiotics and good sanitation haven't been invented yet, but if you let him bleed to death on the battlefield he has no chance at all. | [
"A primary cause of wound dehiscence is sub-acute infection, resulting from inadequate or imperfect aseptic technique. Coated suture, such as Vicryl, generally breaks down at a rate predicted to correspond with tissue healing, but is hastened in the presence of bacteria. In the absence of other known metabolic fact... |
How do we figure out the rotational period of distant stars? | For stars whose axis of rotation is not pointing toward us, we can measure the light (spectra) of the left and right sides of the stars. Since one side is moving away from us, and the other is moving toward us, there is a shift in the spectra (similar to the doppler shift that causes a car coming toward us to sound different than when it goes away from us).
By observing this difference, astronomers can calculate the rotational speed. | [
"The rotational period of each star can be measured by observing periodic variations in the doppler shifts of their spectral lines. The absolute rotational velocities of the two stars are known from their inclinations, rotation periods, and sizes, but the projected equatorial rotational velocities measured using do... |
how does somebody develop paranoid schizophrenia? | Although it isn't really understood, as is the case with a lot of mental health conditions, there is a lot fo evidence that it is largly genetic.
However a genetic predisposition to the condition isn't a gaurentee that a person will develop it, and there is suggestion that it generally presents when combined with environmental factors. It most often presents during pubity. | [
"Paranoid schizophrenia is an illness that typically requires lifelong treatment with neuroleptics or 5-HT2A antagonists to allow someone to have a relatively stable and normal lifestyle. In order to be successfully treated, a person with schizophrenia should seek help from family or primary care doctors, psychiatr... |
When we are cold, why does vasoconstriction occur and what part of the brain initiates it? (curiosity, not homework :P) | Vasoconstriction is the narrowing of the blood vessles. This minimises the amount of heat radiated out of the body and thus is a function of homeostasis in maintain optimum core body temperature. It's initated by the hypothalamus in the brain. | [
"Vasoconstriction occurs first to reduce heat loss, but also results in strong cooling of the extremities. Approximately five to ten minutes after the start of cold exposure, the blood vessels in the extremities will suddenly vasodilate. This is probably caused by a sudden decrease in the release of neurotransmitte... |
why do i need a video card? | Most calculations on a computer are handled by what CPU, the Central Processing Unit. This handles most things for most users without difficulty, and primarily operates on the concept of have a few very powerful cores. Most processors now are dual-core or quad-core.
There's an optional component you can get for your computer called a GPU, a Graphics Processing Unit. A GPU is a different kind of component that plugs into a generic plug in your motherboard called a PCI slot. You can use a PCI slot for a special audio card, for a WiFi receptor, or a number of different things. GPUs are for users who want improved performance on visual calculations on their computer- if you're a video gamer it's very very important. It's also important if you do things like video-editing, 3D production, or even some advanced photo editing. GPUs these days are based around a LARGER number of low-powered cores, each of which is assigned small problems. GPUs are actually quite interesting these days too because they're practically mini-computers within your larger computer- a GPU will have it's own RAM and cooling components in addition to it's processors. | [
"A video card (also called a display card, graphics card, display adapter, or graphics adapter) is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display device (such as a computer monitor). Frequently, these are advertised as discrete or dedicated graphics cards, emphasizing the distinction between... |
how men became the dominating sex in almost every society? | Throughout our history men have been in control because it was the men who were stronger. The strong control the weaker, whether that's weaker men or women in general. Throughout history women spent much of their time pregnant. Being pregnant came with the need to be looked after. | [
"Social power has been popularly associated with sexual infidelity among men; experimental psychologists have linked power with sexual infidelity among women also. A Dutch study involving a large survey of 1,561 professionals, concluded that \"The relationship between power and infidelity was the same for women as ... |
why do android phones wipe their battery statistics when restarted at > 90% battery? | Restarting a phone clears the memory and closes all apps that were open. When the phone restarts, it re-calculates the battery percentage based on the current usage. Not sure if that answers your question. | [
"Some users have experienced battery drain problems after updating to iOS 11. In a poll on its website, 70% of \"9to5Mac\" visitors reported decreased battery life after updating to the new operating system. However, in an article featuring Twitter complaints of battery life, \"Daily Express\" wrote that \"honestly... |
can somebody explain computer specs to me, and what to look for when purchasing a new machine? | > and was always impressed by people who could tell the functionality of a computer simply by looking through its specifications.
I don't really know how else you'd determine how good a computer is without touching it.
And in response to your question, what do you plan on doing with it? If you just check email and watch youtube/netflix, then you really don't need a high-end computer, but if you're gaming, video editing and other stuff like that you'll need a good computer. | [
"Speccy, developed by Piriform, is a freeware utility software and runs under Microsoft Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Vista and XP for both IA-32 and x64 versions of these operating systems, which shows the user information about hardware and software of the computer. The information displayed by Speccy include... |
Panelists: Which books have you found most interesting as a layman (non-expert?) | Oh, there are tons of books. Here are a few of my favorites:
Frozen Earth by Douglas MacDougall
At the Water's Edge by Carl Zimmer
Six Degrees by Mark Lynas
Eternal Frontier by Tim Flannery
The Map that Changed the World by Simon Winchester
Pretty much any of Stephen Jay Gould's books are great to check out.
Also, if you're looking for something a tad challenging/dense, Origin of Species is actually accessible. Its dense, but well-written and no jargon to speak of. Plus, I always think its great that a non-expert can read and grasp the material in one of the most important books written in any scientific field.
For documentaries, check out Brian Cox's series on the Solar System. | [
"‘This is an excellent, succinct book, and written with great verve. It is based, as the many pages of notes and references testify, on many hundreds of hours of interviews with key people throughout the region.’ — Kerry Brown, Asian Review of Books\n",
"Expert authors dissect, simplify and explain each topic to ... |
why do so many reporters use bad puns? | I just spent 10 minutes looking out my window trying to think of the perfect pun. I feel like I failed. | [
"UK tabloid newspapers delight in punny headlines. The Pun-Down took a look at the best (or worst) puns in the headlines of that day's papers, and was especially popular in the Johnny Vaughan era. On Fridays this became the \"Pun of the Week\" when an award was made for the best pun from the week's newspapers.\n",
... |
How did the ancient Mediterranean build their huge ships without drydocks? | You'll want to take a look at Casson's *Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World* and *Ships and Seafaring in Ancient Times*, if you're looking for material. In point of fact the Romans very much had drydocks, in which larger ships might be built. But the vast majority of ships were built on land and then lowered into the water by ramps and slipways. Ships were not necessarily even built near the water, but sometimes just near whatever the source of their timber was--the New Pauly says that the Nemi ships were probably built way up in Misenum and were transported overland to the lake. Ships in the ancient world were not necessarily that large--at least warships weren't, although merchant ships could be pretty gigantic | [
"Sails from ancient Egypt are depicted around 3200 BCE, where reed boats sailed upstream against the River Nile's current. Ancient Sumerians used square rigged sailing boats at about the same time, and it is believed they established sea trading routes as far away as the Indus valley. The proto-Austronesian words f... |
Is it possible to create a molecule containing a noble gas ? | It's possible, but difficult. They're usually hard to make and many can only exist in extremes of temperature and/or pressure. HeH+, or helium hydride, is formed by a positively charged hydrogen ion (a single proton) reacting with a helium atom. It's the strongest acid known to exist. It's theorized to exist naturally in interstellar space but has yet to be detected. The larger noble gases are *somewhat* easier to create compounds with. Xenon has several possible compounds. | [
"Noble gases can form endohedral fullerene compounds, in which the noble gas atom is trapped inside a fullerene molecule. In 1993, it was discovered that when , a spherical molecule consisting of 60 carbon atoms, is exposed to noble gases at high pressure, complexes such as can be formed (the \"@\" notation indicat... |
what's going on in turkey and why are websites like youtube and twitter being banned? | Just as we have seen in countless countries, the government is corrupt . People are exposing the corruption on social media outlets. so they are being blocked to avoid that and so people can't see it. | [
"In 2013 social media sites were banned in Turkey after the Taksim Gezi Park protests. Both Twitter and YouTube were closed by a decision of the Turkish court. And a new law, passed by Turkish Parliament, granted immunity to Turkey's Telecommunications Directorate (TİB) personnel. The TİB was also given the authori... |
how do people who release leaks on to torrent websites originally obtain them ex. game of thrones | There's three reasons why TV shows or any other media is leaked:
- The production crew is huge usually hundreds of people. Someone such as an intern could easily steal a tape from an editor or someone in a similar position and then go home and upload it to the internet.
- The company producing the show also sends out review copies for early reviews. One of these people who receive a review copy could upload it themselves.
- Sometimes companies purposely "leak" an episode of their show to get public interest going or free advertising. | [
"Today most warez files are distributed to the public via bittorrent and One-click hosting sites. Some of the most popular software companies that are being targeted are Adobe, Microsoft, Nero, Apple, DreamWorks, and Autodesk, to name a few. To reduce the spread of illegal copying, some companies have hired people ... |
how are pills tested to determine their side effects? | Human testing, animal testing etc. They discovered that a specific heart medication actually helped with ED. That became viagra | [
"There are services available for testing the contents of an ecstasy pill that can tell the user what chemicals are contained in the pill and at what ratio. The results are then posted on their website along with every other pill that they have tested. The tests are considered to be highly accurate. Their services ... |
- viruses and cancer | Yes, it can. In fact, the Human Papilloma Virus is one of the leading causes of Cervical Cancer in women.
Viruses that lead to cancer are classed together as DNA or RNA Oncoviruses. | [
"Some viruses, known as oncoviruses, contribute to the development of certain forms of cancer. The best studied example is the association between Human papillomavirus and cervical cancer: almost all cases of cervical cancer are caused by certain strains of this sexually transmitted virus. Another example is the as... |
how much credit (or blame) can be assigned to film directors for the overall quality of a film? | The director on any movie is limited by the creative control given to him/her. Generally, the directors who have limited experience, but have big budgets, have very little control over the general direction of the movie. The control is taken away by producers and executive producers. On the other side, indie films and low budget movies gives directors almost universal control. The investment risk low so if the director screws up, it wasn't a big loss.
For the other part of your question, some directors, with a high level of control over the movie, select the entire production staff working on the movie. And vice versa, directors with little control work with what they got. Some production companies have their own production staff on retainer and the producers only change the director of the movie.
The matter becomes more complicated when multiple producers all want to provide input on a movie. They all have money invested and none want the movie to fail.
There is also the challenge of 2nd unit directors and 3rd unit directors. For movies with multiple locations, it is cheaper for a production company to hire a local production team rather than flying and shipping the first production team all over the place. In this instance, only the actors are flown to the location. It also speeds up production because the language barrier issue becomes minimized with local production teams.
Finally, some movies are rushed through production because studios are always targeting specific release dates which don't always agree with the schedules of the directors.
All in all, the director cannot be tied completely to the success or failure of the movie. There are many other people which may have had creative control over the direction of a given movie.
Fun fact: Edward Norton chose not to continue to play the Hulk because he wouldn't have creative control over the direction of the character through the timeline of the Marvel universe.
Fun Fact: Josh Trank, director of the new Fantastic Four, claims the movie was terrible because the movie production studio had too much influence on the development of the movie. | [
"In case of winning a mark, screenwriters, directors and other film artists receive so-called reference points; these make it easier for filmmakers to receive subsidies for future projects. Likewise, films rated as \"worthwile\" or \"especially worthwile\" are subject to lower entertainment taxes, depending on the ... |
[Biology] What is the real difference between something like a lobster and a bug? | Lobsters, crabs, shrimp, insects, and "bugs" are all members of the phylum _arthropoda_. Phyla are a very broad classification of creatures below only Kingdoms in the scientific classification scheme.
Crabs, shrimp and lobsters are all crustaceans, which is a subphylum of arthropoda. Insects such as beetles and houseflies are members of the class _insecta_. Spiders and scorpions are in the class _arachnida_. Arthropods are an almost unimaginably diverse group of creatures with a bewildering variety.
So while all these creatures share many traits and an evolutionary history that justify their grouping in this phylum, they all have many differences that have accumulated over billions of years of evolutionary history. | [
"Lobsters are invertebrates with a hard protective exoskeleton. Like most arthropods, lobsters must moult to grow, which leaves them vulnerable. During the moulting process, several species change color. Lobsters have eight walking legs; the front three pairs bear claws, the first of which are larger than the other... |
Communism/Socialism, etc | > Communism is just one form of socialism.
Well, that much is true.
> The Nazis were socialists and so were the Russians they fought against.
This tends to be a talking point that gets rehashed over and over again. I would summarize it as follows, once you get over the fact that they were the "National Socialist" party, there is really no coherent argument that the Nazis were socialist. It's roughly akin to making the argument that the Democratic Party in the United States is advocating for direct democracy because they have the word "Democratic" in their name. In short - the names of political parties are historically contingent. (As tom_ryan answered, the People's Republic of China is a good example if you want to use a country name instead of a party name)
If you must get dragged into an actual argument about ideology, it's trivially easy to see that that Nazi party was fascist, and not socialist. There was no discourse about worker control of industry. It was hyper nationalistic where as socialist discourse is traditionally international. Don't confuse fascist populist/nationalist rhetoric for socialist rhetoric about class, they are very distinct.
Sometimes people have trouble with it because they try to place it on a spectrum between capitalism and socialism. It doesn't really neatly fit on a line between the two. For example, there was certainly room for state intervention, but at the same time fascism's ideal for the economy was undoubtedly corporate. This blended with their nationalist rhetoric, essentially saying that class distinctions weren't as important as national ones, precisely the opposite of socialist rhetoric on the same point.
There really isn't anything socialist about fascism, and to equate the two has generally in my experience been a cheap attempt to try to justify capitalism by associating alternate paths with two 20th century dictatorships, if I am being perfectly honest. One can look at totalitarian states if one wants. But the ideologies, rhetoric and indeed actual on the ground implementation of policy was simply drastically different between the Nazis and Soviet Union. | [
"In addition to this, the term communism (as well as socialism) is often used to refer to those political and economic systems and states dominated by a political, bureaucratic class, typically attached to one single Communist party that follow Marxist-Leninist doctrines and often claim to represent the dictatorshi... |
why does alcohol (isopropyl) evaporate so much faster than other liquids than say water? | Well thats a very relative question. It is a liquid at room temperature, which puts its boiling temperature above that of any gases. Water has a higher one, wood/metal has a higher one still.
The boiling point is determined by the intramolecular forces in the liquid state. They are weaker than water. Also importantly they can lower the boiling point of a mixture when added to water (which it always is) so its just about how well the molecules stick together (cause they always want to escape). | [
"Isopropyl alcohol is a major ingredient in \"gas dryer\" fuel additives. In significant quantities water is a problem in fuel tanks, as it separates from gasoline and can freeze in the supply lines at low temperatures. Alcohol does not remove water from gasoline—but the alcohol solubilizes water in gasoline. Once ... |
Why did the pages of my book wrinkle as they dried after I dropped it in the toilet? | You know how napkins/toilet paper/tissues tend to completely disintegrate when you let them soak in water for a while? That's what's happening, but on a smaller scale.
The presence of water in paper disrupts the intermolecular forces that hold individual cellulose molecules together. So instead of staying in place, the cellulose molecules can start to move around. As the paper dries out, the intermolecular forces come into play again, but now all the cellulose molecules are in a different position from before. This leads to the wrinkly or wavy look of water-damaged paper.
In the future, you can minimize the waviness by compressing the book (or just the affected pages) with a heavy object until you're sure that it's completely dry. This will minimize how much the cellulose fibers move around. | [
"Parchment is also extremely affected by its environment and changes in humidity, which can cause buckling. Books with parchment pages were bound with strong wooden boards and clamped tightly shut by metal (often brass) clasps or leather straps; this acted to keep the pages pressed flat despite humidity changes. Su... |
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