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what happens if a president is elected and they do not have a so to take the first lady/gentleman position? | Well, in the case of President James Buchanan (who was a bachelor), he had his niece be the official White House hostess, therefore making her acting First Lady. | [
"The President is required to be a member of the National Assembly at the time of his election. Upon his election, he immediately resigns his seat for the duration of his term. The President may be removed either by a motion of no-confidence or an impeachment trial.\n",
"A member of parliament or of a State Legis... |
how do google's driverless cars work? | A system including cameras, GPS, proximity sensors all work together to drive the car. Pretty much every road in north america is mapped on GPS. The GPS gives the rough information on the route the car should take and what to expect in terms of directions. That information is few to the computer on board that tracks the cars position. The cameras and proximity sensors work to control the more important functions. The cameras are used to pick up markers on the road, like lines, helping position the car in the lane. The cameras are also helpful for detecting things like stop lights and signs, using an advance for of recognition software. Proximity sensors work to track the position of the surrounding cars, they track the speed and distance of the other vehicles, helping the car avoid accidents.
All the information is processed by a computer onboard and using pre-written algorithms, the computer drives itself. | [
"BULLET::::- Autonomous mobile robots: Google's self-driving cars are cloud robots. The cars use the network to access Google's enormous database of maps and satellite and environment model (like Streetview) and combines it with streaming data from GPS, cameras, and 3D sensors to monitor its own position within cen... |
how does up voting photos in reddit effect their visibility in google searches? | I believe that every time you upvote an image a link to it is created in your users folder. For example you can see all of my upvotes here:
_URL_0_
Each upvote generates a new link. When a lot of users upvote an image it creates a lot of backlinks.
Google uses the amount of backlinks as one of the determining factors for what is the most "relevant" item. It also uses the anchor text (link text) to determine which keywords it will appear for. Thus you will usually see the keyword in the title.
The real algorithm that google uses is far more complicated then that. But people have figured out that by upvoting you can create enough value to push an image to the front page. | [
"Privacy advocates have objected to the Google Street View feature, pointing to photographs that show people leaving strip clubs, protesters at an abortion clinic, sunbathers in bikinis, cottagers at public parks, people picking up prostitutes and people engaging in activities visible from public property which the... |
What nationalities were the Shock Troops of the British Empire during World War I? | "Shock Troops" was a term liberally used in the First World War. Most notably, the Stosstruppen or Shock troops that the Germans experimented with in 1916, and finally began forming battalions and regiments by 1917, and whole divisions in 1918. What they involve were removing the best, most experienced, most enterprising soldiers from regular infantry units, and assigning them the role of infiltrating enemy positions, reducing resistance or continuing onwards, leaving pockets for the infantry to mop up. While they proved effective, they took horrible casualties in 1918, irreplaceable at the time, and left the regular forces without man experienced core.
Contrast this with the British, who from 1916 onwards (post-Somme) radically re-thought their infantry tactics and doctrine, and already had a rotation system that allowed for these reforms to be distilled to every division, brigade and battalion in the BEF. The difference with the ANZAC and Canadian corps was that these were actual Corps, c. 4 divisions that from 1916 onwards always served in their native corps, whereas British division regularly shifted around. This meant that they operated much more closely, and were somewhat more cohesive.
They were certainly excellent, certainly 'shock troops', but British divisions fought just as well, and just as hard. Unlike the German system, the BEF emphasized training and cohesion of all units, combined arms really, and this was a key to victory in 1918. | [
"A special shock-troop concept was fashioned after German \"Stosstruppen\" of World War I. Their elitism, discipline and fighting qualities were well known to senior British officers. They had also studied the French and Indian War of the 1750a A force of 900 French-Canadian woodsmen and Indians defeated a hand-pic... |
How do rocket engines prevent back-flow of ignited fuel? | The fuel *can't* burn in the fuel line.... there is no oxidizer in the fuel line.
As for why a fuel/oxidizer mix can't get back into one of the lines... too much pressure going the other way. Here's a description of rocket fuel injection from [wikipedia's article on liquid propellant rockets](_URL_0_):
> Injectors today classically consist of a number of small holes which aim jets of fuel and oxidiser so that they collide at a point in space a short distance away from the injector plate. This helps to break the flow up into small droplets that burn more easily. | [
"The rocket is not throttleable. Once lit, the burn can be aborted, but the power output cannot otherwise be controlled. The thrust in fact varies, for two reasons. Firstly, as the pressure in the oxidizer tank decreases, the flow rate reduces, reducing thrust. Secondly, in the late stages of a burn the oxidizer ta... |
Are hitler and Stalin diagnosed as crazy today? | Hey, cool question. I really like that you asked "*Are Hitler and Stalin diagnosed as crazy* ***today***" not "Where they crazy?".
Hitler is often diagnosed as crazy nowadays. Shit-/incest fetish, paranoia, being depressive - all those traits are often attributed to him. In my eyes that's **wrong on many, many levels**.
People do this in an attempt to vilify him even more, which is retarded. The dude is literally Hitler. Maybe it's also done in an attempt to trivialize him and his actions. Sometimes people also try to put irony where it doesn't belong (See all "Hitler was jewish"-BS). He simply wasn't. His positions were shared by many and still are, today. Not even his antisemitism and racism were pathological, in the end politics (Japanese were somehow kinda Aryan, not all Semites were Semites, etc) and personal feelings (Bloch, a jewish doctor he protected) were more important.
Germany made money with the Holocaust and many (even internationally) did think that the world would be a better place without jews. The political and moral climate *today* make it seem crazy, but until the late 60's most people didn't give a shit about the Holocaust. Even in anti-fascist nations, like the GDR, it was very rarely talked about. Anti-Semitism back than was rampant, in Russia, France, Romania and Poland even more than in Germany.
Stalin: The purges killed many innocents but also any opposition to the revolution or Stalin himself. That was the main reason he was able to keep in power the first months of the Blitzkrieg, while Russia was nearly annihilated. There was no one to succeed him. All other important revolutionists, all czarists, the political, democratic bourgeoisie and the former heads of the armed forced where imprisoned or dead.
Calling those two guys crazy is lazy, simple history and disrespectful to the people who lived back than. There were very good reasons to be pro-Hitler or Stalin in 1933 and their agenda didn't come out of the blue. | [
"Some authors have described Hitler as a cynical manipulator or a fanatic, but denied that he was seriously mentally disturbed; among them are the British historians Ian Kershaw, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Alan Bullock, and A. J. P. Taylor, and, more recently, the German psychiatrist Manfred Lütz. Ian Kershaw has concluded... |
the religion of jehova's witness | Using reddit search I found:
ELI5: Jehovah's Witnesses
_URL_0_ | [
"Like many groups, Jehovah's Witnesses strive to reflect Christianity as they believe it was practiced in the 1st century, the Apostolic Age. The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society and its precursor organization, Zion's Watch Tower Tract Society, considers the Great Apostasy to have properly begun before the death... |
why aren't people in congress who took money from people not forced to abstain from a vote? | Because then all I'd have to do to stop something from passing is donate small amounts of money to some people who supported a bill. | [
"One of the interesting aspects of the majority's decision is that it believed Congress prohibited not civil servants from making political donations on their own but making such donations through their supervisors. Justice Bradley dissented, in part, by arguing that the law banned even voluntary contributions made... |
when you flip your rear-view mirror down in the night time, why do the headlights behind you seem less bright? | The mirror isn't flat; the glass is thicker at the top forming a wedge shape. The back of the glass is silvered to make it very reflective. When you tilt the mirror tab, the silvered portion points away from you, so you don't get a great reflection. The dim reflection you end up seeing is a reflection off the glass itself, similar to the reflection you'd see when looking out of a window at night.
Newer or more high-end cars use a different method of dimming. There are sensors which determine if the level of light is too much. This then sends a signal to the glass itself to alter is light transmitting properties. This is a property known as electrochromism. | [
"A prismatic rear-view mirror—sometimes called a \"day/night mirror\"—can be tilted to reduce the brightness and glare of lights, mostly for high-beam headlights of vehicles behind which would otherwise be reflected directly into the driver's eyes at night. This type of mirror is made of a piece of glass that is we... |
compression of video, photo and audio. | Photo: Instead of recording the exact color of every pixel, either reduce the number of colors used (gif), or make a note that the next however number of pixels are the same color, followed by a bunch of pixels that are a different color, and so on.
Audio: instead of recording every single tone of a song, only keep the loudest parts. Maybe the singer is singing while there is a loud cymbal crash. You can't really hear the singer, so cut that part out and leave the loud cymbal. If you don't know the song well, you won't usually be able to tell, unless the compression is really high.
Video: instead of keeping all of the info of every image in the video, analyze the pictures and record only how the images change from frame to frame. The background doesn't change much? Then only change the parts of the picture where someone is moving! You can see the edges of the moving stuff in badly or highly compressed movies. | [
"Video compression is a practical implementation of source coding in information theory. In practice, most video codecs are used alongside audio compression techniques to store the separate but complementary data streams as one combined package using so-called \"container formats\".\n",
"iFrame video and audio is... |
what does falconry actually involve? | Im a falconer. There's kind of a difference between how we take the sport on and how they do it in the arab world. In north america we use trained raptors to hunt "fur or feather" meaning either small furry animals or gamebirds and water fowl. Our method is almost just like regular hunting but with birds of prey instead of firearms. In the middle east the sport is more like a fox hunt that uses high octane gyr falcons or gyr hybrids and a bustard called the houbara.
In either case the bird is conditioned using some degree of weight management and various different training methods. It involves finding a weight at which a bird is both responsive and healthy then maintaining it by weighing them and their food on a daily basis. | [
"Falconry is the hunting of wild animals in their natural state and habitat by means of a trained bird of prey. Small and larger animals are hunted; squirrels and rabbits often fall prey to these birds. There are two traditional terms used to describe a person involved in falconry: a \"falconer\" flies a falcon; an... |
How does a history post-grad student go about finding their thesis topic? | It's really a case of thinking about what you find interesting, and what will hold your attention for however long you have to write the piece of work. I personally think that's the most important thing. There will be ups and downs in this time, and it will be much easier to get through it if you care about the work.
Otherwise, the guidance is pretty standard:
- It needs to be possible. Do you have the sources? Can you access the sources? Do you have the skills to use those sources? Do you have the money and time?
- Has this topic been done before? It is not necessary or always even possible to have a totally unique piece of work; it will do and is expected to build on the work of others. If very very little has been done on it -- is there a reason such as a lack of sources? If there has been very much done on it, what are the chances that you can find a way to approach it from a different angle? It has to have at least the potential of originality to begin with.
- What have you done so far? Are there some gaps in literature that you would like to fill? Or do you think the things you've done so far have been boring and you have no interest in them? What are the themes that you enjoy the most? Perhaps you are keen on radical or women's history? Eighteenth century history? History of medicine? Are there new waves of historiography that you'd like to join? Do you like working with newspapers?
- Take your time. Your first idea may not be the best one, and even if you settle on a good one it's often the case that proposals look very little like the finished pieces of work.
- Take advice from your tutors etc. Do they see potential in certain topics? Similarly, who will be your supervisor? Did you choose them because you like them as a person or because you want to do the topic they have expertise in? It needs to be a little bit of both. Don't settle on Russian history just because your Russian history tutor at undergrad was friendly (and you don't speak Russian!).
- Be inspired. All my theses so far have come from reading other people's works and "stealing" ideas, which is probably the most common approach I've noticed. Sometimes I took their sources and ran with them to write about something else. Other times I took a person's theory and applied it to the sources I want to work with.
Good luck. I'm sure you will receive some good advice here. | [
"And why must so many of us [historians] tie our historical investigations to a thesis or theory? Is it not acceptable to describe the past, comment on what appears to have been happening as best as we can recreate it, and let it go at that? Must we have a thesis, and then drive ourselves crazy (or worse, fool ours... |
How did vegetarian cultures start? | In ancient India, the brahmin ("priest") caste engaged in vegetarianism out of religious belief. The killing of animals was associated with bad karma, so brahmins maintained their diets as a sign of karmic purity. It's also important to note that the lush Indian subcontinent was uniquely suited to sustaining a vegetarian lifestyle, due to its wide biodiversity. A vegetarian diet would not be possible in Alaska, for example.
Religious vegetarianism began to wane as Buddhism spread. Contrary to popular belief, the Buddha allowed his followers to eat meat, so long as the animal was not killed specifically for the follower in question. The Buddha wanted his teachings to be available to all castes, not just brahmins. This allowed Buddhism to spread to arid Tibet and China even as it died out in its country of origin, India. Even the Dalai Lama is not a vegetarian!
I am not aware of vegetarianism existing in any large scale prior to Upanishadic India, but I may be wrong.
Sources:
The Bloodless Revolution: Radical Vegetarians and the Discovery of India by Tristam Stuart
In This Very Life by Sayadaw U Pandita (RIP)
The Upanishads, Penguin Classics, translated by Juan Mascaro | [
"The earliest records of vegetarianism as a concept and practice amongst a significant number of people are from ancient India and the ancient Greek civilizations in southern Italy and Greece. In both instances, the diet was closely connected with the idea of nonviolence toward animals (called \"ahimsa\" in India),... |
Can I make something float? | First of all, just to clarify, gravity doesn't have a uniform strength of 9.8 Newtons. The acceleration due to gravity is 9.8 m/s^2, and because F=ma (for applications near the surface of the earth), the force of gravity on earth equals mg (or 9.8m).
Now to answer your question, yes, objects can float if the summation of forces on them is zero. To simplify, if a 2kg object has a gravitational, downward force of 19.6 N, you will need an upward force of 19.6 N in order to make it 'float'. Balloons usually move upwards because helium provides a buoyant force greater than the force of gravity on the balloon, causing the net force on the balloon to point up.
In your example, yes, if you filled a balloon so that it had a buoyant force EXACTLY equal to the force of gravity acting on it, it would float perfectly still in mid-air. | [
"Bubble floats are small hollow balls which are used to control the fishing line. They may have the facility to be partially filled with water to control how much float is above the water. They are used in situations where a normal float cannot be cast, such a working close to the edge of reeds or heavy surface pla... |
Economic Inequality between Northern and Southern Europe | It actually has a lot to do with history.
The most important thing to understand, I think, is the way the Industrial Revolution spread through Europe. As you may have learned, England was the starting point. What made England special? Firstly, goods and people could be moved fairly cheaply compared to the continent: there were no internal tariffs, you could ship goods up and down the coast line since England was an island. Secondly, there were plenty of natural resources, both within the UK and in the colonies. Thirdly, the rise of enclosure left a lot of peasants without land: this meant that there was a force of unemployed workers that could be exploited. This is why wages were tied to the price of bread: the idea was that if a family had to work to have enough to eat each day, there would be more motivation to work. Couple that with the fact that England has had more or less the same political regime since the Industrial Revolution (a parliamentary monarchy).
France and Germany had a harder time of it, but still had the advantage of colonies and raw materials. They also played off each other in various wars, which gave them motivations to industrialize. France had unified after the French Revolution and Germany had unified under Bismarck.
However, the South of Europe (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) were never fully industrialized. Even today, Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal are primarily agricultural countries. They also did not long benefit from colonies: Italy managed to take Ethiopia in Africa, but did not hold it for long; Spain, on the other hand, decided to take on the US and lost its last important colonies. Portugal held on far longer, but did not exercise much control over its colonies and had lost its most important colony, Brazil, soon after the Industrial Revolution had begun in Northern Europe. The Greeks managed to succeed from the Ottoman Empire, but they were comparatively a very young nation that got involved in the Balkans wars with Croatia, Bosnia, Albania, Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romanians, Turks, Slovenes, and Montenegrins. They were pretty much crushed. Then they were invaded by fascist Italy during WWII; even though they managed to fend off the Italians, Nazi Germany came in to bail their ally out and both the Allies and the Axis bombed Greece at some point.
The other problem is that these countries do not have very many resources for industrialization. Portugal in particular is dependent on other countries for wheat. Portugal, Spain, and Italy have all had totalitarian, fascist dictators (Salazar, Franco, and Mussolini). Italy's fascist regime ended after WWII, but Salazar's and Franco's regimes continued into the mid to late 20th century. Italy has also been plagued by corruption since WWII.
All this means that Portugal, Italy, Spain, and Greece were not really able to industrialize until much later than the UK, France and Germany. When the European Union was formed, these countries took advantage of other EU members' money to try and modernize their economy. The problem is that after several years, the recession came along and they're not returning well on their investments. This means that they default on these old loans, they take austerity measures, and austerity measures in turn make people unhappy; hence, they are less likely to consume certain products, which makes the economy even worse.
| [
"Socio-economic disparities in the European Union countries are considerable. Strong differences between neighboring regions create both, threats and opportunities. In terms of opportunities we understand goods, capital and labour in relatively closely defined regions; in the threats perspective it is mainly appear... |
Given Elon Musk's recent comments about finally being able to reuse rockets: Why is it so difficult to recover and reuse them? | There are lots of ways to do some kind of rocket recovery and thus many reasons not to. I can only talk about a few.
Recovery is the first problem.
Boosters which detach early land in the ocean which can corrode the components to such a degree that it is not worth repairing them. You also have to slow them down so that they are not destroyed on impact. This can be done with parachutes but Musk has stated that they would need to adjust the structural design of their rockets to be able to handle the force of a parachute and they didn’t want to do that. Components jettisoned at higher speeds and altitudes may not survive the heat of reentry and could burn up in the way down. Designing them to handle this condition could be difficult or again too expensive to make it worthwhile.
The second problem is refurbishment.
Even with perfect recovery, rockets suffer a lot of stress and wear when they are used and if you are going to put $100,000,000 of payload on that old rocket you better be sure that it will work perfectly despite the wear it sustained last time. This basically means that you take it all apart and rebuild it. This can be more expensive than building a new engine. | [
"Elon Musk said at the beginning of the program that he believed the return, vertical landing and recovery was possible because the SpaceX manufacturing methodologies result in a rocket efficiency exceeding the typical 3% margin. A SpaceX rocket operating in the reusable configuration has approximately 30% less pay... |
what has changed culturally/politically that people believed it when they were warned about the hole in the ozone, but not about climate change now? | The ozone layer was a fairly visible problem (look at this giant hole that wasn't there) with short term scary consequences (skin cancer for everyone!) which required very little personal or public financial sacrifice to fix (oh... we switch hair sprays.... that's not so bad). Amd since most of that could be fixed with relatively cheap legislation, you really didn't even need to mos people to buy in to fix the problem.
Compare that to climate change which has long term consequences broad consequences diffused away from most key countries (displacenent of populations, issues in 50-100 years, etc) stemming from seemingly minor, nonthreatening visuals (would 1 or 2 degrees be that bad) and which addressing means fundamental changes in just about all aspects of our day to day life and commercial system.
Clinate change is therefore easier to scoff at and people/countries have far greater motivation to do it it. | [
"The two atmospheric problems have achieved significantly different levels of understanding by the public, including both the basic science and policy issues. People have limited scientific knowledge about global warming and tend to confuse it with or see it as a subset of the ozone hole. Not only on the policy lev... |
German Grenades | It's worth noting both sides experimented with a variety of grenade styles and types. You can see some [German](_URL_7_) and [French](_URL_2_) examples. The German "discus" design and the French "hairbrush" design nare especially interesting.
Although ball-type grenades like the Mills Bomb couldn't be thrown as far as a German stick grenade, they were generally heavier - more explosive and more fragmentation from their thicker metal bodies.
Stick grenades weren't really especially hard to carry. The *stielhandgranate* had a clip on the head that could be easily clipped a beltloop as this [staged photo of a German soldier demonstrates](_URL_0_). This method of carriage was popular with trench raiders like [these men](_URL_6_), since it didn't interfere with movement and left the grenades close to hand.
Troops also carried the grenades in large bags under each arm, as you can see in [this photo](_URL_5_). This was especially popular with stormtroopers and dedicated parties of grenadiers assigned to "bomb" their way down a trench.
German troops sometimes used a combation of grenade bags and grenades on the beltloop [as you can see in this illustration](_URL_4_).
For comparison, British bombing parties carried the "cricket ball" Mills Bombs in [chest pouches like these](_URL_9_).
During the 2nd Sino-Japanese War, Chinese troops often wore locally-made copies of German grenades in a bandoleer around their neck. [This photo](
_URL_3_), [this photo](_URL_1_), and [this illustration](_URL_8_) all offer good examples of how this arrangement worked. | [
"The German designation for this grenade is unknown. It consists of a 3 5/8-inch or 4-inch aluminum body which is painted yellow and filled with explosives. It is intended for use as an offensive grenade so fragmentation is minimal relying instead on the blast effect. In this role, it was fitted with a B.Z.E fricti... |
why do phone cameras seem more zoomed out than eyes when looking at the same thing | Your eye has a lens inside them to focus the light reflected off objects onto the retina of your eye (the image). The focal length of that lens, along with the distances involved give you a viewing angle.
If you have an SLR camera, it might have a fixed focal length or a zoom (variable focal length) lens. A camera lens of about 55mm has a similar viewing angle as our two eyes combined have. Any larger focal length would be classified as a telephoto lens and makes objects appear closer (zoomed in). Smaller focal lengths are classified as wide angle and make objects appear further away (zoomed out).
Because it would be cost prohibitive to have variable focal length optics in our phones, the smart decision was to utilize wide angle lenses. The camera resolutions are high enough to allow zooming in electronically instead of optically with an acceptable level of image degradation. | [
"Modest camera phones use only digital zoom and have no optical zoom at all. Usually cameras have an optical zoom lens, but apply digital zoom automatically once its longest optical focal length has been reached. Professional cameras generally do not feature digital zoom.\n",
"Nowadays cameras usually have iZoom ... |
why do international sporting organizations have french names? | Historical reasons. The modern Olympics began in the late 1800's, and FIFA was founded in 1904. While England and Germany were major players at the time, France had been a dominant cultural and military force in Europe for the previous few centuries, and was the default accepted language for international culture and diplomacy, similar to how English today is the international language of business and engineering. Even in English we call the position of having an internationally common language a "lingua franca" which is ~~French~~ Italian for "~~French~~ Frankish Language" reflecting just how dominant a force French was at the time.
Since international sporting leagues were created to be, well, international, everyone assumed that everyone else would be able to speak French and set up the organizations with that in mind. Of course, it didn't hurt that France was a major initial backer for a number of these projects.
(Edit) Romance languages all sound the same | [
"A Belgian club's name usually includes the name of the town where the club plays as well as a prefix and/or suffix. Since Belgians speak three languages, French and Dutch being the main ones and German being the third official language, Belgian teams may use either language as the basis for their names. For histor... |
when people gain weight rapidly, do they grow new hairs to cover all the skin, or do they have the same amount of hairs spaced farther apart? | I lost about 90 pounds in the last year (about 185 now).
I was hairy before, but you couldn't really tell on my arms for example because the hairs were actually spread out quite a bit. Now it's a lot more noticeable since the hair is denser (as in closer together) and appears darker than before. Same goes for face, legs etc. | [
"Many people underestimate the tensile strength of hair. A single strand can potentially carry a weight of up to 100 grams; in theory, with proper technique, a full head of human hair could eventually hold between 5,600 kg and 8,400 kg (12,345 to 18,518 lbs) without breaking individual hairs or pulling out any foll... |
How loud would a sound have to be to be heard around the world? | Krakatoa's last big explosion was heard 5000 km away and is estimated to have been 180 decibels.
[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)
> The sound of the eruption was so loud it was said that if one was within ten miles, they would go deaf. | [
"For sound waves in air, the speed of sound is 343 m/s (at room temperature and atmospheric pressure). The wavelengths of sound frequencies audible to the human ear (20 Hz–20 kHz) are thus between approximately 17 m and 17 mm, respectively. Somewhat higher frequencies are used by bats so they can resolve targets sm... |
the economics of the cost of private education. | What school is claiming that? For $90k you could get every student their own private teacher, a computer, and all the supplies they need and still probably have $10k left over. | [
"The United States has one of the most expensive higher education systems in the world, and also one of the most successful in terms of the boost to earnings from higher education. Public colleges have no control over one major revenue source — the state. In 2016-17, the average cost of annual tuition in the United... |
how come noise cancelling headphones don't increase hearing loss when there is actually more sound being produced around your ears? | That's the whole point of the opposite amplitude, the two waves cancel each other out and the eardrum doesn't move at all as a result. So the additional sounds actually result in less movement of the eardrums, and thus are easier on your ears. People who work in noisy environments (like a data center), even if the volume isn't enough to be classed as dangerous, often eventually lose their hearing in the band of frequencies the sound was in. That's due to the cilia in the inner ear in that zone being worn away. | [
"Active noise-cancelling headphones use a microphone, amplifier, and speaker to pick up, amplify, and play ambient noise in phase-reversed form; this to some extent cancels out unwanted noise from the environment without affecting the desired sound source, which is not picked up and reversed by the microphone. They... |
Is there a maximum possible magnetic flux density? | There is the [Schwinger limit](_URL_0_): Above 4 billion T things get strange.
And then there is the Planck magnetic inductance, 2\*10^53 T. That's at least the maximum where our known laws of physics have a chance to work. | [
"Using the Biot–Savart law, it can be shown that the magnetic flux density formula_1 induced by a solenoid of effective length formula_2 with a current formula_3 through formula_4 loops is given by the equation:\n",
"It is worth noting that the magnetic charge density can be infinite at the edges of the sample, d... |
Will listening to a recording of information while sleeping every night lead to me memorizing that information? Can the brain absorb information in a noticeable way during sleep? | _URL_0_
> Since the electroencephalography studies by Charles W. Simon and William H. Emmons in 1956, **learning by sleep has not been taken seriously**. The researchers concluded that learning during sleep was "impractical and probably impossible." They reported that stimulus material presented during sleep was not recalled later when the subject awoke, unless alpha wave activity occurred at the same time the stimulus material was given. Since alpha activity during sleep indicates the subject is about to awake, the researchers felt that any learning occurred in a waking state | [
"The cortex cannot cope with the vast amount of information received throughout the day without developing \"parasitic\" thoughts that would disrupt the efficient organisation of memory. During REM sleep, these unwanted connections in cortical networks are wiped out or damped down by the Crick-Mitchison process mak... |
are more celebrities dying this year than average? or is it just observe bias or something? | Statistically more celebrities are probably not dying more than in previous years, but there may be a connection based in how popular / unique these celebrities were. | [
"Many make observations about celebrities (especially those who have recently died; one letter printed after the deaths of Gianni Versace and Princess Diana remarked on both their violent deaths and friendship with Elton John, stating \"I tell you what. If I was George Michael right about now, I'd be shitting mysel... |
where do/did words come from? | There are a *lot* of answers to that. Here are some:
* Some people believe the first words were caveman grunts or warning calls. It's easy to see how "gaaah!" for "there's a tiger coming, let's run!" could become a word *meaning* 'tiger' or 'run'.
* It's not interesting, but the main way a language gets words is taking them from other languages. Usually they get pronounced differently and might change so much down the years that they might not look like the original word anymore ('naranja' to 'orange', for example).
* Words can change meaning over time. The word 'deer' once meant 'animal', but with time came to mean only one *kind* of animal. And the word 'hound' once meant 'dog' but now means only one *kind* of dog. A more current example is 'LOL', which once meant 'laughing out loud' but in just a few years has lost so much of that meaning that if you want to tell someone their comment made you laugh out loud, you won't type 'LOL', because it doesn't mean that anymore.
* We'll make compound words - sticking two words together. Like 'blackbird', which doesn't meant any old bird that happens to be black in colour but a particular *kind* of bird.
* We also have a lot of prefixes and suffixes, which are little bits you put at the beginning and end of words to change their meaning. So you have 'locate', but then you have 'relocate' and 'relocation' as well.
* In English one thing we do a lot it take verbs and make them nouns or take nouns and make them adjectives, etc. You can 'chair' a meeting for example.
* There are also words like 'radar', which is the first letter of five different words (an acronym) and words like 'brunch', where the head of one word is stuck onto the body of another (portmanteau words). But it's really, really rare for someone to just 'make up' a word and have it stick. | [
"Many of the common words such as 'papoose,' 'squash' and 'moccasin' were popularized in 1643, even back in England, with the publication of Roger Williams' \"A Key into the Language of America\" and as a result, are often given a Narragansett etymology. Most words were likely borrowed independently until a common ... |
To what degree did the Allies and the USSR cooperate in WW2? | They absolutely collaborated during the war, and while it's hard to say that they would have lost or exactly how the war would have been different, it would nevertheless have made the fighting substantially more difficult. I would say it's a misnomer to think of the USSR as separate from the Allies, because Soviet troops are such a critical aspect of the manpower needed to win the war. As early as 1941, even before the United States formally enters the fighting, Roosevelt insists that Lend-Lease supplies be sent to the Soviet Union as well, despite the fears of his advisors that the country will soon collapse.
In terms of war goods and materiel, the Soviet Union is the second-largest recipient of aid from the United States under Lend-Lease (behind Great Britain). In his memoirs, Nikita Khrushchev claimed that Stalin said the war could not have been won without aid from the United States, and Khrushchev endorsed this position as well (Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, 1918-1945, Volume 1). Even with the truly heroic efforts in Soviet industry to set up factories in the safe hinterland of the country, it still has tremendous need for just about every war good, on top of more ordinary but still vital supplies: trucks, jeeps, planes, and even food were all critical to keeping the war effort. Remember that with the loss of the Ukraine, the USSR had lost some of its most agriculturally productive lands, and American food kept the Soviet army fed at a time when every able-bodied man who could be diverted to the fighting was being sent. Richard Overy's Why the Allies Won gives a good sense of the sheer industrial scale that gave the Allies the edge and why their victory was inevitable, but that edge depended on very close collaboration between them.
In turn, the Soviets shoulder the greatest burden of the fighting against Nazi Germany for the majority of the war. Over a million Germans die fighting on the Eastern Front, and another million plus are captured, whereas just over 100,000 are killed fighting in France and Belgium throughout the war. Soviet troops make the victory possible, in part because Britain and the U.S. also are divided in fighting Japan, but mostly because the Soviets are stuck dealing with the German war machine. This produces tensions between the Allies, to be sure, because at Tehran Stalin demands and insists that a second front be opened up as soon as possible to take pressure off of his armies, which is in part why Churchill and Roosevelt are so insistent that maximum logistical support is diverted to the Soviets; they need to keep them in the war, and they worry about the possibility of Stalin concluding a separate peace with Hitler if he felt he didn't have a better option. But it also leads to American and British commitments to open a second front. After the Tehran Conference in 1943, they agree to a May 1944 (postponed to June) invasion of France, and that Stalin would time similar assaults in the East to tie down German forces and stretch them thin.
They also collaborate closely in the planning for a postwar world. Once the U.S. joins the war on top of supplying Britain and Russia, most rational observers understood that Germany had lost; in his memoirs, Churchill made it clear that once he heard the news of Germany's declaration of war, he felt that they had lost and they simply needed to be smashed into submission. As a consequence, they immediately begin planning for what a postwar world is going to look like. Some of that simply relates to occupation of postwar territories, like the division of Germany that's discussed at Yalta, but it also goes beyond. The Soviets participate in the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 with America and Britain, which was aimed at stabilizing currencies to guarantee trade in the postwar period, which would in turn guarantee prosperity and prevent a recurrence of the war (Roosevelt in particular believed that the collapse of global trade had gone a long way in fueling the rise of dictatorships and the eventual war).
In short, not only did cooperation save lives and shorten the war, but actors on both sides understood they needed the other for the victory they wanted.
Some useful reading...
Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and U.S. Foreign Policy
Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won
| [
"The wartime Allies initially worked together under the auspices of the Allied Control Council (ACC) for Germany. Cooperation between the Western Allies and the Soviets ultimately broke down because of disagreements over Germany's political and economic future. In May 1949, the three western occupation zones were m... |
How are we so sure about the fate of different types of stars when the Universe is not yet old enough for us to witness the death of certain stars? | We're not absolutely certain, you're right. Observations would help us be more accurate, and there's a lot of detail we don't have, even hypothetically.
However, all of our observations of white dwarves are pretty consistent: there are not continuing nuclear reactions happening there. Without anything adding energy, and by observing the current energy output, we can make some very good guesses about when they'll go dark. | [
"Theories about how WR stars form, develop, and die have been slow to form compared to the explanation of less extreme stellar evolution. They are rare, distant, and often obscured, and even into the 21st century many aspects of their lives are unclear.\n",
"Stellar remnants are objects associated with the death ... |
the difference between the degrees and the warm/cold settings on a split system air-conditioner. | Warm=keeping room temp above set temp
Cool=keeping room temp below set temp
The temp you set the thermostat to isn't necessarily going to be the room temp, it's just the temp that activates the system. | [
"Split-system air conditioners come in two forms: mini-split and central systems. In both types, the inside-environment (evaporative) heat exchanger is separated by some distance from the outside-environment (condensing unit) heat exchanger.\n",
"Other common types of air conditioning system are multi-split syste... |
Why are airships/blimps/zeppelins not used for transporting freight? | Mostly for economic reasons. The leakage is not a major issue, as there are commerically operated airships right now. We used to fill these airships with hydrogen, but that went awfully wrong. Helium does not provide the same lift, is a lot more expensive, but easier to contain and does not react. There are some logistics problems too; maybe you want to fly a long distance with those airships, then you need some sort of ballast water recuperation system (otherwise you can´t sink). Also, lets face it, its not really that fast (but faster than cargo ships).
There was a german project, [CargoLifter](_URL_0_), that attempted to build a heavy lift airship that could hoist up to 160 metric tonnes. It was, however, an economical failure.
The efficiency is not to good either. Think of that massive hull, which creates a lot of drag. Drag is not good for any aerial vehicle (even going at low speeds).
In summary, the only real advantages over cargo airplanes are the size of the load it can take (virtually anything) and that it does not need a landing strip to take up the load. Anything else, I think it is not as good a solution as, say, a helicopter. | [
"It has periodically been suggested that airships could be employed for cargo transport, especially delivering extremely heavy loads to areas with poor infrastructure over great distances. This has also been called roadless trucking. Also, airships could be used for heavy lifting over short distances (e.g. on const... |
What's happening in batteries when they seemingly run out of charge but hours later they have "residual charge" enough to power on again? | The "self-recharging" features of batteries is most noticeable in a car battery. In some cases you can crank the engine until the battery seems totally dead, then come back an hour later and crank it again. The higher the drain on the battery (a car's starter motor is an incredibly high-drain device!), the greater the effect.
To understand why this happens, it is helpful to understand what's going on inside the battery. Let's take the simplest zinc/carbon battery as an example. If you take a zinc rod and a carbon rod, connect them together with a wire, and then immerse the two rods in liquid sulfuric acid, you create a battery. Electrons will flow through the wire from the zinc rod to the carbon rod. Hydrogen gas builds up on the carbon rod, and over a fairly short period of time coats the majority of the carbon rod's surface. The layer of hydrogen gas coating the rod blocks the reaction occurring in the cell and the battery begins to look "dead". If you let the battery rest for awhile, the hydrogen gas dissipates and the battery "comes back to life".
In any battery, be it an alkaline battery found in a flashlight or a lead acid battery in a car, the same sort of thing can happen. Reaction products build up around the two poles of the battery and slow down the reaction. By letting the battery rest, you give the reaction products a chance to dissipate. The higher the drain on the battery, the faster the products build up, so batteries under high drain appear to recover more.
Many battery-operated appliances use two or four cells in series to create higher voltages. If one of the cells has a problem (for example, it does not dissipate reaction products as well as the other batteries), it can make all of the batteries appear to go dead. If you test the batteries individually, however, three of the four may be fine. If the batteries seem to go dead too quickly, testing all four batteries is a good idea. Throw out the bad one and re-use the other three. | [
"Batteries that are stored for a long period or that are discharged at a small fraction of the capacity lose capacity due to the presence of generally irreversible \"side reactions\" that consume charge carriers without producing current. This phenomenon is known as internal self-discharge. Further, when batteries ... |
After splitting a magnet in half you cannot reconnect the two pieces back together at the original break point, why? | While the other answers aren't wrong, I'm pretty sure they are the wrong answer to your question. If i understand you correctly, you aren't asking why any old broken object doesn't fuse back together like they seem to be answering. Rather, you are asking why when a magnet breaks does it often have a repulsive force to realigning the fractured joint to how it was before. As opposed to the magnetic attraction holding the fractured joint together. Or like other fractured materials, like say a ceramic plate which many magnet break similarly too, which allows you to simply just line up the fractured joints to how they were initially. Nothing about it fusing the broken atomic bonds back together, just macroscopically lining up the fracture again.
It has to do with how a magnet works. Magnetic field lines always form close loops. They can't start nor end, you can't have a north pole without a south. For a standard bar magnet, the magnetic field lines leave the north pole, loop back through the surrounding space to the south pole, and then travel straight through the magnet to complete the loop. [As such.](_URL_0_) Any broken chuck of a magnet will have its own north and south pole, regardless of whether it came off the north or south end of the original.
Suppose we have a bar magnet:
NNNNSSSS
NNNNSSSS
& nbsp;
And now we fracture it as so:
NNNNSSSS
~~~~~~~
NNNNSSSS
We now have two bar magnets, and they still both have two poles. But, the thing to note is if you now try to attach them back together, you are trying to stick a N to a N and a S to a S. The magnets are going to want to twist 180 degrees to stick back together. Getting the original pre-fractured alignment back is going to be pretty hard, you'd have to really force it.
& nbsp;
Now on the other-hand, say we split the original bar magnet like so:
NNNN ~~ SSSS
NNNN ~~ SSSS
You'll note as i said before this is not valid, such a single pole magnet cannot exist. Really what happens is this:
NNSS ~~ NNSS
NNSS ~~ NNSS
We know have two bar magnets. You'll note that the fracture is even attractive. With ideal magnets of the right geometry and a perfect fracture in the right orientation, you could get the broken magnets that want to stick together exactly as before.
& nbsp;
In real life, you aren't likely to get a clean fracture. You'll get some mix of both cases with jagged edges and such, they'll be some smaller more complex poles and fields going on. Even if like the second case, it's probably going to have some small repulsive or attractive force pulling it away from lining back up perfectly. As well, unless perfectly balanced it might be pulled into position where more poles can line up. Consider the second case, note how the one new N and S poles line up, but the outer N and S, which feel an attractive force, are far away from each other. Since the magnet can move in 3D, any slight imbalance or push and one is going to be pulled to on top of the other magnet into a folded version of the original. Simply put, if you break a magnet it's highly unlikely putting the fracture back together perfectly is going to be the most stable way for them to magnetically attach.
| [
"Components with more connections cannot be removed intact in the way described above unless the wire leads are long and flexible enough to be pulled out one by one. For a component such as a Dual-Inline Package (DIP), the pins are too short to pull out, and solder melted on one joint will solidify before another c... |
why do pigments look like another colour when they’re a powder? | Well, I can't say I've noticed what you describe, but the explanation would be the following:
Let's start with electromagnetic radiation: Electromagnetic radiation consists of electromagnetic waves, which are synchronized oscillations of electric and magnetic fields. It has a property called wavelength — the distance over which the wave's shape repeats.
Light is actually a spectrum of wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation (as are radio waves, microwaves, x-rays and so on.. the difference between all of them is wavelength).
We can perceive a small part of that spectrum with our eyes - That part is what we consider visible light (some animals can perceive parts of that spectrum that we cannot, such as ultra-violet or infra-red). We can further break down that visible spectrum into individual colors - Each color is actually a slight variation of wavelength with red roughly at one end of our visible spectrum and violet at the other, going through every possible color in between.
Here's a little graphic to better explain _URL_0_
Now the reason we actually see objects at all is because they mess with with the flow of these electromagnetic waves. The images we see are the waves bouncing off objects - partially off transparent objects and fully off opaque objects.
The reason we think objects have color is because the surface of the object can bounce the different wavelengths of visible light in slightly different ways - a particular surface might reflect a lot of the red spectrum of light, but little of the blue spectrum. Thus, that object appears to us as red because that's the part of visible light that gets to our eyes from that object.
So color is entirely determined by how a surface reflects electromagnetic radiation. It isn't red, it just reflects red light better than other kinds of light.
The explanation to your question, then, would be that those reflective properties are slightly altered when the powder is mixed with a liquid, resulting in a slightly different spectrum to be reflected back to our eyes.
| [
"Pigments appear colored because they selectively reflect and absorb certain wavelengths of visible light. White light is a roughly equal mixture of the entire spectrum of visible light with a wavelength in a range from about 375 or 400 nanometers to about 760 or 780 nm. When this light encounters a pigment, parts ... |
when the supreme court rules on gay marriage, what will happen to the lower court rulings, and the states, if the supreme court decides that states can constitutionally ban gay marriages? | In the past when a gay marriage ban has been lifted then applied again those who legally married still were married. It's possible this would happen nationally if the SCOTUS ruled that way. But further marriages would still be illegal where the state bans being considered had made them illegal.
Exactly how much of a hassle depends, but since in most of these places not having gay marraige was the norm forever, going back to that norm should be straightforward enough.
This wouldn't make gay marriage illegal in the states which haven't banned it though. | [
"Federal courts have interpreted the U.S. Constitution to place some limits on states' ability to restrict access to marriage. In \"Loving v. Virginia\", the United States Supreme Court overturned state marriage laws that barred interracial marriages on the basis that marriage is a \"basic civil right...\" and that... |
why is mp3's still ripped in 128kbp/s and not simply in either 320kbp/s or straight flac? | While hard drive space is irrelevant for desktops and laptops, it is still an issue for smaller devices like smartphones. The quality of MP3s is what people are used to, so it is still advantagous to stick to it. | [
"Mp3Splt can split MP3 (VBR supported), Ogg Vorbis and native FLAC files without decoding, thus avoiding digital generation loss (see also lossless editing). It can be used to split large MP3, Ogg Vorbis and native FLAC blocks to make smaller files or to split entire albums to obtain individual tracks.\n",
"Audio... |
how does facebook (and other social media sites) compile a creepily accurate suggested friends list even when you are a new user and have given the site minimal personal information? | Did you give them your phone number? Even if it isn't public, if some idiot installs the facebook app on their phone and has it in their contacts, facebook will link you. Same for email address - if someone has that in their phone's contacts or gave facebook access to their emails (e.g. has both the gmail and facebook apps installed).
I recently saw someone from way far away with 0 friends in common who I have emailed a few times for something very specific and business-related as a suggested friend.
Facebook actually [builds profiles on non-members based on members' data](_URL_0_) and then links the two if that person ever does join facebook. | [
"A study was conducted at Northeastern University by Alan Mislove and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, where an algorithm was created to try and discover personal attributes of a Facebook user by looking at their friend's list. They looked for information such as high school and coll... |
why we use rms to express ac voltages | I started to type up a complicated response to this, but then I realized this was ELI5. If you want the full answer Like You Are An Electrical Engineering Student I can actually explain the math behind it.
Basically, an AC voltage is almost always less than its peak value. Think of a wave in the ocean, the peak value is like the top of the wave. A DC voltage of the same "level" would be flat and at the same height as the top of the AC "wave".
It turns out that an AC voltage with a *peak* the same as a DC one doesn't supply as much power, since the AC voltage is only at its peak. But, an AC voltage with an RMS voltage that equals a DC voltage will supply the same amount of power. So, the RMS value is kind of like a fancy average, that lets you think about AC power in a similar way to DC. | [
"The term \"RMS power\" is sometimes erroneously used in the audio industry as a synonym for \"mean power\" or \"average power\" (it is proportional to the square of the RMS voltage or RMS current in a resistive load). For a discussion of audio power measurements and their shortcomings, see Audio power.\n",
"Inve... |
This may be a dumb question, but if losing weight requires simply eating less calories than your body burns, what are the biggest differences from eating healthy or poorly? | This is complicated because your question isn't entirely clear. If by "health", you mean weight gain/loss, it is very hard to overeat truly healthy food. have you ever tried eating 3000 calories of meat and vegetation? your stomach and satiety hormones simply won't let you. healthier food also tends to impact insulin levels and sensitivity, controlling blood sugar and thus, hunger.
If "health" for you goes beyond just weight control, there are many vitamins and minerals that we must eat to maintain proper health, and junk food tends to be extremely low in these, as well as plant-based compounds that are very good for you (think fruit phytochemicals and leafy greens).
while it is true that the sheer number of calories matters for weight loss, it is clearly easier and healthier to eat higher-quality foods for these calories than lower-quality ones. | [
"A commonly asserted \"rule\" for weight gain or loss is based on the assumption that one pound of human fat tissue contains about 3,500 kilocalories (often simply called \"calories\" in the field of nutrition). Thus, eating 500 fewer calories than one needs per day should result in a loss of about a pound per week... |
why does the us federal reserve want to raise intrest rates if unemployment falls below 4%? | The Fed has a dual-mandate: keep unemployment low and keep inflation low. Generally economists think that the US is at full employment if the unemployment rate is around 4%. This is because you figure that at any point in time you have about that many people "frictionally" unemployed. Meaning they are moving from one part of the country to another, want to change careers, just caught a bad break, etc. They are no unemployed because of it being systematically hard to find a job.
Once the economy hits full-employment, the Fed gets very worried about inflation taking hold in wages. If the economy continues to grow, employers will start bidding up wages even though there are no more people to hire. In essence, wages would increase without an increase in productivity, and thus inflation would be transmitted through out the rest of the economy. (This is essentially what happened in the 1970's and was a huge problem.) So they start raising rates to slow growth and prevent wage inflation. | [
"The U.S. Federal Reserve (the Fed) has a dual mandate to achieve full employment while maintaining a low rate of inflation. U.S. Federal Reserve interest rate adjustments (monetary policy) are important tools for managing the unemployment rate. There may be an economic trade-off between unemployment and inflation,... |
how are not-for-profits/nonprofits allowed to pay their workers? isn't salary profit? | No, profit is everything after expenses that normally goes into the pockets of the people who own the corporation and makes them wealthier. Non-profits are allowed to turn a profit, but they have to take that profit and re-invest it into the corporation to further its goals instead of handing that money out to the shareholders. | [
"Workers who are not paid wages, such as volunteers who perform tasks for charities, hospitals or not-for-profit organizations, are generally not considered employed. One exception to this is an internship, an employment situation in which the worker receives training or experience (and possibly college credit) as ... |
why do american's take halloween and costumes so serious? why is it such an important event in the year? | The simple answer is that it's fun. A lot of people like to get artistic with their costumes and have fun dressing up with family and friends. | [
"Halloween is a work day in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and not celebrated until recently. For the past few years, it has been popular among younger generations. Since wearing masks has become highly popular among children and teenagers, e.g. in many Bosnian schools, both elementary as well as high schools (secondary s... |
what is happening when i can tell someone is looking at me from across a busy room? | You have this feeling, of not knowing what is behind you, many times. Most of the time, you take a quick glance, see nothing, forget all about it, and go on. Sometimes you see something, like someone looking at you, and you remember. As all you remember is the few times you glanced and saw something, then you think that you 'know when someone is looking at you'.
There is another thing that is going on - and it is related to the 'stopped clock illusion'. You can't see anything when your eyes are moving from one place to another, so your brain replaces that with what it sees when your eyes stop moving. So you look around, your brain drops the useless, motion blurred imagery, and you see what was there when your eyes stop moving. Someone else sees you turning around or looking up, and looks at you. Bingo - you see someone who appears to have been 'looking at you' - but in fact, was only reacting to what you just did. | [
"BULLET::::1. \"When presenting information or asking questions of a group, make eye contact with each person at the table or as many people as possible in the room. This gesture gives a message of interest and connectedness.\n",
"Information separate to what is presented in a scene also has an effect on the area... |
Given that uranium 235 has a half life of 703.8 million years, now long would all nuclear weapons have to be left alone before they would be considered inert? | The circuitry, chemical explosives, and probably even the structural integrity of the weapons would likely fail before the U-235 decayed to the point where it was no longer a viable weapon. It should be noted there are other long-term effects, esp. with plutonium, which "self-irradiates" and can affect its own composition over long periods of time. (Also, it should be noted that U-235 is not the only material used in weapons.)
But roughly. The uranium in a weapon is enriched to over 90% U-235. If that number falls below a certain threshhold, the weapon won't work as designed, and might not work at all. Let's say, somewhat arbitrarily, that if it became 75% U-235 it wouldn't likely work (it depends on the design; the Hiroshima bomb used 80% enriched material, and dropping that to 75% probably would result in a lower yield but still something since it was designed to create a situation with several effective critical masses in it; an implosion bomb that was basically creating one critical mass would probably not work at that low a value if it was made to work with +90% enriched material). That's 22% of the U-235 decaying, so 700 million years * 22% = ~150 million years. But this is a silly way to think about it in practical terms. | [
"Uranium-238 is the most stable isotope of uranium, with a half-life of about 4.468 years, roughly the age of the Earth. Uranium-235 has a half-life of about 7.13 years, and uranium-234 has a half-life of about 2.48 years.\n",
"The half-life of U-238 is about 190 times as long as that of U-236; therefore, U-236 s... |
why do gas stoves start at the highest heat setting instead of the lowest? | For lighting. The gas comes out at maximum so it will reach the pilot flame and ignite right away.
| [
"An alternative stove based on the down-draft principle and typically built with nested cylinders also provides high efficiency. Combustion from the top creates a gasification zone, with the gas escaping downwards through ports located at the base of the burner chamber. The gas mixes with additional incoming air to... |
how does land/property pass from public too private ownership? | Unless the public body is prohibited from selling its land, it can sell it whenever it wants to. Generally governments try to stick to the market rate, unless there's an ulterior motive (like land redistribution in Africa, in which case it might be sold below market value). Government doesn't sell more because it generally tries not to hold too much excess land, because it generates costs without income or usage.
When no-one owns the land, usage is possession, at least in 18th and 19th century political philosophy. In almost every modern state however, 100% of land is owned, and anything that is registered to a private entity is automatically the government's. | [
"The constitution guarantees the right to private property. The Transfer of Property Act, 1882 is the basic property law. However, some government agencies like RAJUK restrict property transfers in urban areas through foreign direct investment. The Vested Property Act allows the government to confiscate property fr... |
if we can do our own taxes online, why can't we register a new car, transfer a tag to a new vehicle online? or any other dmv task for that matter?? (besides issuing licenses...) | Because the DMV didn't build a web portal and the IRS did. If you want to know WHY the DMV didn't build one....well that's a different question altogether. | [
"If ownership of a vehicle is permanently transferred to a new owner who lives in the same city/region then the registration number may remain unchanged. Administration fees are, however, still payable in respect of the necessary changes to the vehicle's official documentation. Many people however will change the l... |
why it's legal for fox news to make stuff up and sell it as news? | CBS took action against Dan Rather, not the government (now, George Bush could have taken action against CBS as a citizen for slander, but that's different from how I'm understanding your context of 'legality'). Fox News can call itself news and say what it wants as long as it's not infringing on others' rights or endangering the public safety.
What I think you're talking about is intellectual honesty. CBS sided on the side of intellectual honesty (but firing Dan was more of a PR move). | [
"Fox News has been alleged by academics, media figures, political figures, and watchdog groups of having Republican Party bias in their news coverage as well as perpetuating more general views of a conservative bias. Fox News has publicly denied such charges, stating that the reporters in the newsroom provide separ... |
what is the sun's spectrum and how does it work? | Heated matter emits radiation. Most commonly as infrared radiation which we can't see but can feel on our skin. When the heat exceeds a certain value, it starts glowing red. Keep heating up and it becomes yellow, then white, which means that all visible wavelengths are emitted - like a very hot piece of iron. Knowing this, we can attribute the heat to the colour of the light: 5500 degrees Kelvin is daylight "colored" (this light colour temperature is printed on light bulb boxes).
A perfectly black body would emit all wavelengths that come from this temperature. But atoms and molecules absorb very specific wavelengths. So while we know that a star of a certain temperature would emit a certain spectrum of so called blackbody radiation (which wouldn't absorb any specific wavelength), we can observe that certain wavelengths are missing from the expected spectrum.
From the missing lines in the observed spectrum, we can deduce the presence of certain elements in a stars surface, which tells us a lot about that star. | [
"The visible surface of the Sun, the photosphere, is the layer below which the Sun becomes opaque to visible light. Photons produced in this layer escape the sun through the transparent solar atmosphere above it and become solar radiation, sunlight. The change in opacity is due to the decreasing amount of H ions, w... |
Anthem Protests and Francis Scott Key's Third Verse. Is it actually racist? | > Slave almost certainly refers to conscripts, as the British Army fielded thousands of them in America during the War of 1812.
They also fielded thousands of freed slaves, who the Americans demanded be returned to their "owners" after the war. So it doesn't "almost certainly" refer to conscripts. It possibly refers to conscripts. Or can be read literally as being slaves, as freed slaves fought for the British. | [
"The song took on a different meaning when riots in inner-city America led to many young black demonstrators citing the song as a civil rights anthem to social change which also led to some radio stations taking the song off its play list because certain black advocates such as H. Rap Brown began playing the song w... |
why is katsaridaphobia (fear of cockroaches) so common? | Because they are miniature lovecraftian hellbeasts! I almost broke my ankle "teleporting" over the couch to get away from a palmetto bug (cockroaches bigger, uglier, even harder to kill cousin in the south) once. They are made of malice and hatred of people and will fly in your face for no damn reason. I tried to kill one once, "kill it with Raid" my husband said, "It will die instantly" he said reassuringly (from a safe distance over the phone)...it flew into my EYE covered in raid and then escaped. I was blind for like and hour and it got away scott free. Why are we afraid of roaches...because they are scary and have evil murderous hearts that won't quit beating until they have filled you with the maximum amount of rage-panic!! Ok, rant over. | [
"Because of their long, persistent association with humans, cockroaches are frequently referred to in art, literature, folk tales and theater and film. In Western culture, cockroaches are often depicted as vile and dirty pests. Their size, long antennae, shiny appearance and spiny legs make them disgusting to many ... |
what's preventing me from randomly guessing someone else's software product key, especially for physical copies of stuff? | You're grossly underestimating the difficulty of guessing a key. Let's go with your 37^15 probably, since that's a fair approximation. Now let's assume that we can knock out all the "most common" keys that are "too easy". That gets rid of 10,000 or so possibilities. Yay. But that still leaves HUNDREDS of TRILLIONS of possible keys. Assuming you can make 10,000 guesses per SECOND, on average it will take you approximately 10,000 YEARS to get a single hit.
That's what keeps you from randomly guessing a key, it's why Bitcoin wallets (and other forms of encryption for that matter) are so secure, etc. Statistically you have a significantly larger chance of guessing every number in the Powerball drawing ONE time over the course of your ENTIRE LIFE than you do of randomly guessing one out of 100,000 15-digit product keys. | [
"Because of this, software publishers are increasingly turning to alternative methods of verifying that keys are both valid and uncompromised. One method, product validation, assigns a product key based on a unique feature of the purchaser's computer hardware (such as its MAC address), which cannot be as easily dup... |
Is it in the nature of gravity to cluster things even in the largest scale? | > Is it in the nature of gravity to cluster things even in the largest scale?
The word *even* is inappropriate here, because the force of gravity almost only shapes the universe on large scales. It is to weak to have an relevant effect on small scales, like the nuclear forces have. So yeah, the gravity is responsible for things to clump together, because it's always attractive. Nuclear forces don't have the required range to do that.
Together with the electromagnetic force, which is responsible for things to shine and dark energy, something we have yet to reveal what exactly it is, gravity is responsible for the appearance of the mid-ranged and large scales of the universe. The gravity acts as an attracting force, the dark energy as receding force and the electromagnetic makes it al visible for us. | [
"Galaxy groups and clusters are the largest known gravitationally bound objects to have arisen thus far in the process of cosmic structure formation. They form the densest part of the large-scale structure of the Universe. In models for the gravitational formation of structure with cold dark matter, the smallest st... |
how did someone as insane as nero become emperor? | Nero was raised in a Roman imperial governance tutoring system after being adopted by Claudius.
Keep in mind that when looking at the historic past, behaviour considered loathsome now was more common place then. Additionally, the tenets of human emancipation weren’t yet a thing so life was cheap and crimes were rarely held to account. | [
"Nero was proclaimed emperor in 54 AD at the age of 16. His rule has commonly been associated with impulsiveness and tyranny. Early in his rule, he was heavily advised, but he slowly became more independent. In 59 AD, encouraged by his mistress Poppaea, Nero murdered his mother. His leading adviser, Seneca, was dis... |
Why Were Chess Players in the 60s-70s Treated like Celebrities and Not in Todays Society? | Magnus Carlson is treated like a celebrity, even in the United States he make appearances on talk shows and news programs. In other countries he is even more well known. He makes well over a million dollars a year and has sponsors.
But the reason Bobby Fischer was so much more popular than Chess players in the United States today has to do with the cold war. Americans at that time did not beat the Soviets often in Chess. Bobby Fischer was the first naturalized citizen of the United States to be world champion. His world Championship matches were against the #1 ranked chess player at the time who happened to be a Soviet.
The fame of Bobby Fischer is the same reason many people know the name Mike Eruzione. For those who don't know him he was the captain of USA ice hockey team from the 1980 olympic games that beat the Soviets.
My source is a book titled "Bobby Fischer: The Wandering King". It investigates Fischer's FBI files and talks in depth about the importance of Fischer beating the Soviets to the USA.
I also recommend the movie "Pawn Sacrifice" | [
"Chess remains a highly popular pastime to this day. A 2012 survey found that \"chess players now make up one of the largest communities in the world: 605 million adults play chess regularly\". Chess is played at least once a year by 12% of British people, 15% of Americans, 23% of Germans, 43% of Russians, and 70% ... |
if scientists can tell that their best atomic clock loses 1s every 16 million year, why not use what ever they're using to measure the clock's accuracy as a clock itself? | They're not measuring the atomic clock, they're using the science behind it to judge it's statistical likelihood of accuracy. They're measuring it's "margin or error." | [
"A pair of experimental atomic clocks based on ytterbium atoms at the National Institute of Standards and Technology has set a record for stability. NIST physicists reported in the August 22, 2013 issue of Science Express that the ytterbium clocks' ticks are stable to within less than two parts in 1 quintillion (1 ... |
Why does pressure relax tensed muscle? | Hello! I just wanted to let you know that I don’t have an answer, but that I did just read several reviews to see if there was an answer, and that surprisingly it’s still unknown how (and if) massages work on tensed muscles. This British Medical Journal review (_URL_0_) summarizes several studies on the matter, showing that there is a psychological benefit to massages but not really a physiological benefit - massages do make you feel better and less anxious, but don’t necessarily actually improve your health. Anyway, good question, and I’m surprised that I couldn’t find an answer for it! | [
"Progressive muscle relaxation helps relax your muscles by tensing certain parts of the body (such as the neck), and then releasing the tension in order to feel the muscles relaxing. This technique helps for people with anxiety because they are always tense throughout the day.\n",
"Normally, people are unaware of... |
What primary sources do we have for the history of England prior to the Norman invasion? | You'd probably like the [Anglo-Saxon chronicle](_URL_1_), which contains entries from the 9th-11th Century.
There's some other British annals as well - there's a [short list](_URL_0_) on Wikipedia (mods, I hope this is okay as a source?). | [
"The Peterborough Chronicle (also called the Laud manuscript and the E manuscript), one of the \"Anglo-Saxon Chronicles\", contains unique information about the history of England after the Norman Conquest. According to philologist J.A.W. Bennett, it is the only prose history in English between the Conquest and the... |
Is oxygen distributed uniformly in a closed system? | It would ultimately diffuse uniformly, but if you have people respirating the whole time, then it would depend on the volume of air, the total rate of oxygen consumption, how the people are distributed, and whether diffusion is being aided by things like fans and people moving around.
This is actually a problem in human spacecraft - active circulation is needed to avoid CO2 bubbles accumulating around people's heads when they're not moving around. | [
"In thermodynamics, a closed system is important for solving complicated thermodynamic problems. It allows the elimination of some external factors that could alter the results of the experiment or problem thus simplifying it. A closed system can also be used in situations where thermodynamic equilibrium is require... |
The usual test for a witch was to drown them, if they floated they were a witch if not they were dead. What was the origin of this test and were there ever any cases in which the “witch” actually floated? | There is always more to write, but in the meantime you might want to check out this answer I wrote about Trials By Ordeal that discusses the "trial by water".
_URL_0_ | [
"Ordeal by water was later associated with the witch-hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries, although in this scenario the outcome was an accused who sank was considered innocent, while floating indicated witchcraft. Demonologists developed inventive new theories about how it worked. The ordeal would normally be cond... |
What was life like for a university student in the 1650s? | I don't have an answer but a clarifying question... What country or region are you asking about? | [
"The 17th and 18th centuries saw a decline in the University, marked mainly by external factors (e.g., the 1655-1660 Swedish invasions), which led to a decrease in the number of students. Those students who decided to stay in Kraków, especially medical students, oftentimes received an incomplete education and had t... |
why food cools off faster in my 98.6 degree mouth than at room temperature. | because air does not conduct heat as fast as water (or your saliva) does. | [
"Oral temperatures are influenced by drinking, chewing, smoking, and breathing with the mouth open. Mouth breathing, cold drinks or food reduce oral temperatures; hot drinks, hot food, chewing, and smoking raise oral temperatures.\n",
"As Newton's law of cooling states, the rate of cooling of an object - whether ... |
what digital technology is and how it differs from whatever we used (analog?) before it | Both technologies use electronic circuits, but digital ones have 'digital' data running through it.
A signal running through a wire can be high or low. When it's high, we say that it represents the number 1 and when it is low we say that it represents the number 0. This is digital (digit-al) data since a combination of these values can represent whatever we want, eg time, symbols, letters. Say for example, we decide that 3 high signals represent the letter 'A', or when all signals are low then it represents midnight.
We then use these little components called Transistors. These are good at manipulating digital signals. Using these, we could make a component that takes incoming signals and adds them together to make a simple calculator. And then by making more elaborate components and circuits, we develop computers which can manipulate digital signals in all sorts of ways like calculate the motion of a bullet in a video game.
Prior to this, electronic technology had no real concept of digital data. You would have electrical signals running through them, but they would function on the basis of more rudimentary processes.
| [
"Digital audio uses pulse-code modulation and digital signals for sound reproduction. This includes analog-to-digital conversion (ADC), digital-to-analog conversion (DAC), storage, and transmission. In effect, the system commonly referred to as digital is in fact a discrete-time, discrete-level analog of a previous... |
Why do some vaccines use live viruses over dead (inactive) ones? | Live vaccines generally create a stronger and longer lasting immunity. Because they contain a living but weakened form of the pathogen, they need to be refrigerated and handled with great care. Because a live pathogen is present in the vaccine, there is a greater risk of adverse reactions in some individuals compared to inactive vaccines.
Inactive vaccines generally, but not always, provide less immunity and can also require several booster shots over the course of a lifetime. The advantage of inactive vaccines is they're generally much easier to store/transport and can have less side effects for some individuals compared to live vaccines. | [
"Vaccines are another method of virotherapy that use attenuated or inactivated viruses to develop immunity to disease. An attenuated virus is a weakened virus that incites a natural immune response in the host that is often undetectable. The host also develops potentially life-long immunity due to the attenuated vi... |
why doesn't society like loners? | Why don't loners like society? | [
"A loner is a person who avoids or does not actively seek human interaction, also known as a quiet person who has no to very few friends. Some loners are people who appear or behave oddly to others. There are many reasons for their solitude, intentional or otherwise. Intentional reasons include being introverted, s... |
why can’t people sue internet and financial companies for data breaches and why aren’t people behind bars? | Your premise is false. People can, and do, sue companies for data breaches. In fact many companies buy special insurance just for this issue. | [
"Internet fraud may be by claiming a chargeback which is not justified (\"friendly fraud\"), or carried out by the use of credit card information which can be stolen in many ways, the simplest being copying information from retailers, either online or offline. Despite efforts to improve security for remote purchase... |
How did the Holocaust affect the field of psychology and philosophy? | The persecution of Jews in Germany and the Holocaust had several distinct effects upon psychology: a major geographical shift in the epicenter of the scientific psychology world, an influx of Jewish psychologists into American universities, and a major change in focus from behavior to social issues. Prior to that time, behaviorism dominated American psychology in both clinical and experimental subfields, and the influx of Jewish refugees into America had a pronounced effect upon research and practice.
Prior to 1933, Germany was arguably the center of the psychological world. The first scientific laboratory and academic department of psychology was founded in 1879 by Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig, and knowledge of German was considered essential for scientific literacy in the field, even in America. In advance of WWII, numerous psychologists fled Nazi Germany, with most settling in America. When Hitler rose to power in 1933, Jewish scientists were removed from academic posts. The most prestigious psychology post in Germany was held by Wolfgang Köhler, who was associated with the Gestalt school. Although not Jewish, he was a vocal opponent of Nazi ideology and wrote an article in 1933 that is considered to be the last published criticism allowed by the Nazi regime in Germany. After refusing to begin lectures with the Nazi salute, Nazi officials began harassing his students, leading him to resign. Köhler was also editor of the influential journal Psychologische Forschung (Psychological Research), which Hitler suspended. Köhler resumed editing it from Swarthmore College after emigrating to the U.S. in 1935.
Kurt Lewin was a Jewish psychologist associated with the Gestalt school in Germany. He was forced to leave the country in 1933 and turned his attention from perceptual phenomenon to studying the behavior of individuals in groups. He is widely considered to be the founder of the modern subfield of social psychology. According to Elliot Aronson, one of the main themes in post-war social psychology was to combat the idea that “crazy things are caused by crazy people.” The public largely believed that a flaw in the German character was responsible for the Holocaust, and it could not occur anywhere else. The 1950s and 1960s became one of the most productive periods in experimental psychology, as numerous researchers published studies that cast doubt upon the theory of the “Nazi mind.”
* Muzafer Sherif was a Turkish psychologist who was jailed for speaking out against the Nazi regime. The U.S. state department arranged for his release to America in 1944, where he conducted a series of experiments known as the Robber’s Cave studies that demonstrated that arbitrarily dividing people (in this case, children at a boy’s camp) into groups creates ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation sufficient to lead to aggression.
* Soloman Asch was a Polish psychologist of Jewish descent who had immigrated to the U.S. in 1920. In the 1950s he published numerous influential studies of group conformity and propaganda.
* Stanley Milgram, a student of Asch, was an American born Jewish psychologist who was inspired by the trial of Adolf Eichmann to conduct a series of experiments on obedience to authority in the 1960s. His first published study demonstrated that the majority of people can be induced to administer lethal shocks to a complete stranger. This publication came out right as the war crimes trials shifted from the leaders to the low ranking individuals who carried out the actual killings, and had a significant impact upon the public interpretation of what had occurred.
* Leon Festinger, a student of Lewin, was an American born Jewish psychologist developed one of the most important theories of psychology, cognitive dissonance theory. The theory proposed that people experience physiological discomfort when they behave in ways that are inconsistent with their attitudes. In situations where they do not have complete control over their own behavior, they will avoid information that calls attention to this conflict and in some circumstances will revise their attitudes so that they are consistent with behavior.
* Stanley Schachter was an American born Jewish psychologist who developed a theory that emotions are comprised of two factors: nonspecific physiological arousal and a cognitive interpretation derived from environmental cues. Because the cognitive explanation for arousal is malleable, strong emotions can spill over very easily to each other: an experience of terror can directly lead to fanatical devotion, the exuberance of a rally can lead to aggressive hatred, etc.
The field of clinical psychology was also strongly shaped by refugees and Holocaust experiences. Psychoanalysis was almost entirely in the domain of Jewish central European psychiatrists (Carl Jung, a non-Jew, was the only notable exception). Refugees fleeing Germany gave psychoanalysis a much wider audience than it had received up until that point. Simultaneously, the U.S. military and Veterans’ Administration began to initiate psychologists in the practice of psychotherapy due to a shortage of psychiatrists, and many of these new entrants choose to practice using a psychoanalytic approach. Several new therapy approaches were also directly informed by Holocaust experiences. Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist who survived imprisonment at Auschwitz and Dachau, noticed that a prime determinant of who survived and who died was the person’s sense of their life having meaning. He developed a new therapy approach, logotherapy, from these experiences.
I would highly recommend Richard Overy’s (2014) “Ordinary Men, Extraordinary Circumstances: Historians, Social Psychology, and the Holocaust” (Journal of Social Issues, 70, 515-530) and Robert Prince’s (2009) “Psychoanalysis Traumatized: The Legacy of the Holocaust” (The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 69, 179-194) for further reading.
| [
"A major issue in contemporary Holocaust studies is the question of \"functionalism\" versus \"intentionalism\". The terms were coined during the Cumberland Lodge Conference of May 1979 entitled, \"The National Socialist Regime and German Society\" by British Marxist historian Timothy Mason to describe two schools ... |
Did the British really pretend that carrots derived night vision were the source of their radar-derived intelligence? | Yes and no; it wasn't exactly a planned deception, but carrots were mentioned in publicity around John "Cat's Eyes" Cunningham, a night fighter pilot, in early 1941.
The Luftwaffe's switch to night bombing in September 1940 had caused serious problems for the RAF, night defence having a low priority during the prior daylight campaign, negligible successes against night raids precipitated the replacement of Air Chief Marshal Dowding (who had been responsible for much of Fighter Command's success in the Battle of Britain), and fed public perception that German bombers could fly with impunity at night. The ground-based Chain Home radar system faced out from the coast so was unable to track aircraft over land, this being done by the Observer Corps in daylight; Ground Controlled Intercept (GCI) radar capable of operating over land was still in development, a limited number of sets coming into operation in early 1941. Early Airborne Interception (AI) radar was in active service (see e.g. [this photo] (_URL_0_) from the Imperial War Museum of radar equipped Blenheim night fighters from July 1940), but limitations of early sets and the poor performance of the Blenheim (a converted bomber) resulted in few successes.
The introduction of the Bristol Beaufighter, faster and more heavily armed than the Blenheim, equipped with improved Mk IV AI radar was a significant boost to the RAF's night fighting capability, and Flight Lieutenant John Cunningham of 604 Squadron scored the first kill with one in November 1940. Coupled with the introduction of GCI radar, RAF fighters finally started to become a serious threat to Luftwaffe bombers at night, though gradually; Cunningham received a DFC in January 1941 for destroying two enemy bombers in the course of 25 sorties. To reassure the public, newspapers were allowed to write about Cunningham, and rather than mentioning AI radar he was granted uncanny night vision, hence the "Cat's Eyes" nickname that he really didn't like, boosted by eating plenty of carrots.
The World Carrot Museum (no, [really] (_URL_1_)) has a page on [Carrots in World War Two] (_URL_1_history4.html), including the night vision story (and a recipe for carrot fudge); correspondence from the RAF Museum suggests there was no official attempt by the Air Ministry or RAF to use carrots as a cover for AI radar, but they were happy to play along with the Ministries of Information and Food who built on the Cunningham story to promote the consumption of healthy, unrationed vegetables such as carrots. | [
"To keep their new Airborne Interception radar technology secret, the British Ministry launched a propaganda campaign to attribute the new successes of their now AI-equipped night fighter aces not to technology, but instead to an excessive diet of carrots. The misinformation pointed to the Vitamin A in carrots, whi... |
why does boiling point of noble gases change as you go down the group? | All atoms, even noble gases like Neon, Argon, etc., experience a type of attractive interaction amongst themselves called "dispersion forces." As a useful oversimplification, the magnitude of this attractive force depends on the number of electrons that the atoms have. Going down a group in the periodic table, you find atoms that have bigger atomic numbers, and therefore more electrons. Hence, larger dispersion forces.
Interatomic forces are the primary determining factor of boiling point, since in order to move an atom from a liquid of itself to a gaseous state, you have to separate it from it's neighbors. In noble gases, dispersion forces are the only real interatomic forces of note. So, the further down the group of noble gases you go, the higher the interatomic attraction due to dispersion forces, and the more energy (i.e. temperature) you need to boil the substance. | [
"The properties of the noble gases can be well explained by modern theories of atomic structure: their outer shell of valence electrons is considered to be \"full\", giving them little tendency to participate in chemical reactions, and it has been possible to prepare only a few hundred noble gas compounds. The melt... |
why is calling obama a socialist considered an insult? what's so wrong about that type of government anyways? | During the Cold War, the "enemy" of the United States (as well as most of the wealthy world) were all self-proclaimed socialist nations (The USSR and China being the largest). The word "socialism" has come to represent all the things US Americans prefer about their way of life to that of those countries: freedom, democracy and capitalism. So to call someone a socialist is often to associate them with the brutish Communist societies of the Cold War.
Objectively, Obama is not a socialist. Socialism is any social system where the means of production (ie, all the things presently owned by employers like machines and tools as well as land) are "socially" rather than privately owned and controlled. Obama is more accurately described as a Social Democrat, someone whose ideal society is quite capitalist but with a government who often intervenes to improve efficiency and fairness. | [
"Following Obama's election, many on the political right began to allege that his administration's policies were \"socialistic\", a claim rejected by the DSA and the Obama administration alike. The widespread use of the word \"socialism\" as a political epithet against the Obama administration by its opponents caus... |
How did stories of elves, mates, dwarves, etc. come about throughout the world? Is there any proof that they may have existed at one time? | Belief in the supernatural is international. Your question touches on several topics, each of which have generated many books, but it is possible to take this apart carefully and attempt to present a few concise answers.
Although many folk stories were/are told to children, and many more were told as fiction (usually called folktales by folklorists) for adults, this doesn't preclude many of the topics of these stories from also being matters of belief and the focus of stories usually told to be believed (typically referred to as legends). Again, internationally, stories told as fiction and those told to be believed both include supernatural entities - as well as normal men, women, and children.
There is no reason to assume that any supernatural entity - whether humanoid or animal in form - is based on anything that existed in the past. Many have constructed theories along these lines, and while they are often seductive, these scenarios cannot be proven, are often easy to demonstrate as false, and/or are simply not needed to understand folk belief. For example, one often sees the idea put forward that dinosaur skeletons are the basis of beliefs in dragons: while fossils may have helped put wind in the sail of belief, there is no reason to conclude that this was the origin of the tradition. The result is a rather unsatisfying answer to your question about the origin of belief in the supernatural: it is something we simply cannot really know. Again, beliefs are international and historical cultures burst onto the scene with written records exhibiting beliefs and tradition in full blossom, so it is clear that these sorts of beliefs - and related stories - are part of a prehistoric legacy that may go back tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years to a time we can only dimly imagine.
Given that last point, it would be easy to imagine that many supernatural beings are linked by some common, ancestral belief system. It may be possible that this might be the case, but again it would be difficult to prove, and more often it seems less likely to be the case. Supernatural beings that seem similar - ghosts, dragons, elves - seem as though they have international counterparts, but upon closer inspections, dramatic differences suggest that a common ancestor is less likely. The ground-crawling, Northern European worm/dragon (which later took to the sky with wings) was a nemesis that is very different from the often beneficial Asian supernatural entity, which only as a matter of linguistic limits is described with the same English term. Belief in people surviving death are international, but a walking corpse is different from an ethereal spiritual manifestation. And while European elves steal babies and replace them with changelings and the Northern Paiute paúngaa’a does much of the same, the European stories tell of the return of the baby by a community of elves that merely wanted the human as an addition to their society, while the paúngaa’a has eaten the baby and seeks the opportunity to chew into the mother's breast, only to slither back into the water from which it came. These are all so different, it is less likely that they descend from a common ancestor. | [
"In Tolkien's works, the Dwarves (in the form of seven patriarchs) were created during the Years of the Trees (also known as the Ages of Darkness), when all of Middle-earth was controlled by the forces of Melkor. They were created by the Vala Aulë, in secret from the other Valar, intended to be his children to whom... |
what is the onion magazine? | The Onion is a humor and parody newspaper that makes fun of political, social and economic events in the world through parody and exaggeration. | [
"The Onion is an American satirical digital media company and newspaper organization that publishes articles on international, national, and local news. Based in Chicago, the company originated as a weekly print publication on August 29, 1988 in Madison, Wisconsin. In the spring of 1996, \"The Onion\" began publish... |
so i bought 'new' listerine with no alcohol. what's left in it that kills germs? do i need the alcohol? | Alcohol isn't actually the ingredient used to kill mouth germs, its primary purpose is to keep the actual active ingredients in solution. Alcohol free Listerine, according to their site, uses essential oils with antibacterial and anti-fungal properties. I'm unsure what ingredient in the Zero Alcohol formula keeps the oils in solution | [
"The active ingredients listed on Listerine packaging are essential oils which are menthol (mint) 0.042%, thymol (thyme) 0.064%, methyl salicylate (wintergreen) 0.06%, and eucalyptol (eucalyptus) 0.092%. In combination all have an antiseptic effect and there is some thought that methyl salicylate may have an anti i... |
How good is the sense of smell in insects such as flies? | Well, they don't have noses or olfactory organs, just chemoreceptors on their antennae. How well they detect airborn compounds depends on the type of insect, and the specificity with which they detect certain molecules but potentially not others. Certain insects will be very good at detecting organic compounds released from the specific food source they typically seek, but may not be able to 'smell' other things at all. | [
"Like other insects, flies have chemoreceptors that detect smell and taste, and mechanoreceptors that respond to touch. The third segments of the antennae and the maxillary palps bear the main olfactory receptors, while the gustatory receptors are in the labium, pharynx, feet, wing margins and female genitalia, ena... |
grover norquist is just some guy. why do politicians behave as if a pledge to him is sacred? | Norquist is an incredibly influential "just some guy," and his tax pledge is technically a pledge to the *voters* not to raise total taxes, not to Grover. | [
"Dewey did receive positive publicity for his reputation for honesty and integrity, as he \"insisted on having every prospective holder of a job paying $2,500 or more rigorously probed by state police. He was so concerned about the elected public official being motivated by the wealth his position could produce tha... |
why was cavalry so effective against infantry without spears? | I think this is pretty self a explanatory, but I'll do my best. As far as I know, earlier armies were focused around phalanxes or turtle formations, think Greeks or romans, pretty much meaning they'd make walls out of living bodies and see which side broke first. Early cavalry was more mobile, but didn't have stirrups, which didn't allow them the advantages of heavy cavalry in the middle ages. Now imagine mobility with a more powerful punch. Your army can out-maneuver your enemy, and when you meet on the field of battle, you have more control of location, which is a serious tactical advantage. I'm sure seeing a herd of horses with bad guys on top of them charging down at you didn't help with morale, either. | [
"While soldiers armed with firearms could inflict great damage on cavalry at a moderate distance, at close quarters the cavalry could slaughter the musket-armed infantry if they could break their formation and close to engage in melee combat. For many years infantry formations included a mix of troops armed with bo... |
what does it mean for an actor to be executive producer on a tv show? | Sometimes nothing. For a popular show, when the lead actor(s) renegotiate their contracts, they may ask for an Executive Producer credit as a sign of their status, or because it gives them a small portion of the profits.
Sometimes they may actually have a larger role in determining the direction of the show and the writing, or may even choose to direct an episode - see Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad.
Sometimes they may have lent their name and status to helping a show get made, but have little to do with it afterwards. See Martin Scorsese and Boardwalk Empire - he directed the pilot and was involved in developing the show, but didn't have much of a hands on role after that. | [
"In live television or \"as-live\", an executive producer seldom has any operational control of the show. His/her job is to stand back from the operational aspects and judge the show as an ordinary viewer might.\n",
"In television, an executive producer usually supervises the creative content and the financial as... |
In feudal times did the nobility of europe have a distinct ethnicity that seperated them from the rest of the population? | In some instances there could be. For instance; after the Normans invaded England, the nobility was Nordic (Norman) whereas most of the rest of the population was not. | [
"European nobility originated in the feudal/seignorial system that arose in Europe during the Middle Ages. Originally, knights or nobles were mounted warriors who swore allegiance to their sovereign and promised to fight for him in exchange for an allocation of land (usually together with serfs living thereon). Dur... |
Is there a "genetic peak"of attractiveness in humans? | There is no molecular definition of attractiveness, so I'm not sure what kind of answer you're looking for here. | [
"Research by Paul Eastwick and Eli Finkel (relationship psychologist) at Northwestern University also undermined the idea that subjects have direct introspective awareness of what attracts them to other people. These researchers examined male and female subjects' reports of what they found attractive. Men typically... |
why are we certain there wasn't a technological civilization before humans here on earth? | We can't. Just like we can't be certain the universe wasn't created by an invisible purple teapot orbiting Jupiter.
We *can* be certain they didn't use large amounts of plastics, as those show up clearly in fossil records. They also didn't use any carbon or soot producing technology on an industrial scale, didn't launch any geostationary satellites, leaded gasoline, rare earth metals, gold, lithium, or any of the elements we use for advanced technology.
At that point, the question is how you define technological civilizations. Personally I tend to think *widespread technology* is a requirement and we know no one had that before us. | [
"To skeptics, the fact that in the history of life on the Earth only one species has developed a civilization to the point of being capable of spaceflight and radio technology lends more credence to the idea that technologically advanced civilizations are rare in the universe.\n",
"The current scientific consensu... |
What do historians think of Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities? | Hi there -- this is a question that's come up here a few times before. Not discouraging any further discussion on it, but these older threads may be of interest to you:
_URL_0_
_URL_1_
_URL_2_
_URL_3_ | [
"Anderson is best known for his 1983 book, \"Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism\", in which he examined how nationalism led to the creation of nations, or as the title puts it, imagined communities. In this case, an \"imagined community\" does not mean that a national communit... |
gradient descent algorithm | Imagine you're stranded in a mountainous area, and you're blindfolded.
You'll be rescued if you reach the lowest point in a valley.
Your only knowledge of your immediate surroundings comes from placing your foot one step away from yourself, and estimating which direction takes you the furthest downward.
That's it basically, and it's quite accurate for a simple GD problem in 3 dimensions. It can be further complicated if there are multiple valleys, and real problems will usually have more dimensions (so just replace "checking the direction that goes downward the most" with "taking a derivative and choosing the direction that minimizes it".
I'm a bit rusty on this topic but I think that's accurate enough to get the idea. | [
"Gradient descent is a iterative optimization algorithm for finding the minimum of a function. In neural networks, it can be used to minimize the error term by changing each weight in proportion to the derivative of the error with respect to that weight, provided the non-linear activation functions are differentiab... |
Who lived in Britain before the Britons? | Well, Britain has seen activity from Palaeolithic times and you can see an example of the continuity at work here in Norman Davies' *The Isles*, which speaks of continuity in DNA from a Stone Age body to a living member of the town where the body was found.
In among this continuity however there is also considerable migration, a two-way stream. Hunter-gatherers in the Mesolithic would have come up from what was a refugia in Southwest France and Northern Iberia; farmers appear to have come from Brittany and the Low Countries via the Middle East, the Beaker people originated on the Continent and made there way here, and now DNA hints at a large-scale population replacement in the Bronze Age. Finally, Celtic expansion into the Isles from their homeland in modern Austria preceded the Romans.
So the Britons (and the Irish) are a melange of different peoples, with different origins. I'd suggest reading *The Isles* along with *Britain Begins* by Barry Cunliffe. | [
"The native inhabitants of Roman Britain were regarded as Britons (\"Britanni\"), and spoke the Common Brittonic language, one of the Insular Celtic languages which evolved into Welsh, Cornish, Cumbric and Breton. By the time the Roman legions left in the early 5th century, the Britons (Brythons) had started to com... |
If photons are massless, could an infinite amount of them fit into an infinitely small space? | To kind of correct from some of the very poor explanations below:
1) photons are massless, but this has nothing to do with how you can pack them.
2) Photons are Bosons, and hence not subject to Fermi-Dirac Statistics, and thus, not subject to the Pauli-Exclusion principle
2b) Corrollary: in fact, part of the interesting thing about Bose statistics is that bosons *prefer* to be clumped together, almost acting as "one" particle. These are called "Bose-Einstein Condensates." We made a Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) of photons in 2010, in fact.:_URL_0_ This is as close to your original question as an answer is likely to get.
3) "infinitely small space" is a problem. Due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the more tightly confined in space particles are, the less precisely known is their momentum. So if photons were in a very very small box, they'd have such a wide range in momenta that they'd never condense into a BEC. However, a BEC of photons may exist within a very small, but not infinitesimally small, space.
4) also, I feel it's worth pointing out: any system of photons in which the photons are not precisely moving in the same direction has a mass, even though all the photons are themselves massless. I actually don't know what it means for a BEC of photons, because since they're all in the same quantum state, they probably all have the same momentum vector, and thus would remain massless still, but I'm not sufficiently strong in the area to say for sure. | [
"A so-called \"massless\" particle (such as a photon, or a theoretical graviton) moves at the speed of light in every frame of reference. In this case there is no transformation that will bring the particle to rest. The total energy of such particles becomes smaller and smaller in frames which move faster and faste... |
why did the us government have no trouble prosecuting microsoft under antitrust law but doesn't consider the comcast/twc merger to be a similar antitrust violation? | Antitrust lawyer here.
For one, we're talking about different antitrust issues. Broadly speaking, the antitrust laws prohibit (1) concerted action that harms competition, like price fixing cartels; (2) unilateral action by a monopolist that harms competition; and (3) mergers and acquisitions that significantly diminish competition.
Microsoft was alleged to have used its position as a monopolist to undermine competition. That's (2) above. Typically, monopolization entails an element of foulplay. Achieving or maintaining a monopoly through normal, reasonable business practices is not illegal.
Comcast and TWC are proposing to merge. That's (3) above. When evaluating a merger, the DOJ looks at whether the companies directly compete in any markets, and whether the merger is likely to reduce competition in those markets.
Comcast and TWC claim that they do not directly compete. That's true, but there's more to the story. Comcast and TWC will point out that cable systems are "natural monopolies" -- it costs a lot to lay cable, and where one company has already laid cable in a given area, it enjoys a huge cost advantage over other would-be competitors, who would have to lay their own cable to compete.
But on the other hand, Comcast and its rivals have also done some dubious stuff in the past that has led to the current competitive landscape. For example, Comcast, TWC, and others have engaged in a number of anticompetitive deals, such as geographic market allocation and customer swapping, to create large regional monopolies. These deals themselves arguably violate the antitrust laws -- see (1) above -- and indeed are the subject of ongoing litigation. But unfortunately, the DOJ most likely would not take this background into account when evaluating the likely effect of the merger on competition.
So when Comcast and TWC say that the merger will not reduce competition because they do not currently compete, that is in part due to the fact that they have already *agreed not to compete*. It's like two members of a price fixing cartel saying that merging would not reduce competition because, hey, they aren't competing anyway.
We don't know yet whether the DOJ will challenge the merger. The Obama DOJ has been decent in this area; they challenged the AT & T/T-Mobile merger and US Air/American Airlines merger. But neither of those cases played out -- the FCC killed AT & T/T-Mobile, and the DOJ caved once politicians began pressuring the agency to let US Air/American Airlines go through.
Given that Comcast is so well connected in Washington, and in light of the potential difficulties in establishing that the merger will actually reduce competition, I expect that the DOJ will approve the Comcast/TWC merger, subject to certain concessions.
Politics is a core issue when it comes to antitrust enforcement. In fact, I don't think the Obama DOJ would sue Microsoft today. Clinton's DOJ was a bit more aggressive in this area.
Hope this helps. | [
"During the United States v. Microsoft antitrust trial, emails sent by Allchin to other Microsoft executives were considered as an evidence by the government lawyers to back up their claim that the integration of Internet Explorer and Windows had more to do with their competition with Netscape Communications Corpor... |
- recently scientists observed negative mass. what is the significance of this? is this anti-matter? | No, it's regular old matter, with regular old positive mass. What they did, was through difficult techniques, induce the bulk of the material to behave *as though it has* negative mass. It does not, however. Additionally, anti-matter has positive mass. | [
"Negative mass would possess some strange properties, such as accelerating in the direction opposite of applied force. Despite being inconsistent with the expected behavior of \"normal\" matter, negative mass is mathematically consistent and introduces no violation of conservation of momentum or energy. It is used ... |
after a snow storm, why does the sky emanate a pink/gray hue throughout the entire night? | In dry conditions, the light from sodium vapor street lamps is mostly absorbed by the dark pavement or soil/grass.
When the ground is snow-covered, much of that light is reflected upward, where it illuminates the cloud cover or even the water vapor in the atmosphere.
Edit: Made longer to satisfy the auto-moderator. | [
"The sky can turn a multitude of colors such as red, orange, pink and yellow (especially near sunset or sunrise) and black at night. Scattering effects also partially polarize light from the sky, most pronounced at an angle 90° from the sun.\n",
"A red sky – in the morning or evening, is a result of high pressure... |
What percentage, roughly, of settlers in what is now the US prior to the War of Independence were indentured servants? | Across the total area of the future United States, indentured servants probably made up roughly 40 - 45% of all European migration before independence. In the early period of colonisation, this figure would have been much higher; as many as two-thirds of all free European migrants may have been indentured servants in the early seventeenth century, but very few would have been by the time of independence.
The proportion of indentured servants in the wider population would have been much lower by the time of independence. Not only were fewer and fewer servants coming to the continent as time went on, but the nature of indenture as a temporary condition means that every servant arriving in the US eventually became a free subject (if they lived long enough).
Most of this decrease in servant numbers would have already taken place by the dawn of the eighteenth century, as the institution of slavery developed and began to assert itself. By the time of independence, indentured servants would have constituted only a very small portion of the workforce; probably less than one-twentieth in most cases. | [
"The majority of indentured servants ended up in the American South, where cash crops necessitated labour-intensive farming. As the Northern colonies moved toward industrialisation, they received far less indentured immigration. For example, 96.28% of English emigrants to Virginia and Maryland from 1773 to 1776 wer... |
what's happening when my back "pops" and is it bad? | Usually, when bones 'pop', you're basically popping very small air bubbles between your bones (or at least that's the best theory we've come up with). Your back popping is not a big deal if it happens rarely, but if it happens regularly it could be a sign of back problems, especially if it hurts.
Don't be scared about this though (ik how scary looking up health conditions on the internet can be), but if it's just the popping, it's usually nothing too bad. It's probably just a sign of straining your back a lot of maybe unhealthy sitting or sleeping positions. Try to fix these things and the popping should decrease. | [
"Snapping Scapula Syndrome, also known as scapulocostal syndrome or scapulothoracic syndrome, is described by a “grating, grinding, popping or snapping sensation of the scapula onto the back side of the ribs or thoracic area of the spine” (Hauser). Disruption of the normal scapulothoracic mechanics causes this prob... |
why can my laptop pick up my wifi very well, but my phone, on the same desk, hardly connect at all? | I would only assume better hardware in the laptop given its increased form factor.
Same reason you won't get a core i9 and 32gb ram in a smartphone.
Edit - forgot to add phones are more power conscious so reduce performance of areas to prolong life. | [
"Mobile phone users can access and use the same web sites on their wireless handsets that they visit using personal computers. Full web pages load in seconds due to compression and in-network processing of content by the server.\n",
"Laptop computers, conversely, offer portability that desktop systems (including ... |
why lack of genuine industrialization in Argentina? | This is a very good question, but it is challenging (perhaps impossible) to answer. Before delving into a response, I would like to point out some pragmatic challenges that make answering it especially difficult. First, historians and economists have been debating your question for almost a century and so far have been unable to come up with a consensus. As you know, the process of industrialization takes a very long time to occur. It goes through vicissitudes of expansion, contraction, and depression. It is subject to intervention by governments and outside forces. And it often butts up against traditional culture. To further complicate the issue, “industrialization” looks different depending on where in the world you are. German industrialization is different than Canadian industrialization, which is in turn different than Chinese industrialization. So saying there is a “proper” or “genuine” way to industrialize really isn’t fair because it is subjective. This assumes that Argentina has failed. Though many people feel this way, it is not necessarily the case. One could argue that in spite of overwhelming challenges, Argentina has managed to soldier on and maintained a high standard of living in the process.
Also, keep in mind that as historians, it is easier to explain why something happened than to explain why something didn’t happen. Proving why something didn’t happen brings all sorts of hypotheticals into the equation, which isn’t really what historians like to deal with. Finally, how far back should we go to answer this question? I have seen discussions on AskHistorians about industrialization in Europe and its roots in the Middle Ages. Historians often debate the role that the wars for independence and civil wars had on initial industrialization in Argentina. One could also discuss the 19th century positivism which emphasized comparative advantage, order, and progress (the motto that is enshrined on Brazil’s flag). Comparative advantage encouraged developing countries to focus only on what they did well, thereby neglecting the diversification of their economy. Identifying when “industrialization” actually failed is really hard because its roots stretch from the present to the discovery of the New World!
That being said, it seems that you are more interested in understanding why Argentina did not develop following their rise around the turn of the 20th century. I’ll build my answer around that idea. You’ve identified two key reasons why industrialization has been so challenging in Argentina. First, Argentina’s economy during the 19th century was driven by agriculture. Michael Johns, in his article “Industrial Capital and Economic Development,” sees this as the key problem of Argentina’s economy. He argues that despite the wealth acquired during this period, the export economy prevented the development of social and financial institutions that could help aid the process of industrialization. I’m a little skeptical of your assertion that the emphasis on agriculture came at the expense of mining. Argentina has very scant mineral reserves. Unlike Chile, Argentina became an agricultural economy because it could not be a mineral driven economy. Thus, by the end of the Argentine “golden age” wealth was centralized on the Pampas and in Buenos Aires at the expense of the periphery. Di Tella and Platt’s book The Political Economy of Argentina, 1880-1946 examined the early twentieth century, especially agriculture. It showed that the “golden age” of Argentina was much more complicated than one might expect. Economic development was uneven, and many Argentines were deeply pessimistic about their country’s economic future. Yet, there still was a thriving middle class, who struggled through the Great Depression and exist today. The Great Depression and World War II altered the world economy. Argentina’s economy was so heavily invested in the old model that it never fully recovered. The world economy was suddenly predicated on a completely different set of concerns to which Argentina then had to adapt.
This brings us to your other point about social and institutional factors. This is, of course, hotly debated in the historiography. Juan Perón took power, who in turn was expelled by the military, who eventually was replaced by democratic leaders culminating with Carlos Menem, the “Washington Consensus,” and neoliberalism, which in turn brings us up against the twenty year rule. These periods all bleed together, and their social and institutional moves depended on those inherited from its predecessors. With each successive change, new institutions were established that focused on distinct social groups, which created a “stop and go” environment for industrialization. The social structure then played a key role in dividing Argentine society, which in turn led to the rapid change in economic policies.
Yet, I also want to complicate your points. First, industrialization in the middle and late twentieth century is intimately tied to governmental policies. Though the agricultural businesses struggled with the Great Depression, Argentina’s industries actually benefited greatly from both the Great Depression and World War II. They created vacuums of industrial goods which had previously been imported from the United Kingdom and the United States. The hole in industrial imports was thus filled by Argentine industries. How fortunate that in its moment of weakness, Argentina’s economy was buoyed by new opportunities! Perón and later leaders essentially created an artificial vacuum by implementing subsidies for Argentine companies while keeping tariffs high. Thus, Argentine products found a market despite being inferior in quality. On the open market, their industries had no chance, but with this move, Perón insulated Argentina against foreign competition. Argentina’s economy turned inward. Unfortunately, as Carlos Waisman’s book Reversal of Development in Argentina pointed out, Peronism thus became the scapegoat for economic failure. Waisman especially identified the frequent changes in economic policy, import substitution, and removal of government support for agricultural development as key to this disaster.
Unfortunately, once Perón was removed from power, this led to all sorts of macroeconomic problems. The economy became volatile as the military reversed these changes. Thus, the market was suddenly flooded with industrial goods that were cheaper and superior to those being produced by Argentine industries. They failed to protect the gains that Argentine industries had made in the post war years. The economy was racked by hyperinflation, unsustainable wages, and price fixing. Furthermore, reduced assistance to agricultural sectors led to a depreciation of their competitive abilities. This in turn fanned the social flames. Finally, the left itself struggled to create a unifying platform and eventually spawned moderates and radicals alike. Even when Perón returned, he could do little to reverse the chaos or gain control, eventually leading to the chaos of the final military dictatorship. Yet, the military also failed. They never went full “neoliberalism.” In fact, one could argue their management of the economy was even worse than Perón’s, leading to perhaps the biggest economic bubble in Argentine history. So another reason that industrialization struggled was poor economic management by each successive government.
Their actions then created an “alternative reality” of what industrialization looked like. In my opinion, this must be understood in the Argentine context. Comparing industrialization to the United States, Australia, or Canada ignores the contexts that each of these nations dealt with. It paints these nations in a positive light (and Argentina in a negative light), even though they too had many internal challenges. Argentina lacks the natural resources of the United States and lacked the Commonwealth of Nations’ oversight that Canada and Australia benefited from in the middle of the twentieth century. Argentina instead had to go its own way. Though it struggled, it was far from a complete failure. Perhaps a better question would be: Could industrialization ever have looked the same as it did in other “settler” countries? I don’t think so. It ignores the political, social, and cultural setting in which Argentine industrialization occurred.
Finally, I want to point out that recent historiography on the topic has been reexamining industrialization, especially in light of the perceived failure of neoliberal reforms. They have been reinterpreting industrialization itself. For example, James Brennan’s recent article “Prolegomenon to Neoliberalism: The Political Economy of Populist Argentina” argues that the question of industrialization is too closely tied to partisanship in Argentine history. Other works have looked at terms of trade, finance, and concentration as they relate to industrialization and demonstrate the complexity that industrialization took at the local and international levels. All of these are hot topics in Latin American historical circles at the moment. You might want to check out The Oxford Handbook of Latin American History, which has a chapter on the historiography of economic and industrial history. It might provide you with some valuable works to add to your understanding of industrialization in Argentina and see how recent studies are fleshing out other problems and successes of Argentine industries. | [
"On the other hand, the trade isolationism of the world powers ultimately prompted the beginning of Argentine industrial development via import substitution. Important firms, such as the Bunge & Born agribusiness food company and the Tornquist group, previously turned towards exports but began to diversify their ac... |
What was the significance, politically, of Israel instigating the '67 War with a preemptive strike on Egypt? | I'd love to answer, but I want to make sure I know what you're asking for before I get into it. Are you referring to the significance in terms of how other nations perceived it, how it affected Israel's relations with other nations, or how it was perceived in Israel? Or is it some combination of the three? If none, please let me know :).
As soon as I know which you're asking about, I'll get into it, just don't want to overload you with information ;). | [
"The conventional view and memoirs of key Israelis indicate that Israel's actions leading into the war were prudent and the blame for the war rested on Egypt. According to political scientist Zeev Maoz, most scholarly studies attribute the crisis to a complicated process of unwanted escalation, which all sides want... |
Why do we need bigger 'colliders' to smash particles together harder? | \ > Also, I thought they were already accelerated to basically light speed ( 0.999999991 c ) in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - why is a bigger ring needed to go faster/harder given they're already at light speed - going only 0.000000009x light speed extra/faster seems only a tiny improvement for a 10x the size ring? what's the point?
The technological reason for larger colliders has been addressed. Let me answer this part in more detail.
The energy gained from increasing velocity goes up asymptotically as you approach light speed. In our normal intuition, what matters is how much speed you already have. Adding a fraction of a percent to your speed will only add a fraction of a percent to your energy. But in relativistic physics, when you're approaching light speed, that intuition is wrong. What matters is really *the difference* between your speed and light speed. If you go from 0.999999991c to 0.9999999991c (one extra nine there), the difference goes from 0.000000009c to 0.0000000009c. The *difference* is then *ten times smaller.* This approximately triples the resulting energy. If you divide the difference by 10 again - advancing an even smaller fraction closer - you'll triple the energy again, and so on. | [
"The shape of the collider is also important. High energy physics colliders collect particles into bunches, and then collide the bunches together. However, only a very tiny fraction of particles in each bunch actually collide. In circular colliders, these bunches travel around a roughly circular shape in opposite d... |
what policies and systems are (or aren't) in place to help veterans? who is responsible for the aid and implementation? why do so many vets seem to end up homeless or worse? how can people help them? | We have programs and tools in place to help veterans. The GI Bill pays for school, there are housing vouchers, and many companies are actively seeking to hire veterans. Reducing veteran homelessness and unemployment is something that requires a little (not even much) effort on the part of the veteran.
Source: I'm a veteran and currently using my GI Bill. | [
"Under the Department of Labor, the Veterans' Employment and Training Service (VETS) offers a variety of programs targeted at ending homelessness among veterans. The Homeless Veterans' Reintegration Program (HVRP) is the only national program that is exclusively focused on assisting veterans as they reenter the wor... |
- how does my body know how to do things that i can't control? | There is a part of the brain dedicated to "automated" functions of your body. Like a separate computer processor, it keeps track of things like the heart beating, intestines constricting to digest and move food, etc. Some things you can control to a certain extent; controlling your breathing can raise/lower your heart rate, for example.
Other things you cannot control, like your blood reacting to a wound. Such actions are chemical. When you get cut or injured, the barrier that keeps your blood in place is removed. The blood "spills" into the open areas and reacts based on what are called "intrinsic factors" or the "intrinsic pathway".
When blood touches air, the factors are set off in a chain of sequence that allows your blood to clot and start the healing process. Sometimes, a person is missing an intrinsic factor, and the chain is broken causing problems such as Hemophilia or Von Willebrand disease. | [
"Humans have to learn how to walk, skip, and ride a bicycle but inside our bodies perform specific manipulations from birth that we do not need to learn. There is new research that suggests humans may be able to change these inner processes with teaching. Thomas reasons that his body has been functioning fine witho... |
in what order should you brush, floss and mouth wash? | Just doing them in any order is better than not at all, but according to my dentist:
Floss
Brush (spit, don't rinse)
Skip mouthwash, especially if it has alcohol. Use it in the middle of the day to "freshen up" in need be. | [
"Tooth brushing is the act of scrubbing teeth with a toothbrush equipped with toothpaste. Interdental cleaning (with floss or an interdental brush) can be useful with tooth brushing, and together these two activities are the primary means of cleaning teeth, one of the main aspects of oral hygiene.\n",
"General gu... |
Can anybody help me identify a type of helmet? | Ok, well, we have to take a full further back look at the art of the era, as well as the views of the Archangel Michael as seen during that era.
Why Michael? Michael has often been described as the angel who cast out Lucifer from heaven and was lead of God's armies during the battle for heaven.
[This is a statue of Michael in Roman Garb](_URL_2_). Note the similar helmet. Roman, but without the side peices. [Here is a similar period peice](_URL_9_), where he wears a similar helmet and Roman guard.
From these illustrations, we can determine that art of the period depicted angels, especially warrior angels in a Romanesque fashion as was common for soldiers seen in [Baroque art](_URL_5_).
Why is it important to look at Michael? Lucifer and Michael in popular tradition are of the same caste of angels, Archangels. Now, if you are familiar with the styles and themes of 1600's art, Michael is often shown in Roman/Greek style armor.
Now, if you look at the top of the helmet for Lucifer, you will see his star, being the "Morning Star". This being his crest. Now, looking at helmets of the Roman period it appears to be more stylized than practical...but then we are looking at religious art.
So, it appears to be an embellished version of other the classic Greco-Roman style helmet with the ear pieces missing. Or a stylized, medieval/Renaissance helmet; [The Burgonet](_URL_6_), [Capeline](_URL_1_), [Morion](_URL_7_). [This](_URL_3_) is probably the closest helmet I could find that looked like it. [This one is similar as well](_URL_0_). Oh, [here is a great one](_URL_8_) done my Da Vinci. [A good statue from Venice](_URL_4_)
The reason I call this a Burgonet, is because the Morion style did not really show up until the mid 1600's, while Burgonet's had been around for about 100-200 years, making them more common, since metal armor was expensive, and would be used until it practically couldn't be used anymore, giving them very long and traveled lives.
So I would say that the helmet is a stylized Burgonet Renaissance style helmet, with influences from Baroque preferences for Greco-Roman armor in depicting St. Michael/Lucifer, with his moniker of "Morning Star" for his crest. | [
"The helmet is dated to the first half of the first century AD, based on the style of the acanthus scroll on the back of the helmet, and other objects found with the helmet and in the tombs nearby. It is the earliest known Roman helmet with a face mask, and is broadly classified as a cavalry sports helmet—type D, a... |
When did women begin painting their nails? | The act of painting fingernails was a common practice in Egypt by 3000 B.C. but it is believed that fingernail paint originated even earlier in China where the color of your nails showed what your social rank was.
By the third millennium B.C. the Chinese used ingredients such as gum arabic, egg white, gelatin, and beeswax to make varnishes, enamels, and lacquers. The color nails that determined you were royalty, according to a fifteenth-century Ming manuscript were black and red. Although in the Chou Dynasty of 600 B.C. gold and silver were seen as the royal colors.
This was also true with Egyptians where the color of your nails signaled what your social standing was. In Egypt red signaled great importance, Queen Nefertiti painted her fingernails and toenails a ruby red, Cleopatra favored a deep rust red. Women who were of lower social class were only allowed pale hues, no woman would risk having the colors that a queen had.
Painting nails was also common for warriors of great importance. Egyptian, Babylonian and early Roman commanders would spend great amounts of time having their nails painted the same shape as their lips.
The great amount of attention ancients showed to fingernails and toenails suggests to most cosmetics historians that manicuring was already an established art. This is supported by excavations of royal tombs at Ur where manicure sets were found. "Well-manicured nails became a symbol of culture and civilization, a means of distinguishing the laboring commoner from the idle aristocrat".
Panati, Charles . "Atop the Vanity." In Panati's Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things. New York: Harper & Row, 1987. | [
"The exact origin of nail treatments is unclear, since it appears to have originated in different parts of the world around the same time. In ancient Egypt, from 5000 B.C. to 3000 B.C., women would dye their nails with henna to indicate social status and seductiveness. Women of the lower class wore pastel and neutr... |
Thermodynamics, adiabatic expansion. (Joule-Thomson effect) | In an expansion such as you described, it is indeed adiabatic as Q=0 (no heat flow).
Also as you described, the change in internal energy would be zero because the gas is expanding against a vacuum and if ideal by definition requires no work to accomplish.
Think of it this way, the gas is not expanding by a broken seal, but a piston which applies a pressure of zero and has no weight.
dU does equal -PdV, but P should really be labeled as Pe as this equation only applies to the external pressure which in this case is a vacuum where the external pressure is zero.
So dU = -PdV where P=0 thus dU=0. | [
"In thermodynamics, an adiabatic process is a change that occurs without heat flow; it may be slow or fast. A reversible adiabatic process is an adiabatic process that occurs slowly compared to the time to reach equilibrium. In a reversible adiabatic process, the system is in equilibrium at all stages and the entro... |
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