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Book recommendation please: WWII / post war liberation | Fiction or non? There is a great non-fic book called Savage Continent that talks about the immediate aftermath. Then there is another non-fic book called Postwar by Tony Judt. Savage Continent is incredible. Havent read Postwar but Tony Judt is well regarded. | [
"Publication of The Liberation Trilogy began in 2002 with \"\", acclaimed by \"The Wall Street Journal\" as \"the best World War II battle narrative since Cornelius Ryan’s classics, \"The Longest Day\" and \"A Bridge Too Far\".\" While with the 101st Airborne Division south of Baghdad in April 2003, Atkinson learne... |
how were international treaties enforced before the establishment of international organisations such as the UN, EU and the international court of justice? | Well, the simple answer is of course that *in general* they weren't 'enforced', at least not in the sense of being subject to some sort of supranational legal procedure. It's a bit more complicated than that, though.
To a large extent this is more of an IR question than a history question, since you're basically asking the abstract question of how equitable inter-state relations can emerge given the power asymmetries inherent to any real-life international system. It strikes at the heart of one of the key issues that has historically divided the competing schools of IR theorists. Because of this you might be better off asking someplace like /r/asksocialscience.
(As an aside I don't think the existence of the ICJ and the UN necessarily changes that much in any case -- neither of them have state-like powers of enforcement.)
I can provide a more strictly historical answer, though, from what's often called an ['English School' perspective](_URL_0_).
Essentially, from this perspective, the answer lies in the fact that **no two states exist in a vacuum**. Relations between states are inherently articulated through a cultural prism that goes beyond a single specific exchange.
**A variety of localised international systems have prevailed throughout history.** These have ranged from the ritualised rotating hegemony of the Sumerian city-states to the Confucian tributary system that revolved around imperial China and the often confused and contradictory idea of Christendom and the Empire in medieval Europe.
In each of these various cases, we find that instead of being an indeterminate state of nature where anything goes in relations between states, international relations are structured by important underlying conventions and cultural ideas. These ideas are what make something like the very concept of a 'treaty' feasible and comprehensible. This becomes obvious in interactions *between* different international systems, which are often difficult and confused: the unsuccessful British missions to China in the 18th and early 19th century are a case in point.
**The upshot of this is that states have historically tended to define and behave according to certain conventions that regulate their relations with each other.** All states share some stake in maintaining their overarching system of relations because they each directly benefit from the mutual trust and political certainty that derives from it, not to mention the personal moral obligations that state leaders will feel.
In Europe, for example, there's the idea of a ***jus gentium***, a 'law of nations' which articulates the conventions that all peoples can be expected to abide by regardless of their individual state laws. This idea is a tradition that goes back to ancient Rome. (Nowadays we also distinguish a *jus inter gentes* or 'law between nations' that applies to things like treaties, but that's largely an 18th-century invention.)
From ancient Roman thought through to medieval canon law, anyone stepping outside the bounds of *jus gentium* -- such as by violating a treaty -- was by definition violating natural law at a very profound level, and could thus expect to provoke moral outrage and distrust.
The Romans themselves, as Cicero's *De officiis* suggests, saw the upholding of promises as one of the most fundamental aspects of a moral society. Cicero gives one instructive example:
> Again, if under stress of circumstances individuals have made any promise to the enemy, they are bound to keep their word even then. For instance, in the First Punic War, when Regulus was taken prisoner by the Carthaginians, he was sent to Rome on parole to negotiate an exchange of prisoners; he came and, in the first place, it was he that made the motion in the Senate that the prisoners should not be restored; and in the second place, when his relatives and friends would have kept him back, he chose to return to a death by torture rather than prove false to his promise, though given to an enemy.
As far as Cicero was concerned, this was clearly the right thing for Regulus to have done: Rome's reputation was at stake! (Bear in mind, too, that *De officiis* was for a long time the second most widely read book in Europe right after the Bible, and remained widely read by statesmen at least up until the 19th century.)
So at the end of the day, yes, where an international system breaks down in some way or conventions are ignored, what matters is who's stronger. But treaties have historically emerged in the context of overall systems of moral and political norms which determine how the governors of various states view each other, and how they can expect each other to act.
Like I said though, this is only a rather superficial answer to something that's a very far-reaching theoretical question. For more on this particular analysis, and a more general history of international systems, you might be interested in Hedley Bull's book *The Anarchical Society*.
**edit:** I realised I answered the second part of your question ('why did people make treaties if they couldn't be legally enforced') but not the first: what, short of war, did people do about rulers who overstepped the limits of convention? This is unfortunately much more complicated to answer -- the answer obviously depends on what place and time you're looking at. As a quick example though: In medieval Europe, for instance, failure to comply with a treaty was typically treated as swearing an oath under false pretenses -- i.e. perjury -- and thus a matter of ecclesiastical law. So, other than simple war, the full suite of ecclesiastical sanctions could apply to a ruler who broke a treaty -- sanctions which would be exacted by the papacy. (I'm not aware of any cases where a whole *kingdom* or town was put under interdict for violating a treaty, though; a medievalist might be able to clear that up.) This is the sort of 'moral approbation' you might expect from my explanation above. | [
"The United Nations Charter states that treaties must be registered with the UN to be invoked before it or enforced in its judiciary organ, the International Court of Justice. This was done to prevent the proliferation of secret treaties that occurred in the 19th and 20th century. Section 103 of the Charter also st... |
Similar to how Christmas has pagan roots, Are there any traditions in Islam or Buddhism that pull from various regional traditions or customs? | While I can't speak for Islam in broad terms, I can speak a little bit about Buddhism. Even then though, I had to think about it at first, because the idea paganism exists in far more fluid terms in the places where Buddhism is prominent vs Christian and Muslim places. Buddhism is in many was a cultural and religious sponge, being more compatible and requiring less "conversion" than your Abrahamic religion. For Buddhists, the key is not in a belief in gods or a creator, but rather in the Buddha and the teachings he left behind. Buddhist cosmology, while denying the existence of an absolute creator deity, accepts the existence of powerful beings, gods and spirits, and specifically mentions *Mara*, *Yama*, and *Brahma* in the Pali canon, Hindu deities that predate Buddhism by some 500-1000 years. From the very beginning Buddhist texts incorporate some Indian deities into their religion. Mahayana gives us even more examples, with saints and gods becoming *Bodhisattva*. As Buddhism spread, it soaked up regional gods and practices.
Here I'm going to zoom in on two separate traditions, Japanese Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism. While both are descended in part from the Mahayana school (although the Tibetan school is often separated into Vajrayana or Esoteric Buddhism due to its practices being rather different from traditional Mahayana. In fact Japan has ties to the Esoteric form of Buddhism too, though it took on a very different role.) they could not be more different due to the ways in which the culture they were part of influenced them both.
Before we continue, I need to make an important distinction. You see, Shinto as we know it has only truly existed for 250 or so years. While not wholly a modern invention, it codified the Japanese religious tradition and fused it with a rigid worship of the Emperor as a living god and chief of the pantheon and stripped non-Japanese elements away in an attempt to create a purely "Japanese" tradition. That said, many primary practices, legends, symbols, and *Kami* date back to pre-Buddhist and even prehistoric (The first mentions of Japan are found in the first century CE and it isn't really until the late-third century where we have detailed information) times. When I'm talking about Shinto or *Kami* tradition here, I am refering to the general folk beliefs of Japan which differs in some ways, but is very similar in others, to the modern idea of Shinto.
Let's start with Japanese Buddhism for no other reason than it comes first alphabetically. Buddhism entered Japan *officially* in 552 CE but likely was there before that, probably a few decades earlier, but certainly no more than a century before. At this time the Japanese already had a flourishing *Kami* tradition which would later become known as Shinto. This presented a problem for the elite and ruling class who began to favor the Buddhism that was brought from Korea and China as the worship of Kami and the rituals associate with them would not simply end and were in many places antithetical to Buddhist doctrine. Regardless of the contradictions apparent in the two traditions, they were practiced side by side for the most part. With the introduction of Tendai, the role of *Kami* in Japanese Buddhism changed and many Japanese Buddhists followed the new idea that the *Kami* were spirits that helped bring enlightenment, allowing worship of both simultaneously without contradiction. While this was happening Buddhist *Bodhisattva* deities became identified as *kami* as well. Indeed Buddhism began to take a very important cultural role in society, dealing with death.
Death before Buddhism was a very different affair. The Japanese viewed it as unclean or impure so they often ritually cleaned themselves. In those days there were no or few formal priests for Shinto spiritual chiefs often led the community. Rather, Shamans were the link and communities performed the burial rites. Upon the arrival of Buddhism in Japan, communities became increasingly interested in how death could be avoided or at least stalled, the process of human souls becoming *kami* came into being and the early Buddhist exorcism rites began to come about. As the years went on, Buddhism became increasingly associated with death and funerary rites while Shinto became the celebration of life and death. Because of this, Buddhism became increasingly death-centered in Japan with the Esoteric forms becoming associated with the warrior monks, the extreme ascetics who mummified themselves alive, and the suicidal monks while the Mahayana forms gave us *Amida Pure Land*, *Nichiren*, and *Jizo* cults. The Esoteric forms largely died out but the Mahayana cults became an important part of Japanese culture with *Jizo* becoming a popular figure who was associated children and saving people from hell to take them to his *Pure Land*. Jizo is seen all over Japan even today, sitting on roadsides surrounded by dolls and offerings.
It was largely for this reason that Buddhism was able to survive repression in the days of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi (who favored Japanese Neo-Confuscim) and the Meiji Restoration (where State Shinto became the Nationalistic imperative). Now serving an important function, as much as the Meiji Government tried to split Buddhism from Shinto, the two were linked and nearly everyone practiced both to some degree. To this day, most Japanese practice both Buddhism and Shinto together with little distinction in between the practices. Those that are "Buddhist" often have Shinto influences and "Shinto" are tied deeply to Buddhist tradition. It actually makes it difficult to assess how many Buddhists there are in Japan because people will identify as both or either interchangeably though new movements like the Soka Gakkai are more Buddhist and less Shinto.
---
Onto Tibet. So Buddhism in the Land of Snows is kind of a big deal, so much so that perhaps 30% of the population were monks or worked in monasteries prior to the Chinese invasion and nearly the entire population was Buddhist. Tibetan Buddhism had spread as far as Europe and was the primary religion of Mongolia. It's a big deal. It was also far more esoteric than nearly all other forms of Buddhism, with mantras, yogic practice, and complex rituals alongside the traditional Buddhist meditation and study. Gods and demons stare out from walls and buildings and the very land itself seems to have a spirit. *Tulkus*, reincarnated teachers and incarnate Bodhisattvas, lead the monasteries and carry on the teachings of their past lives as incarnate Lamas. The rich and unique culture of Tibetan Buddhism takes many influences from the traditional religion of Tibet, *Bon*, so much so that they are incredibly hard to tell the difference between them.
Well, that isn't entirely true. *Bon* only really came about in the 14th century out of the folk traditions that were absorbed into Tibetan Buddhism and is in part a reconstruction of the animism and folk beliefs of pre-Buddhist Tibet. It can be hard to find the authentic bits of pre-Buddhist beliefs and the post-Buddhist beliefs in modern Bon, but lets look at some things that almost certainly are tied into the pre-Buddhist traditions.
The Tibetan creation myth details Chenrezig, the Buddhas disciple, begged him not to die his final death as the Tibetan land would have people and they would not reach enlightenment, but the Buddha made it Chenrezig's job to bring them to enlightenment. Chenrezig then gave a monkey, whose name I will not even try to pronouce or write down but it means something along the lines of "the Enlightened Old Monkey Father", enlightenment. One day, while Old Monkey Father was meditating a female demon seduced him and thus the Tibetan people were born. This origin myth likely predates Buddhism and was incorporated into the tradition later on with the addition of Bodhisattvas (I seem to recall hearing a version where the demon was an incarnation of Tara).
There are other practices too, many of the demons and Bodhisattvas unique to Tibet are adaptations of traditional deities from the pre-Buddhist times and creatures like the Gyalpo are the realm of Buddhist monks and Lamas to dispel. Indeed the role of Lamas as astrologers, mystics, and seers is a role that dates back to the pre-Buddhist priests (who were actually called Bon) and their mystical powers come from ancient Tibetan beliefs indicated by the early descriptions in ancient Chinese sources.
It is a little harder to find information on the pre-Buddhist myths of Tibet since they didn't write anything down prior to Buddhism, in fact Buddhism was the impetus for a Tibetan writing system, one developed entirely separate from Chinese script to have an exact translation for each Sanskrit word. Peeling back the edges of Tibetan Buddhism, however, gives us an interesting look at how deeply the Buddhists of Tibet fused their own myths, and those of the tantric Hindus, into the religion.
* Laird, Thomas *The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama*
* Achard, Jean-Luc *The Six Lamps*
* HH Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama *My Land, My People*
* Tsering, Diki, *Dalai Lama, My Son*
* David-Neel, Alexandra, *The Superhuman Life of Gesar of Ling*
* Picken, Reverend Stuart ["Death in the Japanese Tradition"](_URL_0_)
* Deal, William E, *A Cultural History of Japanese Buddhism*
* Japanese Buddhist Federation, *A Guide to Japanese Buddhism* | [
"While almost all Christians accept the practice today, Jehovah's Witnesses and some Sacred Name groups refrain from celebrating birthdays due to the custom's pagan origins, its connections to magic and superstitions. While Christmas is the celebration of Christ's Birth, some religious groups see it as being portra... |
why is it possible for certain animals, particularly typical pets, to die from extreme stress? | stress has an inpact on the body functions and chemicals up to a point that it gets dangerous to the body functions.
it is possible for almost all animals including humans to die from stress.
the amount of stress needed might be different. in most cases it is a heart attack in humans. | [
"In animals, stress contributes to the initiation, growth, and metastasis of select tumors, but studies that try to link stress and cancer incidence in humans have had mixed results. This can be due to practical difficulties in designing and implementing adequate studies. Personal belief in stress as a risk factor ... |
Are there Lagrangian points between the black hole in the middle of our galaxy and the sun/earth? | > So Langrangian points are points where gravitational forces of two things cancel themselves out, right?
No, not right. They are points where the combined gravitational force of two things is just right so that a third thing can co-revolve with them. The total force isn't zero, it's equal to the centripetal force needed to orbit at that distance with the same period as the two primaries.
> Are there Lagrangian points between the black hole in the middle of our galaxy and the sun/earth?
Yes, in theory, but the gravitational forces of both bodies would be so weak there as to be pretty much negligible. Any nearby bodies would completely swamp them.
> And can we be trapped in such a point somehow on our journey through the galaxy?
No, even stable Lagrange points don't prevent objects from leaving them with propulsion, or even just being carried through by their own momentum. Getting things to *stay* at a Lagrange point is the hard part, not getting away from one. And, any way, the forces would be tiny in this case, as mentioned.
> What would change for us (even if it's not likely/possible)?
Nothing. There would be no impact on a trajectory through the galaxy.
> Is this possible for any other black hole?
Is what possible? There's nothing special about black holes as far as distant objects are concerned. Their gravitational field is no different (more or less) from a hypothetical non-black hole object of the same mass. | [
"In astronomy, Lagrangian points are five positions in the orbital plane of two large orbiting bodies where a small object affected only by gravity can maintain a stable position relative to the two large bodies. The first three Lagrangian points (L, L, L) lie along the line connecting the two large bodies, while t... |
differences in pain? (example: stab, sharp pain vs. punch pain?) | Part of it is the degree of pressure. A pinch stimulates nerves more accurately than a punch. A sting or stab is more centralized than a punch. If you were pinched at the same pressure as a punch, it would hurt more than a punch. Punches also aren't felt as deep. Think of scratching your skin. That doest hurt. If you scratched an open wound, OWW. Stabbing pains like pinching stimulate the inside nerves more directly.
P.S. Pinching is pushing 2 places inside of you together ( like 2 spots in your arm) | [
"BULLET::::- Back pain – is pain felt in the back. It is divided into neck pain (cervical), middle back pain (thoracic), lower back pain (lumbar) or coccydynia (tailbone or sacral pain) based on the segment affected. The lumbar area is the most common area for pain, as it supports most of the weight in the upper bo... |
why do i stop being able to see properly for a brief period if i exercise vigorously? | I'd say this is more a question for your doctor rather than reddit. | [
"As a result of doing eyes exercise by massaging the acupoint, not only do our eyes have timely rest from daily work and academic assignments, but it also helps to accelerate the blood circulation and bring nutrition to nerve. Doing eye exercises regularly contributes to protection of eyesight and prevention of sho... |
Is there any evidence of Roman gladiators from the same stable (or known to each other) making fight 'arrangements' in order to survive? | Follow-up (or addonial) question: Would it be actually common for gladiator fights to result in death of gladiator(s)? I'm aware that games could include basicaly execution (throwing prisoners sentenced to death to animals etc.), but I assume that properly trained gladiator would be rather expensive and, ethics aside, using them for only single performance seems pointlessly wasteful. And obviously they could become better... "entertainers" with more experience, if given chance. | [
"There were many different types of gladiators in ancient Rome. Some of the first gladiators had been prisoners-of-war, and so some of the earliest types of gladiators were experienced fighters; Gauls, Samnites, and \"Thraeces\" (Thracians) used their native weapons and armor. Different gladiator types specialized ... |
Without hindsight was Stalin's reasoning for believing Hitler wouldn't invade reasonable? | In the books I've read I've never seen any opinion that Stalin's belief was in any way the result of a rational examination of the available evidence. From Mein Kampf, Stalin knew that Hitler intended to attack the Soviet Union. He also knew that Hitler had abrogated peace treaties in the past, indeed had helped Hitler invade Poland. Stalin, and the Soviet High command, ignored numerous warnings including :
- Warnings from Churchill, the USA and Soviet embassies in Romania and Sweden,
- Warning from the Soviet spy Richard Sorge in Japan
- Known buildup of German troops on the Soviet Border, including the entry of German troops in Rumania and Bulgaria in violation of the Nazi-Soviet pact.
- Daily incursions into Soviet airspace by reconnaissance aircraft.
- Numerous German deserters crossed the border in the days before the attack warning of the impending assault.
Stalin appears to have acknowledged that war with Germany was likely, but became fixated on two beliefs. Firstly that the Germans would not attack only two years after signing a non-aggression pact with the USSR. Secondly that the British wanted to provoke the USSR into declaring war on Germany.
This second belief basically allowed him to ignore any evidence that contradicted the first belief. It's possible that the flight of Rudolph Hess to Britain in early May 1941 reinforced the belief that Churchill was actually colluding with Hitler. Even then that doesn't explain the lack of warning to the Soviet border forces.
Sources:
The Second World War; John Keegan.
The Second World War; Martin Gilbert.
Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict, 1941-45; Alan Clark.
When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler (Modern War Studies); David M. Glantz.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; William Schirer. | [
"After further conversation regarding a Second Front in France, Stalin said that the British 'should not be so afraid of the Germans'. He went on to ask, 'Why were we [the British] so afraid of the Germans?' Churchill offered 1940 and the German failure to land troops as a comparable situation, saying that Hitler '... |
why is it that some paintings are popular and others are not? | As far as technique is concerned you're somewhat correct as there is an overabundance of artists with the appropriate training/ability to paint/draw/sculpt a masterpiece. The difference between an artist on the street and a big name artist in modern times is less about skill and more about creativity/subject matter. Granted, once an artist gains a name for her/himself, she/he will likely be able to pass off less inspired works but the initial emergence of an artist is due to their creativity. I'd consider this analogous to the music industry where there are an infinite number of talented vocalists and musicians but the ones who are most famous are the ones who create the most interesting music/write the most interesting lyrics (pop music notwithstanding). | [
"One of the main reasons for the popularity of paintings was the fact that literacy is not required. As a result of this, the stories of Christianity and the messages that the clergy wish to share become more easily accessible to the masses that may or may not be literate. The Abbey of St John holds some of the mos... |
What was the English view of Bacon's Rebellion of 1676 and did they know he wanted full independence from England? | Nathaniel Bacon never intended to declare independence from England. Despite attacking royal governor William Berkeley, Bacon and his group fully imagined themselves as Englishmen who just happened to live in Virginia. They knew that Virginia would fall prey to other colonial powers, the Dutch, the French, and the Spanish, had they not been under England's protection. They also knew their livelihoods depended on English markets.
So why did Bacon's group erupt in rebellion? It was mostly due to large planter versus frontier frustrations. The catalyst to the rebellion was the governor's refusal to let them kill Indians during a war between Virginian settlers and the Susquehannock Indians. In hit-and-run raids the Indians had killed some families on the frontier and the frontiersmen wanted permission to retaliate against all Indians, even those who were peaceful. The governor refused as all out war would hurt the deer trade that was profitable to him and his friends. Also, as Professor Alan Taylor says, "Berkeley also understood that a controlled, gradual frontier expansion better served the interests of the wealthiest planters, who wanted to retain common men as laborers and tenants rather than permit their dispersion to an open frontier as settlers."^1 So, the inability to expand, resentment that the governor monopolized the Indian trade, coupled with ever-decreasing tobacco prices and a belief that the eastern planters did not represent their interests led to the rebellion where Bacon and his men ended up burning down Jamestown. Although Bacon used servants and the ilk in his small army, he did not intend to completely overthrow the social order. He was not an egalitarian. He just thought his group should be at the top. He ended up dying of dysentery. After which, Berkeley returned, hanged the remaining 23 rebel leaders, and put down the rebellion.
As for those in London, they viewed that Berkeley was at fault for overreaching his hand. King Charles II quickly dispatched an army to restore order. He wanted keep tobacco revenue flowing. In the end, "the monarch agreed with Nathaniel Bacon on one thing: the newly rich Virginia elite was unworthy of its power. Determined to maximize the crown's share in the profits of Tobacco, the king disapproved of the competing exactions by the planter elite."^2
^1 Alan Taylor, *American Colonies: The Settling of North American* (New York: Penguin Books, 2001), 148.
^2 Taylor, 150. | [
"Bacon then demanded a military commission but Berkeley refused. Bacon and his supporters surrounded the statehouse and threatened to start shooting the Burgesses if Berkeley did not acknowledge Bacon as \"General of all forces against the Indians\". Berkeley eventually acceded, and then left Jamestown. He attempte... |
why did south korea and japan become so successful after world war 2, but the philippines didn’t? | The US poured most of its restoration efforts into Japan and SK to prevent them being under Communist Russia and to have a foothold in the East. The Philippines barely got any funding from the US relative to Japan and SK.
Also, Filipinos don't know shit about nation building and are selfish as fuck.
Source: I'm form the Philippines. | [
"During World War II, immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces invaded and quickly overcame resistance by the United States and Philippine Commonwealth military. Strategically, Japan needed the Philippines to prevent its use by Allied forces as a forward base of operations against the Japanese ... |
why does using a pillow feel comfortable when it makes your head tilted? | It's about supporting the neck more than the angle of your head. Ideally, you want to keep the spine aligned while maintaining that neck support so that your muscles are not straining to try to provide that alignment. So you're basically letting the muscles in your neck and shoulders relax by using the pillow. That is why it feels good. | [
"Travel pillows provide support for the neck in a sitting position. Their \"U\" shape fits around the back of the neck and keeps the head from slipping into an uncomfortable and possibly harmful position during sleep. However, U-shaped pillows can sometimes force the head forward, creating neck stiffness.\n",
"A ... |
What makes paper fresh from the copier hot? Why don't inkjet printers produce the same amount of heat as copiers do? | Laser printers and photocopiers don't work under the same principle as an inkjet printer. When you make a photocopy, the first step is to give an electrostatic charge to a special cylinder. That cylinder is coated with a material that becomes conductive when exposed to light. When the document is being scanned, a strong source of light shines on the paper and reflects on the rotating cylinder. The parts being hit by light (i.e. what is aligned with white on the original document) become conductive and allows the electrostatic charge to be grounded and discharge. What you are left with at the end of this process is a cylinder with an electrostatic charge only on areas that correspond to the dark areas on the document. The charge then picks up toner and rolls on a blank piece of paper with a heating element, which essentially melts the toner and makes it adhere to the paper. The paper then comes out of the photocopier with an approximate copy of the original document.
Of course, modern photocopiers and laser printers will digitize the original document and then use that digitized copy as the master to apply the charge on the cylinder and make a better copy with a single scan instead of having to pass on the original for each copy, but the core principle remains the same.
Long story short, the paper coming out is warm because a heating element is required to make the toner stick to the paper. | [
"Most consumer inkjet printers, such as those made by Canon, HP, and Lexmark (but not Epson) use a thermal inkjet; inside each partition of the ink reservoir is a heating element with a tiny metal plate or resistor. In response to a signal given by the printer, a tiny current flows through the metal or resistor mak... |
why do you continue to sweat from running (particularly in hot weather) after taking a cold shower? | A quick, cold shower will help cool the outside of your body, but you may still have an elevated internal body temperature. Once the internal temperature stabilizes back to a normal temperature, then you will stop sweating. | [
"Water left stagnant in the pipes of showers can be contaminated with pathogens that become airborne when the shower is turned on. If a shower has not been used for some time, it should be left to run at a hot temperature for a few minutes before use.\n",
"In warm or humid weather or during heavy exertion, water ... |
Why is is that some atoms with a higher atomic mass are less dense than those with less atomic mass? | The atoms themselves are not more dense, but the crystalline structures they naturally form may not be. Let's compare silicon and aluminum at room temperature. Silicon is the heavier atom, but aluminum forms a denser material at room temperature.
For the purpose of crystal structure, you can think of the atoms as being hard spheres packed together. Aluminum forms what's called a Face-Centered Cubic (FCC) structure, which is in fact the densest way of packing hard spheres. Silicon forms a different structure, called the Diamond Cubic structure, which has a lot more space around each sphere. These atoms form different crystal structures for a lot of reasons, which I'd be happy to talk about if you'd like. Also, if this is not clear, please let me know, and I'll be happy to continue. | [
"The large majority of an atom's mass comes from the protons and neutrons that make it up. The total number of these particles (called \"nucleons\") in a given atom is called the mass number. It is a positive integer and dimensionless (instead of having dimension of mass), because it expresses a count. An example o... |
what are islamic extremists actually trying to accomplish by violent attacks, like the one today in paris? don't these attacks just embolden the majority against the viewpoints of the attackers? | We can only speculate on their motives. They may simply want to lash out with violence due to anger or hurt regardless of its effectiveness. They may want to provoke an 'emboldened response' since such would likely embolden people on their own side, since a harsh response can create something of a recruitment drive for extremist organizations. They may be disturbed and have no rationale whatsoever, and religion is simply the guise their actions have taken on. | [
"A campaign of Islamist attacks occurred in France, beginning with the Île-de-France attacks on 7 January 2015, between the French Government and ongoing terrorist acts committed by jihadist terror groups like AQAP and ISIL, or isolated individuals who sympathise with the jihadist movement. Since 2015 and until Jul... |
Why is the word 'Bosnian' left out of the 'Serbo-Croatian language' and the country 'Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes'? | Croatia and Serbia (also Croats and Serbs) existed since early middle ages, before becoming Christian and long before east-west schism. Bosniaks weren't considered separate ethnicity, like Macedonians, by others and weren't allowed to declare as separate people until after WW2. Bosniaks did exist in medieval Bosnia, but it is disputed whether modern Bosniaks are direct descendants of that population. Montenegrins are still not considered as separate ethnicity not just by many Serbs, but by many Montenegrins themselves. Ethnicities aren't something that existed always, they evolve, develop, unite and split apart. The meaning of ethnic identity also changed over time. | [
"Bosniaks speak the Bosnian language, a South Slavic language of the Western South Slavic subgroup. Standard Bosnian is considered a variety of \"Serbo-Croatian\", as mutually intelligible with the Croatian and Serbian languages (see Differences in standard Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian) which are all based on the ... |
can bees sense any ''human-made'' signals such as bluetooth or wi-fi? | There does seem to be some suggestion that bees can detect (or at least are mildly affected by) radio waves. [This website](_URL_0_) compiles a large number of studies that have looked into effects of electromagnetic fields, and includes several studies on bees if you scroll down a bit. Some of these studies seem much more useful than others though, and I'd recommend actually looking at the primary material rather than just trusting the synopses on that page, which may be biased. | [
"Like almost all other bee species, \"X. nasalis\" communicates mainly by dancing, which can communicate information to nearby bees. Information can include the location of provisions, danger warnings, and mating rituals.\n",
"Chemicals are often emitted from the bees via the cephalic labial gland, called pheromo... |
How much do we actually know about gravity? Where are some holes in our knowledge? | Well first off, evolution and gravitation are both observations. Evolution the observation of changes in a population over time, and gravitation is the force of attraction objects with mass have.
The theories are explanations for the observations. "Theory of evolution" is probably a shortened form of Darwin's theory of evolution by means of natural selection. There is, of course, much more to evolution, including gene flow, mutation, drift, competitive exclusion, etc.
In the case of gravity, physicists are actually searching for a better theory, as there are issues with current theories. For instance, dark matter and dark energy are both names for the discrepancies between calculated and observed effects of the universe. There is also talk about moving beyond Einstein's relativity into string theory, M-theory, 11 dimensions folded onto each other, membranes, gravitons, and here is where you realize that I'm not a physicist.
There's really not anything comparable to that in biology, even if you include intelligent design/creationism. | [
"However, there are no current practical outer space applications of artificial gravity for humans due to concerns about the size and cost of a spacecraft necessary to produce a useful centripetal force comparable to the gravitational field strength on Earth (g).\n",
"Unfortunately, there are many other factors t... |
Is it true that the VOC (Dutch East Indian Company) was the most valuable company ever? | Follow up question:
The same but for the French Mississippi Company, worth 6 trillion dollars, which is even more ridiculous as Louisiana was empty at this time, it would be as if each French has on average 300 000$ of share of this company... Is it just an artificial value due to speculative bubble ? | [
"The Dutch East India Company was arguably the first megacorporation, possessing quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, coin money and establish colonies. Many economic and political historians consider the Dutch East India Company as the mos... |
How can scientists detect binary systems of planets with no star? | The planets are about 3 times the mass of Jupiter each, and have a temperature around 1000 Kelvin. This makes them big enough, bright enough, and close enough that they can be detected with a state-of-the-art infrared telescope. | [
"A study of fourteen previously known planetary systems found three of these systems to be binary systems. All planets were found to be in S-type orbits around the primary star. In these three cases the secondary star was much dimmer than the primary and so was not previously detected. This discovery resulted in a ... |
If the terminal velocity of an object is about 120mph, what would it be if the object was falling in an airless environment? | There is no such thing as terminal velocity in an airless environment. It doesn't matter what the terminal velocity of an object in air is, if there is no air for the object to interact with through friction, the object will keep accelerating as it falls until it hits a solid surface. | [
"Using the figure of 56 m/s for the terminal velocity of a human, one finds that after 10 seconds he will have fallen 348 metres and attained 94% of terminal velocity, and after 12 seconds he will have fallen 455 metres and will have attained 97% of terminal velocity. However, when the air density cannot be assumed... |
why don't we say "an user" instead of "a user"? | We determine whether a word should be associated with "a" or "an" by its sound, not by its spelling. For example, "hour" starts with h but it's silent, so the word actually starts with a vowel sound.
Utensil and user both start with consonant Y when pronounced
edit: But, of course, lots of people say things like "an historic event" because English is batshit crazy. | [
"Some usability professionals have expressed their dislike of the term \"user\" and have proposed changing it. Don Norman stated that \"One of the horrible words we use is 'users'. I am on a crusade to get rid of the word 'users'. I would prefer to call them 'people'.\"\n",
"In commerce, user experience (UX) refe... |
why does radiation destroy human dna and make human life impossible but yet trees can survive and flourish? | The destruction of tree DNA isn't nearly as devastating to a tree as it is a human. The main danger of radiation is cancer. Don't get me wrong, trees do get cancer, but because they are much slower growing cancer doesn't affect them in nearly the same way. Trees also don't have a blood stream so cancer in a tree isn't able to metastasize and move to other parts of the tree. (If you have ever seen those knobs on trees that look like bulges, that's tree cancer).
**TL;DR:** because of the way cancer works and kills, it doesn't harm trees in the same ways it does humans, meaning it has little impact on them. | [
"Damage to DNA can be caused by exposure to radiation, chemicals, and other environmental sources, but mutations also accumulate naturally over time through uncorrected errors in DNA transcription, making age another risk factor. Oncoviruses can cause certain types of cancer, and genetics are also known to play a r... |
why does nasa launch its rockets in florida which is prone to a lot of rain? why not launch in arizona where rain is rare and the skies are very clear | Crashing in the ocean > crashing in populated areas. | [
"One reason rockets are launched in Florida has to do with the Earth's rotation. The Earth rotates most quickly at the equator, and to take advantage of this, in adding to the orbital velocity of the rocket, it is most beneficial to launch from a southerly location (near the equator). In addition, to take advantage... |
why can the sound volume of commercials on internet tv be double the actual show's volume? | The commercials are allowed to be as loud as the shows. That means if the show has a gunshot, or an explosion, or a big dramatic music swell, then the commercial is allowed to be as loud as that. Thing is, the loudest sound in the show lasts for a few seconds at most, whereas the volume in the commercial is as high as that for the whole 30 seconds. | [
"Most television commercials are heavily compressed (typically to a dynamic range of no more than 3 dB) to achieve near-maximum perceived loudness while staying within permissible limits. This causes a problem that TV viewers often notice: when a station switches from minimally compressed program material to a heav... |
How did Europe go from a backwater land in the medieval era(Compared to Asia) to one of the most thriving lands in the world by the end of the Renaissance and Industrial Era | I'd suggest that you start with Kenneth Pomeranz's *The Great Divergence*. It's a little old now, and the debate has moved on slightly, but it's seminal and an essential grounding for understanding where the debate is located.
Essentially, he argues that the difference to which you are referring to is only visible after 1800, and largely relies on 1) the colonisation of the new world and 2) readily-accessible coal in the North-East of England.
The colonisation of the new world is important as it provided "ghost acres". Previously, if the UK wanted more lumber then you would have to convert farmland into forest. But with the Empire, you could import lumber from Canada and keep your farmland - you get more resources without sacrificing agriculture at home.
Surface coal is another critical factor. The North-East of England has several natural ports and the coal could be easily mined without advanced technology. In contrast, the coal mines of China (which Pomeranz compares Europe to) were geographically isolated and under-capitalised. Coal is a very efficient form of energy storage and it could be shipped from the North-East of England around the UK or to the continent easily and cheaply, allowing the industrial revolution access to cheap fuel.
But of course the debate is a lot more complex - James Belich might be a sensible step after Pomeranz, and then you can just pick from bibliographies or read reviews. | [
"The salt highways of Europe were the navigable rivers, where by medieval times shipments of salt coming upstream passed rafts and log-trains of timber, which could only be shipped downstream. And even along Europe's coasts, once long-distance trade was revived in the 11th century, the hot and sunny south naturally... |
what is derealization? | Derealization as a psychological phenomenon, independent of substances or medical issues, is usually a severe reaction to stress. It tends to be thought of as on the continuum of dissociation, with total post-trauma amnesia on the more severe end and “spacing out” on the the less severe end. It’s basically a mind’s way of disconnecting from distress in order to help us survive.
It can come about in relation to different types of stress. It’s a common symptom of panic attacks, which are severe episodes of fear activation. It’s common in PTSD and chronic, stressor-related distress like the effects of childhood abuse. I’ve heard of it happening to people with phobias. In and of itself, derealization is not harmful, but is pretty darn uncomfortable for most people and is a sign that something needs to change: either seeking out some support or mental health treatment, or getting the heck out of whatever situation is causing it (for example, if you are in ongoing traumatic situations).
As to how it happens, I don’t think it’s fully understood but it does have a lot to do with attention. Thinking about “zoning out” for a second, we can see our mind is wandering elsewhere from where we are now. The more extreme versions of dissociation likely are more fragmented or severe versions of attention being diverted away from the sources of distress. Much like we can withdraw from the source of physical pain, our minds can withdraw from the source of emotional pain by diverting attention away from it. | [
"Derealization (sometimes abbreviated as DR) is an alteration in the perception or experience of the external world so that it seems unreal. Other symptoms include feeling as though one's environment is lacking in spontaneity, emotional coloring, and depth. It is a dissociative symptom of many conditions.\n",
"De... |
how are teeth made and why can't your body make additional ones? | Simply put, we don't have the biological process developed for this to take place. This would be an extremely complicated process, even compared to everything else already in your body. Your body would have to be able to recognize when its missing actual macro-parts of itself and build it and grow it like it does from when you were created. It's just something we simply don't have and never developed.
*Edit: I'd like to emphasize that it's not the building from scratched part that is the problem, as stated in a comment that is seen in tumors. What is the issue is the epicontrol of it all. Detecting when you don't have a tooth, when to build one, making sure you don't build one when you already have one (probably biggest problem, think cancer). | [
"A tooth (plural teeth) is a hard, calcified structure found in the jaws (or mouths) of many vertebrates and used to break down food. Some animals, particularly carnivores, also use teeth for hunting or for defensive purposes. The roots of teeth are covered by gums. Teeth are not made of bone, but rather of multipl... |
how the heck do keurig's actually work? | They punch holes in the top and bottom of the capsule, and run hot water through it.
Ahoy, matey! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:
1. [How Does a Keurig Work? | The Coffee Whisperer ](_URL_0_)
1. [Inside the Keurig Vue V700, a Single-Serve Coffee Maker - Graphic - _URL_3_ ](_URL_4_)
1. [JUST HOW DO THOSE K-CUP THINGY'S WORK? ](_URL_1_)
1. [animated version](_URL_2_)
| [
"Keurig () is a beverage brewing system for home and commercial use. It is manufactured by the American company Keurig Dr Pepper via its east-coast headquarters in Burlington, Massachusetts. The main Keurig products are: K-Cup pods, which are single-serve coffee containers; other beverage pods; and the proprietary ... |
why does the surface of a stirred liquid calm before the rest of it? | Well, water is sticky stuff. However its 'stickiness' is a factor of surface tension. Water wets glass, which means that it sticks to glass more than it sticks to itself.
Where the glass meets the water at the bottom of the glass, there's no surface, and one particle of water is as likely to press up against the glass as another particle is to slip away. At the surface however, where there's surface tension, there's a skin that clings to the cup. You can see it if you look closely - the water climbs the side of the glass a little bit. This is why the liquid in a straw is always a bit higher than the liquid in a glass. (Capillary action.)
I'm not certain that I'm correct that the surface tension is what's adding more friction, but I think that's the case.
EDIT: To add detail, there are things that water will bead on, and things that water will 'wet', and glass is one of those things that water will wet. This basically means that water doesn't maintain it's surface tension against the glass, which is why it leaves streaks as it falls down a pane of glass - surface tension is broken at the bottom, and the droplet loses water at that point. | [
"Since a liquid with a high surface tension pulls more strongly on the surrounding liquid than one with a low surface tension, the presence of a gradient in surface tension will naturally cause the liquid to flow away from regions of low surface tension. The surface tension gradient can be caused by concentration g... |
if i donate blood while high off marijuana, will the same chemicals that are making me high (thc,cbn,cbc,cbd) make the recipient high when they receive the blood? | I give blood high all the time and I asked to make sure it's okay and the nurse said it was fine and that whoever would be receiving my blood would just feel a little happier haha. | [
"Among the most common effects of this drug is increased blood cholesterol levels. Other changes in blood chemistry such as hypomagnesemia, hypocalcemia, hyperkalemia, and an increase in blood urea nitrogen (BUN) can occur.\n",
"Still, the blood values are approximately equal between the arterial and venous sides... |
Scope and use of different tactics in the First World War | > what exactly were the tactics used in areas where fighting was more mobile?
On the Eastern Front, infantry tactics in the beginning were based off pre-war training and ideas; the German infantry utilized fire rushes, while Russian infantry were trained to entrench and use cover wherever they dug-in. By 1916-17, the Russians and the Germans had moved towards a system based on *Stosstruppen* or 'shock troops', as demonstrated by the Brusilov Offensive, the German counter-offensives against the Kerensky Offensive, and the Battle of Riga.
> How much did it resemble WWII?
With the exception of radios and submachine guns, WWI infantry tactics by at least 1916 were like those of WWII.
> How did these tactics vary between different fronts?
The Austrians utilized *Stosstruppen*, and the Italians in many ways copied this with their *Companies of Death* and *Arditi*.
> Also, with regards to trench warfare, how much of the fighting actually occurred in areas where trench warfare was dominant?
Fighting very much occurred on the Western Front from 1915-16, and on the Italian Front (though trench warfare is much too flattering for the fighting there). However, these were major offensives, especially in the West, which lasted weeks if not months, and often remained in the same sector of they front. Outside them, due to demands for guns, divisions, and shells, things would be relatively quiet.
> When did use of trenches begin and end?
Slit trenches were used by soldiers on all sides from the beginning, essentially as fox holes. On the Western Front, it's generally dated to September, 1914, at the Battle of the Aisne, but I'd date it before that, just before the Marne when German and French forces in the south had already begun to dig in in the Vosges and the Argonne. As to when it ended, I've answered that [here] (_URL_0_). | [
"These tactics emerged gradually during World War I. Several nations modified their existing tactics in ways that supported ideas that were later called infiltration tactics, with the German developments having the most impact, both during the war and afterwards.\n",
"This military tactic takes continuous trainin... |
what causes the fishy smell in clean dishes? | Uhmm...have you ever cleaned them properly using piping hot water? That only ever happens if you don't clean dishes and such like properly as bacteria can fester in the water.
Either that, or your water supply in the area is severely contaminated. | [
"Some time after leaving the body, urine may acquire a strong \"fish-like\" odor because of contamination with bacteria that break down urea into ammonia. This odor is not present in fresh urine of healthy individuals; its presence may be a sign of a urinary tract infection.\n",
"During the production of surström... |
the poincare conjecture. | I’ll give this a try, but I’m not an expert, there might be inaccuracies:
The Poincare conjecture is about topology. That is, the study of properties which remain true when you deform an object.
Imagine a flat map of a country. The earth has a curvature, which has been flattened. So there’s a deformation in the map. This means some distances on the map can be bigger or smaller than the distances on earth. However, some basic properties remain unchanged: for instance, if you travel in a loop that brings you back to your starting point, you still have a loop on the map. If the country is in several separate pieces (like the U.S. with Alaska), you’ll have the same separate pieces on the map.
Now, that’s just a mild deformation. It can be much more dramatic and still preserve topological properties. Two little circles drawn on a paper are a valid deformation of the U.S. map with Alaska.
Imagine now the surface of a ball. That’s a 2D sphere. Yes, you’re imagining a 3D object, but the *surface* is 2D. You can identify a point on it by two coordinates (for instance latitude and longitude). Many objects can be deformed to a sphere. For instance: the surface of a cube (flatten the corners and make the sides curved); or a bowl (move the surface of the inside upwards while the bottom surface stays in place).
The surface of a donut (a torus), on the other hand, can’t be deformed into a sphere, because there’s a *hole* in it. Basically, you’re not allowed to create or fill holes. A cup with one handle can be deformed into a donut; even the human body, considering the digestive system from your mouth to your anus, can be deformed into a donut. (Yes, I said “anus”, that’s funny to a five year old, but please stay focused).
The Poincare conjecture is about the 3D sphere. You think you can imagine a 3D sphere? Well, sorry but no, you can’t. The 2D sphere can be seen as the surface of a 3D ball (although the introduction of the 3rd dimension is not necessary mathematically, it allows us to visualize it). The 1D sphere is a circle, it can be seen as the border of a 2D ball. So the 3D sphere would be the border of a 4D ball. Wait, 4D? How can there be four dimensions? It turns out that mathematically we can use as many dimensions as we want. Each new dimension is just an extra coordinate. Unfortunately, our limited brain shuts down when it comes to visualizing more than 3 dimensions; probably because it is itself in 3D.
I stated earlier that the 3rd dimension is unnecessary to define a 2D sphere, so can’t we consider a 3D sphere without referring to the 4th dimension? Well, the problem is that it has a non-Euclidian geometry. In other words it is “curved”. And our brain needs that extra dimension to imagine a non-Euclidian object in a “bigger”, Euclidian, space. You can, however, imagine what it is to be inside a 3D sphere: in whatever direction you travel, you’ll end up at your starting point! Imagine someone living on a 2D sphere: he lives in a 2 dimensional world. When he moves in a straight line he goes “all around” and ends up at his starting point. In a 3D sphere, it’s the same: if you move left, right, forward, backward, up, or down, you’ll end up where you started. Or, if you look through a telescope, in any direction, you’ll see... your back!
So what did Poincare conjectured? That a set of 3D objects, sharing some specific properties, can all be deformed into a 3D sphere. That’s it, now you can go and watch sponge Bob. What? You ask about the shared properties? Go ask your mother. Ok, ok, don’t scream, I’ll tell you.
First, it has to be simply connected. Connected means it is in one piece (unlike the map of U.S.); and “simply” means it has no hole in it. Yeah, Poincare didn’t like donuts, he preferred muffins. I mean, what’s the point of paying for some food that has a hole in it? You can’t eat the hole, what a rip-off.
Next, it has to be compact, which in this case means finite in size.
And last, it has to be without boundary. This means you can move freely in you 3D object, you won’t encounter a wall with a sign saying “End of the object, no trespassing, return to where you came from”.
And that’s about it! Now go and play outside.
| [
"In mathematics, the Poincaré conjecture is a theorem about the characterization of the 3-sphere, which is the hypersphere that bounds the unit ball in four-dimensional space. The conjecture states: An equivalent form of the conjecture involves a coarser form of equivalence than homeomorphism called homotopy equiva... |
What regulations were there for firearms in the early United States? | So I am going to share a link to past questions I answered on this subject because that'll make the most sense, [which you can find here](_URL_0_). Essentially, there wasn't any widespread laws to govern firearms or firearm safety during this period in early American history (1776 - 1803). At the time, the gentry was more concerned with armed uprisings happening in rural America and needed provisions in federal and state constitutions to protect their ability to summon militias since the US lacked a standing army. A more detailed answer can be found in the link above.
> Would people be surprised about our modern regulations?
It's impossible to answer such a question. I'm not trying to be dismissive, but it is literally impossible. Our lives, morals, and experiences are so vastly different from them that it's impossible to answer.
Please let me know if you have follow up questions
| [
"The first Federal legislation related to firearms was the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution ratified in 1791. For 143 years, this was the only major Federal legislation regarding firearms. The next Federal firearm legislation was the National Firearms Act of 1934, which created regulations for the... |
Is it true that there was an unspoken rule amongst WWII pilots that said you shouldn't shoot at soldiers in parachutes while in the air? | It depends on when and where in the war you're talking about. Generally, there was some sort of unspoken rule, although it was definitely broken at times. Many airmen talked about letting themselves fall as far down as possible before deploying a parachute for fear of being shot while drifting down. The Polish squadrons in the Battle of Britain had the reputation in the British squadrons for "taking no prisoners" and shooting airmen in their parachutes; I can't remember exactly where I read it, might have been in "Fighter Boys" by Patrick Bishop. I don't know how well earned that reputation was. Of course, the pacific conflict was a much more racial and brutal than that in Western Europe, and several American airmen were reportedly shot by the Japanese and vice versa in the South Pacific. All that said, there are also interviews where pilots said that they would never shoot at somebody who had bailed out, so it goes both ways. Unfortunately, I don't know of any formal study of the prevalence or numbers of this happening, so much of the evidence is anecdotal. | [
"Still, both German and American pilots did shoot enemy airmen in their parachutes, albeit infrequently. Richard \"Bud\" Peterson, a P-51 pilot with the 357th Fighter Group, based in Leiston, agreed that \"normally, \"nobody\", including the Germans, would be shooting anybody in a parachute. It just wasn't done. I ... |
why is whatsapp so popular? | What others have said here are accurate but also WhatsApp is quite popular for two other reasons, particularly in developing countries:
It's available on every smart device out there, even on older Nokia and Blackberry smartphones. If you have a smartphone, no matter the year it was made, chances are WhatsApp can be installed on it. It also has a small footprint on one's smart phone, compared to say Facebook Messenger where it's much more resource intensive.
Also it uses very little data if you just text people and in many developing countries it's cheaper to have a limited data plan than to use SMS, and especially MMS (picture and video texts). Just looking at my WhatsApp data usage in the 11 months I've had it installed on my reformatted phone it's only used ~19 MB and that includes many pictures, videos and even calling via WhatsApp (just texts alone used ~5.5 MB, and that's for 10,000 messages). Ten thousand text messages, as well as numerous pictures, videos and voice chat using so little data is quite impressive and is much cheaper than SMS/MMS.
One key thing also is that international use is big as well, for instance I use WhatsApp for messaging friends and family in Belgium, Nigeria, the UK and many more places.
Most people think of WhatsApp and smartphone use from a developed world perspective, most people have computers and tablets, however in the developing world it's a much, much different story. To buy a computer, as well as having an Internet plan for your home can be quite expensive, that is to say even if it's available in your area. Cell phone coverage however is a much different story, where coverage is almost everywhere in populated areas of a country, and smartphone data plans are much more affordable, for example while working in India I had unlimited 2G data for less than $10 a month, which WhatsApp is *surprisingly efficient* with.
So these are the many reasons why WhatsApp was popular, ironically when Facebook bought it (which was a very defensive purchase and an easy way to enter the developing world demographic but that's another topic) popularity for it surged, especially in developed countries where the major messaging platforms were Facebook Messenger and iMessage.
Source: Started a nonprofit organization in Nepal/India tackling the issue of Internet availability in developing countries, did research in regards to it. | [
"WhatsApp, created in 2009, is a platform that allows users to communicate via text and voice message, video chatting, and document sharing for free. WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook in 2014, but the brand continues to be promote as a secure and reliable form of communication. The app can be downloaded and used on... |
when being drunk, is there a psychological factor involved? | 'Expectancy' of intoxication can affect how you behave when drinking alcohol. People's behaviour may change after the very first sip of a drink, long before it has actually started to have a physiological effect, and 'placebo alcohol' (where someone thinks that they're drinking but isn't) can produce up to [a third of the intoxication experienced by drinking actual alcohol](_URL_0_). | [
"Subjective response to alcohol (SR) refers to an individual's unique experience of the pharmacological effects of alcohol and is a putative risk factor for the development of alcohol use disorder. Subjective effects include both stimulating experiences typically occurring during the beginning of a drinking episode... |
Berbers ancient to Ireland? | 18th century antiquarians like Charles Vallancey speculated that Irish civilization was founded by Phoenician seafarers, and attempted to prove this using what we would call today linguistic arguments. While largely discredited, it is possible that Carthaginian explorers based in present-day Morocco sailed north on voyages of trade and exploration. Pliny describes an expedition led by Himilco from Gibraltar to the islands north of mainland Europe. Details are sparse, unfortunately. I am not aware of any archeological evidence of continuous direct trade between Ireland or even Britain and the Mediterranean world. The commodity of the area most valued, tin, appears to have likely been transported across present day France via a series of Celtic middle-men. | [
"The native \"Berbers\" of North Africa were among the many peoples called \"Barbarian\" by the early Romans. The term continued to be used by medieval Arabs (see Berber etymology) before being replaced by \"Amazigh\". In English, the term \"Berber\" continues to be used as an exonym. The geographical term Barbary ... |
places like norway and iceland seem to have few to no trees, yet i've seen old dwellings and other ancient structures built out of wood. we're there forests at one time? | Correct.
[Source](_URL_0_)
*At the time of human settlement about 1140 years ago, birch forest and woodland covered 25-40% of Iceland's land area. The relatively tall (to 15 m) birch forests of sheltered valleys graded to birch and willow scrub toward the coast, on exposed sites and in wetland areas and to willow tundra at high elevations.*
Also, don't forget that trees can be moved from one place to another particularly by water. | [
"30% of Iceland was forested when it was settled, mostly with birch. Oak was the preferred timber for building Norse halls in Scandinavia, but native birch had to serve as the primary framing material on the remote island. However, Iceland did have a large amount of turf that was suitable for construction. Some str... |
- utilitarianism | Utilitarianism is basically the principle that the best course of action in any given situation is the one which maximizes the overall well being or good of the most people. There are other types but pretty much its just the greatest good for the most people is rational | [
"Utilitarianism (from the Latin utilis, useful) is a theory of ethics that prescribes the quantitative maximization of good consequences for a population. It is a form of consequentialism. This good to be maximized is usually happiness, pleasure, or preference satisfaction. Though some utilitarian theories might se... |
why do police helicopters circle instead of hover? | Because it gives them a constant overview. If they hover they only have one vantage point. If the cops wanted a stationary observer they could just send a man onto a building. | [
"Police departments and other law enforcement agencies use helicopters to pursue suspects. Since helicopters can achieve a unique aerial view, they are often used in conjunction with police on the ground to report on suspects' locations and movements. They are often mounted with lighting and heat-sensing equipment ... |
how did old hand-drawn animation achieve such consistent color? | Speed and skill. Each pencil drawing by an animator was traced in ink on to a transparent sheet. Once the ink dried it was sent to painting where the paint was applied to the BACK of the transparent film. Each section of color had to be completed quickly while the paint was still very wet so it would show no brushstrokes or the cel was ruined, but going outside the lines would also ruin a cel, as even though it would not obscure the line, it would still show the color in the next section over.
In the golden age of Disney the ink and paint department was a fleet women who's only job was to trace or paint. The inking girls were considered to be a higher caliber than the painting girls, as their work required a more steady hand, but the painting girls were amazing in their own right. One of the greatest accomplishments of that department was maintaining consistency in color and positioning on Snow White's blushed cheeks, which were done with *actual blush.* The effect was so time consuming it was never used again. They stuck to solid colors from then on out.
Edit: I have been corrected below. The use of actual blush is an urban legend. The effect was achieved no less amazingly with a dye applied to each cel by a very talented woman from inking named Helen Ogger. See the post correcting me below for more detail. | [
"Ub Iwerks adapted xerography to eliminate the hand-inking stage in the animation process by printing the animator's drawings directly to the cels. The first animated feature film to use this process was \"One Hundred and One Dalmatians\" (1961), although the technique was already tested in \"Sleeping Beauty\", rel... |
if stars we see now could actually by "burnt out" due to the traveling of light, will the major constellations (i.e. the big dipper) ever disappear? | Yes. Millions or Billions of years for most stars. | [
"During 2009, a bright star within the galaxy NGC 6946 flared up over several months to become over one million times as bright as the Sun. Shortly thereafter it appeared to vanish. New observations with the Hubble Space Telescope strongly suggest that the star did not survive, although a faint trickle of infrared ... |
how do transistors in a cpu work together? | First we'll need a reference image. [This is how transistors are arranged in a NAND gate](_URL_1_)
The top two transistors are ON normally and turn OFF when A or B goes high. The bottom two transistors are OFF normally and turn ON when A or B goes high. If both are low then Out is connected to Vdd and Out is high. If both are high then the top two are both off and both bottom ones are on pulling Out low to Vss. If only one is on then Out is high. This forms a NAND gate which only has a high output when the two inputs aren't equal, its the Not AND gate. An AND gate has a high output only when the two inputs *are* equal.
So where to A and B come from? They're the outputs of other gates! We can strap the 6 basic logic gates(AND, OR, NAND, NOR, NOT, XOR) together to form complicated things like [an adder](_URL_0_) which you can see takes 2 4-bit inputs and feeds it into NAND and NOR gates which feed more gates which feed more gates which eventually output the result of addition. All of this is done with transistors | [
"All transistor types can be used as the building blocks of logic gates, which are fundamental in the design of digital circuits. In digital circuits like microprocessors, transistors act as on-off switches; in the MOSFET, for instance, the voltage applied to the gate determines whether the switch is on or off.\n",... |
How did Soviet military power at its height compare to the U.S. during the same period? Where they relatively equal, or was there some advantage to one side, militarily speaking? | I think this breaks down into two questions:
a) when was the soviet military at it's height
b) how did it compare with the US at the same time, or at the time of greatest soviet advantage.
[This thread](_URL_1_) summarizes the discussion ;
Essentially you may have to split military power according to conventional forces and nuclear forces.
Unquestionably, having many nuclear warheads & delivery systems means that the later military (I vote for the late 70s like one of the posters there) had greater absolute power. And I'm not sure if the difference in power is meaningful anymore at those scales. (i.e. Questions of the form: Would Soviet forces being able to destroy life on earth say 30 times over vs 10 times over ten years later or vs US being able to destroy it 45 times over ? be more powerful)
And yet, in absolute numbers, probably the late 40s in WWII would be the peak strength of the soviet union.
This doesn't take into account difference in quality, training and precision of later weapons and armies (on both sides) as well as force multipliers such as improved communications, air support and the like.
At that time, the US unquestionably had an advantage in strategic reach (which would diminish in later years) over the soviet union, with long range bombers, the atom bomb, aircraft carriers, ability to support amphibious warfare, expeditionary logistics etc. However, the soviet army was substantial and had just gotten through chewing through the german forces, and had mastered the 'operational' art of land warfare. (in contiguous locations such as europe, or manchuria), (even if it did it on lend-leased equipment as well), using their combined arms concept to leverage their huge numbers of artillery, tanks, men and close air support. There's a reason why it was the soviets and not Ike who took berlin.
David Glantz is a good reference for WWII soviet military themes.
Ironically, as the soviet union played catch up in some of these areas in the 50s and 60s, the US beleived in a bomber gap and missile gap, that was non-existent (at least until the late 70s). Also, over time, the various wars proved the shortcomings of both soviet army (hungary, aghanistan) and the US army (vietnam)
Edit:
In summary, military advantages such as where the fight was (continental europe, asia, americas), your allies, and what your objectives were made much more difference than (conventional) military strength.
The Soviet Union would never have been superior to the US in USA in conventional forces (though massive WMD mounted on missiles, subs and bombers made it moot). It had enough to make an US invasion of eastern europe or similar full strength on strength face-offs entirely unappealing (though US overflights of soviet airspace continued till at least the late 60s with increasing risks - eg U2 incident). Conversely, a Soviet invasion of Germany in the cold war would have leveraged their overall [superior quantities] (_URL_0_) of men, tanks and artillery, versus the US/NATO lead in in missiles and perhaps in responsiveness/preparednesss and co-ordination., but again, ultimately NATO had enough to make it unappealing. Assessment of the various qualitative soft factors/force multipliers and assumptions in such hypothetical encounters were necessarily complex and varied quite substantially from optimistic to pessimistic.
In fringe territories such as Afghanistan, this meant a proxy war, with complete strengths, doctrines etc not applied.
And eventually, WMD quantities and delivery weapons made the question moot on both sides.
| [
"World War II also saw the United States become by far the largest Naval power in the world. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the United States Navy possessed over 70% of the world's total numbers and total tonnage of naval vessels of 1,000 tons or greater. Throughout the rest of the 20th century, the Uni... |
what does "cogito ergo sum" mean? and what is the importance of this statement? | I think therefore I am.
The importance of it is that, while all other knowledge can be doubted, because we are inherently limited by our senses, being able to doubt yourself seems to prove that you exist by the very act of doing it.
For instance, I cannot absolutely prove that you exist. You could be a figment of my imagination, a hallucination of my senses, but I do not seem able to doubt that I myself exist in the same fashion, because my imagination, or my senses, are required for such figments/hallucinations to exist in the first place.
In short, it gives you a 'known fact' to start from and approach all other philosophy. | [
"The phrase \"cogito, ergo sum\" is not used in Descartes's \"Meditations on First Philosophy\" but the term \"the \"cogito\"\" is used to refer to an argument from it. In the \"Meditations\", Descartes phrases the conclusion of the argument as \"that the proposition, \"I am, I exist,\" is necessarily true whenever... |
How did North Africa and the Middle East become so thoroughly Arabized. | This question is made difficult by the lack of consistency in what "Arab" has signified throughout history. The same can be said for "Turk", as during most of the Ottoman empire "Turk" referred to an Anatolian farmer. But as the article say, Arab identity relies heavily on lingustics. Turkish was never really imposed on those who did not speak it. Ottoman schools in the Levant for example taught in Arabic, and as you may know the Arabic alphabet was the one used. But even among those who speak Arabic, it has not been obvious to identify as "Arab". As recent as one hundred years ago, Arab meant a desert bedouin, someone living outside of "civilized society" (at least in Egyptian context where still today many people identify as Egyptians rather than Arabs)
Furthemore, the Middle East, especially the Levant, most definitely got Hellenized. Just look at the fact that the Hebrew bible had to be translated to Greek by the Jewish diaspora in Alexandria because they no longer spoke Hebrew.
**Sources:**
Dignas, B. & Winter, E., ”Arabia between the great powers”. In *Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity. Neighbours and Rivals*, 152-172. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2008.
Freeman, Charles, ”The Hellenistic World”. In *Egypt, Greece and Rome. Civilizations of the Ancient Mediterranean*, 333-354. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004.
Pappé, Ilan. *The History of Modern Palestine*. Cambridge: Cambride University Press, 2006.
**EDIT:**
See also:
Haim, Sylvia (ed.). *Arab Nationalism.* Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1962.
This anthology includes many discussions on the meaning of "Arab". | [
"Before the eleventh century, most of North-West Africa was a Berber-speaking Muslim area. The process of Arabization only became a major factor with the arrival of the Banu Hilal, a tribe sent by the Fatimids of Egypt to punish the Berber Zirid dynasty for having abandoned Shiism. The Banu Hilal reduced the Zirids... |
why there are rainforests along australia's east coast but not the west? | The mountain range running the length of the east coast (the Great Dividing Range) causes moist air that's coming off the ocean to rise (called orographic uplift), when it rises it cools, condenses, and comes down as rain, allowing forests to exist. At least to the seaward side of that range. The west of the range, even tho it's still in the east of Australia, is in a rain shadow, and get very little rain also.
The west coast has no such mountain range, the air coming in from the ocean to the west doesn't have that lift so misses out on the rain.
There's also associated temperature, geology and soil differences that prevent forests from occuring in the west, but that's it in a nutshell. | [
"Most of Western Australia has a hot arid and semi-arid climate. However, the south-west corner of the state has a Mediterranean climate. The area was originally heavily forested, including large stands of the karri, one of the world's tallest trees. This agricultural region of Western Australia is in the top nine ... |
Searching for a historical figure | Could it be Robert Owen? He was manager and part-owner of the New Lanark mill in Scotland, and among other things he paid employees in currency instead of tokens (as was customary), pressed for ten and later eight hour workdays, etc. He's a pretty seminal figure in pre-Marxist socialism. | [
"Historical figure is a person who lived in the past and whose deeds exerted a significant impact on other people’s lives and consciousness. These figures are attributed with certain features that are a compilation of the actual values they proclaimed and the manner they were perceived by others. This perception ev... |
How exactly were armour and weapons (that we associate with being) used by samurai suited to their way of waging warfare? What would make European plate armour less useful in Japan than in Europe? | First, a summary and timeline of Japanese arms and armour, and warfare:
1. **Ancient period (until approximately AD900):** Armies depended on infantry, often armoured, equipped with polearms (primarily spears) or sword (short, often double-edged, straight) and shield. Soldiers could be full-time professionals, or peasants providing short-term compulsory military service.
2. **Medieval period (approx 900-1400):** The key component of armies were samurai, who fought as armoured cavalry, primarily as mounted archers, with sabres (the *tachi*) as sidearms.
3. **Early Modern period (approx 1400 onwards):** Armies became larger, necessitating dependence on infantry, most of whom were equipped with spear or other polearms, or bows (up to the mid-16th century) or muskets (after the mid-16th century). Samurai often continued to fight as armoured cavalry, still fighting as mounted archers at times, but often using a lance as their primary weapon. Infantry often wore lighter armour than mounted samurai. Samurai often fought as infantry (resulting in the adoption of the *katana* as their main sidearm, rather than the cavalry-oriented *tachi*).
> What exactly made this armour good at their warfare?
It stopped spears and arrows. In particular, it could stop arrows from high draw weight bows - we know this both from literary sources which describe arrows being stopped by armour (and exceptional arrows piercing armour), and from the thickness of the armour. Japanese lamellar armour used lamellae of rawhide (3mm thick or greater, up to about 6mm thick) or iron/steel (typically 0.8-1mm thick; iron/steel lamellae could be of composite iron and steel construction, with a hard steel face and a tough iron backing), and depending on the type of construction, at least 2 or 3 thicknesses were presented to arrows due to the side-to-side overlap, and that would be doubled again where there was up-down overlap. The disadvantage is the weight. Note that these heavy samurai armours were intended for cavalry use, which would make the weight more tolerable. Arm and leg armour was thinner (as in Europe), keeping the overall weight tolerable, at the cost of arm and leg armour no longer being reliably arrow-proof.
These armours provide excellent arrow protection, with the shoulder and thigh pieces providing excellent arrow protection for upper arms and legs.
The lack of shields is due to Medieval samurai fighting as mounted archers, and Early Modern Japanese soldiers fighting as spearmen/pikemen or archers/musketeers. Shields, in the form of pavises or mantlets, were still used, but with almost all soldiers using two-handed weapons as their primary weapon, the hand-held shield was of little use. The use of pavises was discussed by /u/PapaJacky in _URL_0_ a couple of years ago.
> Why haven't there been an arms race like in Europe, where armours were improved to be better at protection, while weapons were constantly improved to counter that?
There was an arms race to improve armour and weapons. The first part of this - the adoption of high-draw-weight bows (comparable in anti-armour performance to the English longbow) and the development of body armour and helmets that could stop arrows from such bows - happened quite early (early in period 2 above). The second part, the adoption of guns and the development of bullet-proof armours (body armour and helmets, but not arm and leg armour), was in the 16th century. This included plate cuirasses. Between those, the performance of bows was limited by human strength, and the arms race had already reached its peak. Missing compared to Europe were mechanically-spanned crossbows, which might have pushed armour to improve in the time between these two arms races.
For a good description of the construction of Japanese body armours, see Trevor Absolon, *Samurai Armour: Volume I: The Japanese Cuirass*, Bloomsbury, 2017.
For an Edo Period Japanese source (in English translation), see Sakakibara Kozan, *The manufacture of armour and helmets in sixteenth century Japan*, Holland Press, 1963 (originally published in Japanese c. 1800)
> What would make European plate armour less useful in Japan than in Europe?
It would have been just as useful in Japan as in Europe. Notably, with the adoption of guns, the improved protection from bullets available with thick plate cuirasses was useful, but this feature was adopted in Japanese armours anyway. | [
"In the 16th century, Japan began trading with Europe during what would become known as the Nanban trade. Samurai acquired European armour including the \"cuirass\" (torso armor) and \"comb morion\" (crested helmet), which they modified and combined with domestic armour, as it provided better protection from the ne... |
why do restaurants need to do 2 trips with my check? why can't they just give me the check with the tip line in the first place? | LPT: If you hand the server your credit card as you ask for the check, then there will only need to be one trip. | [
"Table reservations are also a handy tool in competitive markets since it makes it possible for restaurants to “steal” some market share from its competition. This occurs when clients are not able to get a reservation at their “first choice” restaurant and they decide to go to their “second choice” restaurant, wher... |
what's the subconscious drive that gets you motivated to do something your conscious brain doesn't want to do? | Humans have an instinct side, this decisions are made without our "permissions" and it represents what our reptilian side of the brain does.
The reptilian side of our brain represents our primary survival function. Your heart, lungs and other parts of the body survive thanks to this. This is the primitive side of the brain; it is involuntary, impulsive, and compulsive and it responds like any animal on danger:
1) fight response, 2) flight response, or the 3) freeze response.
Since the main goal of this part of the brain is survival, sometimes your body reacts over certain actions. From a natural perspective, if you see a Tiger in front of you ready to attack you, pretty sure your brain will trigger in automatically and run(flight response). This was a very basic example, but in First World Problems, you can generate these with other dangers such as "If I don't do my laundry now, I won't have a dress shirt and I am going to get fired from work and I won't have money and I will starve". | [
"Other neurological research is documenting how much the unconscious mind is involved in decision making. According to cognitive neuroscientists, we are conscious of only about 5 percent of our cognitive activity, so most of our decisions, actions, emotions, and behavior depends on the 95 percent of brain activity ... |
how does the shape of an airplane's wings generate lift? and how does the retractable wing flaps affect that? | The shape of the wing when viewed from the side is called an aerofoil.
As the aerofoil moves, the wind / air splits into 2 streams.
The air passing above the aerofoil generates higher velocity (speed in simpler terms). Whereas the air velocity below the wing is low.
Without going into the intricate details of fluid dynamics, higher velocity creates a low pressure and vice versa.
Since the pressure below the wing is higher (due to the lower air velocity) it generates lift, hence enabling the aircraft to be airborne.
A similar concept is applied to the rear spoiler of a car (the opposite) to create downforce. | [
"For a wing to produce \"lift\", it must be oriented at a suitable angle of attack relative to the flow of air past the wing. When this occurs the wing deflects the airflow downwards, \"turning\" the air as it passes the wing. Since the wing exerts a force on the air to change its direction, the air must exert a fo... |
Christmas tree candles?? | A few considerations:
The candles probably weren’t left lit all the time, since candles were expensive.
The tree was probably very fresh, and cut locally rather than being shipped in. Also, Christmas Day was the beginning of the season, not the culmination (as it is now, where the beginning of the season is Black Friday), and so people wouldn’t have a tree up for weeks ahead of time.
People were used to handling fire and would probably have placed candles in such a way as to avoid lighting needles.
Last, houses without central heating were probably much cooler and more humid, and would dry out a tree more slowly than a contemporary home with forced air heat.
These aren’t definitive, but they are some thoughts. Now, I’m in no hurry to put candles on a tree in my house, but it must have looked pretty cool in the day.
| [
"The Christmas tree was adopted in upper-class homes in 18th-century Germany, where it was occasionally decorated with candles, which at the time was a comparatively expensive light source. Candles for the tree were glued with melted wax to a tree branch or attached by pins. Around 1890, candleholders were first us... |
Can people die from a highly oxygenated environment? | Let me first give you the stupid answer: yes you can die because if your environment is really « oxygenated enough », you are stuck in a high pressure block of solid oxygen and cannot move or breathe, and you’re also probably crushed.
I have the feeling this is not what your question meant, and if we stick to conditions humans have actually experienced in real life, There is a medical issue called [hyperoxia ](_URL_2_), which is exactly what you are asking about. Humans can breath a pure oxygen atmosphere at a reduced pressure apparently without harm, such as during [Apollo](_URL_0_) missions. However at normal pressures, this causes damage to the lungs after some time, and as pressure increases, the allowable oxygen fraction diminishes and other issues appear such as damage to the nervous system. This is an issue [divers](_URL_1_) must be acutely aware of. | [
"Before the enormous increase in atmospheric oxygen, almost all existing lifeforms were anaerobic, i.e., their metabolism was based upon a form of cellular respiration that did not require oxygen. Indeed, free oxygen in large amounts is toxic to most anaerobic organisms. Consequently, the majority of the anaerobic ... |
is it possible to see the iss from earth? | Yes, often without binoculars. On a clear evening, far from the city, with a cheap pair of binoculars you can make out the solar panels on the side.
[NASA webpage providing estimated viewing times](_URL_0_) | [
"The National Lab also has unique remote sensing capabilities. The orbital path of the ISS travels over the regions of Earth that contain more than 90 percent of the Earth's population, giving scientists a unique view of our planet. In addition to the view, the ISS also provides better spatial resolution and variab... |
emps | EMP stands for electromagnetic pulse. It is a sudden massive burst of energy, which can be created through multiple natural and artificial processes.
The main way EMPs cause damage is a huge current flowing through electronics, which will destroy capacitors, resistors, diodes, wiring and circuit boards. The magnetic field created might also break inductors or other magnetically sensitive components.
A lightning strike creates multiple EMP pulses when the current enters the ground. The electromagnetic energy spreads through the ground and is luckily stopped by circuit breakers before it enters your house.
The rapid release of high energy photons and charged particles during a nuclear explosion can also generate EMP pulses. There are even plans to use the earth’s magnetic field to focus and direct the EMP pulse, which allows an army to disable electronics on the other side of the earth. | [
"While EMP often is assumed to be a characteristic of nuclear weapons alone, such is not the case. Several open-literature techniques, requiring only conventional explosives, or, in the case of high power microwave, a large electrical power supply, perhaps one-shot as with capacitors, can generate a significant EMP... |
since there is a nautical mile, is there also a nautical feet, inch, etc? | There are no nautical feet, yards, etc. A nautical mile is one minute (1/60 of a degree) of latitude. Using nautical miles makes it easier to find distances on charts that use the latitude/longitude grid. That being said, sailors will use a unit for navigation called a *cable*, which is 1/10 of a nautical mile. For smaller measurements, such as ship dimensions, depths, etc., sailors use metric or imperial units, depending on their preference.
| [
"In the United States, the nautical mile was defined in the 19th century as 6,080.2 feet (1,853.249 m), whereas in the United Kingdom, the \"Admiralty nautical mile\" was defined as 6,080 feet (1,853.184 m) and was about one minute of latitude in the latitudes of the south of the UK. Other nations had different def... |
Why were the innovations on the HMS Dreadnought not thought of earlier? | They were thought of earlier, or arguably, at almost exactly the same time:
- The Japanese began construction of the *Satsuma* in May 1905, several months before HMS Dreadnought. She was a "semi-dreadnought", incorporating and all big-gun armament of mixed 12in and 10in guns (although originally designed with an all-12in gun design, which was adapted due to cost limitations) but still powered by triple-expansion steam engines rather than turbines.
- Italian naval designer Vittorio Cuniberti had already espoused the "all big gun" concept in 1903 in his ideal battleship design, 2 years before the battle of Tsushima took place, and approached the Italian government with such a design which was rejected on cost grounds.
- The US Navy had been tendering "all big gun" designs from around 1903 onward, which would eventually emerge as the USN's first dreadnought class, the South Carolina. Although they were once again powered by expansion engines rather than turbines, they arguably possessed a far more advanced gun layout ("superfiring"), which would in time become the standard layout for dreadnoughts the world over, although the characteristic beam turret layout championed by HMS Dreadnought would prove hard to shift for other navies.
So dreadnought arguably didn't really do anything that was totally unheard of: All big gun armament was being mulled as the next step some years before, and steam turbine technology was cemented as a viable future propulsion system since the end of the 19th century, although originally for small high speed vessels such as torpedo boats and destroyers. What the Dreadnought design did do was take all those ideas, combine them into a working warship, and get that design into service in blisteringly fast time. HMS Dreadnought was constructed at an astonishing pace, leaving the slipway in 5 months and fitting out in another 10, which pulled the rug out from under the navies of other countries who had either semi-dreadnoughts sitting on slipways half finished, or full dreadnoughts existing only in the minds of designers.
Other nations did not feel the same impetus for economic reasons, such as the Italians, technological reasons, such as as the struggle the embryonic Japanese gun and shipbuilding industries would and did have meeting such demands, or simply because the slipways were already filled with the current battleships being finished, and new designs would only be considered when the current round of building concluded, as building a battleship was not something that can be taken lightly, unless of course you are the worlds premier naval power and have the shipbuilding capacity and sheer balls to render all your pre-dreadnoughts useless, because you know it also renders your rival navies obsolete and leaves them playing catch-up. Dreadnought reflects this point well as she possessed plenty of odd and awkward design choices and flaws, such as the position of her spotting top behind the first funnel and her generally weird turret layout, flaws that would not be immediately corrected as the following dreadnought classes of the Royal Navy would remain outwardly similar (although with improvements), up until the Orion class superdreadnoughts, which finally dispensed fully with beam turrets. | [
"The pre-dreadnought design reached maturity in 1895 with the . These ships were built and armoured entirely of steel, and their guns were mounted in fully enclosed barbettes, inevitably referred to as \"turrets\". They also adopted a main gun, which, due to advances in casting and propellant, was lighter and more ... |
How many of those living in the Roman Empire/ Rome itself, were actually citizens. | Interesting question! And the answer is that 1) we can never really know and 2) it changes drastically over time.
The definition of citizen changed multiple times over the course of both the republic and imperial Rome. The point of greatest change came in 212 with the Constitutio Antoniniana in which Caracalla decreed that all free men in the empire should be made citizens and that all free women should be given the same rights as female citizens.
In comparison during the early republic citizenship was very restricted and was not generally granted outside of those born to existing Roman citizens within Rome.
Adding even more complexity to the question is the notion of a two-tiered citizenship where captured foreigners (during the empire) were granted a lesser form of citizenship which wouldn't allow them the right to vote.
I realise this hasn't answered your question but hopefully explained in part how difficult it is to reach an answer! | [
"Before 212 the majority of Roman citizens had been inhabitants of Roman Italia, with about 4–7% of all peoples in the Roman Empire being Roman citizens at the time of the death of Augustus in 14AD. Outside Rome, citizenship was restricted to Roman coloniaeRomans, or their descendants, living in the provinces, the ... |
What is happening during a 'sleep high'? Why is everything so funny? | [Relevant study.](_URL_0_)
Apparently a lack of sleep stimulates pleasure centers of the brain after a while. (NB: being "sleepy" isn't exactly like being sleep deprived, but I'm on mobile and can't look for better sources at the moment.)
EDIT: looks like mine is the only relevant comment in the thread several hours later, and I'm really not comfortable with the level of research I put into it -- where are the brain experts? | [
"Hypopnea during sleep is classed as a sleep disorder. With moderate to severe hypopnea, sleep is disturbed such that patients may get a full night's sleep but still not feel rested because they did not get the right kind of sleep. The disruption in breathing causes a drop in blood oxygen level, which may in turn d... |
How deep into the ocean will the impacts of a hurricane be felt? | Three times the effective wave height.
The magnitude of water movement underneath a wave tails of quite rapidly with depth. Once you are about three times the wave height (trough to crest) below the surface, the movement is barely noticeable.
"Effective wave height" is the average height of the biggest third of all waves. Once you're three times deeper than that, the effects are negligible.
Typical maximum wave heights in a hurricane are rarely exceed 15m, so once you're 50m deep, you're not going to get much effect.
This also means that hurricanes cause remarkably little damage in the ocean. It's only when they get into waters less than about 15m deep that the devastation happens.
As another puzzle, we have no idea how air-breathing marine life weathers a hurricane. How to dolphins survive? We simply din't know. | [
"Despite the storm's severity, it was neither the costliest nor the strongest to affect the northeastern United States. It was weakening as it made its closest approach to land, and the highest tides occurred during the neap tide, which is the time when tide ranges are minimal. The worst of the storm effects stayed... |
how hindu religon / gods works | Do [these previous discussions](_URL_0_) help? | [
"Naraka in Hinduism serves only as a temporary purgatory where the soul is purified of sin by its suffering. In Hindu mythology, Naraka holds many hells, and Yama directs departed souls to the appropriate one. Even elevated Mukti-yogyas and Nitya-samsarins can experience Naraka for expiation of sins.\n",
"Edelman... |
How does blending fruit/veg change nutrient content and uptake by the body? | Well, solid food remain in the stomac for a while before the pyloric sphincter release, and it does when the solid material have dissovled / liquified enough. Then the stomac content can escape through the duodenum and the small intestine where the majority of the glucose is absorbed (a small fraction is absorbed in the mouth).
& #x200B;
You absorb mostly the same quantity of glucose, but because it is in a liquid form, it reaches the intestines faster and it requires less mecanical and chemical processing to absorb. The glucose ends up in your intestine capillaries (blood vessels) and escape to the hepatic veins. From here it eventually reaches the heart throught the inferior vena cava, and spreads through your blood.
& #x200B;
Of course, the pancreas secretes insulin so you eventually absorb everything into glycogen. | [
"The controlled addition of the nutrient directly affects the growth rate of the culture and helps to avoid overflow metabolism (formation of side metabolites, such as acetate for \"Escherichia coli\", lactic acid in mammalian cell cultures, ethanol in \"Saccharomyces cerevisiae\"), oxygen limitation (anaerobiosis)... |
if it takes lawyers 3 years to learn the law, how can we trust a cop to learn it in 6 months? | Cops don't need to know the bankruptcy code, or contract law, or probate law, etc. The part of the law they're generally concerned with is much smaller. And they don't need to be experts - anything they do is generally useless in the long term if the DA (a "real" lawyer) isn't willing to prosecute you.
There is a process (in Texas at least when I was a HS student, I'm sure there are similar setups elsewhere) called "DA Intake" where when a cop arrests someone, as part of the booking/charge process they would meet with some lowly assistant DA who was on call to determine what exactly to charge you with. Remember that once you're under arrest they have a certain amount of time to charge you (in front of a judge) or let you go.
The problem with cops is that **some** are assholes who abuse their power, not that they have a imperfect understanding of the law. | [
"Canadian lawyers must article for a period of 1 year after graduating from law school. Depending on the province, students may also be required to pass a bar exam in the form of Professional Legal Training and Certification during their articling year.\n",
"The Bar Association requires a minimum of two years of ... |
how does the koenigsegg gearless transmission work? | Basically its not a transmission at all... the engine is linked directly to the wheels through a differential type unit. Meaning that the ratio of engine speed to wheel speed never changes. Normally this won't work with gas motors because they make such little torque at low rpms that the either cant accelerate or cant reach decent speeds. That's where koenigseggs electric motor comes in providing the torque necessary to get the car moving. | [
"Like other transmissions, a manual transmission has several shafts with various gears and other components attached to them. Typically, a rear-wheel-drive transmission has three shafts: an input shaft, a \"countershaft\" and an output shaft. The countershaft is sometimes called a \"layshaft\".\n",
"The simplest ... |
Can custom proteins be manufactured? | The technique we use to make novel proteins has been around for decades. See [site-directed mutagenesis](_URL_1_), a common technique in deciphering enzyme mechanisms. Basically, you introduce a desired mutation to the DNA sequence that codes for the protein - say, changing a serine into an alanine - and have your bacteria express this novel protein. Then you can do tests on the resultant protein, such as examining shape, binding characteristics, reactivity, etc., and compare it against the wild-type protein. This way we can understand the role of that particular amino acid (in this case serine) in how the protein operates.
Expanding this into completely new sequences (_de novo_ synthesis) is [also possible](_URL_0_), though the new protein's physical characteristics is harder to predict. With modern day computational methods, though, it is becoming easier to design your own synthetic proteins with a purpose in mind. | [
"\"Proteins\" are “very high-molecular-weight” (MW 100,000) organic compounds, consisting of amino acid sequences linked by peptide bonds. They are essential to the structure and function of all living cells and viruses and are among the most actively studied molecules in biochemistry. They can be made only by adv... |
Can race be determined by bones alone? | The anatomy of the skull can be used to determine race with a decent degree of accuracy, certainly enough to make the claim that a set of remains "probably" belongs to a member of one race or another. It's a major part of the field of forensic anthropology, along with determinations of things like age and sex. | [
"Sesardic argues that when several traits are analyzed at the same time, forensic anthropologists can classify a person's race with an accuracy of close to 100% based on only skeletal remains. Sesardic's claim has been disputed by Massimo Pigliucci, who accused Sesardic of \"cherry pick[ing] the scientific evidence... |
when did people start listening to music/radio in their cars. | Not so much a question of being available, but being practical. The earlier radios were big, required a lot of electricity, and were not loud enough to be able to be heard while driving. There was also a problem with radios picking up the ignition noise. [Here](_URL_1_) is an example of why radios didn't work so well at first, taking up lots of room. First practical one was the Crosley Roamio in 1931, and car radios become pretty common in the 1940's. [Here's]( _URL_0_) a site that will tell you perhaps more than you ever needed to know. The text is in French, but if you can't read French you will still find lots of ads, schematics etc. in English. | [
"From August 1975 until early 1977, WEZE tried \"The Wonderful World Of Music\" again (which was often branded \"The Easiest Sound In Town\" in newspaper ads, billboards, and television commercials). Since FM radios still weren't widespread in automobiles, station management hoped that people who would listen to ea... |
Can the human eye detect a Gamma Ray Burst from a near distance? Or are Gamma Rays frequency too high? | Human eye can only see things between ultra violet and infra red. That's why they are called such things. The lowest frequency we can see is red, and the highest we can see is violet. Anything beyond those are not in our visible range. Gamma Rays have frequencies much higher than violet visible light. | [
"BULLET::::- The BATSE instrument averaged one gamma ray burst event detection per day for a total of approximately 2700 detections. It definitively showed that the majority of gamma-ray bursts must originate in distant galaxies, not nearby in our own Milky Way, and therefore must be enormously energetic.\n",
"Me... |
when astronauts play with liquids in space aren't they worried about water damage to parts from all the floating liquid? | They have machines that filter the moisture from the air which then gets filtered and recycled for reuse. | [
"The effects of alcohol on human physiology in microgravity have not been researched, though because medications can differ in their effects NASA expects that the effects of alcohol will also differ. Beer and other carbonated drinks are not suitable for spaceflight as the bubbles cause 'wet burps'; a foamy head can... |
software patents and why they are "evil" | A computer program is a series of instructions, like a recipe.
Suppose you're making dinner, and decide to mix certain spices together in a bowl then toast them in a pan.
It turns out well, so you publish it as part of a recipe.
Then someone comes along and sues you, saying they invented the idea of mixing those spices together and toasting them. You protest that you didn't copy them, it was your own idea. That doesn't matter. The other guy thought of it first, and now he owns that technique for the next nineteen years. He can charge you whatever royalties he likes, or prevent you from using that technique at all.
Software patents are like that. Patents are awarded for the sort of ideas that programmers come up with all the time, as part of their everyday work.
Getting a software patent is a lot more expensive than coming up with the "invention" in the first place, so only large corporations can afford to do it much. | [
"Software patents, like other types of patents, are theoretically supposed to give an inventor an exclusive, time-limited license for a \"detailed idea (e.g. an algorithm) on how to implement\" a piece of software, or a component of a piece of software. Ideas for useful things that software could \"do\", and user \... |
Why do we see citizens who support the Confederacy in the US even today, and why are they not considered traitors? | I think it goes more along the lines of freedom of speech. neo nazis in america are allowed to hold parades and such things in america because they are protected by the constitution. as long as they are not violent, they are left alone. Same thing applies for confederate supporters. | [
"Historian Frank Lawrence Owsley argued that the Confederacy \"died of states' rights\". The central government was denied requisitioned soldiers and money by governors and state legislatures because they feared that Richmond would encroach on the rights of the states. Georgia's governor Joseph Brown warned of a se... |
what are the most likely effects of this super powerful el nino season? | I remember in the 90's being in California and having a powerful El Niño taking us from a 10 year drought to "normal" in a month (it was referred to as March Miracle).
There's a lot that could happen or could not happen.While we know it will generate more precipitation, where that lands is going to vary. Also in states like California that are so parched, a large amount of rain will cause a lot of mudslides (less vegetation on the ground to hold things together).
As to if it will make a dent in the drought, that's also unknown. This is where the "where" matters. For example, rain falling in Southern California isn't as important as rain/snow in northern california as far as Los Angeles and the agricultural central valley is concerned (they get a lot of their water from Northern California).
Lake Mead in Nevada is 60 feet below normal, but rain in Las Vegas isn't really important compared to rain and snow in western Colorado (i.e. upriver) as far as Lake Mead is concerned. | [
"Because El Niño's warm pool feeds thunderstorms above, it creates increased rainfall across the east-central and eastern Pacific Ocean, including several portions of the South American west coast. The effects of El Niño in South America are direct and stronger than in North America. An El Niño is associated with w... |
Is it true that our solar system moves at speed of 70,000km/h? | Move relative to what? An important part of physics, classical or modern, is that there is no absolute rest frame. That is you can't say an object is moving at X kilometres per hour because it isn't obvious what we mean by that. On earth it sort of is, we mean it relative to the earth. And that is a good reference because friction and air drag are big obstacles when you want to keep moving, but if you were a bad ass action hero trying to jump off the wing of a plane onto a car speeding down the tarmac before the plane takes off, how would you want to measure the car's speed when trying to sync up. Would you judge it relative to the ground? Or the much more useful relative to the plane? In space, well in general, when we talk about speeds we talk about speeds relative to an object. These can get pretty extreme because as long as the speed between two objects is less than the speed of light, almost anything goes. Acceleration is hard, so changing your speed relative to an object is certainly non trivial, but there's very little restriction to what the speeds can be. Now you're surprised that the speed of the solar system (probably relative to the galactic core) is 70,000 km/h... That's actually wrong, it's more than 10 times that speed at over 800,000 km/h, 70,000 km/h is only about 2.5 times faster than the orbital speed of the international space station which orbit the earth at about 27,600 km/h. And no, this isn't just some theoretical idea, you can measure the ISS speed based on the height of the orbit and the period, or it can be figured out, both speeds, using celestial mechanics; which is a very established and thoroughly tested theory.
Tl;dr: not, it isn't 70,000km/h, it's 800,000 km/h.
Edit: Mercury's average speed around the sun is about 170,000 km/h. | [
"The speed of the star around the system's center of mass is much smaller than that of the planet, because the radius of its orbit around the center of mass is so small. (For example, the Sun moves by about 13 m/s due to Jupiter, but only about 9 cm/s due to Earth). However, velocity variations down to 3 m/s or eve... |
how can babies scream for a long time and not hurt their vocal cords but adults can easily hurt themselves when they cream for a few minutes? | When adults do what now? | [
"During attacks in infants, the child often looks startled or terrified and can scream inconsolably. These attacks can be precipitated by injections, defecation, wiping of the perineum, eating, or the consumption of oral medication. When attacks occur due to such precipitation, pain and flushing are often present i... |
why is it so satisfying to peel something? | I'd assume that it triggers a smaller version of the dopamine rush we get when we get something new. | [
"Peel, also known as rind or skin, is the outer protective layer of a fruit or vegetable which can be peeled off. The rind is usually the botanical exocarp, but the term exocarp also includes the hard cases of nuts, which are not named peels since they are not peeled off by hand or peeler, but rather shells because... |
What's the oldest historical event that we have mythology about? | Hi there. While you are waiting for a more comprehensive answer, you might want to take a look at [this discussion](_URL_0_) about this very topic from a few years ago.
The consensus seems to be (and this agrees with what I know), that Australian Aboriginal oral histories likely record major climatic and geological events that occurred more or less near the end of the Pleistocene, somewhere about 10-15 thousand years ago. | [
"The oldest known version of the legend is Aldhelm's \"De laudibus virginitatis\", addressed to Abbess Hildelitha of Barking Abbey, Essex. Kirsten Wolf characterizes it as one of several legends invented in the fourth and fifth centuries to provide a story to go with a name on one of the various liturgical calendar... |
What's the most distant possible orbital path for something orbiting Earth? | Not my area, but I think you're asking about the size of the Earth's [Hill sphere](_URL_1_). The Earth's is about [1.5 million km](_URL_0_) in radius -- or around 4 times larger than the Moon's orbit.
edit: "it appears that stable satellite orbits exist only inside 1/2 to 1/3 of the Hill radius" | [
"Other types of orbit in a 1:1 resonance with the planet include horseshoe orbits and tadpole orbits around the Lagrangian points, but objects in these orbits do not stay near the planet's longitude over many revolutions about the star. Objects in horseshoe orbits are known to sometimes periodically transfer to a r... |
Is there a factual, un-ideological and un-biased primary source covering the history of all (or mostly all) communist governments? | This isn't exactly the answer you are looking for, but unfortunately, I do not think such a text exists, nor could it exist. Communism is an inherently political subject, and there is no way to have an "unbiased" history of it. Moreover, even books like the *Rise and Fall of the Third Reich* have biases; it would be more accurate to say that they have adopted a language of objectivity that masques the presence of the author. But the author's perspectives and limits, ideas and interpretations of the facts (and even interpretations of what count as "facts") are still there. There is no neutral ground of pure "facts" discussed by some group of people who are neither communists nor anti communists, or at least influenced by those perspectives. If you learn about communism, you will have to get into the dirt. | [
"In addition to this the party publishes many miscellaneous pamphlets under its own name. The \"Classics of Communism\" series are reprints of classic works such as \"The Communist Manifesto\" or \"\". The \"Our History\" series aims to re-tell 'history from below' and covers historical events from a working class ... |
why do theists often deny evolution? what religious beliefs does evolution disprove? | Evolution throws some serious doubt to the Adam and Eve story. Specifically the compelling DNA evidence that mitochondrial eve and the last common male ancestor did not live at the same time.
Without a literal Adam and Eve, there is no original sin. Without original sin, no reason for Jesus to sacrifice himself, which is the entire basis of Christianity.
Some Christians get around this by creative interpretation. | [
"The argument that evolution is religious has been rejected in general on the grounds that \"religion\" is not defined by how dogmatic or zealous its adherents are, but by its spiritual or supernatural beliefs. Evolutionary supporters point out evolution is neither dogmatic nor based on faith, and they accuse creat... |
A spaceship travels from earth at near speed of light and is transmitting a short message back to earth every 10 minutes. After one year of travel the signal has to travel a year to get to earth but will it still arrive every 10 minutes? My head aches thinking about this. | It will be subject to a [relativistic Doppler effect](_URL_0_), so its frequency will be lower than 1/10 min. You also have to specify whether you mean 10 min in the ship's frame or the earth's frame. If the ship is traveling with a constant relative velocity, the frequency will be constant. The distance to earth at the time of sending is not relevant, only the distance to the last point a signal was sent is relevant. | [
"For example, a spaceship could travel to a star 32 light-years away, initially accelerating at a constant 1.03g (i.e. 10.1 m/s) for 1.32 years (ship time), then stopping its engines and coasting for the next 17.3 years (ship time) at a constant speed, then decelerating again for 1.32 ship-years, and coming to a st... |
Do proteins dissolve in water? | It is not true that all proteins are soluble in water. Proteins are typical macro-molecules having a large range of solvents in which they dissolve including water. The property of solubility of different proteins is governed by their three-dimensional folded structures. Many proteins have exposed polar groups with little to high dipole moments. Water is a solvent with high dipole moment. | [
"After protein folding in aqueous solution, hydrophobic amino acids usually form protected hydrophobic areas while hydrophilic amino acids interact with the molecules of solvation and allow proteins to form hydrogen bonds with the surrounding water molecules. If enough of the protein surface is hydrophilic, the pro... |
Why is there still such a sizeble italian minority in the US despite ww2? | It did. Assimilation occurred on a wide scale, and it continues today, often though gentrification.
And Italians were placed in internment camps, as were Germans. Neither were on as large a scale though, as the US’s main adversary and concern was the Empire of Japan. | [
"Italians continued to immigrate to the United States, and an estimated 600,000 arrived in the decades following the war. Many of the new arrivals had professional training, or were skilled in various trades. The post-war period was a time of great social change for Italian Americans. Many aspired to a college educ... |
Why did the Labour Party achieve a landslide victory in the 1945 UK General Election? | There is much debate over this topic and unfortunately I am away from my computer to get all my references for this issue.
Historians have suggested that during WWII there was a move towards a more left leaning UK, hidden by the fact that by elections in the UK were not properly fought due to a gentleman's agreement between the main parties. Labour had grown in importance during the wartime coalition and began to be seen as a respectable and viable party of government.
Their election manifesto was popular, promising rapid, affordable rebuilding - especially of housing in the urbanized areas that tended to support more left leaning ideas. Promises to nationalize key industry were probably not driving most voters, despite some left wing historians believing that there was a mass turn to the left. Economic growth and development were popular notions at the time.
We must also acknowledge the failing popularity of the Conservative government, especially given some of the comments made by Churchill on the eve of the election. For some, Churchill was part of the old guard and a figure of the past. Comments about a Labour victory being comparable to the Gestapo winning the election probably did little to help his cause.
(For more information and references give me some time to access my records :) ) | [
"In the event, the election produced a low turnout (with many voters perhaps feeling that another Labour victory was inevitable) and Labour won a second successive landslide, with the British political scene remaining almost completely unchanged with only a few seats changing hands.\n",
"The general election resu... |
What is the age difference of Earth's pole vs equator (theory of relativity)? | They are actually the same age, for not-obvious reasons. Basically, the difference in the passage of time due to the relative motion from the rotation is perfectly offset by the difference in the gravitational field due to Earth's shape. An explanation can be found [here](_URL_2_) or [here](_URL_1_).
However, if you were to compare the age of the surface and the center, [the core is over two years younger.](_URL_0_) | [
"At the equator, the radius of the Earth is \"r\" = 6,378,137 meters. In addition, the rotation of the Earth needs to be taken into account. This imparts on an observer an angular velocity of formula_18 of 2\"π\" divided by the sidereal period of the Earth's rotation, 86162.4 seconds. So formula_19. The proper time... |
If you are in a car going the speed of a bullet and shot a gun backwards out the window what would the bullet do? | fall while spinning | [
"BULLET::::1. Figure 1 (center panel). To an observer at rest on an inertial reference frame (like the ground), the car will seem to accelerate. In order for the passenger to stay inside the car, a force must be exerted on the passenger. This force is exerted by the seat, which has started to move forward with the ... |
why does depression sometimes cause cognitive dysfunction issues, such as reduced attention span, memory, concentration, information processing capability and executive functioning, that sometimes persist after a depressive episode is over? | Depression still exists in a depressed person's brain even after an "episode". Depression is more than just in your mind, it is like a mental disorder that actually causes physical changes in your brain's structure and neural network, and it is those changes that can cause the other symptoms you mentioned. | [
"MRI scans of patients with depression have revealed a number of differences in brain structure compared to those who are not depressed. Meta-analyses of neuroimaging studies in major depression reported that, compared to controls, depressed patients had increased volume of the lateral ventricles and adrenal gland ... |
Would an all out nuclear war result in these conditions? | This sounds like sci-fi fantasy.
New mountain ranges can be ruled out - orogenic events (a fancy way of saying mountain building) are known to almost exclusively come from buckling of the Earth's crust with the movement of tectonic plates (the exception being hot-spot volcanism, like Hawaii). Plates are moved by the circulating rocks and magma beneath the entirety of the Earth's crust, and represent an amount of force almost impossible for humans to imagine - basically, outside of making a bunch of craters which I guess could look like mountains, there is no stockpile of nuclear weapons which would damage the 50-70km thick continental crust enough to cause any significant uplifting.
I am also fairly certain that oceans filled with radioactive waste is a bit overblown. The fallout from weapons grade nuclear explosions is actually quite short (in a matter of days radiation levels fall to non-dangerous levels - the reason places like Chernobyl remain radioactive to this day are actually because of the leftover fission products produced from plutonium fission, which are not produced in significant quantity in nuclear weapons).
The real danger of permanent environmental damage comes from nuclear winter - which is when dust and other aerosols are scattered high in the atmosphere, reflecting sunlight from the surface and causing the Earth to cool dramatically - it is believed that the major killer of the dinosaurs was not just the impact of a giant meteor, but nuclear-winter-like aftermath which followed from all of the dust stirred up by the collision.
I have no idea what the jet black antarctic ice cap would refer to, except maybe to soot/particulate matter accumulation on the surface of the ice. Such a scenario is hypothetically possible, considering the general circulation patterns of the Earth (see: Hadley cells) causes the atmosphere to circulate from the equator to the poles (and back), despositing lingering water vapor (and presumably other particulate matter) on the surface of the ice. Perhaps in a nuclear winter we would see the dust from the upper atmosphere settle in the poles, but that is pretty abstract speculation, and I think it wouldn't be a significant enough input to blanket an entire continent (or outpace new ice accumulation).
| [
"Under the scenario of total multilateral disarmament, there is no possibility of nuclear war. Under scenarios of partial disarmament, there is disagreement as to how the probability of nuclear war would change. Critics of nuclear disarmament say that it would undermine the ability of governments to threaten suffic... |
How did Hitler improve Germany's economy to the extent it was before World War two broke out in the space of six years when prior to 1933 inflation and unemployment were at all time high under the leadership of the Weimar Republic. | So Hjalmar Schacht successfully begins to bring Germany back from the great depression, at the same time the the world was recovering from the Great Depression. The plan he implements to get people on their feet involves large social programs. – policies which had been instituted in Germany by von Schleicher's government in late 1932. He also introduced the "New Plan", Germany's attempt to achieve economic "autarky" (Autarky was the idea of being a self-sustainable nation)
Schacht also secured trade deals for raw materials in Latin America that they would pay with the Reichmark preventing the rise of inflation within Germany.
However Hitler want's to push for rearming Germany to prepare them for war, however Hitler from his experience realized that for a country to receive full support for a war the general population needs to continue their high standard of living before the war. Schacht then makes Hitler decide between "Guns or Butter" saying he cannot have both. As a result he is kicked out of the Nazi Party and Goring says he can make Germany economically stable in four years. (Keep in mind he has no economic experience)
- Goring becomes in charge of the Four-Year Plan in 1936 to be ready for war by 1940. Also with the global recession being lifted Hitler took advantage of economic plans established in the Weimar Republic, so the economic situation improved around 1932
It also helped that they absorbed several nations around them in that period. On top of other things Hitler also abolished the unions in Germany allowing for lower wages, to increase manufacturing in Germany.
However it is important to note that a lot of the policies created during the Weimar Republic allowed for the economic growth of Germany which Hitler took credit for. Some policies such as the Reich Hereditary Farm Law h | [
"The German economy, like those of many other western nations, suffered the effects of the Great Depression with unemployment soaring around the Wall Street Crash of 1929. When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, he introduced policies aimed at improving the economy. The changes included privatizatio... |
Was there a consistent democratic "country/state/area" between 1000-1400 AD? | Iceland had a democratic body, the althing, and can be considered a democracy until 1262. The althing came together once a year for two weeks. Every household owner (i.e. a farm of a certain minimal size) had a seat. All feud ceased during that time and disputes were brought before the body. Before 1262 the Althing was the only governing institution on the island. After 1262 Iceland became part of Norway and the power of the Althing was greatly reduced.
Another "country" with a democratic structures was Switzerland. The towns were self-governed and formed a loose federation, the "Eidgenossenschaft". The free cities of the holy roman empire had democratic bodies as well.
Even the monastic states can be considered as democracies to a small extent: The members of the monasteries voted for their abbots and also had a say in the general proceedings and politics. Admittedly, this meant nothing for the general population, who were ruled by a small minority.
But this is true for every medieval democracy: Only landowners, household owners, wealthy had a say. If you were a servant, a woman, a beggar, one from the "wandering folk", you had nothing to say. | [
"The first known states were created in the Fertile Crescent, India, China, Mesoamerica, the Andes, and others, but it is only in relatively modern times that states have almost completely displaced alternative \"stateless\" forms of political organization of societies all over the planet. Roving bands of hunter-ga... |
why law enforcement uses polygraphs but they are not admissible in court | It is a useful tool for finding pressure points.
There are two types of modern police interrogations - reid method and interrogative. Interrogative - That is basically questioning people until you catch them in lies. Knowing which questions to ask is very helpful. Reid method is basically accusing them of doing something in a manner that follows a storyline.
Obviously, a trained liar has a better chance of passing a polygraph with discipline. Thing is that most criminals aren't highly trained or as sociopathic/anhedonic as is required to maintain the cool required to pass a polygraph in a simple criminal investigation.
While the polygraph can be very revealing, it isn't considered admissible because of the technical arguments for guilt are easily refuted with arguments by the defense for "innocent behavior". | [
"In most European jurisdictions, practice varies by country but polygraphs are generally not considered reliable evidence and are not generally used by law enforcement. Polygraph testing is widely seen in Europe to violate the right to remain silent.\n",
"In some countries, polygraphs are used as an interrogation... |
is it possible for there to be a solar system in a solar system? | Stars that orbit one another are fairly common. However, it's unlikely that any planets would remain in stable orbits. The tug from the other star would keep pulling them around. The stars don't even need to get all that close to cause problems. especially if there are any gas giants that can be knocked around, affecting the orbits of other bodies, exacerbating the effects.
You have to understand that, in our solar system, planetary orbits are elliptical, but only just barely. They're very close to circles. Another star, even if small, might pull a similar system's planets into highly elliptical orbits, making life unlikely to thrive because of the vast differences in temperature and tidal forces at different parts of the orbit.
Another potential consequence is that the planet's orbital speed is affected. A slow planet may spiral inward, potentially close enough that the original star's gravity tears it apart. A faster planet might be thrown from the solar system entirely.
These sorts of systems are just too chaotic to be good candidates for life, much less permanent civilizations. Given that Firefly also includes organisms adapted to life on earth, with our relatively-circular, stable orbit, it's unlikely that man would ever settle in such a system, except in the very short term.
EDIT: spelling | [
"orbit around a star or star system. Generally speaking, systems with one or more planets constitute a planetary system, although such systems may also consist of bodies such as dwarf planets, asteroids, natural satellites, meteoroids, comets, planetesimals and circumstellar disks. The Sun together with the planets... |
how are sine, triangle, square, and saw waves used to produce sound? | Those waves are a representation of the sound. Let's take a square wave because that'll be a simple example, at 1000hz. So 1000 times a second there will be a high and a low on the wave. So 1000 times in one second, the speaker playing the sound will move to where however much the high side gives in terms of voltage through the amp, and the low side will go to it's spot.
If you had a scope that shows the sound waves, the noise coming out of the speaker (assuming a 100% correct playing of the sound) would show up as a square wave.
So pretty much the wave just shows how the speaker is going to move and by how much. And if you had something like a lie detector where it has those needles scribbling lines on paper, and the other end of the needle was connected to the speaker, it would draw that wave that you put into it. | [
"A conical shaped resonator, such as a megaphone, tends to amplify all pitches indiscriminately. A cylindrical shaped resonator is affected primarily by the length of the tube through which the sound wave travels. A spherical resonator will be affected by the amount of opening it has and by whether or not that open... |
how are fetishes learned but sexual orientation is inborn? | Your question suggests that we already know this is the case, but that's not really the truth. Depending on who you ask in psychology. You'll get different answers. A radical behaviourist might (but most won't) argue that all behaviour is learned, including sexual behaviour. A psychologist focuses on biological psychology might (but again, most won't) argue that all behaviour stems from genetics.
My personal opinion (and the generally accepted consensus in academic psychology), is that it's a bit if both. Some behaviour is inherited, some is acquired. It's not always easy to tell them apart, and I think this is such a case. You could argue that hormone levels and such would influence your sexual attraction and behaviour, and you could argue that you learn it from societal norms and exposure to various situations.
What I'm trying to say is that there isn't really a definite answer right now. | [
"Sexual orientation has been defined as \"an erotic inclination toward people of one or more genders, most often described as sexual or erotic attractions\". In recent years, psychologists have sought to understand how sexual orientation develops during adolescence. Some theorists believe that there are many differ... |
how can people with dark skin say they're, "half-white" and white people can say they're, "half-black"? | No, race is a complicated and mostly made up categorization. It includes culture and characteristics beyond phenotypes including historical affiliation.
Its not a good categorization, but its more complicated than just skin tone. | [
"Black people is a skin group-based classification used for specific people with a mid to dark brown complexion. Not all \"black people\" are dark skinned. However, in certain countries, often in socially based systems of racial classification in the Western World, it is used to describe persons who are perceived t... |
why are nike shoes $150 or more and how do they enhance performance in sports? | It's a fashion statement mostly.
Don't get me wrong - there's some technology and research there, but not nearly enough to really affect, well, anything that much. You may jump a few millimeters higher through some new bouncy sole and lighter material. And there is some stability enhancements that will slightly reduce the risk of a rolled ankle. And some fabric may allow the foot to "breathe" a hair better.
But in the end, it's clever marketing.
| [
"It is also for this reason that Nike and other retailers specialized in sportswear are experiencing an increase in profits (Nike saw an increase of 8 million dollars capital in just three months, that is a 15% more than 2014’s revenue, when the soccer World Cup took place).\n",
"Nike sells an assortment of produ... |
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