question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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How does current flow in two phases from a three phase system without a neutral? | The 120V refers to [RMS](_URL_3_) rather than peak voltage. For sinusoidal electrical power, they are related as follows:
V_RMS = V_peak / sqrt(2)
where *sqrt(2)* is the square root of 2. So a 120V phase actually has a peak of around 170V with respect to ground.
When you have two phases separated by 120^o you need to consider the potential difference between them. This is just the voltage of phase X with respect to ground minus the voltage of phase Y with respect to ground. [This plot](_URL_1_) shows the voltage between two 120V phases. You can see that the maximum potential difference is 295V which is 208V RMS, as per your original figures.
If you have a purely resistive load, voltage and current will be related by [Ohm's law](_URL_0_). Once you have an inductive load, however, current and voltage are no longer in phase, which leads to a possible need for [power factor](_URL_2_) correction. | [
"In power engineering, the voltage between two phases in a three-phase system equals times the line to neutral voltage. This is because any two phases are 120° apart, and two points on a circle 120 degrees apart are separated by times the radius (see geometry examples above).\n",
"In a three-phase system feeding ... |
Why did the practice of Astrology go from being practiced by Popes and Kings to considered witchcraft in the Christian world? | The phrasing of the question makes an argument which is not true: that astrology 'equaled' witchcraft at some point in time. This was never the case, at least in a European-North American context.
The first point, about witchcraft: astrology was never considered witchcraft in and of itself at any point as a matter of broad policy, neither by secular nor religious law. Here we can talk about late medieval through early modern period (note that accusations of witchcraft were rare in the medieval period before 1300), and we will speak very broadly.
Accusations of witchcraft, over the course of hundreds of years and in different localities, was generally a question of *effect* or *result*, and then complainants would look for cause and evidence. So, someone would be accused of causing someone's death, causing an animal or crops to die, or causing various manners of injury to person or property. From there might proceed an accusation of being a witch (or necromancer, or sorcerer) and simultaneously finding sources to support the accusation. Those sources could be any of a wide-ranging collection of indicators: herbal remedies, songs and incantations, strange looks, and yes, astrology could be rolled up in it.
Astrology continued to have a life long into the early modern period, even within monestaries and priesthood, sometimes forbidden, sometimes permitted. Astrology had a life even within Christian royal and noble circles across Europe.
To summarize: astrology was never the foundation of witchcraft accusations, it could be (rarely) dredged up as convenient support for the accusation. What's most important to understand about witchcraft accusations in this context is that anything could be used as evidence for an accusation so long as the community supported it being transformed into an act or habit of a witch. Being astrology, as a thing unto itself, was not especially relevant.
As a side note, astrology as a going concern was really demolished by scientific understanding of stars, planets, et al in the latter part of the early modern period, in particular the 17th century.
For a very readable introduction to astrology and magic in the middle ages:
* Richard Kieckhefer, *Magic in the Middle Ages* (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
| [
"During the Early Middle Ages, the Christian Churches did not conduct witch trials. The Germanic Council of Paderborn in 785 explicitly outlawed the very belief in witches, and the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne later confirmed the law. Among Orthodox Eastern Christians concentrated in the Byzantine Empire, belief ... |
why is task manager more effective and faster rather than pressing the x or alt + f4 when something freezes? | Because being able to end a program that won't exit by normal means is one of the features of the Task Manager.
Whether you hit X on a program window or press alt+f4 you are essentially asking the program: "will you please exit?". Under normal circumstances the program will then go through whatever it needs to do before ending, like asking you to save unsaved changes for example.
When you end a program through the Task Manager you're no longer asking nicely. Instead you're telling Windows that you'd like the program to exit and if it won't exit willingly Windows should force it to. The downside is that a program that is forced to exit might not be able to go through the steps it would normally do before ending. | [
"Because the window controls are being rendered by the application process, if the application freezes the controls will often become unresponsive too. This can make it more confusing when trying to close unresponsive applications as the display server has to detect this. \n",
"The commonplace alternation between... |
How good of a military leader was Pancho Villa? | Villa had a lot of success early on with enthusiastic cavalry charges. He brought a lot of charisma to his command, was an excellent horseman and an excellent judge of horses, and could add mobility to his already mobile troops by putting them on trains. It worked well against demoralized, badly-supported troops in scattered defensive positions in the initial period of the Revolution , with Villa, Carranza and Zapata fighting against Huerta. Villa was also lucky to have the assistance of Felipe Angeles ( perhaps the most heroic character in the Revolution), who provided expertise in artillery. In the latter phase, though, it was not enough. After the successes of 1914 and Huerta defeated, the Convention of Aguascalientes allowed Carranza to assume more power, and put him in position to get assistance from the US government. After this, supplies, infantry tactics, and fortification began to be a problem for Villa. This was starkly shown at the Battle of Celaya, where Obregon essentially used the same techniques being used in the European war, employing trenches, barbed wire, and machine guns. After this defeat, Villa was more or less a bandit leader on the run until he could negotiate a surrender in 1919.
Katz: The life and Times of Pancho Villa | [
"Villa was one of Mexico's greatest military leaders. His string of victories since the beginning of the Mexican Revolution was decisive in bringing the downfall of Porfirio Díaz, the victory of Francisco Madero, and the ouster of Victoriano Huerta. He remains a heroic figure for many Mexicans. His military actions... |
When an atom undergoes alpha decay, does it lose electrons and stay neutral or keep them and become an anion? | It will lose usually more than two electrons. Alpha decay releases around 3-6 MeV of energy. That alpha particle rips electrons out since they are bound with eV of energy. The ion will eventually become neutral if there are electrons around, which is usually the case. | [
"Alpha decay is characterized by the emission of an alpha particle, a He nucleus. The mode of this decay causes the parent nucleus to decrease by two protons and two neutrons. This type of decay follows the relation:\n",
"Alpha decay or α-decay is a type of radioactive decay in which an atomic nucleus emits an al... |
Are there any potential ways to modify the human eye to see more of the electromagnetic spectrum? | Theoretically, this is absolutely possible. You take an opsin protein from another species, or one engineered to respond to a specific wavelength, you find out it's genetic code, you package it with a correct promoter into an appropriate virus, and you inject it into the eye. In theory, it is something we could do right now, and there are labs doing similar things in mice as we speak.
In PRACTICE there are some significant issues. The first is you only want the the gene to be expressed in rods/cones and not in all the other neurons in your retina. There are ways around this, I *think* using an appropriate promoter might help, but I'm not so sure. I'm not an expert on molecular biology. There theoretically could be problems with your body recognizing the foreign protein as an antigen, but my understanding is that this isn't that much of a problem in reality.
I think the final issue is the most interesting. What are you going to see? Let's say you make your eye respond to infrared. What are you going to see when you look at something emitting bright infrared? Well, if we've made your red cones express this foreign opsin protein, you're going to see red; if green cones, green... blue cones, blue, or all of them, white. Your phone has reg green and blue sensors too. Point it at your TV remote (which emits Infrared) and press some buttons, you'll see a dark or whitest purple. It's the same situation. Without a special neural pathway to deal with this new information, you can only piggyback on what is there.
And no, we do not know how to create a new neural pathway which would allow people to see a new color.
There are some other problems, like UV doesn't penetrate the medium of the eye, focusing wavelengths far from visual would cause trouble, but you would still be able to sense them (if not resolve them properly) if they were of enough power. | [
"Various researchers have demonstrated that the retina performs strategic image preprocessing for the brain. The problem of creating a completely functional artificial electronic eye is even more complex. Advances towards tackling the complexity of the artificial connection to the retina, optic nerve, or related br... |
why do we have state troopers and municipal cops? | They have different jurisdictions and enforce different laws.
Muni cops are responsible for the city and enforcing city ordinances. They'll pull you over for speeding on a city street, for example.
State cops enforce state laws on highways and unincorporated areas of the state. They'll pull you over for speeding on the freeway.
There are also county cops (sheriff) and federal cops (FBI), each with their own jurisdictions and sets of laws to enforce. | [
"Special Constables are appointed by Towns. In general, they are appointed to serve as police officers and expected to have or complete the requirements of the Police Officer Standards and Training Council in order to do so. Special Constables normally work under the supervision of a Resident State Trooper contract... |
can cycling in a well insulated room noticeably heat up the room? | Yes. This is clearly evident when you get a large number of people exercising in an enclosed, insulated space.
I remember Basic Training, ~40 people in a room doing Iron Mike's until the walls dripped with the excess moisture. Very clear increase of several degrees Fahrenheit. | [
"Besides burning (on average) between 300-500 kcal in 60 minutes, indoor cycling also strengthens the muscles of the lower body. It tones the quadriceps and hamstrings, along with working the back and hips. It can be difficult to stay at the moderate level in a class that is geared towards more intensity. The diffi... |
how propeller aircraft engines with different horsepowers but same rev speed make difference? | If you put the same propeller on two engines with different power, it will run at two different rpm's (speeds).
To run the weaker engine at the same rpm as the stronger engine, you must mount a less forceful propeller -- one that pushes less air per rotation.
| [
"Propeller engines handle larger air mass flows, and give them smaller acceleration, than jet engines. Since the increase in air speed is small, at high flight speeds the thrust available to propeller-driven aeroplanes is small. However, at low speeds, these engines benefit from relatively high propulsive efficienc... |
how does emptying the recycle bin on your computer work? | Your hard drive is like a book with a table of contents in the front.
When you write a file to the hard drive you've essentially written a page in the book, plus you've made an entry to the table of contents. Writing the page in the book takes some time, but there's no way around that.
Then, when you delete it you go to the table of contents and you put an asterisk next to that entry that says "Hey, this is in the recycle bin now."
When you delete the file from the recycle bin you go to the table of contents and you erase the entry. Note that the page is still written with all the data, which is how un-deleting applications are able to restore files. At this point if you were to need to write another page you might select that page and write over it (our pencil in this case has the magical property of erasing whatever is already on the page as you write).
There's one more level of deleting, which is offered by some programs: you erase the entry in the table of contents, then you go to the page and you erase everything on the page. It has, in the past, been possible to still recover some data left on the page (hard drives are actually analog media, although they are used to store digital data). If you erase pencil from paper you're left with paper that is more blank than it is filled with writing, but under the right light you can see what was written before. Similarly, when you write all zeroes in a section of the hard drive you have a bunch of values that are closer to 0 than anything else, but a sensitive tool could tell the difference between a 0 that was overwritten with a 0 and a 1 that was overwritten by a 0. Modern hard drives tend to be too dense for this to work. To combat this some programs will write over the page with all zeroes, all ones, random combinations of zeroes and ones, and so on. This is obviously the slowest option, but for the very paranoid it offers peace of mind that the file has been completely deleted. | [
"In computing, the trash (also known as the Recycle Bin in Microsoft Windows and by other names in other operating systems) is temporary storage for files that have been deleted in a file manager by the user, but not yet permanently erased from the file system. Typically, a recycle bin is presented as a special fil... |
[NSFW] - Did sexual positions evolve independently across multiple cultures, or can we trace certain positions from one culture to the next? | Hi there! After some discussion among the mods, we've removed your question. It's not a bad question - just one that's going to be difficult to answer as you're asking about multiple historical periods. (We think of these as "throughout history" questions) You're welcome to rephrase and ask about specific periods or places - i.e. how other societies responded to Kamasutra or if the texts were updated following exposure to other cultures and societies. Likewise, you may find better luck getting an answer at _URL_0_. Please feel free to reach out via modmail if you have any questions. | [
"Many cultures define the transition into adultlike sexuality by specific biological or social milestones in an adolescent's life. For example, menarche (the first menstrual period of a female), or semenarche (the first ejaculation of a male) are frequent sexual defining points for many cultures. In addition to bio... |
what kind of consequences will russia face if they are held legally responsible for the downing of mh17? | The sanctions will be decided by some kind of UN vote most likely, and then individual countries can pursue whatever sanctions they wish. There's talk in the US already of not even waiting, they're convinced Russia did it and they want to push unilateral sanctions on Russia, especially for the Russian financial sector.
Russia's economy is hugely based off of oil and natural gas (which Europe is dependent on) so if the sanctions don't include oil and natural gas, Russia will probably be just fine and will continue doing whatever it likes. If the sanctions do involve oil and gas, and they last a long time, who knows, they might just pressure Russia to pull back and stop supporting the separatists. | [
"According to the poll conducted by the Levada Center between 18 and 24 July in 2014, 80% of Russians surveyed believed that the crash of MH17 was caused by the Ukrainian military. Only 3% of respondents to the poll blamed the disaster on pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.\n",
"On 19 June 2019, the Dutch... |
Why don't we wet the bed after we're toilet trained? | Nocturnal emissions have no bearing on bowel and bladder. completely unrelated. As a side note, daily sex and/or masturbation will prevent nocturnal emissions
While the toiler per-se is not instinctive, it is natural for many mammals to have bathroom control. Dogs and cats would be two species you may be familiar with that do have control.
Human development is slow, so we have to toilet train so that our young know what to do about the sensations. it is perfectly natural and instinctive to not go instantly and to find a place to squat. We sublimate that into teaching our children to use the toilet instead of squatting where convenient.
Most animals with control don't like to soil their sleeping area. we are no different than cats or dogs in that respect. | [
"Toilet training begins very early in China, sometimes within days of birth and usually no later than a month. Frequently babies are held closely by parents, grandparents or other extended family members caring for them, sensitive to when they need to relieve themselves. A child who appears ready to urinate or defe... |
what are the specific ingredients in beer that make it high in calories and carbs? | To make beer you let barley or other types of grain go through a process that extracts its starch and makes it into sugar. The wort you end up with have been sold as sweet energy drinks and is comparable to soda. The wort is then further put through a fermentation process where the sugar is being converted into CO2 and alcohol. Different factors determines how much sugar and alcohol you end up with. However even if you end up without sugar the alcohol is being broken down in your body producing energy. | [
"Ethanol is a source of energy and pure ethanol provides 7 calories per gram. For distilled spirits, a standard serving in the United States is , which at 40% ethanol (80 proof), would be 14 grams and 98 calories. Wine and beer contain a similar range of ethanol for servings of and , respectively, but these beverag... |
why is the menstrual cycle the same as a calendar month? | It's coincidental. See this specific part of the Wikipedia article on menstruation:
> Even though the average length of the human menstrual cycle is similar to that of the lunar cycle, in modern society there is no relation between the two. The relationship is believed to be a coincidence. Light exposure does not appear to affect the menstrual cycle in humans. A meta-analysis of studies from 1996 showed no correlation between the human menstrual cycle and the lunar cycle.
_URL_0_ | [
"The menstrual cycle is the regular natural change that occurs in the female reproductive system (specifically the uterus and ovaries) that makes pregnancy possible. The cycle is required for the production of oocytes, and for the preparation of the uterus for pregnancy. The menstrual cycle occurs due to the rise a... |
equinox isn't equal | The equinox isn't necessarily defined by when the days are most even where you live (rise vs set time) but rather when the sun crosses the celestial equator and appears in the north hemisphere in the sky. (For the north hemisphere) The autumnal equinox occurs when the sun crosses in the other direction. For the southern (ergh sorry, autocorrect nailed that word) hemisphere, the equinoxes are reversed | [
"The name \"Equinox\" refers to the time when day and night are of equal lengths, a phenomenon which occurs on two days in a year. The theme at the Equinox Complex is to attain perfection and harmony throughout the year.\n",
"In astronomy, equinox is either of two places on the celestial sphere at which the eclip... |
Did the Germans count on being able to use the Czech tanks? | Opening a can of worms here. There was actually no such thing as the Blitzkrieg so it'd be a bit hard for something to be an essential part of it. Blitzkrieg was more of a media term to explain things that they didn't understand and the whole idea that it was some well developed doctrinal way of waging war by the Germans just doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
That being said, the Germans did make a habit of appropriating captured enemy equipment, reddesignating with German names, and then using them. However, the Germans expected to have a few more years to prepare for a major war and so they expected to have more of their Panzerkampfwagen III and IVs, and possible even some heavy tanks since the Tiger had been in development since the late 1930s, by then instead of mostly the Is and IIs they went to war with, supplemented with captured Czech equipment. | [
"The occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 had provided the German military with large amounts of high quality weapons at no cost, from the arsenal of the Czech military. There was enough equipment for about 40 army divisions. The Germans integrated the Czech industry, mainly the Skoda factories, becoming part... |
why do softer tires have better grip than harder tires? | Because softer things deform and grip the imperfections in a surface. This isn't just tires, you'll probably notice that a softer a surface is, the easier it grips other surfaces. | [
"Tires called R-Compounds are commonly used in motorsports for high amounts of traction. The soft rubber allows them to expand when they are heated up, making more surface area on the pavement, therefore producing the most traction. These types of tires do not have grooves on them. Tire pressure is dependent on the... |
When my candle is lit, why does dust caught in the wax gather around the base of the wick? | When the candle is burning, the capillary forces in the wick are drawing in the molten wax. So the dust gets carried there by the flow. That's my guess at least, I haven't researched it.
| [
"A candle wick works by capillary action, drawing (\"wicking\") the melted wax or fuel up to the flame. When the liquid fuel reaches the flame, it vaporizes and combusts. The candle wick influences how the candle burns. Important characteristics of the wick include diameter, stiffness, fire-resistance, and tetherin... |
what is hdr, and why do "we" hate it? | HDR is a technique that is used to produce a wider range of brightness in photographs, it does so by taking several pictures and changing how much light is taken in each time.
These pictures are then combined into one photograph.
The reason the shittyhdr subreddit exists is because sometimes this isn't done very well resulting in light levels that look quite... bad.
The shittyhdr subreddit gives example of both [good HDR](_URL_1_) and [bad HDR](_URL_0_) | [
"WHDI becomes High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) Certified, garnering the necessary approval for any device to deliver HD video to another device, a requirement in Hollywood movie studios. It is considered an Approved Retransmission Technology (ART). The approval allows for WHDI to begin selling devic... |
what has to happen to our recycled items before they actually get repurposed/what does the cleaning process of these items look like? | Newspapers: de-inking facilities separate ink from the newspaper fibers through a chemical washing process.
Glass: A mechanical processing system breaks the glass into small pieces called cullet. Magnets, screens and vacuum systems remove metals, labels, bits of plastic, and caps.
Any water etc left inside the glass bottle is most likeley going to be filtered out after the crushing of the glass.
| [
"Items deemed resellable are displayed for purchase in stores. Savers also has a recycling program and attempts to recycle any reusable items that cannot be sold at the stores, as well as any items that do not sell over a period of time to make room for fresh merchandise. Savers has buyers for its recyclables throu... |
why are led headlights so bright? | LED lights are more efficient at turning electricity into light. Most other lights use a lot of the energy in creating heat.
Lights that are too bright can be dangerous, but there's not a lot of standardisation for them. Some lights can have something on the front to diffuse or spread out the beam. | [
"Another field that uses this is the automotive industry. LEDs in the dashboard and instrument lighting are designed for use in mesopic luminance. In studies, it has been found that red LEDs appear brighter than green LEDs, which means that a driver would be able to see red light more intense thus more alerting the... |
why do batteries in parallel have a stronger current than batteries in sequence? | Let's say that I have an entrance to a building with two doors that guests have to pass through to get in. Each one can let 1 person through every 2 seconds. If I put them in series, each guest goes through one, and then the next. The total rate at which people get through is still the same as each individual door. If I put them side by side though, they can both have 1 person going through at the same time, for a total of 2 people every 2 seconds. Now replace the doors with batteries and the people with electrons. | [
"If the cells of a battery are connected in parallel, the battery voltage will be the same as the cell voltage, but the current supplied by each cell will be a fraction of the total current. For example, if a battery comprises four identical cells connected in parallel and delivers a current of 1 ampere, the curren... |
How do zygotes gain totipotency? | Activation of a few enzymes returns the cell to totipotency. Adding these enzymes to regular cells can make them pluripotent, this the existence of ipsc: induced pluripotent stem cells, which can be stem cells that were skin cells with the enzymes added. I don't remember all of them but there is Nanog, and Oct4 among others. | [
"Zygotes are formed by microgametes from the microgamont penetrating the macrogamonts. The zygotes develop into oocysts of two types. 20% of oocysts have thin walls and so can reinfect the host by rupturing and releasing sporozoites that start the process over again. The thick-walled oocysts are excreted into the e... |
explain the p=np problem li5. | Do you have a bicycle? Does it have a lock? If not, nag your parents to get you one, those cheap bastards.
If I told you the combination, how hard would it be for you to check if I was right? It's quick. Use the numbers I gave you and see if the lock opens. Easy! People have found a whole bunch of jobs that are easy like checking lock combinations and grouped them together and called them "P". It's a terrible name, really. Let's call them "Easy problems".
Now, what about the problem of finding out the combination? That's hard. Unless it's a bad lock, it's a HUGE job to try and figure it out. You're going to sit all day and fiddle with the lock and hopefully you'll figure it out in the end. If you're clever, you'll try every single combination one after the other. That's called "brute force". Maybe it'll take 1 day to open your little bicycle lock, but I've got a lock which has got *20* numbers on it. Trying every combination would take you far too long.
People have taken all those types of problems and put THEM into a group too. They called that group "NP". Another dumb name. Let's call them "NP hard problems". I need to leave the "NP" in their name because NP hard problems are special. Not every hard problem is NP hard.
So here's the thing. We know that "easy problems" are easy, because we can solve them easily. But we don't actually KNOW that "NP hard problems" are hard. We strongly suspect it. We think that "Easy Problems" are different from "NP hard problems". Mathematicians write this like P != NP.
So, we've got this group of "easy problems", and this other group of "NP hard problems". What happens if someone comes up with a wild and brilliant way of solving the NP hard problems? If they did that, they would instantly all become easy problems. We could say that "NP hard problems" are the same as "easy problems". Mathematicians write it like P = NP.
So there's 2 different possibilities. We've never solved an NP problem, but nobody has been able to show exactly *why* NP problems can't be solved easily. So that's the big unsolved mystery. Are they really hard? And why.
What does it matter? Well, it matters for 2 reasons. First of all, all NP problems are the same. And there's a LOT of them. What do I mean they're the same? It means that if you find a way to solve one, you can use that way to solve them all.
The second reason is because a lot of what makes humans different to computers is being able to look at an NP hard problem and make some progress even though it's "unsolvable" for a computer. Proving something is like an NP hard problem. Checking the proof is like a P easy problem. Often, only humans can write proofs, and then computers can check the proofs.
If we discover that P=NP, that all these hard problems are really easy, we will very very quickly be able to ask computers to do things that today seem totally impossible. We're not just talking about faster and better computers. Compared to what computers do today, they would be able to do stuff that would look like magic.
But don't get too excited just yet. 9 out of every 10 scientists think that P!=NP, which means that hard problems are really very hard, and there's no easy shortcut to solving them. And the other scientist is on LSD and basically has no clue what he's talking about. | [
"The P versus NP problem is a major unsolved problem in computer science. Informally, it asks whether every problem whose solution can be quickly verified by a computer can also be quickly solved by a computer; it is widely conjectured that the answer is no. It was essentially first mentioned in a 1956 letter writt... |
Are we any closer to resurrecting humans from cryostasis yet? | No. The freezing process damages cells, as water turns to ice and expands. So they try to use different types of antifreeze, but [these are toxic](_URL_2_). And on top of that [not all cells are equally permeable](_URL_1_), especially in a state of reduced biological activity (or even none at all).
Human bodies are too large to freeze quickly. Doctors can't even effectively freeze hearts or other organs for later implantation, that's why almost every organ transplant is treated as an emergency situation. There are reasons [to hope this will be different in the future](_URL_0_).
But unfortunately, it will probably involve a new type of freezing process, so there's still no guarantee that the people who have already attempted cryopreservation of their remains will ever be able to be restored. | [
"Cryonics, the practice of preserving organisms (either intact specimens or only their brains) for possible future revival by storing them at cryogenic temperatures where metabolism and decay are almost completely stopped, can be used to 'pause' for those who believe that life extension technologies will not develo... |
Why aren't animals that can see in the dark blinded by daylight? | For starters, some species *are* 'day blind'. Mostly species that sleep during the day and are only active at night. So the question really is about 'why are *some* species able to see both in very low light and very bright light'. And it is complicated.
Visual systems vary *a lot* across species so it is hard to give an answer that applies to all species. To keep it simpler, let's restrict ourselves to mammalian eyes for species that are not strictly nocturnal since I suspect that is what the OP means.
A reasonable answer is that there are multiple mechanisms in the eye that compensate for varying light levels.
* Bleaching of photoreceptors under bright light makes them *less* sensitive the more light there is. This is why it takes time for your eyes to 'dark adapt': Your eyes are actually increasing their sensitivity dramatically and the chemistry takes time. It takes roughly thirty minutes to fully achieve full dark adaptation.
* There are two different photoreceptor systems: Rods for low light conditions and cones for bright light conditions (color vision is also a function of cones). If you don't have rods, you are night blind (can't see under low light conditions). If you don't have cones, you are day blind (can't see under bright light conditions).
* Variation of the pupil size. This is actually the smallest part of your ability to see under varying light levels. It only adjusts by about factor of perhaps 10 in the total amount of light entering the eye. But it is a very fast mechanism.
Even plain old human eyes actually can see over a brightness range of roughly 6 orders of magnitude (meaning the brightest light you can see acceptably with is about 1000000 times brighter than the dimmest light you can see acceptably with). Most of that is due to the varying sensitivity of the photoreceptors under different light conditions.
A mere factor of 6 in there really isn't a huge difference between animals like cats and humans when you realize the incredible dynamic range even the human eye already handles.
Edit: Fixed typo where I typed 'rods' when I meant 'cones'. | [
"Light pollution can disorient species that are used to darkness, as their adaptive eyes are not as used to the artificial lighting. Insects are the most obvious example, who are attracted by the lighting and are usually killed by either the heat or electrical current. Some species of frogs are blinded by the quick... |
eli: how can a country simply write off debt of another country? wouldn't it put the country itself in deeper debt? | Say I owe Bob $10. Say it's been years since I paid Bob and keep telling him I'll repay him later. Bob can write of my debt by telling me to forget about the $10 altogether, so that I no longer owe him the $10. | [
"Some observers such as Professor Steve Keen of University of Western Sydney, believe that many countries are hurtling towards peak debt, fueled by excess borrowing and an addiction to credit. To such observers, it appears illogical to take on ever increasing debt just to bid against each other for the same assets.... |
Mathematical History | You're in luck, Cajori's History of Mathematical Notations is available online:
_URL_0_
The partial derivative symbol was used here and there before 1841 when it was popularized by Jacobi (of Jacobian, or matrix of partials, fame). | [
"BULLET::::- An overview of the history of mathematics, in seven chapters including the development of important concepts such as number, geometry, mathematical proof, and the axiomatic approach to the foundations of mathematics. A chronology of significant events in mathematical history is also provided later in t... |
how is the ceo of turing pharmaceuticals able to raise the price of daraprim (the aids drug) and make people pay the increase, without it being considered a monopoly? | Monopolies are not per se illegal. There is arguably nothing wrong here because anyone who wants to spend the time and money to manufacture a generic can do so. This is also not the only drug that can treat toxoplasmosis. | [
"In May 2015 amfAR released a report showing that increases in intellectual property rights of pharmaceutical countries would drive up the price of some drugs that are desperately needed in the developing world, namely countries who rely on affordable antiretroviral drugs. The group says that would hamper the globa... |
Why do some people snap better/louder with their non-dominant hand? | The snapping sound is caused by your middle finger hitting your ring finger. If you haven't practiced this with your hand your middle finger will hit your palm and make a much quiter noise. However I don't know why you would only be able to do this with one hand and not the other. | [
"Finger snapping may be used as a substitute for hand clapping. The University of Michigan Men's Glee Club has a long tradition of doing this. The club's history states, \"The reason behind this (as legend goes) is you can't clap and hold a beer [at the same time]! Another possible reason is that snapping is less d... |
why are some electrical plugs so huge that they cover the outlets next to them? what is taking up all that space? | The large component is the transformer. Household voltage can easily be stepped down to a few volts. However smaller the transformer, the lower the amps. If you look at all those power adapters around your house, you will see 2 numbers: volts (V) and amps (mA). The larger the amps, the bigger the brick.
Of course, companies can slim down power bricks using more efficient transformers and other components but that requires cost. And of course, that cost is included in the equipment you’re buying. | [
"Within each size group, the plugs and sockets are keyed with certain \"lugs\" protruding on the outside of the plugs. Higher current plugs have more lugs to prevent them from being inserted into a lower current socket outlet, while still allowing them to be inserted into a socket outlet of the same size group rate... |
how does creatinine work in the body? | Creatinine is a metabolic byproduct that is produced in muscle tissue. Specifically it is used as an indicator of kidney function because the kidneys are the only organs that filter it out of the blood. It is formed in the body, usually at a fairly set rate and the kidneys will remove it at a set rate. Normally we expect creat levels in the bloodstream to be 0.5-1.0 in adults. As that number begins to rise, it indicates that the kidneys are not functioning properly. It doesn’t tell us specifically what’s wrong with the kidneys, it just tells us SOMETHING is wrong with them. Hence, they call it an indicator of kidney function. Usual follow up testing for elevated creatinine levels range from imaging, ultrasound and possible biopsy. It doesn’t indicate liver function at all to my knowledge. | [
"Creatinine formation begins with the transamidination from arginine to glycine to form glycocyamine or guanidoacetic acid (GAA). This reaction occurs primarily in the kidneys, but also in the mucosa of the small intestine and the pancreas. The GAA is transported to the liver where it is methylated by S-adenosyl me... |
Why are the people of a land as big as China relatively so culturally similar while Europe and the Middle East are so full of different people and cultures? | Are you sure China is as culturally similar as you say it is, or are you just unable to pick out the differences? As an ethnic Chinese, I find there are differences in the food, speech and customs of every Chinese province, especially since I have a good sense of what should be familiar.
By contrast, when in India, everything feels similarly alien. I can't tell the difference between Hindi and Nepali, so as far as I'm concerned they're all lumped as "Indian". I objectively know India is culturally diverse, but I don't know enough to be able to tell the difference. | [
"Today, China still has many close cultural links with other parts of the world, especially within East Asia, Southeast Asia and overseas Chinese community. Its cultural elements have spread across the globe due to Ancient China's influence, as well as the country's modernizing popular culture and rise as a global ... |
What's the difference between the effects on the heart due to aerobic exercise and due to amphetamine use? | The heart is a muscle. When you exercise, the increased demand for blood to skeletal muscles cause the heart to pump harder and faster. Over time, the muscle in the heart is trained to more efficiently deliver blood by increasing the thickness of the muscle. So resting heart rate in athletes decreases because the muscle in the heart can push the same quantity of blood out with less effort so to say.
Amphetamine use can stimulate heart rate but will not necessarily make the heart more efficient. Increased heart rate and higher blood pressure put a lot of strain on the heart and can eventually lead to heart complications. When the heart is overstimulated with an increase in blood pressure, the ventricular walls thin and the space in the ventricles can get larger. This causes the heart to work extra hard and continues to strain the heart.
Exercise allows for blood in the veins to be returned to the heart because the muscles physically push blood through the valves of the veins back to the heart. This increases the total amount of blood circulating whereas just increasing heart rate does not. When the heart has to deliver more blood and is receiving more blood, the cardiac muscles are trained to most efficiently do this over time. Stimulants can’t contribute the same physiological effects, so they strain the heart instead of training it.
This website goes into the mechanics of cardiac output, stroke volume, and heart rate. Understanding how the three play a role can help understand how different situations effect the heart.
_URL_0_ | [
"USFDA-commissioned studies from 2011 indicate that in children, young adults, and adults there is no association between serious adverse cardiovascular events (sudden death, heart attack, and stroke) and the medical use of amphetamine or other ADHD stimulants. However, amphetamine pharmaceuticals are contraindicat... |
why do gas companies ever bother lowering their prices? | Because there's more than one gas station in town. They could all leave their prices at $3 and people would still buy gas. However, if one company drops their price to $2.90 then they'll increase their market share. Perhaps everyone still buys the same amount of gas in total, but more people will choose to buy from the company with the lower price. | [
"BULLET::::- Low natural gas prices have resulted in lower congestion due to i) increased generation from gas-fired generators which are often located nearer to demand centers, and ii) lower fuel costs translating to lower congestion costs;\n",
"According to the World Bank, as of November 2012, the increased gas ... |
If the world's population became completely vegetarian would the amount of farmland decrease or increase? | It would decrease. Most farmland is dedicated to growing livestock feed. However, if you want to use the least possible amount of land, the way to go would be a "farm-animal free" diet which would include fish, so it wouldn't be vegetarian.
EDIT: [Here I actually found a source.](_URL_0_) "More than two-thirds of all agricultural land is devoted to growing feed for livestock, while only 8 percent is used to grow food for direct human consumption." | [
"Intensive farming often leads to a vicious cycle of exhaustion of soil fertility and decline of agricultural yields. Approximately 40 percent of the world's agricultural land is seriously degraded. In Africa, if current trends of soil degradation continue, the continent might be able to feed just 25 percent of its... |
How does changing the tire pressure affect the car's traction? | More lateral force can be applied through a larger contact patch given the same downforce because the contact pressure will be lower.
Therefore the shear stress between the tire and the road can be greater before losing traction. | [
"Load transfer causes the available traction at all four wheels to vary as the car brakes, accelerates, or turns. This bias to one pair of tires doing more \"work\" than the other pair results in a net loss of total available traction. The net loss can be attributed to the phenomenon known as tire load sensitivity.... |
why can an american go off to war and vote at age 18, but cannot buy a beer or a pistol until age 21? | Mothers Against Drunk Driving heavily lobbied the federal government to withhold federal highway funding from states that refuse to set the drinking age to 21. They caved. 18-21 year olds are easy to beat in a lobbying/political influence fight because so few of them vote and virtually none of them hold public office. | [
"Johnson is in favor of lowering the legal drinking age to 18, or eliminating the drinking age outright; \"I just believe that the lower the age the better you come to grips with what these substances are... If you can go to Iraq and die, or Afghanistan and die as a service man or women at 18, and you can't drink —... |
how do people get in the music industry? | Some really do get discovered on YouTube etc. But much more often, they ask to perform at bars and other public locations, where they play hundreds of times, working on their skills in front of a real audience and gradually improving (and moving to better venues). Once they get decent, some hire an agent to help get them better gigs and maybe even a deal with a record company. | [
"Music industry including companies and individuals through the new song, live performance and recordings for earn money. This industry allows individuals like singers, composers and musicians to create new songs. And the record companies sale records and sheet music. Also, the music industry has a range of profess... |
what is so special about henrietta lacks and why is she contaminating things? | Henreitta Lacks died of cervical cancer back in the 50s.
The cancer that killed her made her cervical cells immortal. Almost every other cell we know about stops dividing after about 500 divisions. This is known as the [Hayflick limit](_URL_0_).
Her cancer cells don't stop dividing. This makes them ideal for use in scientific experiments, which require human cells and repeatability. If I want to reproduce your experiment, the best way is for me to start by using the exact same cells you did. | [
"Henrietta has often been praised as a cultured princess and her correspondence with Moliere, Racine, La Fontaine, Bussy-Rabutin and others is notable. She was also a lover of gardening, and it was she who created a water garden at the Palais Royal. Henrietta also amassed a large and prestigious picture collection ... |
what is "bad gas" (or "bad diesel" in my case) and what are the complications it can cause for a motor vehicle? | There are a few forms of bad diesel. Water or possible algea contamination being most common. Most diesels have a water trap that needs to be emptied every oil change. If the water is allowed to remain I've seen it rust out the fuel system internally. Diesel fuel has a lubricant in it and due to the lack of lubricity in the water it will start wearing down your pump and or injectors. Just replaced 10k worth of high pressure fuel system due to this. Algea will form if the diesel fuel sits in the tank for a long time usually will plug up the filters first. | [
"Diesel is less flammable than gasoline / petrol. However, because it evaporates slowly, any spills on a roadway can pose a slip hazard to vehicles. After the light fractions have evaporated, a greasy slick is left on the road which reduces tire grip and traction, and can cause vehicles to skid. The loss of tractio... |
what was the original purpose of the invention of the internet? | The internet has taken a lot of forms over the years. It began with the developement of ARPANET ( Advanced Research Project Agency Network) which was funded by DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) for the sole purpose of having a defense network that could function in the time of a nuclear war. | [
"In the 1950s and 1960s, with the creation of computers, is where the history of the Internet begins. In 1969 came the invention of Arpanet, the first network to run on packet-switching technology. These were the first hosts on what would one day become the Internet. The concept of email was first created by Ray To... |
What was the nightlife like during the weimar republic? | This is a question I would be very happy to answer, but to my utter shock and horror, my personal library has virtually no sources regarding pre-1900s German literature and culture. So, I will have to rely on my memory and wait for someone with more reference material to come along. That said, I do have an M.A. in German literature and we certainly did cover the Weimar Republic, i.e. 1919-1933.
To begin with, movies were increasingly popular. We had theaters opening up and film was becoming a mass medium. You may be familiar with the name Fritz Lang. He directed the movie "M" (i.e. "Mörder"). This was sort of a combination of thriller, crime film, social commentary and mystery. It was noteworthy for its use of Bauhaus forms and futurism. Prior to this we had another Fritz Lang film called Metropolis, which incorporated a lot of expressionist motifs and also plays to the science fiction angle. Put into its broader cultural and social context, these films were struggling to address the instrumentalization of the individual and the perceived "mechanization" of society. You see over- and undertones critical of fascism in these movies as well, if you pay attention.
Taking a gander at "Italian futurism" in Google could also be rewarding.
In terms of cabaret we have a lot of left-wing and humorous elements, in particular if you look at Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill and the Threepenny Opera (Dreigroschenoper). Another, more correct name for this is 'Revue'. This popular performance was held in theaters thousands of times within a year or two of its creation; it would not be an overstatement to describe the Threepenny Opera as a "blockbuster" in 1928-terms.
You also had female entertainers like Marlene Dietrich who were able to break through socially conservative stereotypes on gender roles and become massively pop-culturally successful sex symbols, similar to Marilyn Monroe in the United States. Dietrich even achieved transatlantic popularity, which at the time was somewhat unusual (even then, the U.S., with its jazz music, had the pop-cultural edge).
In terms of music, as I just alluded, next to operettas and street operas and movies, in the music scene, revue and jazz were most popular. Berlin at the time was seen as a hotbed of "foreign" elements and non-German culture, and if you look at National Socialist propaganda, a lot of it was directed at the "Jews" (and Jewish entertainers) who were "polluting" the capital city with their allegedly "non-German" ideas. Likewise, the presence of foreigners in Berlin, which at the time was a global cultural magnet, was frowned on by Hitler & Co.
I'll see if I can do better than this in terms of sources, but for now... | [
"Life in the Weimar Republic was marked by massive hyperinflation, crippling poverty, and political upheaval. The massive number of orphans and widows without a means of feeding themselves resulted in prostitution on a scale not seen before in Germany. Additionally, the repeal and relaxation of laws forbidding pros... |
What are historians' assessment of Jimmy Carter's legacy, both of his presidency and his post-presidential activity? | I can give you my own assessment. Jimmy Carter was an incredibly consequential foreign policy president. The Carter Doctrine, along with the Monroe and Truman Doctrines, is one of the enduring concepts in American grand strategy. It defined the Persian Gulf as an area or American national interests. On the other hand, Carter also elevated human rights to a national interest. Those are two huge legacies. Carter facilitated the Camp David Accords and the Panama Canal Treaty. He also concluded and signed SALT II, established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, and initiated covert aid to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the Iranian Revolution and hostage crisis really tarnished the public view of his presidency. It's quite similar to Truman's "loss of China" and his unpopularity in the later years of his presidency. I strongly suspect that Carter will go through a similar, if not as thorough, rehabilitation based on the legacy of his policymaking. | [
"Jimmy Carter is much more highly regarded today than when he lost his bid for reelection in 1980. He has produced an exemplary post-presidency, and today there is an increased appreciation for the enormity of the task he took on in 1977, if not for the measures he took to deal with the crises that he faced. Carter... |
why do people from low social classes tend to be conservative? | Where do you get this from? I dont think the data transfered for example it is proven the poor areas of america almost always vote Democrat. Blacks also always vote Democrat. Highly populated areas typically poor inner cities always vote democrat. I dont think I understand .... | [
"Lenski originally predicted that people suffering from Status Inconsistency will favor political actions and parties directed against higher status groups. Lenski continues by stating that Status Inconsistency can be used to further explain the phenomenon of why status groups made up of wealthy minorities will ten... |
Why do beards get itchy? | When you shave your hair you cut it off flat. Those flat edges are sharp enough that they grab onto the skin as they grow back out. You usually also pull on the skin as you're shaving to get a "closer" shave. This can result in the hair being cut back to below the level of your skin once you stop pulling on it. When the hair grows out it has to push it's way out of the follicle again.
Both of these combined, a large cross section pushing its way through your skin, irritates the skin. It's even more apparent if the hair starts to grow sideways rather than up. You then have an ingrown hair which may get infected. That irritation itches so that you'll scratch it and remove either the hair that's causing the problem or the skin that the hair is catching on.
You also tend to have razor burn after shaving. That's where the razor shaves off some skin along with the hairs. The skin is now doubly irritated.
New hairs are like needles. They don't have a large rough cross section. They grow up and out of the follicle smoothly without irritating the skin. Even if the hair does grow sideways (ingrown) it usually isn't pulling on skin because there's no rough edge to catch at it.
I believe that waxing will cause the hair to grow back closer to naturally, so you don't get as many ingrown hairs. Anyone feel free to correct me on that one. | [
"Sycosis vulgaris is a cutaneous condition characterized by a chronic infection of the chin or bearded region. The irritation is caused by a deep infection of hair follicles, often by species of \"Staphylococcus\" or \"Propionibacterium\" bacteria. Asymptomatic or painful and tender erythematous papules and pustule... |
why are schools strict on females showing shoulders and exposing skin? | Because they seem to believe the archaic and stupid notion that all teenage boys are slavering hormonal beasts and the mere sight of even the tiniest bit of skin will put them into a lust filled rage and they won't be able to learn. You know, since the only education that matters is the male's. | [
"BULLET::::- Page 3 School – An all-teenage girl school where the students are required to attend topless (much to the arousal of all men they encounter; with the exception of their male teachers). They are often inspected at the gate by a teacher to ensure their nipples are erect and up to school standard. They la... |
why does the same water feel a different temperature to your body than it does to your head? for example when in the shower? | Fun fact: you can’t actually sense temperature; not in the way we usually think of it.
Instead, you sense the transfer of heat into or out of your skin. If different parts of your body are different temperatures, they will feel the same temperature differently.
There are a couple of experiments you can run to illustrate this:
1. Get three bowls of water, big enough to stick your hands into. Fill one with icy-cold water, one with hot water, and one with luke-warm water. Put one hand in the cold water and one in the hot water, and hold them there for a minute or so. Then put both hands in the medium water at the same time, and notice how each hand reports the temperature of that water differently.
2. Leave a block of wood, a piece of metal, and a plastic object in a room for a while, so they end up being the same temperature. When you feel them, they will feel different temperatures, because the different materials transfer heat more or less efficiently. | [
"The effects of dousing are usually more intense and longer-lasting than just a cold shower. Ending a shower with cold water is an old naturopathic tradition. There are those who believe that this fever is helpful in killing harmful bacteria and leaving the hardier beneficial bacteria in the body.\n",
"There are ... |
what does 4k oled mean, and how does it differ from regular 4k? | 4K means 4K resolution; 3840 x 2160 pixels or 4096 x 2160 pixels.
OLED is an LED technology which has a very low black level (can be very dark) and terefore giving much more contrast and "life" in the image.
Most likely the 4K (without OLED) is a normal TFT or LED display, while the OLED has the OLED technology in it
I hope I helped | [
"4K resolution, also called 4K, refers to a horizontal display resolution of approximately 4,000 pixels. Digital television and digital cinematography commonly use several different 4K resolutions. In television and consumer media, 38402160 (4K UHD) is the dominant 4K standard, whereas the movie projection industry... |
why does 'water' keep coming out of my nose when i have a cold? what's the purpose? | This question actually has a really cool answer. The stuff that's coming out is a result of your nasal mucus membranes going into overdrive. These membranes regularly generate a little bit of mucus to help flush dirt and things out of your nasal passages. However, when you have a cold, they go a little nuts and run like crazy.
So the question is, why do they generate *so much* watery mucus? The answer is that the cold viruses specifically evolved to cause your nasal membranes to do this, because it's a more effective way of spreading themselves to others! Imagine a cold virus that didn't cause you to snot all over, or cough, or sneeze. How would it spread to other people? It would be a lot more difficult. So viruses that caused your nose to spew all sorts of liquid ended up becoming more widespread. | [
"It is possible that the nasal cycle may exacerbate the nasal congestion caused by the common cold, as the lack of motility of the cilia in one half of the nose may lead to an uncomfortable sensation of not being able to shift mucus by blowing the nose.\n",
"The water should not be tap water, which may contain sm... |
as a non-american, what exactly are electoral colleges and how do they affect the us presidential election? | In the US the president is not elected by popular vote, instead he is elected by the electoral college. The representatives to the electoral college are decided by each state. Each state get's one electoral college member per member of congress they have (so the smallest states have 3 members, while large states like California have 55).
Most states are winner-take-all, so that whoever gets 50%+1 of the vote gets all of the electoral college votes for that state. What this means is any state with a fairly partisan lean (like California for the Democrats or Texas for the Republicans) isn't really contested by the presidential candidates. That's because convincing hundreds of thousands of people to vote for you won't actually do anything if all it does is cause you to lose by 5% instead of 10%. What that means is there are only a handful of states that are 1) Close enough that campaigning can change who wins the state, and 2) Large enough for the electoral votes to really matter. Right now those states are Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida. There are other smaller swing states that can help (Virginia, Nevada, Colorado), but the rule of thumb is that if you can win 2 out of the 3 big swing states you win the election.
Pennsylvania leans a bit more towards the democrats, and Florida leans a bit more for the republicans, and Ohio sits in the center. That means Ohio is really the only state you need to win (because if you win Ohio is highly likely that you'll win the other more favorable state as well). Now this sounds really bad, that only 1 out of 50 states "really matters", but voting in individual states aren't independent (generally) of each other. Basically Ohio acts like a good sample of the country as a whole, so arguments that convince Ohioans to votes for you generally gets Americans in general to vote for you. Still the electoral college allows for situations where the person that got the most votes doesn't win (Such as Al Gore in 2000), because narrow victories in swing states are more important to running up the popular vote count in large states. | [
"The United States Electoral College is an example of a system in which an executive president is indirectly elected, with electors representing the 50 states and the federal district. Each state has a number of electors equal to its Congressional representation (in both houses), with the non-state District of Colu... |
why human immune systems cannot adapt to diseases like cancer, aids, etc. but can adapt/evolve to other illnesses that would've otherwise killed us centuries ago? | The main way the immune system recognizes threats is through the presentation of antigens. Antigens are proteins on the surface of cells. With most disease-causing things, the body can react to the antigens and recognize it as a threat.
Cancer is a large group of diseases where the body's own cells undergo slight changes, then grow uncontrollably. Because a cancer cell is formed from pieces of the patient's own body, it's really difficult for the body to recognize the bad cells.
AIDS is the result of a virus called HIV. HIV is hard to fight off because it changes (mutates) really quickly. It's very difficult to recognize the virus if it keeps changing what it looks like. And as if that wasn't bad enough, HIV specifically attacks immune cells. These two factors make it so most people have very little chance of fighting off HIV and AIDS without medical help. | [
"The immune system extends this response to its treatments of self-antigens, softening reactions against allergens, the body, and digestive microorganisms. As the worms developed ways of triggering a beneficial immune response, humans came to rely on parasitic interaction to help regulate their immune systems. As d... |
why don't companies bring back those discontinued products people miss so much? | You assume that they haven't already considered and ruled out doing so behind closed doors. And sometimes they do, sometimes even on a recurring (annual/seasonal) basis.
But the bottom line is that the product was discontinued for a reason, and that reason was money. The hypothetical "right marketing campaign" you mentioned would be expensive, far more so than what they believe the product could bring in. From a profit point of view, a small, vocal fan/user/consumer base just isn't enough to justify the cost of reproducing an unsuccessful product. | [
"Products may also become obsolete when supporting technologies are no longer available to produce or even repair a product. For example, many integrated circuits, including CPUs, memory and even some relatively simple logic chips may no longer be produced because the technology has been superseded, their original ... |
What's the limiting factor in making bipedal robots? | If you just need it to move on an infinite plane, it would be easy. Walking up stairs and over obstacles is more complicated than just walking normally and trying to balance. And if the robot can't walk up stairs and over obstacles, wheels would be better. | [
"Six-legged robots, or \"hexapods\", are motivated by a desire for even greater stability than bipedal or quadrupedal robots. Their final designs often mimic the mechanics of insects, and their gaits may be categorized similarly. These include:\n",
"For nearly the whole of the 20th century, bipedal robots were ve... |
what makes a meat "processed" | Processed meat is any meat that is preserved by any of a number of methods, such as smoking, curing, salting, or addition of chemical preservatives. Examples of processed meat are bacon, salami, pepperoni, obviously bologna and hot dogs, most lunch meats, etc. | [
"Processed meat is considered to be any meat which has been modified in order either to improve its taste or to extend its shelf life. Methods of meat processing include salting, curing, fermentation, and smoking. Processed meat is usually composed of pork or beef, but also poultry, while it can also contain offal ... |
the difference between a pun and a play on words. | A pun is specifically a joke made using the multiple meanings of a word or exploiting that some words with different meanings sound the same. A play on words is much more broad as an exercise of wit where words are the main focus. It encompasses puns as well as double entendres, phonetic mix up, etc. | [
"Non-humorous puns were and are a standard poetic device in English literature. Puns and other forms of wordplay have been used by many famous writers, such as Alexander Pope, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, Robert Bloch, Lewis Carroll, John Donne, and William Shakespeare, who is estimated to have used over 3,000 pu... |
why do actors fake eating on tv and movies, rather than just eating the food? | Cos they have many takes to get a scene right and the food is cold by the time they get to it. Or theyre tired of eating it by take 20 | [
"Specific cases on the show have raised concerns that at least some portrayals are fictional or falsified. For example, the large number of Pica-like cases where subjects claim they consume materials that are known to be fatal when swallowed in the quantities are shown. These include gasoline, camphor (contained in... |
what causes major isp's (brighthouse, comcast, etc) have frequent service outages? | Simple. It's out dated technology that can't keep up with the demands of the country. Before anyone starts downvoting, let me explain. Coaxial cable have been delivering signal into our homes since before the internet was even invented. Then companies learned how to delivery internet using a infrastructure already laid down. (Coaxial cable) The problem is, this technology was invented for one way communication. Hence why your download speeds are hitting 100-150 Mbps and upload speeds of 10-15 Mbps.
This matters because of frequency issues. Farther away from transmitter you are, more static noise interrupts the signal. Keep in mind your connection is shared. Sure you have your own private hook up in your house, but your entire neighborhood/community shares a common access point. (The green boxes hidden behind bushes) Also Traditionally there's no redundancy incorporated into broadband infrastructures.
Take all the flaws that come with old technology and now add human error. Some engineer fat fingering code, a frayed cable, people digging holes.....ect ect ect. Hope this helps. | [
"BULLET::::- On February 28, 2017, AWS experienced a massive outage of S3 services in its Northern Virginia region. A majority of websites which relied on AWS S3 either hung or stalled, and Amazon reported within five hours that AWS was fully online again. No data has been reported to have been lost due to the outa... |
why is our immediate response to pleasure closing our eyes? | By closing our eyes, we increase the sensation by limiting distractions so we can focus on the pleasure more. | [
"Conversely, it can be considered that if the eye-opening muscles are in a continually relaxed state, the activity of the sympathetic nervous system is reduced and parasympathetic dominance is attained. Matsuo raises the example of meditation, in which loosening the eyelids can result in a relaxation effect.[『文藝春秋』... |
the positions and opinions of the candidates of the 2012 us election to a non-american. | If you could clarify which posts you're most interested in it would be much easier. There's quite a long litany of positions each candidate holds. | [
"In 2006, all candidates for the United States House of Representatives and Senate were invited to respond to a 10-question survey on several health and research issues, including stem cell research, research funding and global competitiveness in innovation. Candidates' responses, along with the public’s view on th... |
Will my phone charge faster/more if my portable battery is in a higher position than my phone? | No. Or at least not noticeably so. The electricity uses the electromagnetic force to move, and the wire is built to take advantage of that fact. The force carriers (electrons) are affected by gravity, but the force at that scale is so miniscule that you would need extremely sensitive equipment to even detect it, let alone quantify it. | [
"The battery contains 432 pouch cells. It can charge from 0 to 80 percent in 85 minutes using 50kW DC charging, or 45 minutes using a 100kW charger. Home charging with an AC wall box (7kW) achieves the same state of charge in 10 hours. As the I-Pace has a single-phase AC charger, it is slow to charge outside fast c... |
why is it that internet routers seem to "go bad" after a few years? | For a lot of routers, especially cheap ones, I think it's mostly an issue of cooling.
Routers are really just little computers, with a processor to make decisions about where to send traffic, and memory to temporarily store information. Like all computers, they have to be kept cool to function properly. However, they're expected to be cheap, small, and silent, so they don't get the big heatsinks and fans used to keep normal computers cool. They have to make do with convection, and small heatsinks if any. Because of this cost-cutting, the chips inside tend to run pretty hot, sometimes close to their rated limits.
As dust builds up, or the device sits in a warm location for months and years on end, the chips run hotter and hotter. At high temperatures, they are more likely to make a mistake and cause a crash. So if the problem is mild, you might be able to correct it by cleaning out the dust or even adding a cooling fan.
If the overheating goes on long enough, though, the processor can actually start to degrade. This is sort of like wear and tear on the engine in your car, except it's microscopic, and the parts are carrying electrons instead of moving. Once the degradation gets bad enough, a transistor or two in the processor might start switching incorrectly and sending a signal down the wrong path. This sounds like it should just make the device stop working completely, but there's some error-correction built in. On top of that, there are probably 500,000 transistors inside the router's processor, and not all of them are used for every decision. So the router will crash when it tries to use a deteriorated area of the processor (or store data in a deteriorated part of the RAM, which can also suffer damage).
You can prevent this issue by buying more expensive routers with (hopefully) better thermal control, and by making sure you keep yours from getting too hot. There's no reason a router *has* to wear out over time, it's just something that many of them end up doing. | [
"Routing in delay-tolerant networking concerns itself with the ability to transport, or route, data from a source to a destination, which is a fundamental ability all communication networks must have. Delay- and disruption-tolerant networks (DTNs) are characterized by their lack of connectivity, resulting in a lack... |
shouldn't bi-weekly mean twice in the same week instead of once in two weeks? | Yes, it should. Look at bi-annual vs biennial. The former means twice a year, the latter means every other year.
Though it seems as though bi-weekly can actually mean either twice a week or every other week _URL_0_ which is even more confusing. | [
"Biweekly means either occurring every two weeks, or occurring twice every week. This causes ambiguity when the term is used. As a result, in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, the term fortnightly is more commonly used for an event that occurs every two weeks.\n",
"'La quinzaine' is used in ... |
What caused the Age of Battles? | There wasn't an Age of Battles, to put it pithily. Battle has always been a part of war, but by their very nature, decisive battles are rare things. Siege, raid, and pitched battle are all tools available to a commander, and there are many problems in defining an age by one of them.
Beyond the questions of methodology, though, the alleged shift towards seeking battle just didn't happen in the 17th/18th centuries. Chandler credits the Duke of Marlborough with 'reviving' decisive battle (earlier 17th century figures like von Wallenstein, who had a big financial stake in their units, obviously tended to use the most cost effective approach), but we should remember that he really fought four large battles and scores of sieges. The last of these four, Malplaquet, was furthermore fought as part of his attempts to put the fortress at Mons under siege; he was fighting a positional war, just like the Duke of Parma a century before him and Frederick the Great a half century later.
Frederick the Great bears some investigation, too. Certainly, he fought a great many battles, but it's been commonly pointed out that he had little alternative to battle, since his kingdom lacked a solid fortified frontier (he liked to invade Saxony so as to knick their share of the Bohemian frontier). Furthermore, his writing and experience in warfare would indicate he considered strategic maneuver a superior tool to the tactical engagement. Contemporary writers like Lloyd and de Saxe joined him in agreeing with Vegetius, that it was better to destroy an enemy army by hunger than by the sword. Frederick got at least two bucketfulls of icewater to the face from Field Marshal von Daun, who at one point countered his invasion of Bohemia by maneuvering against Frederick's communications with Prussia (much of his army melted away in the precipitous retreat), and again at Kolin, where operations against the fortifications at Prague consumed his army to the point of being vulnerable to von Daun's counterstroke. Indeed, Frederick became quite a pessimist by the end of his career, declaring that the general symmetry of military skill and alliances made it impossible for a monarch to profit through military aggression.
If there was an 'age of battles', it was a very short one, lasting perhaps from 1805 to 1870. With Napoleon's Army Corps system, active use of partisans, general staffs, intensified foraging, more rapid marches, and professional officer corps, destroying an enemy army in a single battle (ideally by a concentric attack by separated army corps) and following up with a blistering pursuit became a possibility. While the Revolutionary levee en masse often fell short of expectations, the trend towards larger armies, which could simultaneously garrison their own fortresses, bottle up those of the enemy, and fight large field battles, was unmistakeable. Whereas the fortresses on the frontiers previously pointed like a knife at an invader's line of communications, now armies could leave behind troops to observe the garrison and proceed into the enemy's interior. This threat would force the enemy to accept battle, whereas for centuries prior the enemy army would as often opt to maneuver against your communications.
The great triumphs of decisive battle in the 19th century were quite short lived. The opening phase of the Franco-German War was as 'decisive' as any string of battles you could imagine, destroying both principle French field armies in a matter of months, but the increased mobilization of society that had made this short 'age of battles' possible would prove to be its undoing. After the destruction of their field armies, the French population itself took up arms against the German invaders, drawing out the war for months longer in a brutal national partisan struggle as well as several reconstituted Republican armies. von Moltke the Elder, one of the greatest theorists and practitioners of 'operations in the classic style' recognized as much by the mid 1870s, having calculated that a a preventative war against a rapidly rearmed France would no longer be possible. The world had left behind the Kabinetkreigen of the previous era, in which kings and princes fought battles on the field and made deals in palaces, and had entered the age of the Volkskrieg, the national struggle for existence.
| [
"BULLET::::- LeBlanc, Steven, \"Constant battles: the myth of the peaceful, noble savage\", St. Martin's Press (2003) argues that recurring famines have been the major cause of warfare since paleolithic times.\n",
"Warfare occurred throughout the history of Ancient Greece, from the Greek Dark Ages onward. The Gre... |
why hasn't the leaning tower of pisa fallen over? will it eventually fall? | Because engineers have anchored it. They drove a ton of steel piles into the ground and connected them to the tower with steel cables.
It won't fall any time soon. With enough money, material and care, anything can stand forever. | [
"The Leaning Tower of Pisa () or simply the Tower of Pisa (\"Torre di Pisa\" ) is the \"campanile\", or freestanding bell tower, of the cathedral of the Italian city of Pisa, known worldwide for its nearly four-degree lean, the result of an unstable foundation. The tower is situated behind the Pisa Cathedral and is... |
what does it mean to unlock your phone to another service provider? and why, depending on the brand, does it cost so much and take so long? | Most phones are *capable* of talking to other carriers that use the same networking technology. For example, in the USA, AT & T T-Mobile and I think a couple others all use the same GSM system.
However, if you buy a phone through one of those carriers, they put a piece of software in place that checks who you're trying to connect to, and will block it if it's not AT & T or whoever. Why? Because they gave you a bargain/contract when you bought that phone through them, and they want you to stay inside their network.
Thus they make unlocking the device and leaving their network challenging and/or expensive. If you leave, they don't make money billing you.
Cell phones not purchased through a carrier company are unlocked and can be used with any compatible network. | [
"If the handset is purchased as part of a promotional package or at a preferential price and the customer requires the unlocking before the expiry of the minimum period provided in the contract for communications services concluded with the operator, the customer will have to pay both the unlocking fee and the pena... |
how does 1080i work? | The i for "interlaced" means first your TV draws the even-numbered lines for the whole screen, then the odd-numbered lines.
By contrast in p for "progressive" mode your TV draws all the lines in order. | [
"Within the designation \"1080i\", the \"i\" stands for interlaced scan. A frame of 1080i video consists of two sequential fields of 1920 horizontal and 540 vertical pixels. The first field consists of all odd-numbered TV lines and the second all even numbered lines. Consequently, the horizontal lines of pixels in ... |
why does the stomach flu (norovirus, rotavirus) present such intense, violent symptoms in most people? | Both. The pain is caused by the virus to basically make you immobile, noone wants to move much when in a lot of pain, vomiting and diarrhoea are two great ways to spread the virus to those taking care of you because you yourself are too sick to do anything. The Diarrhoea is most likely due to the virus' attacking the cells in your intestine causing them to leak water. That in combination with your body trying to berid most of the virus leads to those symptoms. | [
"Rotavirus, norovirus, adenovirus, and astrovirus are known to cause viral gastroenteritis. Rotavirus is the most common cause of gastroenteritis in children, and produces similar rates in both the developed and developing world. Viruses cause about 70% of episodes of infectious diarrhea in the pediatric age group.... |
If stars have more planets than previously thought, would this "add " enough mass to galaxies so we don't need dark matter for explaining their dynamics? | This can't explain astronomical observations. There is about 4-5 times as much mass as we can see in star form, and planets typically weigh at most a few tens of a percent of their stars, but often much less. If planets weighed more than stars, we wouldn't see the orbits that we do.
There was an idea that the missing mass might be in the form of starless brown dwarf planets or other massive objects (the MACHO hypothesis), but their existence has largely been ruled out by the non-observation of microlensing. | [
"Current models also predict that the majority of mass in galaxies is made up of dark matter, a substance which is not directly observable, and might not interact through any means except gravity. This observation arises because galaxies could not have formed as they have, or rotate as they are seen to, unless they... |
What separates the historical method from journalism? | I trained as an historian to doctoral level, but spent six years working professionally as a journalist and have continued to freelance since that time, so I hope that I'm in a decent position to draw some lines for you here. I should stress that these lines are not hard-and-fast, but I do think that the core differences between history and journalism are about a lot more than just the age of the topic.
First, we need to bear in mind that there are different specialisms in journalism as well as in history. If you are a news journalist, your job is to report on events and developments that are important to your audience as promptly and as completely as possible. "Important" can mean different things. You might be a newspaper journalist reporting on world events that won't impact directly on your readers, but which, nonetheless, they feel it is important to know about because they change the shape of the world they live in, in a minor or a major way. But you might also be reporting in the trade press to a professional audience that needs to know about government policy, or new product launches, or something that's happening to competitors.
Either way, the key point is that news journalism is *immediate*. You're conveying information that is significant or meaningful now, but will be less so the next time your publication actually publishes. Again, time is quite a flexible thing here - a daily paper is, famously, just tomorrow's fish-and-chips wrapping (at least that's how we express it here in the UK), but I've worked for weekly and monthly and even quarterly trade press titles that still had a major commitment to reporting news. So the imperative is to cover the news as completely, and in as balanced a way as you can, *against a deadline*. If you miss that deadline, you might as well not have bothered in the first place. Your competitors will be covering the story, so you are going to lose readers if you cannot keep pace with them. Of course the same applies if you cannot cover the news as well or as accurately - if you are constantly being scooped by rivals, you are also going to lose readers. The point is that there is a strong commercial imperative (which eventually translates for individual journalists into strong career imperatives, because you need to keep your job and you are being assessed on your ability to meet readers' needs as well as, or better than, your competitors) to be *timely*, which is ultimately more important than any other consideration.
This means that journalists accept from the start that the stories they write are only going to be "complete" in the most comparative sense. There will be things your sources won't tell you, and contexts you won't be aware of at the time you write. You publish anyway, and everybody involved, from your bosses to your readers, understands and accepts that you are confronted with problems and limitations that can't be overcome in the time available.
Of course there are also journalists who write features, or commentary, who aren't confronted with precisely the same problems as "hard news" journalists. It's their job to contextualise, join dots, and even speculate in ways that news journalists aren't usually expected to do. But in pretty much every case, these writers still face rather similar limitations in terms of the *completeness* of the information they can access, and their reporting is assessed and judged in similar ways. No one really expects them to be complete, and in some contexts they wouldn't even be expected to be neutral or unbiased. If you're writing commentary for a conservative newspaper, you're usually going to be expected to write from a broadly conservative perspective.
Historians do face some of the same constraints that journalists do, which is why I say the lines between journalism and history are not absolutely hard and fast. If you're an historian, you don't expect to have access to every piece of information you might need; there are going to be gaps in the records you consult; sources still "lie" or seek to portray matters in a way that benefits the person or the group that created them, even if they are hundreds or thousands of years old. And historians themselves may still write in a way that is openly biased - they may approach history from a consciously Marxist perspective, for instance - and will be impacted by semi-conscious or unconscious biases as well. There really is no such thing as absolutely "neutral" history.
Nonetheless, if you are writing as an historian, you are supposed to do two things that are not expected of journalists. First, you are expected to have sought out, and read, and thought about, everything that matters to the topic you are interested in. Now, "everything" is a very moveable feast. If you are writing on very modern periods, a lot of stuff is still going to be restricted, and if you are looking further into the past there are going to be other sorts of problems to confront. It's possible to have pretty much literally read everything there is to read, if you are writing about eighth century Saxon England – though you'll certainly also be aware of the yawning gaps where you want to have something to read, and absolutely nothing exists. If you are writing about the French Revolution, it's simply impossible to have read "everything" - not only in terms of secondary sources, but primary sources too. And nowadays there's a lot of pressure on historians, and every other sort of academic, to publish regularly, and maintain some sort of publishing "schedule", if they want to get a job and win promotion.
So it's accepted, by your colleagues and your readers, that you are going to have to be selective. But, nonetheless, the expectation is that you are still going to have assembled your evidence in a way that's quite different to the way journalists work. You're going to be expected to have read *representatively* and you are also going to have to show, if required, that you have read *as completely as is reasonable* to expect in the circumstances – depending, that is, on where you are specialising. That includes reading and taking account of the findings and, just as importantly, the opinions of other historians, including those you have fundamental disagreements with - the latter being something that journalists, broadly speaking, rather rarely do. In addition, you are expected to contextualise. That may mean being aware of the historiographical debates that impact on your topic, or it may mean placing a very specialist study in a broader context of time or place.
Journalists are expected to do most of these things as well, to a greater or lesser extent, I know, but I do think that it is here that the critical difference between history and journalism lie. For journalists, it's a matter of doing what you can to tell the whole story *in the available time*. For historians, it's a matter of taking whatever time is necessary to tell the whole story *in its fullest context*. And that's because, ultimately, it's an historian's job to render judgement on some complete problem, whereas it's a journalist's job to provide pieces of the jigsaw that combine with other pieces (published and yet to be published) to let the reader assemble a picture on which *they* will render judgement, and perhaps take action. And all the commentary and features journalism that runs alongside the news journalism has a similar purpose.
In other words, while both historians and journalists are in the business of persuasion, historians try to persuade by presenting findings that have already been both contextualised and assembled into a reasoned case, whereas journalists (who may try to be, and think of themselves as being, neutral, or may be just as keen to persuade as any historian) are more usually presenting information, and contexts, that are not fully contextualised, and which *somebody else* (the reader) is often going to assemble into a reasoned case.
So, to answer your question directly, the time element you are interested in doesn't operate in quite the way you are suggesting. It's not so much about how long it's been since the topic under consideration was current, or since the events concerned took place. It's much more about how much time the journalists, or the historian, will be expected to invest in researching and writing about that topic or problem. | [
"Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on recent events. The word journalism applies to the occupation, as well as citizen journalists using methods of gathering information and using literary techniques. Journalistic media include print, television, radio, Internet, and, in the past, newsreels.\... |
What is AskScience's opinion on /r/NoFap? Is there actual evidence that not masturbating will positively affect a person's energy and motivation? | * Refraining from masturbation influences the testosterone levels for men and most men will tell you that this is a positive thing. There has been an interesting [study](_URL_0_) about the abstinence of ejaculation for a longer period of time. In this study, it was found that after exactly 7 days, there was a significant increase of testosterone levels.
From the abstract:
> The authors found that the fluctuations of testosterone levels from the 2nd to 5th day of abstinence were minimal. On the 7th day of abstinence, however, a clear peak of serum testosterone appeared, reaching 145.7% of the baseline ( P < 0.01). No regular fluctuation was observed following continuous abstinence after the peak. Ejaculation is the precondition and beginning of the special periodic serum testosterone level variations, which would not occur without ejaculation. The results showed that ejaculation-caused variations were characterized by a peak on the 7th day of abstinence; and that the effective time of an ejaculation is 7 days minimum.
I'd like to also refer to this great blog post that discusses this study together with some additional information:
_URL_1_
Some questions I have:
* Perhaps someone can explain what the proven behavioral and mental consequences are of an increase in testosterone levels for men.
* After the change on day 7, the testosterone levels decreased to their baseline again, at least, that's how I interpret this sentence:
"No regular fluctuation was observed following continuous abstinence after the peak."
I would also be really interested in why there is a change occurring after exactly 7 days. Is sperm of higher quality after 7 days? Are there mental health benefits to ejaculate every 7 days? I.e. can it also be *unhealthy* to refrain from masturbation for longer periods than that?
* Furthermore, I'd love to know if an increase in testosterone also influences the level of dopamine in the brain. Could it be that the level of dopamine steadily increases, the longer you refrain from masturbation as a male?
edit: removed personal anecdotal experiences
| [
"After abstaining from porn and masturbation for a period of time, some of NoFap's users claim to experience \"dramatic increases in social confidence, energy, concentration, mental acuity, motivation, self-esteem, emotional stability, happiness, sexual prowess, and attractiveness to the opposite sex\". Some NoFap ... |
what is title insurance | title insurance protects you from any financial loss due to problems with title.
when you buy a house, it's recorded in public records. anyone that has a claim on the house is recorded as well. however, mistakes happen, reports get lost, public records might not be complete, etc.
so if down the line, if it's discovered someone has a claim on the house, say it was sold to you "free and clear" by the previous owner, or some lien was discovered. title insurance would cover you. | [
"Title insurance differs in several respects from other types of insurance. Where most insurance is a contract where the insurer indemnifies or guarantees another party against a possible specific type of loss (such as an accident or death) at a future date, title insurance generally insures against losses caused b... |
how are hummingbirds able to hover and fly in any direction? to clarify, what is going on aerodynamically that allows this to happen? | Pretty much in the same way as a helicopter, except the wings don't go all the way around, but move back and forth instead. While flapping they generate lift/thrust, which supports the bird in the air.
There is a lot of aerodynamically interesting stuff going on around the wings, and the birds make small adjustments to the wing angles to control themselves, but that is rather beyond eli5. Just ask if you want more details. | [
"Hummingbirds have specific morphological adaptations that enable them to fly forwards, backwards, sideways as well as hover for extended periods of time. Hovering flight specifically is supported in Eurotrochilus by abbreviated ulnae and humeri and developed humeral protrusions.\n",
"During turbulent airflow con... |
What did Roman legionnaires actually do with the land they got after their tour of duty, and could it actually sustain their owners? | I'm not 100% sure if this really counts as a follow up question, but somewhat related to this I guess. It's my understanding that giving land to soldiers was practiced by the Successor kingdoms too. Was that any different than the Roman system in how the land was distributed or used? | [
"Gaius Marius, as part of the Marian Reforms of 107 BC, allowed these non-land-owning Romans to enlist in the Roman legions. For the first time, men no longer had to own property to fight for Rome. Because these men had no property, they became the clients of their generals and veterans looked to them for land or m... |
why are new smartphone processors hexa and octa-core, while consumer desktop cpus are still often quad-core? | The name of the game is efficiency. Virtually everything done on the hardware side of cell phones is aimed at the goal of lowering power consumption.
Usually, the best way to go about it with a processor is to lower the clock speed. Lower speed means lower heat dissipation, which means the electronics perform more efficiently and use less power, so you get longer battery life (or more juice for the giant screen). However, lower clock speed means slower performance. So in order to get performance speed up while balancing efficiency, they use more cores.
On a desktop processor, the name of the game is performance. They still go with multiple cores, but they also use higher clock speeds. They try to cram as many cores as they can in there, but it gets more expensive and you usually don't need as many for the same performance (unless you're using an AMD chip)
In addition to that, you have to keep in mind the cast majority of processors for cell phones are ARM while many desktop processors are Intel. Intel is able to do some crazy efficient processing with just four cores, and doesn't need to cram as many as they can into one chip. When they do, you get the top of the line i7s and Xeons, which are too expensive for most desktops. | [
"Most modern mainstream and value CPUs are made with a lower TDP to reduce heat, noise, and power consumption. Intel's dual-core Celeron, Pentium, and i3 CPUs generally have a TDP of 35–54 W, while the i5 and i7 are generally 64–84 W (newer versions, such as Haswell) or 95W (older versions, such as Sandy Bridge). O... |
how do bike/car stuntmen learn to do it without dying? | Firstly, they can practice with safety equipment. You can have mats and nets and other things to soften the landing of a failed attempt.
Also, they start with smaller, safer types of tricks and work their way up.
Lastly, failing isn't necessarily a death sentence. Just broken bones and stuff. So they try - and fail - without dying, but not without injury. Evel Kinevel is reputed as having broken every bone in his body. | [
"Stunt riding generally consists of wheelies, stoppies, and other variations on wheelies. Pit bikes can be used for stunting. Serious stunting requires many modifications including pegs and other optional mods such as an additional lever above the clutch for the rear brake this is used encase your right foot is not... |
Were any African countries positively impacted by the colonial era? | There is really no measure of whether a country was overall Positively or Negatively affected by the colonial era. Rather, there were positive effects and negative effects in different areas and to different peoples. A Black officer in the King's African Rifles could certainly consider himself positively impacted by the Colonial Era, though the same might not be said for a tribesman who found himself driven off his land to make way for a plantation.
For example, One could argue that Colonialism positively affected the continent by bringing with it:
- Modern Technology and Agricultural practices
- A Common Law Legal System
- A Central, Stable authority
- Democracy (Though this obviously wasn't always true)
Likewise, one Could Just as easily note the negative impacts:
- Artificially created borders leading to sectarianism
- The Transatlantic Slave Trade
- Resources were extracted with the profits going near entirely toward enriching the Colonizing power
Historians tend to avoid passing moral assessments on a topic so broad as this, simply because it clouds and simplifies the facts - That is instead more the focus of Politicians or Philosophers. Instead, one should simply look at the era's individual effects for what they are. | [
"Colonial powers in Africa wanted native Africans to wait patiently for limited political concessions and better career opportunities. Due to their exclusion from the negotiations of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles — the most important of the peace treaties that brought World War I to an end — black ex-servicemen and... |
What is the cause of diffusion and osmosis? How does it work? | There is a chemical potential difference because of different free energy for the different concentrations. Systems tend toward the lowest energy configuration, which occurs when there is no chemical potential difference.
Basically, the system is thermodynamically most stable when there is no concentration gradient. | [
"Simple diffusion and osmosis are in some ways similar. Simple diffusion is the passive movement of solute from a high concentration to a lower concentration until the concentration of the solute is uniform throughout and reaches equilibrium. Osmosis is much like simple diffusion but it specifically describes the m... |
Is there a search engine (of sorts) where you can search for the earliest recorded use of a certain word? | Unless I'm mistaken, I believe that's what the Oxford English Dictionary is supposed to do. I'd check there first. | [
"Early search engines looked for documents containing the words entered by the user into the search box . These are known as keyword search engines. Boolean search engines add a degree of sophistication by allowing the user to specify additional requirements. For example, \"Tiger NEAR Woods AND (golf OR golfing) NO... |
What is the most widely accepted explanation for the Late Bronze Age collapse? | Well, the consensus is generally something like "it was the Sea People, but it was also a bit more complex". The Sea People raids leading to the collapse captures the imagination, yet the view of raids in the Levant being the sole reason is starting to fade a little.
Cline's recent book deals really well with this and I think reflects much of the scholarly consensus. He argues that it is not a simple explanation; that there was one cause leading to a collapse. There were a number of complex, intertwining factors at play in the last 50 years of so of the Late Bronze Age (See Cline, *1177 BC: The year civilization collapsed*).
Certainly, the Eastern Mediterranean around 1200-1150 BCE did see large migrations and invasions, which are commonly attributed to the Sea People, though to it generally accepted that this this explanation of collapse is simplistic. There's certainly plenty of archaeological and textual evidence for attacks from the sea. For example, this is a letter from the king of Ugarit (coastal Syria-Palestine) to the king of Alashiya (Cyprus) reporting sea raids:
> My father, now the enemy ships are coming (and) they burn down my towns with fire. They have done unseemly things in the land. My father is not aware of the fact that all the troops of my father’s overlord are sta-tioned in Ḫatti and that all my ships are stationed in Lukka. They still have not arrived and the country is lying like that. … Now, seven ships that are approaching have done evil things to us, now then, if there are any enemy ships send me a report somehow, so that I will know. (RS 20.238, from Schaeffer, Ugaritica)
While this is all very dramatic and interesting, they only really tell part of the story. It does not explain how these attacks could have caused the near total destruction of a system that had been flourishing for 300 years, at least, according to the Sea People model.
The LBA in the Aegean and the Near East was extremely integrated. An international trade network, and advanced diplomatic and legal systems had been established between the imperial powers that had worked very effectively for several centuries. War had largely been abandoned between the Great Powers. Yet with such an integrated system, the failure of one part may affect the others.
During the 13th century BCE, there is evidence of natural disasters, famine and a reduction of trade. Beginning around 1250 BCE, there is evidence of very dry weather, which almost certainly would have caused crop failures (Langgut et al, *Climate and the Late Bronze Collapse*; Drake, *The influence of climatic change on the Late Bronze Age Collapse and the Greek Dark Ages*). It is also at this point that we also see the resurgent Assyrian empire, which began aggressive expansion in the last quarter of the 13th century (Grayson, *'The Synchronistic History' in Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles*). Diplomatic relations start to decline, moving away from a model of cooperation. A combination of these factors and the integration of the system led to system decline.
It is unlikely that the Sea People raids would probably not have been so destructive without the system already being in decline. The weakening structure probably gave opportunity to those who wanted to take advantage of the situation. It was most likely a destructive mix of natural disasters; climate change and resultant agricultural problems; trade interruptions and economic failures; and migrations and invasions. | [
"The \"Bronze Age collapse\" is the name given by those historians who see the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age as violent, sudden and culturally disruptive, expressed by the collapse of palace economies of the Aegean and Anatolia, which were replaced after a hiatus by the isolated village ... |
how do chinese people alphabetize? | Just like everyone else; the English alphabet doesn't change if you're Chinese...
On a more serious note, there are two ways:
1. You group in radicals (i.e. the radical 女 means "woman" and makes all characters that contain it have a feminine quality:
- 妈 = Mother
- 姐 = older sister
- 好 = good
Within radicals, you group by number of strokes needed to write that radical:
- 女 takes 3 strokes to write
- 木 takes 4 strokes to write
Therefore, words that contain 女 as a radical come before those that contain 木 in a dictionary. For a complete list of radicals in the order they come in a dictionary: _URL_2_
2. The other way to alphabetize is quite modern since it's a western adaptation. Every character in mandarin Chinese can be pronounced using the western alphabet plus an accent, so in dictionaries that use this classification, they'll convert 女 to "nǚ", 妈 to "mā", 姐 to "jiě". It would work just like an English dictionary, j coming before m, 姐 would come before 妈.
Now to classify accents, they follow this simple order:
- Flat accent (horizontal line above the letter you want accented) comes first: - (e.g. ā)
- Ascending accent comes second: / (e.g. é)
- Valley accent comes third: v (e.g. ě)
- Descending accent comes fourth and last: \ (e.g. à)
There are of course special cases like ¨, but that's more advanced, and not incredibly relevant to the main question.
Third way, mentioned by someone else that I didn't know about (probably the most ancient of all 3 methods): _URL_3_
EDIT: WOW THANK YOU FOR GOLD!
EDIT2: The proper word for "accent" is "tone" as some have pointed out. Also, for tones in Cantonese: _URL_0_
EDIT3: changed "neutral accent" to "flat"
EDIT4: Some have asked why 木 takes 4 strokes, when you can technically do it in 3. The ^ in 木 isn't a legitimate stroke (based on millennia of customs). List of legitimate strokes: _URL_1_
EDIT5: Added "sort by stroke", 3rd method. | [
"The Chinese orthography centers on Chinese characters, which are written within imaginary square blocks, traditionally arranged in vertical columns, read from top to bottom down a column, and right to left across columns. Chinese characters denote morphemes independent of phonetic change. Thus the character (\"one... |
What happened/happens to military dead on the losing side? | You should narrow it down to a time period, specific war or countries. This is too broad to give a good answer. | [
"A person who is not a battle casualty, but who is lost to his organization by reason of disease or injury, including persons dying from disease or injury, or by reason of being missing where the absence does not appear to be voluntary or due to enemy action or to being interned.\n",
"On 23 February 2011, at a fo... |
why do so many water droplets stay in place on a glass shower door after you are done? | Water molecules would kinda prefer to be close to other water molecules rather than to air molecules so they gather together in drops (you can Google water surface tension if you like). While the shower glass may look smooth to us its tiny bumps seem rough to the little water droplets so they cling where they are rather than running downwards, plus the tension which draws the water molecules towards each other as droplets isn't over powered by the force of gravity pulling them downwards | [
"To create the effect of a thin layer of condensation forming on the outside of glasses containing cold liquid, dulling spray may be applied, with paper or masking tape protecting the non-\"frosted\" areas. More pronounced condensation and dew drops are imitated by spraying the glass with corn syrup or glycerin.\n"... |
Any background info on this Greek artifact? | Probably a krater, illustrated with satyrs. Here they are pouring wine ( or, more precisely, likely wine mixed with water, from just such a krater). As satyrs were supposed to be constantly looking for sex ( therefore hypersexuality in men was once called satyriasis) it is perhaps a humorous comment on this one's priapic skills that he can balance a wine cup. | [
"Greek artifacts were found in the bay of Vičja near Ložišća on the estate of the Rakela-Bugre brothers. Many of the objects belonging to this still unexamined site are now on display in the Archeological Museum of Split.\n",
"The Archaeological Museum of Delos () is a museum on the island of Delos, near Mykonos ... |
whats the difference between sugar in fruits, sugar in sweets, sugar in normal food (like potatoes, meat) and raw white sugar that i buy in supermarket? which one is worse for my health? | Sugar is a category of molecules, including monosaccharides (one molecule, like glucose or fructose), disaccharides (two monosaccharides stuck together, eg 1 Glucose + 1 Fructose = 1 Sucrose), and polysaccharides (many mono or disaccharides stuck together, eg Starch which is a whole bunch of glucoses).
The sugar you find in fruit is mostly fructose. Fructose is a lot sweeter than glucose or sucrose, which means less of it is required to create the taste of sweetness. Many artificial sweeteners are fructose-based. Fructose is also less versatile than glucose in terms of what the body can use it for.
The sugar in sweets is typically sucrose, as is raw white sugar. Sucrose is broken down into 1 glucose and 1 fructose in your small intestine. The glucose is subsequently stored in the liver, whilst the fructose behaves like fructose. Generally, you need more sucrose to create a flavour of sweetness than you do fructose, however, sucrose is also *waaaaay* easier to make and also quite a lot easier to work with, which is why it's the go to sugar for things like baking.
The sugar in things like potatoes and meat *tend* to be glucose-based polysaccharides. In potatoes, this is starch. This kind of sugar you probably hear referred to most often as "carbohydrates". They're the carbohydrates that don't count as "of which sugar" on food labels. These sugars take quite a while for your digestive tract to digest, and are also very easily stored by the liver (the first stop of the blood after the small intestine, where glucose is absorbed), meaning that these large glucose-based polysaccharides are much less of an issue for blood sugar levels than sucrose is. Also, these polysaccharides don't taste sweet, which means they don't activate the brain's dopamine very much, and thus it's much harder to over-eat.
Bonus round: Lactose sugars found in milk and other dairy products are even less sweet than glucose, but is pretty much identical to glucose in terms of function since the body rapidly converts it into glucose. However, most humans can't actually digest lactose at all.
No sugar is directly worse for your health than any other. The real danger of sugar is that it can be addictive, and as a sweet substance, is also something we can be prone to eating far too much of just by accident. Sucrose in particular dissolves spectacularly well, so you can pack a *ton* of it into pretty much anything you want, like coke. | [
"Sugar is a very versatile ingredient and is used in many of food and products we consume every single day. What makes sugar different is the way it interacts with the other ingredients and systems within the food as well as how it is treated. When it is heated enough to break the molecules apart, it generates a co... |
why are med schools and residencies so selective when there is a national shortage of doctors? | Wow, I'm so lucky the dropped the standards for becoming a Doctor, otherwise I would never have made it. So anyway, I'll be preforming an epend... apetand.... a procedure an you. This might fix the problem, I hope. If not we'll try something else. Hell, the body has 2 of most things for a reason so I can probably take most of them out. | [
"Though India has many medical schools and produces thousands of medical graduates every year, there is a great shortage of doctors in rural areas. Most graduates do not wish to practice in rural areas due to understaffed hospitals and inadequate facilities.\n",
"BAPIO estimates that there are around 40,000 docto... |
why don't companies like boeing and rolls-royce use robots in their manufacturing processes? | Huge amounts of automation are used.
Automating final assembly of these parts would be hard. If they made millions of engines, they would do it. But assembling a few per day is easier and more cost effective to do with people.
It's a matter of cost vs benefit. Do you spend millions automating something, or pay hundreds of thousands on labor? | [
"Advanced industrial robots, also known as smart machines operate autonomously and can communicate directly with manufacturing systems. In some advanced manufacturing contexts, they can work with humans for co-assembly tasks. By evaluating sensory input and distinguishing between different product configurations, t... |
why is plastic so bad for the environment if it's raw material literally comes out of earth ? | The raw materials are converted into something nature has never experienced before. There are no organisms capable of processing it, so plastic trash might as well be everlasting rocks, but with no positives and countless negatives for the environment (especially marine life).
The problem is that plastics are less robust than rocks. They break into micro-sized fragments which are absorbed by marine animals. Imagine eating a mouthful of sand with every meal. That will screw up your digestive system. Also, plastics can be made in Long thin shapes like plastic bags / ribbons. These can tangle easily, and choke animals to death, or block their digestive tract. Because it doesn’t degrade, there is no option but to slowly die.
If an organism evolved to digest plastic, there would be less problems with plastic trash. Floating bits would break down into hydrocarbons and become feed material for plants. Unfortunately, evolving an organism capable of doing so will be slow.
Look up the Carboniferous period. The exact same thing happened with wood lignin. When woody plants first evolved, nothing digested wood pulp and it just littered the entire world. Literally miles deep of coal rocks were formed from this wooden layer not decaying and slowly being compressed. Eventually some fungi evolved to digest it and now we don’t worry about “wood pollution”. | [
"The distribution of plastic debris is highly variable as a result of certain factors such as wind and ocean currents, coastline geography, urban areas, and trade routes. Human population in certain areas also plays a large role in this. Plastics are more likely to be found in enclosed regions such as the Caribbean... |
why are large objects cgi in a normally 2-d animated movie or tv show? | It's cheaper to animate. The hardest thing to animate is movement so that takes time and time=money. Why the giant is a cgi model is because it's easy to make it a 3D it model. Robots, cars and aircrafts are the things that mostly gets to be cgi in 2D animations because their movements are much easier to calculate and manipulate in a software were humans and animals are much more complex. And cgi metal does not look as weird as cgi skin. | [
"Nevertheless, despite the fluidity of CGI animals and monsters, purely visual effects are often panned, or, at least, not preferred by discerning film viewers. It is extremely difficult to mimic realistic lighting, leading to most CGI creatures and characters looking obviously fake when placed alongside real envir... |
How does chlorine gas kill you? | Chlorine gas will react with the water in the mucous/linings of your lungs and form hydrochloric acid. This will destroy your lung's ability to take in oxygen and will be very painful. Enough gas and you will die from lack of oxygen. | [
"Chlorine is a toxic gas that attacks the respiratory system, eyes, and skin. Because it is denser than air, it tends to accumulate at the bottom of poorly ventilated spaces. Chlorine gas is a strong oxidizer, which may react with flammable materials.\n",
"Once inhaled, chlorine gas diffuses into the epithelial l... |
What are the physics behind surviving a fall from 3km up without a parachute? | Soft earth, aka lots of decaying matter could be enough. Generally not hitting anything overly rigid would increase your chances.
People have occasionally survived falls from great heights over the years
_URL_3_
_URL_0_
_URL_2_
_URL_1_ | [
"Thanks to large unpopulated areas to jump over, 'stuff' jumps become possible. These jumps consist of skydivers leaving the aircraft with some object. Rubber raft jumps are popular; where the jumpers sit in a rubber raft. Cars, bicycles, motorcycles, vacuum cleaners, water tanks, and inflatable companions have als... |
why do reditors get so upset over reposts? | Usually it's not the repost itself that upsets people, it's the reposter trying to take credit for a repost as original work. | [
"Redlining has a multiplicity of effects on the way our systems are set up today. Financial implications, benefits and public safety regulations impact the way that people who live in the \"Hood\", (often people of color) have come to relate to themselves and society. Hood Culture is reflective of the ways people o... |
If any of the planets orbiting stars that we have discovered had lights similar to earth (city lights that can be seen from space) could we see it with our telescopes? | I'm pretty sure we aren't capturing images of these planets but instead know they exist due to the light they block between our view and the sun they are orbiting. The representations of these planets that you see in the media are artist interpretations of what those planets might look like. In reality, NASA has a light graph that indicates the planet's presence based on light obstruction data.
Right now they are having a hard time even finding planets smaller than the largest in our solar system so identifying lights on those planets is very unlikely.
I'm actually in the process of developing a lesson about NASA's Kepler project for elementary students and was doing a lot of research on this today. You should check out [this website](_URL_0_) | [
"Both Corot and Kepler have measured the reflected light from planets. However, these planets were already known since they transit their host star. The first planets discovered by this method are Kepler-70b and Kepler-70c, found by Kepler.\n",
"On March 22, 2005, NASA released news that infrared light from the p... |
how old is that story about Alexander crying salt tears because there were no more worlds to conquer? | It doesn't appear in any ancient texts!
Segrais writes that Greek Historians claimed that Alexander wept at hearing the legend of Achilles, Plutarch has Julius Ceaser weeping because he can't match up to Alexander's accomplishments. But no where does Alexander weep because 'he has no more worlds to conquer.'
The earliest version of the story doesn't appear until 1628, in Robert Hayman's book 'Quodlibets.' Which was the first English Poetry book published in Canada! It seems to be the result of a confusion between quotes attributed to Julius Ceaser *about* Alexander and quotes attributed to Alex himself.
"Great Alexander wept, and made sad mone, because there was but one world to be wonne."
The version that mentions 'salt tears' was the poetic wizardry of legendary darts commentator Sid Waddel
"When Alexander the Great was 33 he cried salt tears because there were no more worlds to conquer. Bristow is only 27."
Bristow had just won the World Professional Darts Championship.
Waddel also said:
That was like throwing three pickled onions into a thimble!
He's about as predictable as a Wasp on speed
Look at the man go, its like trying to stop a waterbuffalo with a
pea-shooter
The atmosphere is so tense, if Elvis walked in, with a portion of chips...
you could hear the vinegar sizzle on them
It is entirely right that people assume his quote must come from a classical source, the man was a genius. | [
"... said Alexander 'Truly, then, all the inhabited world is mine. West, north, east, south, there is nothing more for me to conquer.' Then he sat down and wept because there were not other worlds for him to conquer.\n",
"Arrian states that all his sources agree that \"for two whole days after Hephaestion's death... |
what is a purchase order? | It's basically a contract. A company or government agency issues a purchase order when they have approved the purchase of a product or service from a certain vendor for a specific price. It's like saying, "We agree on the terms of this purchase and we will pay the price in this purchase order upon billing." | [
"A purchase order (PO) is a commercial document and first official offer issued by a buyer to a seller indicating types, quantities, and agreed prices for products or services. It is used to control the purchasing of products and services from external suppliers. Purchase orders can be an essential part of enterpri... |
How do you differentiate between history and mythology? | This encroaches on a difficult topic because it implies an evaluation of a range of religious texts that are approached with faith rather than academic scrutiny. Most people tell legends (narratives generally told to be believed) that deal with past times. These historical legends include etiological legends (narratives that describe the origin of things). These were honest attempts to describe the past, and in some sense, they are an early generation of the historical process. In that sense, the Vedas - just like the story of Noah (and the origin of the rainbow), for example - are historical texts.
Like all historical texts, these documents have been examined with academic scrutiny and they are often found to be wanting as historical documents. And yet, those who approach these documents with faith rather than academic scrutiny continue to find them as valid descriptions of the past or at least as having some "truth" embedded within the words of the text. The process of faith is very different from the historical process, however.
It is also important to point out that historical legends are often evaluated academically and are sometimes found to contain elements of truth: the Arthurian legendary cycle is history in some sense; they aren't particularly good or reliable historical texts, but there seem to be some elements of history embedded in them. Many scholars have created a field unto itself, chasing down the "real" Arthur and the "real" Camelot. Most of the Arthurian sources evaporate under the harsh light of historical evaluation, but enough survives that those who seek the core element are satisfied. This isn't always the case with historical/etiological legends: often there is no "fact" underlying the legend: the idea that there is always an element of truth beneath every legend is, in itself, an aspect of folk belief that is not entirely true. But that doesn't exclude these narratives as serving as the first attempt to describe and understand the past.
We can look at Gibbons, The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776) as both a history (a secondary source) about ancient Roman, and as a primary source that can be used to consider eighteenth-century culture and point of view. In the same way, we can look at the Vedas at an attempt to document and understand an ancient past - as a first attempt at the historical process - and as a primary source that describes religion, faith, and the society during the time when the Vedas took shape.
We would not look at ancient mythologies as particularly reliable descriptions of the past, but they were clearly honest attempts to achieve just that. | [
"In present use, \"mythology\" usually refers to the collected myths of a group of people, but may also mean the study of such myths. For example, Greek mythology, Roman mythology and Hittite mythology all describe the body of myths retold among those cultures. Folklorist Alan Dundes defines myth as a sacred narrat... |
A question about artificial limbs. | The problem you mention is an open research question, and lots of people are working on how such an artificial limb may work.
A researcher at the University of Pittsburgh named [Andy Schwartz](_URL_1_) recently made headlines and [a 60 Minutes special](_URL_3_) on a brain machine interface for paralyzed patients. The Schwartz group uses what's called [the Utah array](_URL_2_) which connects the patient directly to the machine through leads that are implanted. The most recent iteration, if I'm not mistaken, is something like 100 leads, though I'm not all that familiar with their work.
One thing you will notice is that the arm in the 60 minutes special is HUGE. Well, huge compared to the patient and their own limb, at least. That's one of the biggest problems in artificial limbs today--being able to incorporate each and every degree of freedom in a human arm, all the way from the fingers, wrist, elbow, to shoulder. In addition, these artificial limbs must be lightweight, so the user is comfortable for long periods of time. On top of *that*, the limb must be *perfectly* reliable, working whenever called upon.
All of what I've mentioned already is focused just on the *mechanical* design of the arm. To get neural control, the Schwartz group looks at brain signals during typical arm movements, to try and isolate the waveforms and use them to control the arm. This is tough because the EEGs (I assume the signals are EEG, but if not please correct me!) are typically very noisy, but so far the Schwartz group has been able to find some correlations to different muscle and arm movements.
This accounts for the learning time required of patients as they adjust to their new arm. I can imagine some computer science methods in machine learning may help here, but in the end, since everyone is different, it will be a fact of life that there needs to be some training time before a patient is comfortable and able to use the arm with confidence.
AND this hasn't even touched on the idea of providing a "sense of touch" to the artificial limb user!! [There is an article on the front page](_URL_0_) right now about a robotic hand that can "feel," but I haven't had the chance to look more in depth on how that is accomplished. It seems to me like there are leads and wires from the hand that are able to provide this sense, but I am not yet convinced about how it will be received in the patient. The brain certainly has a lot of plasticity, and theoretically should be able to incorporate the robotic hand as its own, but questions remain as to if the patient would be able to keep it on all the time, or remove it for hours at a time to "rest." In addition, I'm worried about the sensitivity of the sense--whether it is high fidelity enough or still too coarse to provide meaningful feeling. Finally, if the patient *does* adapt well to the hand, would they react badly if it was removed, or needs to be replaced?
As you can tell, lots of questions, and the field is certainly still evolving. In the future, we will be able to answer your question more fully, but at the moment, we're only scratching the surface of what's possible. | [
"Prosthesis is a synthetic alternative for missing limbs, teeth, and various other body parts. Advances in prosthetic limbs have increased greatly during the twentieth century. The use of new materials such as modern plastics, complex procedures and better pigments have created lighter in weight and more realistic ... |
Has there ever been any experiments showing any kind of seemingly paranormal activity, such as objects floating on their own, with no visible explanation in sight, or episodes of mental illness with no known diagnosis? | No double blind study has ever produced plausible paranormal activity.
There have been lots of episodes of mental illness with no know diagnosis, but that really is just reflective of how complex and imprecise mental illnesses are. | [
"Among modern theories are those connected to paranormal activity, such as abduction by aliens. Fictional use of this premise was featured in the \"Doctor Who\" serial \"Horror of Fang Rock\". The mystery also was the inspiration for the composer Peter Maxwell Davies's modern chamber opera \"The Lighthouse\" (1979)... |
US/Israel before and after Suez | > 1) What was the US stance on Israel at its inception? I imagine the US would try to win the favor of the whole Middle East (gaining foundational regional influence over the Soviets) but when the Soviets won the social favor of anti-imperialist Arabs, the US made an anchor out of Israel
The original US stance was slightly muddied. The US was very, very keen to stay out of supplying weapons or military aid to Israel, and was very stringent on keeping arms from flowing into the Middle East (for the most part). However, they did also become the first nation to provide *de facto* recognition to the state of Israel, within 11 minutes. While the Soviets were the first to provide *de jure* recognition, 3 days later, the US' quick response (or rather, Truman's hasty one) and *de facto* recognition was still pretty significant. Still, the US did not have any special affinity for Israel: it provided no military aid, and the main ally of the Israelis was the French. They were repeatedly rebuffed by the US when they came to the US for a strategic partnership throughout the 1950s.
> What did Israel's economy look like early on, and how/what did it develop into? Also, what/how did the US aid this (grants, resources, tech-transfers)?
Again, the US was not particularly huge in influencing the early Israeli economy and military. The economy was fairly industrialized but not too first-world-y. The Israelis faced huge problems: they had just fought a war, and had (over the course of the 4 years following) doubled their population with refugees who were mostly displaced persons in Europe or refugees from Arab states that left all their livelihoods and belongings/valuables behind (Iraq, for example, supplied over 130,000 Jews, and forced them to leave all their jewelry behind when they left). International aid was forthcoming, but didn't mean the Israelis didn't suffer and struggle. They tried to succeed economically and deal with this problem through a few methods:
1) Appealing for diaspora Jews to help - Golda Meir went on fundraising trips around the United States and other areas, and managed to raise far more than they even expected/asked for thanks to donations from Jews around the world. Still, this was not enough.
2) Settling Jews on Arab lands - Arabs who fled over the course of the 1948 war and were left outside the borders and refused re-entry, or those who remained in the borders and had their lands seized thanks to the very selective laws about absentee land seizure, lost their lands to the Israeli government. The government then filled many of these lands and homes with Israeli refugees who came to Israel. Still, this was not enough, and many Israeli refugees were stuck in refugee camps (ma'abarot) similar to the Palestinians. These refugee camps were gone within a decade, however, thanks to the help of the international community, Israeli government, and land seizures.
3) Appealing to the US for help - Israel received $100 million in bank loan format from the United States Congress at Truman's urging, for the absorption of new immigrants.
Israel didn't just build homes at breakneck pace, and resettle people that way. It also took huge steps to jumpstart the economy and get people employed and working. Because most of the immigrants were unskilled, a huge public works program was initiated, and afforestation was one of the main things the Jewish National Fund encouraged during this program (Israel is known for planting many new trees during this time, and past it).
That's a basic overview of that, but yeah. Throughout the rest of the 1950s Israel would receive some mixture of loans and grants from the United States, which helped it get on its feet, but militarily it didn't begin getting even loans until 1959, and aid didn't really start in earnest until after the 1967 and 1973 wars in terms of tech sharing and military grants/loans. Table [here](_URL_0_) on page 27.
> When/why did the Soviets lose control of Israel when they were mostly socialist/leftist to begin with? Why did they gravitate to the US?
The Soviets never really had control of Israel. They had some pretty similar ideologies, but the Soviets were pretty firmly allying themselves with the Arab states, who were more willing to work with them to get military technology and weaponry. This was a solid shift but the US refused to give up on working with the Arab states too at first. But since Israel fell into the Western camp for working with France, and later Britain during the Suez Crisis, it was hard for the Arabs to take the US seriously. And when, during the 1967 war and the lead-up to it, the Soviets took even bigger steps to arm the Egyptians and Syrians, it became clear which side was which. The shift was gradual, but the Soviets had never been all too great of friends with Israel to begin with: Stalin wasn't the biggest fan. Klinghoffer in "Soviet-Israeli Relations" (1990) writes that the question of Soviet Jewry's loyalty was the unresolved source of hostility between them, and the Soviets had taken some pretty anti-Semitic positions in the past in their treatment of Soviet Jews. Klinghoffer notes, as I said, that relations were warm at the start: fuel, weapons, and the like were flowing through the Soviet's influence (through Czechoslovakia especially) and the Soviets were the first to extend *de jure* recognition. But this died fairly quickly: ideologically Israel was different because of its democratic ideals, and it backed the UN against North Korea in the Korean war. The Soviets feared that Soviet Jews would leave for Israel, so they banned emigration, and the anti-Semitism of the cultural purges in 1947-1948 was noted and remembered by Israelis. In 1953 the Soviets accused Jews of working for Israel and the CIA to kill Soviet officials, and then Israelis bombed the Soviet legation in Tel Aviv. Relations were severed, then reassumed, and the shift of Arab vs. Israel where the Soviets appealed to the Arab side and were doing better, and the Israelis went with the French, cemented. That's a basic overview of that, I suppose.
> What is Israeli Grand Strategy? What is the Arab geopolitical/social perspective of Israel and, knowing this, how has Israel sought to most effectively cease Arab attacks and harassment?
I don't know what you mean by Grand Strategy necessarily, but the Arab geopolitical view had been for a very long time that Israel had no right to exist and that it should be removed and replaced with an Arab state. This was the foundation of the Arab rhetoric socially, and geopolitically the Arabs sought to weaken Israel at any turn they could so long as it didn't also harm them. The Arab states also co-opted and used the Palestinian cause as the reason for their actions, refusing to integrate Palestinians effectively to keep them separate and keep their "identity" strong, and they also fostered false governments in the area like the "All Palestine Government" the Egyptians put in place that had no authority (placed in Gaza). They also allowed, and in some cases aided, Palestinian guerrilla operations against Israel, especially during the lead-up to the 1967 war (Fatah from 1965-1967 was especially important).
The general Israeli strategy was usually deterrence. They and the Arab states were engaged in a constant arms race, and there were rumors leading up to 1967 that the Israelis were building nuclear weapons capability, while they were also securing arms deals with the French that the Egyptians and Syrians would then seek to match through deals with the Soviet sphere. Israel's nuclear program does not appear to have been a huge contributor to the decision to go to war in 1967, but it definitely was a concern of the Egyptians in particular, who were also considering their own program and making longer-range missiles. Deterrence has always been a big strategy: when Egypt or Syria moved, Israel moved too. In the lead-up to the 1967 war, when Egypt mobilized, so did Israel. If Egypt backed down, so did Israel. And when guerrilla attacks came, especially from Syria, the Israelis retaliated harshly, sometimes prompting the Syrians to attack them so they'd have an excuse to "punish" the Syrians (as in April of 1967 with the air battle over Damascus that the Syrians lost badly).
> I'm trying to gather an Israeli perspective, so how has partnership with the US helped their country (specific case studies if you have them)?
It's provided technology that helped the Israelis win wars and fight them (look at the Phantom F-4 deal in 1968, if I'm not wrong on the year), it's provided them with international cover (consider the UN Security Council proposals that have been vetoed or amended to be less harsh on Israel), it's provided them with a superpower that could counter the Arab superpower protection from the Soviet Union with funds and weapons (aid under Nixon increased greatly), and it's provided them with a backstop during times of war (the US airdrop didn't reverse the tides for Israel during the 1973 war, but it did embolden them and make it possible for them to keep momentum going their way without worrying about running out of supplies).
> How/has Israel ever manipulated the US and/or other great powers to its advantage?
Manipulated? I guess by saying they had shared interests, attempting to use all methods possible to influence the government (ie. the Weizmann friendship with Truman or AIPAC), etc..
> the US and Israel were pretty estranged until after the Suez Crisis when the US replaced France and Israels sugar daddy
This didn't happen until 1967. While the French and British became less involved in the Middle East after Suez, leaving the US to be the "overseer" of the region, France remained Israel's supplier until after 1967, by most accounts. | [
"During the 1956 Suez Crisis, the Soviet Union sided with Egypt. The USSR viewed the nationalization of the Suez Canal as important to the removal of Western influence from within the Middle East. Additionally, the Soviet Union was willing to fund Egypt because in return, it received access to warm-water ports, whi... |
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