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In "Diplomacy" by Kissinger, he mentions that 19th century Russia had both Asian and European focused foreign offices. With the European directive being dominated by "Baltic Germans". Who were these Baltic Germans and how important of a role did they have in Tsarist Russia? | From an [earlier answer of mine](_URL_0_)
**Part I**
Although the state's trust in its Baltic German minority waned over time, it was an especially privileged group in the imperial state hierarchy, especially in the Petrine and Katrine years. Baltic Germans in this period found a wide variety of roles inside the Russian state apparatus and the state tended to not interfere much in the internal affairs of this ethnic minority until the mid-nineteenth century. The were several different overlapping rationales behind the Russian imperial state's employment of its Baltic German minorities as a class of state servitors.
One important reason for the state's preference for Baltic German servitors was the perceived cultural and educational advantage that this group allegedly possessed. German language and culture, especially the Lutheran religion, tied this group to the Central European cultural sphere, and, by extension, to the West. This was clear cultural capital that placed the Baltic Germans in an advantageous position that many of the empire's other numerous minorities lacked. Moreover, the Baltic German educational system, as exemplified by such institutions as University of Dorpat, was much more advanced than most parts of the empire. As a whole, the Baltic German elite were much more educated than the empire's other nobility in the eighteenth century, making them as a class much more suitable as servitors to a modernizing state. Eric Lohr has termed one of central tenets of the Russian state's nationalities policies in the eighteenth century as "attract and hold," in which the state sought to enlist qualified foreign groups in its service and then make them beholden to the Russian state. This policy underlay the Katrine era's advocacy of German colonization of the Volga as imperial circles felt that Central European methods could make this region more productive. In the case of the Baltic Germans, there was little need to attract them as the region had already been conquered. But the state did engage in a series of patchwork methods to "hold" the Baltic Germans, namely by delegating local authority to the Baltic German nobility and upholding their local rights and privileges over the other Baltic peoples. Catherine II approached the delegation of authority towards the Baltic German nobility as part of a larger process that domesticated this influential minority to Russian rule.
But there was more to the Romanov state's employ of the Baltic Germans than just the community's cultural capital. One factor that dovetailed with the minority's purported sophistication was the demography of the Baltics which made a Baltic German political hegemony increasingly shaky without outside support. Service in the Russian state increased the dependency of the Baltic German nobility on the good graces of the Romanovs to uphold their privileges. The Baltic Germans thus possessed a virtue other minorities in the empire frequently lacked: reliability. Delegating power to Baltic Germans carried a much lower risk of rebellion in the eighteenth century as any powerful patrons in Central Europe were quite distant and the highly stratified Baltic society feed into antagonisms between the Baltic Germans, which by some estimates was only ten percent of the total population, and their non-German neighbors. This rigid social stratification helped foster a more reactionary and elitist mentality among the Baltic German nobility, which also made them more psychologically comfortable serving a Romanov autocrat. But there was wiggle room for the Baltic Germans even in such an asymmetric power relationship. Emperor Nicholas I was reputed to have said the difference between a Baltic German noble and a Russian one is that the latter serves the state and the former the imperial house. The Baltic German nobility tended to treat its relationship with the Romanovs as a personal compact between the sovereign and the the Baltic Germans as a corporate estate. This was a type of relationship that the Romanovs were ill-favored to accept as it implied a limit on autocratic authority. One of the few consistencies of Romanov nationality policies was was the notion that state authority was sacrosanct and any compromise with an ethnic group set a dangerous precedent.
Nicholas I's remarks on the nature of Baltic German loyalty was emblematic of a growing distrust of the state to this largely *Kaisertreu* ethnic group. Cracks in the reciprocal relationship had already appeared in the early nineteenth century as the tsarist state sought to regulate Baltic German institutions. The French invasion of 1812 opened up new suspicions of the hitherto quite loyal estate. The presence of many Baltic Germans and German emigres in the Russian officer corps was the cause for alarm during the retreats before Napoleon and a loosely organized "Russian party" faction in the officer corps blamed the retreats on the Baltic German commander Barclay de Tolly (mistakenly disparaged as "the Finn" by Bagration- de Tolly's own origins were quite mixed- he was a German-speaking member of a Scottish family that emigrated to Livonia in the 1600s). Baltic Germans were disproportionately represented in the army's ranks and the Russian party blamed them for the largely bloodless abandonment of Russian territory prior to Borodino. Although Nicholas I remained predisposed to the Baltic Germans as a special class of servitors, his administration began a process of clawing back various prerogatives and privileges. Orthodox ministers began to convert the Baltic peasantry, much to the annoyance of the Lutheran Baltic German nobility. Speransky's great project of codifying the empire's laws meant that the various laws upholding Baltic German hegemony came under scrutiny by St. Petersburg. Although delegations from the Baltic German nobility were able to persuade the court of the the sanctity of local law, the centralizing trend f the Romanov state was quite clear. The Nicholavean era also saw an attempt by the state to bind and regulate the Lutheran church closer to the Russian state with Nicholas I upholding his brother's right to appoint a Lutheran bishop and promulgating an 1832 law that abrogated existing promises of Lutheran autonomy and instead designating the Baltic Lutheran church as "tolerated church." This law subordinated the Lutheran Church to St. Petersburg and put it under the watchful gaze of the Ministry of the Interior.
Although the Nicholavian policies of the 1830s and 40s brought a definite chill between imperial-Baltic German relations, the twin events of the 1863 Polish revolt and German unification severely degraded the functionality of this relationship. The Polish revolt kindled fears of both real and (more often) imagined fears of Polonization among the Baltic and Western Provinces' peasantry and the state ramped up efforts at Russification of these groups. This ensured even more tensions between the Baltic Germans and the state as both religion and the educational policies of the region increasingly came under state, not local, control. German unification also cast a shadow on the Baltic Germans' own German identity as it was feared among Russophile and Slavophile circles that German nationalism would use the Baltic Germans against the imperial state. This climate of ethnic suspicion led to further restrictions on the Lutheran church, a *Kulturkampf* of sorts, and in turn fostered the very connections with pan-Germanist circles that the Russian imperial state feared already existed. Although pan-Germanism found very little converts within the Baltics, the Russification efforts of the state became a *cause célèbre* for *Kaiserreich*-based pan-Germans and romanticized notions of a besieged ancient Germanic empire on the Baltic marches soon emerged as a stock trope in these circles.
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"The Foreign policy of the Russian Empire covers Russian foreign relations down to 1917. All the main decisions in the Russian Empire were made by the tsar (tsarist autocracy), so there was a uniformity of policy and a forcefulness during the long regimes of powerful leaders such as Peter the Great and Catherine th... |
Employment status of prostitutes in the Old West | I would love to hear what insight /u/itsallfolklore has. | [
"Brothel prostitutes, also known as Courtesans, work as independent contractors and thus do not receive any unemployment, retirement or health benefits from the house they work for. They are responsible for paying Federal income tax and their earnings are reported to the IRS via form 1099-MISC. Nevada does not have... |
why did the us care so much about not letting cuba, parts of latin america, vietnam, and other parts of the world become communists? | We were (and some argue still are) at war with Russia. Allowing a communist nation in our region of influence would give Russia a point that they could use to attack up directly faster than we could react, and it would siphon money and political influence away from us. | [
"Cubans were given preferential treatment in the United States for four main reasons: Cold War politics, reduction of administrative burdens for immigrants, humanitarian concerns, and Cuban professionals' potential impact on the United States economy. The United States government was concerned that Cuba would serve... |
Can anyone help identify the pictures on this scrimshaw? [x-post] r/whatisthisthing and r/antiques | What an interesting mystery! I find a depiction of Jenny Lind pretty reasonable for the 1880s, because she did the big American tour in 1850 so people would probably remember her from then. The scrimshaw might predate the wedding by a while too.
My library has digital copy of Godey's Lady's Book and I took a look at the "Elopement" plate from that issue -- completely different picture, sad to say.
Was your great grandpa into opera by any chance? I have a bit of an idea that these might be depictions of opera scenes from some role Lind was known for. | [
"The picture was published by \"LIFE\" in their June 20, 1949, edition, covering most of pages 112 and 113. That the picture used most of two pages was in itself unusual. The photograph was part of the magazine's coverage of the 3rd Sculpture International exhibition, which was organized by the Fairmount Park Art A... |
why is footage from camera that was attached to you always shaky while you don't see same shaky effect through eyes? | There's three things going on:
1) Our eyes automatically counterbalance the effects of walking; as we step up slightly during our gait, our eyes look slightly down (pretty much automatically) to keep our field of vision somewhat stable. Most cameras don't do this, so it's shakier than an actual person's vision.
2) Your brain screens out a ton of unnecessary or useless input. Remember, our retinas actually see a ton of blood vessels as well as a blind spot (and everything's upside-down), but our brain just removes all the unnecessary junk without us realizing it. Similarly, our skin is constantly sending all kinds of little signals to our brains as our clothes rub against it, the breeze blows, etc, but again our brain just filters it out. It's the same way with a decent amount of shakiness; our brain automatically stabilizes our view somewhat
3) We *do* see some shakiness, more than you probably realize. First-person videogame movement started to feel a lot more realistic when they added "head bob", where the camera moves a little as your character walks. | [
"Home movies, often filmed with a cell phone camera, also tend to cause motion sickness in those who view them. The person holding the cell phone or other camera usually is unaware of this as the recording is being made since the sense of motion seems to match the motion seen through the camera's viewfinder. Those ... |
if diamonds are just compressed carbon, why cant we make a machine that just compresses carbon into diamonds | We have them. They make industrial diamonds for saw blades and the like quite frequently. We produce diamonds all the time through a variety of processes, though it only recently we have been able to make gem quality diamonds of size in the laboratory. | [
"At very high pressures, carbon forms the more compact allotrope, diamond, having nearly twice the density of graphite. Here, each atom is bonded tetrahedrally to four others, forming a 3-dimensional network of puckered six-membered rings of atoms. Diamond has the same cubic structure as silicon and germanium, and ... |
Why do we "Weigh" things in kg,g,and mg, if grams are units of mass? If I've got some powder on a scale and it reads 40mg, is it actually calculating the weight and then dividing it by 9.8 to tell me the total mass of the powder on the scale? | > Why do we "Weigh" things in kg,g,and mg, if grams are units of mass?
We measure mass by exploiting Newton's 2nd law: F=ma. The acceleration due to earth's gravity at its surface is about 9.8 m/s*^2*, so we can measure an object's mass by measuring the force gravity exerts on it and then dividing by 9.8 m/s*^2* (using F=ma -- > m = F/a). If you know the force on earth's surface (ie weight) then you know the mass, and vice-versa.
> If I've got some powder on a scale and it reads 40mg, is it actually calculating the weight and then dividing it by 9.8 to tell me the total mass of the powder on the scale?
Yes. | [
"Although the size of an object may be reflected in its mass or its weight, each of these is a different concept. In scientific contexts, mass refers loosely to the amount of \"matter\" in an object (though \"matter\" may be difficult to define), whereas weight refers to the force experienced by an object due to gr... |
Kind of a weird question, but do any historians here feel that being religious affects their professional career? | A lot of the people in Reformation history are Christians, and I've never seen anyone suffer as a result of it. | [
"Scholars of religion have argued that a study of the subject is useful for individuals because it will provide them with knowledge that is pertinent in inter-personal and professional contexts within an increasingly globalised world. It has also been argued that studying religion is useful in appreciating and unde... |
If you were trapped in a room to die of dehydration with nothing to drink but alcohol, would you live longer if you did or did not drink it? | Well, if you were willing to drink your own urin, you are good to go.
Problem with alcohol is that it blocks your Pituitary gland from producing Vasopressin.
This hormone makes your kidney reabsorb the water from your urine.
So if you drink alcohol, you lose a lot of water from your system.
But if you drink your own urine, you will be good (aside from losing salts and giving you a really bad time from all the toxins produced by breaking down the alcohol) but you will enmd up with *more* water, since the alcohol you drink isn't pure ethanol I guess but an "alcoholic drink" | [
"Death from dehydration can take from several days to a few weeks. This means that unlike many other suicide methods, it cannot be accomplished impulsively. Those who die by terminal dehydration typically lapse into unconsciousness before death, and may also experience delirium and deranged serum sodium. Discontinu... |
why do three-pin sockets block two-pin plugs when this security measure can easily be bypassed by a three-pin plug key or using a stick to push the relevant lever? | Because you're supposed to be more afraid of the fire you're likely to start by doing that than proud of how clever you are for using the stick. | [
"Within each size group, the plugs and sockets are keyed with certain \"lugs\" protruding on the outside of the plugs. Higher current plugs have more lugs to prevent them from being inserted into a lower current socket outlet, while still allowing them to be inserted into a socket outlet of the same size group rate... |
How do T-cells know which cells they've already inspected? | It doesn't know. And it doesn't loop because it's not like the T-cell specifically waits until the current cell under investigation has "passed inspection" before moving on. The T-cell just moves around, continuously coming into contact with other cells in the neighboring environment, and if it happens to brush shoulders with bad antigens then it triggers an attack. But if no attack is triggered, it'll just keep on happily moving about. The key is that the time it takes to trigger an attack is much less than the time it takes a T-cell to "move over" any given cell. | [
"T cells need another signal to become activated in addition to Signal 1, this is done by co-stimulatory molecules such as the proteins CD80 (B7.1) or CD86 (B7.2), although other additional co-stimulation molecules have been identified. When Signal 2 is not expressed, but T cells receive Signal 1, the antigen-speci... |
what are the main doctrines of christianity? | - Believe God exists and created everything
- Believe John 3:16
- Love God
- Love people
- Pray faithfully
- Acknowledge the existence and reality of heaven, hell, and eternity
- Don't be stupid | [
"Christian doctrines include the beliefs that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, was born of a virgin named Mary, performed miracles, founded the Christian Church, died by crucifixion as a sacrifice to achieve atonement for sin, rose from the dead, and ascended into Heaven, from where he will return. Most Chri... |
Black babies as bait for alligator hunt? | Holy cow. I had never heard of this before. I did a search of GenealogyBank (they have a large American newspaper database) for the phrase "gator bait." I found a few articles that talked about exceptionally large alligators being caught (around 1900-1910) that mention using a pig leg or a live pig stuck on a hook (poor pig) as bait.
But I also found this article: "Naked Pickaninnies Bait For Alligators; But They Suffer No Serious Effect," *Evansville Courier and Press* (Evansville, IN), 16 Sept. 1923, p. 15. (It's behind a paywall so [I made a copy](_URL_0_)--sorry its a bit choppy since it's on imgur.) (I just realized--it's a reprint of the same article that's quoted in the last line of the story linked by OP.) It's a sorta tongue-in-cheek, quasi-human interest article (so I'm a bit suspicious of its 100% veracity), but it explains that babies are used as bait by sitting the kid in the shallows of the water and letting it splash and make a lot of happy baby noises that would attract alligators. Honestly it's horrific (no matter how much the author smirks that the kid is happy doing it), but I suspect that was likely how babies were "traditionally" used as bait--if this was ever actually practiced. Alligators didn't eat the kids, but the kids were used to lure the animals.
I am somewhat suspicious of that guy quoted in the article as saying that the kids were actually eaten by alligators for the reasons you mention--setting aside the obvious morality of it, it doesn't make any sense from a monetary perspective. I'd like to see some contemporary evidence corroborating those statements. (Have any researchers out there read anything on this?)
It's not uncommon for stories passed orally from one generation to another to be inadvertently distorted. I suspect that is the case here. I haven't made a study of African-American or slave narratives, but I do study another group of Americans who were badly treated in the past, and it's interesting how the stories that are repeated now by members of that group don't 100% match the historic, contemporary sources--some details are sensationalized, and some details are forgotten. But--as I've stated--I've not made this a matter of study and I'd be very interested to hear if anyone here can give us more details about this bizarre practice. Was it actually a documented practice, or was it sorta a menacing joke? | [
"BULLET::::- Alligator bait / Gator bait: (U.S.) a black person, especially a black child. More commonly used in states where alligators are found, particularly Florida. First used in the early 20th century, although some hypothesize the term originated in the late 19th century. The term derives from the fact that,... |
what keeps your skin cells in a human shape instead of them reproducing outwards indefinitely? | Oversimplified: Skin grows upward from a base layer - as you go further there's less and less blood supply, and cells aren't supported. The outer surface of your skin is substantially dead cells that form a protective layer.
In the case of injury, other tissues are involved, and chemicals help signal where repair needs to happen. An abscence of those chemicals means repair can stop. | [
"The cells in the stratum granulosum do not divide, but instead form skin cells called keratinocytes from the granules of keratin. These skin cells finally become the cornified layer (\"stratum corneum\"), the outermost epidermal layer, where the cells become flattened sacks with their nuclei located at one end of ... |
How many primary sources do we have about Rome from 700 _URL_0_ 500 a.d? | Virtually all of our literary sources on ancient Rome were transmitted through the Christian monastic system. The oldest literary manuscript we have is the Vatican Vergil, which dates from the early fifth century CE. There are a small handful of manuscripts from about that time period, but I think they are all of Vergil and the Bible.
If you want texts that are older than that you are in the realm of what I consider archaeology, or at least epigraphy. In Latin, there are a handful of extended literary compositions preserved in inscriptions--the most famous is the *Res Gestae Divi Augustus*, an extended (what I would call) pseudo-autobiography of Augustus. There are a few things like this (Claudius' Lyon tablets being another well known example) and there are also examples of poetry on tombs and the like. But outside of these few lucky finds, the vast majority of the corpus of surviving non-transmitted Latin are dedicatory inscriptions, tomb epitaphs, etc. There are also a few examples of administrative records, such as the Vindolanda Tablets.
With Greek we have a few more sources, and not only because the corpus of transmitted Greek literature dwarfs that of Latin. For one, Greek was a common language and culture of Egypt, and Egypt's hot and dry environment preserves manuscripts, giving us some rather extraordinary "new" texts (such as Menander and the Oxyrhynchus historian). Added to that, there are many places in the Greek speaking parts of the empire with a *very* vigorous epigraphic habit, meaning we have more examples of things like civic history from the Greek world. But even with Greek, these finds pale in comparison with the amount of transmitted literature. | [
"The cover matter states \"Part X: The History of Rome from the Earliest Times to 476 AD\" is based chiefly on the works of the following authorities: Ammianus, Appian, Thomas Arnold, Barthélemy Aube, the Augustan History, Julius Caesar, Henry Fynes Clinton, Cicero, Dion Cassius, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Eutropi... |
What are some things that are attributed to Roman culture and society, but actually come from the Etruscans? | A whole lot! Tarquinian kings ruled Rome until 509 BCE, so much of early Roman culture was derived from the Etruscans. Etruscan art became highly sophisticated during the Orientalizing period (c. 700-570 BCE), and Etruscan bucchero pottery exhibited particularly fine craftsmanship for its era that was later imitated by Roman potters. The Tuscan temple plan was originally an Etruscan invention, as were burial urns, tumulus tombs, and corbel arches, to name a few. There aren't many things the Etruscans did that weren't later surpassed by the Romans (the invention of the true arch, for example), but many elements of Roman culture were Etruscan in origin.
I just finished a term studying Classical Art and Archaeology in Rome and visited several significant Etruscan sites (Veii, Sutri, Falerii, Volsinii, Chiusi, Arezzo, Volterra, Populonia, Roselle, Cosa, Tarquinia, and Cerveteri), so hopefully I can be of some help if you have any more questions. | [
"The Etruscans (\"Etrusci\" or \"Tusci\" in Latin) were settled north of Rome in Etruria (modern northern Lazio, Tuscany and part of Umbria). They founded cities like Tarquinia, Veii and Volterra and deeply influenced Roman culture, as clearly shown by the Etruscan origin of some of the mythical Roman kings. The or... |
why did humans lose fur? | _URL_0_
This article brings up an interesting fact about humans and their long-distance running abilities.
> “Ancient humans exploited the fact that humans are good runners in the heat,” Dr. Bramble said. “We have such a great cooling system” — many sweat glands, little body hair.
Humans are outstanding long distance runners, and are (were) able to run down almost any animal. Part of that is our ability to not overheat during the run. Which is helped by not having fur. | [
"Loss of fur occurred at least 2 million years ago, but possibly as early as 3.3 million years ago judging from the divergence of head and pubic lice, and aided persistence hunting (the ability to catch prey in very long distance chases) in the warm savannas where hominins first evolved. The two main advantages are... |
Has any country that engaged in mass surveillance of its own citizens avoided becoming totalitarian? | > > The question was raised by a famous cryptographer Bruce Schneier in this article, but was not answered.
This isn't as good or insightful a question as you might think it is.
Pre-modern governments tend not to have the power or technology to conduct surveillance of individuals en masse in society. The pre-modern state tend to be laissez-faire by necessity, even centralized governments like imperial China's rely on the local land only gentry outside the government for administration below a certain level. There might be surveillance of segments of the political elite, or the occasional purge of commoners, but day to day surveillance of ordinary people's lives are well beyond the capacities of pre-modern states.
Totalitarianism in this sense is also anachronistic, because even the most brutal governments would not be able to exercise the power that, say, the USSR had over its citizens outside of perhaps looting and pillaging during war time.
So you are only really asking about the 20th century, and the answer is that historically speaking regimes which had mass surveillance actually collapsed and turned into more democratic entities. The Statsi and East Germany, the KGB and the USSR are probably the two best examples of this. | [
"Surveillance can be viewed as a violation of privacy, and as such is often opposed by civil liberties activists. A liberal democracy may have laws which restrict domestic government and private use of surveillance. Authoritarian governments seldom have any domestic restrictions, and international espionage is comm... |
what's the difference between a strategist and a tactician? | Strategy is big picture, tactics is more technical. A military example would be:
"let's move our armies to X area to damage the enemy's food supplies" - strategy
"let's go this way and flank the enemy with our soldiers" - tactics | [
"A strategist is a person with responsibility for the formulation and implementation of a strategy. Strategy generally involves setting goals, determining actions to achieve the goals, and mobilizing resources to execute the actions. A strategy describes how the ends (goals) will be achieved by the means (resources... |
why do children so often cry on public transport whilst a private car sends them to sleep? | Maybe its all the strangers comming off and on the bus.
When its a car its just your family and you all the while. | [
"A study by the American Automobile Association (AAA) found that talking to a passenger was as distracting as talking in a call on a hands-free smartphone, and a study by Monash University found that having one or more children in the car was 12 times more distracting than calling while driving. Devid Petrie of the... |
the difference between curd and yogurt. | I like both cheese (curds) and yogurt and no one has answered, so I'll have a go at this.
Milk is made of water, sugars, fat and proteins. When they're all flowing together as a liquid, that's milk or cream.
Curds are formed when the proteins in milk get bunched together and tangled up so that part of the milk turns solid, and part turns extra watery. The solid part is the curds. The liquid part is called whey. If we press the curds together, they become various kinds of cheese.
Yogurt is formed when tiny, tiny microbes decide they want to live in the milk. The microbes are called lactobacilli. When there's such a crowd of them living in the milk that the milk gets thick, that's yogurt.
Maybe for your sixth birthday we can make some cheese! Or yogurt! Go ask mom. | [
"In Indian English, used only in the Indian subcontinent, \"curd\" or \"curds\" instead refers to the traditional homemade yogurt (also known as dahi, while \"paneer\" and \"Chhena\" are used to denote curdled milk.\n",
"Another name for this curd is Chakku yogurt. There is also a reason behind the name. The qual... |
Could there be a noticeable change in heat on objects that are illuminated by a regular light bulb? | Speaking from decades of experience, old style incandescent bulbs radiated 90+% of the energy they consumed as heat. That meant 25 watts was just mood lighting and 40w could barely be read by.
But if you sat by a lamp with a 100w bulb, your bare skin could feel the sensation of heat and under a 200w bulb your skin would noticeably warm. Also:
* Some light fixtures came with fire hazard warnings not to use bulbs higher than 60w.
* Bulbs 60w and up gave painful burns if you touched them while illuminated (or even for a minute or two after).
* A children's toy from the 60's-70's, the EZ Bake Oven, produced simple baked confections using the heat of a 100w incandescent light bulb. | [
"According to classical electromagnetic theory, the photoelectric effect can be attributed to the transfer of energy from the light to an electron. From this perspective, an alteration in the intensity of light would induce changes in the kinetic energy of the electrons emitted from the metal. Furthermore, accordin... |
How were microprocessors made before automated robots (which use microprocessors) were invented? | Microprocessors are really just integrated circuits (ICs). The first IC was fairly primative and was developed by Jack Kilby. You can see what it looked like [here](_URL_0_).
Keep in mind, integrated circuits are really just circuits made out of semiconductor substrates (e.g. silicon). The actual circuit components such as resistors, capacitors, transistors, etc can be made _outside_ of silicon as well. That means that you can actually build a computer with discrete components (not an integrated circuit). In addition to building a digital computer like that, I'd suggest looking into the topic of analog computers, which run entirely on analog signals (using op-amps and resistors) instead of digital signals.
Primative machinery used to make the first commercially available ICs were made of the aforementioned computers. In reality, they weren't automated, but rather a computer assisted system. Laser etching is a popular method for creating the structures in semiconductor substrate, and computer control of the motors that move the laser around allow for much greater precision than a human could ever achieve.
You can effectively "boot strap" and over the years the technology keeps getting smaller, more precise, and cheaper. | [
"The first uses of modern robots were in factories as industrial robots – simple fixed machines capable of manufacturing tasks which allowed production with less need for human assistance. Digitally controlled industrial robots and robots using artificial intelligence have been built since the 2000s.\n",
"Industr... |
why is it bad for our body to shower daily, but it's okay to wash our hands many times a day? | I think I'll have to disagree with your premise. Can you show evidence that your claim of daily showers being bad?
| [
"More frequent is washing of just the hands, e.g. before and after preparing food and eating, after using the toilet, after handling something dirty, etc. Hand washing is important in reducing the spread of germs. Also common is washing the face, which is done after waking up, or to keep oneself cool during the day... |
the difference between countries ruled by england (eg scotland/wales) and colonies of england (eg canada/australia) | Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland are all constituent countries of the United Kingdom. Although England is the largest country and home to the capital, England does not rule the other countries. in fact its the other way around as the other countries each have thier own governments while England does not.
Canada and Australia are Commonwealth realms, in that they are both in personal union (the Queen of Canada, Australia and Great Britain & Northern Ireland are all the same person) and both members of the Commonwealth of Nations - the club founded for ex-members of the British Empire. They have no formal constitutional links to the United Kingdom and are not colonies
| [
"Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom are also Commonwealth Realms which share Elizabeth II as constitutional monarch and head of state. The countries share a number of institutional, linguistic and religious similarities such as the use of the Westminster parliamentary system of government, Common... |
Do more physically attractive people tend to have more pleasant (or even sexy) voices? What role does voice play in human mate selection? | Not so much. The markers identified for physical attraction (facial symmetry) and voice preferences (vocal tract size) do not correlate in either direction. Furthermore, the studies that have discovered these preferences lack cross-cultural validation.
**Voice:** Even within a population, these preferences appear to shift. In one study of native English speakers, men appear to prefer ladies with higher-pitched voices while women's preferences shifted to higher-pitched during breastfeeding and lower-pitched elsewhere (Apicella & Feinberg, 2009).
Vukovic et al. (2010) demonstrated that women's preference for male voice pitch depends on the woman's own vocal pitch.
As most studies in this area seem to focus on pitch, an understanding of what causes a voice to be higher or lower pitch is important. Roughly, this depends on the size of the person - specifically, their vocal folds. This is somewhat akin to a wind instrument, in that short vocal folds will produce higher pitches (e.g., the mouthpiece of a trumpet) and longer vocal folds will produce lower pitches (e.g., the mouthpiece of a tuba). For a brief overview, see this [NCVS article on the fundamental frequency in voice production](_URL_0_).
**Physical attractiveness:** Again, judgments of physical appeal vary widely by culture. However, studies that have looked at this tend to identify facial symmetry as a key attribute (e.g., Grammer & Thornhill, 1994). While facial symmetry may have some relation to vocal tract shape, the size of the vocal tract bears little relationship to facial symmetry.
Does that answer your questions?
**References:**
Apicella, C. L., & Feinberg, D. R. (2009). Voice pitch alters mate-choice-relevant perception in hunter–gatherers. *Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences*, 276(1659), 1077-1082.
Grammer, K., & Thornhill, R. (1994). Human (Homo sapiens) facial attractiveness and sexual selection: The role of symmetry and averageness. *Journal of Comparative Psychology*, 108(3), 233.
Vukovic, J., Jones, B. C., DeBruine, L., Feinberg, D. R., Smith, F. G., Little, A. C., Welling, L. L. M., & Main, J. (2010). Women’s own voice pitch predicts their preferences for masculinity in men’s voices. *Behavioral Ecology*, 21(4), 767-772.
**Edit:** Corrected explanation of where the fundamental frequency comes from. Thanks to [seabasser](_URL_2_) and [badassholdingakitten](_URL_1_) for their helpful comments! | [
"In addition to physical looks, quality of voice has also been shown to enhance interpersonal attraction. Oguchi and Kikuchi (1997) had 25 female students from one university rank the level of vocal attraction, physical attraction, and overall interpersonal attraction of 4 male students from another university. Voc... |
can somebody please explain how the person betting $1billion that the united states will lose it's aaa rating will make money if that happens. | You can [short sell](_URL_0_) anything. In this case, he shorted US government bonds.
Short selling is the practice of borrowing a stock or bond (or anything) from person A and selling it to person B. Then after the price goes down (hopefully), you buy it from person C and sell it back to person A. Boom - you pocket the difference.
Example: You borrow Microsoft stock from Person A and sell it on the market for $50, then when the price goes down to $40, you buy it back and give it back to Person A: pocketing an easy $10 minus the small interest you had to pay to Person A. The risk is that if the price goes to $90, person A (or more likely the broker you use) will demand you give the stock back (margin call), thereby forcing you to repurchase it at $90: losing you $40.
If you borrow money to make that first purchase (leverage), you can make more than you originally had - or go totally bankrupt if the price goes up. | [
"Standard & Poor's downgraded America's credit rating from AAA to AA+ on 6 August 2011 for the first time. The US had a AAA rating since 1941. Standard and Poor's said that it could go down further than AA+, with Moody's also warning of a potential downgrade of the government's credit rating.\n",
"Several credit ... |
Red and blue images on my phone look 3D through my corrective glasses. What gives? | It looks like the polarizer on your phone and the anti-glare coating on your glasses Real interacting to create a ChromaDepth effect.
This website explains the phenomenon quite well:
_URL_0_ | [
"In Blue Only mode only the blue pixels of a display render the picture on the screen - or, for CRT displays, the blue cathode ray tube. Thus we see only the blue channel of the image, but rather blue tinted than black and white. Areas with blue color in it appear bright and those without blue color appear dark or ... |
why do some pencil sharpeners work perfectly and others simply mutilate my pencil slowly without sharpening the lead? | There is 2 main factors to a good pencil sharpener. 1 - Blade sharpness, the sharper the blade the more smoothly you can sharpen your pen without the tip "cracking" and the sharper it is the sharper the maximum sharpness the tip can be. 2 - The plastic guider that guides the pencil into the blade, if the guider is of bad quality it may guide the pencil such that when you sharpen it the tip of the pencil does not touch the blade at all thus making the pencil dull. | [
"Mechanical pencils dispense the graphite lead progressively during use and thus do not require sharpening; such pencils are sometimes called \"self-sharpening\". A type of mechanical pencil has a rotating gear mechanism which rotates the lead slightly every time the lead is lifted off the paper, helping to maintai... |
what happens if a wedding guest "speaks now" instead of "forever holding their peace"? | Usually nothing. By that time if someone speaks up at that moment, they're drunk or delusional.
But, there is a good reason to do this. Marriage is a funny institution, so one cannot legally be married to two people at a time. I remember reading a case where a women had been trying to get her husband to sign divorce papers. He wouldn't and was ducking her for years.
So she showed up to the wedding and objected, on the basis that he was still legally married. The official couldn't go on with the ceremony, so he was forced to sign. It was a mess, but I've heard of it happening before (and it'll surely happen again). | [
"BULLET::::- 389: Frenemies – Speak now or forever hold your peace (September 11, 2009): Rakoff demonstrates—in rhyme—how to make a wedding toast for people you never wanted to see married in the first place\n",
"Sandy keeps quiet about what she has seen. At the wedding she almost speaks up at the point in the ce... |
What exactly would Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels have been charged with had they been tried at Nuremberg? | There were 4 indictments leveled against Goering and the other high ranking Nazi's in the first of the series of Nuremberg Trials. They were:
A. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace
B. Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace
C. War crimes
D. Crimes against humanity
Goering was convicted of all 4, and there is no doubt Hitler would have been convicted as well.
Now, let's look at Himmler. He would said he was innocent of the first two as he was not a military man and didn't plan any wars. On the second two who would have denied knowing of the crimes.
On the second two there is no doubt he would have been convicted as of course he was involved but also his subordinate Kaltenbrunner was convicted with the same defense.
He may have been declared innocent on A. or B., but it's unlikely as other party insiders were convicted of them, including Hess, when Hess was probably innocent of that anyway. Even Wilhelm Frick, the minister of the interior was convicted on B simply because of his high rank pretty much.
So, Himmler is convicted of all 4 and executed most likely.
Goebbels would have said that he was the minister of Propaganda and was not a military man and that his position was a civillian one and that's it.
He still gets convicted on all 4 because:
1. He specifically was involved in war crimes including the overseeing the shipment out of Berlin of Berline's jews. 2. His role as a propaganda man would have still gotten him convicted as they convicted Julius Streicher of it even though he was just an evil dumbass who edited a magazine and had no real power.
As to the first two, I contend that Goebbels still would have been convicted for the some reason Hess was.
| [
"BULLET::::- In Munich, Adolf Hitler was fined 1,000 marks for contempt of court and threatened with prison time for refusing to answer questions from a Jewish lawyer. Hitler had been called as a witness in a perjury lawsuit against the writer Werner Abel, who accused Hitler of accepting bribes from Italian Fascist... |
what happens to my feces when it’s at the gates but i’m driving and can’t stop to defecate? it feels as though it simply goes away and i get a bit of stomach rumbles | What makes you feel like you have to poop (or pee for that matter) is that there are muscles in your stomach which you don't have any control over. Those muscles try to push the poop/pee against muscles that you do have control over, so you have to push back to keep the poop/pee in.
Even though you don't have conscious control over those push out muscles, you do still have some unconscious control over them. When you're in a situation where you know you can't poop/pee right now, those muscles relax and stop pushing. This means that you don't need to push back to hold the poop/pee in anymore, and the feeling of having to go to the bathroom goes away. But the poop/pee doesn't go anywhere - its right where it was back when you felt like you had to go to the bathroom, its just you can't feel the poop/pee unless its being shoved forward against the muscles that you control. | [
"Humans expel feces with a frequency varying from a few times daily to a few times weekly. Waves of muscular contraction (known as \"peristalsis\") in the walls of the colon move fecal matter through the digestive tract towards the rectum. Undigested food may also be expelled this way, in a process called \"egestio... |
Is there any scientific studies on the difference between children raised by gay parents vs. heterosexual or single parents? | Not sure why this is getting downvotes, the question is valid, we are all shaped by our experiences and our environment it is not a controversial hypothesis that there could be differences between heterosexual parents and gay/lesbian parents. In the same way that there could also be a difference between gay men and lesbian parents, or a single mother or a single father. Or a big family, the gender make-up of the sibelings, all factors that have a different impact on an upbringing.
There has been some research done on this but there isn't a lot. There is more on lesbian parenting then on gay men parenting.
Sample sizes also seem to be a problem especially with gay men. Factors like adoption on a later age then infancy can skew with the results.
This is a quote from page 14 of the first link posted below:
> In conclusion, the results of this study point to family
> processes as being more clearly associated than family
> structure with positive outcomes for parents and chil-
> dren in adoptive families. Family process variables such
> as parenting stress, parenting strategies, and couple
> relationship satisfaction were significantly associated
> with assessments of child behavior problems. In com-
> parison, parental sexual orientation was unrelated to
> children’s adjustment. That family process was more
> closely associated than family structure with outcomes
> among adopted children is a result that is important
> both to developmental theory and to family policy.
This seems to be the general consesus from most sources. This however hardly really answers your question. Most studies I have come across try to measure the overal happiness, disadvantages compared to peers, grades, etc. Not other differences like personality.
This is quoted from the 4th link below at the end of the article:
> * Teenage boys raised by lesbians are more sexually restrained, less aggressive and more nurturing then boys raised in heterosexual families.
>
> * Adolescent and young adult girls raised by lesbian mothers appear to be more sexually adventurous and less chaste. Sons of lesbians display the opposite – boys are choosier in their relationships and tend to have sex at a later age than boys raised by heterosexuals.
>
> * It is more common for both lesbian moms to be employed, to earn similar incomes and to cut back on their hours of paid work in order to nurture young children. Some research indicates that egalitarian parenting contributes to child well-being, Stacey said.
>
> * Same-sex couples proved better at managing disagreements and anger than did comparable heterosexual married couples. Research suggests that parental conflict may be one of the most significant sources of difficulty for children, Stacey said.
Hardly conclusive, one of the researchers explained why on this subject there probably isn't a lot of data.
Quote is again from the 4th article linked:
> "*Studying how the numbers, genders and sexualities of parents interact to influence children could give us valuable information relevant to central questions in family theory,*" said Biblarz.
>
> "*Researchers have been reluctant to investigate differences among children for fear that such evidence will be used to discriminate against gay families.*"
**TL;DR**: General consesus seems to be that kids of gay parents don't suffer any big measurable disadvantage or advantage compared to their heteory sexual counterparts that is linkable to the sexual orientation or parent gender make-up. The difference outside of societal performance hasn't been studied much at all so there hardly is any data credible data on this that I could find.
Sources:
* _URL_0_
* _URL_3_
* _URL_4_
* _URL_2_
My own credentials: Non, other then following the physics course online of MIT which has nothing to do with psychology. If anything seems out of context or misleading then my apologies, make sure read the sources.
There is a pretty extensive article on LBGT parenting on Wikipedia, I didn't read it though, have fun checking the sources! If you are any lucky some will start with _URL_1_.
* _URL_5_ | [
"A 2002 review of the literature identified 20 studies examining outcomes among children raised by gay or lesbian parents and found that these children did not systematically differ from those raised by heterosexual parents on any of the studied outcomes.\n",
"Scientific research has been generally consistent in ... |
Who were the major "sex symbols" of the 19th century? | A discussion of this sort should probably begin with Sarah Bernhardt, who set Europe ablaze with her acting and her rambunctious public persona from the 1870s onwards. She was rumoured to be romantically linked with dozens of then-famous men - including some, like Gustave Doré, Alphonse Mucha, and *Nikola Tesla* (who famously rejected her advances) who are still well-known today. This is to say nothing of the European royals who clamoured to have her on their arms, ranging from the smallest satellite houses of Belgium up to the man who would become King Edward VII of the United Kingdom.
She was scandalous, fun, beautiful (by the standards of the age, at least; I think [she's pretty great](_URL_0_) even by our own, too - picture by Doré), outspoken, and existed at the centre of a sort of riotous, unending party that traipsed around France and the rest of Europe during *La Belle Époque*.
As for others, I'm afraid I know rather less. You'll probably want to look into courtesans, who were that period's equivalent to Crawford/Monroe-style sex symbols. [Liane de Pougy](_URL_1_) was an especially famous one, but I only ever heard of her while investigating celebrities who lost children in the Great War and don't know much about her beyond that she was a very big deal - though not on the level of The Divine Sarah. | [
"The term \"sex symbol\" was first used in the mid-1950s in relation to the popularity of certain film stars and pin-up models, including Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot, and Raquel Welch. This concept was a reflection of the post-World War II increase of sexual and economic emancipation of women. \n",
"Towards t... |
Why are Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian (Uralic Languages) under the same language family and how did they become related? | They didn't become related. The common roots of the 3 languages (with only about 200 related words) originated just west of the Ural Mountains and grew further and further apart with time. The first mention of any Uralic language was in 98 AD in Tacitus's "Germania." The languages are very distantly related. | [
"BULLET::::2. The second main argument is that, although Hungarian does have similarities in structure and vocabulary with Finno-Ugric languages, it has equally significant and fundamental similarities to other language groups, such as the Turkic languages. The alternative theories claim that the connections betwee... |
burning wood to create energy does not create global warming? | Our planet has not always been the same as it was now. It took a very long time for photosynthetic life to store all of the carbon currently sequestered. (It's also worth noting that not all carbon in the world is either in plants or the atmosphere.) The problem is that when people burn wood for fuel, we have the capacity to burn wood far more quickly than plants can fix CO2 from the atmosphere. Though the net amount of carbon on Earth is pretty fixed, the percentage in the atmosphere is currently increasing. | [
"As fossil fuels, burning wood causes greenhouse effect gases. However, wood is a renewable source of energy. A sustainable heat system would be to use solar heat in the summer, and the minimum of wood in the winter, thanks to maximum insulation.\n",
"The environmental impact of using wood as a fuel depends on ho... |
beyond the protection of fame and money, how do serial sexual predators like cosby, weinstein, or spacey get away without serving any jail time? | You can only get jail time of you're convicted of a crime. A lot of the people accused of sexual misconduct are accused of behaviors which aren't actually criminal. They might be unlawful civilly, where they could be sued over it, or they might just be severely frowned upon, but you only get jail if you're convicted of a crime. What is and is not a crime is not open to interpretation - there has to be a pre-existing statute on the books, in effect, that spells out exactly what counts as that crime.
Even when they are accused of a crime, sometimes they aren't charged with a crime because the statute of limitations has elapsed, which means they can no longer be charged for that, or the prosecutor lacks a good-fairh belief that the charge could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt - at which point the ethical rules forbid bringing the charge.
Cosby was tried for a criminal offense. He was acquitted: the jury did not believe the evidence proved him guilty *beyond any reasonable doubt.* Whether the jury felt that someone's testimony alone wasn't enough, or whether the long delay before reporting it made the jury question the accuracy or authenticity of the testimony, we'll never know, but the criminal court is not designed to convict everyone who's guilty - it's designed to convict the fewest number of innocent people possible.
| [
"The crime of stalking is punishable in California by imprisonment in a county jail for not more than one year, or by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars ($1,000), or by both that fine and imprisonment, or by imprisonment in the state prison. The punishment for violating a CHO is 2–4 years of imprisonment.... |
Why is hypoglycemia a symptom of diabetes? | Future Med Student here!
Hypoglycemia, or low blood glucose, is a side effect of treating diabetes. There are 2 types of diabetes, insulin dependent or non-insulin dependent. In insulin dependent (type 1) the pancreas produces little or no insulin; in insulin independent (type 2) the pancreas produces insulin, but the body's cells are resistent to its effects.
So that brings us to what insulin does- insulin is a hormone that, when it binds to its receptor, it causes the cell to mobilize glucose transporters to the cell's surface so that they can bring glucose into the cell. Taking extra insulin, enough that the body is *forced* to respond, even if it is resistant, would cause excess glucose to be taken from the bloodstream into the cells, causing hypoglycemia. Those that take extra insulin, or have not had a meal in a long time (thus, there is little glucose in the bloodstream), will develop hypoglycemia. *Hyper*glycemia, or high blood sugar, is a symptom of diabetes. Hypoglycemia, on the other hand, results from treating diabetes | [
"Hypoglycaemia occurs when blood sugar levels drop too low; it can cause a variety of symptoms including hunger, sweating, rapid heart rate, and shaking. If left untreated, hypoglycaemia can lead to a loss of consciousness. Onset of hypoglycaemia can be sudden, requiring glucose levels to be normalised by consuming... |
Why do we steer vehicles from the front, but aircraft (elevators/rudder) from the rear? | That's a good question, but in short the way vehicles and aircraft are controlled aren't really related. I can explain why standard aircraft have the control surfaces at the back on the tail (the rudder/vertical stabilizer/elevator/horizontal stabilizer assembly being called the *empennage*).
Also note, some ground vehicles like forklifts do use the rear wheels for directional steering because it enables you to align the forks more easily in tight spaces by making the front wheels near the forces your pivot point. And also note, some aircraft do have their control surfaces towards the front of the aircraft - the original wright flighter had the elevator at the front of the craft. Some modern fighter aircraft such as the Eurofighter also do this with "canards".
The first role of the empennage of a standard aircraft configuration is for *stability*. Think of it like a weathervane/weathercock: when you perturb the aircraft in a yaw or pitch motion, the vertical and horizontal stabilizers respectively return you to a straight orientation. This works because they're located far behind the center of gravity of the aircraft. If you were to reverse this configuration and had the empennage in front of the center of gravity, they would have an opposite effect on stability.
Imagine holding a large board, plywood or posterboard in the wind. If you try to orient it into the wind, it'll quickly try to pitch up or down, and it's difficult to hold it flat and level -- that's instability. Now if you hold it downwind, it's very easy to hold it flat and level, the wind helps you -- that's stability.
So knowing that you need that empennage at the rear of the aircraft for stability, it makes sense to also put your control surfaces (elevator and rudder) there as well, because you have a nice long moment arm giving you good control authority compared to something closer to the center of gravity, where you'd have no moment to work with. | [
"When an aircraft is steered on the ground exclusively using the rudder, turning the plane requires that a substantial airflow be moving past the rudder, which can be generated either by the forward motion of the aircraft or by thrust provided by the engines. Rudder steering requires considerable practice to use ef... |
why can't they make space elevators with propellers on them to reduce tension forces? | That would only work in the atmosphere, where the propellers have something to push: air. But the cable will experience the same amount of tension above the atmosphere, where there is no air for the propellers to push. The only real solution is to find a way to manufacture, in large quantity at reasonable cost, a material with the necessary tensile strength. | [
"Both the horizontal stabilizer and the elevator contribute to pitch stability, but only the elevators provide pitch control. They do so by decreasing or increasing the downward force created by the stabilizer:\n",
"Historically, the main technical problem has been considered the ability of the cable to hold up, ... |
What are the margins of error in elections? If a study hasn't been done, how could we construct one? | You can look at recounts to get a sense of how much the count varies on repeated measurements. I found some statistics here: _URL_0_
Based on those 72 counties, the average relative change in Prosser's vote was 0.999877827 and the standard deviation over counties was 0.001448963.
In terms of absolute votes, the average was -5, the standard deviation was 12, and the rms change was 13.
| [
"Another way to reduce the margin of error is to rely on poll averages. This makes the assumption that the procedure is similar enough between many different polls and uses the sample size of each poll to create a polling average. An example of a polling average can be found here: 2008 Presidential Election polling... |
what makes some color combinations more aisthetically pleasing than others? | Mostly it comes to personal preference. I would recommend watching this video by Kurzgesagt about what makes humans 'like pretty things.' | [
"Designers should also note that red-blue and yellow-blue color combinations are generally safe. So instead of the ever-popular \"red means bad and green means good\" system, using these combinations can lead to a much higher ability to use color coding effectively. This will still cause problems for those with mon... |
When does a baby get its own blood type? | Depending on what you mean, either a. immediately upon conception, because the blood type is genetically determined or b. around week five when first blood cells are formed according to those genetic instructions. | [
"ABO blood grouping and screening for antibodies in neonates differs from blood grouping in adults and older children. Any antibodies detected are the mother's antibodies rather than the baby's. Therefore, any donor blood given to the baby must be ABO and D compatible with both mother and baby; and antigen-negative... |
It's a common trope in 19th century fiction for a character to descend into insanity. What would 19th century "insanity" mean in modern medical terms? | Edit: Thanks for your patience, everyone. I hope you will enjoy my answer: please scroll further down the page to find what became many hours of research for your amusement and edification.
Could you please give some examples of the texts you mean? For example, a lot of research has been done on the trope of the "madwoman in the attic" trope and hysteria, which was a medical diagnosis of the time primarily, but not exclusively, applied to women. This is the 19th century novel madness that I'm most familiar with. The classic study on this is the aptly titled *The Madwoman in the Attic* by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, from 1979. I actually just gave a presentation about Silas Weir Mitchell, the so-called "rest cure," and representations of female insanity in 19th century literature, but I'd like a confirmation that this is the sort of thing you're talking about before I delve in, for fear that I might be off-base. (Another possible contender for "madness" is the sudden shock that characters suffer that changes them completely in some books, such as what happens to Sir Leicester Dedlock in *Bleak House* or Mr. Hale in *North and South.* You might also be thinking of the kind of "madness" that Ben Gunn suffers from in *Treasure Island*, or the insanity of characters in Edgar Allan Poe's stories.)
I should also note that our contemporary understanding of psychology really can't be read onto an artifact of the past. At most, we can say that today what was diagnosed/described one way might be diagnosed as a certain disorder. Also, the way that madness is represented in a fictional story is not necessarily reflecting actual medical understanding, but as a literary device is serving some other purpose. | [
"In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, terms such as \"madness,\" \"lunacy\" or \"insanity\"—all of which assumed a unitary psychosis—were split into numerous \"mental diseases,\" of which catatonia, melancholia and dementia praecox (modern day schizophrenia) were the most common in psychiatric institutions.\n... |
how do chinese speakers imply sarcasm? | You can still stress syllables in Chinese without changing the tone. In addition in China people tend to be very creative with word choices and puns to imply sarcasm or even insults.
Source: Native speaker. | [
"In English, sarcasm is often telegraphed with kinesic/prosodic cues by speaking more slowly and with a lower pitch. Similarly, Dutch uses a lowered pitch; sometimes to such an extent that the expression is reduced to a mere mumble. But other research shows that there are many ways that real speakers signal sarcast... |
Question about US Air Force rank structure during WWII | Short answer. The Air Force was a branch of the army in WW2 and used Army ranks. It was known as [The United States Army Air Forces](_URL_0_).
The US Air Force was not active until 1947. | [
"When the ranks of the RAF were designed, an officer with the rank of group captain (equivalent to colonel and naval captain) commanded such a unit, although by the time of World War II, many groups were commanded by air commodores (equivalent to brigadiers/brigadier generals and commodores) or air vice-marshals (e... |
How did ancient Greek and Roman sculptures survive in such good condition for so long? | One of the larger factors in the survival for more than 2000+ years of Greek and Roman statues (and buildings) has been the relative lack of large scale heavy industry in their immediate vicinity.
A great deal of damage was caused between circa 1940 and 1980 by [Acid Rain](_URL_0_) which, while less of a threat now due to stricter emissions control, remains an ongoing cumulative threat.
The Parthenon being blown up by explosives was a singular tragedy, altering the chemistry of the very air we breathe and causing it too dissolve millennia of history carved in stone is a Greek tragedy.
| [
"Examples of Roman sculpture survive abundantly, though often in damaged or fragmentary condition, including freestanding statues and statuettes in marble, bronze and terracotta, and reliefs from public buildings, temples, and monuments such as the Ara Pacis, Trajan's Column, and the Arch of Titus. Niches in amphit... |
why do people that play hockey or other sports left handed prefer to golf right handed? | Canadian kids starting to learn hockey are taught to place their dominant hand on the end of the stick. This translates to playing golf "left-handed" | [
"The game of golf is most commonly played right-handed, and left-handed players typically must provide their own special golf clubs. The game can be played with both hands, provided the player has both left- and right-handed clubs, giving an advantage over one-handed players. Professional golfer Phil Mickelson play... |
if we have enough grain and milk sitting in silos around the usa to feed the world why do we give farmers subsidizes to burn it instead of using that money to give it away? | To stabilize the price. Too much supply will result in price drop which will drive lot of farms out of business which will decrease the supply and cause price spike.
We are doing this to stop volatility in prices. | [
"BULLET::::6. \"Yet the United States, even if it fully cultivates all its land, even if it opens every spigot of charity, will not have enough wheat and other foodstuffs to keep alive all the starving\" (p. 206)\n",
"The US Agricultural Act of 1949 made surplus US agricultural products available to be shipped ab... |
why did nature make us intelligent instead of strong? | We are actually quite large and strong. We are not as strong as some other primates, but we have a lot more stamina, and we can run farther (although not faster) than just about any land animal in existence. While we lack the innate weapons of other large predators, we can still kill many smaller animals with our bare hands or with extremely simple tools.
The theories behind the evolution of intelligence are varied. One idea is that at some point intelligence became sexually attractive and so increased over time. A similar theory states that intelligence was used to succeed in complex social environments, and so more intelligent individuals would have more progeny.
So, to answer your question, we are reasonably strong and have incredible stamina and intelligence. Some scientists have proposed that the shift from strength to stamina (relative to other large primates) occurred when our primate ancestors left the forest and began living in grassland environments.
| [
"BULLET::::- The power of nature over the lives of humans is demonstrated throughout the narrative with the rising of the water levels of the Great Salt Lake. Just by the flooding alone, the residents of the area had their lives interrupted to the point that they considered intervention the only option. Williams, h... |
Is there an end to the obesity epidemic in sight? | I found better data for overweight so I will make my arguments for overweight instead of obesity. The correlation is so high that it makes no difference.
1) The adult population of some states in the US is now ~67% overweight (Mississippi, West Virginia) and the trend is still going up. So we have not reached an upper bound yet.
2) Childhood overweight increases the risk for adult overweight and the rate of overweight children is increasing.
3) Overweight in the US is associated with low income. The current economic crisis puts a lot of pressure on the middle class and increases poverty.
So from 1-3 I would estimate that overweight/obesity will increase in the near and mid-term future.
What could turn the trend around?
**Medical breakthrough**
A magic pill that makes people thin or crave only for healthy food could eliminate obesity virtually overnight. But even if such a drug is found today it will take years to get it to the market and it might be quite expensive.
**Policy change**
The government could stop subsidizing high-fructose corn sirup, make laws for maximum portion sizes, ban advertisement for fast food, tax unhealthy food and so on. Some of this is done in Europe but I doubt it will find enough support in the USA. The status quo is too profitable.
**Change in Food culture**
It is always possible that home-cooking for friends and family with fresh and healthy ingredients becomes mainstream. This is impossible to predict and in a deeply divided country like the US it is very difficult for a trend to get everyone on board. | [
"Brownell and many of his colleagues attribute the nation’s obesity epidemic to the toxic environment. In 1995, the Institute of Medicine noted that the human gene pool has not undergone any real change over the past several decades when obesity has been on the rise. Therefore, the root of the obesity crisis must l... |
If fever is a common means of thwarting infection, why haven't bacteria and viruses evolved to tolerate a slightly higher body temperature? | You've struck on a very interesting and "hot" topic in evolutionary medicine.
One interesting theory (and I may be biased, since it's been posited by my adviser) claims that it's a form of micro-selection. First, it should be noted that even one "strain" of a pathogen still exhibits slightly different variants, as one would expect in a rapidly reproducing genetic organism. So, basically, by altering the environment a few degrees, you are selecting for pathogens that thrive in a slightly hotter environment. Then, you facultatively lower the temperature (break the fever), and engage in another micro-selection event, but the original pathogens may at this point have been outcompeted by the slightly more temperature-tolerant pathogens. In a sense, you're pitting them against each other. | [
"In theory, fever can aid in host defense. There are certainly some important immunological reactions that are sped up by temperature, and some pathogens with strict temperature preferences could be hindered.\n",
"Temperature has the highest effect on virus’s survival in water since lower temperatures are the key... |
What does the word Way mean in The Milky Way? | In the night sky without light pollution, you'll see a white cloudy band, like a milky-colored road through the sky. Presumably because of this, this band was called in Latin the "Via Lactea" which we translate into English as "the Milky Way" -- *way* as in *road* or *path*. And this band is the Milky Way galaxy as we see it (not counting closer stars that we see as individual points of light).
You might want to take a look at [this](_URL_0_). | [
"In western culture, the name \"Milky Way\" is derived from its appearance as a dim un-resolved \"milky\" glowing band arching across the night sky. The term is a translation of the Classical Latin \"via lactea\", in turn derived from the Hellenistic Greek , short for (', \"milky circle\"). The Ancient Greek (') – ... |
when i'm watching satellite tv, is the satellite transmitting all the channels at once for my receiver to pick one or is my receiver requesting a channel to the satellite? | They broadcast from a few satellites on horizontal and vertical polarity. Your dish selects which satellite and polarity, but it still **receives many channels at once**.
The signal going from the dish to the receiver has many radio carriers, and the receiver has to tune to the desired one. Further, within each carrier there are multiple digital streams, each representing one channel.
They have video on demand as well, but that uses an internet connection. | [
"The set-top box selects the channel desired by the user by filtering that channel from the multiple channels received from the satellite, converts the signal to a lower intermediate frequency, decrypts the encrypted signal, demodulates the radio signal and sends the resulting video signal to the television through... |
why do first nations / native people in canada continue to live on reservations where they have poor housing, below par schools and medical access, few jobs, poor quality of life and limited prospects for their children? | Partly culture but mainly land claims. If they all abandoned their reserves it'd be harder for them to claim their treaty rights on the land.
I think this duality inside Canada is a shame though. It's basically apartheid. They live in squalor because of how remote they are but they can't really relocate because of costs (and social issues that prevent them from having paying jobs/money) and land claims.
It'd be nicer to declare reserves as undeveloped (or less invasively developed) national parks (e.g. prevent destruction of wildlife) and then just make them all part of Canada proper (e.g. natives don't have to hold their flag post anymore) | [
"Some Indians have immigrated from the United Kingdom and the United States due to both economic and family reasons. Indians move for economic prospects to Canada's economy and job market and have been performing well against many European and some American states. Lastly, individuals have decided to settle in Cana... |
what's causing the very high pitched engine noise and bangs usually rally cars produce? | Straight cut gears (used because stronger than the quieter helical cut gears used in most road cars)will whine" at higher road speeds.
A blow off valve or BOV will vent excess turbo boost pressure when the throttle is closed, this generally produces a high pitched "squeak"
An anti lag system will delay the ignition after the throttle is closed so that the fuel/air mix is still burning when it enters the exhaust manifold so keeps the turbine spinning so full boost can be made sooner when the throttle is opened again. This makes the loud pops and bangs. Also massively shortens turbo life to around 1000km. | [
"Due to their characteristic howling start-up noise, which is typical for three-phase AC motors with pulsed voltage control, these vehicles are occasionally also called \"circular saws\", \"hoe buoys\" or \"flying alarms\". The loud start-up and brake noise has led to many complaints.\n",
"Cars significantly cont... |
why do pets play with/are scared of their own tails? do they not know they're their own? | Young dogs and cats do it because it's fun. They like having fun just like we do. Slightly older pets might do it to get attention from humans since we tend to find the spectacle to be hilarious. If you have an elderly pet chasing their tail regularly, you might want to consider taking them to a vet because it might be indicative of another problem. | [
"Animals respond to threats in many complex ways. Rats, for instance, try to escape when threatened, but will fight when cornered. Some animals stand perfectly still so that predators will not see them. Many animals freeze or play dead when touched in the hope that the predator will lose interest.\n",
"The signal... |
What was the long term ecological impact of the Narnian ice age? | The Narnian ice age (which is more properly categorised as a pessimum, as Narnia was - still is - in an ice age during the entire time, an ice age being properly defined as a time when both the polar caps are full of ice year long, and when the sweet sea that rocks Aslan's realm drops below 10 degrees surface temperature) was of course, as all climate phenomena are, felt in effect in the entire North part of the world. Whereas some regions were rendered completely uninhabitable - such as the Far North, where the population mostly retreated underground, where fabulous archaeological traces remain - or suffered from a severe drop in agricultural output, such as Narnia and to a lesser extent Archenland (the population of which was boosted by Narnian immigration, both to escape the climate and the persecutions of Jadis), others suddenly felt the effects of warmer climes. The biggest example for this category is Calormen, where the hinterland of Tashbaan in particular became a major agricultural centre almost overnight, allowing the city's warlords to progressively subjugate the nearby dukedoms, and create the Calormene Empire, headquartered in Tashbaan obviously. Another country which suffered terribly from the pessimum was Telmar, whose population of Talking Beasts, already weakened by hunting, was made entirely extinct by the shortages of the Winter. | [
"Regions that experienced greater environmental effects as the last ice age ended have a much more evident Mesolithic era, lasting millennia. In Northern Europe, societies were able to live well on rich food supplies from the marshlands fostered by the warmer climate. Such conditions produced distinctive human beha... |
how to choose delicious watermelon? | Weight and sound. The heaviest one per size means that they have more water, and usually more sweetness. When you tap on the watermelon it should be more of a dull/muffled thud rather than a higher pitched sound. | [
"Watermelon soup is prepared with watermelon as a primary ingredient, and may be served chilled. The seeds of the watermelon may be removed, or seedless watermelon may be used, and additional ingredients can include additional fruits, ginger, chili pepper and sugar.\n",
"Sukiyan is prepared by cooking green gram ... |
Do Immunosuppressant medications cancel historical vaccinations? | Defective? No. The vaccine-induced immune responses would be suppressed via general suppression of humoral and cellular responses, but it would still be recoverable. Vaccine-induced immunity is essentially stored in memory B and T cells. If an infection occurs, these cells recognize elements of the pathogen and undergo clonal expansion to mount an attack against it. The only way to permanently remove the vaccine-induced immunity would be to kill the reservoir of related memory cells. | [
"As with other immunosuppressants, application of live vaccines is contraindicated because the microorganisms in the vaccine could multiply and infect the patient. Inactivated and toxoid vaccines do not hold this risk, but may not be effective under imatinib therapy.\n",
"To help avoid shortages of these drugs, t... |
why am i so tired after flying, or other times where i sit all day? | I know that, for me, I feel tired when I get off a plane because I just spent the past few hours scrunching in my shoulders and arms and keeping my legs together in order to not encroach on the space of the person sitting next to me. If I were sitting in a regular chair at my office for the same duration of time, I would be able to have a much more relaxed posture. Airplane seats just aren't made for a taller person with broad shoulders, but I'd rather inconvenience myself than get in someone else's space. | [
"Due to the work nature of airline pilots, who often cross several timezones and regions of sunlight and darkness in one day, and spend many hours awake both day and night, they are often unable to maintain sleep patterns that correspond to the natural human circadian rhythm; this situation can easily lead to fatig... |
Since the Earth and the Sun are constantly moving in their respective orbits, is it fair to say we'll never be in the same spot in the Universe again? | > As I understand astronomy, the Earth is orbiting the Sun
That's one reference frame. There's also a reference frame in which Earth is stationary. Both are equally valid, though one may be preferable for various calculational purposes.
> the Sun, which is in turn moving in the Milky Way
That's one reference frame. There's also a reference frame in which the sun is stationary. Both are equally valid, though one may be preferable for various calculational purposes.
> which is moving outwards like the rest of the Galaxies.
This is technically also a valid reference frame, but it's a very, very odd one. Specifically, it's taking some arbitrary intergalactic point in space as being stationary. I *suspect* this is because you have a view of the universe as a bunch of galaxies all receding from some central point where the big bang occurred, but it's important to realize that this is *not* how things went down. Rather, at the moment of the big bang, every point go further from every other point. As such, which point you choose to take as your "fixed" center away from which everything else is expanding is arbitrary: where ever you are in the universe, you will see all sufficiently distant galaxies as receding from you at a rate proportional to their distance.
> is there a chance we will return to this "point" some day?
In the reference frame centered on Earth we never leave this point, and that reference frame is just as valid as any other. | [
"BULLET::::- Explanation : Within the Sun–Earth system, the point exists on the opposite side of the Sun, a little outside Earth's orbit and slightly further from the Sun than Earth is. This placement occurs because the Sun is also affected by Earth's gravity and so orbits around the two bodies' barycenter, which i... |
is the human immune system "stronger" now than it was 1000+ years ago? (not including knowledge of simple things like hand washing, etc.) | Evolution does not change a lot in a thousand years. There is a dance between infectious diseases and their hosts. A really deadly disease kills the host and therefore itself.
We have found antibiotics that work for a while.
Let me relate a story about malaria.
Malaria is the number one killer of humans. It has done this for a long long time. There are specific malarias for all vertebrates. There are specific ones for humans, several species.
Humans invented DDT. We thought we had malaria licked. DDT was used very widely. There was a dramatic fall in malaria cases for a while. Then DDT resistant mosquitoes developed. DDT not working. It also was doing widespread damage in the environment. It was banned.
Later a new technique was developed. Spraying DDT on the inside of huts killed only the female mosquitoes which had fed on the blood of humans. Resistance would not become widespread. We thought we were winning.
The hut wall spraying campaign began. Hut wall spraying only killed mosquitoes on the walls of huts, and cats. The cat effect was noticed by villagers. They liked their cats. Cats kill rats and mice.
DDT also kills wasps that live in huts preying on caterpillars living in the roofs of the huts. The wasps died. The caterpillars thrived. The roofs fell in.
Finally it was noticed that female mosquitoes were no longer always stopping to rest on the walls of the huts. Instead they fly outside first. Evolution in action.
Now bed nets education and permethrin seem the way to go. For now.
| [
"The immune system extends this response to its treatments of self-antigens, softening reactions against allergens, the body, and digestive microorganisms. As the worms developed ways of triggering a beneficial immune response, humans came to rely on parasitic interaction to help regulate their immune systems. As d... |
What was Julius Caesar’s legacy as a politician? Was he remembered as an absolutist and a populist or as the demigod that tried to end the corrupted Senate? | Not to discourage further answers but you might enjoy reading these:
[Why when people hear Julius Caesar, do they think of a great historical figure and a tragedy in the form of his assassination, when he was so obviously a tyrant?](_URL_0_) by /u/Celebreth
[Was Julius Caesar a reformist, a conservative, or just an opportunist?](_URL_1_) by /u/Tiako
But there's always more that can be said on this! | [
"Gaius Julius Caesar, sometimes distinguished as \"the Elder\", was the father of the dictator. In 103 or 100 BC, he served on a commission for the distribution of land, which was then awarded mainly to veterans who had served under Marius. Caesar was praetor around 92 BC, and proconsul of Asia for at least two yea... |
why people enjoy the bitter taste of alcohol | Even though alcohol isn't usually as pleasant to drink as soda and juice, drinking it usually makes people happier and more social. That's why people like to drink alcohol at parties and social events.
Also, having milk at a party would be a [poor choice](_URL_0_). | [
"Excessive concentrations of some alcohols other than ethanol may cause off-flavors, sometimes described as \"spicy\", \"hot\", or \"solvent-like\". Some beverages, such as rum, whisky (especially Bourbon), incompletely rectified vodka (e.g. Siwucha), and traditional ales and ciders, are expected to have relatively... |
What the rationale for the Soviets letting the East German army keep it's Prussian tradition? | Though I'm not an expert, I think the assumption you're making is incorrect. The East German army didn't keep Prussian military traditions, they adopted Prussian military traditions.
The National People's Army was established in 1956. East Germany didn't have an army before then. Post World War II communism also fully embraced nationalism and allowed for it. As long as the commissars were there keeping the army firmly within the ideological grasp of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, there were no issues.
The USSR and East Germany's neighbors knew that the DDR wasn't going to be invading its neighbors as well. Germany was divided, people were trying to escape the DDR whenever they could, and the Warsaw Pact's command structure pretty much allowed the USSR to take control of a member state's military whenever they wanted. The East German army was relatively small and East Germany never had a large population either.
**tl;dr If the East Germans want to goose step around in stahlhelms, that's fine as long as they're communists. If the USSR wanted to, they could change things up pretty easily.** | [
"The East Prussian Offensive was planned by the Soviet Stavka to prevent flank attacks on the armies rushing towards Berlin. Indeed, East Prussia held numerous troops that could be used for this. During initial Stavka planning, Joseph Stalin ordered Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky to annihilate the Wehrmacht forces ... |
how does morse code work | With silences. A silence the duration of three dots separates between letters, while a silence with the duration of 7 dots separates between words. | [
"BULLET::::- Morse code is a variable length telegraphy code, which traditionally uses a series of long and short pulses to encode characters. It relies on gaps between the pulses to provide separation between letters and words, as the letter codes do not have the \"prefix property\". Morse code can be represented ... |
[META] Is it just me or are there way more [deleted] comments in this sub as compared to other popular subs? Why is that? | Trust me on this: I don't mod here, but I mod over in ye olde /r/askscience which has a similar comment philosophy. You are *not* missing anything in these deleted trees. The contain unsourced answers, bad attempts at puns, etc.
If you're here because you're interested in history, then the deleted trees are a good thing! What is left is quality, informative, and well written answers that are correct.
I wish we could run AskScience as tight as they do over here, but with 3+ million users it is nearly impossible. | [
"In between these views is the assertion that comments are neither beneficial nor harmful by themselves, and what matters is that they are correct and kept in sync with the source code, and omitted if they are superfluous, excessive, difficult to maintain or otherwise unhelpful.\n",
"Other phrases typically used ... |
who owns the land that roads are on? can you purchase that land? | The exact arrangement varies by location. In some places, the land is owned by the adjacent landowners, but the city, county or state government has a right of way permitting it to build the road. This means that if it were ever stricken as a public road, it would revert ownership to the adjacent owners.
In other areas, the land is simply owned by the government, and it can use it as it likes. One side effect of this is that the air space above the road is government-owned, too, so you have to purchase permission if e.g. you want to build a walkway over the road. | [
"Many public highways in the UK have a private owner. That is, someone can prove \"title\" to them, either by being the registered owner or by having conveyances showing exactly how the land has been bought and sold over a long period of time. Such ownership in no way affects the public highway rights, since the re... |
the sports and competition seeding system for playoffs or things like octa/quarterfinals | In some activities this is called the "power protect" tournament system. It is to reward the players/teams/competitor with the best regular season or preliminary rounds performance.
This system is the most likely to produce the two best teams in the final round... Notice that the only way the #1 seed and the #2 seed will ever meet in this tournament will be in the finals because they have been 'protected' from playing each other.
| [
"The playoffs, play-offs, postseason and/or finals of a sports league are a competition played after the regular season by the top competitors to determine the league champion or a similar accolade. Depending on the league, the playoffs may be either a single game, a series of games, or a tournament, and may use a ... |
If I went to 1st century Rome with 100 pounds of salt, how rich would I be? | Are you sure you didn't mean to write pepper or some other (for that age) luxury spice? At that time the Mediterranean cultures already knew how to extract salt from the sea and salt mines were abundant. 100 pounds of salt wouldn't get you very far. | [
"The Latin word \"salarium\" originally \"salt money\" (Lat. \"sal\", salt), \"i.e.\", the sum paid to soldiers for salt. () or the price of having soldiers conquer salt supplies and guard the Salt Roads (\"Via Salaria\") that led to Rome. But there is no evidence for this assertion at all.\n",
"In ancient Rome, ... |
Does the flight from Europe and USA (and in the other way) lasts longer/shorter because of Earth movement beneath the plane? | It doesn't create any real effect on travel time; Air in our atmosphere tends to rotate with the earth. A small headwind however can change flight times by hours. These winds tend to blow in one direction, so traveling one way you'll have a tailwind, reducing your travel time.
_URL_0_ | [
"The \"world's longest flight\" has disputed status due to the generality of such a claim. While the distance between two cities is constant, aircraft do not follow a straight path but will adjust the flight path based on headwinds and tailwinds and other weather events, and to avoid flying over certain countries b... |
Some modern animals look just like their long-extinct ancestors. Have these "living fossils" really not changed in millions of years? | It might be easiest to explain using a specific example. I'll use one of the poster boys of living fossils, the horseshoe crab, the best studied of which is the atlantic horseshoe crab, *Limulus polyphemus*.
Although "horseshoe crabs" may have been extant as early as 450 million years ago, *L. polyphemus* itself is not nearly so old. In fact, the entire genus *Limulus* is, at best, in the tens of millions of years old, when it genetically split from the other variants of horseshoe crab (of the genus *Tachypleus*). Though the horseshoe crabs look very similar anatomically, speciation did occur multiple times through its long history. In comparing currently extant horseshoe crabs to the oldest fossil, that of *Lunataspis aurora*, there are anatomical differences - the backplate of extant horseshoe crabs is fused, while on *L. aurora*, it is in two parts.
Setting speciation and morphology aside, there is also genetic diversity, and even geographically-delineated change within *L. polyphemus*. Populations sampled along the east coast of the United States showed significant diversity in their mitochondrial DNA sequence, and a north-south "break" was found, demonstrating current divergences in the species.
References [here](_URL_2_), [here](_URL_1_), and [here](_URL_0_). | [
"At the end of the 18th century Georges Cuvier showed that some fossil animals resembled no living ones, thus demonstrating that animals could become extinct; this led to the emergence of palaeontology, the study of fossils. The coasts of eastern Devon and western Dorset were rich in fossil beds, but before this ti... |
what does a non compete clause stop workers from doing? | It means you can't go work for a competing company either durring employment and usually for a set period after you leave the company. | [
"The extent to which non-compete clauses are legally allowed varies per jurisdiction. For example, the state of California in the United States invalidates non-compete-clauses for all but equity stakeholders in the sale of business interests.\n",
"In contract law, a non-compete clause (often NCC), or covenant not... |
why are mortgages so much more common in the u.s. than in other countries? | Why do you think this is?
People take out loans for homes in every corner of the globe, they usually cannot purchase them straight up.
A mortgage is just the name of a loan you get to buy a home. | [
"In most of Western Europe (except Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany), variable-rate mortgages are more common, unlike the fixed-rate mortgage common in the United States. Much of Europe has home ownership rates comparable to the United States, but overall default rates are lower in Europe than in the United Sta... |
how do women in burqas pass through customs in an airport? | Honestly women in full burqas are a small fraction of all Muslim women. And usually from the poorest Islamic nations. I doubt many of this already small population actually fly. But if they did I'm guessing a female security officer would ask to see them unveiled. | [
"Women are generally discouraged from using public transport. It is technically forbidden, but unenforced, for women to take taxis or hire private drivers, as it results in \"khalwa\" (illegal mixing with a non-\"mahram\" man). Women have limited access to bus and train services. Where it is allowed, they must use ... |
Are hormones passed from the donor to the recipient in a blood transfer? How do they treat the blood before it's ready for use? | Yes hormones exist in transfused blood. Whole blood or plazma will contain [hormones from the donor](_URL_2_).
In most cases the hormone levels are insignificant so they aren't a consideration. However, in some cases the remaining hormones are used for [therapeutic purposes](_URL_0_).
The hormones can break down over time. A much faster change is in the concentration of nitric oxide in blood. Nitric oxide dilates blood vessels, so an [infusion of blood with very little nitric oxide can cause problems](_URL_1_). It is becoming more common to also give nitric oxide along with a blood transfusion to avoid these problems.
In some cases blood is frozen for long term storage. I know that freezing blood will destroy some of the surface proteins, making rejection less likely, so I assume that the same process could degrade hormones faster, but I don't have any real evidence to back that up. | [
"Apheresis platelets are collected using a mechanical device that draws blood from the donor and centrifuges the collected blood to separate out the platelets and other components to be collected. The remaining blood is returned to the donor. The advantage to this method is that a single donation provides at least ... |
are there any negative side effects to eating a tumor? | I’m honestly not sure how much nutritional benefit could be gained, but it wouldn’t be poisonous nor give you cancer. Only side effect would be grossing out the redditors who read your question, afaik. | [
"Physical inactivity is believed to contribute to cancer risk not only through its effect on body weight but also through negative effects on immune system and endocrine system. More than half of the effect from diet is due to overnutrition rather than from eating too little healthy foods.\n",
"BULLET::::- Nutrit... |
How close do atoms in a given space have to be in order for sound to be able to travel across them? | The is no distinct line. The average distance between atoms in a gas (ideal gas really, but it's the same at the low-pressure limit) is inversely proportional to the pressure.
So what you're asking is the same thing as what the lowest pressure is, at which you can have sound. But sound is a propagating [_fluctuation_ in the pressure](_URL_0_). Clearly, the fluctuation in the pressure (i.e. the amplitude of the sound wave, or simply 'volume' of the sound) can't be larger than the absolute pressure, since the pressure cannot go below zero. The less matter you have to make waves in, the smaller the waves can be.
So sound doesn't 'stop' at any point, a single atom bouncing off something could be counted as part of a sound wave, but it's certainly not a very _loud_ sound. So it doesn't stop, it just gets quieter.
| [
"In low molecular weight gases such as helium, sound propagates faster as compared to heavier gases such as xenon. For monatomic gases, the speed of sound is about 75% of the mean speed that the atoms move in that gas.\n",
"For sound waves in air, the speed of sound is 343 m/s (at room temperature and atmospheric... |
How does β-NMR-spectroscopy work? | I'm surprised nobodies said anything yet, so I guess i'll try to give it a shot.
Basically any NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) application is using the nuclear spin of the material to identify what the material is. It's done by using magnets to orient the direction of the spin, then using another magnet that is pulsed to essentially "flip" the spin state. [This explains more about what exactly is the NMR lab](_URL_1_).
From what I [gather] (_URL_0_), beta-NMR is a method of NMR which implants beta particles into whatever material you're studying to reduce the amount of sensitivity you need. That is because beta particles have more spin than other particles.
I would highly recommend asking this is the physics community. This stuffs a bit out of my league, I've only done a couple labs on PNMR, and ESR so I am still trying to understand it myself. | [
"NMR spectroscopy is one of the principal techniques used to obtain physical, chemical, electronic and structural information about molecules due to the chemical shift of the resonance frequencies of the nuclear spins in the sample. Peak splittings due to J- or dipolar couplings between nuclei are also useful. NMR ... |
How close exactly was India to the USSR? What was the nature of the Indo-Soviet friendship, and were the Indo-Pakistani wars actually proxy wars? | The USSR has always had fairly warm ties with India, and these ties became warmer as the Sino-Soviet split became apparent. The deterioration of the USSR-China relationship made close ties with India a natural fit. USSR began aid and technology transfers to India and both countries jointly developed their military industries. There was always Soviet support for Indian sovereignty, cultural, industrial, and technological exchanges. There were never any military entanglement though, despite weapons sales.
The Soviets took a more neutral stance on India's issues with Pakistan and acted as peacemakers. Kosygin himself helped broker the peace deal during the 1965 war.
This has always been strange to me, and a testament to Indian diplomacy. India has maintained cordial relations with both sides during the cold war, successfully maintained its interests in the region, and didn't fully commit to one side or the other. While Indian relations with the USSR were warmer than with the US during the 1970s and 80s, it still didn't go over to the Soviet camp completely. | [
"The relationship between the Soviet Union and India was a significant part of the Cold War. Both political and scientific in nature, this cooperation lasted for nearly 40 years. Over this span of nearly four decades, Soviet-Indian relations maintained through three pairs of leaders—Jawaharlal Nehru and Nikita Khru... |
why is muhammed ali considered the greatest (or one of the greatest) boxers of all time if he lost five times? | From an article by Max Kellerman.
> The only heavyweight champion in history to beat more than one other great heavyweight in that heavyweight's prime -- and Ali did this several times when he was no longer at his best! Even if you take Joe Frazier and George Foreman and even Sonny Liston off his resume, Ali still has an argument for greatest heavyweight ever. He beat Floyd Patterson twice, Jerry Quarry twice, Ron Lyle, Ernie Shavers, Jimmy Ellis, Doug Jones, Ernie Terrell, Joe Bugner twice, Oscar Bonavena, and George Chuvalo twice. And this isn't even name dropping because I left out old Archie Moore and Zora Folley, and washed up Cleveland Williams and too many others to mention here. Between 1964 and 1967, when Ali was in his prime, he was the untouchable. Between 1970 and 1978, a faded Ali dominated the most talent-rich heavyweight landscape in history.
_URL_0_
The ELI5 he beat a lot of the best fighters of all time while in their prime.
| [
"Muhammad Ali is regarded by boxing commentators and historians as one of the greatest professional boxers of all time. \"The Ring\", a prominent boxing magazine, named him number one in a 1998 ranking of greatest heavyweights from all eras. In 1999, \"The Associated Press\" voted Ali the number one heavyweight of ... |
what does the secretary general of the united nations do? | He or she expresses concerns... sometimes, on rare occasions, they express deep concerns. That’s about it. | [
"A Special Representative of the Secretary-General is a highly respected expert who has been appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to represent her/him in meetings with heads of state on critical human rights issues. The representatives can carry out country visits to investigate allegations of h... |
why schrödinger's cat needs to be observed, and why someone/thing needs to be observing everything around us? | It is a bit different than that. In normal physics, when you don't measure something you don't know the value of whatever it was that you did not measure.
When you *do* decide to measure the value (you *observe the system*) you find one single value. You deduce that it did have that particular value all along, even at the time when you hadn't measured it yet. Furthermore, when you repeat the measurement you expect to find that exact same value, no matter how often you measure it. Within tolerances of accuracy.
In quantum physics, this is not the case. You can make measurements, and each time you measure something the outcome can be one of several possible values. The first measurement yields 3, the second and third measurement yield 7, and the fourth measurement yields 3 again. You cannot know in advance what value will be measured, only that it will be one of several distinct values that follow a certain statistical distribution.
This phenomenon is explained by assuming that before the measurement, the quantum physical system has *several different values for the same quantity at the same time*. In quantum physic speak we say that the system can be in different states at the same time. We do not know what state it is in until we make a measurement (observe the system) and as we make more measurements, we will find different values grouped according to some statistical distribution.
Now, the experiment involving Schr & ouml;dingers cat says that a certain elementary particle has or has not decayed during a certain time. If it has, the cat is poisoned, if it hasn't, the cat lives. Because it is a quantum physical system, we say that the two states (decayed particle/not decayed) both exist at the same time for the system. This translates into the cat being both dead and alive at the same time prior to the measurement. Only after observing the system, one would find that the cat is either dead or alive.
Here is the wikipedia article on this experiment:
_URL_0_
| [
"BULLET::::- Schrödinger's cat, a thought experiment devised by Schrödinger that illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects\n",
"BULLET::::- Schrödinger's cat, a thought experiment devised by Schrödinger that illustrates what he saw as ... |
Books about US Covert Activity? | While not a strictly CIA operation "Blind Man's Bluff" was a good read on submarine operations during the Cold War, specifically Operation Ivy Bells which detailed the tapping of undersea cables between Petropavlovsk and Vladivostok.
As a former spook, this book still feels wrong to read because of what's in it. | [
"The \"Covert-One\" series is a sequence of thriller novels written by several authors after the death of Robert Ludlum, presumably according to some of his ideas. The books feature a team of political and technical experts, belonging to a top-secret U.S. agency called Covert-One, who fight corruption, conspiracy, ... |
how can the distance of a light year be consistent? | This is actually a good question.
And the problem isn't with just "light years". You can apply that argument to any distance.
The answer is that part of the relativistic effects along with time dilation is length contraction. That is, the closer you are to the speed of light, the more distances are contracted for you. What you measure 1 light year for you, could be 10 meters for me. This is a important result of the postulate that the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames. Because otherwise, as you said, you get some wonky stuff like it taking twice the time to travel a distance d than it should take.
So not is only time relative, but so is length. If you're going infinitely close to the speed of light, the whole universe will essentially be contracted to almost 0.
Heres a helpful image.
_URL_0_ | [
"Older studies generally derived smaller distances such as 345, 370, or 430 lights years. The original parallax calculated from Hipparcos measurements was 9.43 mas, indicating a distance of 346 light years.\n",
"Astronomical distances are sometimes expressed in light-years, especially in popular science publicati... |
when trying to regain balance, why do we lean towards the side that is off balance? | Your upper body/head/chest seem to move to the left; this is so that your hips/center of mass will move to the right. Your hips/waist/belly easily counteract the tilt. It is impossible, however, to move your waist to the right quickly without moving your upper body to the left. Does that make sense? | [
"The complexity of balance allows for many confounding variables to affect a person's ability to stay upright. Fatigue (medical), causing central nervous system (CNS) dysfunction, can indirectly result in the inability to remain upright. This is seen repeatedly in clinical populations (e.g. Parkinson's disease, mul... |
countries with a president and a prime minister | It goes back to the idea that it has been found by experience that a country needs both a head of state and a head of government. A head of state personifies the nation, acts as a focus of national unity, acts as diplomatic host, and is generally just "there". A head of government actually runs the country having been appointed by the head of state, either as the result of an election or by however else the country works. | [
"The post of prime minister may be encountered both in constitutional monarchies (such as Belgium, Denmark, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Malaysia, Morocco, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom), and in parliamentary republics in which the head of state is an... |
how were modern day scholars able to translate works written in archaic english (e.g. the canterbury tales) so accurately when the language used is so different from the english today? | You have a lot of texts written in Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, Victorian English, etc., so you can trace the evolution of the language and backtrack. By now, Old English is an easy language to learn since we know so much about it.
Things that help:
* Having the same text in multiple periods (the Bible)
* Having translations of earlier texts done in different times (English doesn't rely on this as much, but for example we know a lot about Japanese and its evolution thanks to people adapting Genji Monogatari every 50 years or so starting the 12th century)
* Having repetitive texts drawn out over the centuries (census data, tax books, etc.)
* Having a fairly straightforward evolution that you can explain using historical context (Sudden French loanwords? Go figure, it was after France became a cool place. Sudden Latin influence? Go figure, it was around the time that the church had a say in written language)
* Having a lot of text to work with
You can also figure out pronounciation based on linguistic analysis and old songs which use rhymes (Ever notice that Shakespeare sometimes randomly doesn't rhyme? That's recorded language change right there, and you can figure out the pronunciation of old words based on the fact that, in Shakespeare's time, they used to rhyme)
It's harder with languages that don't have as much data to work with, but fortunately English started writing down things pretty early. | [
"Such modern rendering is applied either to literature from classical languages such as Latin or Greek, notably to the Bible (see \"Modern English Bible translations\"), or to literature from an earlier stage of the same language, as with the works of William Shakespeare (which are largely understandable by a moder... |
What causes the planets to align the way they do? | This is answered in the sciencefaqs.
_URL_0_ | [
"Since the alignment must be so precise, if the event lasts more than a few weeks, scientists can observe changes as the Earth moves around the sun, since this movement changes the alignment. Traditionally in astronomy, a change in view caused by the Earth's motion is called parallax, and this is the term used by r... |
Did civilization recede in China in periods of disorder between dynasties? | Well, let me start by saying that, as I sit here in an at-least-nominally-republican society, typing away in a Latin script, and using a language deeply infused with Romantic vocabulary, and speaking from a high Judeo-Christian social perspective… that reports of fall of Roman Civilization remain somewhat exaggerated.
That said, your point is well-taken… certainly something happened around 476 CE… and that something tends to be viewed, as Gibbon put it, as the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire…Just as long as we don't look too far to the east, and as long as we say that Merovingians don’t count because of… reasons (and I’m sure there are some very lovely ones that my Roman colleagues can fill us in on!)
Anyways, let’s trend toward the meat of the question: did a similar process happen in China during its tremendously long periods of internecine conflict? You’ve asked the question in 4 parts, and about 3 broad periods (between Zhou and Qin, Han and Sui, and Tang and Song, respectively). These, I’d say are very good choices, since they certainly account for the longest of the struggles to reclaim imperium, and thus the periods that seem the ripest for total social collapse…
But before getting into the specifics, it’s important to note a critical difference in worldview between East and West that will help to explain the differences in both expectation and outcome of the Chinese conflicts versus the Roman “collapse”. There are two main ideas that it’s important to understand: the Mandate of Heaven, and the Dynastic Cycle. The Mandate of Heaven corresponds broadly with the European Divine Right of Kings – with one key difference…its innate transferability. “Created” by the first Kings of Western Zhou after the Duke of Zhou’s victory over the last, corrupted King of Shang, Di Xin. The giant question mark hanging over the victory, however, was “how in the world is what we just did legitimate? How could we possibly be in the right if we just attacked Heaven’s very emissary on Earth?” In a debate between the second Zhou king, Cheng, and his two top advisors, his uncle the Duke Dan of Zhou and Duke Shi of Shao (two of the three Grand Guardians second only to the King himself), King Cheng stated:
> Stop! I, the young son [of King Wu], do not dare to disregard the command of the Lord on High. Heaven was beneficent to King Wen [his grandfather], raising up our little country of Zhou, and it was turtle-shell divination that King Wen used, succeeding to receive the mandate […] *Wuhu!* Heaven in brightly awesome – it helps our grand foundation! […] It is that I will proceed through the borders and lands pointed out by our ancestors; how much more so now that the divination is also auspicious. As so, expansively I will take you east to campaign. Heaven’s mandate is not to be presumed upon; the divination is aligned like this.
Though the specific “role” of Heaven was questioned – notably be the Duke of Zhou, who was a big proponent of the idea that “Heaven helps those who help themselves” – nevertheless the idea would stick and stick *hard*: the ruler has the divine right to rule, but not based on blood or ancestry, but rather his righteousness… and should the ruler – no matter how ancient or auspicious his line might be – fail to uphold that righteousness, then Heaven could and would strip him of his right to rule and bestow it upon another who would go on to overthrow the unworthy monarch. It’s particularly ingenious from the perspective of a warlord fresh off of victory, in that it both retroactively justifies the already accomplished rebellion, while also throwing up a firewall against any future rebellions. After all, the winner of any such conflict is Heaven’s will – and the loser is in rebellion against Heaven’s Own Son.
The other major concept that traces itself way all through Chinese history is the innate circularity of time itself – as true detective Rust Cohle put it, “Time is a flat circle.” And while any number of other civilizations like to look back and emulate their civilizational predecessors… China tended to view itself particularly strongly through that lens – or as I like to call it, their “Zhou-colored glasses.” Everything’s about getting back to the Zhou Period, which would post-Warring States come to be viewed as the Great Civilizational High Point when everything was great, all the women were strong, all the men were good looking, and all the children were above average. Even as late as the mid 8th century CE, there were rulers like Empress Wu Zetian who’d go whole-hog and actually rename her period of rule back to Zhou in an attempt at emulating “the good ol’ days” from 1800 years prior. This also played out in the circular nature – or rather, the circular **understanding** - of government, namely in the concept of the “dynastic cycle”, which dominated Chinese political and historical opinions for much of its historiography. Simply put it’s the idea that a dynasty rises, comes to power, improves the nation, slowly declines, causes Heaven to become displeased, loses the Mandate of Heaven, has rebellions crop up against them, and is at last overthrown and replaced with a new dynastic order that has received the Mandate afresh… wash, rinse, repeat ad infinitum. Now there are quite a few issues with that understanding, but the fact that most people in positions of power understood it as true deeply affected how periods of instability affected the empire. To wit – largely the role of a rebel leader was not to try to break away from imperial rule* (*exceptions do apply, please see store for details), but rather to supplant it. Thus even rebellion and ages of civil strife could be incorporated into that cycle-structure of historicity… as the old saying went, “China long united must divide; long divided, must unite.” Though there would always be a drive to shatter an aging and corrupted empire into is constituent parts, there was an equally-strong gravitational pull that would ultimately yank them back together: the understanding that no mandate to rule could be effectively claimed if the realm remained incomplete – one had to prove his worth through overwhelming conquest or not at all (as several of the northern emperors during the 5 Dynasties period found out to their chagrin… one does not simply claim the Mandate of Heaven by calling a foreign king “daddy.” It is folly.).
In terms of population, such conflicts generally weren’t nearly so destructive as to greatly reduce China’s numbers and in fact, as per R. Eno, “During the Warring States years, the overall population of China grew rapidly, spurred by great strides in agricultural technology.” This is not the case during the 3/16 Kingdoms, nor the 5 Dynasties eras, while did see population fall off significantly from their dynastic highs… though typically that was more to do with things like natural disasters like famines and floods, rather than direct conflict.
In terms of the cities, they did not empty during any of these conflicts like we find at the end of the Western Roman Empire, largely because they had – unlike their far-western counterparts – specifically designed their cities to be the safest possible places in the even of attack. Though certainly specific cities were largely abandoned ahead of attacks, there was not the largescale shift to a manoral system because there was no need for one – cities and their massive walls provided far greater defenses than any countryside castle could. In fact, the period that seem most like the “fall of Rome” in the 5th century is actually one of the *failed* rebellions against the throne – the An Lushan Rebellion from 755-763 CE, which did see an absolutely **tremendous** fall off in terms of population. This was due to both the destructive nature of the conflict, but at least as much as that, people just up and saying “peace-out” to wherever they’d live until that point, and dropping off the books. In fact, between 755 and 764 – the two censuses that surround the rebellion – the taxpaying population went from 52 million in 8.9 million households, to just 16.9 million in 2.9 million households. Even so, the idea of city = safety would never really lose its luster for China.
| [
"BULLET::::- This invasion, combined with the later Mongol rule, were speculated to have caused China's advance into capitalism to fall behind by several centuries; although the Ming dynasty later restored the old order, their own fall to the Manchus was to stagnate China once more. This view is supported by the fa... |
how does opening a beer with just a refrigerator magnet and a quarter work | It's a trick - a normal fridge magnet and bottle of beer wouldn't do that. I strongly suspect the bottle is rigged before the video starts and the magnet is just a red herring.
It might even be completely fake. | [
"The device works by loading a beer from the refrigerator to an elevator leading outside of the fridge. From there, the beer is loaded to a catapult. The prototype device is controlled by a remote keyless control which can determine and lock the speed, launch angle, and direction just by the press of a button. Then... |
Did Spartacus ever truly threaten Rome / the Republic? | An uprising of slaves was nothing new to Rome. Spartacus led the third Servile War. The trouble with this war, or any war with slaves, was no Roman general was very interested in conquering the slaves; primarily because it brought no glory or loot.
But if you lost, which was a possibility, it meant defamation and the loss of any prestige. You would certainly be kicked out of office (all Roman generals held political office) and perhaps worse consequences. Those factors delayed some Roman generals in engaging Spartacus. Once his threat increased the generals eventually saw that defeating Spartacus would, in fact, bring them glory and support of, I think, the Senate. ( I say the Senate because I'm unsure of whether defeating slaves would of brought support of the people/lower classes)
| [
"Spartacus defeated many Roman armies in a conflict that lasted for over two years. While trying to escape from Italy at Brundisium he unwittingly moved his forces into the historic trap in Apulia/Calabria. The Romans were well acquainted with the region. Legions were brought home from abroad and Spartacus was pinn... |
- i saw a ted video today about altering the dna in bacteria to fight cancer. how does one "edit" the dna in something?? | Kurzgesagt made [the most clear and amazing video](_URL_0_) about how we can use CRISPR to edit DNA | [
"Transformation of bacteria, plant cells and animal cells has important research and commercial functions. Targeted introduction of exogenous DNA is used to identify genes because the introduced DNA can act cause a mutation or altered expression of the gene into which it inserts. This technology, known as insertion... |
How can a complex protein fold in milliseconds, yet it takes current supercomputers an immense time to find the lowest energy state? How do they know how to fold? | They don't "know how" to fold. They don't know anything, and, I guess you could say, there is no "how" to know. They are following the laws of physics, those involving thermodynamics, entropy, quantum mechanics and all that follows, and their folding behavior is going to depend to some degree on their environment (e.g. pressure and temperature).
A computer has to simulate all of that in one way or another to calculate protein folding, because the operations it performs do not follow those same sets of rules (obviously the computer itself has to at its lowest level, but it is processing information at a higher level). It follows human made instructions that operate at a higher level than the mechanics that dictate something low level like chemistry or physics.
This isn't too dissimilar from any other simulation problem. Why does a computer take so long to render what we saw in Avatar or even Toy Story? Then, take into account that it isn't even simulating most of the mechanics that would be involved if those scenes were real. The computer games we play seem pretty fast and often very lifelike, but that is because a lot is being left out.
The computer isn't simulating every atom or even every molecule or even every cell of every Na'Vi. Part of that is because it isn't necessary, but the other part is that it can't do it in real time and in a lot of cases it wouldn't be able to do it in a reasonable amount of time at all. The computer operates using human constructs to process information at a much higher level of information. It is processing information in terms of 0s and 1s and using math, both of which are very low level themselves, but the computer is not actually operating at those low levels. We think of it as operating on bits, but it's actually operating on representations of bits; a magnetic field, an electric charge, a photon or the absence of one, and so on. When we do math (in our head, on paper, with a computer), we don't actually have access to the information we are processing directly. And so when it applies mathematical principles to those bits, it can't just perform the math on the bits. It has to perform the math on the entire representation, whatever that may be, and then transfer that to wherever it needs to go, down a wire or a fiber, for example, and that adds additional time and energy requirements.
EDIT (I think this clarifies my point):
Then, consider that we aren't even talking about information in its most basic form, but physical phenomenon with physical properties and parameters (all of which are described by that information). So all of the low level math that we are simulating in a computer has to be used to simulate still higher levels of abstraction. High enough to get from bits and math to atoms or molecules and all of the mechanics that govern them, but not so high that a complete simulation is unnecessary (for example just displaying an image/model of the protein or its chemical formula, etc.).
END OF EDIT
Atoms and molecules, on the other hand are governed by the fundamental mechanics of the universe, not some system separated by many levels of abstraction, like a computer or even a brain.
Does that make sense and answer your question?
Another edit, because I'm still not quite satisfied with this answer. I tried to avoid including this, because some people might disagree on it being a scientific answer:
In other words, the universe is a computer that processes information. We don't yet have access to the levels of abstraction where this takes place, certainly not to a degree that allows us to incorporate them into our own computers.
So, our computers have to simulate that (or, they end up doing so anyway in order to do the math we need them to do). Similarly, adding further levels of abstraction to simulate higher level processes of the universe (relative to information itself) requires humans to create additional constructs to bridge the gaps and those just move the computer's simulation that much further away from the level of abstraction it is simulating.
Hopefully that adds some clarity to my answer. | [
"The duration of the folding process varies dramatically depending on the protein of interest. When studied outside the cell, the slowest folding proteins require many minutes or hours to fold primarily due to proline isomerization, and must pass through a number of intermediate states, like checkpoints, before the... |
why does the us have less money now than it did in the mid-20th century? | The US government didn't do all that production; they converted essentially all factories to wartime production...car companies made tanks and engines, pipe companies made gun barrels, airliner companies made fighters and bombers...basically, the entire industrial capacity of the US for *everything* switched to war production. Today, we don't do that. Even after fighting for over a decade in two wars we never switched any significant manufacturing capacity from consumer to military. | [
"By the end of the 20th century, the United States dollar was considered the world's dominant reserve currency. The world's need for dollars has allowed the United States government as well as Americans to borrow at lower costs, granting them an advantage in excess of $100 billion per year.\n",
"The United States... |
How could the "stab in the back" myth have formed if Germany had essentially become a military dictatorship under von Hindenburg and Ludendorff? | The key words here are "essentially military dictators." The Hindenburg and Ludendorff duo had broad powers within in Germany, but the civilian government conferred these powers on them. The duo operated within *Oberste Heeresleitung* (Supreme Army Command/OHL) which nominally was under the leadership of the Kaiser. Wilhelm II had already delegated his own significant powers to OHL leadership. The duo's OHL was the third of the war and Ludendorff went about restructuring the German state to better suit military prerogatives. He staffed the War Ministry and the new *Kriegsamt* with pliant servitors. Much of the existing organs of the German state such as the Foreign Ministry or the Chancellery likewise became subordinate to the OHL or were sidelined. The Kaiser arguably became a victim of the latter process as he found himself locked out of key decisions made by OHL and complained of his lack of real power.
So if the duo was a military dictatorship, it was a *de facto* one. OHL did not displace the existing branches of government but rather tried to subordinate them to military needs. This was not entirely successful and a good many bureaucrats and officials resented the power the duo exercised. This became important as Germany's military fortunes waned throughout 1918 and there was growing momentum for an armistice. Hotheads within the OHL still wanted a death ride and ride the war to a conclusion, but mutinies in the fleet as well as wider urban unrest forced Wilhelm II's abdication. The confused state of events led to the Reichstag seizing power and declaring a republic as well as an armistice.
This chain of events was what provided the nucleus of the *Dolchstoßlegende*. More than a few nationalists and the army leadership portrayed both the November Revolution and Ebert's declaration of republic as a betrayal of the front. According to this self-serving narrative, it was not the military that lost the war, but people in Kiel or Berlin. This pernicious myth gained a degree of currency because the OHL dictatorship was not a formal one but rather one that evolved within the existing structure of the *Kaiserreich*'s government and military. The *Reichstag* and the central government both had the power to take away the broad authority of OHL, which they did. OHL was also quite canny in making sure that it was the new government that made the armistice overtures and not the military.
Of course, not everyone in Germany bought the *Dolchstoßlegende*. A good many Germans recognized that OHL's incompetence and promises of impending victory only served to make the defeat that much more bitter. But this was swimming against the tide of public opinion. Von Hindenburg helped to popularize the idealized vision of an undefeated army betrayed by communists, socialists, Jews, and other enemies of the *Volk*. The *Dolchstoßlegende* became much like many other types of conspiracy theories: evidence for the conspiracy simply did not matter. Adherents of the *Dolchstoßlegende* were not concerned much with proving the conspiracy so much as they were as using it as a political cudgel against their enemies. | [
"The former military chief Erich Ludendorff successfully propagated the Stab-in-the-back myth. This stated that Germany could have been victorious, had not greater powers insidiously undermined the \"heroic struggle of the German people\". His wife Mathilde authored writings on the \"supranational powers\" which ex... |
why are there flights that take longer than 12 hours? | Earth may spin 1 rev/day, but planes spin with it so the spin of Earth doesn't matter at all. Its just about the speed to get from A to B.
i.e. Why doesn't a boat just take 12 hours around the world? | [
"In air travel, as delays are both common and potentially expensive, the scheduled flight time is usually increased to about 110% of the expected flight time, however some airlines are reportedly now padding by as much as 50%. \n",
"The longest non-stop scheduled flight was the Singapore Airlines Flight 21 from N... |
Is is any more likely that the universe is not expanding, but that every point or particle in it is shrinking in size? Does the distinction even matter? | I am a cosmologist and this thought has crossed my mind before and I have discussed it with my colleagues. And I can't give you a good reason why this would be impossible. However, it seems less likely, because there is no known mechanism that could even come close to causing something like this. Whereas we know that the contents of the universe cause it to expand or contract, so it is just a simple explanation that it's the space itself that is expanding. And by Occam's razor, we follow this explanation until we find a problem with it. | [
"Even if the overall spatial extent is infinite and thus the universe cannot get any \"larger\", we still say that space is expanding because, locally, the characteristic distance between objects is increasing. As an infinite space grows, it remains infinite.\n",
"Whether our universe is ever-expanding depends on... |
Why isn't Guy Fawkes night celebrated in the Republic of Ireland? | Guy Fawkes Day is a day of celebration of the fact that King James I *survived* the attempt on his life; not that the attempt was made. The day was enacted by Parliament specifically in thanks that the Protestant Monarch was alive.
The day also mobilised significant anti-Catholic feeling. [Wikipedia states "a study of the earliest sermons preached demonstrates an anti-Catholic concentration "mystical in its fervour"."](_URL_0_) The effigies burned on the fire are not just of Guy Fawkes himself (who is symbolic of all unruly Catholics), but often are of various other Catholic figures such as the Pope.
Basically Guy Fawkes is a very Protestant, pro-English Monarchy holiday. The connotations attached to the event would have to be quite radically re-worked before it could be acceptable to the Irish.
EDIT: speaking personally for a moment, my backcountry New Zealand family celebrates Guy Fawkes to this day by burning an effigy of the Pope, along with the more normal setting off of fireworks. I don't think this is typical, and my family did it more because we'd always done it rather than anything else, but it does suggest that the anti-Catholic feeling still survives within the celebration even today. | [
"Settlers exported Guy Fawkes Night to overseas colonies, including some in North America, where it was known as Pope Day. Those festivities died out with the onset of the American Revolution. Claims that Guy Fawkes Night was a Protestant replacement for older customs like Samhain are disputed, although another old... |
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