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Contemporary criticism of the Maginot line? | Follow up, how impenetrable was it, really? What sort of attack was it designed to repel? | [
"The psychological factor of the Maginot Line has also been discussed. Its construction created a false sense of security, which was widely believed by the French population. Kaufmann and Kaufmann comment that this was an unintended consequence of André Maginot's efforts to \"focus the public's attention on the wor... |
why do sharks expose their top fins above the surface? | Sharks -- most species, anyway -- are true predators. Many of those predators hunt air-breathing species... seals, sea-lions, turtles, etc.
The shark would prefer to be far below the surface, as it is a true fish. However, the air-breathers that they prey upon, quite naturally spend a lot of their time at or near the surface. A shark's "topmost" posture in the water exposes its dorsal fin and part of its back to the air above the surface.
Sharks don't expose their dorsal fins on purpose, it's just a natural function of the shark operating as high in the water as it can. | [
"Fin skeletons are elongated and supported with soft and unsegmented rays named ceratotrichia, filaments of elastic protein resembling the horny keratin in hair and feathers. Most sharks have eight fins. Sharks can only drift away from objects directly in front of them because their fins do not allow them to move i... |
what are the benefits and drawbacks of having an overvalued or undervalued currency? | Overvalued- It's easier to buy imported stuff cos they're cheaper than your domestic stuff. Even though your currency is worth more, theirs is worth the same, so their prices will decrease from your perspective. On the downside, your domestic market suffers, and so do your country's exports, because they are costly relative to the world market.
Undervalued- Pretty much the opposite. Imports become costlier, and your domestic market thrives. Your exports also thrive because they become cheaper to other countries. On the downside, other countries don't take kindly to you dumping your cheap exports (like China does) and you could face embargos and stuff.
Obviously this isn't a comprehensive overview, but it goes through the essentials. | [
"The currency exchange rate exerts a significant influence on the trade balance, and by extension, on the current account. An overvalued currency makes imports cheaper and exports less competitive, thereby widening the current account deficit (or narrowing the surplus). An undervalued currency, on the other hand, b... |
Was it correct to call the decline of Aboriginals in Australia, a 'genocide'? | u/ispeaknoamericano wrote a great answer, and I'm especially happy that they addressed non-violent forms of genocide as well - a community can't survive if you take away most of its children and ban what makes it different. We focus far too much on the invasion, and far too little on the persecution that continued until at least the 1970s. We could also add starvation, diseases, arrests and tribal wars to the genocide - these are not direct murders, but the settlers *knew* that they had caused them by taking the land, and did nothing to prevent it from continuing or spreading to new areas.
In Australia, part of the problem with the argument around genocide and invasion is that the non-Indigenous public's concept of these events is essentially the Holocaust and WWII. The idea that police and farmers can commit genocide and invade territory seems an alien concept, as does the idea that foster families and education can be evil. Many believe that modern Aboriginal Australians make these narratives up to try and cheat the Australian public - our historians try to convince us that, yes, colonial Australians did all of this, and beyond that, even admitted to it in their diaries and newspapers, and told us why.
The best book I've read on the subject, *The Whispering in Our Hearts* by Henry Reynolds (one of the historians slandered by Windschuttle), explores the history of white Australians who spoke out against the violence of colonialism. This is such a great read because it explores almost every side of the events - the Aboriginal victims, the white perpetrators, the white colonials who objected, and the colonial authorities who either condoned or condemned it all. It goes from 1788 and the First Fleet to the last massacre in the 1930s, covering each massacre in detail, and ends on the issues around politics and the History Wars (including Windschuttle) today, talking about why Australia began and continues to deny its dark past, how it was hidden, and how it affects Australians today. Reynolds is one of Australia's best historians, and has spent his whole career writing about these topics.
A great example of how genocide was hidden or justified is the Battle of Pinjarra, now recognised as a massacre. Governor of the Swan River Colony (Perth) James Stirling led a revenge raid on a tribe called the Pinjareb near modern Pinjarra, as punishment for these starving people raiding food from (what is now) the Old Mill in South Perth - he wanted to scare all of the Aboriginals of Western Australia by setting a dreadful example, which is the main reason why most of Australia's massacres occurred. Another reason was that his friend, Thomas Peel, wanted to own more Pinjareb land, and they were scaring away workers and colonists. In newspapers and monuments of the time, it was reported that Stirling and his men faced down the tribe's warriors in glorious battle and won. What really happened, as described in their own journals, is that they ambushed the entire tribe at the Murray River - the Pinjareb men tried to buy time for their families to escape across the river before also retreating, when another group of colonials rode up behind them. Together, both groups of Stirling's men shot and killed at least 30 Pinjareb men, women and children who could not fight or flee as they struggled in the river. This tribe was practically destroyed, and the survivors were attacked by its neighbours or forced to beg from white settlers for food and safety. There are still many who say this was a battle for modern political reasons, despite the obvious truth admitted in the perpetrator's diaries.
Lyndall Ryan, another historian attacked by Windschuttle, [has spent the last several years mapping Australia's massacres](_URL_0_) \- she is researching in WA this year (I got to meet her). Every dot on the map is full of detail, including all the evidence for the massacres, all the people involved, the reasons why, etc., etc. [On the same website](_URL_1_) she also discusses the debate around massacre in Australia, and what she has learned from massacre and genocide scholarship from elsewhere in the world.
I haven't read Windschuttle, so I'd mostly be repeating what Ispeaknoamericano wrote (which is essentially what other historians think of it), but u/AbandoningAll's post on Windschuttle, linked by u/drylaw, is a really great deconstruction of the issues with Windschuttle's work. | [
"It was originally claimed that Australia was uninhabited. The Stolen Generations are the mixed (Australian Aboriginal and white Australian) children who were forcibly removed from their homes and families. According to the Stolen Generations webpage, \"The notion that the absorption or assimilation of some Aborigi... |
What does the Holy Roman Empire have to do with Ancient Rome, if anything? | "The Holy Roman Empire," quipped Voltaire, was "neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire"!
The name was more an invention to legitimate the emperors as emperors, like the old caesars were in the Roman Empire.
| [
"The Holy Roman Empire was founded centuries after the fall of Rome but brandished the name of the Roman people and honoured the king with the title \"King of the Romans\". Despite this, the Holy Roman Empire was largely a Germanic affair with German kings, although its territory was considerably greater than prese... |
How can we know the energy of the universe* is constant? (also Quantum Physics) | Okay so we have this really famous theorem from Emmy Noether: For any symmetry of physics, there must be an associated conserved quantity.
So we have some neat mathematical ways of expressing physics, two of which are the "Lagrangian" or the "Hamiltonian." And suppose I take those mathematical expressions and add some direction to the coordinates in the X direction. I then redo the math... and if the end result is the same (the terms due to the shift cancel out, say) then we say it is "space-translation invariant." The physical system described doesn't change (invariant) to lateral shifts in space (space translation). Turns out the associated quantity is linear momentum in the same direction as the shift.
If I rotate the axes of the system or its description, and nothing changes, we say it's "space rotation" invariant, and the associated quantity is angular momentum.
And if I shift the time coordinates, it is time-translation invariant, and the conserved quantity is energy. So whenever we can note that a system doesn't change depending on when I start the clock, we know that system conserves energy. | [
"Zero-point energy (ZPE) is the lowest possible energy that a quantum mechanical system may have. Unlike in classical mechanics, quantum systems constantly fluctuate in their lowest energy state due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. As well as atoms and molecules, the empty space of the vacuum has these prop... |
why do european countries have to accept refugees from the middle east and elsewhere? | Because they have signed (at the very least) the [UN treaty related to status of refugees] (_URL_0_) ([full text] (_URL_1_)). That is, the 1951 convention and the 1967 protocol. All members of the European Union have signed] both. | [
"Refugees coming specifically from the Middle East have been attempting to seek asylum in Europe rather than in countries surrounding their own neighboring regions. In 2015, over 80 percent of the refugees who arrived in Europe by sea, came from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Routes in which these refugees face whil... |
why do mushrooms taste like meat? | They don't.
Mushrooms have a very earthy flavor, which is something that some meats also share, but they in no way actually taste like meat on their own. If you do not often eat meat on pizza that similarity may be what you are picking up on and you assume it is meaty flavor. | [
"The mushroom is edible and has a sweet taste. While the species is edible, old mushrooms may be spongy and soft inside. The species is high in nutrition and can be used for cooking. The authors of \"North American mushrooms: a field guide to edible and inedible fungi\" said that the mushroom has a pleasant odor. \... |
blood types. what are all the different types, what's the rarest, who can donate to who, and why can only some donate to others and others can't. | OK - I'll give it a go - it's been a few years since I looked at this - you all lemme know how I did....
The types are: A, B, O and AB. There's also an Rh Positive and Rh negative. We'll skip the Rh stuff till later.
You can think of the A and B types as being kinds of "spikes" or "sticks" on the surface of a red blood cell (RBC). 'A' sticks and 'B' sticks. Folks have one or the other, both or none. That's how you get the A, B, O and AB types. O type has no sticks. AB has both.
Those 'sticks' are kind of like an ID flag. If you're a type A, your RBCs have type A sticks on them. Your body is 'used' to your red cells having those 'A' sticks on them and your immune system recognizes red cells with an 'A' stick as being yours, part of "Us".
The problem comes when you're, say, an A or O Type and you somehow get B blood in you (or some other kind of mis-match). Your body recognizes that B stick as "Not ours" and attacks it. Even if those red cells would do no harm and may actually help you. Because they're recognized as "Not Us", this causes your immune system to destroy those B type cells. That can cause a bunch of other problems.
Now if you're an AB type - you can receive A, B, O and AB blood - because your body recognizes both A and B 'sticks' as being "Us". And O, having no sticks, doesn't cause a reaction either.
An O type person can only receive O blood as their immune system will recognize any stick as "Not us" and something to be attacked.
O type blood is called "The Universal Donar" as their blood can be given to most anyone.
AB type people are known as "Universal Recipients" as they can accept any donor's blood.
After that - there's still the Rh factor to consider - those have to match as well. But that's a bit different. Suffice to say, so long as they match - you avoid problems.
In reality, there are many, many other 'factors' that can come into play. A, B, O, AB and Rh Pos and Rh Neg are just the more well known ones. There are many tests done on donor blood BEFORE it's given to a patient to make sure it's safe.
Make sense? | [
"In addition to the ABO and Rh blood group systems, there are more than two hundred minor blood groups that can complicate blood transfusions. These are known as rare blood types. Whereas common blood types are expressed in a letter or two, which may be a plus or a minus, a smaller number of people express their bl... |
Why wouldn't the armies of the 1700s and 1800s use something like armor to stop gunshots? | There's always more to be said; while we wait for that, u/WARitter has dealt with this subject previously. [This thread asks](_URL_2_) basically the same question from another direction, and [in this answer](_URL_1_) he expounds further on the difficulties armour had to face to be effective in a world of increasingly effective gunpowder.
And as it happens, the armies of the 1700s and 1800s did use armour - some heavy cavalry units called cuirassiers kept their armour throughout these periods. u/AncientHistory provides an overview of the effectiveness of cuirassier armour [in this answer.](_URL_0_) | [
"In the decades leading up to the Civil War, numerous advances had been made in small arms technology. The flintlock, which had been in use for over two hundred years, had been replaced by the caplock in the 1840s. Muzzle-loading rifles had been in use for many years but prior to the Civil War had been very rare in... |
why does the periodic table allow us to predict the properties of other atoms | It first started off the other way. That is, scientists noticed that the then-known elements could be arranged in a grid that grouped common behaviors together.
The table had gaps then, which were predicted to be undiscovered elements. This later turned out to be true as new elements were discovered.
TLDR, ELI5: The table was created from observing patterns, and the observed pattern from the table allows us to predict stuff. | [
"The form of the periodic table is closely related to the electron configuration of the atoms of the elements. For example, all the elements of group 2 have an electron configuration of [E] \"n\"s (where [E] is an inert gas configuration), and have notable similarities in their chemical properties. In general, the ... |
why are foreign language classes and language immersion programs not taught from the most basic perspective (like elementary school)? | Because the students know how to read and write in their own language.
In many languages the letter are identical. If you know one alphabet system learning to read another is easier then learning to read the first one.
When you learn to write your own language you are learning to write a language you already can speak. Kids don't learn to speak their own language in kindergarten the know it from home.
When you learn another language you learn to spell and to speak the words at the same time.
The brain and ability to learn change over time so the way that is good for a child is not necessary good for a adult. | [
"Dual Immersion classrooms encourage students but with the permission it may be enthusiastic &' native language development, making an important contribution to heritage language maintenance and allows language minority students to remain in classrooms with their native English-speaking peers, resulting in linguist... |
Is there a magnetic field created by the quarks in a neutral particle, like the neutron? And if not, why? | The neutron does have a magnetic dipole moment, as explained [here](_URL_0_) in some detail. The magnetic properties of the neutron are often exploited in neutron scattering to study the structure & dynamics of various materials, perhaps most clearly in the [neutron spin echo method](_URL_1_). | [
"It was later discovered that protons and neutrons were not fundamental particles, but were made up of constituent particles called quarks. The strong attraction between nucleons was the side-effect of a more fundamental force that bound the quarks together into protons and neutrons. The theory of quantum chromodyn... |
Could you actually fall into a black hole ? | If you jump into a black hole, you will pass the event horizon and reach the singularity within a finite amount of time. For most stellar sized black holes, this takes a small fraction of a second from your point of view though as you're shredded by tidal forces so you won't be alive for it. For super-massive black holes the time spend inside might be on the order of hours. (Corrected from seconds)
You also won't witness the lifespan of the universe or anything on your doomed journey. There will be some final light signal which reaches you before you reach the singularity. In other words if you were watching a distant clock, there would be a final time you would read if tidal forces hadn't yet killed you.
Mass loss due to Hawking radiation is an incredibly slow process. And you as an in-falling observer won't notice anything strange falling in, like excessive temperatures. The black hole will only appear "hot" if you accelerate away from it, like with a rocket.
Now... here's an interesting question, what if you jumped into a tiny black hole who is massively radiating energy? Presumably the singularity might wink-out or vanish before you reach it. I don't quite know the details of this question, but I suspect that infalling observers will always be able to reach the singularity before the black hole vanishes to avoid weird pesky non-physical paradoxes. The radiation pressure would also be significant preventing real matter from entering. | [
"Observers falling into a Schwarzschild black hole (\"i.e.\", non-rotating and not charged) cannot avoid being carried into the singularity, once they cross the event horizon. They can prolong the experience by accelerating away to slow their descent, but only up to a limit. When they reach the singularity, they ar... |
how do all planets become to be near perfect spheres? | As Carl Sagan once explained in Cosmos: (paraphrasing)
Take a ball of clay (not spherical, just a rough shape) of clay, then put your hand on top and push down, then turn it over and do it to that side, then keep turning it over in different angles and pushing down on top. Eventually, you will end up with a spherical ball.
This is pretty much what gravity is doing to everything all the time, hence why many objects in the universe are spheres. The larger the object, the larger the mass, and hence the more effect gravity has on objects on the surface. Compare that to an asteroid that could be shaped like a potato, the mass is not nearly as large, and hence gravity does not push down as hard, which allows it to keep its shape of a potato. | [
"In the fully developed Aristotelian system, the spherical Earth is at the center of the universe, and all other heavenly bodies are attached to 47–55 transparent, rotating spheres surrounding the Earth, all concentric with it. (The number is so high because several spheres are needed for each planet.) These sphere... |
why don't gas giants solidify? | At the temperature they're at, they're gasses.
There's not a lot of ways to loose heat, besides radiating in space. If you're orbiting a sun there's an influx of heat. These usually balance each other. So temperature should remain constant. | [
"Gas giants consist mostly of hydrogen and helium. The Solar System's gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, have heavier elements making up between 3 and 13 percent of their mass. Gas giants are thought to consist of an outer layer of molecular hydrogen, surrounding a layer of liquid metallic hydrogen, with a probable mo... |
Are invasive species (such as lion fish in the Gulf of Mexico) just natural selection, accelerated by humans introducing species into new environments? | That's doubtful. Lion Fish are a small and very slow moving fish that survive in warm waters down to 300 ft.
It's very unlikely that one could survive a trip across the Atlantic Ocean from the Indian Ocean through the Suez canal (their closest natural habitat to the east coast of the US) There's nothing for them to eat in the middle of the ocean.
They definitely wouldn't survive the cold waters of the South sea (going around the bottom of South America) or, a trip through the fresh water of the Panama canal.
It would take the lion fish evolving into different species or, a massive geological change in the oceans to make it possible. | [
"Two of the twelve species of \"Pterois\", the red lionfish (\"P. volitans\") and the common lionfish (\"P. miles\"), have established themselves as significant invasive species off the East Coast of the United States and in the Caribbean. About 93% of the invasive population in the Western Atlantic is \"P. volitan... |
why are we investing billions in fighter jets? shouldn't they be replaced by drones? | > near future do exactly what fighter jets do now?
magical word: near future. they can't do that now. and probably for quite some time they will not be as good as humans.
and second thing, drones can be jammed, with planes it's much, much harder. | [
"Drones are unoccupied aircraft vehicles that are remotely controlled by a person. While often associated with military use, the decreasing cost of the technology has allowed for civil use of drones to grow. Drones are being increasingly used in the fields of resource management and conservation because of their li... |
before modern day lawn mowers existed, how were golf courses like st. andrews able to cut & maintain that much land dating back to the late 1700's? | Modern mowers were invented in the 1830s.
Before that, they'd either have peasants go out there and scythe the grass down, or they'd have flocks of sheep graze it down. | [
"After World War II gravel was extracted from the site and subsequently used for landfill until the late 1960s. The golf course was established in 1977. The course was designed by Fraser Middleton and opened in 1979. Operation of the course was leased to \"Parpost Ltd\" in 2005 and \"John Laing Integrated Services\... |
why does rigor mortis make bodies stiff? | It has to do with the way your muscles work. The muscles have fibers that extend and contract using the energy of ATP molecules. Those fibers are mainly made up of actin and myosin. They slide along each other to make the movement. But the way it actually works is that ATP breaks the connections between those fibers to allow them to move in the first place. It's a third molecule, that I can't remember the name of, that actually does the pushing and pulling. With no ATP, after death, the actin and myosin fibers are locked together. | [
"Rigor mortis (Latin: \"rigor\" \"stiffness\", \"mortis\" \"of death\"), or postmortem rigidity, is the third stage of death. It is one of the recognizable signs of death, characterized by stiffening of the limbs of the corpse caused by chemical changes in the muscles postmortem. In humans, rigor mortis can occur a... |
Scholars of Reddit, I'm a junior in college taking BS
Biology. I want to get into stem cell research but I
need to know how to get into the right track. | Going to graduate school is pretty much a prerequisite to having a career in biology/medical research. But there are a lot of other things you can do now or before then:
Are you at a research university? If so, there probably will be a lab researching stem cells of some kind. You should definitely look into it, and if there are labs, you should email the professor and talk to them about their research and ask if you would be willing to take you on as an assistant. Right now would be the best time to start getting into research; you might not have your own project and might be doing simple work for a while, but it'll give you experience and training and you'll better be able to figure out if you want to do research for a living.
Another thing that many people do is take a year or two after graduation to do full time work in a lab before graduate school as a lab assistant as well. There are some programs with the NIH and such that offer such training and positions, but most likely getting a job like this would be with specific labs, although now it won't be restricted to your university. Hopefully someone else can help with how exactly you would find positions like this if you don't already know someone.
If you are having trouble, then consider looking into working in other fields that isn't specifically stem cells. It might surprise you what you really become interested in with experience and you might find a new calling (I used to be really into molecular biology and genetics, but since have found neurobiology to be fascinating), but even if not any research experience you get in biology will be helpful for future work in stem cells.
But yeah, in the end you definitely will want to apply and go to graduate school. I would definitely advise you to get some research experience first though, not only because having some research experience is valued for graduate school but also because you have to know if you can see yourself working in a lab for the next fifty years more than a hospital. | [
"The Science Research Department is a four-year elective program situated in the school's Biotechnology Laboratory. It allows students with a declared interest in science to conduct original research alongside of researchers at college, university, hospital, and medical school laboratories. The courses include Intr... |
why would an asteroid collision wipe out life on earth? | > but would it stay there for so long that we would all freeze to death?
Your bigger worry is starving because all the plants have died out due to lack of sunlight. But yes it would stay up there for months AT LEAST.
Assuming you weren't caught in the blast or any of the earthquakes or megatsunamis such an impact would cause of course. | [
"Asteroids that impact the Earth have led to several major extinction events, including one which created the Chicxulub crater 64.9 million years ago and which is associated with the demise of the dinosaurs. Scientists estimate that the likelihood of death for a living human from a global impact event is comparable... |
how come when one really needs to go pee, they're completely okay when in any other room, but as soon as they reach the bathroom to relieve themselves, they almost pee their pants? | Classical Conditioning. If you ring a bell and then give a dog treat, and continously repeat this process until its engrained in the dog’s brain, then the next time you ring the bell, the dog will automatically salivate. Same with us and bathrooms. We see a bathroom, and then our brains automatically prepare for us to pee through years of conditioning. | [
"Generally, patients who are able to are encouraged to walk to the toilet or use a bedside commode as opposed to a urinal. The prolonged use of a urinal has been shown to lead to constipation or trouble urinating.\n",
"Functional incontinence is a form of urinary incontinence in which a person is usually aware of... |
What happened to the alleged cold fusion that Italian Andrea Rossi was working on? | Rossi was, I believe, convicted of fraud. [Take this claim with an entire mine of salt.](_URL_0_)
[edit] the conviction was later reversed. It's still almost certainly a scam. | [
"In 1989 following the apparent discovery of cold fusion by Department of Chemistry chair Stanley Pons and British colleague Martin Fleischmann, the University of Utah immediately began plans to construct the National Cold Fusion Institute in Research Park and appointed College of Science dean Hugo Rossi as directo... |
What would a day in the life of Marie Antoinette look like? | Marie Antoinette's days began with her own semi-public rising ceremony that paralleled the king's *lever*.
Upon waking up around eight, she would be handed a dressing gown, and then take breakfast (little but coffee or hot chocolate) either in bed or at a small table nearby. Some mornings, a tub would be rolled into the room for her to bathe in while wearing a flannel gown; after getting out, she would be dried off and dressed in another shift and dressing gown. Either way, she would get back in bed to read or embroider for a while; at this point more people were admitted to the room, like her doctor and surgeon, the king's doctors and surgeons, her private secretary. Eventually, the first *femme de chambre* would bring in a book full of swatches of fabric matching all of the gowns in the wardrobe, and the queen would stick a pin into the ones that she intended to wear during the day: one [court gown](_URL_1_) for the pre-midday-meal ceremonies, one [casual outfit](_URL_2_) for the afternoon, and one [formal gown](_URL_0_) for the evening. Servants would bring these out wrapped in silk taffeta, as well as a taffeta-covered basket containing a couple of chemises and neck handkerchiefs for the day. Earlier in her reign, the male viewers would leave and individual pieces of clothing would be handed by a servant to the highest-ranking lady present to give to the queen or help the queen into - this could lead to farcical situations if everyone didn't get to the room on time; her waiting-woman Henriette Campan later wrote a memoir that documented one instance where the queen's shift had to be passed from one woman to the next as new ladies and princesses walked in, while Marie Antoinette stood naked in the middle of the floor. However, once Rose Bertin became an important part of the queen's dressing routine, she would retreat to the closet to dress after the toilette described in a bit: the ladies were not enthusiastic about giving the tradeswoman a place of prominence that implied she outranked them. Around noon, the maids who had been with her were replaced by new ones in full court dress, and more people would come into the room (such as the Princes of the blood, captains of the guard, and other officers). The queen would make her full hair-and-makeup toilette at a table brought into the middle of the room, all of her ladies would join her, and then she would set out of her chambers to meet people who were to be presented to her.
At this point, she would meet up with the king for mass, normally a small ceremony. The two would then dine in the "cabinet of the nobility", a room attached to her chambers, with titled nobles holding specific serving appointments and anyone who could make it to Versailles watching, and then split apart again so that Marie Antoinette could change out of her hoops and train and into something more comfortable.
After the early-afternoon dinner (sometimes followed by another dinner with the Duchesse de Polignac, her BFF; perhaps it was necessary, given that the queen was known to have barely touched her food at the public meals), her time was more her own. This was when she might socialize with her ladies, read or be read to, receive more people, embroider, walk around the gardens, etc. Then she would head back to her rooms for yet another change of clothes, into the formal "*robe parée*" that was appropriate for the supper and card parties which, like dinner, were fairly public. She might then go on to a more private party with close friends, or go out to the opera.
When she was ready for bed, the queen would be undressed in much the same way she'd been dressed in the morning. A basket with her nightclothes (a lace-trimmed shift, loose corsets, and a nightcap) would be brought out, and her clothing taken back to the wardrobe to be meticulously mended, cleaned, and stored. If the king were going to spend the night with her, she would be put to bed first; then he would come in through the door that connected their rooms after his own *coucher* ceremony that put him into his nightclothes. In the morning, before the full *lever*, one of the queen's servants would open the door to put him back into the hands of his male staff. | [
"Marie Antoinette: The Journey is a sympathetic 2001 biography of archduchess Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France (1774–1792) by Antonia Fraser. It is the basis for the 2006 Sofia Coppola film \"Marie Antoinette\".\n",
"In her historical biography, \"Marie Antoinette : The Journey\" Antonia Fraser claims Marie ... |
what causes abnormally high jackpots? is is just chance and replication? or are there other mechanisms involved? | As the jackpot rises and it becomes more publicized, more people play, which adds more money to the jackpot. If this continues through several cycles with no winner, they can grow rather dramatically, as we've seen recently with the $400 Million bump. | [
"Probability of the jackpot changed depending on the jog selector. When the jackpot was obtained, from the beginning, players could listen to \"Crazy 4 U,\" \"Cutie Honey\" or \"Ningyo-Hime.\" A second consecutive win opened \"Wind,\" a third opened \"Butterfly\" and a fourth opened \"Selfish.\" On the sixth consec... |
why is breakfast the only meal where it's socially acceptable to only eat a dessert? (doughnuts, pancakes, cinnamon rolls, muffins, etc.) | Those aren't breakfast foods, those are foods that accompany coffee/tea. As our lifestyle has evolved to where we no longer eat a full breakfast, but rather we caffeinate and maybe eat something to go with it, pastries have evolved into de facto "breakfast" foods. | [
"Tapioca flatbreads or pancakes are also commonly served for breakfast in some states, with a filling of either coconut, cheese or condensed milk, butter, and certain meats. They can also be filled with dessert toppings as well.\n",
"Bread (' or ') is traditionally sourdough baked from rye and wheat, and is flavo... |
why is the "k" silent? as seen in: knack or knock | In the 1600s, the K was pronounced. Pilgrims in America said "kuh-nife" and "kuh-nee" for knife and knee. It died out around then, but spelling had become set,
So we kept that. | [
"The letter ⟨k⟩ is normally silent (i.e. it does not reflect any sound) when it precedes an ⟨n⟩ at the beginning of a word, as in “knife”, and sometimes by extension in other positions, such as “tight knit”. Exceptions include the town of Knoebels Grove ( ) located in Pennsylvania in the United States, the Germanic... |
Is it hard to be a history professor or a historians? | This is a question that gets asked with a fair amount of frequency, both here and at /r/askacademia.
[this is a recent thread](_URL_2_) where /u/restricteddata and /u/dire88 explore some of the aspects of the academic job market for history.
[this thread](_URL_1_) also discusses grad school, academic employment, and "plan b" (or plan c, d, and e) careers.
There is also [this thread about applying to grad school](_URL_0_). I think the comment by /u/DerProfessor is a very important one to consider. Specifically, what exactly is your research interest? If you are writing on your statements of purpose that you want to attend a doctoral program because "i've always loved history", that is very vague and unfocused. If you are able to identify a specific topic or event in history that isn't adequately explained, and you *need* to get to the bottom of, that lets admissions committees and potential advisers judge if if you are a good fit for a specific program. Also, you will be competing against candidates who are bringing their research topics to the table.
What specific history are you interested in? What region? What era? The answer to that question can have a strong bearing on the academic job market for your specialty. In general, there are more PhDs for US and European history produced than there are faculty jobs for. Africa and Middle East history PhDs are more in-line with the number of faculty jobs (though, that is not a guarantee). I don't know how Latin America or Asia compare.
| [
"The Harvard University Department of History is home to some of the world's leading and most renowned scholars in history. The department focuses on multiple areas within history \"including social life, the economy, culture, thought, and politics. Students of history study individuals, groups, communities, and na... |
How does this work? | By definition, melted rock beneath the surface is called magma. Once it erupts, it is called lava. The distinction is largely semantic and done for convenience (i.e. by describing it correctly as either magma or lava, you are conveying extra information in terms of its location), though there are some true differences. For example, magma will have varying amounts of dissolved gases (water, CO2, etc), many of these gases escape in the eruption process (as pressure decreases) so lava tends to have less volatile content than magma. Similarly, by virtue of it being at the surface, lava is cooling rapidly compared to magma and will contain progressively more (small) crystals as it cools. You could also view the distinction as an extension of the way we classify igneous rocks, specifically the division between extrusive and intrusive. Chemically, a [basalt](_URL_0_) and a [gabbro](_URL_1_) are nearly equivalent, but we classify and name them differently because one is extrusive and one is intrusive (respectively) and as a result, the size of the crystals within the rocks are very different. To return to the lava/magma distinction, basalt crystallizes from a [mafic](_URL_2_) lava, gabbro crystallizes from a mafic magma. | [
"It works by injecting the material stream to be sorted into a chamber which contains a column of rising air. Inside the separation chamber, air drag on the objects supplies an upward force which counteracts the force of gravity and lifts the material to be sorted up into the air. Due to the dependence of air drag ... |
This might be startlingly ignorant, but: why are sunny days in the winter still cold? | The reason that the tilt makes it more cold in winter is not distance. Yes, the sun is less bright the further out you travel from it, due to the spreading of the light. The reason that the winter is colder is because when you have the surface at an angle to the incident light, you're taking a lot less of the angle of the radiation.
Consider holding a piece of paper under a ceiling lamp. If you hold the paper very close to the floor, and move it up an inch, you can see the shadow of the paper get a little bigger- the paper is absorbing more energy from the lamp. This is the sort of change which occurs due to a change in distance from the sun. Now hold the paper at a 45 degree angle to the ground. See how much smaller the shadow is? The paper is not being exposed to nearly as much energy total, and so each square inch of the paper is getting less radiation, too. This is the mechanism which causes the amount of heat received from the sun to vary so drastically during the seasons. | [
"Temperatures are hot in summer reaching up to , and in winter are cool, either because of the fog (about twenty days from November to January ) or a cold and dry wind blowing from the northwest, the \"Cierzo\" (related to other northerly winds such as the \"Mistral\" in the SE of France) on clear days. Frost is co... |
A question about US colonization | You might want to check out David Hackett Fischer's *Albions Seed* which addresses how the different British Isles groups who settled in British North America determined how the different American regions developed. It is an easily readable book even for those with only a casual interest in history. | [
"The history of colonization is complex, varied according to the time and place. France and Britain were the main colonial powers involved, though the United States also began to extend its territory at the expense of indigenous people as well.\n",
"In order to understand what constitutes successful colonization,... |
When did tourism become a large part of countries incomes? | That depends a lot on the country. And where there.
For example - Austria (where i live) had areas with a vibrant touristic economy starting in the 19th century. Especially areas like semmering (the closest mountains to Vienna) became available for day trips with the construction of the train line there. Same is true for the salzkammergut which catered more to nobility and the rich bourgeoise.
So those two areas had a very strong touristic industry much sooner then for example tyrolia which today is much more connected with tourism then it was back then.
This is due to the rise of winter tourism - and there are just the better mountains there then in other locations.
If you ask for the start if real modern mass tourism in Austria that would be after WWI - sometimes in the 20ies before the stock market crash.
It really took off though in the 50ies with the mass availability of cars for everybody. It just got a lot easier to do a trip from Munich to Innsbruck or Vienna when You have your own car.
The same is true for the distant and exotic travel locations. Thailand as as travel destination for mass touris for Europeans became an option in the 70ies and 80ies with the rise of long range jet travel.
So basically - as soon as mass transit became available You can assume that tourism started and the industry took off. When this was exactly depends on the development of the transport infrastructure then anything else. | [
"The 19th century also saw the rise of tourism as an important industry (linked with the improvement in passenger ships) which reached its climax in the period from the end of the Second World War to the 1980s.\n",
"The tourism industry first truly flourished during the late 19th to early 20th century due to the ... |
Would it be possible to make a radio which uses a different type of electromagnetic radiation? | You can certainly transmit data using visible light - that's what an optical fibre does, after all. However, radio has the advantage that it generally passes through most objects (e.g. walls), and so you don't need line-of-sight to the transmitter. With visible light, you would need to be able to see the sender, which limits its effectiveness.
I seem to recall that there are some military communication systems that do use precisely aimed lasers to transmit data to another location within line of sight, without optical fibres. The advantage there is that it's very hard to intercept any signals being sent, but you don't need to lay down several miles of cable | [
"To prevent interference between different users, the artificial generation and use of radio waves is strictly regulated by law, coordinated by an international body called the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), which defines radio waves as \"electromagnetic waves of frequencies arbitrarily lower than 3 ... |
In regards to "nitrogen narcosis", how does the gas we inhale while diving suddenly become narcotic to us at great depths? | You need to understand a little about how SCUBA works. You can snorkel at the surface, right? What if you had a 12 foot snorkel, would it work? No, but why? Because the weight of 12 feet of water is squeezing you body. You don't feel it because hey we are made out of water. However, it's more weight than your lung muscles can push against. You would not be able to suck in any air.
With SCUBA an aluminium tank can be filled with 2000 to 3500 psi. That's more than the pressure of the water down to a couple hundred feet. The pressure is controlled by the regulator. Every time you suck in air the regulator gives it to you at a pressure *equal* to the pressure of the water around you. It's almost too easy to breath when you are on SCUBA, its fun. Sport divers, the ones who do it for fun, use normal, filtered air.
At the surface when you breath in you get about a half a liter of air and your lungs can hold about 4 liters total. At ten meters deep the pressure is twice as much, so you will actually suck in twice as much air! At that pressure you could have 8 liters of air squeezed into your lungs! At 20 meters it would be 12. So, as you go deeper you suck in a lot more air. At about 100 feet, or 30 meters the pressure is 4 times normal.
So, if you drink one cup of coffee at the surface that would be like drinking 4 cups of coffee under pressure. 4 cups of coffee is a lot more caffeine that 1 cup. So with normal air at 100 feet you would get 4 times the nitrogen, 4 times the oxygen and 4 times whatever else is in the air. If you had pure oxygen by the time you reached 60 feet the amount of pure oxygen would burn out you lungs! I had some friends get some bad air once, a small amount of exhaust from the pump motor got in the tanks. That was Carbon Monoxide. At the surface you wouldn't notice it, but when they reached 100 feet down it would be four times as much CO enough to kill you in minutes. They noticed the probable at about 30 feet down and surfaced, but in the three minutes it took them to dive down and come back up they had enough carbon monoxide that they had turned blue.
There are lots of things in air that can cause you to get drunk-like symptoms, including nitrogen. Dive deep enough and you get stronger concentrations of those gasses. So they can make you intoxicated. I have never experienced, nor has anyone in any group that I was with. That includes dives to 200 feet, so I think it's pretty rare.
No 5 year old could sit through my long winded explanations. | [
"Nitrogen narcosis is also called “L’ivresse des grandes profondeurs” or \"rapture of the deep\". Nitrogen comprises 79% of the air, but at surface pressures it has no sedating effect. At greater depths, however, nitrogen affects the brain in the same way as nitrous oxide (also known as laughing gas) and other anae... |
if the speed limit isn't actually a hard upper bound, why don't we just post a target speed instead? | I've been pulled over for 26 in a 25. It's up to the cops discretion, and some cops are dicks. The speed limit is a hard upper boundary, but it is up to the individual officer whether to enforce that strictly or not. | [
"BULLET::::1. When speed limits are arbitrary, such as when set through political rather than empirical processes, the speed limit's relationship to the maximum safe speed is weakened or intentionally eliminated. Therefore, a crash can be counted as speed-related even if it occurs at a safe speed, simply because th... |
What were the role and effectiveness of archers and crossbowmen during the hundred year war? | That blog post was written by someone who views themselves as very educated on a topic they don't seem to have read much about. He starts off relatively alright- myth of longbow archers as super soldiers, pointing out the relatively similar composition of French and English armies- then becomes so determined to tear down old mythology that he created entirely new mythologies. That book he's complaining about seems to be pretty shit, but one shitty pop history book isn't representative of the scholarship available on the longbow.
I'm going to focus primarily on his description of Agincourt, because that's where he's most egregiously wrong. He claims that "Once the cavalry van was defeated there is no indication that longbow fire contributed at all in defeating the enemy." This is a pretty absurd point and one that not a single primary or secondary source would bear out. I think one of the problems here is that the author seems to think that the purpose of archery was to cause direct casualties and stop an advance outright. This isn't the case at all. His claim that "the longbow’s failure was in meeting the threat of the dismounted attack" only makes sense if you suppose that the purpose of the archers was to stop the dismounted attack. This couldn't be farther from the truth. The purpose of massed archery fire was to disrupt and slow down the dismounted attack, so that the disordered French could be picked apart by the English men-at-arms. That's what combined arms is all about. Saying that the archers were useless because they didn't "stop the dismounted attack" is like saying modern infantry is useless because artillery and air support cause more casualties. It's sort of a true statement if you squint, but it's comparing apples to oranges. Different units have different roles, and ideally work together to support each other. This is exactly what happened at Agincourt.
His point about the archers running out of arrows is confusing and strange. Running out of arrows "would have been a clear indication that the archery fire was unable to influence the course of the foot battle?" How does that follow, exactly? The archers joined in the hand-to-hand fighting because 1) a bow is kind of useless when a Frenchman is swinging an axe directly at you and 2) that was their job. The archers frequently dropped their bows to support the men-at-arms in the melee. How does joining in the melee prove that archery is useless on the battlefield? Are bullets useless because soldiers sometimes also use bayonets? If archers were so useless, why were so many of them hired for the HYW? Why did kings get so involved with maintaining archery supplies, working with bowyer's and fletchers guilds to set prices, and haul thousands of these troops to France over and over again if they were as useless as this author says? That book he's complaining about sounds pretty awful. But the solution to that would be to read actual academic work on the HYW, rather than scan through a few primary sources and write a blog post showing that he really doesn't have the first clue about the subject.
Minor historiographical note: I find it amusing that he attributes the longbow mythology to "Marxists" rather than English nationalist myth-making. Again, it shows that the author is entirely unfamiliar with even the most basic scholarship on the subject.
| [
"The traditional role of archery on the medieval battlefield was to begin the action, advancing in front of the main body of the army, as occurred at the Battle of Hastings. This continued to be a standard tactic, particularly in the absence of enemy cavalry. The Swiss crossbowmen and handgunners of the 15th centur... |
what would happen if a queen was carrying a king's son, but the king died. | It would depend on the time and country. Different countries all had different rules of royal succession, and those rules changed over the course of history.
There is no actual single answer to this question. It would be like asking, "What color is everything?" | [
"A king's queen died when his son was born. He remarried, and his new wife also had a son. The stepmother tried to poison the first son so her son would inherit, but her son warned his brother. The first son decided to flee before she succeed, and his brother went with him. They tried the drinks she had given the o... |
why do contestants on "jeopardy" pick the lowest amount of money questions first? | Daily doubles are often hidden in the larger amounts, they are not useful when you only have $500 to bet on. Also some categories want answers that aren't quite straight forward (like "before and after"), so contestants want to get the hang of it before forfeiting larger amount questions. | [
"The next question was worth $5,000, and a contestant had to answer correctly to advance. If correct, the contestant would have a maximum of eight questions to answer, being forced to bet at least half of what they had at that particular point in the game. The catch was that each question came from one of ten diffe... |
How many vehicles are there on Earth right now that are capable of spaceflight? | If you don't care about them being human rated, the answer is probably a lot. Russia (and people that contract them for launches) frequently use old ICBMs (e.g. _URL_0_) to launch satellites. | [
"The Lunar Roving Vehicle could be folded into a space 5 ft by 20 in (1.5 m by 0.5 m). Unloaded, it weighed 460 lb (209 kg) and when carrying two astronauts and their equipment, 1500 lb (700 kg). Each wheel was independently driven by a ¼ horsepower (200 W) electric motor. Although it could be driven by either astr... |
Can UV light kill fleas? | UV light can kill pretty much anything, if you leave it under the UV long enough. It's used pretty commonly as a disinfectant in labs and hospitals already, though sterilisation cycles are generally minutes to hours long depending on what you're trying to kill (bacteria, fungus virus, bacterial spores).
This thing in particular? I'm pretty sceptical. It would depend on the strength of the UV light. It says it works in 10 seconds. I reckon that would make it absolutely deadly to be waving around in the air without any safety equipment. UV light is not a toy, and is especially damaging to eyes and other fun things. So chances are it's a bit bullshit, as they would have to reduce the power enough to make it 'safe', which would also make it useless.
It is also an absolutely unnecessary device for personal use. | [
"Ultraviolet traps called bug zappers are used to eliminate various small flying insects. They are attracted to the UV and are killed using an electric shock, or trapped once they come into contact with the device. Different designs of ultraviolet radiation traps are also used by entomologists for collecting noctur... |
A finding of life based on what at first appeared to be metabolic activity? | Here's a good article from Wikipedia:
_URL_0_
The experiment that caused all the controversy was the "Labeled Release" one. This incubated Martian soil with a dilute solution of nutrients, each of which had carbon-14 incorporated into it. The headspace gases were analyzed to see if any of the 14C had ended up being converted to a gas (like carbon dioxide) through biological activity. The first round of samples did appear to show this effect, but none of the other experiments indicated the presence of life. Later discovery of oxidizing agents in Martian soil have raised the possibility of the LR results being due to straight inorganic chemistry, rather than biochemistry, but opinions vary on this, too.
Overall, the Viking results are, I believe, still considered inconclusive and difficult to interpret, at least until we do other direct tests for life again. | [
"It was the discovery of enzymes at the beginning of the 20th century by Eduard Buchner that separated the study of the chemical reactions of metabolism from the biological study of cells, and marked the beginnings of biochemistry. The mass of biochemical knowledge grew rapidly throughout the early 20th century. On... |
Are there any sources for the trial and execution of Socrates that were not written by his students? | No, but there is one other primary source on Socrates which focuses on his early life: the playwright Aristophanes.
It is generally accepted that the three mostly intact sources for the life of Socrates are found by the following authors: Xenophon, Plato, and Aristophanes, the latter of whom was less than flattering but who produced what is technically the oldest surviving source. Socrates was apparently well aware of his semi-fictional depiction in *The Clouds* (and then later in *The Birds* and *The Frogs*). In Plato's *Apology*, Socrates complains at his trial that "that is what you have seen yourselves in the comedy of Aristophanes; who has introduced a man whom he calls Socrates, going about and saying that he can walk in the air, and talking a deal of nonsense." And the Socrates who appears in the plays of Aristophanes is remarkably different from the Socrates of Plato or Xenophon: this caricature is very interested in learning things like how far a flea can jump, and runs a "Thinkery" of similar-minded natural philosophers who pay him to instill his knowledge in their heads. This in sharp contrast to the Socrates who made much of knowing nothing except that he knows nothing, and who insisted on living in poverty.
There are no other primary sources on the life of Socrates (though some fragments from his other students and contemporaries exist), and none which describe the trial. The Athenian polity did not leave a surviving written record of his conviction and execution.
For an in-depth analysis of the three major primary sources on the life of Socrates (more detailed than the [entry at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy](_URL_0_)) and what each one contributes to our current understanding of who Socrates was, I recommend the following source:
Navia, Luis E. *The Socratic Presence: A Study of the Sources*. New York: Garland Pub, 1993. | [
"The extant, primary sources about the history of the trial and execution of Socrates are: the \"Apology of Socrates to the Jury\", by Xenophon of Athens, a historian; and the tetralogy of Socratic dialogues — \"Euthyphro\", the \"Socratic Apology\", \"Crito\", and \"Phaedo\", by Plato, a philosopher who had been a... |
How effective was the boomerang as a weapon? | 400-500g is a not unusual weight for a boomerang (straight-flying hunting boomerang, rather than a returning boomerang). An experienced thrower can throw such a boomerang at speeds in excess of 20m/s, for kinetic energy of over 100J (translational kinetic energy, not counting the rotational kinetic energy).
This is approximately the energy that can be delivered with a blow by a club of similar weight (Alan R. Williams, *The Knight and the Blast Furnace*, Brill, 2003 gives 60-130J as typical energy for sword and axe blows). While this isn't as dangerous as a strike by an edged weapon, it is still a dangerous blunt weapon. R. W. French and G. R. Callender, "Ballistic Characteristics of Wounding Agents", ch 2 in J. C. Beyer (ed), *Wound Ballistics*, Medical Department, United States Army, 1962, report 58 ft-lbs (approx 80J) as an energy where "on the average it is probable that this amount of energy will insure a casualty". The boomerang also strikes with a narrow (but not sharp like a blade) edge, which makes it more damaging than an impact weapon with a broad striking surface.
The rotational kinetic energy can also contribute to damage when the boomerang hits.
Payne-Gallwey (of *Crossbow* fame) reported that
> This weapon will travel, skimming low over the ground, to a range of from 150 to 180 yards, and the blow it gives a tree-trunk at 80 yards, is as if the latter were struck by a heavy blunt sword. As an instrument of savage warfare it would have a terrible effect on a scantily clad opponent.
(Arthur G. Credland, "Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey Bt. and the Study of Medieval and Ancient Projectile Weapons", *Arms & Armour*, Vol. 8 No. 1, 2011, 46-88)
Such boomerangs were used to hunt large game such as emus and kangaroos, and were capable of bringing down such animals at ranges in excess of 60m (at which distance, the boomerang, through its straight and level trajectory, can provide significant advantage in accuracy over spears).
As for the possible effect on humans, Michael Westaway et al., "The death of Kaakutja: a case of peri-mortem weapon trauma in an Aboriginal man from north-western New South Wales, Australia", *Antiquity*, 90, 1318-1333 (2016) report skeletal evidence that boomerangs or similar narrow-edged wooden weapons (like sword clubs (e.g., the lil-lil club), which will deliver similar energies) can kill. | [
"Boomerang's most dangerous asset is, naturally, his arsenal of specialized boomerangs designed by Justin Hammer. He has modified and improved on them over the years, but the most common ones are exploding \"shatterangs\" (with enough explosive power to destroy an automobile), \"gasarangs\" that release large doses... |
i know why animals/humans store fat, but how and why do plants that grow fatty fruits collect and store fat (avocado, coconut, olives, etc)? | I believe sometimes a fruits/seeds will contain nutrients for making new plants/trees. The growing plant will find it easier to find sustenance
I also believe that sometimes it is to trick animals into eating the seeds and pooping them out far from the original tree.
But I am not a scientist | [
"Although fruits provide a source of carbohydrates, they have very little protein, and because protein cannot be stored in the body as fat and carbohydrates can, fruitarians need to be careful that they consume enough protein each day. When the body does not take in enough protein, it misses out on amino acids, whi... |
if we were able to remove the brains ability to release dopamine and serotonin, would we be able to feel happiness? | Nope, because we'd be dead. While those neurotransmitters do affect mood, they also have other very important functions. For instance, Parkinson's Disease is caused by a loss of dopamine. And serotonin deficiencies often cause babies to just suddenly die. | [
"Chronic secretion of stress hormones, glucocorticoids (GCs) and catecholamines (CAs), as a result of disease, may reduce the effect of neurotransmitters, including serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine, or other receptors in the brain, thereby leading to the dysregulation of neurohormones. Under stimulation, nore... |
why are some features of humans, like hands and skulls, so innately hard to draw? | Aside from their intrinsically complex shapes etc that others already mentioned, we are also more adept at detecting aberrations from the norm regarding human anatomy. If someone draws a weirdly warped car or chair for example it might not look as strange as a bizarrely drawn face or appendage, because our brains are fine-tuned to extract a lot of information from the former. | [
"The abilities which involve the use of hands develop over time, starting with primitive gestures such as grabbing at objects to more precise activities that involve precise eye–hand coordination. Fine motor skills are skills that involve a refined use of the small muscles controlling the hand, fingers, and thumb. ... |
why are logos and layouts getting simpler? | It's just the current popular style. Flat simple forms are the current "in " look, so that's what companies are adopting to seem more relevant. In 5-10 years, odds are good some other basic design trait will be the new fad.
| [
"In today's digital interface adaptive world, a logo will be formatted and re-formatted from large monitors to small handheld devices. With the constant size change and re-formatting, logo designers are shifting to a more bold and simple approach, with heavy lines and shapes, and solid colors. This reduces the conf... |
How does a flamethrower prevent the back flow of combustion as it shoots a stream of ignited fuel? | This device has no barrel - it's a torch with a two handed grip, plain and simple. Fuel and air mix outside of the fuel hose, which allows combustion. Inside the fuel hose, there is nothing but fuel, so combustion cannot occur. | [
"There are three methods of combustion: Dry forward, reverse and wet combustion. Dry forward uses an igniter to set fire to the oil. As the fire progresses the oil is pushed away from the fire toward the producing well. In reverse the air injection and the ignition occur from opposite directions. In wet combustion ... |
Are there any bugs (like moths) who have evolved an 'immunity' to being confused by or drawn to light sources like porch lights? How about predators that started living near lights because of the abundance of food? | [Mediterranean Geckos](_URL_0_) , which now live almost exclusively on buildings, have been incredibly successful in spreading around the world. Man made structures offer vertical surfaces and hiding places. But they also often have lights and windows that attract insects. Although I have never seen a scientific study on how lights affect them, it is likely that the Mediterranean Geckos benefit from insects attracted to lights. | [
"One of the best known modern examples of the role that evolution has played in insect defenses is the link between melanism and the peppered moth (\"Biston betularia\"). Peppered moth evolution over the past two centuries in England has taken place, with darker morphs becoming more prevalent over lighter morphs so... |
If you were somewhere in space where the nearest star was thousands (or millions) of light years away would it be practically pitch black? Could you see your hand in front of your face? | Yes, there are places where it's that dark. In fact, most of the universe is that dark. If you were to suddenly appear somewhere else at a random place in the universe the odds are you would be in a place so dark you could not see any stars or galaxies. You could see galaxies if you had a telescope but with the naked eye there would be nothing to see, not even a dim glow, because the space between galaxies is so great. It makes you realize how big the universe really is. | [
"BULLET::::- In the region of the constellation \"Perseus\", a star not visible to the naked eye, and 1,533 light years distant from Earth, explodes in a nova. The light from the star, now called GK Persei, will first be seen on Earth on February 21, 1901\n",
"Distance to the star, 92 light years, is enough that ... |
Why is there no mention of Alexander the Great in the bible? | As far as I know we simply will not have any particular reason to give to that.
Now, [hillsonghoods](_URL_0_) mentions two good points in his post when an answer was removed: (a) there's not one canon (b) the process by which we end up with certain texts needs to be discussed. And he helpfully points out a passage in which a Biblical text does mention Alexander the Great. I will largely focus on the second point I mention, but not in a definitive way. Rather, that point got me thinking about the difficulties that seem to come with the question (especially as I tried to find research I had access to that might offer more helpful answers and I continually came up with nothing)
I'll preface my quick response with a quick note: I suggest crossposting this [/r/AskBibleScholars](_URL_1_) since there are some people who will know a lot about this topic. But I will also quickly add that the text we have already had mentioned is from 1 Maccabees, a text which does not appear in the Protestant Bible but does appear in Orthodox and Catholic Bibles. The process by which the canon had some alterations (namely, Protestants viewed some texts as less-inspired or not-inspired and removed them from their canon and, overtime, largely stopped reading them) is, I think, what hillsonghoods was getting at.
Another thing to consider is that 1 Macacabees is one might call an intertestamental book -- meaning it was composed sometime between the Old Testament and the New Testament (though it would be considered part of the Old Testament in some traditions). This is relevant because 1 Maccabees is a later text (written about the time after Alexander the Great had died, in particular). I suspect OP's question is concerned with why contemporary texts in the Bible don't mention him. A quick look at the common dating of books suggests that the texts which were written around Alexander's reign are Chronicles (dealing with the history of the North and South kingdoms), a smattering of wisdoms texts (Job, Ecclesiastes), and sections of Psalms. And perhaps Ezra and Nehemiah were starting to take shape. If you were to ask me what texts I would expect to speak about such a figure, I would say "history or prophetic texts" but the texts that are commonly thought to originate from that time all pretty insular in focus (history of the people and a record of the restoration of the people in the land). If common dating of texts is correct, the question is really why weren't more prophetic texts being composed or preserved during this time?
Bradley Gregory, in "Historical Candidates for the fallen King in Sirach 10,10" (from *Zeitschrift Für Die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft* 126, no. 4 (2014): 589-591) believes that Sirach 10:10 ("A long illness baffles the physician; the king of today will die tomorrow," New Revised Standard Version) is a reference to Alexander the Great and writes:
> The significance of Alexander’s fatal illness for Jews living much later is confirmed by the brief account of Alexander the Great in 1 Maccabees in which the author’s main point about Alexander is that his illness, described as »falling on his bed«, was a reversal of his arrogance, described as having a heart that was »exalted and lifted up« (p. 591)
Gregory's article is sadly short (he's mostly just suggesting a possible figure to consider), but he believes that in the original languages there's also commonality between the Sirach passage and 1 Maccabees. Yet I believe Gregory's potential solution to a minor quandary (does 10:10 refer to a specific monarch?) raised another question: if Alexander's perceived arrogance was so well-known that this would have been seen as a clear reference to him, why do we not have more Jewish literature concerning him? To which there is no clear answer. I tried to do a search to see if there are non-biblical, religious texts from the Jewish people that mention him but that's outside of my realm of expertise.
And I'm not sure there will be answers on this question that do not go into speculation. Because the question can easily because why do the Jewish holy texts not mention this figure? And my speculative answer is simply that the scope of Tanakh was, for some unknown reason, codified so that Alexander the Great seems outside of the scope. The histories we have and the prophetic texts which we have are largely dealing with pre-exilic realities and the final books concern the restoration of the people to the land and the rebuilding of the Temple. One could hypothesize that these were deliberate choices made by the priestly class, but we do not know if this is the case. One could assume there is a narrative unity that ultimately runs thought the Old Testament, but this would also be speculation. And would open the question as to why the canon was codified in such a way, why did their canon close when it did?
And part of this issue is simple: the process by which some texts are codified and others are not is not a clear process. Brennan W. Breed, in *Nomadic Texts: A Theory of Biblical Reception History*, discusses the fluidity of text in the Second Temple period: even if certain texts were agreed to be holy which version of that same text was considered authoritative was not agreed upon (in a modern analogy it'd be like if I decided to read from The Message in my church, where Scripture reading is explicitly done from either the New International Version or the New Revised Standard Version; The Message is not seen as an adequate representation of the word of God, but in other churches it might be). Yet Breed's argument makes this conversation even more difficult. Because he also is pretty firm on the idea that the idea of a canon is an anachronistic category to impose upon ancient Judaism (p. 48-9) and highlights the variety of textual traditions and differences in which "the earliest version \[of a text\] was both copied and altered by... successive communities, each with their own distinction theological perspective" (p. 21). Which only highlights: why do we not know of Judaic traditions who were engaging in this process with their religious texts to decry or praise Alexander the Great? Why is it not until after his death that Judaism seems to find him particularly noteworthy?
Which also highlights why this issue becomes even more bizarre: there is not a monolithic Judaism that we can look to the past and say "there, that's THE Judaism." We know there was a plurality of Judaisms with people that were writing. We find manuscripts or references to texts that we do not have, we have competing views of what counts as the Old Testament (is 1 Maccabees a holy text or not?), yet we do not find more references. Did Alexander the Great not strike the Jewish people as noteworthy? Was his reign simply in an era where the Jewish people were, by and large, not writing too many works? Were works referencing him largely lost? Are there perhaps coded references to him in texts (akin to how Rome might be referenced through allusions and metaphor in later apocalyptic texts)?
(Added: to that last question, some do believe that Daniel contains obscure references to Alexander the Great:
> ALEXANDER THE GREAT -- the king of Macedonia, the great conqueror; probably represented in Daniel by the “belly of brass” (Dan. 2:32), and the leopard and the he-goat (7:6; 11:3)
from M. G. Easton, Easton’s Bible Dictionary (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1893); it's an assertion I've come across elsewhere).
This is all a long way to say that I'm simply not sure if there's an answer we can get to. I think any answer will raise more potential question. It's a difficult answer to give, especially when Alexander the Great seemed to have made an impact with their neighbours. | [
"Alexander the Great (356BC-323BC) was a Greek king of Macedon and the creator of one of the largest empires in ancient history. He was tutored by the philosopher Aristotle and, as ruler, broke the power of Persia, overthrew the Persian king Darius III and conquered the Persian Empire. His Macedonian Empire stretch... |
Why did the Visigothic and Ostrogothic cultures disappear? Why are there no more ethnic Goths in Europe? | Some of the Visigoths ended up ruling northern spain and parts pf southern france in the Visigothic Kingdom from the fifth through the eighth centuries (AD). They were able to secure this land partly via conquest and partly at the behest of the Romans. Their dominance was ended by the invasion of Spain by Islamic forces in 711. Their influence was subsequently confined to the Pyrenees region until the reconquista began.
As flor being culturally asimmilated, they did convert to Catholicism. Also, a professor of mine referred to their actions in Spain as being "more Roman than the Romans," as they adopted many practices of the Romans including legal ideas, entertainment, and architectural and engineering practices.
As an aside, during my semester abroad, the school organized a trip to Rome. One of our professors spoke Gothic, and claimed to be one of a very small number who still spoke the language. I have no idea if his statement was accurate or not, but I have no real reason to question his claim as it was an impressive performance. | [
"The Goths and Vandals were linguistically assimilated to their Latin (Romance) substrate populations. Evidence exists that for 2nd- and 3rd-century Goths as well as for 4th- and 5th-century Lombards that significant population displacement throughout Roman-occupied Europe occurred. This quite likely contributed to... |
why do devices such as phones take such little time to get to around 80%, and then take ages for the last 20%? | The charge stored in a battery when supplied by a constant voltage is exponential, depending on the type.
ELI5: you’re at a public pool on a 105° degree day that only lets people in 1 at a time. They are gonna fill that pool up until they’re shoulder to shoulder, but each person goes to a random open spot in the pool. When the pool has no one in it, people enter from wherever and they can find their spot quickly. The more full the pool gets, the more time it takes for each person to find their designated spot. | [
"A cell phone's shelf life is only about 24 months for the average user. This means that newer cell phone models are constantly put up on the market to replace older ones. This is as a result of the rapid progression of technology in the mobile industry. According to Matt Ployhar of Intel, the industry is rapidly e... |
How popular was classical music versus other songs in their mutual contemporary period? Was it based on class? | TL;DR:
Classical music is music from the past, but it should not be assumed to be THE music of the past. It was mostly the music of the rich and powerful, and it was composed in specific styles and for specific contexts. Most people never wore fancy expensive formal clothes with elaborate jewelry, ate expensive exotic meals, or listened to fancy classical music. Classical music was not pub music.
& #x200B;
First, what is classical music?
In the general sense, it usually refers to music that is connected to a tradition that comes from practices that started to be codified and institutionalized around the 9th-10th century in Europe: the usage of a form to write music down and theory of how to create music. It started in the Catholic Church, with literate people who wanted to standardize the music in the liturgy and its practice in all the regions in which it was performed. Those practices managed to get to secular music, mostly to the musicians employed by the rich and powerful.
Today most people think of classical music as a collection of pieces by some specific composers. Those composers belong to the previously mentioned tradition, because their music survived by being written with musical notation and their music uses the techniques codified in the music theory that was developed from the system that started to be codified many centuries ago. Those musicians had an education: they learned what music was meant to be and how it was meant to be performed. They mostly worked for the rich (first the Church and the nobility, then the wealthy). They were mostly trained craftsmen (today we would say professionals and artists, but for a long time that was not how they were seen) who were hired because of their skill and knowledge.
& #x200B;
How did this compare to other kinds music? Let's get to the specific centuries of your question with some examples.
François Couperin was a French musician, from a long line of distinguished musicians, working around 1700 at the court of Louis XIV. He and other very well respected musicians composed and played music for many events of the aristocracy: religious ceremonies, social events, state events. Keep in mind Louis XIV [had this place built](_URL_0_), and employed hundreds of musicians for all his musical needs. The king wanted the fanciest palace to show his wealth and power, establishing what refined taste and the highest expression of the arts were. All the artists he employed were working to give the king what he wanted, and the aristocracy were to follow whatever he came up with. Surgery for an anal fistula became a [fashionable thing](_URL_2_) because he had it done.
So, Couperin and others composed for the richest and most powerful, in quirky styles that matched the dances those people liked (the king danced). At that time there was a lot of emphasis even in things like how should a high born person move, how to make fancy gestures and make ceremonies out of many things (they had ceremonies for when the king was waking up and going to bed, for examples). A highly stylized way of life in many regards.
[You can listen to some music by Couperin here.](_URL_3_)
Would poor people find any use for this peculiar music that was composed for fancy dancing or to entertain noble folks in choreographed social/state events? Would such music be suitable for pubs or public festivities? Not really, no. Would this music be easy to get? Well, some of this music was printed and sold. You would need to pay for it and pay properly trained musicians with proper instruments. Not doable for most people.
& #x200B;
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German musician who died in 1750. He was a very religious protestant, who worked for churches and princes. Would regular people be able to listen to this music? Well, in many cases they would. People attending the [St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig](_URL_1_) in 1724 would have listened to [Bach's new Passio, composed for Good Friday](_URL_4_). They even tried to notify people of a change of venue!
This was religious music, hours of it. Not easy to listen cheerful tunes by ANY standard. In this case, and many others, Bach's music is dense. He was a mature composer with above average compositional technique, quite a taste for dense and complex (out of fashion) music, and quite a heavy hand when it came to write down notes. This music is challenging for the trained professional musicians of today (who have usually spent many, many years studying music). You don't just casually say let's play one of the Passions next Friday.
Was his other music well known among the general public? Not terribly much, I am afraid. He composed dense, difficult music that was popular among music freaks (other professional musicians, and rich people with extensive musical training). He was a well respected specialist, hired to compose proper music for very proper religious ceremonies, and for people with a particular taste. He is way more famous today than he was in his time. | [
"Classical music became immensely popular in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and was known across even the most rural sections of the country. It was defined by the tension between classical composer Martin Gjoka along with Fan Noli and Mikel Koliqi, who embraced national identity and added religious and fol... |
why does adrenaline in certain circumstances give people super human strength? (being able to lift extremely heavy things off of people, etc.) | First its important to note that so called feats of "hysterical strength" are not scientifically recognized, although they are well documented. They clearly happen, but science has a hard time testing them, because its obviously very hard to reproduce in a lab.
However, they have given small tests, like testing grip strength, and then electrically stimulated the muscles and tested again, and found that people exhibit about 25% more strength under electroshock, which definitely verifies people are in general stronger than they're normally able to access. Additionally, you may have heard of people being flung across an entire room after being electrocuted. This isn't because of the electricity - electricity doesn't move things like that - its because the shock caused massive muscle contraction, and the people flung *themselves* across the room, jumping far further than they would have believed possible under normal circumstances.
So, because they can't test hysterical strength, we can only hypothesize why adrenaline causes it. More than likely it is because your muscles are under several inhibitory systems, including pain as well as the neurological restriction of simply having not enough signaling at any given time to activate all the muscle fibers in a group. Strength isn't just about raw strength, its about *timing*; you need one perfectly timed electrical burst to signal all fibers to work in concert when exerting force. The more fibers activated simultaneously, the more strength you'll have.
Adrenaline most likely acts to remove several different limiter systems. Your pain sensation is dulled or removed entirely, your blood vessels are dialated and your muscles are more heavily oxygenated, and your neural activity increases; more brain activity = increased signaling, which means you're better able to activate more muscle fibers at once.
The reason we can't do this all the time is fairly obvious - it puts much more strain on the body and consumes far more energy. Since our bodies evolved in times of scarcity, our bodies evolved a logical mechanism for limiting the bodies ability to use its full strength and energy; only when the brain sensed certain stimuli (a tiger, a child in trouble), would it release its natural chemicals that overrode its own internal limiters, allowing for a brief state of higher muscle performance.
EDIT: Thought I'd throw this out there just 'cause: what people normally call "adrenaline" is actually called "epinephrine". The name "adrenaline" comes from a company that tried to patent a synthetic epinephrine compound, and then name stuck. There's another hormone called "norepinephrine", which some scientists theorize may actually be responsible for "hysterical strength". It operates much faster than epinephrine, and acts as a primer, which engages the body and officially switches it to "fight or flight" mode. It can also cause the muscles to start dumping their glucose stores (your muscles store glucose for quick, instant feats of anaerobic strength, because aerobic energy doesn't engage instantly). The fact that norepinephrine greatly increases brain activity, and causes a massive release of muscular energy, may be the contributing factor to huge bursts of extra-natural strength.
EDIT EDIT: Some people have (correctly) indicated that "adrenalin(e)" and "epinephrine" are called different things in different countries. True! I mostly included the edit to point out that the common reactions of the body to adrenaline / epinephrine in the case of hysterical strength can actually be attributed to several molecules, and refer to "epinephrine" so that it can be seen in relation to "norepinephrine." I would just add that the "proper" name for the molecule is still under debate, and this site does an excellent job summarizing the conflicting nomenclatures and debating for a unified name:
_URL_0_
EDIT THE THIRD: Wow, surprised and thankful for so many upvotes! In honor, I thought I'd go a little deeper into an ELI-a-very-bright-fifteen-year-old explanation of the topic, for those who are interested, and talk about some of the things many people have brought up in the comments.
The brain controls muscles by sending impulses to "motor units", which is a motor neuron and the various actual muscle fibers that are activated by that neuron. This is called recruitment. If you want to curl a 20lb dumbell, your brain has to "recruit" all the proper motor units in your arm, hand, and shoulder necessary to lift it, by sending the "contract" signal to them. Humans have many, many motor units, which allows us for very intricate, refined movements. You can play guitar, dextrously use tools, and figure skate!
But it also means your brain has to work a lot harder, and disperse signals a lot farther and wider, to fully activate a muscle. Comparatively, chimps have much fewer motor units, but the motor units they *do* have control many more fibers. So a single "contract" signal now applies to a MUCH wider group of muscles, which makes them *appear* stronger.
No one is precisely sure, but on a given basis, for a given task for a large muscle like your bicep, you may only use as little as 25% of the *total muscle fibers*. Even though it seems like you're trying your hardest, your brain simply isn't signalling all of the fibers inside that muscle.
But lets take a scenario of hysterical strength. Adrenalin and norepinephrine activate your sympathetic nervous system, dialate your eyes, increase brain activity, and more importantly, *consolidate your focus*. If you think about lifting a dumbell in a gym, your concentration is branching out in many directions. You're thinking about your day, your surroundings, your hunger, aches and pains. All of these detract from your brains ability to send recruitment signals to motor units. But now, in a state of supremely focused motivation - rescue a loved one - *all* your focus is dedicated to a single task. NOW when your brain sends a recruitment signal, its sending it to MANY more motor units - 80, 90, maybe even 100% of the total muscle fibers in a given muscle, across many muscles.
In the moment, this may seem like superhuman strength, but in actuality, its only because we so rarely experience the full extent of our strength. Athletes get to where they are by practicing specific and timed recruitment of specific motor units. This study:
_URL_1_
Shows that in athletes, the physical volume of their cerebellum (the part of the brain responsible for sending the coordination & motor recruitment signals) is larger than non-athletes; i.e, they can recruit *more* motor units, faster, while in a "normal" state than the average person. By contrast, in a high-stress adrenal state, your brain has to divert processing power to recruiting motor neurons in order to achieve your greater state of strength, compromising things like external focus, logic, etc. Athletes, because of a greater volume in their cerebellum, can achieve physically profound feats *without* compromising these functions, and don't need to rely on a sudden huge influx of Adrenalin to do so - they can summon it at will. | [
"Extreme sports trigger the release of the hormone adrenaline. This is a very powerful hormone as it can cause human beings to perform tremendous stunts of many sorts. However, with a bad mix of other hormones it can lead people to execute terrible actions. It is believed that the implementation of extreme sports o... |
high gravity beer | Did you look at the wikipedia article?
_URL_0_
It sums it up pretty consicely.
Anyway, gravity refers to the specific gravity (density relative to water). Beers are considered high gravity when the density of the wort (beer before fermentation) is high. The density is of the wort is higher when there are more things dissolved in it (sugars). All these sugars are metabolized by the yeast (this process is called fermentation). The yeast turn the sugars into alcohol. Starting gravity refers to the density of the wort before fermentation, ending refers to the gravity after. Several things effect the difference in starting and ending gravity (this difference is called attenuation), including mash temperature, fermentation temperature, yeast alcohol tolerance, yeast health, addition of sugars during fermentation, etc.
The term 'high gravity' itself is kind of arbitrary, and would probably vary depending on who you ask. Typical gravity readings for beers range from 1.035-1.1 before fermentation, and 1.0-1.03 after fermentation. There are cases where the readings would fall outside of this range depending on the style of beer, but it probably encompasses 95% of beers. I could go on and on about beer. Let me know if you have any other questions.
edit: I just looked at your link, and realized they give the gravity in plato. Plato is simply a different scale to measure gravity, like Celsius vs Fahrenheit. | [
"Measurement of the specific gravity of the beer has been used to estimate the strength of beer by measuring its density. Several different scales have been used for the measurement of gravity, including the Plato, Baumé, Balling, and Brix scales, with the Plato scale being the most common modern measure.\n",
"Th... |
Does the creation of the electricity used to fuel Tesla cars create just as much pollution as if they were gas powered? | You've asked about the electricity generation so I'll address that first. Then we can talk batteries and other aspects of EVs if you're interested.
In the US power generation breaks down like this;
- Coal 37%
- Natural Gas 30%
- Nuclear 19%
- Hydropower 7%
-- Other Renewable 5%
-- Biomass 1.42%
-- Geothermal 0.41%
-- Solar 0.11%
-- Wind 3.46%
- Petroleum 1%
- Other Gases < 1%
So on average 13% of power in the US is coming from renewable sources, 19% from nuclear which is very clean, and a huge amount from natural gas (which has it's problems but still arguably better than coal). So between coal and petroleum you're only looking at 40% of the power coming from dirty sources. But of course that depends on [where you live](_URL_0_). If you live in Idaho or Washington then over 70% of your power is coming from a renewable sources.
So renewables are growing and coal use shrinking. Meaning your electric car is automatically getting cleaner over time without you doing anything.
Lets compare this to petrol. You need to find it (often in dangerous places), drill it, ship it (diesel boats), refine it (using power), ship it again (diesel ships), transport locally. And then once it reaches an engine it only gets 25% efficiency with most of the energy going into heat/noise/vibration and every time you break you lose all your momentum by converting it to heat in your friction brakes. An electric engine is over 90% efficient and much of your grid power is renewable and when you brake some of your momentum is converted back into energy. There is simply no comparison in terms of energy usage or efficiency here, EVs win hands down.
Where it gets a bit more complicated is when we include the manufacturing process of the car itself.
It can be argued that EVs with their big heavy expensive batteries require more energy in their initial construction and we are comparing technology that has been subject to economies of scale over 100 years vs brand new technology that's still maturing. Still [this 2012](_URL_2_) report says "Electric vehicles charged on the power grid have lower global warming emissions than the average gasoline-based vehicle sold today."
Even without the already clear advantages batteries are improving all the time and are largely recyclable. Tesla's [closed loop battery recycling program](_URL_1_) can, depending on where you live, reuse 10-70% of the battery.
So in short when you consider everything EVs are much better overall than gas cars, and they will improve, and the grid will continue to improve. | [
"Electric cars have several benefits over conventional internal combustion engine automobiles, including a significant reduction of local air pollution, as they do not directly emit pollutants such as particulates (soot), volatile organic compounds, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, ozone, lead, and various oxides of ... |
why did all the mice die in the mouse utopia experiment, as opposed to reaching a stable population | _URL_0_
Ignore my previous comment if anyone read it, I was very incorrect.
Basically the tl;Dr for OP's question is that overpopulation conditions in animals (such as rats and mice) with social order of some kind results in disorientation in individuals there in, and causes pathological behavior changes ranging from mild deviations from what would be called normal such as self-isolation and failure of maternal instinxts, to severe and extreme deviations such as cannibalism and unprovoked aggression. | [
"Mice with reduced expression of the mitochondrial antioxidant, [[SOD2]], accumulated oxidative damage and developed [[cancer]], but did not live longer than normal life. Overexpression of antioxidants reduced cellular stress, but did not increase mouse life span. The [[naked mole-rat]], which lives 10-times longer... |
what happens when home owner dies and there is a mortgage left? | When a person dies, their property makes up the *estate*. Creditors can make a claim against the estate, and what is left after the debts are paid is distributed according the last will of the *decedent*. If the estate does not have enough assets to pay all of the debts, the creditors are out of luck regarding the remainder (and the heirs get nothing). That is one of the risks of lending money.
However, a mortgage is secured by the house. If the estate does not have enough money to pay the mortgage, the bank gets the house (and with priority over other creditors), just as if the decedent was unable to pay while alive. That is one reason that mortgages have lower interest rates than unsecured loans. If the heirs really want the house, or any other part of the estate for that matter, they can agree to pay off the creditors with their own money. | [
"In a mortgage by demise, the mortgagee (the lender) becomes the owner of the mortgaged property until the loan is repaid or other mortgage obligation fulfilled in full, a process known as \"redemption\". This kind of mortgage takes the form of a conveyance of the property to the creditor, with a condition that the... |
eli17: what's so great about "the great gatsby"? | The reason its great is because of Jay Gatsby. All the people around him are shallow and materialistic. Jay is the last American dreamer. Fitzgerald sees the 20's as a time when morals were decaying. The people who attend Jay's parties are social climbers. They have an insatiable desire for wealth and pleasure; they're corrupting the American dream. Jay dreams of a time and place where social status didn't prevent him from being with Daisy. He romanticizes Daisy until his idea of her is no longer reality. When Jay realizes that he will never get his time with Daisy back, his dream is corrupted (much like the American dream...see the symbolism?), and all that's left for Gatsby is death.
tl;dr Jay's dream of Daisy = American dream. Both are corrupted, and die. | [
"Gatsby has recently been read as a personification and representation of human-caused climate change, as \"Gatsby’s life depends on many human-centered, selfish endeavors\" which are \"in some part responsible for Earth’s current ecological crisis.\"\n",
"Postmodern criticism of Gatsby seeks to place the novel a... |
What were stationary/notebooks/writing materials like in colonial America? | You might find looking at the [digitized Jefferson papers](_URL_0_) useful. [The Farm Book](_URL_1_) should give you a good idea of what a casual "journal" type volume would have looked like. Not much like the Moleskine brand!
Writing implement would have been a quill pen, which you can still buy very easily, and iron gall ink, which you can also still get, or just get a bottle of modern fountain pen ink from any decent office supply store. If you want to go full-tilt you can still get historically authentic paper [which I wrote about yesterday, how odd!](_URL_2_) but it will cost you a bit. | [
"A writing table (French \"bureau plat\") has a series of drawers directly under the surface of the table, to contain writing implements, so that it may serve as a desk. Antique versions have the usual divisions for the inkwell, the blotter and the sand or powder tray in one of the drawers, and a surface covered wi... |
how does pintrest make money? | Investors is a channel where they get to keep the company running. With platforms like these, the norm is to create a solid user(fan) base and improve their services to a point where subscribers have invested enough content and won't mind seeing relevant ads.
| [
"Her lucky pin continues to prove itself useful when she manages to pick a very profitable stock at one of the city's reputable investment corporations: Hendrick Courtney, Sr. and Sons. The firms manager, Hendrick 'Hank' Courtney Jr. is baffled by her performance, and lets her go on picking several more stocks to s... |
if i was to travel away from the earth at sub-light speed then travel faster than light for a time, stop and look back at the earth, could i see myself leaving? | If you had a ship the size of a big city you probably could yes. If it was something the size of our current spacecrafts then no.
For the same reason not even all the telescopes in the world put together could ever see something like the lunar rover we left on the moon. | [
"Since one might not travel faster than light, one might conclude that a human can never travel further from the Earth than 40 light-years if the traveler is active between the age of 20 and 60. A traveler would then never be able to reach more than the very few star systems which exist within the limit of 20–40 li... |
how do online rewards sites know you’ve downloaded the app they are offering. | I am not sure about that exact use case (user level tracking), but in general there are a few ways that advertisers use to check which marketing campaign generates more app installs.
One of the approaches is that the apps have a Tracking SDKs (like google analytics tags, but for apps) that can post back (send the url that generate the download) to the advertiser. If you click on the url to download the app, you will probably notice a lot of parameters. Those parameters can uniquely identify your click, so when you open the app, it posts back that same click ID. | [
"In most cases, incentive sites grant rewards for completing requirements. This usually requires viewing advertisements, signing up for a site, entering a PIN code (through a mobile device), purchasing trial products or full products or completing surveys. This in turn rewards the specified user in cash, points, ch... |
can phones read your mind? on more than one occasion an ad or something on my phone has aligned with a previous thoughts i’ve had. explain? | It's called [Confirmation Bias](_URL_0_). You don't even think about the thousands and thousands of times that you've seen stuff on your phone that had nothing to do with anything you've been thinking about. But when there's a random match-up, you're amazed.
Plus there are targeted ads. Stuff that you've been browsing on your phone or similar to stuff you've been browsing is going to show up. Because they are spying on you, for real. | [
"This shows, however, the same absent-minded muddle that would be revealed by someone who wondered whether telephones did not speak and think (for, tinny voice aside, they are apt to give very thoughtful replies), or who reasoned that books think (since they contain and communicate thoughts). The user is not in com... |
How did Israel justify it's six-day war? | Following things build up before the attack:
* Jordan and Egypt started a defense treaty, in late May
* Egypt blocked the Straits of Tiran for Israel ships (Israel politicians stated before several times that this was a Casus Belli)
* Egypt also forced the UNEF to retreat and
* draw roughly 1000 tanks and 100.000 men to the border between Israel and Egypt
Your question should be asked more neutral/mature.
Edit: Just to make it perfectly - I'm not taking any sides. That's not what this subreddit is about. But I don't like how your question already implies that there were no good reasons for Israel to attack. | [
"The 1967 war between Israel and the Arab states (the \"Six-Day War\") marked a major turning point in the history of both Israel and of Zionism. Israeli forces captured the eastern half of Jerusalem, including the holiest of Jewish religious sites, the Western Wall of the ancient Temple. They also took over the re... |
Was Neil Armstrong not the first man on the moon? | Any successful mission to the Moon by the Soviets--even without an EVA--would have been enormous news that Moscow would have trumpeted around the globe. The idea that such a mission could have been kept secret is preposterous: missile launch detection satellites had been in orbit since the mid-1960s in the form of the [MIDAS program](_URL_1_), and any rocket large enough to get to the moon would certainly have been noticed. Various ground-based radars would also have noticed a sizable new object in orbit, and radio traffic coming from the moon (or a trajectory consistent with lunar orbit injection) would have been noticed.
The Soviet lunar program was a bit of a mess, with at least two major programs and sever minor programs running simultaneously and competing for men, materials, and money. Sergei Korolev is the name most widely known in the West, but Vladimir Chelomei ran the other major program, and got political points (and budget) for bringing on Sergei Khrushchev, son of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Fights between rocket and engine designers meant that Korolev lost out on the preferred engines and had to go with inferior engines provided by a design bureau with essentially no rocket experience, leading to the need for 30 engines, a horribly complicated mess to handle even now, and automation was in its infancy at the time. However, after Nikita Khrushchev was replaced by Brezhnev, Chelomei fell from favor, and his (possibly better) project was canceled, and Korolev got the sole work to go forward.
However, Korolev died in January 1966 while in surgery. He was replaced by Vasili Mishin, Korolev's work partner for some 20 years. The Soviets managed to get some successful lunar firsts: Luna 9 managed a soft landing on the moon, and Luna 10 successfully orbited the Moon. Both occurred before the US could do the same thing. But note that we're running short on time: the Apollo 11 landing happened in June 1969.
The push to stay ahead of the Americans started to result in massive quality problems that resulted in the death of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, who was killed in April 1967 when his Soyuz, having experienced numerous malfunctions during the flight, had one final malfunction when the descent parachutes failed to deploy. Manned flights were cancelled until designers and engineers could fix the problems. No cosmonaut would fly again for two years, essentially killing the Soviet chance to be first to the moon.
Ongoing problems with the L1 launch system further slowed development. The first somewhat successful launch ended up in the wrong orbit and had to be terminated, but it was definitely noticed by the West. In 1968, the only successful test mission occurred when Zond-5 was able to get to lunar orbit and back. The shock of a human voice coming from the capsule was allayed somewhat when it was learned to be a recording, but it certainly shook up the US space program. At the end of that year, Apollo 8 became the first manned mission to orbit the moon, and the Soviets realized they couldn't win the race. While the L1's successor, the N1, continued to receive some funding, continued failures, including one that destroyed the entire N1 primary launch pad, doomed the program.
There have been numerous hoaxes and urban legends about Soviet moon landings over the years. Some have claimed that there was an attempted landing but that the capsule crashed, or that the landing was successful but the astronauts never returned for various reasons. They're among many myths about the Soviet program where cosmonauts were killed and then erased from history, relying on the Soviet tendency to erase politically undesirable people from history but ignoring that Komarov's death was mentioned publicly and he received a hero's funeral despite an essentially needless death brought about by quality control issues (that part was probably not mentioned in Pravda). Most of the claims appear in tabloids that don't try very hard to poke holes in the stories. Russia has admitted to numerous embarrassing episodes since the fall of the Soviet Union, including the numerous failures of the proposed launch systems. Even a partial success like what your classmates suggested would have energized the Soviet space program and rocked the world.
Source: [The Soviet Manned Lunar Program](_URL_0_), edited and compiled by Marcus Lindroos | [
"In 1964, Neil Armstrong presented at the camp, and gave a lecture to the delegates describing NASA's plans to put a man on the moon. Five years later, just days before he was due to launch on Apollo 11, he sent a telegram to the camp expressing his commendation.\n",
"On August 16, 1950, Aviation Midshipman Neil ... |
how do binary explosives work, and how do they not explode if they are dropped? | They are explosives that come in two parts. Only combined do they become explosive.
On their own they are inert. | [
"A binary explosive or two-component explosive is an explosive consisting of two components, neither of which is explosive by itself, which have to be mixed in order to become explosive. Examples of common binary explosives include Oxyliquit (liquid oxygen/combustible powder), ANFO (ammonium nitrate/fuel oil), Kine... |
What is the Arminian Genocide? | Hi there! Part of your question is, essentially, ‘why didn’t I learn about this’. We’re happy to let the question stand, but there are a variety of reasons why you may find it hard to get a good answer to this question on /r/AskHistorians.
Firstly, school curricula and how they are taught vary strongly between different countries and even even different states. Additionally, how they are taught is often influenced by teachers having to compromise on how much time they can spend on any given topic. More information on your location and level of education might be helpful to answer this question.
Secondly, we have noticed that these questions are often phrased to be about people's individual experience but what they are really about is why a certain event is more prominent in popular narratives of history than others.
Instead of asking "Why haven't I learned about the Armenian Genocide", considering asking "What importance do scholars assign to this event in the context of Turkish/Armenian/World War I history?" - the latter question is often closer to what to what people actually want to know and is more likely to get a good answer from an expert.
Thank you!
| [
"The Herero and Nama genocide was a campaign of collective punishment that the German Empire waged against the Ovaherero, the Nama, and the San in German South West Africa (now Namibia). It is considered the first genocide of the 20th century. It occurred between 1904 and 1908.\n",
"BULLET::::- The Herero and Nam... |
Why can 2D objects rotate in just 1 axis but 3D objects can rotate in 3? | The number of rotation generators in D dimensions is D*(D-1)/2. So D=2 gives 1, D=3 gives 3, D=4 gives 6 and so on.
The rationale is as such: rotations in general shouldn't be though as happening *around* an axis, but *in* a 2D plane. That with axes is a picture which is only meaningful in 3D, where a plane is also identified by his perpedincular axis.
However, already in 2d you see that there's really no axis to speak of. The same extends to D > = 4.
So to find all possible "fundamental" rotations we need to find all possible 2d planes we can build with our coordinates.
In D=2, it's easy: the only plane is xy. Also yx is valid, but it's the same rotation just in the other direction, and so we don't count it. There's only one generator of rotations.
In D=3 you have xy, yz, zx (a.k.a rotating around the z, x, y axes respectively) so 3.
In D=4 the 6 planes are xy, yz, zw, wx, xz, yw.
What is the general rule? Well, to find a plane you first need to choose one coordinate, there's D of them. Then you also need to choose another different one, there's D-1 remaining. So D*(D-1) pairs possible. However, we need to correct for double counting pairs which are reversal of eachother (e.g. xw and wx) and so we divide by two. We obtain the formula I quoted in the beginning. | [
"In 3D, equivalently it is the combination of a rotation and an inversion in a point on the axis. Therefore it is also called a rotoinversion or rotary inversion. A three-dimensional symmetry that has only one fixed point is necessarily an improper rotation.\n",
"Rotations in 3D space are made mathematically much... |
From the 1970s on, many cults are associated with religiously-motivated mass suicide. Why did this develop during the 70s--or was it in fact continuing an older tradition? | > From the 1970s on, many cults are associated with religiously-motivated mass suicide. Why did this develop during the 70s--or was it in fact continuing an older tradition?
Your question is really two different, but related, questions. The first one is "how did cults become associated with mass suicide?" The second one is "did religiously-motivated mass suicides occur prior to the 1970s?" I can definitely answer the first, but I don't know the full answer to the second, though I'll try to point you to articles I've read that try to touch on it.
Note: in your original question, you referred to them as "cults." "Cults" isn't necessarily wrong, but it also has negative connotations in common context. This isn't necessarily ideal in the academic context, since having an inherent negative bias towards these groups would hamper proper examination of these groups. As such, this leads to debate as to what these groups ought to be called, whether any proposed new names are adequate enough, or whether they should be renamed at all. Alternatives to the word "cult" have been proposed in the literature, including "new religious group", "sect", "charismatic movement", and "marginalized movement." If you want to read more about this, I suggest checking out "'Cults': What They Are" in _The Rhetoric of Religious Cults: Terms of Use and Abuse_ (Mooney, 2005).
Due to this debate, you might see these terms used in quotes from the literature. I'll personally be referring to them as marginalized religious groups in my answer, but note that if you see "NRM" or "sect" or "cult" in a quote or in an article/book I cite, it refers to the same thing.
> How did marginalized religious groups become associated with mass suicide?
Basically, Jonestown happened.
The anti-cult movements (which I'll abbreviate as ACMs) of the 60s and 70s often warned about marginalized religious groups. These warnings generally claim that said marginalized religious groups are:
* brainwashing members into joining the group;
* causing members to do things seen as "abnormal" by wider society (e.g. communal living, giving up old hobbies to devote all their energy to the group, moving to another place to join the group);
* physically, emotionally, and sexually abusing members of the group;
* financially exploiting and/or extorting members of the group;
* censoring dissent among members of the group;
* barring members from freely leaving the group; and
* forcing members to cut off contact with loved ones who might otherwise try to pull them out of the group.
You can see many of these claims leveled against groups such as the Children of God, the Unification Church, Hare Krishna, the Church of Scientology, Jehovah's Witnesses, and (of course) Peoples Temple (henceforth PT).
A summary of PT is needed to understand how Jonestown became a darling -- if you could call it that -- of ACMs. As the group existed for over 20 years, this summary will be a bit long, so I apologize. A breakdown can be found in _Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People_ (Reiterman, 1982), _Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple_ (Moore, 2009), _A Thousand Lives_ (Scheeres, 2011), and the well received documentary _Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple_ (2008). First-hand accounts also exist; see _Stories from Jonestown_ (Fondakowski, 2013) and [this list (presented without comment)](_URL_3_) for examples.
PT was a marginalized religious group, led by Jim Jones, that operated between 1956 to 1978. The group originated in Indianapolis as an interracial Christian church, and ran social service programs such as church-run nursing homes and a soup kitchen. They later became affiliated with the Disciples of Christ.
In 1965, after Jones warned of a nuclear holocaust that would devastate the midwest, the church moved to California, settling in Ukiah. They continued to do social service work in Ukiah and in San Francisco. Jones later expands the church, recruiting black people (often from other churches; many were poor, elderly, and/or otherwise felt dissatisfied with existing black religious groups such as the Black Church, Black Muslims, and the Nation of Islam) and white people (who were often middle-class and college educated), in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Jones preached anti-racism, advocated for "apostolic socialism" in his sermons, criticized the King James Version of the Bible for enabling racism and imperialism, and used healing sessions to great effect, causing them to gain members. PT also encourages members to live communally in PT-owned apartments, asking them to give up what they had with the promise of a stable allowance, housing, and food. The group also suffers from higher-ranking members choosing to leave the group around this time, most famously the "Eight Revolutionaries"/"Gang of Eight" in 1973, and Elmer and Deanna Mertle (later Al and Jeannie Mills) in 1975. Stories, accusations, and rumors of abuse, financial exploitation, and dodgy theology begin to circle the group, although for the most part they don't gain much traction in the media (outside an eight part series published in 1972, which ended prematurely after only four parts saw print). In 1973, PT begins work on an agricultural mission located in Guyana, in what is later known as Jonestown.
In 1975, after the election of George Moscone, Jones and PT begin to gain political influence. PT participates in political activism during this time, participating in letter writing campaigns and supporting the "Fresno Four" and the fight for the International Hotel (among others). In 1976, Jones becomes appointed to the San Francisco Housing Authority. Soon, Marshall Kilduff and Phil Tracy take interest in the group and Jim Jones in particular, and begin interviewing defectors, including new apostate Grace Stoen, who was now in a legal battle with her estranged husband, Tim Stoen, and PT, seeking custody for her son. Kilduff and Tracy publish [their article](_URL_4_) in _New West_'s August 1977 edition, leading to a mass exodus of PT members to Jonestown.
A dedicated ACM group, known as the "Concerned Relatives," begin to mobilize against PT. Concerned Relatives consisted of PT apostates (the "Gang of Eight", the Mills, Grace Stoen, Tim Stoen -- Grace's estranged husband, who now teams up with her in their custody battle -- in 1977, and Deborah Layton Blakey in 1978) and relatives of PT members. They lobbied government agencies, congresspeople, and the media to do something about Jonestown, who they claimed were holding their loved ones against their will in a "concentration camp." (See: Concerned Relatives flyer ["This Nightmare is Taking Place Right Now"](_URL_2_), ["Accusation of Human Rights Violations by Rev James Warren Jones Against Our Children and Relatives at the Peoples Temple Jungle Encampment in Guyana, South America"](_URL_1_), and the [Affidavit of Deborah Layton Blakey](_URL_0_)\).
After the exodus, tension begins to mount in Jonestown. The custody battle escalates in September 1977 when the Stoens' lawyer gets a court order from the Guyanese government requesting that Jones appear with their son, leading to an event known as the "Six Day Siege," where PT members armed themselves with machetes and guns and patrolled the grounds for six days. The battle stalls after PT has a talk with the Guyanese government, but the damage has been done. Jones's paranoia increases, and with a US Postal Service memo asking workers to return Social Security checks going to Guyana, a US Customs INTERPOL report revealing that Customs investigated shipments to Jonestown, and FCC investigations regarding amateur license violations for their HAM radios, members begin to believe that the US government, in tandem with Concerned Relatives, is set out to destroy their group as part of the Cold War fight against communism. They hire Mark Lane (a conspiracy theorist who believed such a conspiracy existed against PT) for legal counsel, begin practice suicide drills, and increasingly discuss suicide or violence against PT critics as part of educational exercises.
Ultimately, the Concerned Relatives got the attention of Congressman Leo Ryan, who decides to go on an expedition to investigate these claims. PT tries to prevent Ryan from going to Jonestown, but they ultimately relent on 17 November 1978, and allow him, his congressional group, members of the media, and members of Concerned Relatives to enter Jonestown.
Tragedy ensues on 18 November 1978. Sixteen people decide to defect from the group on that day, which upsets Jones. While the congressional group, the media, PT critics, and the defectors begin to board planes back to Georgetown, a PT group arrives and begins to shoot, ultimately killing five. PT members later gather in a central pavilion, where, after a prolonged discussion in which people express their fears of fascists coming in to kill their seniors and children and taking them back by force to the US, the group decides to self-destruct, primarily via poisoned Flavor-aid. One woman tries to argue against what was to happen during that discussion, but she fails to convince the group, and the self-destruction goes ahead. 909 PT members died that day, thus ending PT as a marginalized religious group. | [
"In early 2000, followers of the religious movement perished in a devastating fire and a series of poisonings and killings that was initially considered a group suicide. It was later determined to be an orchestrated mass murder by group leaders after their predictions of the apocalypse failed to come about. In thei... |
How common was it in Medieval times for people to name their swords? | I recently read "La Chanson de Roland" and "Le Couronnement de Louis/Charroi de Nîmes" in my medieval french lit. class. In both of those chansons de geste, both dating from the ~10th and ~11th century there are many named swords that are featured in the works.
For instance, there are a number of passages about Roland's sword, Durendal. Also Charlemagne's sword Joyeuse, and the villian in "Roland" has a sword names Précieux.
Because I'm more familiar with the medieval literature I cannot speak specifically to actual real life documented examples of people naming swords.
However, due to it's inclusion in the aforementioned chansons de geste (and in other works of that genre) it was likely an important aspect of medieval society. One can make this conclusion because of the fact that throughout works of that genre you saw the authors emulating their society, or at least an ideal of there society. Of which naming swords were important.
Also, just to add on. Perhaps someone here can give an estimate in modern money, but swords were extremely expensive possessions in the Middle Ages. They were extremely important to the owner because of the sheer cost of owning one. This perhaps influenced why names were given to swords. | [
"In the Middle Ages, the sword was often used as a symbol of the word of God. The names given to many swords in mythology, literature, and history reflected the high prestige of the weapon and the wealth of the owner.\n",
"From the testimony of Germanic mythology and the Icelandic sagas, swords could also be give... |
How much power, if any, did the Senate still possess in the Byzantine Empire? | It's hard to say "during the Empire," because of how long the Empire was around. Generally, it just constantly lost power, sort of eventually forming more of a body of dignitaries and advisors than an actual legislative body.
At least during the post-Justinian Byzantine times, it's rule was one of slowly losing power, although it was still prestigious. Justinian's Corpus, for example, gave the Senate the right to debate all laws before they were instituted by the Emperor (although this ended up not happening), and judicial trials were often held by a prefect and 5 senators drawn by lot. High treason trials were often done in front of the Senate as well, meaning it had sway in legal matters like that.1 It's real power, more than anything though, came from the people who made up the Senate moreso than the prestige of the body itself. Senator was a title that was, like many Byzantine courtly titles, given out like candy at times to members of the government, so the Senate often acted like the conglomeration of the government.2 As such, it's few moments of relevancy in the Byzantine times was during times of succession. For example, the Senate was the body that decided that the gates would be open to Heraclius during his war with Phokas. Likewise, at the death of Heraclius, the intervention of the Senate is what forced Empress Martina to accept the rule of Constantine III and later Constans II over her own son Heroklonas.3 You see it pop up from time to time after this, such as when Theodora (Empress of Theophilos) went to the Senate to appeal to their virtue in hopes that they would allow her to peacefully rule as regent for her young son Michael III without fear of intervention/scheming against her. Following this, however, the Basilika law code that was introduced under Basil I and Leo the Wise stripped it of almost all of its remaining power. After this, you could simply buy the title of Senator, so any real power and or function of the "senate" was really just the collective power of those who owned the title, not even the body itself anymore.
Hope this answers your question :)
[1] The Civil Law, Justinian _URL_0_
[2] Alexiad, Anna Komnenos, along with The Byzantine Aristocracy: IX to XIII Centuries by Michael Angold (I've only read excerpts from this, but this seems like a good book for you to get your answer from in terms of later Byzantine history)
[3] History of the Byzantine State, George Ostrogorsky (This isn't a great text since it's outdated, but it serves its purpose as a survey piece)
[4] A Synopsis of Byzantine History, John Skylitzes with translation by John Wortley | [
"The senate continued to exist in Constantinople however, although it evolved into an institution that differed in some fundamental forms from its predecessor. Designated in Greek as \"synkletos\", or assembly, the Senate of Constantinople was made up of all current or former holders of senior ranks and official po... |
how does it come that helicopters are so widely used in military even though they seem so vulnerable? | By the time you can see or hear an aircraft, it's already close enough to fire its weapons. It's more important to catch them with radar systems long before they get into firing range. That's where a helicopter has an advantage: It can fly very low to the ground, so low that objects on the ground and the earth's curvature can hide it from radar.
In addition to that, helicopters can start and land everywhere, while combat jets require a proper runway. That's why they are often used for transporting and evacuating soldiers. | [
"A military helicopter is a helicopter that is either specifically built or converted for use by military forces. A military helicopter's mission is a function of its design or conversion. The most common use of military helicopters is transport of troops, but transport helicopters can be modified or converted to p... |
if dying of old age is not an actual cause of death then could one live indefinitely(not immortal) provided they have enough money and a constant supply of vital body parts to replace with? | No, you couldn't, and the reason is your DNA. Your DNA has bits of blank information on the end of it that are called telomeres. They act as a buffer to prevent damage to your DNA, because every time your cells reproduce, there is a risk of losing a very small amount of data from the resulting DNA. Think of them like aglets on your shoelaces. The telomeres are there to absorb the damage, leaving the important data in the strands of DNA intact. This can't happen indefinitely, however, because eventually the telomeres will wear away. This is what causes aging. Once the telomeres wear away, any damage that happens to the DNA strands happens to actual, vital data, causing the body to slowly function less and less efficiently, until eventually it simply cannot operate well enough to function anymore. | [
"The process of preserving and maintaining one's health throughout life is a matter of grave concern. At some point in every person's life, his or her health is going to decline regardless of all measures taken to prevent such a collapse. Coping with this inevitable decline can prove quite problematic for some peop... |
crime explosion 1958 to present. | I have a degree in Criminal Justice, and criminology is a very vast field with many reasons within that could explain this answer. What type of crime rose specifically? Did some crime rise and some crime fall? Typically, around the holiday seasons, robbery will increase because citizens are looking to provide gifts for their loved ones. Also, if the economy is bad robbery will also rise.
For example, in this UCR from the FBI _URL_1_
it lists that "robbery was the lowest since 1989." A distinction should be made that robbery is defined legally as "the taking of goods from another" _URL_0_ and is not the same as burglary, which is defined as "breaking and entering a building" _URL_2_
The UCR listed above shows that in December in every month of every year robbery goes up.
1991 - up to 9.2 from 8.7 in November
1992 - up to 9.0 from 8.3 in November
1993 - up to 9.4 from 8.5 in November
1994 - up to 8.4 from 8.2 in November
1995 - up to 8.9 from 8.7 in November
(this is all from page 23 in the UCR).
Which should be enough empirical evidence to support my "robbery rises" claim.
For other claims I would have to know which type of crime in particular you are talking about.
edit: formatting | [
"Since the night of the explosion in 1951, five separate criminal investigations have been initiated and completed. The first investigation was headed by the FBI beginning on the night of the explosion and concluding in 1955. The second investigation was a joint investigation by the Brevard County Sheriff's Office ... |
Hello, Historians! My history class is doing a writing assignment about pre-Depression era (1928) America and we need a little help. | The Library of Congress has a collection entitled ["Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929"](_URL_0_), which contains (among other things) several advertisements of products for sale in the '20s. That will certainly help you for the "Consumerism" part, but it is a useful resource in general. | [
"The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression is a book by Amity Shlaes and published by HarperCollins in 2007. The book is a re-analysis of the events of the Great Depression, generally from a free market perspective. The book criticizes Herbert Hoover and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff for their role in exac... |
how is malpractice handled in countries with universal healthcare? | It's actually pretty similar to how it's handle in the US. I'm from Canada so I'll talk about our system.
Medical professional have a professional order which regulate their practice. They are the one that choose which professional can or can't do, they also are the one investigating any case of malpractice or things like that. If they find you guilty they can make decision like excluding you from the order and you can't practice if you are not a member. In Canada, healthcare is mostly a provincial competence so each province have their own College of Physician (name vary province to province).
Then there is criminal charges if the case is serious. And of course nobody is stopping people or their family to bring charge in the civil court. That depend which province because we actually have two different legal system. One come from the French and the other come from the British and one of the main differences is the Civil Code. But that's a whole other discussion.
The responsibility of the physician and hospital are pretty much the same compare to the US to be honest. The consequences for the physician is also pretty similar. The difference is for the Hostpital.
Because the hospitals are own by the Governement, they are never really in trouble, it's the board of direction that might lose their job if they did some wrong doing for example by employing bad doctors. The other differences is that there isn't any financial discussion for the patient. Basically, the patient will be schedule for whatever they need to fix the situation if possible.
Here is the website for the College of Physician and Surgeons of Ontario, as well as an insurance company for malpractice. Give you some idea of the coverage and the legal protections if you want.
_URL_1_
_URL_0_ | [
"Outside of government intervention through subsidies, non profit organizations can also move a society towards the socially optimal outcome by providing free immunizations to developing regions. Without the ability to afford the immunizations to begin with, developing societies will not be able to reach a quantity... |
what kind of things does mi6 and the secret service actually do? | The Secret Service is in charge of investigating counterfeiters, and provide protection services for the President, Vice President, Senators, Congressmen, and various other Dignitaries and their families in the US.
MI6 is the British Foreign intelligence Service. They spy on other countries, and attempt to counter spies in Britain though that is the primary purpose of MI5. The US counterpart to MI6 would be the CIA, and the counterpart to MI5 would be both the FBI and NSA. | [
"MI6 is noted to use human intelligence to operate in different countries or Britain itself to protect the country from global affairs. However, this is usually mixed up with their brother agency MI5 which focuses on the security of Britain.\n",
"The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6, is th... |
when dogs have so much better ears than us, why isnt their barking hurt them? isnt it extremly loudly for them? | Dogs have better ears means they can pick up sounds too quiet for us to hear or frequencies, it doesn't mean that all sounds they hear are amplified. A dog will hear sounds just as loud as us, but they will also pick up sounds we can't hear, that's what them having better hearing means. | [
"Chronic, excessive vocalization may be due to improper socialization or training, stress, boredom, fear, or frustration. Up to 35% of dog owners report problems with barking, which can cause disputes and legal problems. The behavior is more common among some breeds of dog, such as the Shetland Sheepdog, which are ... |
Transition from prehistory to history: emergence of large-scale well organised societies before the invention of writing? | I have a more specific reply to your question below, but first I'd like to talk about the question itself a little bit.
**Musings**
You have brought up several big issues here, many of which are extremely contested. The first big one is this; does 'history' truly require written records? As archaeology has grown more sure of itself and we've become able to extract more information from remains that question has become more and more up for grabs. I identify myself as primarily an ancient historian, but many of the periods I am familiar with are on the whole evidenced by archaeological materiel and *not* historical records or indeed literature. Ever since I chose to venture into periods outside of Classical Greece and Rome, this is a line I have consciously felt like I'm straddling.
In addition, what you appear to have reached semi independently is another major battle ground; the emergence of 'civilizations' vs processional change. Civilization is not the term that you used, but where you used the term 'well organised societies' many would use the word civilization. If you look at many uses of the term, it seems to describe a binary state, but as you have pointed out surely a transition between the two would seem to be in order. Except at what point in the transition do you chose to determine that a particular group has become a civilization? One day they were just a humble tribe, the next day they were a civilization?
Most relevantly to your question, for many the definition of a civilization *requires* the emergence of writing. So in essence, to be a well organised society that society also has to be historical. This is not neccessarily something people agree on. Indeed, the exact definition of what a civilization is will probably never be agreed on. This is a debate that I have mostly encountered among academics working in prehistoric fields. I personally feel that most of the traditional conceptions of 'civilization' are not actually about the societies in question but about the historian or academic in question and that makes it deeply suspect.
**Specific Answer**
The main place I'm familiar with that fits your parameters pretty much perfectly is the BMAC (Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex), also more pithily known as the Oxus civilization. To give you a brief introduction, the Oxus river is the ancient Greek name for the modern Amu Darya river. It is navigable and also able to be channeled for intense agriculture. The Oxus civilization is currently dated to 2300-1700 BC. The area is known to have been inhabited in the Central Asian neolithic at least from around 6000 BC onwards. The BMAC is generally understood to have occupied the length of the Oxus river starting from its upper reaches at Pamir down to Margiana.
It had been suspected for some time that Central Asia had more to offer than just its first historical appearance in the 6th century BC as a series of Persian provinces. Archaeologists in the 1960s onwards found that irrigation canals had not just been in operation from the Achaemenid era onwards (i.e the Persian Empire), but in fact from the Bronze Age. More evidence has emerged since then, and since around 2007 it is considered a relatively safe bet that the BMAC was a complex society. The only element missing from the traditional cocktail required for a 'civilization' is writing. Our first evidence of writing in Bactria is not for another 1200 years after the end of the BMAC period, and the writing is in Aramaic which originates far to the west of Bactria/Margiana.
But nonetheless, here we are. This is an area in which there is enough complexity to build and maintain large scale canal irrigation, pretty much exactly the kind of society that you were asking about. In fact, your answer was predicated on the fact that such a culture would eventually develop writing; unless we find some rather drastic new evidence, we can only conclude that the region *never developed its own writing system* and writing was only introduced much much later.
We understand almost none of the history of the region between this period and the Achaemenid Persian era. We do not know if the Bactrians of the 2200s BC were directly related to the Bactrians of the 500s BC, we do not know if any states emerged in Central Asia before the Persians, we do not know if the BMAC was an Indo-European speaking culture. There are many many arguments about all of these issues and few of them have been resolved yet.
If writing truly was only introduced by the Persians, then it would seem that writing only became neccessary to meet the demands of running an Empire and integrating this territory into it, and not from any internal pressures in Central Asia itself.
There is source material that I can recommend on this subject if you'd like, I've only left that out because many of the works I'm familiar with need their *own* introduction before reading them.
**Glossary**
Bactria- A region that is now mostly within modern Afghanistan, based around the upper reaches of the Oxus/Amu Darya river. Rich in agriculture, but also in jewels and gold. Originally known as *Baxtrish* in Old Persian (that's transliterated).
Margiana- A region to the west of Bactria, traditionally considered to be based around the city of Merv and at the very eastern edges of the Iranian plateau. Much of it is now in either Afghanistan or Turkmenistan. Originally known as *Margu* to the Persians. | [
"Writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, which used pictograms, ideograms and other mnemonic symbols. Proto-writing lacked the ability to capture and express a full range of thoughts and ideas. The invention of writing systems, which dates back to the beginning of the Bronze Age in the late Neolithic Era of... |
Was the Reconquista considered more secular or religious at the time? | I am surprised no one has tackled this yet. This is not my exact area of expertise but I will give it a crack.
First we have to ask when was it considered more secular or religious?
> "There is a corresponding change in the notion of reconquest. At the start the ideal is to restore a united Spain under the kings of the Visigoths. This is a territorial ambition, and in these early centuries the two religions (or three, with the many Jews living in Spain) prosper regardless of whether the ruler of the region is Muslim or Christian. In the 11th century religious fervour enters both camps. A new Muslim dynasty, that of the Almoravids, is more dogmatic than the Umayyads. A more aggressive Christianity, characteristic of the whole of Europe at this time, affects the northern kingdoms. On the wider stage this is the time of the crusades, and the Christians of Spain have their own local Muslims to confront."
[Source](_URL_0_)
I think this source some it up pretty well. The religious fervor of the era of the Crusades added an element that isn't necessarily visible before the 11th century. It was mainly a work of returning Iberia to the Visigoths, but by the end it had transformed into the major conflict between Christians and Muslims outside of the Near East.
There is also some good work out there about how Spanish identity was in large part formed by this transition from battle of territory to fight between religions: [Source 2](_URL_2_). This focuses mostly on El Cid and the role he played uniting the political and religious spheres, but you can take it as you like.
Secondly we have to ask to whom was it considered more secular or religious at the time? I think there is certainly ample evidence that to some this was nothing more than a power grab and they simply were interested in gaining power, wealth, and land.
This is a pretty good paper discussing why religion may have been more of a facade: [Source 3](_URL_1_)
On the other hand I would argue that had there been no real religious zeal, we would not have had the establishment of the Inquisition in 1481. I think to many in the Church and perhaps Isabella I and Ferdinand II the Inquisition was either the culmination of Reconquista or at least its logical conclusion.
So to sum up the answer, it depends on when and who you are talking about. I think this is one of those that needs to be taken on a case by case basis rather than as a whole seeing as the Reconquista was neither a mono-causal, nor an un-evolving inorganic event by itself, let alone the thousands upon thousands of individual actors and agents involved. Events really need to be seen as organisms which change and adapt over time depending on a variety of different circumstances, but I think this is going a little beyond your question now and more into the nuances of how history should be represented.
I know that may not be wholly satisfactory, but if you have a more specific question regarding a particular person or time period I could dig a little deeper. | [
"\"Reconquista\" resulted in expulsion of the Moors from the Algarve, in the institutionalization of Christianity and the building of churches. During the Middle Ages, the parish was officially referred to as \"Nossa Senhora da Luz\".\n",
"The \"Reconquista\" was a war with long periods of respite between the adv... |
why do the southern states have the highest rates of obesity in america? | There are several reasons.
1. Poverty. As others mentioned, states like Mississippi and Alabama have very high poverty rates. Obesity and poverty are correlated strongly in the U.S.
2. Cuisine. Southern food isn't known for being terribly healthy. While Southerners don't eat fried chicken for every meal, the sort of restaurants that are ubiquitous in the South--McDonald's and the other national fast food giants, but also more regional chains like Chick-Fil-A, Waffle House, Bojangles, Popeye's--are especially ubiquitous in poorer areas.
3. Lifestyle. Even the South's big cities--Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Jacksonville, etc.--are very car-centric and sprawling. Most people drive everywhere, so walking is rare.
4. Climate. I doubt this is really a strong factor influencing it, but [the South's climate](_URL_0_) may go further in discouraging physical activity. I've lived in Georgia and outside of the South (Colorado, mid-Atlantic region). What most of the country calls "summer" starts in April in states like SC, GA, MS, AL and continues on into early October--sweltering heat, high humidity. It's very unpleasant to be outside. While winter is fairly mild in the South too, it's still not that pleasant to be outside in.
5. Reaching a bit further, I would also expect that the legacy of segregation plays a role as well with creating big areas of poverty in black communities. Those areas are more likely to lack transit infrastructure, decent grocery stores, and so on, resulting in food deserts and similar barriers to health. | [
"Nine Southern states have obesity rates exceeding thirty percent of the population, the highest in the country: Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia, Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas, South Carolina, Kentucky, and Texas. Rates for hypertension and diabetes for these states are also the highest in the nation. A study r... |
what classifies something as a plastic and how can the same type of plastic (e.g polyester) be used from slick, waterproof shirts to fluffy blankets? | Plastics are synthetic or partly synthetic polymeric materials. (Basically materials made from enormously big molecules, compared to other materials.)
As to why is there a wide range of plastics. Simply because we spent the last century with trying to make new kinds of plastics that could be applied in different situations. Our technology has evolved so much, that we can now make plastics how we want them.
Their properties are mainly controlled by the actually plastic, so PET (PETP) will act completely differently than Teflon. (PTFE) This is caused by them being made from different macromollecules. You can then adjust the properties of plastics by additives, you could make them more heat resistant, you could change their density, you could make them more durable, you could make them conduct electricity better... Pretty much anything.
I'm not sure how well did I explain it as English isn't my native language and this is hard to explain to someone who doesn't work or study in the the field even in my native language. But fell free to ask more questions.
Also polyesters are category of plastics that PET falls into. They don't have that wide use as you stated, but they can still get pretty useful, not only to make bottles.
But the wide range of uses is possible thanks to the additives I wrote about above. | [
"Plastic products are printed with numbers 1–7 depending on the type of resin. Type 1 (polyethylene terephthalate) is commonly found in soft drink and water bottles. Type 2 (high-density polyethylene) is found in most hard plastics such as milk jugs, laundry detergent bottles, and some dishware. Type 3 (polyvinyl c... |
Has an invasive or agriculturally-destructive species ever been intentionally introduced to a rival country, with the intention of causing harm? | This does not quite fit the bill of "rival country" but in 1989, a self described "ecoterrorist group" known only as "The Breeders" took credit for the recent infestation of California by medflies, which began destroying crops. Opinion is divided today as to whether it was a real attack, an out of control prank, or if it was a hoax of people claiming credit for what was a natural occurrence. | [
"In cases of massive and severe infection of invasive pests, techniques of pest control are often used in combination. An example is the emerald ash borer, \"Agrilus planipennis\", an invasive beetle from China, which has destroyed tens of millions of ash trees in its introduced range in North America. As part of t... |
is the "fiscal cliff" actually bad for our economic recovery? | Probably really bad for the economy.
It does a lot of things all at once. 1- End Bush Era Cuts, 2- Cuts in Defense Spending, 3- End of the payroll tax holiday, 4- Cut in Unemployment Benefits, 5- Cut in Medicare payments to doctors.
A lot of people will lose their jobs because of point 2. (Military contractors and some government employees).
It is also a bitter pill for both sides of Congress to take.
In regards to reducing debt, it will probably reduce the debt but its taking money from the entitlement section of the budget to do so.
ELI5 - Probably bad. Maybe some good. But more than likely bad. | [
"The \"fiscal cliff\" refers to December 31, 2012, the date of the expected implementation of government spending reductions and expiration of a large number of tax cuts, many of which were the tax cuts enacted under George W. Bush and extended by President Obama. In a report released in May 2012, the Congressional... |
what makes a coach watch or something designer worth so much money? | They do tend to be very high quality. That is how they make a name for themselves and then on top of that they have become status symbols and the fact that they are expensive makes them more valuable to some people
"I want people to know/think I'm rich so I buy things people know are expensive"
| [
"Millennium Luxury Coaches is a Central Florida based manufacturer of custom luxury motor coaches, built at their 100,000 square foot facility in Sanford. All coaches are built using the Prevost commercial bus chassis. Millennium has designed custom coaches for business owners, celebrities and pro athletes which ha... |
Scientists plan on taking the first picture of a black hole. But how? | You're correct that black holes emit nothing visible to our cameras. All they mean is that they will take a picture of where the black hole is, not that they will image photons emitted from it.
> So how does one take a picture of something that by definition is impossible to see?
At this point we can start nitpicking the words a bit. How does one take a picture of a shadow, when a shadow is by definition something that is not possible to see? | [
"studies into black holes with the goal to construct a black hole camera using the Event Horizon Telescope. This would allow testing of general theory of relativity by creating an image of the black hole shadow.\n",
"The first image of a black hole, at the center of galaxy Messier 87, was published by the EHT Col... |
how a ufc fighter can drop 26lbs in 6 days to make weight, then manage to fight the next day? | Dropping that much weight in such a short time takes an enormous physical toll. An average person would be physically spent, however, these fighters are in phenomenal physical shape to begin with. Think of the most fit person you know and multiply it by ten. Yes, it affects his strength and physical abilities, but since he is dropping weight to fight lighter, it is likely he is already significantly stronger than his opponent and can afford to lose some strength.
As others have said, he will be dropping mostly water weight by dehydrating himself. 26lbs is on the higher side of what I have heard for a weight cut in such a short amount of time. I believe the weigh-in happens the night before the fight, so he has almost a day to recover. I wouldn't be surprised if he gains 10-15 lbs back from the time of weigh-in to the start of the fight.
| [
"Tara LaRosa (127.6 lbs) and Lacey Schuckman (106.2 lbs) failed to make weight at the weigh in. Schuckman was able to get within 1 pound of her 105 weight class limit within the next two hours and was fined 10% of her purse. LaRosa was not able to get within one pound of 125 pounds within two hours and was fined 25... |
how does a musical score in a film help elicit such specific emotional response in viewers? | It's partially something you learn, partially innate, but it's also the result of a long experience in eliciting emotions through music.
Wrt. learning, let's look at Western movies. We were not born with the association of a certain rhythm with riding a horse. But composers have been using it for a long time, and by now, movie goers will associate the two.
But we do get born with certain associations, or acquire these associations very young and fast. E.g. we know the sound of a wail isn't a happy sound. A dancing rhythm on the other hand is probably happy. Perhaps because of this, we associate slow, descending melody lines quicker with sadness, and dance music with happiness and fun. Low, distant sounds are easily associated with threats.
Finally, underscoring movies has been going on for a long time, so each generation just builds on the experience from the previous one, but also on the expectations set up by the previous generation. | [
"In regards to issues with connectivity, it is important to consider the musical score of composite films. Much like visual repetition or thematic similarities, the score offers another medium through which stories can be linked. Rather than leaving viewers with content to process, decode, intellectualize and then ... |
How do we know ice core samples get older as we go deeper? | The most obvious answer is the older stuff had to freeze to allow the newer stuff to freeze on top of it.
We can further show this by: Oxygen for example normally exists with 8 protons and neutrons giving O16. It can however exist in an isotope with 8 protons and 10 neutrons giving O18. In the same why Hydrogen can exist with 1 neutron or 2 (2 neutrons gives something called deuterium).
Long story short the more of the high weight Isotopes (O18 and deuterium, these are harder to evaporate into the atmosphere so will be present in the H2O in greater quantities during cold spells) the colder the climate at that time.
Now fortunately every year is split into 2 periods, a cold period and a hot period, hence you can map back the summer and winter year after year as you go down the ice cores.
| [
"In 2016, cores were retrieved from the Allan Hills in Antarctica in an area where old ice lay near the surface. The cores were dated by potassium-argon dating; traditional ice core dating is not possible as not all layers were present. The oldest core was found to include ice from 2.7 million years ago—by far the ... |
Physics: How are special relativity, general relativity, and e=mc^2 related to one another? | E=mc^(2) is a result found from special relativity that tells us that mass is a form of energy.
Special relativity: The consequence of light having the same speed relative to any observer. Explains how to translate what one non-accelerating observer measures to what another non-accelerating observer measures.
General relativity: What you get when you add gravity to special relativity. The Principle of Equivalence says being in a gravitational field is equivalent to being in an accelerating frame of reference (which special relativity does not address).
OR
General relativity is a theory of gravity in which light always travels at the same speed relative to any observer at all, leading to spacetime not only being warped, but that warping to be a dynamical variable -- something that changes over time according to equations of motion. Special relativity arises when we get rid of this dynamical warping, and simply consider spacetime to be fixed to be flat. | [
"Formally, special relativity combines the electric and magnetic fields into a rank-2 tensor, called the \"electromagnetic tensor\". Changing reference frames \"mixes\" these components. This is analogous to the way that special relativity \"mixes\" space and time into spacetime, and mass, momentum, and energy into... |
Synapses are the gaps between the axon terminal of one neuron and the dendrites of another neuron, correct? So, effectively, synapses are gaps between neurons? In that case, what conducts the travel of neurotransmitters through the synapses, and how is the nervous system held together? | There are broadly two types of synapses.
The type you are thinking about are strictly called "chemical synapses". Yes, at the simplest level they are very small gaps between two very specialized parts of two neurons. Not just any gap will do, there are specialized structures on both cells both in the synapse and surrounding it (including structural proteins holding the whole thing together), and often support cells surrounding the synapse that do things like sucking up used neurotransmitters. The neurotransmitters aren't conducted, they simply travel through the fluid by the same unguided rules as all other small molecules. You would think this would make thing slow, but the gap is so tiny that they actually travel extremely fast. Our intuition about how this sort of thing should work doesn't help much on such small scales.
The other type are called "electrical synapses". These are made up of something called "gap junctions", which are specialized protein pores connecting two cells (one on each cell). These allow electrical changes to travel directly between cells without needing neurotransmitters. | [
"An axon can divide into many branches called telodendria (Greek–end of tree). At the end of each telodendron is an axon terminal (also called a synaptic bouton, or terminal bouton). Axon terminals contain synaptic vesicles that store the neurotransmitter for release at the synapse. This makes multiple synaptic con... |
how hiv is transmitted from a woman to a man | Blood. Micro cuts in her vagina and micro cuts on your penis. | [
"The most common form of transmissions of HIV is through blood, semen, pre-ejaculation, rectal mucus, vaginal fluids and breast milk. Therefore, women need to be extremely cautious when engaging in sexual activity as well as if and when falling pregnant. Often, behaviours that lead to women contracting the HIV viru... |
From where did Roman legionnaires get their equipment? | The Romans, at least in the late Republic and Empire, had very sophisticated logistics. They had to, they were supporting a large army spread out throughout Europe and North Africa and into Asia. Jonathan Roth's *The Logistics of the Roman Army at War* covers this in detail. Roman military campaigns generally pre-planned supplies. An example would be where Drusus marched west from the Lippe River valley, and met supply ships coming down the Weser river. A Roman supply depot on the Weser was discovered, which might be part of that campaign. The Romans also seemed to have differentiated what we call the 'combat train' (*sarcina*, or the gear immediately needed by the army, like tents and a few days food) and the 'army train' (*impedimenta*, the longer trains with the campaign food, building materials, etc.). They could operate for a short while without the army train (*expediti*) when the army needed to move fast, and sometimes without the combat train (Caesar left behind his *sarcina* during the amphibious landing on Britannia).
The early Roman army was levied from the land-owning classes, who provided their own armor and weapons. After the Marian reforms, when non-land owners were allowed to join, armor was provided by the state, issued by the *custodes armorum*. However, the cost was probably deducted from the soldier's pay. During the late Republic and Principate, arms and armor (along with other goods) would have been sourced locally or from nearby major population centers, produced by contractors (*publicani*), or sometimes produced by the soldiers themselves. By the third century, state-owned *fabricae* were responsible for production. See Bishop & Coulston, *Roman Military Equipment* for a good discussion of that. | [
"Roman legionaries were recruited from Roman citizens under the age of 45. This meant that while Roman legionaries were first predominantly made up of recruits from Roman Italy, more legionaries were recruited from the provinces as time went on. As legionaries moved into newly conquered provinces, they served to he... |
How much more powerful were the battleships Yamato and Musashi in comparison to other WW2 era battleships? | Going off of numbers alone, *Yamato* and her sister *Musashi* are very impressive ships. Their nine [46 cm (18 inch) guns](_URL_3_) were the largest guns to ever be fitted to any class of battleship. In comparison, the Iowa-class battleships, commissioned after *Yamato* and *Musashi*, stuck with [16 inch guns.](_URL_1_) Looking at armour, *Yamato* has thicker armour than the *Iowa*-class (the best battleships built by the US) just about everywhere - the belt (16.1" vs 12.2"), deck (9.1" to 6"), turret faces (25.6" to 19.7"), et cetera. It's no surprise that *Yamato*'s displacement was so high - 71,659 tons fully loaded, compared to *Iowa*'s 57,000 tons.
That is what makes them "super battleships."
However, numbers don't tell everything. *Yamato* is very impressive on paper, but many suspect that an *Iowa*-class battleship would get the better of her in an actual combat situation. Japanese steel was of mixed quality at best - no where near as good as that found in US ships - so whilst *Yamato* had thicker armour than *Iowa*, it wasn't necessarily as much better as it might seem at first. The 18 inch guns on *Yamato* could outrange the 16 inch guns of *Iowa* - around 45,000 yards vs 42,000 yards, but in reality, they would be unlikely to hit anything. American Radar-based fire control was much more accurate than anything that the Japanese were capable of, meaning that *Iowa* would be more likely to land hits on *Yamato* at range. Given that *Iowa* was also a few knots faster than *Yamato*, in a hypothetical engagement, she'd have the ability to break off of combat at will.
*Yamato* and *Musashi* were not terrible ships, though in hindsight one can easily say that they were a waste of resources (of course, this is all hindsight - in the 30s, naval leaders really did think that battleships would still play a vital role in fleet combat in the future). They weren't as refined or capable as the *Iowa*-class battleships, however.
_URL_2_ has a [very good battleship comparison page](_URL_0_), which runs down through various categories. It's worth a read. | [
", named after the former Japanese province, was one of three s built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), beginning in the late 1930s. The \"Yamato\"-class ships were the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleships ever constructed, displacing almost fully loaded and armed with nine main guns. Their secondary ... |
what's the advantage of a really long lease (1000s of years) as opposed to actually buying a property? | It's not there as a benefit to the seller but to the owner of the property. If they sell it, they lose it forever & have no control over it. If they lease it, they can impose conditions on it.
Like, let's say you want somebody to make beer in your town. You give them a great piece of land. After 5 years, they decide to sell it to somebody who wants to built a WalMart. If you've sold them the land, you have no power to stop this. If you leased the land, you can terminate the lease and/or find somebody else who will run a brewery on that spot. | [
"Tenancies above a couple of years are normally called leases and tend to be long; if more than 7 years a new leasehold estate must be registered. These are governed by few of the above rules and are in longer examples deliberately more akin to full ownership than tenancies, in general. They seldom require a sizeab... |
France has detonated over 210 nuclear devices to Britain's 45. Why did France pursue a much more aggressive nuclear testing regime than Britain? | A number of reasons really. They didn't sign on to the [Partial Test Ban Treaty](_URL_0_) in 1963, so they weren't under any international treaty regulation. France has 75% nuclear energy, so they had fissile material in abundance. Being so heavily invested in nuclear energy is (or was) a huge source of pride for France. Also, Nuclear Weapons Scientist *want* to test bombs. They don't want to figure out ways to dispose of them or do mock tests. That's not what they trained for and that's not what they dreamed of while studying. It's an interesting case study because there were massive protests against the tests, and it hurt France's reputation internationally, yet they persisted.
I'd have to dig up my syllabus for a class I took on Nuclear Proliferation to get all the sources but you can read more in: The radiance of France: Nuclear power and national identity after World War II G Hecht, M Callon, 2009 _URL_1_ | [
"France tested its first nuclear weapon in 1960 (\"Gerboise Bleue\"), based mostly on its own research. It was motivated by the Suez Crisis diplomatic tension \"vis-à-vis\" both the Soviet Union and its allies, the United States and United Kingdom. It was also relevant to retain great power status, alongside the Un... |
How does gene therapy/crispr affect every single cell in the body? | They don't. Getting CRISPR to the right tissue is a completely separate problem, and it's not solved right now. Until it is, CRISPR has research value but not therapeutic value.
Delivering CRISPR to a single cell changes that cell and cells created from that cell by cell division. This means that delivering CRISPR to a reproductive cell (sperm or egg) will affect the entire organism created from it (this is called germline editing and is extremely ethically problematic), and delivering it to a stem cell will affect all cells derived from it. For other cells, how far the effect spreads depends on how much that type of cell divides.
But in no circumstance does CRISPR jump from cell to cell. Yet — there is no theoretical reason why you couldn't do that if you insert the right genes into the target cell, but that's way more complicated than anything we can do today with genetic engineering. | [
"In 2016, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a clinical trial in which CRISPR would be used to alter T cells extracted from people with different kinds of cancer and then administer those engineered T cells back to the same people.\n",
"The first clinical trial involving CRISPR started ... |
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