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why would anyone give out a predatory loan? if they know it cannot be paid back why would the loaner be interested in the arrangement?	There are two kinds of predatory loans out there. You're probably talking about the payday type. The loaner is interested because, even if the loan is never paid out, something is going to be paid out. I can offer you $1000 now, with 25% interest due in a week, and I think that you won't be able to pay it back. If you'...	[ "Predatory lending typically occurs on loans backed by some kind of collateral, such as a car or house, so that if the borrower defaults on the loan, the lender can repossess or foreclose and profit by selling the repossessed or foreclosed property. Lenders may be accused of tricking a borrower into believing that ...
Why were Union causalities so large relative to Confederate casualties in the Civil War?	First of all a lot of times, CSA casualties were under reported. One example is from the battle of Cedar Mountain in Aug 1862, and I think Jackson reported 3 missing. this after an all day battle where several brigades were routed. I think a similar example is at South Mountain, Sept '62. CSA casaulties usually listed ...	[ "In the overall actions on September 29, 1864, through October 2, 1864, the Union force suffered about twice as many casualties as the Confederate forces but both sides lost about the same percentage of their forces. The Union forces took some key positions and forced the Confederates to extend their increasingly t...
Can anyone explain to me why the average US citizen views the French Military as weak and insignificant?	The biggest thing that feeds this is everything that has happened to the French since WW1. They got hammered by Germany in WW2. They got booted out of Algeria and Indochina after long, bloody fights against insurgents in the 50's and 60's. Like other European nations they have shrunk their military since the end of the...	[ "In August 2012, an article entitled \"Army morale declines in survey\" states that \"only a quarter of the [US] Army's officers and enlisted soldiers believe the nation's largest military branch is headed in the right direction.\" The \"... most common reasons cited for the bleak outlook were \"ineffective leaders...
when riding a bike, why does turning your ear towards the wind make it more quiet?	It forms a pocket of pressurized air that other air flows around, stopping turbulent air from making your eardrum vibrate.	[ "When the bicycle user pedals at a slow speed, the beads slide up and down the spoke, resulting in noise. When speed is increased the beads move to the outside of the rim due to centripetal force and cease to make sound. They come in a variety of colors, including glow in the dark and a variety of shapes include sp...
why is 1/sin(x) called cosecant and not secant?	A right triangle has one 90 degree angle and two other angles. These angles are complements of one another (i.e., they add up to 90 degrees). The co- in cosine means that the function is the sine of the complementary angle. The secant gets its name from the fact that the line you draw to calculate this val...	[ "This explains why \"EQ\" is often called \"XNOR\" in the combinational logic of circuit engineers, since it is the \"negation\" of the \"XOR\" operation; \"NXOR\" is a less commonly used alternative. Another rationalization of the admittedly circuitous name \"XNOR\" is that one begins with the \"both false\" opera...
Is there a temperature that is too cold for a computer to run?	The chips will have a minimum temperature rating, typically either -25C (248K) or -40C (233K). (As an example, the Intel Atom E3805 is -40C). But there is an actual threshold below which SiGe (Silicon Germanium) transistors are not viable, which is between 40K and 100K depending on the exact transistor type. The m...	[ "Because high temperatures can significantly reduce life span or cause permanent damage to components, and the heat output of components can sometimes exceed the computer's cooling capacity, manufacturers often take additional precautions to ensure that temperatures remain within safe limits. A computer with therma...
How does the diameter of a particle accelerator influence its function? Is bigger always better, and if so, why?	The momentum per unit charge of the beam particles on the central orbit is equal to the product of the bending magnetic field and the radius of curvature of the accelerator. Usually the magnetic field strengths are limited by what magnets can be built. So for a given field strength, if you want a higher-energy beam, y...	[ "This means that changing to particles that are half as big, keeping the size of the column the same, will double the performance, but increase the required pressure by a factor of four. Larger particles are used in preparative HPLC (column diameters 5 cm up to 30 cm) and for non-HPLC applications such as solid-pha...
how does the police choose what cars to use as patrol cars?	I asked my father in law who was a retired lieutenant in a good sized department. 1. Safety. Car accidents are the #1 cause of death for officers 2. Space, they have a lot of gear and need seats big enough to get in and out with their vest and belt on, also a rear seat big enough to carry anybody that needs a ride. ...	[ "A police car (also called a police cruiser, patrol car, cop car, prowler, squad car, radio car, or radio motor patrol (RMP) ) is a ground vehicle used by police for transportation during patrols and to enable them to respond to incidents and chases. Typical uses of a police car include transporting officers so the...
why was las vegas built in such miserable heat?	Las Vegas was a water stop on the Old Spanish Trail. The springs (which fed the meadows) created a rare oasis, and a pleasant one. For much of the year, Las Vegas has beautiful weather: mild sunny days, cool nights. That was traveling time. The Old Spanish Trail connected the Pacific Coast ports with Santa Fe, the inl...	[ "1931 was a pivotal year for Las Vegas. At that time, Nevada legalized casino gambling and reduced residency requirements for divorce to six weeks. This year also witnessed the beginning of construction on nearby Hoover Dam. The influx of construction workers and their families helped Las Vegas avoid economic calam...
why is mercury poisonous? what exactly is it doing to the body, and why can it not be resisted?	TLDR: It prevents your cells from repairing themselves from everyday damage, and it's very hard to flush out of your system. Mercury like many other toxic heavy metals accumulates in your body over time. Your body has a difficult time flushing it out so even if the source of Mercury poisoning is small, if it persists ...	[ "Modern medicine finds that mercury is inherently toxic, and that its toxicity is not due to the presence of impurities. While mercury does have anti-microbial properties, and used to be widely used in Western medicine, its toxicity does not warrant the risk of using it as a health product in most circumstances. Th...
scientifically speaking, what is the most widely believed theory of who the very first humans were and how they came to be?	My non-scientist understanding: Like all life on earth, humans evolved from earlier species through natural selection as well as random genetic mutation. The first anatomically modern humans are believed to have emerged in Africa about 200,000 years ago, although other hominid species had been around for millions of y...	[ "The idea that, along with other life forms, modern-day humans evolved from an ancient, common ancestor was proposed by Robert Chambers in 1844 and taken up by Charles Darwin in 1871. Modern humans evolved from a lineage of upright-walking apes that has been traced back over to \"Sahelanthropus\". The first known s...
Illnesses like cancer and Alzheimer's are surrounded by a stigma of being incurable/immune, and have been for a long time; have any historical diseases (e.g. Polio, Measles) been considered in a similar way? When the cures were developed, was it sudden/unexpected?	If you don't get an answer here, you can try /r/askhistorians, /r/historyofscience, /r/historyofideas, or /r/historyofmedicine	[ "In addition, availability of cures and recent advances in medicine have led to only three diseases being considered neglected diseases, namely, African trypanosomiasis, Chagas disease and Leishmaniasis.\n", "Infectious diseases are worldwide a major cause of death, especially in developing countries. Next to ine...
why the japanese confuse "l" and "r."	A human vocal system can make a huge variety of sounds. Each language only uses certain number of those sounds. Once a person is past a certain age, it is hard for them to learn sounds that aren't a part of the language that they grew up speaking. Japanese doesn't have separate sounds for the letters L and R. The sou...	[ "Due to the difficulties that Japanese have in distinguishing \"l\" and \"r\", this expansion of Japanese phonology has not extended to inventing different kana for /l/ vs. /r/. Therefore, words with /l/ or /r/ may be spelled identically if borrowed into Japanese. One important exception is due to the fact that Jap...
how do off brands like great value make money?	They're still charging more than the cost of making the product. By doing their packaging and branding "in house," they save a lot of money in manufacturing, allowing them to lower the price	[ "Products offered through the Great Value brand are often claimed to be as good as national brand offerings, but are typically sold at a lower price because of lower marketing and advertising expense. As a house or store brand, the Great Value line does not consist of goods produced by Walmart, but is a labeling sy...
Why didn't the Soviets keep Germany for themselves?	During the war, Russia was aligned with Britain, France, and the United States (Allies). You're right to say that the Russians rolled over the Germans, but they actually did get to occupy a big piece of Germany. At the [Yalta Conference](_URL_0_), the Allies had to agree on several post-war conflicts of interest. Rus...	[ "Soviet neutrality between 1939 and 1941 helped Germany to avoid a two front war, concentrating most of the Wehrmacht eastward in 1941, while Soviet imports to Germany proved vital to the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Ironically, despite fears causing the Soviet Union to enter deals with Germany in 1939, tha...
What would I see if I managed to cross the event horizon of black hole? Is there an area between the singularity in the center and the event horizon where objects can still exist?	It depends on the mass of the black hole. Supermassive black holes, like the one at the centre of our galaxy, 'stretch' objects less after passing the Schwarzschild radius, and so one could potentially survive passing the event horizon. As the Schwarzschild radius gets closer to the centre of the black hole, as in less...	[ "An observer crossing the event horizon of a non-rotating and uncharged (or Schwarzschild) black hole cannot avoid the central singularity, which lies in the future world line of everything within the horizon. Thus one cannot avoid spaghettification by the tidal forces of the central singularity.\n", "The locatio...
if nothing existed before the big bang, how was the subatomic particle able to create the universe?	The usage of "before" in your question suggests our understanding of time extends to the moment of the big bang. Our understanding of how time works breaks down at the moment of the big bang. It is analogous to how our understanding of north breaks down at the north pole. - What is north of the north pole? Nothing. -...	[ "The Big Bang explains the evolution of the universe from a density and temperature that is well-beyond humanity's capability to replicate, so extrapolations to most extreme conditions and earliest times are necessarily more speculative. Georges Lemaître called this initial state the \"\"primeval atom\"\" while Geo...
What societies in history were built on ideals of universal equality, particularly gender equality?	The [Taiping Heavenly Kingdom](_URL_0_) was a propertyless, classless society where genders were declared equal. It was based in Southern China and was led by a Hakka scholar, [Hong Xiuquan](_URL_1_) who believed himself to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ . It was crushed by the Qing Dynasty with the help of F...	[ "In wider society, the movement towards gender equality began with the suffrage movement in Western cultures in the late-19th century, which sought to allow women to vote and hold elected office. This period also witnessed significant changes to women's property rights, particularly in relation to their marital sta...
Considering that srand() function doesn't give a true random number, what can be used to generate truly random numbers that are impossible to predict ?	The reason why pseudo-random numbers are called "pseudo-random" is that in general, if you know what the seed input(s) to the function are, you should be able to predict the value being calculated. We generally presume that for most uses the fact that the seed input values are stored in RAM are sufficient (which is wh...	[ "Though random numbers are needed in cryptography, the use of pseudorandom number generators (whether hardware or software or some combination) is insecure. When random values are required in cryptography, the goal is to make a message as hard to crack as possible, by eliminating or obscuring the parameters used to...
Why did the public view on nuclear energy change so drastically?	You're going into this with a lot of presuppositions and assumptions, and that makes for a poor understanding of history. There had been growing concerns about nuclear energy prior to meltdowns. The idea that reactors could be catastrophically risky (in that the consequences of even a low-probability event were going...	[ "The nuclear power debate is a long-running controversy about the risks and benefits of using nuclear reactors to generate electricity for civilian purposes. The debate about nuclear power peaked during the 1970s and 1980s, as more and more reactors were built and came online, and \"reached an intensity unprecedent...
[META] TrueBestOf2012 awards. r/AskHistorians has been nominated for Best Big Community of the Year, and the mod team for Mod Team of the Year. Show your support and upvote ! (links inside)	Awards that are distributed by popular vote are pretty much meaningless, since it favors quantity so much over quality. However, our mods are awesome.	[ "Mod DB's Mod of the Year competition, the 'Golden Spanner' awards, aim to set the industry standard in awarding inventive and high-quality mods. Mods are chosen via a community vote and are then reviewed by staff to produce the final list of winners. The competition aims to encourage all fields of modding, with di...
Why/How were U.S. Marines in WWII so effective against the Japanese?	Usually it was the strategic situation. In the situations you are describing, the Japanese were typically in a hopeless situation, cut off from supply, reinforcement, air or naval support, and up against a better equipped enemy with vastly superior numbers. Another less important contributing factor was the far too sl...	[ "In World War II, the Marines performed a central role in the Pacific War, along with the U.S. Army. The battles of Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Tarawa, Guam, Tinian, Cape Gloucester, Saipan, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa saw fierce fighting between Marines and the Imperial Japanese Army. Some 600,000 Americans serv...
In WWII, was there a service milestone in a soldiers career that made them likely to survive?	For Germans and Russians there was no such point excluding such exceptions. If you belonged to the airforce or navy you were likely to survive if you achieved a certain rank since you stopped combat missions all together. If you were a special propaganda figure you maybe were forbidden to take part in further combat op...	[ "During WWII at least 50 Manual men and one teacher, Richard Orange, gave their lives in service. Unfortunately, no complete and accurate honor roll record was kept of the men who served, but presumably the roll call would include a major fraction of all graduates of the 1930s and 1940s.\n", "During the First Wor...
Why can you not have an elliptical orbit pass through the event horizon of a black hole?	Anything that crosses the event horizon can't come back. That's it. If you want to analyze the motion in terms of equivalent potential, then the potential is very unlike the Newtonian effective potential which goes like > U_Newtonian_ = A/r^(2) - B/r where A and B are positive constants. So the potential goes to...	[ "An observer crossing the event horizon of a non-rotating and uncharged (or Schwarzschild) black hole cannot avoid the central singularity, which lies in the future world line of everything within the horizon. Thus one cannot avoid spaghettification by the tidal forces of the central singularity.\n", "In the case...
If Mars at some point had oceans that were filled with life similar to our own, would there still be oil there despite the harsh Marian conditions and what we know about the planet?	It is very unlikely. Oil forms when organic matter of the right composition (with as high a H:C ratio as possible so with as little cellulose as possible) is buried rapidly at a depth where the geothermal gradient will allow the chemical transformation to oil & gas. There are thus 2 problems with Mars: 1 - While t...	[ "Further evidence that Mars once had a thicker atmosphere which would make an ocean more probable came from the MAVEN spacecraft that has been making measurements from Mars orbit. Bruce Jakosky, lead author of a paper published in Science, stated that \"We've determined that most of the gas ever present in the Mars...
why do my glasses still correct my vision if i turn them backwards?	Your glasses might be fitted with double-concave/convex lenses.	[ "BULLET::::- Research has confirmed that when nearsighted subjects remove their corrective lenses, over time there is a limited improvement (termed \"blur adaptation\") in their unaided visual resolution, even though refraction indicates no corresponding change in refractive error. This is believed to occur due to ...
cross/crucifix as a symbol of christianity?	Christianity is primarily about the idea "jesus died for your sins". That's why he's considered so important. The cross is a symbol of the most important thing done by the primary figure of the religion. It didn't really have spiritual significance beforehand, although the romans would normally reserve crucifiction ...	[ "The Christian cross, seen as a representation of the instrument of the crucifixion of Jesus, is the best-known symbol of Christianity. It is related to the crucifix (a cross that includes a \"corpus\", usually a three-dimensional representation of Jesus' body) and to the more general family of cross symbols, the t...
how do cuts become new skin?	Most of your skin is dead/dying cells. They are just there to act as a physical barrier. The living cells which divide and produce these dead cells are way below deep under the skin. So when you get a shallow cut, the layer of dead skin cells is destroyed but the living cells underneath survive and continue what they’...	[ "Cutting occurs when material is separated from the surface in the form of primary debris, or microchips, with little or no material displaced to the sides of the grooves. This mechanism closely resembles conventional machining.\n", "It involves cutting the underside of the subject's forearm, in an area where the...
If polar bears and penguins were to switch poles, what would happen? Would their species survive?	Switching polar bears with leopard seals would be a better exercise, as they fill the same ecological role whereas penguins do not. edit: If we did this, curiously, each might be a more effective predator. Polar bears could chase penguins on land/ice, where they're slow and vulnerable, and leopard seals are better sw...	[ "While many species have been able to adapt to the new conditions by moving their range further towards the poles, other species are not as fortunate. The option to move is not available for polar bears and for some aquatic life.\n", "Four months later, the United States Geological Survey completed a year-long st...
how does a tire stay seated on a wheel even if all the pressure has been lost?	The reason that you need force to remove it is because you need force to get it there in the first place. The inner diameter of the tire is lower the the outer diameter of the wheel so need to stretch/deform it to get it to fit and for large tires you need a lot of force to get it there. The edge of the tire is the t...	[ "Air pressure within a tire forces its beads against the wheel rim and normally ensures that the tire and rim rotate as a single unit. In general automotive situations, a tire's air pressure is sufficient to withstand dislodging and rim-slip forces experienced during, respectively, hard cornering and acceleration (...
Are there any evolutionary reasons for photic sneezing? (sneezing when exposed to light)	OMG, first comment on reddit. Eep! So, sneezing is actually a function of the spinal trigeminal nucleus, which is connected to your trigeminal nerve (cranial nerve 5). When this is stimulated by...stuff, like pollen or feathers or stuff, the spinal trigeminal which receives the sensory information triggers a motor re...	[ "Today, scientific attention has mainly focused on a hypothesis proposed in 1964 by Henry Everett, who was the first to call light-induced sneezing “The Photic Sneeze Effect.” Since the nervous system transmits signals at an extremely fast pace, Dr. Everett hypothesized that the syndrome was linked to the human ner...
does genetics determine your bust size?	It is largely genetic. Bear in mind you other get genes from your father, which will equally contribute to your breast size.	[ "A woman's bust measure is a combination of her rib cage and breast size. For convenience, a woman's bra measurements are used. For example, though the measurements are not consistently applied, a woman with a bra size of 36B has a rib cage of 36 inches in circumference and a bust measure of 38 inches; a woman with...
Why do we look tired?	"The physiopathology of periorbital hyperchromia (which is the word for dark circles under the eyes) is not clearly deﬁned; however, blood ﬂow stagnation seems to be a determinant factor involved in the development of this process. This concept is supported by the fact that in the last years, cosmetic companies have be...	[ "Fatigue is generally considered a more long-term condition than sleepiness (somnolence). Although sleepiness can be a symptom of medical issues, it usually results from lack of restful sleep, or a lack of stimulation. Chronic fatigue, on the other hand, is a symptom of a greater medical problem in most cases. It m...
/u/unidan	Simply put; He was a biologist who appeared everywhere, randomly in threads, typically when people weren't sure what something was, and he clarified. With extreme, intelligent, accurate detail. Reddit liked him because he was basically a reddit super hero, appearing when people needed info. This accrued him a follo...	[ "The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (the IACHR or, in the three other official languages Spanish, French, and Portuguese CIDH, \"Comisión Interamericana de los Derechos Humanos\", \"Commission Interaméricaine des Droits de l'Homme\", \"Comissão Interamericana de Direitos Humanos\") is an autonomous organ...
the possibility of a bigfoot-like creature actually existing based on scientific and historic evidence.	If bigfoot really existed, you wouldn't have to ask in eli5. All of the new species we're discovering now, are either clarifications of what was previously thought to be a subspecies, or some small critter in some remote part of the world or deep sea. A human sized creature wandering around the forests of the pacific...	[ "The evidence advanced supporting the existence of such a large, ape-like creature has often been attributed to hoaxes or delusion rather than to sightings of a genuine creature. In a 1996 \"USA Today\" article, Washington State zoologist John Crane said, \"There is no such thing as Bigfoot. No data other than mate...
How do root vegetables reproduce?	It depends on the plant, but a root vegetable like ginger is not a root at all. It is a rhizome, which is a stem that is located underground. It gives rise to other stems or roots. Like the other poster said, it can be broken off in deer, transported yonder, then give rise to a new plant. To more specifically answer y...	[ "The plants have a very developed and extensive root system, and the roots live in symbiosis with nitrogen-fixing \"Frankia\" bacteria. The roots also transform insoluble organic and mineral matters from the soil into more soluble states. Vegetative reproduction of the plants occurs rapidly via root suckers.\n", ...
How many GPS satellites could we lose and still have a working GPS system?	Wow, some bad answers here. The short answer is that you need 4 satellites in view of your receiver. Many people will incorrectly tell you you need 3, but that is wrong. GPS works by [Trilateration](_URL_0_). In a 2D universe, you'd need the common intersection of 3 circles to uniquely identify a point. In a 3D un...	[ "Also on 7 May 2009, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, released a report citing the very real potential for the GPS system to degrade or fail in light of program delays which have resulted in scheduled GPS satellite launches slipping by up to three years.\n", "However, i...
In the sense that the blood in your brain will naturally favor the pull of gravity, what are the potential effects of falling asleep on your side? Is there anything out there showing a difference in how the left or right hemispheres may respond to this?	Circle of Willis prevents this from happening. Edit: it is both the structure (split hemisphere blood flow), pressure, and flow that prevents this. As an aphasiologist, if I could make blood flow one way, I definitely would! Sorry for the brevity.	[ "Orthostatic hypotension happens when gravity causes blood to pool in the lower extremities, which in turn compromises venous return, resulting in decreased cardiac output and subsequent lowering of arterial pressure. For example, changing from a lying position to standing loses about 700 ml of blood from the thora...
why does the legal system allow for evidence to be disregarded simply because a form wasn't completed properly?	The idea is to make sure everything is done by the books so nothing is coerced or planted. The only way to do this fairly is to do it indiscriminately.	[ "Suppression of evidence is a term used in the United States legal system to describe the lawful or unlawful act of preventing evidence from being shown in a trial. This could happen for several reasons. For example, if a judge believes that the evidence in question was obtained illegally, the judge can rule that i...
how do we determine the directional source of a sound?	I think it has to do with the time difference between one ear hearing the sound first, then the other.	[ "This first detected direction from the direct sound is taken as the found sound source direction, until other strong loudness attacks, combined with stable directional information, indicate that a new directional analysis is possible. (see Franssen effect)\n", "Sound localization is the ability to correctly iden...
The credibility of Yi Sun-sin	Note that these were ships and not warships. More than half of the Japanese fleet at Myeongnyang were logistical ships - transports and supply ships. Yi estimated in his diary that at least 133 were warships. These numbers certainly weren't exaggerated, the reason why Yi was able to defeat so many Japanese ships wa...	[ "Sima Nan (; born 22 June 1956), real name Yu Li (), is a television pundit, social commentator, and journalist from the People's Republic of China. In the early 21st century, he is well known for his staunch support of Chinese Communist Party values and nationalistic, anti-American and anti-universal value sentime...
How did the Mexican/Spanish elite in places like California and Texas fair under U.S. rule?	This is a really interesting topic and you can find a great discussion of the fate of the Californios in Anne Hyde's book "Empires, Nations & Families." Hyde won the Pulitzer for that book, but I'll just have to do the best I can! "Californio" is the term most commonly used to describe the Spanish-speaking but nati...	[ "Even before Mexico gained control of Alta California in 1821, the onerous Spanish rules in effect from 1770 to 1821 against trading with foreigners began to break down as the declining Spanish fleet couldn't enforce their no trading policies. The Californios, with essentially no industries or manufacturing capabil...
How many circles can fit in a larger one?	There is a [Wikipedia page](_URL_1_) devoted to this exact problem. In general this falls under "packing problems," which can be really hard. It took like 350 years to prove that the most efficient way to pack spheres is the way that oranges are stacked in a grocery display. [This website](_URL_0_) has the densest kno...	[ "Great circles are the largest possible circles (circumferences) of a sphere; each one divides the surface of the sphere into two equal halves. Two great circles always intersect at two polar opposite points.\n", "The 25 great circles can be seen in 3 sets: 12, 9, and 4, each representing edges of a polyhedron pr...
What does AskHistorians think of history.stackexchange ?	It is good that it exists. But I think it also proves why we do a lot of what we do here. Much of our "arbitrary moderation practices" are a necessity based on our scale. Both pages have been around since Fall 2011. AH has accepted 25 questions in the past three hours. SE received just as many total over the past fo...	[ "r/AskHistorians is a subreddit on Reddit where users may ask questions or start discussions about history, and is \"one of the largest history forums on the internet\". It was founded in 2011 and has remained highly active ever since, having over 700,000 subscribers. Unlike other Reddit communities, it aims to \"p...
if you have a two way mirror with a one way mirror right behind it to produce an infinite tunnel, why would angling it up or down make the tunnel appear to curve instead of just as a straight tunnel?	If you angled one of the mirrors by, say, 2 degrees, each reflection would be "off" by two degrees more than the reflection before it. You would, in this case, see a reflection at 2 degrees then at 4 degrees. I'm not sure of the exact equation, but it's not 2, 4, 6, 8 degrees, but rather a progression like 2, 4, 8, 16,...	[ "In a classic self-contained infinity mirror, a set of light bulbs, LEDs, or other point-source lights are placed around the periphery of a fully reflective mirror, and a second, partially reflective \"one-way mirror\" is placed a short distance in front of it, in a parallel alignment. When an outside observer look...
why is poland poor, while its next door neighbor germany is one of the richest in the world?	For the last hundred plus years poland has been passed around like a whore between every european empire during every european conquest. It's sad but they can't get free. East Germany was poor as shit when they were under the red flag. They are still worse off.	[ "Wańkowicz begins this chapter by reminding the readers that Second Polish Republic is a very poor country, which is confirmed on each page of the Polish Statistical Yearbook. Poland, however used to be a rich country, which lost is wealth and capital due to the stupidity of the Polish nobility, which did not inves...
sovereign citizens	Sovereigns [(they wouldn't ever consider themselves citizens) i will explain] ascribe to a certain Ideology that is built around Common Law. they call themselves Sovereigns because they see themselves as kings unto themselves. A citizen is under the rule of a government, so that is why they wouldn't call themselves a "...	[ "The sovereign citizen movement is a loose grouping of American and Commonwealth litigants, commentators, tax protesters, and financial-scheme promoters. Self-described \"sovereign citizens\" see themselves as answerable only to their particular interpretation of the common law and as not subject to any government ...
Can you help me identify the coat of arms on this antique?	The [fleur-de-lis](_URL_0_) is widespread in heraldry, not only in France. What are the symbols on the left? Rosebuds? Hearts? It might also help to check out some crowns - if you find a similar one to the one depicted.	[ "Originally made in 1843, the coat of arms comes from an idea of St. Idda von Fischingen, whose church choir had the symbol of an elk with flaming horns. This goes back to around 1812 when the church was inaugurated. The oldest coat of arms still intact hangs in the old guardhouse from Bauen to see.\n", "The coat...
how did the nsa tap the german chancellors phone?	They intercepted the signal from her mobile phone and simply decrypted it. Since she often would use a normal 2G/3G cellphone the decryption is basic. Also she likes to use messaging a lot and I believe that is even easier to decrypt. The US embassy in Berlin is within line of sight of the Reichstag building and seem...	[ "The mobile phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel might have been tapped by U.S. intelligence. According to the Spiegel this monitoring goes back to 2002 and ended in the summer of 2013, while \"The New York Times\" reported that Germany has evidence that the NSA's surveillance of Merkel began during George W. B...
Biology: Speciation	> Moreover, Bs can sometimes produce viable offspring with either As or Cs. And Cs can sometimes produce viable offspring with Bs and Ds. However, As can't seem to ever produce viable offspring with Cs or Ds, nor can Ds reproduce with As or Bs. Are there examples of this in biology? Read about the Ensatina salamander...	[ "Speciation is the evolutionary process by which new biological species arise. Biologists research species using different theoretical frameworks for what constitutes a species (see species problem and species complex) and there exists debate with regard to delineation. Nevertheless, much of the current research su...
what happens if there’s a natural disaster during an election?	It's up to the state/local election board.	[ "A natural disaster is a major adverse event resulting from natural processes of the Earth; examples are floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, and other geologic processes. A natural disaster can cause loss of life or damage property, and typically leaves some economic damage in ...
can an electric car be charged wirelessly like the samsung galaxy's?	It is coming: * September 2015 AUDI Wireless Charging(AWC) presented a 3.6 kW inductive charger during the 66th International Motor Show (IAA) 2015. * September 17, 2015 Bombardier-Transportation PRIMOVE presented a 3.6 kW Charger for cars, which was developed at Site in Mannheim Germany. * Transport for London has ...	[ "The port can charge the battery and power the phone while it is connected to, for example, a hands-free solution in a car. The FastPort became the only way to get external power to the phones. Chargers comes in several varieties, from 12/24 volt DC to use in cars, to 100-250 volt AC to use elsewhere. Some charger-...
why are "-ese" used to describe only asian people?	Because those countries were first explored [with respect to Europe] by the Portuguese, whose language uses that ending. And it's not only Asian demonyms; consider the Portuguese themselves, or, in Africa, the adjectives Congolese or Togolese.	[ "According to the Oxford English Dictionary, \"Asian person\" in the United States is sometimes thought of as a person of East Asian descent. In vernacular usage, \"Asian\" is often used to refer to those of East Asian descent or anyone else of Asian descent with epicanthic eyefolds. This differs from the U.S. Cens...
why are some people more likely to have sleep paralysis, while others never have it or have only experienced it once?	Everyone or, at least, most people are capable of having sleep paralysis. Its nothing special as far as chemical imbalance go or something in genes or dealing with immune (it's been noted to be a common occurrence in narcoleptic people). But experiencing that transition from physically awake to mentally awake can vary ...	[ "Sleep paralysis could lead the individual to acquire conditioned fear of the experience (\"worry attacks\"), resulting in more nighttime awakening and fragmented sleep (because of nocturnal arousal and hyper-alertness to symptoms of paralysis), making the person more likely to have sleep paralysis in the future. I...
How are RSA keys converted to numbers?	It actually is just a number already. Displaying it as letters takes up less space. As you mentioned you're aware that it's really just 1s and 0s in the computer, but displaying it that way would take a very long time because of the limited amount of differentiation per digit. To describe 24 unique numbers using bin...	[ "Note: The authors of the original RSA paper carry out the key generation by choosing \"d\" and then computing \"e\" as the modular multiplicative inverse of \"d\" modulo \"φ\"(\"n\"), whereas most current implementations of RSA, such as those following PKCS#1, do the reverse (choose \"e\" and compute \"d\"). Since...
Why is it that if you multiply any number by nine and add up the digits of the product, they also equal nine? For example 9x12=108. 1+0+8=9	It's got to do with the relationship between 9 and 10, the base of our numeral system: When we write the number "324," what we really mean is three hundreds, plus two tens, plus four ones, or 3 times 10^2 + 2 times 10^1 + 4 times 10^0 Now consider: what is the remainder when I divide ten by nine? What about wh...	[ "A nice trick for very young children to learn to add nine is to add ten to the digit and to count back one. Since we are adding 1 to the ten's digit and subtracting one from the unit's digit, the sum of the digits should remain the same. For example, 9 + 2 = 11 with 1 + 1 = 2. When adding 9 to itself, we would thu...
We are usually taught that the American civil war was simply the North against the South, but were there different factions besides the Union and Confederate armies who fought in the American civil war?	The closest thing to this would be the involvement of various American Indian nations, who both participated in the conflict on both sides, as well as engaged in conflict against the Union seperate from the Civil War itself. I talk at good length on this [here](_URL_0_) but am happy to answer any follow-ups you might h...	[ "During the American Civil War (1861–1865), the Union, also known as the North, referred to the United States of America and specifically to the national government of President Abraham Lincoln and the 20 free states and four border and slave states (some with split governments and troops sent both north and south)...
Is a tectonic collision significant enough to form a new mountain range still possible?	I get the sense that you are envisioning that the collisions between continental plates that form mountains are A) catastrophic and B) occur quickly, but neither of these things are true. The rates of convergence between plates that drive the building of mountain ranges are, in extremely fast scenarios, on the order of...	[ "The immense region involved in the continental collision, the vast temporal length of the orogeny and the thickness of the pile of sediments and igneous rocks known to have been involved are evidence that at the peak of the mountain-building process, the Appalachians likely once reached elevations similar to those...
Willingly transmitting HIV is a criminal offense in many countries, were the transmitters of syphilis also subject to persecution when it was more prevalent?	I'm not aware of laws that punish the syphilitic in particular; it would seem unlikely, since from roughly the early 19th century to 1905, it was understood that while syphilis was most infectious when patients can the primary lesion of the chancre, people could still be infectious years later, and it was not always cl...	[ "In several articles published since 2001, Preston Marx, Philip Alcabes, and Ernest Drucker proposed that HIV emerged because of rapid serial human-to-human transmission of SIV (after a bushmeat hunter or handler became SIV-infected) through unsafe or unsterile injections. Although both Chitnis \"et al.\" and Sharp...
explain the drunken spins. what is that feeling where your mind is telling yourself not to get too nauseous. what is taking place where a body's alcohol content can fight with a mind's grasping for preventing sickness.	When you drink, alcohol gets absorbed into your bloodstream. Its main effects occur when it gets transported by your blood to your brain, but as you can imagine, once something is in your blood, it goes pretty much everywhere in your body. One place it goes is your inner ear, which is involved in helping you maintain ...	[ "Since at least some of the symptoms of \"the spins\" can be attributed to alcohol's disturbance of the vestibular system, many symptom relief strategies are based on increasing the body's ability to use other senses to regain balance. In addition to the vestibular system, vision and touch information from the body...
How did the Japaneses manage to defeat the Mongols during their invasion of Japan?	Disclaimer: English isn't my first language so there might be a few passages in this post which may sound a bit strange. Please forgive me if you come across any! --- First Mongol Invasion of Japan (1274) During the First Mongol Invasion of Japan, the Japanese were greatly outnumbered but fought courageously...	[ "The Japanese defenders recognized the possibility of a renewed invasion and began construction of a great stone barrier around Hakata Bay in 1276. Completed in 1277, this wall stretched for 20 kilometers around the border of the bay. It would later serve as a strong defensive point against the Mongols. The Mongols...
why do reporters still use overly large hand-held microphones instead of headsets or a boom mic off screen?	Hard to interview people with a headset mic and news crews usually consist only of the camera person and the reporter, which leaves no one to hold a boom mic overhead.	[ "In the mid-1980s, with the royalties from his latest fiction, he bought all the microphones on the market, took them apart to find out how they work - and why they don't work well enough. He developed a series of microphones, built on new principles, and used them in his own films, generally mounted directly on a ...
Is it possible to use the Sun, Moon and Earth's gravitational influence to find your location on Earth?	The problem is that Earth's gravitational field varies from place to place to a much greater level of magnitude than any of those other effects. You could possibly do it by measuring the long term cyclicity, but not by one-off measurement. The other problem is that even if you have equipment sensitive enough to pick up...	[ "The primary way of determining one's position on the earth's surface when no known positions are nearby is by astronomic observations. Observations to the sun, moon and stars could all be made using navigational techniques. Once the instrument's position and bearing to a star is determined, the bearing can be tran...
Why didn't European disease wipe out African slaves in the new world like it did ti Native Americans?	African slaves, and their ancestors, had already been exposed to many of those diseases in the Old World. The diseases that wiped out the Native Americans weren't European, they were Afro-Asiatic-European diseases shared among all 3 continents. There were incidents where Euro-Asian diseases hit African populations, sma...	[ "Diseases introduced from Europe and West Africa devastated the indigenous peoples, and the European powers colonized the Americas. Mass emigration from Europe, including large numbers of indentured servants, and importation of African slaves largely replaced the indigenous peoples.\n", "The rapid rate at which t...
how a person who commits horrendous acts against humanity, such as albert speer get 20 year sentence while illegally downloading documents, such as done by aaron swartz, holds a potential for 35 years ?	In most jurisdictions, the maximum penalty that can be issued by a court is much more severe than the typical penalty. The maximum penalty is usually reserved for only the most heinous of crimes or repeat offenders of serious crimes. Also, sometimes the maximum penalty is exaggerated because it reflects the maximum p...	[ "He was convicted of eight criminal counts, including attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and attempted murder of 289 people. On February 16, 2012 he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole by a U.S. federal court.\n", "On 8 November 2007, a British woman, Samina Malik, became ...
why does the drug trade particularly thrive in latin america?	There's a few reasons: 1) Drugs grow there easily. The climate and soil makes it incredibly easy to grow illicit drugs like marijuana and cocaine. 2) Legal system. It sucks. They don't have the manpower to regulate the underground drug industry, to find all of the grow operations, or to stop the refining/trafficking....	[ "Drug consumption in Latin America remains relatively low, but cocaine in particular has increased in recent years in countries along the major smuggling routes. As of 2008, the primary pathway for drugs into the United States is through Mexico and Central America, though crackdowns on drug trafficking by the Mexic...
how do certain parts of the world have so many undetonated landmines?	> More specifically, how is it possible to place so many mines in certain locations and areas? It isn't necessarily someone going out and carefully digging a pit and setting trip wires for every mine. Instead if you wanted to mine an area you could add a trigger delay of a few minutes and just throw buckets of mines...	[ "Land mines and other explosive remnants of war are not limited to North Africa, however; they pose a persistent threat to local people all over the continent, including the countries of Ethiopia, Somalia, Nigeria, Senegal, Angola, Kenya, Uganda and South Africa to mention just a few. In the Tropics, typhoons and f...
How does digital media degrade over time (specifically hard drives)? I know film (if stored properly) will still last longer than digital storage.	Basically... that IS the long and the short of it... A CD is like a "digital record" in that a laser burns pits and grooves of information in a dye layer on the CD. The dyes used in this process are highly susceptible to UV light and the biggest killer..oxidation. Film also produces a better quality picture than digi...	[ "Film preservationists would prefer that the film images, whether restored through photochemical or digital processes, be eventually transferred to other film stock, because no digital media exists that has proven truly archival because of rapidly evolving and shifting data formats, while a well-developed and store...
How much is true about the female pope Joan?	The story of Pope Joan is an interesting one. > [A] learned woman in male disguise managed to get herself elected pope. She reigned for two years. During a procession on its way to the Lateran Joan gave birth to a child, which in the most dramatic fashion imaginable unmasked the deception. She died immediately a...	[ "Pope Joan is one of Marlene's dinner party guests in act 1, scene 1, and the fourth to arrive. Pope Joan is somewhat aloof, making relevant, intellectual declarations throughout the conversation. When the topic turns to religion, she cannot help but point out heresies—herself included—though she does not attempt t...
When two identical waves of 180 degrees phase difference meet they cancel out.Where does their energy go?	As /u/rantonels pointed out, for the waves to cancel out at all times they must be traveling in the same direction. If two identical waves 180º out of phase traveling in opposite directions meet, they produce a standing wave whose amplitude is zero at two instants of time per period. At those moments, the energy is sto...	[ "When the two waves are in phase, i.e. the path difference is equal to an integral number of wavelengths, the summed amplitude, and therefore the summed intensity is maximal, and when they are in anti-phase, i.e. the path difference is equal to half a wavelength, one and a half wavelengths, etc., then the two waves...
They called it a gold rush back in the day. How many people rushed for gold?	Your question seeks answers that involve an enormous region and a historical process that spanned a great deal of time, so answers could be very different for specific locations. The classic Gold Rush was the one that occurred in 1849, bringing one hundred thousand, more or less, to California. The classic source on t...	[ "The Pike's Peak Gold Rush sent many Americans into a frenzy, prompting them to pack up their belongings and head to Colorado. This initial boom influenced people to begin falsifying information, often sending people out to the west without any proof of a true presence of gold. As early as the spring of 1859, peopl...
Does an atom bomb really work by splitting the atom? And if so why doesn't that explosion split other atoms around it and create a gigantic chain reaction?	> Does an atom bomb really work by splitting the atom? Sure does. Specifically Uranium or Plutonium atoms, though in principle others could be used. > And if so why doesn't that explosion split other atoms around it and create a gigantic chain reaction? They work based on a chain reaction with the other Pu atom...	[ "BULLET::::- Chain Reactions – If a piece that is detonated has an Emerald, Starflower, Ruby or Black Pearl next to it, the initial explosion will cause the 2nd piece to explode, which in turn blows up the pieces that are adjacent to it. In this manner, long chains of pieces can be linked together and detonated in ...
why do big ship pull water from shore?	These things are moving so much weight that when they're moving they push tons and tons of water behind them. That creates a bit of an up-lift behind, and a depression in front. The water around the depression moves to fill in the depression which pulls it away from the shoreline. I passed an oil tanker in a channel n...	[ "Water transport is movement by means of a watercraft—such as a barge, boat, ship or sailboat—over a body of water, such as a sea, ocean, lake, canal or river. The need for buoyancy is common to watercraft, making the hull a dominant aspect of its construction, maintenance and appearance.\n", "Water transport is ...
How responsible is IBM for the holocaust?	IBM punch cards were used by the Nazis to track Jews, but I doubt the modern company bears any culpability. Imagine you're an SS guard at Auschwitz... You drive to work in your VW, put on your Hugo Boss uniform, kill Jews tracked by IBM tech with Zyklon B gas manufactured by IG Farben, owners of Bayer, and at the end o...	[ "IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation is a book by investigative journalist Edwin Black which details the business dealings of the American-based multinational corporation International Business Machines (IBM) and its German and other European su...
why does china replicate everything?	Because it is cheaper than innovation, and the government has not been very strict about it.	[ "Most of Ai's artworks and projects carry this theme of making the Chinese Government's faults transparent to the rest of the world, as well as encouraging freedom of expression and strength to act. Along with this, the seeds represent China's growing mass production stemming from the consumerist culture, particula...
what happens when the liver fails and why is it fatal?	The livers job is to filter blood for toxins (or in otherwords foreign bodies not necessarily biological in nature). The liver is also responsible for processing and metabolizing key vitamins and other nutrients. Thus, liver failure greatly impacts tuebtodisfffffrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Live...	[ "Chronic liver failure usually occurs in the context of cirrhosis, itself potentially the result of many possible causes, such as excessive alcohol intake, hepatitis B or C, autoimmune, hereditary and metabolic causes (such as iron or copper overload, steatohepatitis or non-alcoholic fatty liver disease).\n", "Th...
Why are batteries measured in Volts and not Watts?	Batteries have two main electrical attributes, and they aren't really related. You need to know the voltage of a battery to know how a circuit hooked up to that battery will behave. In the simplest example, if you know the voltage of a battery hooked up to a resistor, then you also know how much current will flow ...	[ "The energy content of a battery is usually expressed indirectly by its capacity in ampere-hours; to convert ampere-hour (A⋅h) to watt hours (W⋅h), the ampere-hour value must be multiplied by the voltage of the power source. This value is approximate, since the battery voltage is not constant during its discharge, ...
how do magic tricks work?	There's no real way to answer this one in ELI5, unfortunately, because every trick has a completely different explanation, and also because I'm not really one to reveal methods like that. One good way to look at it though, is this (paraphrasing Penn Jillette): You're willing to spend half an hour trying to figure out...	[ "Magic Works is a series of magic tricks imported from Japan by Tenyo and distributed by Hasbro (Milton Bradley). Known in Japan as Magic-tainment (マジックテイナンド, \"Majikkuteimento\"), each trick in the series is packaged with an enclosed instruction book on how to perform it. Magic Works is billed on TV commercials as...
Why is the animals brain usually located in the head of animal?	Studying for my high-school biology midterm right now, here's what my textbook has to say about the subject (known as [(Cephalization, here's the wiki in case you want to hear it from the horses mouth)](_URL_0_) Anyways: *"Cephalization, a trait exhibited in bilaterally symmetrical organisms is the evolutionary proc...	[ "In animals, the brain, or \"encephalon\" (Greek for \"in the head\"), is the control center of the central nervous system, responsible for thought. In most animals, the brain is located in the head, protected by the skull and close to the primary sensory apparatus of vision, hearing, equilibrioception, taste and o...
The ocean is full of plastics: What are the primary sources of these plastics?	The "Pacific Garbage Patch" gets a lot of press, and [its single largest component, at 46% by weight, is fishing ~~gear~~ nets](_URL_1_), but it makes up only a small fraction of the oceanic plastics. [This report](_URL_0_) indicates coastal detritus makes up about 74% of the total, and that most of that total (94%) e...	[ "Over the course of the past 50 years, plastics have increasingly become a large part of people's lives all around the world. Due to the durability, versatility, and low cost of plastics, consumers and industries utilize plastics for a variety of products. However, with increased production and consumption of plast...
Can plasma electrocute you?	Plasma is a gas composed of positive ions and electrons in roughly equal amounts. By itself it can't electrocute you, but the process which created it could. Man made plasmas often use high voltage. A small neon bulb needs around 90 volts. A neon sign uses several thousand. A static electric shock creates a tiny, brief...	[ "A plasma consists of positively charged ions and negatively charged free electrons, while remaining macroscopically neutral. If a strong electric field is applied, ions and electrons can be spatially separated. A local electric field is thereby created, thus a charged particle entering a such plasma can be acceler...
How is Georgy Zhukov viewed by Russians?	I'm curious, what have you been reading up on Zhukov? I read a biography of him by a French author (["Zhukov, the man who beat Hitler"](_URL_0_)) and well, as you can guess from the title, it doesn't paint him as a "ruthless sociopathic human being" but rather as one of best officers in the Red Army at that time. Not p...	[ "While Sergey Durov's literary legacy is lean, the strength of his personality has made a deep impression upon the people who knew him, first and foremost Petrashevsky's cohorts (Pleshcheev, N.Grigoriev, A.P.Milyukov) and members of his own circle (Ch.Valikhanov, G.N.Potanin, Viktor Burenin and others). He became t...
what is so great about cuban cigars? will the quality of the cuban cigar go down if the u.s. embargo is lifted?	Cuban cigars might have been the best in 1962, but the rest of the world has caught up, while Cuba stood pat. There are Dominican and and Nicaraguan cigars every bit as good as Cubans, which have been getting by on the mystique generated by the embargo.	[ "While Cuban cigars are smuggled into the US and sold at high prices, counterfeiting is rife. It has been said that 95% of Cuban cigars sold in the US are counterfeit. Although Cuban cigars cannot legally be commercially imported into the US, the advent of the Internet has made it much easier for people in the US t...
On changes in the scope of Classics/Classical history	This sounds like a question that could benefit from multiple perspectives, since its partially a question of institutional tradition. There is generally a sense in which Near Eastern history is more prevalent in ancient (western) history than in years past. This is particularly true at an undergraduate level. So a c...	[ "Though the influence of classics as the dominant mode of education in Europe and North America was in decline in the 19th century, the discipline was rapidly evolving in the same period. Classical scholarship was becoming more systematic and scientific, especially with the \"new philology\" created at the end of t...
why aren't republicans pro choice and democrats pro life? (u.s.)	In the 70s, 80s and 90s, the republicans found that Christians shared many conservative values. The party made a conscious effort to embrace the conservative Christian Right and made opposition to abortion part of the party platform to gain the large religious base. The Democratic Party responded as the party of huma...	[ "Because of its stance on the issues, the \"Republican-American\" is more inclined to endorse Republican candidates in election years. However, the paper is not hesitant to support Democrats who share its views or are uniquely qualified for the positions they seek.\n", "Though members of both major political part...
what is the difference between all those different types of toothpaste?	There's not a lot of difference. Some manufacturers will add materials that have certain properties, but in real-life use, those properties will be minimal. Examples: Whitening toothpaste contains a higher level of ~~surfactants~~ abrasives, essentially "scrubbing" the surface of the tooth clean. This can damage enam...	[ "Toothpaste comes in a variety of colors and flavors, intended to encourage use of the product. The three most common flavorants are peppermint, spearmint, and wintergreen. Toothpaste flavored with peppermint-anise oil is popular in the Mediterranean region. These flavors are provided by the respective oils, e.g. p...
How dangerous are toy laser pointers really when shined in someones eye?	Milliwatt laser pointers shouldn't do much, because your blink reflex prevents your eyes from staring into the beam. However, invisible IR lasers can do serious damage to your retina because you don't know when you are staring into the beam. The main hazard is that cheap high power lasers often use an IR diode and a fr...	[ "Another distressing and potentially dangerous misuse of laser pointers is to use them when the dot may reasonably be mistaken for that of a laser gun sight. Armed police have drawn their weapons in such circumstances.\n", "Laser pointers can cause eye injuries directly, and dangerous situations by distraction. ,...
The word lord comes from "loaf warden" and formed well after the rise of Christianity, so how did they retroactively apply that to the Bible? What word would a Roman in, say, the 4th century have used in its place?	The Latin word used in the Vulgate (ca. 4th Century) was "Domini". For example, [Matthew 1:20 in the NIV](_URL_0_) reads, > But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in he...	[ "In ecclesiastical use the term was given to heads of the colleges of \"Notarii\" and \"Defensores\", which occupied an important place in the administration of the Roman Church in Late Antiquity and in the Early Middle Ages.\n", "\"Abecedarius\" (or \"abecedarium\") is a Medieval Latin word meaning \"ABC primer\...
How did you know which branch you were drafted into? (WWII)	I answered a question similar to this [here](_URL_0_), but I'll repost it below.	[ "At the outbreak of World War 2 in 1939, he was called up and, after eight weeks basic training in the Essex Regiment, he was posted to the Fourth Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment, HQ Company, Intelligence Section for the duration of World War 2. This formed part of the 18th Infantry (Combat) Division of the Briti...
What year is my globe from?	Certainly post-WWII (e.g. Yugoslavia possesses Istria). It looks like it comes from 1948-1949. The termini seem to be (a) the existence of Israel, founded in May 1948, and (b) a single Germany, divided in May 1949. A bit later than that is also possible, since the makers of the globe may have taken a while to catch up ...	[ "The globe started life as the Palais de l'Equilibre at Expo.02 in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. It was designed by Geneva architects, Hervé Dessimoz and Thomas Büchi, as a model of sustainable building. It is high and in diameter, roughly the size of the dome of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The globe consists of two co...
What does the bacteriophage do once it injects it’s DNA into the host cell?	you’re personifying the virus a little too much. the virus and the cell don’t ‘do’ anything, they’re controlled by the laws of physics and chemistry. think of the virus as a piece of rogue dna. it starts by borrowing the cells machinery to make viral proteins that self assemble into capsids and such which then get ...	[ "This stage involves for the virus to penetrate itself in the host cell. It does so by injecting its DNA into the cell. The process of penetration happens when the bacteriophage's tail secretes the enzyme lysozyme, which breaks down the bacterial cell wall into segments. Therefore, the break down of the cell by the...
What happens to energy when it enters a Black hole?	The black hole gains mass.	[ "At first sight this seems like a \"bad\" result as it allows energy to apparently be obtained \"for free\", because we can surround the black hole with a circular track, and allow an object to repeatedly fall \"downhill\" around the track from A to B and back again, extracting energy each time, and thus violating ...
when a star dies, is it possible to see this occurrence with the naked human eye? say you're looking up at a star at night, and you see a slight flash and then it's gone. is that possible?	Yes, but the flash might last days or even weeks, and is only visible with the naked eye if it's really close or an extra-large explosion. _URL_0_	[ "The stars of the night sky cannot be counted unaided because they are so numerous and there is no way to track which have been counted and which have not. Further complicating the count, fainter stars may appear and disappear depending on exactly where the observer is looking. The result is an impression of an ext...
Directly after Japan was nuked, what was the worlds reactions after learning about nuclear weapons?	The scientists who developed the atomic bombs felt tremendous remorse after the bombing. Many actually signed a petition that was given to Truman asking to not drop the bomb. Leo Szilard, the man who petitioned Roosevelt to start the atomic bomb project, was the man spearheading the campaign to not use it. The atomic...	[ "Hans Kristensen, of the Federation of American Scientists said that at the time the country was facing a difficult decision between national security for Japan under a U.S. nuclear umbrella or telling the public the truth; the decision makers chose to be \"economical with the truth.\" The pacts revealed that nucle...
A question all men secretly want the answer to. Is there really any point at all to washing your hands after you take a piss? Is there really bacteria on your dick that needs to be washed off?	Think of all the things you touched in order to take that piss. In your own bathroom, you touched the doorhandle, the toilet flush lever, and your junk. Now, take that to a public bathroom - you touched a public door handle (or push area), you touched a public toilet flush lever, and in the process just shared urine ...	[ "However, incorrect choice of cleansing agents, or their incorrect application, may itself cause labial irritation and require medical attention. Over-vigorous rubbing of the labia of little girls while washing, combined with the lack of estrogen in their bodies, may lead to the mostly pediatric condition known as ...
If someone is in a completely black room, and somebody fires a single photon into one of their eyes, what would they see? Would they see anything?	I'm going to self plagiarize here but... I am not aware of any psychophysics study that suggests a human can reliably detect a single photon. The usual threshold for detection I've seen in the literature is around 100 photons ([source](_URL_0_)). If you think about it, you wouldn't want the perceptual threshold mu...	[ "This can be seen when the eyes are closed and looking at the back of the eyelids. In a bright room, a dark red can be seen, owing to a small amount of light penetrating the eyelids and taking on the color of the blood it has passed through. In a dark room, blackness can be seen or the object can be more colourful....
if nature is so jagged, colorful, and seemingly random (yes, i know all about the golden ratio), why do us humans find straight lines, clean edges, and muted colors so aesthetically pleasing?	2 things most likely. 1) We like these things because they are different from nature. We can get all the other stuff from nature easy enough, but we have to work at making a straight line. 2) Nature is dangerous. Disease, predators, poisons, and natural disasters are all natural, so why should we necessarily desire n...	[ "Any color perceived by human visitors for a few hours is entirely different from what is really happening. According to Leopold, the three features of ecosystems that generate land ethic are integrity, stability and beauty. None of the mentioned features are real in nature. Ecosystems are not stable: they are dram...
how do american soldiers, who serve their country in wars around the world, result in americans getting freedom?	Well think about today. We have had several terrorist attacks in the U.S. and our veterans are fighting in the middle east where the majority of them are	[ "Throughout history, American servicemen have made a habit of putting themselves squarely in evil’s way. They have done so secure in the knowledge that if they fall into the hands of the enemy, they will not be forgotten. Indeed, every effort possible will be undertaken to bring them home. In this, the 60th anniver...
how do fresh water springs emerge and how does the water keep coming?	springs show up where the water table (a layer of always-wet porous rock with a clay or otherwise non-porous bottom) reaches the surface. they continue to emit water due to the pressure of the dry layers above pressing the water out. same thing with the artesian wells. very similar to squeezing a toothpaste tube. (_U...	[ "A spring may be the result of karst topography where surface water has infiltrated the Earth's surface (recharge area), becoming part of the area groundwater. The groundwater then travels through a network of cracks and fissures—openings ranging from intergranular spaces to large caves. The water eventually emerge...
Is Kurt Gödel's claim about the US Constitution true?	Hi there, a [fairly similar question](_URL_0_) got asked here about a month or so ago. You may be interested in u/restricteddata's answer from that thread.	[ "He then tallies all people who might \"claim\" to support the constitution, making a case for why each general grouping of them do not actually support it or have the capacity for informed consent. For example, those who would use it for legal plunder, and those who do not really understand it, or else they would ...

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