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1xxbq0 | In quantum physic's 'observer effect', what qualifies as an 'observer'? | Does the observer have to be something that would be considered a conscious entity, or does it just refer to any Newtonian object, or something else entirely? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1xxbq0/in_quantum_physics_observer_effect_what_qualifies/ | {
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"\"Observation\" really just means \"interaction.\" In order to measure a quantum system's state, we have to poke it with something, ie force it to interact.\n\nSo, if I measure an electron by shooting it with a photon, I induce the weird stuff that happens with the observer effect. It wasn't really me doing it though, it was the photon. If the same physical interaction happened when I wasn't in the room, it wouldn't matter.",
"Suppose we have an observable object in a superposition of state A and state B. My understanding has always been that when something \"observes\" the quantum state, the observer is then entangled with the observee. From the perspective of a third party, the overall observer-observee system is then in a superposition of 1) the observer, in the state of having observed A, with the observee in state A, and 2) the observer, in the state of having observed B, with the observee in state B. The the perspective of the outside party, nothing has collapsed. However, from the perspective of the observer, the observee has collapsed, as any given observer waveform is entangled with only one observee state."
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a23w74 | Is the Last Kingdom Depiction of Shield Walls Accurate? | In The Last Kingdom, Anglo Saxons seem to be taking a page out of the Roman playbook by creating shield walls that resemble the Roman Testudo (tortoise) formation. Was this strategy actually employed in battle? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a23w74/is_the_last_kingdom_depiction_of_shield_walls/ | {
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"Hi there, I kind of answered your question [here](_URL_0_). The simple truth is that we really don't know, but that a full-on legionary *testudo* would probably be unlikely. As opposed to the Roman *scutum*-wielding formations, an Anglo-Saxon shieldwall worked by overlapping its round shields for increased strength and protection, but of course this does leave gaps. We know from contemporary sources and archaeology that missile combat was a key part of English warfare, especially in the use of javelins to disrupt shield walls, and we have images from the Bayeux Tapestry of English soldiers raising their shields to protect themselves from Norman missiles, but this would not have been directly comparable to the more mobile Roman *testudo*."
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1b8yt8 | How did the Mayans build their pyramids? How did the construction compare to the construction of Egyptian pyramids? | I asked this question a few days ago, but never got a response. So, I am trying to rephrase it a bit. My understanding is that Mayan pyramids are about the same size and that they were built much later and used a different design than the Egyptian (set me straight on any of this please!). This is just a really interesting subject to me because, to my knowledge, these two civilizations were the only ones to construct these massive pyramid structures. The Mayans and Egyptians lived on opposite sides of the world, so Mayans would not have been influenced by seeing the Egyptian pyramids. Anyways, please help me out with some information about this topic. I am not really sure where to look | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1b8yt8/how_did_the_mayans_build_their_pyramids_how_did/ | {
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" > My understanding is that Mayan pyramids are about the same size and that they were built much later and used a different design than the Egyptian.\n\nYes on all three counts: comparable in size*, built later, and different designs.\n\n > This is just a really interesting subject to me because, to my knowledge, these two civilizations were the only ones to construct these massive pyramid structures.\n\nThere are actually [pyramids and pyramid-like structures](_URL_0_) all over the world. Pyramids use a very basic architectural principle so a variety of cultures have used it. The Mesoamerican pyramids are more similar to Mesopotamian ziggurats than they are to Egyptian pyramids (though the Mesoamericans seem to have favored steeper staircases than the Mesopotamians).\n\nHopefully the Mesoamerican specialists can give you details on exactly how Mayan pyramids were built, but one thing I know that you might find interesting is that Mesoamerican pyramids were at least sometimes built atop older pyramids, as you can see in [this cutaway](_URL_1_) illustration of the Templo Mayor, the great Aztec pyramid, which shows a succession of smaller pyramids inside it.\n\n*EDIT: A point of clarification, the largest Mesoamerican pyramids can outmatch the Great Pyramid of Giza in terms of mass and footprint, but the Great Pyramid takes the prize for height.",
"The construction of Mesoamerican pyramids is not as mysterious as people seem to think. The material was typically limestone, or occasionally basalt. The material was quarried using harder stone tools at specific quarry sites in a rough cut, then transported to its location where it was ground into the desired shape and stacked by hand. Large blocks were either rolled on logs over land or floated on rafts downstream. But typically, pyramid bricks were small enough that one or two men could carry them.\n\nDespite the superficial similarity, Mesoamerican and Egyptian pyramids were actually different in both form and function. Egyptian pyramids were designed as tombs. While most Mesoamerican pyramids do contain burials, their primary function was as a temple for living people. They typically had a shrine on top with an altar and a deity statue. Offerings and sacrifices would be made there by priests, and the burning of offerings produced smoke. There's some speculation that Mesoamerican pyramids were designed to resemble mountains or volcanos, both of which were sacred in the Mesoamerican religion.\n\nArchitectural styles of pyramids varied over time quite substantially. The Classic Period Maya (which is what most people think of when they talk about \"the Maya\") used a style of architecture called \"apron molding\". [Here's a close up of the corner of a Maya pyramid](_URL_2_) and here's a [larger example](_URL_1_) from the site of Tikal. Notice how it doesn't appear to have a hard \"corner.' Instead, the corner zig-zags from one side to the other, like the edge of a curtain. This is a characteristic style of the Maya.\n\nThe Aztecs frequently built twin-peaked pyramids with two shrines dedicated to different gods, Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc. Few of those survive, thanks to the Spanish, but here's [an artists reconstruction](_URL_4_) of what they looked like. The Tarascans (a group rival to the Aztecs) built strange looking keyhole-shaped pyramids called \"yacatas.\"\n\nAnother famous style is the kind implored by Teotihuacan (not ethnically Maya, but still Mesoamerican). This style was called talud-tablero, and [a diagram of it can be found here](_URL_3_). And here's how it looks [on the side of a pyramid](_URL_0_). This style was so characteristically Teotihucano, that when you saw it you could infer that the site in question had close ties with Teotihuacan. The flat surfaces of this style, the \"Tablero,\" were plastered and frescoed.\n\nThat actually brings up another point. What you see today, the bare stone structures, are just the skeletons of the pyramid. Mayanists excavating at Copan found one pyramid with its original plaster and paint still on it. Mesoamerican pyramids actually looked more like [this](_URL_5_)."
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6rz7nv | If East Germany was a socialist state occupied by the USSR, why weren't they made a Soviet Socialist Republic as a part of the USSR? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6rz7nv/if_east_germany_was_a_socialist_state_occupied_by/ | {
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"East Germany was never made part of the USSR for a variety of reasons, but the most prominent one was that it would act as a buffer state between the west and the Communist Bloc. Had the USSR annexed East Germany, they would have a direct border with West Germany, and by extension, the entire western world; by turning East Germany into a buffer state, Soviet forces would not have to come into direct contact with the west. \n\nThis was a strategy employed by the USSR - and by other Communist regimes - throughout the Cold War. In fact, Mongolia asked to become a part of the USSR on multiple occasions, but the USSR turned them down, as they were an effective buffer state against China. It can also be argued that one of the reasons North Korea still exists is because China doesn't want the South Koreans up close. \n\nHowever, another reason was that it would be hard for the Soviet government to justify an annexation of Germany. Whereas Poland and many other Eastern-European states had historically been under Russian rule, the USSR had no claim to East Germany. An annexation would therefore be considered an extremely aggressive move, bordering on warmongering. This made installing satellite states instead of simply conquering them was a much more effective option. \n\nAnother reason would be the costs. East Germany was a very populous and urban area; maintaining it as a part of the USSR would take a heavy toll on the USSR's weakened post-war economy."
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3hc9lj | Have there been any historical examples of entrenched corruption being removed from a country/empire without a violent revolution? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3hc9lj/have_there_been_any_historical_examples_of/ | {
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"Yes, the US civil service was very corrupt by the late 19th century. Andrew Jackson started the practice of awarding jobs in the federal government to supporters of politicians who won elections in what is known as the spoilage system. The result is that civil servants were not chosen on the basis of merit but rather on the basis of political loyalties and the civil service was filled by politicians assigning cushy jobs to their friends. Throughout the 19th century the spoilage system was standard tactic for ensuring political support during elections and as a result the civil service was very corrupt.\n\nThis changed in 1881 with the assassination of president James A Garfield by a frustrated office seeker who believed that he was promised the post of ambassador to France and was angry that he didn't receive the job. The resulting public outcry, fueled in part by a growing middle class who are frustrated by inability to acquire positions given out by the spoilage system despite their superior technical education, forced the government to reform the civil service. Congress passed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883 banned handing out offices on the basis of political affiliation and established an examination system as means of determining who got jobs in the civil service. The net result is that office holding became to a much larger degree based on merit rather than connections and the civil service stopped being an institution for rent-seeking.\n\nSource: Political Order and Political Decay by Francis Fukyama",
"Many reforms came about that were nonviolent or at least not part of some larger revolution. Just in the United States you have the examples from the progressive era that while might have involved many violent incidents such as strikes you had the increase of working conditions and regulations simply from more awareness and government intervention. Passing a constitutional amendment for the direct election of senators could also be seen as an example as could the opening up of the political party primary system over the 20th century \n\nOn a smaller scale you can look to Tammany Hall and how it went from a cesspool of corruption to a waning influence that eventually dried up. For an overview of how it began to lose power I'd look at Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Tammany Hall of New York by Charles LaCerra\n\n",
"Yes. Under the long stewardship of Lew Kuan Yoo, Singapore dramatically transformed in many ways, including a reduction in corruption.\n\nBy simultaneously increasing the salaries for Singapore's officials and making the sentences for corruption harsher, Singapore brought the corruption levels down to among the lowest in the world.\n\nA recent article in The New Yorker summarized it:\n\n > By the time Lee stepped down as Prime Minister, in 1990, Singapore had gone from being one of the more corrupt countries on the planet to one of the least. According to Transparency International’s most recent Corruption Perceptions Index, Singapore now ranks seventh in the world for transparent government—less corrupt than Australia, Iceland, or (by a good margin) the United States.\n\nIt's probably also worth noting that the same article stressed how rare and challenging it is to remove entrenched corruption, and the difficulty of implementing Singapore's carrot/stick approach elsewhere:\n > It might be tempting to extrapolate lessons from a country like Singapore, but Singapore is a tricky analogy for Afghanistan. With just over five million people in a territory of less than three hundred square miles, Singapore is tiny, centrally controlled, peaceful—and rich. And it is not just corruption that has been abolished on the little island but a variety of lesser human infractions, from spitting on the sidewalk to failing to flush a public toilet: the population is subject to an authoritarian penal code. Most important, perhaps, Singapore had, in Lee Kuan Yew, a leader who was truly invested in the anticorruption agenda. \n\nSource: \"Corruption and Revolt.\" *The New Yorker*. January 19, 2015.",
"Great Britain had a lot of corruption in the late 1700s. Not just pocket boroughs; members of parliament were receiving sinecures and places, naval procurement was corrupt, and reversions could allow succession of relatives. Reforms were very gradual through the 1800s.\n\nThe KMT were notorious for corruption when they fled mainland China. Now, per _URL_0_ , Taiwan is not New Zealand, but it's not Pakistan either.\n"
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c0rfjp | Why are the responses on posts in this subreddit so frequently removed? | I always see great questions on here but every time I go to see the responses they are mostly removed. What gives? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/c0rfjp/why_are_the_responses_on_posts_in_this_subreddit/ | {
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"The moderators remove comments that are, in their eyes, low effort and speculative. Here on r/askhistorians people post questions they want answered with certainty, otherwise there wouldn't be any reason to ask on here to begin with. The moderators, and the people seeking answers, expect answers to be provided by people with a background or at least proficiency in the subject they are answering questions on, when people who lack the knowledge answers questions they often base their answers on heresay or speculation which isn't inherently a bad thing but it doesn't fit it on this subreddit so it is removed. Another problem is that personal opinion factors in too much in peoples responses, it clouds the truth and makes it hard to distinguish fact from fiction.\n\nIn short, r/askhistorians has standards and far too many unqualified people are answering questions nowadays.",
"Hi there, thank you for your question - we get variations of it periodically, but it never hurts to reiterate the basics from time-to-time:\n\nAskHistorians is a relatively heavily-moderated subreddit. Unlike general subs like r/AskReddit, we [require answers to be in-depth](_URL_0_), from folks who know their subject matter and can answer follow-up questions. \n\nA lot of the comments that are removed are either comments that don't meet our standards for whatever reason - this can include simply being too short, too general, or having too much speculation; it can also include answers which are partially or wholly wrong, use poor sources (like wikipedia or pop history books, podcasts, and youtube documentaries that are meant for a general audience), or include links to sites that contain or cater to hate speech or Holocaust denialism. \n\nWe also remove jokes, hate speech, soapboxing/modern politics, and generally useless comments like \"Why don't you google that\" or \"Why are all the comments removed?\" A lot of the comments you see removed quickly are of the latter variety - you're not missing much.\n\nIt is, unfortunately, the case that sometimes we remove a comment which happens to have the right answer but doesn't meet our other standards as far as being comprehensive or the poster not having the expertise to answer follow-up questions - but the whole point of the subreddit is that the folks who answer questions should be informed enough that they are able to communicate their knowledge effectively.\n\nWhich is why really good users are encouraged to apply for flair in their specific area of expertise. Flaired users are those who have demonstrated the ability to answer questions in their area to our standards, and we tend to lean on them whenever a question comes up in their flair area. In this way, by pairing up flaired users with appropriate questions, we try to match answers to questions. We also have some great FAQ finders who find previous answers from the same or similar questions who do a great job of providing pointers.\n\nUnfortunately, with the really popular questions, we tend to get a lot of non-subscribers on the subreddit who aren't familiar with the rules - and that's when we tend to get a rush of low-quality comments. We remove these, but they still show up in the total for the post, which is when you get the \"comment graveyard\" effect of dozens or hundreds of comments but none of them to read. This is especially the case with popular questions which take a day or two to answer.\n\nBut, we would much prefer *no* answer to a *bad* answer. If you're going to get an answer on AskHistorians, you can trust that it's going to be a quality answer. That's what we aim for: quality.\n\nI hope that answers your question.",
"I'm not sure if this is the place to ask, but could this sub get something like a tag on posts like in out of the loop where they are marked \"answered\"? It's hard to tell which posts have anything other than \\[deleted\\] comments. As great and amazing as this sub is, it's almost impossible to know what's been answered well."
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1eo5tt | I'm an average Roman going to see an event at the Colosseum. What kind of snacks or beverages are available to me and what would they cost? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1eo5tt/im_an_average_roman_going_to_see_an_event_at_the/ | {
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"The Romans loved fruit, and you'd probably find some dried grapes somewhere. These would be very cheap, but I can't find exact prices. Suffice to say, much less than a d.c. for a cup of grapes.\n\nKeep in mind, I'm far from an expert, but I've read several books on food throughout the ancient world.",
"It is possible that the cost is recorded in a graffito or incidental literary mention I don't know of, but I do not believe we can accurately say what ephemeral food vendors charged.\n\nAs for what food you can get, I have seen mentions of sausages, lentil soup, simit, cheese pies, flatbreads, and stews as examples of Roman street food.",
"Snack food in the Roman Empire usually was served in Thermopolii, basically, cheap fast food restaurants where a citizen could be served olives, sausages, soup, stew, bread, olive oil etc. kept in giant jars.\nIf I remember correctly, in Pompeii, archaelogists found the menu with prices in denarii.\n",
"I have some knowlegde about this from my bachelor's thesis, coincidentially (I'm agronomist.).\n\nThey ate - among other things - cooked and salted lupins ([*Lupinus albus*](_URL_0_)) similar to the way peanuts are eaten today. I don't know about the price, though.\n\nSource: \"Die Lupine: Geschichte und Evolution einer Kulturpflanze\", Hondelmann, 1996",
"Perhaps someone could answer what they did about bathrooms. I know that when I go to any large attendance event, the bathrooms are packed with people doing their business. They the Romans have a similar means to get rid of human waste during these events? Did everyone just have to cross their legs really tight? ",
"The closest I can come to answering it is an estimation of the general prices in the late Roman empire; Diocletian's Edict on Maximum Prices, issued around 300AD, was not specifically followed due to harshness of punishment for charging over the maximum price, and also the level of impurity in Roman coins, being at this point a fraction of their original precious metal content. \nIt does, however, give a decent idea of what the general acceptable price was and from this we've learned that wine in Rome decreased in value over years, make of that what you will.\n\nSource for that is Mike Duncan's THoR podcast. Great chap.\n\nA UCL professor talks about it here: _URL_0_"
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7pg51b | why aren't counties used for voting lines? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7pg51b/eli5_why_arent_counties_used_for_voting_lines/ | {
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"Districts are redrawn in response to the census to ensure proportional representation. This is not feasible for counties, which are political entities with their own governments and laws.\n\nYou'd have potentially thousands of people waking up one morning to a new set of laws and ordinances they'd have to obey. It'd be a logistical nightmare."
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6jzwxh | Humans and animals get lots of diseases from mosquitoes, do they get any from us? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6jzwxh/humans_and_animals_get_lots_of_diseases_from/ | {
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"Interestingly, yes - and some of them are the same diseases, too! Malaria-infected mosquitoes actually suffer fitness costs from carrying the malaria parasite, which would mean that we could consider malaria to be a disease of mosquitoes as well as a disease of humans (or rather, that *Plasmodium* is a disease-causing pathogen in both animals). [This study](_URL_1_) showed that infected mosquitoes had about half as many offspring as noninfected mosquitoes, and [this study](_URL_0_) showed that mosquitoes genetically manipulated to be resistant to the parasite performed *better than normal mosquitoes* when feeding on infected prey. (Which, by the way, is potentially good news if we want to control malaria through this increasingly talked-about method.)",
"Parasites probably exert the most harm on mosquitoes, malaria (already posted) and [filarial worms](_URL_2_) are probably the best examples. \n\nBut the path to understand why mosquitoes *don't* get sick has been very fascinating and though not mosquitoes per se the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded for figuring out a main mechanism.\n\n[RNA interference](_URL_1_) is very basically an innate way cells can silence genes they don't like. In the case of [dengue](_URL_0_) *Aedes* mosquitoes do just that and can transmit dengue without suffering any costs. ",
"What a coincidence! I just read a story this very day about a wild hedgehog with a streptococcus group A infection. This was most likely a reverse zoonosis, human to animal transmission.\n\nOh... just re-read the title and this thread is only about mosquitoes getting diseases. Still, I like the hedgehog story so I am leaving it."
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4c0eeh | how do birds that migrate in a "v" formation decide who the leader is? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4c0eeh/eli5_how_do_birds_that_migrate_in_a_v_formation/ | {
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"They take turns. Depending on the species they may rotate out from the front to the back, or vice versa. At least that's what I remember from what I've read in the past.",
"They take turns. Flying in a V reduces wind drag and makes it easier. The birds in the back honk and make noises to encourage the first bird who remains silent as it has the most difficult flight. ",
"I recall hearing that there is an energy saving advantage to the formation they fly in. If that's true, it is to each bird's advantage to be behind another bird in that formation. \n\nThe one at the front is the one who didn't fly off to be behind another bird yet, until they do. Kind of like being volunteered when everyone else in a line takes one step backwards.\n\n",
"Similar to chain gangs in cycling. The riders behind the first man are using 15-20% less energy. By regularly switching the front rider you can maintain a faster pace for longer with the front rider dripping back to recuperate. ",
"I'd imagine that there are some flight efficiencies due to \"vortex surfing\"where vortex's created from the flapping wing tips can be used to increase lift. Similar to this perhaps?_URL_0_"
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ft7b71 | How far back can anti-slavery philosophy or views be traced? | From reading Wikipedia and elsewhere, one gets the impression that abolitionism is only a few centuries old. While that may be true of an organised political movement, it seems absolutely astonishing that slaves could form a substantial percentage of world population since at least the time of ancient Rome and probably much earlier without someone literate seeing it as unfair. I’ve seen and heard a lot of references to Aristotle’s defence of natural slavery; did any of his ancient Greek contemporaries call him out on it? Did ancient priests see anything wrong with slavery? Do we even have examples of individuals in power taking a stand, like a wealthy slave owner manumitting all his slaves? Are there any societies known that refused to take slaves? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ft7b71/how_far_back_can_antislavery_philosophy_or_views/ | {
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"Peter Hunt writes in his essay \"Slaves in Greek Literary Culture\" found in *The Cambridge History of World Slavery Vol. 1*, there is a bit of anti-slavery writing going as far back as ancient Greece. Hunt claims that \"a number of scholars have\" regarded Euripides \"in particular, as a proto- or a crypto-abolitionist\". Among other evidence in Euripedes' writing, he wrote in a passage in *Hecuba*:\n\n > \"Alas, what an evil slavery has always been\n > \n > \"It endures what is not right,\n > \n > \"overcome by force.\"\n\nOr in [another translation](_URL_0_):\n\n > \"Alas! how cursed is slavery always in its nature / forced by the might of the stronger / to endure unseemly treatment.\"\n\nAntisthenes, the reported son of a Thracian slave woman, wrote an entire treatise *On Freedom and Slavery*, which is lost, but which Hunt suspects may have been an anti-slavery text, based on the one quote from the original work that survives.\n\nHistorian Peter Garnsey argues in *Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine* that there was \"rather more than a universal, passive acceptance of the institution\" of slavery, and criticism is found throughout ancient texts, albeit usually in rather modest terms in the texts that do survive. That's probably because, as Hunt writes:\n\n > \"[The] mass of evidence is, however, obviously one-sided. The surviving literature of classical Greece was almost all written by slave masters and for its free, male citizens.\"\n\nGarnsey argues that, despite the lack of anti-slavery texts, due to the dominance of slaveholders as the writers of the surviving texts, it can nonetheless be inferred that there was vocal anti-slavery rhetoric at the time. After all, if Aristotle is giving a defense of natural slavery, what is he defending it against if there isn't criticism of it? Garnsey writes:\n\n > \"At one point in the *Politics*, Aristotle refers to the view ascribed to certain unnamed persons that slavery was unjust, inasmuch as it was a product of convention and rested on nothing else than superior force. Aristotle's own conviction was that some people are natural free men while others are natural slaves.\n > \n > \"Here are the beginnings of a critique of slavery on moral grounds. Aristotle gives few clues as to who advanced it. They are usually regarded as a few isolated individuals. Rather more than this is suggested by 'many of those versed in the law' and 'some men of judgement' (sophoi). They were perhaps 'philosophers of law'- not, in any case, jurists, there having been no such profession in Athens. The intellectual origins of the critique lie ultimately in the activity of the\nsophists, which was centred in the second half of the fifth century and the early fourth and was marked by sceptical inquiry into traditional beliefs and practices. How far the critique was taken is a moot point, but Aristotle evidently thought that it was sufficiently dangerous to warrant a counter-attack.\"\n\nHowever, Hunt counters that these kinds of arguments might be overstating the case from the available surviving texts. The texts of Euripides, and other suggested critics such as Phormio and Pasion, fall \"well short\" of being abolitionist. Rather than being critical to the point of advocating for abolition, the surviving texts are more suggestive, says Hunt, of the viewpoint that slavery was considered \"inevitable and necessary\" in ancient Greece, and that slaves were to be pitied, rather than that abolition was to be championed.\n\nBut again, as Hunt says, all we really have are the writings of slaveholders. We have no direct evidence of what the non-slaveholding class of free Greek citizens (let alone of what the underclasses) thought of slavery. Thus, unlike Garnsey who goes further, Hunt concludes it's \"possible but not certain\" that there was criticism of slavery at the time, and that there were abolitionists, but the biased evidence is too scant to make any solid conclusions.\n\nSimilarly, Neville Morley writes in \"Slavery Under The Principate\" also published in *The Cambridge World History of Slavery Vol. 1*, that in ancient Rome \"there is no evidence for any ancient abolitionist movement, let alone for its having any effect on social practices\". Catherine Hezser writes in her essay \"Slavery and the Jews\": \"The claim that ancient Jewish sources reveal a proto-abolitionist stance towards slavery can therefore be considered apologetic rather than historically persuasive.\"\n\nThe first real, unequivocal anti-slavery text dating from antiquity is probably Gregory of Nyssa's \"Fourth Homily on Ecclesiastes\", written in the 4th century C.E. Only [part of the sermon](_URL_2_) survives, the most often quoted passage being:\n\n > \"I got me slaves and slave-girls. For what price, tell me? What did you find in existence worth as much as this human nature? What price did you put on rationality? How many obols did you reckon the equivalent of the likeness of God? How many staters did you get for selling the being shaped by God? God said, let us make man in our own image and likeness. If he is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and has been granted authority over everything on earth from God, who is his buyer, tell me? Who is his seller? To God alone belongs this power; or rather, not even to God himself. For his gracious gifts, it says, are irrevocable. God would not therefore reduce the human race to slavery, since he himself, when we had been enslaved to sin, spontaneously recalled us to freedom. But if God does not enslave what is free,who is he that sets his own power above God’s?\"\n\nJennifer Glancy writes of Gregory's text in \"Slavery And The Rise Of Christianity\" published in the *Cambridge World History of Slavery*:\n\n > \"In his fourth homily on Ecclesiastes, Gregory of Nyssa penned what may be the most scathing ancient Christian critique of slavery, a critique that, though not setting forth a programme of reform, anticipates some of the hermeneutical moves of nineteenth-century Christian abolitionists...The brunt of Gregory’s attack was slaveholder arrogance; he did not explicitly call for the abolition of slavery or even wholesale manumission of slaves. However, his condemnation of the morality of slaveholding comes as close as anything in extant early Christian literature to a sustained attack on the foundations of slavery.\"\n\nD. Bentley Hart writes in \"The ‘Whole Humanity’ Gregory of Nyssa's Critique of Slavery in Light of His Eschatology\" published in the *Scottish Journal of Theology*:\n\n > \"Nowhere in the literary remains of antiquity is there another document quite comparable to Gregory of Nyssa's fourth homily on the book of Ecclesiastes: certainly no other ancient text still known to us—Christian, Jewish, or Pagan—contains so fierce, unequivocal, and indignant a condemnation of the institution of slavery....[I]t is a passage of remarkable rhetorical intensity. In it Gregory treats slavery not as a luxury that should be indulged in only temperately (as might an Epicurean), nor as a necessary domestic economy too often abused by arrogant or brutal slave-owners (as might a Stoic like Seneca or a Christian like John Chrysostom), but as intrinsically sinful, opposed to God's actions in creation, salvation, and the church, and essentially incompatible with the Gospel.\"\n\nFrom then on, evidence of anti-slavery began appearing. As some examples, in 873 CE, shortly after becoming pope, John VIII wrote to the princes of Sardinia commanding them to free all their slaves in order to save their souls and repent from sin. As recorded in the *Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et Amplissima Collectio Vol. XVIIIa*, at the Council of Koblenz in 922 CE, the Holy Roman Empire tried to enact a law that considered the enslavement of Christians as illegal:\n\n > \"Also the question was put what should be done concerning him who led away a Christian man and then sold him; and the reply of all was that he should be guilty of homicide.\"\n\nAt [the 1102 Council of London](_URL_1_), the slave trade was banned as \"wicked\":\n\n > \"Let no man from henceforth presume to carry on that wicked traffic, by which men in England have been hitherto sold like brute animals.\"\n\nThe movement away from slavery in Europe continued through the centuries. By the time the African slave trade began c.1500, much of Europe was free. But then, of course, with the colonization of the Americas, it was instituted against African captives. This began a whole new round of anti-slavery rhetoric, among the earliest being those written by the missionary Bartolomé de las Casas in *A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies*. This helped enact abolition of enslavement of the indigenous people of the Americas through the New Laws of 1542, in the Holy Roman Empire.\n\nUnfortunately, in de las Casas's book, he suggested the enslavement of Africans as a replacement of the enslavement of the indigenous peoples, a suggestion he quickly came to regret. Writing in the second volume of his three-volume *History of the Indies*:\n\n > \"I soon repented and judged myself guilty of ignorance. I came to realize that black slavery was as unjust as Indian slavery... and I was not sure that my ignorance and good faith would secure me in the eyes of God.\"\n\nHe wouldn't be the last abolitionist and critic of slavery. On the contrary, throughout the period of the African slave trade in the Americas, there was a corresponding anti-slavery movement. Wherever slavery spread, anti-slavery texts soon followed. \n\n**TL;DR**: There is indirect evidence of anti-slavery thought in the ancient world, but since surviving texts are almost all written by slaveholders, the inferences are debated by scholars. It isn't until the 4th century C.E. that an unequivocal anti-slavery text is preserved."
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"http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0098%3Acard%3D299",
"https://books.google.com/books?id=Wjc1RUnI6jsC&pg=PA6&dq=%22Council+of+London%22",
"https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2019/01/24/a-fuller-extract-from-gregory-of-nyssa-on-the-evils-of-slavery/"
]
] | |
2rtkc2 | when i rub my feet on the carpet and then shock someone, why is the shock more painful to them than myself? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rtkc2/eli5when_i_rub_my_feet_on_the_carpet_and_then/ | {
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"Alsk, why does this happen rarely, sometimes not even after I rub my feet on carpet for minutes? What are the variables here, is there a \"trick\" to it?",
"Stop using your knuckle to zap people on the eyeball."
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74aqnr | are there planets in interstellar/intergalactic space? | So, here's where I'm going with this. As I understand it, when a solar system is formed, dust turns into clumps, clumps turn into bigger clumps and so on until the sun and planets are formed. There's also a lot of collisions.
Could a planet size object (or bigger) get knocked into interstellar space or intergalactic space? I may be using the wrong terminology here.. I mean the space between solar systems and the space between galaxies.
If so, is it possible to detect one (or have we done that already)?
Lastly, (assuming this possible) with no sun, could there be life on them (for example, I've heard it's possible one of the moons around Jupiter could have liquid water because Jupiter's gravity is "flexing" it, or could the planet itself simply have a hot enough molten core for liquid water)?
-Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/74aqnr/eli5_are_there_planets_in/ | {
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"Yes, and quite a few. It is not uncommon for planetary bodies to get a gravity assisted slingshot out of orbit of their star.\n\nThere are even brown dwarfs and other dark stellar-mass bodies floating around interstellar space (think binary stars where one gets flung).\n\nedit: They are known as Rogue Planets, here's the wikipedia: _URL_0_",
"One of the hypothesis for dark matter is the existence of massive compact object lying in the interstellar medium such as planet. \nSee _URL_0_\nHowever, astronomer looked for them and found out that if there is some there are not enough to be a significant part of dark matter (This is an example of experiment discovering nothing but contributing to the progress of science by excluding an option) ",
"Interstellar space - yes absolutely, for example if a star or a black hole \"pass by\" and pull the planet away from it's star.\nDetecting it would be almost impossible and to my knowledge none have been detected. (there are some candidates but those objects are all much heavier than Jupiter, i am assuming you were talking about \"rock planets\" like earth and not gas giants)\n\nIntergalactic space - not really imo, the energy required to leave the gravitational confinements of a galaxy would be too high. Or in other words - it might be theoretically possible but compared to the rogue planets between solar systems this would be incredibly rare.\n\n > Lastly, (assuming this possible) with no sun, could there be life on them (for example, I've heard it's possible one of the moons around Jupiter could have liquid water because Jupiter's gravity is \"flexing\" it, or could the planet itself simply have a hot enough molten core for liquid water)?\n\nTheoretically yes, but it would cool down \"fast\" without the gravitational pull from an object like jupiter or light from the sun.\nRadioactivity would be the only supply of heat besides the stored heat."
]
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bkoemp | why does running for president of the us cost so much money and how does fundraising work (also, wtf are pac and super pacs) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bkoemp/eli5_why_does_running_for_president_of_the_us/ | {
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"Because the more money you have, the more you can spend on campaign staff like advisers, assistants, and strategists. The more money you have, the more you can spend on polling. It also costs money to put on rallies, and fly yourself and your staff around the country to attend them. Plus, you need money to make money, because it costs a lot of money to organize fundraisers.\n\nSome spending is done by the actual, official campaign. But the amount of money you can donate to the campaign itself is limited. You can give more money to a political action committee (PAC). A PAC is not directly linked to a campaign, but it is allowed to advocate for a specific candidate. Donations to PACs are still pretty limited, with a lot of oversight.\n\nYou can give even more money to a Super PAC. But there are strict rules that prevent Super PACs from advocating for a specific candidate. Political candidates are not allowed to coordinate with Super PACs. Typically, Super PACS get around this by just running negative ads against the candidates opponents. They're technically not campaigning for that specific person - just *against* everyone else.",
"Advertising is the big money sink.\n\nThe candidate also has to pay staff working for them and there can be many of them (50 states * 10 staff each = 500 employees...500 * (say) $50,000/year = $25 million).",
"Why does it cost so much? Think of a political campaign as being just like a new-product rollout, like trying to get people to line up to buy an iPhone or to line up to see Avengers: Endgame. Except that unlike a new iPhone, which you're going to be selling for months after the roll-out? or even a movie, where a whole lot depends on your opening weekend sales but, really, you still make money on sales over the next couple of weeks? A national election is a product where you need tens of millions of people to stand in line to \"buy your product\" *all on the same day.* On the same day that your competitor is selling a competing product. On a weekday, no less!\n\nThis means a lot, and I mean a whole lot, of advertising. I can't tell how old you are, or even if you're an American, but if you are an American and you were around for the 2016 American presidential campaign, I guarantee that by election day you were really, really sick of campaign ads, no? But they've seen, over and over again, that they can't let the other side make any claim that doesn't get counter-claimed. If you let the other campaign \"dominate the airwaves,\" then no matter what else you do right, you lose.\n\nAnd worse, for the last couple of weeks, when it matters the most, they're all bidding against each other for the same TV advertising slots on the same broadcast (and a few cable) TV networks. And there are only so many advertising minutes per channel per day. So ad space that would have gone for a couple of hundred bucks to some used-car lot for a weekday 6:00 news ad slot suddenly sells for hundreds of dollars; in a key swing state, maybe over a thousand. Per ad.\n\nThere are other big-ticket expenditures, too. Candidates are flying to campaign appearances in up to four cities a day, by the end, all of it air travel, all booked at the last second based on yesterday's polling results. There's a thing called \"GOTV\" for \"get out the vote\" that's mostly done by volunteers, but, traditionally, those volunteers need a place to work out of, some kind of strip mall office space -- hundreds and hundreds of strip mall office spaces. Just getting your candidate on the ballot in all fifty states costs money in legal fees and filing fees. The kind of money they're handling calls for a small army of accountants to keep track of. They also spend what would look, to you, like real money on radio, direct mail, and Internet advertising.\n\nBut really? The big-dollar item is TV advertising.\n\n \\- - - - -\n\nSo, PACs and SuperPACs, not to mention bundlers and 501(c)(4)'s that you didn't even mention because you hadn't heard of them -- what's with all the entirely separate fund-raising groups? The shortest answer is that way back over 100 years ago, we knew for a fact that rich people were handing candidates huge sums of \"campaign money\" as bribes to get specific government favors. So long, long ago we made a law (that's gotten updated many times since then) that limits how much money one person can give any one candidate to an amount that's so low that no politician would think it was worth getting caught being bribed over such a tiny amount of money.\n\nIt took almost no time at all for rich people, who want to influence campaigns whether they get any direct return on their investment or not, just because they're rich and want to get their way, to find work-arounds. Because this is ELI5, I won't go into all of the specifics of each kind of work-around that's been found and are all still in use, but what they all have in common is (a) Mister Moneybags and all his rich friends give their money to someone else, then (b) that someone else gives the money to the candidate without ever telling them where it came from -- that way if Mister Moneybags calls the candidate, after they get elected, and asks for a favor, *in theory* the candidate isn't doing it in exchange for the money. It's a thin, tiny fig-leaf, though, because both before and after getting elected, the candidate spends hours and hours on the phone calling one rich person after another, asking them to donate to each and every one of these campaign-financing groups.",
"Questions about the US are generally better in r/askanamerican."
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4k786t | do people who do not put on weight but eat a lot of sugar/fat still put their lives in danger? or does their metabolism regulate it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4k786t/eli5do_people_who_do_not_put_on_weight_but_eat_a/ | {
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"Yes. Taking in excess sugar will cause insulin resistance even if you're not obviously getting fat.\n\n\"Skinny-fat\" people, people who look thin but have high body fat percentage, tend to have worse outlooks for obesity-related health problems than regular fat people."
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c9xnvr | what are the differences between os systems like mac os, linux & windows? why would someone want to use one over the other? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c9xnvr/eli5_what_are_the_differences_between_os_systems/ | {
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"They have different user interfaces, areas of learned expertise required and most important, software libraries available.",
"In short: Different ideas solving the same problem in different _URL_0_ operating system on a computer is basically a collection of base-functionality that makes up the bulk of what you want to do with a computer. Like reading and writing files to a storage device (like your harddrives) or accessing a network or displaying information on a screen and reading inputs from a mouse and keyboard, etc.\n\nAll those functions (and a whole lot more) are basically common functionality that all computers need to operate. An OS provides a pre-built set of those functionalities, hence it's called an \"Operating System\".\n\nMac OS and Linux are both based on an earlier OS called \"Unix\" while Windows is more of a self-contained concept. The main difference between the two would be that almost all Unix-based operating systems provide their base functionality in small and independent modules, where each module is designed to do only one specific job, (a so-called 'Modular' operating system) while Windows provides a more \"All-in-one\" approach to providing base functionalities in one, big, interconnected set of functionalities (A so-called 'Monolithic' operating system).\n\nThis means that in Unix-based operating systems, it is a lot easier to replace single modules with newer, better or simply more 'different' bits while leaving most of the rest of the OS in tact to continue it's operation, while in Windows it is not as trivial to replace single components since most of them are interdependent on each other by design.\n\nThere is no definitive answer to which OS is 'better' than the others, because this highly depends on what you expect of your OS and which needs you have. For example: Linux is highly adaptable, requires only little computing power to operate (at least generally) and generally handles text-based commands and interactions better than graphical applications.\n\nWindows is a lot less adaptable but generally handles everything graphical and everything Multi-Media way better than Linux does in my experience.\n\nI can't really speak for Mac OS in great detail since I have only very little experience with it, but from what I have seen of it, it is basically a mid-way point between Linux and Windows, since it aims to be modular (like Linux) while hiding away it's complicated details from inexperienced users in an attempt to provide ease of use and fault tolerance, just like Windows does."
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16fxz9 | To what extent have the improvements in communications influenced the waging of warfare, and the success of armies in war? | Of all the technologies of war, communications has always seemed to take a back seat compared to arms and training. Therefore, I want to know just how important communications (particularly in the 20th Century) were to the waging of successful warfare. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/16fxz9/to_what_extent_have_the_improvements_in/ | {
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" > Therefore, I want to know just how important communications (particularly in the 20th Century) were to the waging of successful warfare.\n\nIn the First World War, it would perhaps be more accurate to say that communications were important to the waging of *un*successful warfare. Infantry in the field had the following options when it came to communication:\n\n- Face-to-face speech or shouting\n- Short messages delivered by runners or pigeons\n- Telephone\n- Flares\n\nAnd that's it, basically. Wireless radio communication did exist, but the wireless units were still absurdly heavy and complicated and deeply hostile to notions of \"portability\". Ships had them, but infantry mostly could not. \n\nNone of the above was reliable; the field was often too loud for speech to be properly audible (to say nothing of how hard it could be to actually reach the person you wished to address), often too dangerous for runners or birds to get through without being shot, and often too shell-torn for telephone lines to survive for more than a few hours unsevered. Flares were only useful when everyone knew in advance what they were meant to signify, and they were just as visible to the enemy as to one's own line. Even if the enemy did not know what a flare meant, they knew it was a flare and that *something* was about to happen. \n\nCommanding officers were driven to distraction by the frequent impossibility of conveying orders to their men, or even of knowing where their men *were*. In many ways, it marked an actual decline from the communication penetration enjoyed during the days of lined infantry, when horns and flags could be deployed to such great effect. The men had now become less easily visible, their commanders further removed, and the field of battle far wider than had ever been the case before. So much of the apparent stupid thoughtlessness of infantry charges in No Man's Land was actually a consequence of not being able to rely on any dynamic communication with the men after they had left the first trench. They had to be given primary orders, and then a limited number of contingency orders, and then left to accomplish these things as best they could without the possibility of asking their commanders for further advice or of the commanders knowing enough about the state of play to even provide it if they could have.\n\nIt was... not great.",
"Here are a few specific examples from World War II: By early 1942, the U.S. intelligence (I think Navy) had broken the Japanese Navy's code. They were able to use this to determine an attack on Midway Island was being planned, and the U.S. set a trap. In the battle that resulted from this broken communication, the Japanese lost four aircraft carriers, a heavy cruiser, 248 planes, and more than 3,000 men. The U.S. lost one carrier, one destroyer, 150 aircraft and about 300 men. \n\nThe U.S. was later able to use the deciphered code to ambush and kill Admiral Yamamoto in 1943. \n\nThe United States Marine Corps used a code in the Pacific campaign that used the Navajo language to encode messages. Rather than simply translate messages directly from English to Navajo (which would make it difficult enough; at the time of WWII, only about 30 non-Navajos were believed to speak the language, and most of them were the children of traders or missionaries) they developed an alphabet consisting of words for letters, like \"ant\" (Wóláchííʼ) for \"a\", \"bear\" (Shash) for \"b,\" etc. More common letters would even have more than one word assigned to them to prevent frequency analysis. Using this system (which was later expanded to include words like \"potato\" for grenade and \"turtle\" for tank), Navajo codetalkers could encode, transmit, and decode a three line message in 20 seconds. The machine in use at the time? 30 minutes. During Iwo Jima, a team of six codetalkers spent the first two days of the battle working around the clock, sending and receiving more than 800 messages, and all of them without error. The 5th Marine Division's signal officer said, \"\"Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.\"\n\nFinally, a tale of deliberate miscommunication. Part of the reason the invasion of France - D-Day - was so successful was due to a massive signals intelligence operation. British intelligence managed to find, and turn, every single German spy in England. (One complained of lack of cash for bribes, so the Germans shipped him gold from Spain - gold that was captured by the British and used to fund their Secret Service throughout the war.) The Allies knew that the Germans would expect an attack at Pas de Calais, the narrowest point of the English Channel. They created the First U.S. Army Group to invade, put General George S. Patton in charge, and started moving tanks, planes, artillery, and troops in the area around Dover. Other double agents sent messages about troops and equipment being shipped to Dover. The problem? It was all grade-A bullshit. The army was completely made up - rubber tanks were driven around on jeeps dragging chains to kick up dust, plywood planes, trucks, and other equipment was built to look good from the air, but that's about it - Patton was even under suspension at the time for striking a shell-shocked soldier. Intercepted radio traffic (which the Allies wanted to be heard) combined with the reports from their spies convinced the Germans that the invasion would come at Pas de Calais. There was a similar effort, including frequent requests for skis, crampons, cold-weather gear, and maps of Norway to keep up the facade of a future invasion of Norway - a ruse Hitler fell for that kept thousands of German soldiers in Norway and off European battlefields. \n\nRemember that double agent who asked for all that gold? Code named Garbo, he was one of the German's most trusted spies - his messages went to Hitler himself. On the night of June 5th, he sent a message warning that a huge Allied attack was coming at dawn the next day on the beaches of Normandy. By the time it could have been useful to contest the landing itself, it was too late, but its accuracy enhanced Garbo's stature. He sent another message a few days after D-Day claiming that this invasion at Normandy was a diversion, a feint to draw down the Panzers from Pas de Calais so the real invasion could take place there. Hitler, the only one with the authority to move the Panzers, believed him and did not send the Panzers south, even as Erwin Rommel begged for the tanks. Hitler was so grateful for the intel that he awarded Garbo the Iron Cross. The panzers never joined the action in Normandy - they were kept at the Pas de Calais until after the liberation of Paris, more than two months later, waiting for Patton to invade. "
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3bty6n | the difference between capital gains tax and the corporation tax. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bty6n/eli5_the_difference_between_capital_gains_tax_and/ | {
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"Capital gains tax is a tax generally specific to investments, such as stock sales, dividend payments, and the like.\n\nThe corporation tax is mostly just like income tax for a person, but for a corporation\n\nThey are NOT related."
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3ztgfa | How did Kuwait avoid being enveloped by the strict Islamic movement (wahhabism/salafism) that took over Saudi Arabia? | Kuwait seems to be fairly tolerant of all religions despite being surrounded by arguably the most conservative Islamic country in the world. How did this happen? Did Saudi Arabia ever try to envelop them? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ztgfa/how_did_kuwait_avoid_being_enveloped_by_the/ | {
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"I think the foundations of these two distinct states are an important thing to understand. This does not answer your question in it's entirety but it does play a role. \n\nPut simply, the Saudi polity from its early days was aligned with Wahhabis, including the founder of the school/movement, [Muhammad ibn Abdul al-Wahab](_URL_0_), whose doctrine played a critical role in the spread of the House of Saud's power and influence in the interior of Arabia during the period of the 'First Saudi State' (1744-1818). Although Saudi power subsequently expanded and contracted during the 19th and early 20th Centuries, their eventual conquest of the Hejaz ejected the pro-British Hashemites from Arabia and Wahhabism spread throughout their domains, serving as a means of differentiating the House of Saud from pro-Western elites, legitimizing their rule in the eyes of many.\n\nKuwait by contrast emerged initially as a fishing and commercial centre in the 17th and 18th Centuries, subsequently benefitting from the pearl trade and eventually oil, and from the start enjoyed a more cosmopolitan environment than the provincial Arabian interior from which the Saudis emerged, with Persian, Indian, and European traders (including the East India Company) playing a prominent role in the early Kuwaiti economy. As the power of the ruling Bani Utbah clans and later the Emirs of Kuwait from the House of Sabah was from the start based on trade and trans-/international connections as opposed to an ultra-conservative religious revivalist movement, it is not surprising that Wahhabism has generally had a harder time finding support among the Kuwaitis. Additionally, the close connection between Wahhabism and the Saudis has not endeared the school/movement to other Arab elites. The Saudis fought a war over territory with Kuwait from 1919-1920, and imposed trade sanctions on them for more than a decade afterward, so one can understand why Kuwait might not welcome scholars and clerics from a movement associated with the Saudis."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Abd_al-Wahhab"
]
] | |
aqmftp | [networking/computer science] does an online streaming video with static background images (like a slideshow presentation) consume less data than an actual video of the same resolution/quality and length? | Does the video still download each frame as an individual image or can it repeat use of an image in a previous frame in the case of a slideshow?
For example, would the following use the same amount of data?
* 10:00 long YouTube 1080p 30fps slideshow presentation with HQ audio
* 10:00 long 1080p 30fps video of PewDiePie's Meme Review also with HQ audio.
Also, subscribe to PewDiePie on YouTube! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aqmftp/eli5_networkingcomputer_science_does_an_online/ | {
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"depends on the codec. But yes this is a thing, the codec uses some \"vector math\" to try to save as much as possible!\n\nPretty much every codec online does that youtube twitch etc...",
"Many modern video file formats don't actually store the images for each frame. Instead they save the difference between the last frame. So if you'd have a black screen and then one frame later you turn one pixel to white, only that pixel would be stored and send. So unless you're going through your slideshow at 30 fps for 10 minutes, your slideshow is better in terms of resources."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] | |
5qp1tf | World War I is said to be the first war which more soldiers died in combat than disease. How true is this claim? | Excluding extreme cold, tropics, and common epidemics of the time, why would disease be such a big problem? Did commanders do calculations such as "Yeah I have 10 thousand men right now, but when we get to _x city_ , only 6 thousand will remain, so I should plan accordingly"? And which disease would be most likely to kill a soldier in summer in Central Europe, let's say in Seven Years War? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5qp1tf/world_war_i_is_said_to_be_the_first_war_which/ | {
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"When Henry V attacked Harfleur in 1415 he lost very few to combat, but [upwards of 1500 were sent home sick with dysentery.](_URL_1_) Attacking Calais, his grandfather Edward required repeated reinforcement to cover losses due to disease. *Id.* \n\nDysentery is a bad-water illness, very debilitating, certainly can be fatal, and is a natural consequence of premodern bivouacking: men and horses all crapping together with no regard for sanitation. It affected pretty much every army on campaign, and was characterized [here](_URL_0_) as \"more fatal than powder and shot.\" Retrospective diagnosis of overall disease casualties from 200 or 600 years ago isn't really possible, but I would nominate dysentery as the most likely cause of non-combat casualties. As the author points out, of 12,535 war deaths in the US Mexican campaign, 10,986 were due to disease from camp water pollution, presumably dysentery. \n\nHenry did, in fact, alter his strategy after his losses at Harfleur, leading his depleted force north in semi-retreat, toward the shelter of the English beachhead at Calais. He ran into the main French force at a field known as Agincourt, but that's another story. . "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19684375",
"http://www.agincourt600.com/7-13-september-1415-disease-and-deaths-during-the-siege-of-harfleur/"
]
] | |
4qy4xe | how does dependent care flexible spending accounts work? | Hi,
I just started a new job and they are offering a dependent care flexible spending account, but I am completely lost on how it works. Please help me understand
As I understand it, I would set aside a certain amount of pre-tax money (up to 5,000/year). That money will be taken from my pay check and set aside in a separate account that I can only use for daycare or other services for my child that would allow me work. Then I have to make a claim to the IRS to get that money back. Is that correct?
Thanks | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4qy4xe/eli5_how_does_dependent_care_flexible_spending/ | {
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"text": [
"This would best be asked in /r/tax?\n\nTypically you pay the daycare company and get reimbursed from this account. Sometimes they'll pay the day care directly. Any that you don't use is lost. Any that you withdraw and don't use for a qualifying purpose is taxed. \n\nThe amount you use from this account reduces the qualifying expenses for the day care credit. People in 25% and higher brackets are usually better off using this account. People in lower tax brackets are often better off not signing up for the account and claiming the tax credit instead. See your tax professional for your own analysis. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
igg0c | Could water clouds form on a planet with no/barely any liquid surface water? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/igg0c/could_water_clouds_form_on_a_planet_with_nobarely/ | {
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"I'm not a scientist, but I do know that there is a star that routinely ejects jets of water from its magnetic poles.\n\nHypothetically speaking, a planet with water molecules on it, but with a temperature/pressure combination that would only allow for it to exist in a gas form, would have water \"clouds,\" though they would most likely not look anything like clouds here on Earth.",
"Water ice clouds have been [observed in the atmosphere of Mars](_URL_0_), imaged directly from spacecraft on it surface."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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"http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/MPF/science/clouds.html"
]
] | ||
rtsu1 | How come the Jewish and Christian holy books are written in Aramaic (I assume) whereas the Quran was written in Arabic? | The Old Testament and New Testament were written as far apart, at least as the New Testament and the Quran. How come the latter is the only one written in a modern language (is Koranic Arabic any different from modern Standard?) Has the survival of the Arabic language anything to do with the Quran? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rtsu1/how_come_the_jewish_and_christian_holy_books_are/ | {
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"The original works of the New Testament were written in Koine Greek or according to wikipedia: \" < The New Testament Gospels and Epistles were only part of a Hellenistic Jewish culture in the Roman Empire, where Alexandria had a larger Jewish population than Jerusalem, and Greek was spoken by more Jews than spoke Hebrew[7] > [Source](_URL_0_)",
"The NT was written in Greek and Greek is still spoken today (although it changed a lot). The OT was mainly written in Hebrew, some parts in Greek as well. Hebrew is still spoken today. (Although it is not known how Jews spoke Hebrew in some cases).\n\n > Has the survival of the Arabic language anything to do with the Quran?\n\nI wouldn't say the survival, but at least the spread of Arabic. It is not allowed to use translations of the Quran in a religious context. It's the same with Latin in Western Christianity. Latin was the main academic language until the 18th century.",
"The Jewish canon was written in Hebrew. The New Testament was written in Greek. Aramaic was the main spoken language of Palestine, but not the language of scripture. Hebrew died out as a vernacular, but has been revived in Israel. Quranic Arabic is the basis of Modern Standard Arabic, much like how Biblical Hebrew is the basis of Modern Hebrew, but the Arabic vernaculars form a complex dialect continuum, the far reaches of which are not mutually intelligible. The Quran was written in Arabic because that was the language of Mecca and Medina.\n\nYour post was honestly full of odd misconceptions and I couldn't really grasp what your point was exactly, but I hope that helps.",
"The Arabic language survives because the people that speak it continue to live in a large area. Modern Arabic is still similar-ish to Koranic Arabic because there is a tradition that the Archangel Gabriel revealed the exact wording of the Koran to Muhammad in the Cave of Hira. Because the exact words ultimately come from god, translating them would diminish the meaning. This means that lots of pious Muslims learn Koranic Arabic through working with the scriptures, which makes the language more homogenous than it would be otherwise.\n\nThe OT was written in Ancient Hebrew but was translated to Koine Greek in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy II. The NT was written in Greek because the disciples were trying to spread it everywhere (look at how a lot of the NT is epistles; letters to a specific group) and Greek was the Lingua Franca of the Eastern Mediterranean. By the 5th century the Church translated the Bible to Latin, which was at that time a very common language spoken. Over time, Latin became the official version, or 'versio vulgata', Latin for [common translation](_URL_0_). This is where we get the term Vulgate Bible. Fast forward another thousand years or so and nobody speaks Latin so there's new Church reform to make the Mass more ineligible to more people again.",
"As others have said, the OT was written in variants of Hebrew. Which variant depended on when the book was written, and no, the OT was NOT written in one go. The last book was written around 400 BCE.\n\nThe NT was written in Koine Greek, as that was the most popular language in that part of the Roman Empire. With that, you could spread pretty far out. Latin was unwelcome in the eastern parts of the Roman Empire. Aramaic was the spoken lingua franca of the Levant at that time, but no books of the Bible (the Bible(s) most Christians are familiar with, at least) were ever written in it. The last book was written in around 70 CE.\n\nThe Quran was written in Arabic, which was already a trade language in the Arabian Peninsula, and the language that Muhammed spoke. It already had a widespread writing system, so that naturally would've been the language that the Quran would've used. It's like the Book of Mormon being written in English: English was what Joseph Smith spoke and wrote in."
]
} | [] | [] | [
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_the_New_Testament"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0059:entry=vulgo2"
],
[]
] | |
1wdbst | When two live wires meet and sparks fly in various directions, what are those sparks made of? | When two pieces of metal strike, the sparks are little bits of metal. So the sparks that come off wires. Is that metal from the wire or are electrons just shooting about everywhere? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1wdbst/when_two_live_wires_meet_and_sparks_fly_in/ | {
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"The sparking is actually happening when the wires are a little bit apart. You'd need two wires which are at different electric potentials - for example, one wire with some positive voltage, one wire at ground potential.\n\nTwo things to start. When you have a voltage, it creates an electric field, which varies with distance - voltage = electric field * distance.\n\nEvery material has a property known as a dielectric constant. This roughly tells you how easy it is for the material to conduct. (That isn't even close to a stringent definition, but it'll serve for the moment.) Materials with a high dielectric constant are better conductors; perfect vacuum has a dielectric constant of 1.\n\nIf the electric field gets high enough, it can overcome the dielectric strength of a particular material, and conduction will occur through that material. In the case that you described, the electric field is breaking down the air molecules. In order to conduct, some of the air molecules ionize / have electrons stripped away - and this creates a temporary conducting path through the air. That ionization produces the sparks that we see.",
"Energized wires brushing each other make two kinds of sparks. Electrical arcs are actinic blue-white, appear only between the wires when they're close to one another, and are what just_commenting and thechasbrown described. That kind of arc is due to electrons shooting around everywhere inside the arc, breaking apart molecules and creating a soup of ionized atoms and electrons. That soup is called \"plasma\" and it is the fourth state of matter (after the more familiar solid, liquid, and gas). \n\nBut sparks that fly away from contacting wires are just what you think - they are microscopic bits of superheated metal, and they look pure white, orangey-white, or reddish (as opposed to the actual electrical arc, which is made of plasma and generally looks blue-white).\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] | |
2ork6x | is ttip good or bad for the eu? | It's difficult to find differentiated news sources on the internet. The picture painted is either black or white. As a German, I am aware of the benefits of open trade zones, but I also do feel strongly about our environmental standards and basic facilities being in public rather than private hands. Even if that means no or negligible profit.
So if anyone could shed some light on the pros and cons and some sources perhaps, that would be swell! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ork6x/eli5_is_ttip_good_or_bad_for_the_eu/ | {
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"No one knows. I don't know if the fine details of TTIP have been released yet, but I know for a fact that people were calling for the death of it long before anyone knew a damn thing about it. A most of the really loud voices on the matter, either for or against, are completely and utterly uninformed.Half truths, cherry picked ideas, and outright lies are all incredibly common in just about every conversation about it.\n\nAnd that's before we get into the complicated mess that is economics. There are lots of different economic models, and whether having more free trade and less government restriction between the US and EU will actually be beneficial is going to depend on a lot of uncertain factors. And then you need to ask \"who benefits from this?\" \"will the benefits spread equally?\" \"will there be unintended consequence?\" and so on.\n\nSo tl;dr, no one is going to know if TTIP is good until it goes into force. If it doesn't, then there's not going to be any way to if it would have worked."
]
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[]
] | |
cf8bwc | the gun argument in the usa | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cf8bwc/eli5_the_gun_argument_in_the_usa/ | {
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"These are not my personal feelings, just my observations of how some people in the US feel:\n\n & #x200B;\n\n* Some folks are worried that when we start to restrict guns, in any meaningful way, its the beginning of much stricter rules down the road.\n* It's far easier to slowly increase gun restrictions once some forms of restriction are already in place.\n* We do have restrictions in the US so some folks fight against *any* attempt to increase those restrictions.\n* The people who feel this way tend to worry that eventually no one will have any guns other than the government and that we will lose control over our democracy."
]
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[]
] | ||
38ci4p | How did Otto, first King of Greece, get chosen? | I'm nervous that this might sound dumb, but here goes. Otto was the first greek king after the greek war of independence, right? But where did he come from? Was he a random guy that was elected? Did the greek smallfolk have anything to say? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/38ci4p/how_did_otto_first_king_of_greece_get_chosen/ | {
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"text": [
"Some time back [I asked a somehow related question which partially answers your question.](_URL_0_) "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2irc4o/history_of_the_balkans_ama/cl4uds7"
]
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5yfxht | Why does nitrogen have valence 5? | Why does nitrogen (or any element in the nitrogen group) have valence 5? It's electron configuration is 2s2 2p3 , which means 2s is filled, and all three 2px, 2py, 2pz can form covalent Pauli pair bonds. The heuristic I learned for understanding why carbon (and those in its group) has valence 4, is because even though its electron configuration is 2s2 2p2 (so it would have a valence of 2), the difference in E between the 2s and 2p levels is so small that the bonding E more than offsets the E required to shift an electron from the 2s to the 2p, so that effectively the configuration is 2s1 2p3 , in which case it clearly has a valence of 4. This heuristic doesn't work anymore for nitrogen, because 2s1 2p4 can't covalently bond 5 electrons, since one of the 2s or 2p states has to be completely filled, whether 2s or 2px or 2py or 2pz. Further, I don't see how it could be energetically favorable to promote one of the 2s or 2p electrons up to the 3s level, which is a much larger jump such that if it were allowed then the valency of all the other elements would be thrown off. What am I missing?
| askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5yfxht/why_does_nitrogen_have_valence_5/ | {
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"Valence electrons are electrons that are available to participate in chemical bonding. By this definition carbon has four and nitrogen has five. While common neutral nitrogen molecules will only donate three electrons for bonding, the remaining pair is available to bond and does so often as a Lewis base which is easily observed in amino acids.\n\nWhile 2p orbitals are higher in energy than the 2s orbital, as long as there is no 3s orbital the 2s is sufficiently exposed to be able to be used in bonding. Additionally, several atoms such as carbon and nitrogen will end up forming s and p hybrid orbitals with a common form being sp^3 where for nitrogen the 2s and the three 2p orbitals are formed into an equivalent set of four orbitals."
]
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] | |
9js4ne | why did we create litres (or other liquid measurements)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9js4ne/eli5_why_did_we_create_litres_or_other_liquid/ | {
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"text": [
"Liters measure *volume* - the amount of space an object takes up - not mass. One liter of water takes up the same amount of *space* as a liter of mercury, but one liter of mercury is much heavier."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
4p87mq | How can the quality of a video deteriorate if it is uploaded, downloaded and re-uploaded to and from the same location? | This question comes from [this post](_URL_0_?) where he uploaded and downloaded and re-uploaded the same video 1000 times. My thinking is this: Let's say you export a video, and take the SHA1Sum of the exported file. (For my knowledge a SHA1Sum verifies that a file downloaded is the same as the source file.) Then you upload and download the file, and compare its SHA1Sum to the original SHA1Sum. I imagine that they would be the same, because the same file was uploaded and downloaded. Now if the process was repeated 1000 times, I still would think that the SHA1Sum's would be identical. I thought that maybe it was YouTubes processing of the video which deteriorated it over time causing a change in the SHA1Sum, so to exclude that factor, instead of uploading to youtube, what if it were uploaded to Dropbox, Google Drive, or even just another computer on the same network. What causes this video deterioration if the SHA1Sums do not change? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4p87mq/how_can_the_quality_of_a_video_deteriorate_if_it/ | {
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"YouTube (and I assume other video websites) processes the uploaded videos. If you'd download a YT video, you'll find that it's not the same as the original file.\n\nIf you would upload the file to a service that doesn't do any processing (such as cloud storage), then no matter how often you'd upload/download, the file would remain unchanged and the video would look and sound exactly the same as the original. ",
" > I thought that maybe it was YouTubes processing of the video which deteriorated it over time causing a change in the SHA1Sum,\n\nThat's correct. Specifically, this happens when processing uses [lossy compression](_URL_3_) algorithms. For instance, you could compress and decompress an audio file a thousand time using the [FLAC](_URL_2_) algorithm with no loss of quality, recovering the same exact file with the same exact SHA sum^1. But if you do that with a lossy format such as MP3 then eventually the sum will change. Video formats are more often lossy because they are very big files, thus there is an aggressive need for strong compression.\n\n > to exclude that factor, instead of uploading to youtube, what if it were uploaded to Dropbox, Google Drive, or even just another computer on the same network.\n\nThose are just \"file\" storage services which do not assume anything about the contents. You're right to assume that the file will not be changed and you may get the same SHA sum after a thousand uploads, except for a small probability of undetected network errors.\n\nBasically every time a packet is sent over the network data is encoding as electrical or optical signals. They are subject to noise, and they may be corrupted. Ethernet frames have a 4-byte [frame check sequence](_URL_0_), this is similar in concept to the SHA sum but shorter and easier to calculate (thus not \"secure\" but that's not important in this context). If there was a transmission error and the FCS does not match, the receiver will discard the frame and wait for it to be retransmitted. On top of that [TCP has a similar 2-byte checksum](_URL_1_). Transmission errors have a very low probability of being undetected, but it may happen. Therefore you may have a slightly corrupted file after a thousand uploads even to another computer on the same network, and the SHA sum may not match. But don't expect this to be more than a couple of flipped bits - certainly it won't be as bad as that \"creepy video\".\n\n(1) If there are any tags such as timestamp, artist, songname etc. they may not be preserved in the conversion if one of the file formats does not support them, and this may change the SHA sum of the file. Also, SHA still has a very low probability of not detecting some changes, but that's really negligible."
]
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAC",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossy_compression"
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ikdzz | How close are we to restoring inner ear hearing loss? | In humans, the inner ear hair cells do not regrow. But I've seen research done on birds and other lab animals in which researchers were able to regrow the hair cells and restore hearing.
How close are we to restoring hearing in humans? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ikdzz/how_close_are_we_to_restoring_inner_ear_hearing/ | {
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"_URL_0_\n\nAlthough speech sounds ****ing terrifying [when vocoded](_URL_1_).\n\nCouldn't we do it with stem cells fairly easily?"
]
} | [] | [] | [
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant",
"https://mustelid.physiol.ox.ac.uk/drupal/?q=prosthetics/noise_vocoded_speech"
]
] | |
17ebd9 | the massive battle on eve online last night. | I saw the thread [here](_URL_0_) but I am not an EVE player and a lot of the jargon they use is completely unfamiliar with me. [Especially this comment.](_URL_0_c84jg9c)
As an outsider who has never played, I am interested in the game, but at the moment I do not have the ability to play it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17ebd9/eli5_the_massive_battle_on_eve_online_last_night/ | {
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"text": [
"If anybody is considering starting, you should get a friend or someone to send you an invite because you'll get an extra week to try it out (21 instead of 14 days). If you don't know anybody, message anybody on /r/eve and they'll be glad to help (like me!).",
"Decoding that comment.\n\nHe was chilling drinking tead and listening to a korean girl pop band (this one if you are curious: _URL_6_)\n\nA fleet commander from a different alliance pops up. He is expecting some news about one or two high value ships tackled somewhere, which the other dude needs help killing.\n\nNow this other gentleman says that there is a trap being set for him, and he wants to set a trap for the people trying to trap him.\n\nNow the first trap is about to be sprung, the expectation being that only a couple medium-high value things will be caught and killed.\n\nPart of this trap is using the highest value ship in the game as a secret entrance to the place the fight potentially will be at.\n\nHe moves to spring the trap, but instead of letting everyone else move 'through' him. He jumps his super expensive thing in with no support.\n\nNow the poster makes a call for his alliance to assemble a specific fleet composition, so if the super expensive ship gets in trouble he can bail it out.\n\nHe then says that they organized quickly and the trap spring-er dude allows all of the Posters friends get to him. At this point the enemy had many high value things on the field, and one very high value thing.\n\nHowever at this point no one was stopping the super valuable thing from leaving so as soon as the allies showed up he left.\n\nThe allies start trying to kill the medium high-value things (carries), when they realize that super high value stuff is appearing to attack them. They attack the weakest of the super high value stuff and kill it. (_URL_5_)\n\nThe enemies however nearly killed an ally super valueble thing, but through luck it managed to escape. The second thing the enemies tried to kill wasn't lucky and died (_URL_4_)\n\nNow all the sides didn't have many of the type of thing they needed to keep the high value stuff from escaping, so all sides called their friends (all the following acronyms are names).\n\nThe allies were having great luck getting their valuable stuff in and out whenever the enemy tried to kill it. So they decided to stay around, and exploit a poor tactical decision on the enemies part to kill some medium-high value stuff that was doing most of the damage to them.\n\nAt this point more allies show up with many powerful ships. And the original trap spring-ers are bringing many of the ships needed to trap the high value stuff, despite losing many.\n\nThey trap and attack one of the super-high value things (_URL_1_) knowing that the person flying it is frequently the leader of the enemy.\n\nThe enemy realized they were losing, so they tried to get all of their super valuable things out, while killing the allies medium-high value things. They did this by telling people to kill them in alphabetical order.\n\nTime dilation was extremely high which represents the sever trying to compensate for lots of lag.\n\nThe number of people present in the location was 2800.\n\nThe allies trapped and killed another one of the super high value things (_URL_2_)\n\nThe enemies tried to get all of their high value things, all while their allies arrived in increasing numbers of small things.\n\nThey caught and killed another high value thing (_URL_0_)\n\nThe enemies managed to get almost all of their remaing things out, but one more was caught and killed (_URL_3_)\n\nAfter that it was 'clean up' of the remaining smaller things.\n\nAt this point the poster gives props to some allies who did good work (these names are individuals who commanded the fleet)\n\nHe then lists the casualties (of the high value stuff) on both sides\n\nIn order of value\n3 super high value killed\n6 high value killed, 1 high value lost\n44 medium high value killed, 4 lost\n29 other medium high value killed, 8 lost\n\n-----\n\nHope this helps, most of the acronyms are proper nouns (names of places, things, people, or groups) if you want any specifically translated I'll try to help",
"To put it most simply:\n\nOne guy accidentally pressed button A when he meant to press button B. This put him in a vulnerable position, and many other people decided to take advantage of the situation by attempting to kill him. \n\nSo he calls in some backup. Which causes everyone else to call in more backup. Rinse, repeat, until you have 3,000+ people having this massive battle. \n\nIt was essentially one of the largest PvP battles in the game's history, and all it took was one tiny mistake to get the ball rolling. This wasn't a scheduled event, or a part of some scripted quest chain. This was EVE players making and becoming EVE history. ",
"Eve is a game of internet spaceships. The largest and most valuable of these ships, the titan class, [is literally worth several thousand dollars](_URL_1_) (the numbers are somewhat out of date but the relative scale is still accurate). People go to great lengths to save titans.\n\nOne of the things titans can do is act as a gateway to random spots in space, allowing whole fleets to surprise the enemy. They usually stay behind and just send people in. In this case, the titan jumped in with the rest of his fleet. Once a titan jumps, there's a several minute delay before they can go back.\n\nOnce the titan showed up, the people that got jumped called all their friends in - people want to kill a titan just as much as the owners don't want to lose one. The guy in the titan called his friends in to save him. Things kept escalating. At the peak, there were over 2800 people involved, and nearly 60 titans on the field. [Total damage](_URL_0_) was 480 billion game credits - a real world value of about $15,000.",
"Can someone tell me how the battle ended? Who won?",
"Find via /r/depthhub, user Kiresays\n\nEssentially, there are two \"Mega\" coalitions in the game right now, the Clusterfuck Coalition (CFC) and the Honeybadger Coalition (HBC). A coalition is a group of alliances that band together. There are also 3-4 other smaller coalitions (Russian Bloc, N3), as well as some independent notable alliances (Black Legion in this case).\n\nThese are all Nullsec powers. The HBC's core alliance is TEST; an alliance that is based from and recruits out of your favorite website, Reddit (Shameless plug: go to /r/evedreddit to check out Reddit's corporation/alliance. The CFC's core alliance is Goonswarm, which is based in and recruits out of your least favorite website, SomethingAwful!\n\nNow, it would appear that these two alliances were born to be rivals, but it was not always this way. When the reddit corporation (alliances are composed over individual corporations) first joined EVE, they were attacked by the SA corporation, goonswarm; who were already very established in the EVE universe. Instead of becoming enemies, the Goons were taken aback by the adorableness of our attitude towards the game, and we became allies and soon to be best friends. They nurtured us, tought us, fought for us. Our current leader, Montolio, decided that he wanted to take a path of independence.\n\nWe met another group of players in an alliance called Pandemic Legion. They are considered the big bad guys of EVE. They posses hundreds of the Super Carriers and Titans; the most powerful ships in the game and which the pictures in the OP are mostly comprised of. Basically, these guys have a public mumble channel called OG mumble. Mumble is a program like teamspeak, if you didn't know. This was when Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was popular, and some of our guys joined their channel to play with them. They befriended them, and more people joined to play and more and more. Soon, their EVE alliance had invited us to go on campaign with them; and it was hella fun. They were a bunch of old players, and our raw enthusiasm of the game seemed to make it more fun for them, and their wealth, power and experience taught us a lot.\n\nThe problem is, that our new PL friends are direct enemies with our Goonswarm bros. These tensions were drawn down, and we eventually got both of them fighting for us to attack a new threat to us in the South. But that's another story.\n\nWhat's important to last night is that we chose to go with PL instead of goons, and we formed our own coalition; the HBC. Between PL's ability to drop many of the most powerful ships in the game, and our ability to rush in with hundreds of support ships to back them up, it's a potent force.\n\nLast night, a relatively small pirate alliance that controls a good bit of territory nearby Goon-land thought that the goons may try to attack them over a local moon; which holds mineral resources. They informed a fleet commander in Pandemic Legion that this may be happening, and PL set up to ambush goons.\n\nThe goonswarm Fleet commander (FC), Dabigredboat, is a prettty interesting character, who is loved or hated throughout the game, but that's another story. Anyways, he is flying a titan. These are the most powerful ships in the game, they do a lot of damage, can take a LOT of damage, and are ridiculously expensive. Additionally, they can move across the universe rapidly with a jump drive; but they can also move OTHER SHIPS across the universe rapidly by \"bridging\" them.\n\nSidebar: EVE has an interesting feature where people can buy game time cards (30/60 day) and sell them in game for in game money; allowing wealthy people to essentially play the game for free, and allowing people who are wealthy out of game to have the money to do what they want. This provides a rare insight to the actual value of in game item. And a titan, like dabigredboat's, would cost something like $3500 dollars to buy with out of game money.\n\nBack to the story. So basically, boat is in his titan getting ready to bridge a full fleet (~250 dudes) onto this small pirate alliance. Except he makes a mistake; he clicks JUMP instead of BRIDGE. That sends his $3,500 ship right into the middle of this pirate corporation with nobody nearby to support him. And then all hell breaks loose.\n\nIf you'll remember, PL was aware that something might be going down, and when the pirates inform them that a titan has jumped in, and not only a titan but Dabigredboat's titan, they jump in 3-4 supercarriers. Supercarriers do more damage than a titan, but don't take quite as much and aren't quite as expensive. Boat orders Goon and CFC supers to log in, and they drop a few more supers in to help boat. PL goes into hyperdrive and goes all in; they drop every supercarrier they have available, and are frantically calling everyone they know to get there as well.\n\nAnd then Boat makes a crucial mistake. He should have realized that his titan and the few supers he called in to support him were going to die, and cut his losses. But instead he panics, and calls in EVERYTHING the CFC has to help get him out of there. At this point, the battle transcends hell and goes into every god damn layer of Dante's Inferno. The CFC commits every supercarrier, titan, dreadnought (basically floating gun platforms that do a ton of damage) and regular carrier (which are basically \"healers\") that they can. PL does the same, and the rest of the HBC is in right behind them. My fleet, and the rest of the TEST fleet burned across the universe at best speed to get into the fight, and all of our capitals (dreads/carriers) and supercapitals jumped in ahead of us.\n\nAlso, goons are not well liked in the universe of EVE. They have fought against (and won against) pretty much every major player in the game. So the rest of the smaller coalitions also jump into the fray. And even though we're technically \"unfriendly\", they join ourside and the whole universe of EVE piles onto the CFC. My poor laptop crashed when there were 2800 people in the solar system (And there were hundreds more in surrounding systems), but it was epic.\n\nThe CFC lost a lot of shit. ~44 Dreads, 29 Carriers, 5 Supercarriers and 3 Titans. The HBC and the rest of EVE lost 10 Carriers, 6 Dreads, and one Supercarrier. It's a mind boggling amount of damage done, and money lost. But that's EVE.\n",
"I would like someone to ELI5 what consequences this will have, if any.",
"Any videos of this yet? Sounds like something to watch",
"This was really interesting. I'd love if there was a place to read about the in-game history/notable events for EVE and other MMOs for people that don't play them. Most of the stuff I know about different events are from _URL_0_ articles!",
"There's really no ELI5 for Eve, that's both the beauty and the horror of the game.",
" < extremely valuable ship... I mean like one of the best in the game > \n\n-only fantastically rich players and/or corporations (like guilds) can afford one\n\n-These ships are called \"titans\"\n\n-titans always have a large group of friendly ships flying to protect them and scout ahead for enemies.\n\n -Think of it like how an aircraft carrier always has a submarine, destroyer, and battle ships with it. \n\n-Each ship is another player, not just a ship.\n\n-\"naked\" titans are very tasty targets, if they don't have protection literally everyone who can will come to get in on the kill.\n\n\n\n < how space in EVE works > \n\n-EVE has \"systems\"\n\n-systems are connected by gates that let you jump system - > system\n\n-titan's can NOT use gates, too big. \n\n-Titan's have something called \"cynos\" (sigh-knows)\n\n\n < how cynos work > \n\n-rather than jumping from system - > system by gates (where gates can be guarded) cynos let you jump 10-12 systems away in one jump.\n\n-a ship must be in the destination system (usually a cheap scout) and \"light a cyno\", think of it like a beacon or road flare in space. This lets the titan jump straight there.\n\n\n < special abilities of titans > \n\n-\"doomsdays\" (nuclear laser beams of death in space)\n\n-cyno-jumping (explained earlier)\n\n-\"bridging\", instead of jumping just themselves, Titans can warp their *entire support fleet* to the cyno first (sometimes hundreds of players).\n\n\n < what happened > \n\n-titan chillen with his fleet\n\n-cyno gets lit by scout far away deep inside enemy territory\n\n-titan *accidentally* clicks \"jump\" instead of \"bridge\"\n\n-Naked titan jumps into far-away enemy territory, leaving it's entire support fleet stranded systems away.\n\n-enemies freak out, call for help to kill titan before it can escape. Thousands of people log on to get in on it.\n\n-owners of the titan scream for their memebers to log on to save the titan, bringing in dozens more titans, super carriers, and hundreds of battleships.\n\n-thousands of people brawl in one of the largest battles ever (3200 people at once)\n\n-$700 billion of in-game currency obliterated in a few hours\n\n\n\n(there are tons of more thing's I'm leaving out:\n\n-ongoing social dynamics between the groups involved\n\n-the fact that the fight took place in low-sec and not nul (different classes of space have limitations which limited the titan even more)\n\n-dynamics with the FC (fleet commander) involved being known to be a dumbass\n\n-conspiracy theory that this was an intentional \"pearl harbor\" moment by the owners of the titan\n\nBut that's not ELI5 :)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n",
"Reading all this makes me want to pick up the game. How noob-friendly is the game? How much time/effort am I going to spend getting to a point where I'm taking place in things like this, as opposed to hearing about them on reddit a few days later?",
"Damn, and there was me thinking I had deliberately unsubscribed from r/gaming. ",
"I don't understand how things are worth real money. Do people buy ships from others with real world currency? what creates the value? time spent in the game developing ships?",
"I ALMOST wish I was single so I could have the time to get into this game."
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"http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/17dohb/eve_online_a_compilation_of_the/c84jg9c"
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"http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=16069454",
"http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=16070144",
"http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=16071218",
"http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=16068387"... | |
ej8ql2 | Why do some animals have more than 1 stomach? That is, what's the benefit physiologically over having just 1 really large stomach? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ej8ql2/why_do_some_animals_have_more_than_1_stomach_that/ | {
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"If you use a cow as an example, grass and other things cows eat, are fairly difficult to digest. By having multiple stomachs, there is more time to process the food. I believe some stomachs have more specific specializations as well, similar to our small and large immune systems."
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2913ei | If a bee were to fly into my car and join me on a road trip across the country, would it join another hive at my destination, or die alone due to being so far from home? | Pretty self explanatory. :) | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2913ei/if_a_bee_were_to_fly_into_my_car_and_join_me_on_a/ | {
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"Once it left your car it would attempt to use the sun to navigate back to its home hive and find the hive not in the location it thought it should be. Without a known hive to return to its unlikely to find another hive unless it was very close by to where it thought the hive should be. Even if it did the guard bees at the entrance would not allow a bee from another hive inside under most circumstances. Eventually it would die of exposure, starvation, or be eaten by something. \n\nOn the upside individual bees don't matter. A standard hive has upwards of 30,000 bees and the average worker only lives about 45 days anyway. If you manage to get one in the car its a forager at near the end of that 45 day lifespan as it is. The bees that leave the hive are the older and more expendable workers so you might have cut its life short by a week or so.\n\nBees can join another hive but only under certain circumstances. If there is a major nectar flow on and the strange bee is loaded up with nectar the guard bees are less picky about stopping it. After some time in the hive it acquires the hive smell and considers the new hive its home. This happens when beekeepers have lots of hives in a row the ones on the end tend to attract bees the ones in the middle lose them, its called drift. \n\nHives can also be combined. One way to do this is to remove the queen from 1 hive then place a layer of newspaper on a second hive with some slits in them. Take the first hive and place it on the second (which has a queen). There will be some fighting but by the time the newspaper is gone and lots of bees mingle they all have the same hive smell and consider themselves one hive.\n\n",
"on a slightly unrelated note, tons of bee species are solitary - meaning they live without a \"hive\" at all. your hypothetical bee may be one of those :)",
"Its possible, but it probably very much depends on the bee. For example, in this [paper](_URL_0_) they found that 55% of female paper wasps (same order as bees, and social) \"drift\" into colonies other than their own. "
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2mairg | why are smoothbore cannons more prevalent in modern tanks when we previously hailed rifled guns as a large advancement | e.g. M1, AMX Leclrec, etc | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mairg/eli5_why_are_smoothbore_cannons_more_prevalent_in/ | {
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"Smooth bores allow the firing of complex projectiles that might pop out fins for example, or have aerodynamics which shouldn't be disturbed. Rifling actually cuts into the projectile and would cause harm to such a tank round. Instead modern rounds use sabots which allow a wide variety of projectile shapes.",
"Rifling is used to increase accuracy, by making the round spin. nowadays, the computers are advanced and rounds have fins, so rifling is not that big of a benefit. On the other hand, a rifled gun needs sliding rings to fire sabot rounds, and, more importantly, wears out much faster. A smoothbore gun is more reliable and easier to maintain.",
"The M1 actually originally used a rifled barrel before the A1 upgrade replaced it with a smoothbore system.\nThe British and Indian Main Battle Tanks still retain rifled barrels.\n\nSmoothbore barrels don't wear as fast as rifled barrels, so maintenance is a consideration but it depends largely on the ammunition you want to use.\n\nYour choice of munitions will be informed by who you expect to be fighting and what sort of fighting it will be - big open terrain tank battles (as envisaged taking place in W.Germany during the Cold War), or in-town anti-insurgency, anti-personnel fighting where the enemy have no tanks or heavy armour.\n\nIf you want to use fin-stabilised rounds for accurate long range shooting and some of the newer anti-personnel rounds (which are basically glorified shotgun cartridges that fire multiple projectiles simultaneously) then a smoothbore barrel is good.\n\nIf you want to use traditional spin-stabilised high explosive shells then a rifled barrel is required.\n\nThe invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan was one of the reasons for the Americans to move to a smooth-bore barrel - the fighting there involved very little anti-tank activity and was mostly anti-personnel and anti-building, which called for munitions better served through a smooth-bore barrel.",
"Rifled guns are good because they cause projectiles to spin, stabilising them and increasing accuracy. But the typical modern armor-piercing tank round is in the form of a long, thin rod made of super-dense material. The thinner (in relation to length) the projectile, the lesser the stabilising effect of rotation, so the spin imparted by a rifled barrel doesn't work very well. They use fins instead.\n\n",
"Smoothbore \n-Less barrel wear \n-More reliable \n-Easy to maintain \n-Increased projectile velocity (shorter time of flight and more penetration) \n-Less variables (wear on rifling affects accuracy) \n-Cheap simple high performing ammunition \n-Can fire longer projectile in relation to its bore size \n-Accurate out to 3000m\n\nRifled \n-Accurate over 3000m \n-Can fire HESH rounds (overrated IMO)",
"US used 155mm cannons still use rifled barrels. ",
"rifled barrels improved accuracy on dumb bullets/shells.\n\nimproved projectile design has taken care of that, and a smoothbore allows for higher velocity, simpler maintenance, more durability, etc.",
"So the question has been answered. I have a new question:\n\nIf I went back in time to the reign of the cannon, could I design and build a more modern \"complex\" cannon bullet for those cannons and potentially change the course of an ancient war?",
"Do a search for cannon rounds or shot from prior to WWI. You'll be amazed at some of the stuff warfighters were jamming down the barrel of a cannon. Example) _URL_0_",
"So here's the thing about most technology breakthroughs; they're not really inventing new ideas, they're just using old ideas in a new way.\n\nSmooth bores were terrible when we had \"dumb\" projectiles, so we rifled the bores to correct for bad bullets. Well now, we invented complex bullets that do many things on their own, so a rifle bore gets in the way. Now we're back to smooth bores.\n\nAs the see-saw of innovation continues, technologies come in and out of usefulness, but never truly go away.",
"Could someone please eli5 this question?",
"Challenger 2 tank has a rifled bore and actually hits it's targets.",
"To actually explain it like your 5\n\nThe ammunition has changed and now spins itself so rifling isn't needed. With some types of ammo the rifling would wear down quickly making the gun useless and they want to use a whole bunch of different types to get the job done. \n\nHere is a picture of common ammo for tanks. \n\n_URL_0_ \n\n"
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9oll60 | is it possible for a country to create a nuclear weapon without telling anyone? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9oll60/eli5_is_it_possible_for_a_country_to_create_a/ | {
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"Well if they did, how would we know? ",
"Yes and no. They don't have to tell anyone but it is unlikely that it would go completely undetected. Nuclear tests get detected by seismologists, buying uranium always gets attention and is regulated etc. ",
"Make? Yes. Test? No. It would be very difficult to make sure their design works without testing and very easy for everyone to know they made it if they do test it. ",
"I'm not even sure making it would be practical for most countries, without other people knowing. Enriching uranium is required for basic nuclear weapons, and that is not a process which is easy to hide. If we can figure out that it's going on in a nation as insular as North Korea, it's going to be hard to keep it from the world.\n\nBasically, the gas centrifuges and the sheer quantity of uranium required are going to give a nuclear program away. In order to make a Bomb, you have to separate U-235 from U-238, and since they are basically chemically identical, you need to exploit the tiny differences in atomic weight using high tech centrifuges.\n\nBut since the weight difference is so slight, it's still time consuming to do.... So you buy a lot of centrifuges. And house them in a big building. And then a military satellite takes a picture of your big building, various intelligence services pick up orders for the centrifuge components and track their delivery, and they notice all the yellow cake going into the big building....",
"Sure, it's been done several times. I assume you mean \"without telling anyone\" to mean \"and keep it secret.\"\n\nIsrael built nuclear weapons in the 1960s, and kept it pretty secret. The only reason we know for sure that they have them is that a whistleblower posted photographs of their program.\n\nSouth Africa built weapons in the 1970s, and is wasn't known for sure what they had accomplished until, in the 1990s, they disclosed it to the world (after destroying them).\n\nPakistan had nuclear weapons by the 1980s, without it being too known for sure, until they tested weapons in 1998. \n\nThere are degrees of \"knowing,\" of course — it was not hard to have suspicions that Israel, South Africa, and Pakistan had nuclear development programs, prior to the \"moments of revelation.\" It is hard to hide absolutely every sign that one might be doing such a thing. It is very hard to hide nuclear testing (though not impossible, if you go about it on a very small scale and under the right conditions). \n\nAnd, of course, the USA built the first bomb \"without telling anyone.\" Soviet spies knew, but few others did until the bombs were dropped on Japan."
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5e1bjb | why it's acceptable to eat meat or hunt certain animals but not animals that are considered typical pets? | I don't mean to offend anyone and really want to understand the difference between meat versus pets.
I just want to understand how animals are categorized as food/hunt/pet and why someone is deeply hurt when a pet is hurt but animals that are killed for food/products or hunted are not a big deal. What causes a differing emotional connection to certain animals/situations? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5e1bjb/why_its_acceptable_to_eat_meat_or_hunt_certain/ | {
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"It's cultural. In Asian countries they eat cat and dog because they are animals. In India and other info-Asian countries they eat insects for protein. ",
"Vincent:\nWant some bacon?\n\nJules:\nNo man, I don't eat pork.\n\nVincent:\nAre you Jewish?\n\nJules:\nNah, I ain't Jewish, I just don't dig on swine, that's all.\n\nVincent:\nWhy not?\n\nJules:\nPigs are filthy animals. I don't eat filthy animals.\n\nVincent:\nBacon tastes gooood. Pork chops taste gooood.\n\nJules:\nHey, sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I'd never know 'cause I wouldn't eat the filthy motherf***er. Pigs sleep and root in shit. That's a filthy animal. I ain't eat nothin' that ain't got enough sense enough to disregard its own faeces.\n\nVincent:\nHow about a dog? Dogs eats its own feces.\n\nJules:\nI don't eat dog either.\n\nVincent:\nYeah, but do you consider a dog to be a filthy animal?\n\nJules:\nI wouldn't go so far as to call a dog filthy but they're definitely dirty. But, a dog's got personality. Personality goes a long way.\n\nVincent:\nAh, so by that rationale, if a pig had a better personality, he would cease to be a filthy animal. Is that true?\n\nJules:\nWell we'd have to be talkin' about one charmin' motherf***in' pig. I mean he'd have to be ten times more charmin' than that Arnold on Green Acres, you know what I'm sayin'?",
"It is a purely cultural distinction. People often cite domestication as proof that some animals are more 'pet'-like, but that is just evidence of a long-standing cultural distinction (and might have more to do with the way *humans* have been domesticated by our cultural beliefs, and - possibly - by biological processes).\n\nTravelling to countries where people eat things that I did not consider to be *food* - cats, dogs, bugs, horrible Cthulhian nasties from the sea - I listened to many discussions about what is or isn't a pet and what is or isn't food, and nobody made a claim stronger than \"this is how it has always been done here\". Foreigners would often cite their emotional connections to pets, and how there was something inherently 'natural' dividing animals that should be pets and animals that should be food... but many of them disagreed about which animals went into which category.\n\nIn the US I have observed that many people don't really think of 'meat', as found in a grocery store, as being or coming from an 'animal', and numerous people have told me they eat meat, not animals. If the average person still lived with animals, still butchered their own meat, I suspect this weird abstraction could have never occurred. But what we eat and what we do to be able to eat are rarely connected by anything but money, for a lot of people.\n\n(In the US when people find out I don't eat meat the responses range from polite interest to being seriously offended. I don't know why they get offended. I don't care what anyone else eats, I just don't eat meat when I have other options. Among the people who get seriously offended, many have tried to explain to me that there are 'natural' reasons to eat some animals, like cows. \"It's not like we're eating cats or dogs!\", which would apparently be 'unnatural'.)",
"Also if you look to nature most animals who do eat other animals don't eat other carnivores (cats and dogs). They mostly eat vegetarians (cows, pigs, chickens). Just a thought as to why in many cultures they never thought to eat these animals. ",
"It mostly has to do with culture and societal norms. In America and (some) European countries, we tend to avoid animals that are too \"smart,\" \"cute,\" or \"gross.\" \n\nSo, we'll shy away from things like monkeys, dolphins, cats, dogs, insects, and rodents, but other cultures who don't have the same hangups will obviously choose differently. Consider the French with snails, the Chinese with cats and dogs, and the Japanese with squids and such.",
"There isn't any reason. Different cultures have different proximity to different animals. Some cultures consider dogs unclean. Some eat dogs. Some keep them as pegs. There's no \"reason\" other than how a culture developed.\n\nIt also depends on the type of meat. Horse meat is fantastic, but we eat cow meat because it's fattier and fat was important for a while. Horses could be ridden and had another purpose. Cows were quite fierce (well, bulls anyway) and couldn't.",
"It is a cultural distinction and it is because we add human attributes that do not really exist in the animal to our pets and so are disturbed to eat them. ",
"I'd say this comes down to two things.\n\nFirst, dietary taboos. Nearly every culture puts some animals off-limits for eating for one reason or another. I'd go so far as to say the tendency to do this is intrinsically human. Sometimes it's just to maintain cultural distinctiveness: sitting down and eating together is also a near universal method for human bonding, and dietary rules can make it pretty obvious who is or isn't in your group when you do this. Sometimes it's because while something may be edible, it's not generally wise to eat. For example, rats eat stored grain, cats eat rats, but if you eat a lot of cats there will be more rats and less grain. Not the best choice of foods in an agricultural society. Most pets were originally working animals, after all.\n\nSecond, people tend to alter their responses to things in a particular category based on their social relationship to those things. For example, nobody expects someone to have the same response to all children as to _their_ children. The university I attended treated me different than it treated similar students attending other universities. Soldiers treat soldiers in their own army differently than soldiers in the enemy army. Likewise, our pets are our pets. By mere virtue of having that relationship to our culture, animals of certain species are removed from the 'ok to eat' list. It's pretty much irrelevant that a dog and a deer are both animals and not that different in many ways: what matters is not so much what the dog _is_ biologically, but rather its relationship to western culture. Deer don't fill the role of companion or helper and we don't feel any specific obligation to not eat them. ",
"Well we don't make as big a distinction as you might think. Take rabbit for example.\n\nBut the distinctions between things like dogs and cows are just due to efficency. Dogs eat meat, it would be completely stupid to farm dog, because you would have to feed it meat, like beef. Might as well just eat the beef, and make upwards if a 90% efficency saving. Dogs instead serve uses like herding, which are more pet like. Cats catch mice. \n\nOver time people find these work animals cute, and keep them when the work is over because they care about them. Exactly how people can care about a dog but systematically execute cows is beyond me. I could understand caring about both, and I personaly care about neither, but caring about only one is something I have to put down to irrationality. "
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1ewq7q | Are there any effects of returning transplanted organs to living donors? | For example, a person decides to donate his kidney to another, but after a few months, the donor develops kidney failure in his remaining kidney. As luck/bad luck would have it, the recipient dies from an unrelated accident but leaves the kidney relatively unharmed.
Would transplanting the donor's kidney from the recipient back to the donor be feasible? Would there be any organ rejection or any ill effects? Would the donor have to take anti rejection drugs, albeit at a lower dosage? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1ewq7q/are_there_any_effects_of_returning_transplanted/ | {
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"Feasible - yes. In practice its never done because the removal will lead to some ischemic damage, living donors are specifically selected for their ability to live a healthy life with only one kidney, and the risk of adverse events during implantation is significant."
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14hyqb | hatch-waxman act | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/14hyqb/eli5_hatchwaxman_act/ | {
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"There are things known as \"generic drugs\"; these are drugs usually sold under store brands, with the same active chemical as a brand name drug. They can't be sold as long as the brand name drug has a patent on it.\n\nIt used to be that generic drugs had to go through the same approval process as the original drug. But this process is very costly, and not really necessary, because the entire point of generic drugs is that they do the same thing as the original. The Hatch-Waxman Act changed the law, so that generic drugs could get approved just by showing they do act the same way as the original. To compensate for this, brand name drugs were given some additional time to have a guaranteed monopoly, on top of the 20 years guaranteed by the patent."
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2r3xiy | What places on the body are best equipped to take an impact? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2r3xiy/what_places_on_the_body_are_best_equipped_to_take/ | {
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"The gluteus maximus; it's the thickest layer of muscle and fat on the body, with no delicate organs behind it, only bone.\n\nA strong impact on the glutes are less likely to result in serious injury than if the same impact took place elsewhere on the body, though there is a possibility of damage to the coccyx (tail bone) or hip bone depending on how the impact lands.\n\nLimbs and extremities are generally more resilient than other parts of the body for the aforementioned reasons.\n\nThe worst places for an impact to occur are the head and spine, due to the seriousness of the injuries which can result, such as brain damage, paralysis and death.\n\nThe torso contains vital organs such as the lungs, heart and liver, which are protected by the ribcage, however as good a job as ribs do at protecting these organs from impacts, they do so at a cost to their own risk of injury; and a bad enough fracture can even cause a rib to puncture a lung.\n\nImpacts to the abdomen can damage organs such as the kidneys, spleen, intestines, bladder and reproductive systems. These organs are protected only by a thin layer of muscle and fat (relative to the limbs)."
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1j4vis | If gravitation propagates at the speed of light, then isn't the Sun actually pulling the Earth from where the Earth was 8 minutes ago? What physical consequences does this have? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1j4vis/if_gravitation_propagates_at_the_speed_of_light/ | {
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"Mass creates a gravitational field. It's this field which propagate at the speed of light. Since the Sun has been around much longer than that, the field is already established and the gravitational potential in each point of Earth's orbit is established. \n\nThe fact that gravitational fields propagates at the speed of light only has effects if there are changes in the source of gravity. For example: If the sun where to suddenly disappear it would take 8 minutes until the Earth stopped orbiting and shooting of into space with it's current velocity.",
"This is a surprisingly subtle question, that has been answered best in a paper by S. Carlip, found [here](_URL_0_).\n\nIn short, the force on the Earth points toward the Sun's current position, not its position 8 minutes ago. This can be seen from simple symmetry arguments, and is referred to as the *lack of gravitational aberration*.\n\nIt is actually not unique to gravity; a similar effect arises for the Coulomb force in electromagnetism.\n\nThe argument is more complicated in the gravitational case than for electromagnetism, but the basic idea is the same.\n\nSuppose we have a star and a planet, with the planet stationary and the star moving at constant velocity. Which way does the force on the planet point? The answer is that it points directly toward the instantaneous position of the star! To see this, go to the frame in which the star is at rest. In that frame, the planet is moving in a fixed gravitational field, and so as the planet moves at constant velocity, it experiences a force directly towards the instantaneous position of the star. Now switch frames back to the one in which the star is moving, and the result that the force points directly to the star must still hold regardless of frame, and so the force on the planet points to the instantaneous position of the star, not where the star was. \n\nThis description I've provided is exactly the case for the Coulomb force in electromagnetism, which only uses special relativity; the analogous argument for general relativity is little more complicated, but the basic idea still holds. In both cases, if abstract symmetry arguments make you nervous, you can also do the calculation explicitly and see the result emerge.\n\nNote that this does not mean the speed at which gravity propagates is anything other than *c*. What it means is that there are various effects that propagate at speed *c* that combine to produce this (perhaps surprising) effect. As Carlip says in referencing the electric case, \"This effect does not mean that the electric field propagates instantaneously; rather, the field of a moving charge has a velocity-dependent component that cancels the effect of propagation delay to first order.\"\n\nThere is even experimental evidence. The orbits in the solar system would be show marked changes if the net Newtonian gravitational force pointed to where the Sun had been rather than to its instantaneous position; this has been known for two centuries."
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25lxbl | why do some people mind if you change lanes in front of them, and attempt to move forward to prevent you from changing lanes? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25lxbl/eli5_why_do_some_people_mind_if_you_change_lanes/ | {
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1qza1v | To what degree did allies share technology with each other in WWII? | As I was writing this I came up with several questions I'd like to know, so sorry if this is too long or complicated. I'm mostly curious about the original question, and then the others are more like follow-ups.
First of all, here are the types of technology I'm talking about (I'm sure the answer to each question will depend on which type):
* Small arms/artillery - machine guns, cannons, shells, mines
* Ships - fire control systems, advancements in speed/armor, aircraft carriers, anti-sub technology
* Submarines - the subs themselves, torpedoes, torpedo computers
* Tanks - fire control systems, advancements in speed/armor
* Aircraft - general design, jet engines
* General technology - radar, atomic weapons, codes/codebreaking, etc
Without further ado:
1. The original question - to what degree did allied nations (both Allies and Axis) share their advancements in the above with each other?
2. Did the degree of sharing differ greatly between nations within the same alliance? For example, I can see the US/UK exchanging more with each other than with the USSR. But programs like lend-lease would've given some insight even if it wasn't explicitly shared.
3. To what extend did the capture of enemy weapons aid in the advancement of each nations' tech?
4. In which of the above (or other notable) areas was one nation or alliance vastly superior to the other nations (ally or enemy) or alliance?
Thanks! | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1qza1v/to_what_degree_did_allies_share_technology_with/ | {
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"There was quite a lot of sharing. There was Lend Lease where many countries obtained US weapons and equipment. A lot of British Empire countries such as Australia not only bought British equipment but made it under licence.\n\nScientists from around the Allied nations worked on the Manhattan and related projects. This didn't extend to the Soviets though but their spies managed to steal quite a lot of information from the projects. Yes, even wartime allies spy on each other.\n\nThe Germans created the Panzerschreck after capturing American bazookas. It's not exactly known where they captured them as the stories either say North Africa or from the Soviets. \n\nThe Panther was developed due to German experiences in coming up against the Soviet T-34. For a while there was serious discussion on just copying the T-34 but this was decided against for a number of reasons, one of the main ones being friendly fire. However, the Germans were well known in taking captured equipment, such as tanks and other armoured vehicles, and redesignating them with German names and using them on the battlefield. \n\n",
"I don't know about the conventional armaments, but in the case of radar and the bomb, the US and the UK had a famously important exchange of information. In both cases the UK had made breakthroughs (or what it thought were breakthroughs) and shared them with the US in the hopes that the US would be able to, with its superior access to resources of all kinds, be able to rapidly improve the technology. The UK delivered a working cavity magnetron to the US in 1940, and around the technology rapidly spawned the US radar program (at the MIT Radiation Laboratory). This led to impressive and rapid development of radars that could be used for a variety of purposes. The working radars were shared with the UK as well.\n\nIn the case of the atomic bomb, by 1941 the US had concluded that atomic bombs were too unlikely to be developed soon to be worried about and too risky to invest in. The UK had come to a different conclusion — that the bomb was difficult but possible to make, and that the Germans might be making on. They convinced a number of key scientists in the US of this conclusion, these scientists pushed the US program out of its exploratory stage (the Uranium Committee) and into its development stage (the Manhattan Project). The UK did this because it did not feel it had the resources necessary to develop the bomb. At first there was some collaboration between the US and the UK, because the UK had more information than the US, and then the US started to cut them off, because they felt they no longer needed UK participation to succeed and worried that the UK would try to gain industrial advantages from postwar nuclear technology. Churchill directly appealed to Roosevelt and this led to the Quebec Agreement, which basically said that the US and the UK would share information freely and consider each other more or less equal partners in the wartime project. The UK were permitted a delegation of scientists to come to Los Alamos where they did indeed contribute important (though not necessarily irreplaceable) work. They also happened to include the most important of the Soviet spies (Klaus Fuchs) but that is its own story. General Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, still did not want to give the UK \"everything\" so he did not allow them to participate in anything related to plutonium production (the Hanford site), and only minimally related to uranium enrichment (the UK helped on gaseous diffusion issues — Fuchs again). After the war the UK was basically cut off from atomic information by Congress (who didn't know about the Quebec Agreement in any case). \n\nIn both cases, the US did not really share anything like the same level of technical information with the USSR. In the case of the bomb the US famously shared nothing with them deliberately and did not even hint at having worked on the bomb until the Potsdam Conference. Of course we now know that they were inadvertently sharing quite a bit through spies like Fuchs. ",
"The best example of Allied sharing of technology came from the hundreds of thousands of trucks that the US shipped to the Soviet Union. Well-made vehicles that could actually navigate the harsh Russian weather and the terrible autumn muds? Magnificent. Also see the Sherman Firefly, the British modification of the Sherman. The Firefly which was given a 17-pounder gun, was the only British tank capable of man-fighting the German heavy armor.\n\nPersonally, what I find more interesting is the Axis sharing of information during the war. Which is to say, almost non-existent. What little sharing that took place through the Soviet Union quickly stopped after Operation Barbarossa. But there were a few attempts to use submarines to exchange information. Several German and Japanese subs managed to make a voyage around to Europe/Japan, and in a few cases two separate submarines met near India to exchange various pieces of technology and small amounts of raw materials. The Germans sent designs for the \"E-boat\" torpedo boat engines (which Japan had belatedly started research on after Guadacanal) as well as their turbojet fighters, which contributed to the design of a Japanese rocket interceptor similar in design to the German Komet. The Japanese sent over some specimens of their type 95 torpedo, which was a submarine version of the infamous \"Long Lance\" oxygen propelled torpedo. Ultimately though, neither of these exchanges of technology affected the outcome of the war, as it was already too late for this technology to be deployed."
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eu6tfh | Is not wanting to have kids becoming more common? | I find more and more people my ages (20-30 ish) say they don’t want to have kids. Almost all my friends except one say they don’t want to have children. I feel like my parents generation had a much different attitude towards having kids ?
Edit: Wow i’ve been out all day and i’m shocked how this has blown up! Thanks for all the great answers everyone | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/eu6tfh/is_not_wanting_to_have_kids_becoming_more_common/ | {
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"Edit Disclaimer: I am not an expert on fertility, I am only citing how I understand my readings. :) \n\n\nHey, coincidentally I am studying populations at the moment in my masters program.Yes, women around the world, and especially in western countries, are opting to have kids later and later in life.\n\nIf you want to do research on this look up: Age of First Birth.\n\nThis can usually be attributed to; better family planning, longer life expectancy, education and better career opportunities for women\n\nReally, the attitude on kids hasn't shifted so much, or at least none of the readings I have done would suggest that. More so the opportunities to have kids has become more difficult. 20-30 are prime years for furthering your education and career. Having a child, while possible during this time, can really hamper and slow most people down. Not to mention some companies would rather fire you than wait for you to deal with your pregnancy.\n\nReferences (also interesting reads): Patterns of low and lowest-low fertility in Europe\n\nFrancesco C. Billari1, 2 and Hans-Peter Kohler3 1Bocconi University, 2Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research, 3University of Pennsylvania\n\nThe German Low Fertility: How We Got There and What We Can Expect for the Future\n\nPetra Buhr and Johannes Huinink\\*\n\nVOLUME 19, ARTICLE 3, PAGES 15-46 PUBLISHED 01 JULY 2008 [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n\nResearch Article\n\nOverview Chapter 1: Fertility in Europe: Diverse, delayed and below replacement\n\nTomas Frejka Tomáš Sobotka",
"Globe and mail alluded to this today\n\nOlder, longer: The super-aging of Canadians has taken everyone by surprise\n\n\n\nAnd longevity continues to increase. The fastest-growing age group in Canada is centenarians. There are more than 10,000 them today, three times the number in 2001, and there should be about [40,000 ] mid-century.\n\nOver the same decades in which longevity has increased, the fertility rate has decreased. Today it sits at [1.5](_URL_0_), half a baby short of the 2.1 children per woman, on average, needed to keep a population stable. If it weren’t for this country’s high immigration intake, Canada’s population would eventually start to decline, just as it is declining or about to decline in dozens of countries around the world, from China to Japan to Italy to Russia.\n\n\n\"As a result of increasing longevity and decreasing fertility, Canadian society is aging rapidly. In 1982, [the median age in Canada was 30]. Today it is 41. There are now more people 65 and older than people 14 and younger in Canada, and that will widen in the years ahead.\"",
"I use Total Fertility Rate to talk with my students about having children. It calculates how many children each woman has. Here is a GREAT site with some graphs: [_URL_2_](_URL_2_) \n\nYou are right that in the US the trend is down. We are having fewer children and waiting later to do it. The population of both the US and most European countries will shrink without immigration.\n\nOne cause is the education and career opportunities available to women. Women have dreams and aspirations aside from just raising children. Another is the increased availability of medical care. You don't need to have 5 kids when you know they will all survive and you can have as much sex as you want with prophylactics. \n\nAs far as just wanting kids, the Macleans article is good. Research has consistently shown that having kids makes you less happy overall, **but** delivers occasional highs: [_URL_0_](_URL_1_)",
"The global birthrate has been steadily falling since its peak in the early 1960’s.\nOver population is almost completely fueled by increased longevity not the birth rate.\nThe current us birthrate is below replacement level and there is every indication that rate will continue to fall. \n\nWhy does this concern people and why do countries like Italy and Finland give financial incentives for people to have more children when humanity is over consuming resources at unsustainable rate?\n\nAs longevity gains continue to out pace birth rates humanity is facing a global shift toward a majority population of old people. As this population grows and ages it will become more and more dependent, physically, financially and socially, on an increasingly diminishing pool of young people. This is a big problem for young people who will be forced to contribute more and more to the well being of older people. It’s also a big problem for older people who’s quality of life is almost certain to diminish as the pool of young workers, caregivers, innovators and family gets stretched thinner and thinner.\n\nThe current math on demographics has some unfortunate consequences for modern life. Even if people did suddenly decide now to have more kids we are still facing a quite a population knothole in about 30 years. Also creating enough children to support the glut of people becoming elderly seems irresponsible given the climate crisis. We’re going to have to be creative about how we handle this thorny situation as it developed along side the climate crisis or a lot of people are going to suffer. \n\nHere’s a link to the World Bank’s data on the global fertility rate that breaks it down by country so you can see it for yourself \n\n_URL_0_",
"It has become more common in countries where women have achieved the capacity to have a professional career. I'm sure you will find a trend if you analyze the relationship between number of childless couples and number of companies headed by women or with women in the board",
"Populations with low infant mortality, women's education, and birth control drop to replacement levels across all cultures -- we are now below 2.5 children per couple worldwide and the population will stop growing at 10-11ish billion around 2100 (when all the current people have replaced themselves). That means some couples still have lots of children, some couples have none. The stability across all demographics is impressive.\n\n_URL_0_ \n(22 minutes in is where we see why we have 11 billion from zero population growth today)",
"the birthrate is definitely falling...an interesting article with their view:\n\n\" As for what's behind the negative sentiment among people of childbearing age, Myers cites the current political turmoil and a gloomy outlook for America's future. Not a whole lot of things are going good,\" he says, \"and that's haunting young people in particular, more than old people.\"\n\n\" Many current or would-be parents also responded to the report Wednesday, using social media to list a string of obstacles to having kids in the U.S., from the frustration of finding child care to high insurance costs and a lack of parental leave and other support systems. And they note that while the national economy has done well, workers' paychecks haven't been growing at the same pace.\n\nAs Elena Parent, a state senator in Georgia, [wrote on Twitter](_URL_0_), \"Parents know why the birthrate is falling. Kids are expensive & time-consuming & our society doesn't make it easy.\" Another factor, says sociologist Sarah Damaske of Penn State, is job security — even in a time of low unemployment. \"\n\n & #x200B;\n\nOur society is fundamentally changing in terms of both attitudes and economics. The 'gig economy' is a problem for job security. Obamacare was an attempt to decouple healthcare somewhat from the \"good old days\" of long term corporate healthcare, but that is faltering in the new political climate."
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5enrhz | When did higher education become stereotypically politically liberal? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5enrhz/when_did_higher_education_become_stereotypically/ | {
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"Can you be more specific? \n\nAre you asking when people started stereotyping higher education as liberal in nature, or are you making the assumption that it's de facto liberal now and are looking for a point in history when (and if) it shifted to more liberal values?",
"In Rodney Cline's 1960 paper, \"The Conservatism of Philosophical and Educational Liberals,\" published in the *Peabody Journal of Education*, he declares that **\"Philosophical liberalism and Educational liberalism have strongly held sway in American Education for the greater part of the twentieth century.\"**\n\nEdmund Fawcett's book *Liberalism: The Life of an Idea*, traces modern liberalism (we'll define it here as preferring new ideas to the tried-and-true, an alternative to don't-fix-it-unless-its-broke) to the 1830s and the ideas of Wilhelm von Humbolt, a German scholar and diplomat who encouraged universal education.\n\nThere's an argument to be made that **higher education became liberal once the notion of universal education became popular.** In the 19th century, universal education was a radical concept in Western Europe. It had its strongest supporters in Germany, and many of those supporters migrated to the United States in the 1840s and 1850s, part of a flood of immigration about the time of the failed 1848 general European revolution.\n\nBecause conservative factions won that revolution almost universally across Europe, it was the liberals who emigrated to the United States, carrying their ideas with them. They believed in things like kindergarten (a German word, mind you), universal education, the elimination of slavery, and other radical concepts along those lines. German and Austrian immigrants made up an even larger portion of the Union armies in the Civil War than did the famed Irish regiments.\n\nWith conservative Democrats out of Congress because of the war, a liberal Republican-led Congress in 1862 passed the Land-Grant College Act of 1862, which provided grants of land to states across the United States to finance universities specializing in \"agriculture and the mechanic arts.\"\n\nThis was a huge innovation, and it's a key sign that higher education was seen as politically liberal even in 1862. Indeed, President Lincoln was already leaning upon the politically liberal ideas of college professors when he approved guidelines for the treatment of prisoners of war and general rules of war to be followed by the Union armies in combat.\n\nThe Land-Grant College Act was a key milestone in the advancement of higher education in the United States, because it democratized it, allowing it to be accessible to many more Americans than before. Until 1862, colleges tended to cater toward the elite. Institutions like Yale and Harvard, among the oldest in the United States, produced theologians and lawyers, people among the upper strata of society. \n\nThey were exactly the people most inclined to want to keep society the way it was, because they had the most to lose if it changed.\n\nThe establishment of West Point was a step toward the democratization of higher education in the United States, because it didn't distinguish based on the ability to pay for the education. Furthermore, it taught engineering, which at the time was considered a \"lesser\" study than the law. West Point (and Annapolis, later) still had a high bar for entry, but it was a *political* bar rather than a financial bar. One had to be recommended to the institution, and while that was easier, it wasn't *easy.*\n\nOnce the Land-Grant College Act arrived, there were a wave of institutions to choose from, and competition begat lower prices in a classic case of supply and demand. Once World War II arrived, the Montgomery GI Bill ensured that anyone (Note: blacks were excluded) could attend these colleges, which by 1944 had 80 years to become established. That was the last step needed for the democratization of higher education.\n\nNow, it should be noted that **the whole idea of public education, enshrined in the United States from its earliest days** (I'm thinking in particular of the Land Ordinance of 1785) **is at its heart a liberal idea.** The notion of giving a schoolroom education to everyone was a departure from the previous process of education through apprenticeships and journeymen in a trade. Previously, in Western Europe, general education was usually restricted to the elite, or religious institutions. Overton Taylor's \"Liberal Education and Liberalism,\" published in the Jan. 1945 issue of *Ethics*, is a good walkthrough of how the idea of widespread *lower* education was also a liberal idea, but that's outside the scope of your question. I think it's worth mentioning, because it plays into the subsequent idea of *higher* education being a liberal force. \n\n*Note: This is a badly worded question, and trying to answer it is like trying to eat soup from a cardboard box.* ",
"In order to have some context for the word 'Liberal' in this, would positivism be a liberal thing according to American standards?"
]
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2rvtbb | how would the completion of keystone xl reduce us dependence on foreign oil? | Canada would have no obligation to sell crude to the US at discounted rates in the event of an OPEC embargo, what am I missing? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rvtbb/eli5_how_would_the_completion_of_keystone_xl/ | {
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"No, but we're nicer and more stable than some of our OPEC \"friends\".\n\nIts like if there are two gas stations across the street from one another. But one is owned by your friend. The price of gas is the same, but you go to your friend's gas station because, well, he's your friend. And sometimes he throws in a free Mars bar.\n\nCanada's really unlikely to be a jerk about supply and demand (like Saudia Arabia is being currently), because we need you guys as much as you need us. That and we're super polite and stuff.",
"The Keystone Pipeline is more about tapping Montana and North Dakota shale gas rather than hitting Alberta's oilsands gas. Currently production in Montana and North Dakota is tapped because they have absolutely no pipeline and are currently transporting it into Canada to be refined and then later re-sold into the US market. It would make so much more sense to send all of that gas to Texas.\n\nIf the shale market were to continue to expand (which currently it cannot because of aggressive Saudi Arabia trying to prevent it) America could become 100% independent of foreign oil. This year due to shale, America was for the first time ever an exporter of gas.\n\nThink about that for a second. In the entire history of the United States, 2014 was the first year America ever had enough gas. Before then America was always dependent on war torn countries, tinpot dictators, and Islamist kings to get their oil.\n\nThere is already a pipeline from Alberta to Texas called Keystone. This one Keystone XL looks to cut into Montana/North Dakota and across other regions that are rich in shale gas production from fracking.\n\nCanada sells America gas at about $10 less per barrel. There's absolutely no reason to believe that Canada will always play nice with their oil. But the pipeline is mostly about North Dakota/Montana. They only care about the segment between Montana and Texas because the other part has been done for quite some time.\n\nThere is also a future plan to build a northern gateway that would allow for gas from Alaska and the Northwest Territories to get pumped to Texas refineries."
]
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1psrsp | Cost/benefit analysis of daylight savings time? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1psrsp/costbenefit_analysis_of_daylight_savings_time/ | {
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"As a follow up, does anyone have a rational reason why different countries do it at different times? Also, I feel like the answer to this question is very straight forward, but I just can't wrap my head around it: why does the southern hemisphere change in the opposite direction? And why are their seasons not directly opposite to the seasons in the northern hemisphere? And why are some time zones separated into half hour zones? \n\nI realise I'm moving off topic here, but these are questions that interest me.",
"Because of that, engineers can't build systems that have a correct local time without having a connection to internet and a dependence on a human-curated database of timezones. See, DST not only have different settings in different countries, but there are several changes every year around the world. It has to be constantly updated. (there was actually a lot of uncertainty when the maintainer of the only freely usable database retired a few years ago).\n\nThis has a clear cost: you can't set something for local time without giving it an internet access. That can be a HUGE cost, economically but also in terms of security. You have to choose between making your mission-critical equipment potentially messing a human-set timeline or having to be connected to internet with the security risks it causes.\n\nAs an engineer, here is my proposal: have a way to map a GPS coordinate to a timezone, and make it eternal. Have every country vote on the time they want to live in and be done with it. Here is a simple procedure: average the population's getting up time, average the population's getting to bed time, choose an integer number of hours that will make 11:30 AM and 12:30PM include the middle point.",
"While most everyone has dealt with DST in their life, that does not make you an expert on the topic. Questions in /r/askscience are for people who are experts in the field to answer. \n\nAlso, while sources are encouraged, they are not a substitute for expertise. Please do not simply copy and paste info from a link. ",
"I'm sure nobody will read this, but there is a very informative podcast about the history of DST put out by the Organization of American Historians on their show Talking History from 2006:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe podcasts can also be found on itunes.\n\nContrary to popular belief, farmers were very much opposed to DST, but the retailers were strongly in favor because an extra hour of daylight in the evening resulted in additional sales for them.\n\nEven though Talking History is a little dated, the podcasts are very well done and worth a listen.",
"There has been a campaign in Britain, as part of the 10:10 project, for us to move to GMT+2 in the summer and GMT+1 for the rest of the year (ie be a whole timezone ahead). You can read some of their arguments at [_URL_0_](http://www._URL_0_/benefits.html)",
"It was not invented to benefit farmers. Cows and crops do not obey DST. Farmers and ranchers get up during daytime and stop when it's too dark. Source: family farmers.\n\nIf I remember correctly the the genesis if DST is a satire written by Franklin concerning the benefit to candlemakers if we pushed DST so that Parisian nightlife would be out during more night time hours.",
" > Once upon a time daylight savings time was invented for the benefit of farmers.\n\nThis is not true. [Farmers actually lobbied *against* DST.](_URL_1_)\n\nIt was proposed to maximize the amount of sunlight during daytime hours. Refer to t[his map](_URL_0_).\n\nNotice how DST usage correlates directly to distance from the Earth's equator. Countries closer to the equator do not have as much seasonal shift in daylight hours, so DST is not as useful to them.\n\nIt should then follow that the benefits and costs of DST are not purely economical."
]
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"http://i.imgur.com/7EqBLCs.png",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time#Politics"
]
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9864dm | why is it easier to swim in a cold pool than it is to take a cold shower? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9864dm/eli5_why_is_it_easier_to_swim_in_a_cold_pool_than/ | {
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"I feel like it may have to do with your exposure to the air. In a pool, your body is completely submerged in water while in a shower, you’re only getting sprinkled which then allows any cold air that may have been in the room to hit you and make you feel even colder.",
"This is a guess, but I would say it's due to the fact that when you jump in a pool, a larger surface area of your body is being exposed to a lower temperature, so your body quickly comes to equilibrium with the water temperature. However, in a shower, you have a much smaller amount of water on your body at any one time and it's a constant flow of cold water, so your body reaches equilibrium much slower, and hence you feel cold as the heat is leaving you body. ",
"Water absorbs a lot of heat from your body when it evaporates. When your body is submerged it can't do this so you lose less body heat.\n\nSource: Something I heard a long time ago that may or may not be true"
]
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2bj1mf | why can't deep web/dark web websites be closed? | Curious. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bj1mf/eli5_why_cant_deep_webdark_web_websites_be_closed/ | {
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"They are operated by individuals hosting servers in various countries. And first, you need to find the server/website then find the person hosting/paying for it. It will usually be in some remote country with little jurisdiction. Now, they have to produce a court order in that country. \n\nTL;DR; It is a huge pain in the butt; Unless they have to, they don't bother with it.",
"The overwhelming majority of the \"dark web\" is composed of things you don't want to be closed down. Pages which are locked behind passwords, emails, things like that. The minority of the deep web which *is* composed of illegal stuff is not only hidden, but might also be hosted in a country which doesn't put much effort into cracking down on these kind of crimes. "
]
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21fj6k | incest laws | I am aware that these laws exist in order to prevent genetic mishaps including deformation and recessive diseases. I am wondering what other reasons exist that make incestuous relationships a bad thing. In particular, I am wondering why the ban extends to homosexual incestuous relationships. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21fj6k/eli5_incest_laws/ | {
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"text": [
"Surely it's for the same reason that relationships between teachers and students, professors and students, prison wardens and prisoners etc., are banned: there is the possibility of an abuse of power."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
1kscy2 | /r/askhistorians, what do you think about the "quetzalcoatl was a viking" myth? | Is there any evidence at all to prove it? What evidence is there against? Could we ever discover more evidence about this myth? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1kscy2/raskhistorians_what_do_you_think_about_the/ | {
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"As far as I can tell there is zero evidence to suggest it is real.\n\nWe have access to a Viking saga or two which describes them fighting the \"Skraelings\" of North America:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThere is also archaeological evidence of the Vikings in NA such as buildings and artefacts:\n\n_URL_1_\n\nIf the Vikings had travelled south and discovered an urbanized and sophisticated culture, the sagas would have recorded it.\n\nThere has been no archaeological or literary evidence of the Vikings going that far south.\n\nSuch theories also are a tad elitist in nature since they are normally presented as \"advanced white people come and educate the primitive natives\", and represents are belief that non-Christian/Non-European people could have achieved such civilization on their own.",
"It makes no sense whatsoever. \n\nQuetzalcoatl, was already an established thing centuries (or more than a millenium, depending on how you want to parse the iconography) before the Vikings even thought about sailing to Greenland, let along the Americas (see: [Florescano](_URL_0_), among others). We'd have to also accept that the \"Quetzal-Norsatl\" was a time traveler, in addition to being part of a group of Vikings that managed to physically travel the extra few thousand miles from Newfoundland to Mexico (then hiking more than 100 miles inland), leaving no evidence of any kind.\n\nIf you have some more specific source making this claim, I'd be happy to debunk it further.\n\n\n\n"
]
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"http://www.mnh.si.edu/vikings/voyage/subset/markland/sagas.html",
"http://www.mnh.si.edu/vikings/1137.html"
],
[
"http://books.google.com/books?id=3HDprRxXsGsC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false"
]
] | |
wxq6e | what is sweat? | As in, what is it composed of and how exactly is it excreted from our bodies? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/wxq6e/eli5_what_is_sweat/ | {
"a_id": [
"c5hd3st"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Body excretes water through your pores to cool you down.\n\nLots of dissolved salts are in sweat."
]
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[]
] | |
4bxmbz | Good books on Polish history? [particularly the PLC] | I've got Pole in my blood and especially with what's going down in Poland today I've been very interested in reading up on how the nation has changed over time. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4bxmbz/good_books_on_polish_history_particularly_the_plc/ | {
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"text": [
"A good English language source for the History of Poland is Norman Davies two volume book \"God's Playground\". Vol. 1 deals with the Origins of Poland, up to 1795. Vol. 2 deals with the history of Poland, since 1795."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
8zc75q | why do the lesions from acne on my face take so long to heal while lesions on other parts of my body take a few days? | For example, I've gotten cuts in my mouth and get some on my hands as well. These cuts/lesions take about 2-4 days to clear up from redness and one can see repair happening to the area. Meanwhile on my face it takes weeks for inflammation to go down by itself and visible repair takes about the same time. Should I ice it down more often? Why is that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8zc75q/eli5_why_do_the_lesions_from_acne_on_my_face_take/ | {
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"I think it’s because the acne is caused by bacteria- and the cut isn’t. So, it’s an infection whereas the cut isn’t infected and should just heal from being cut.(unless it gets infected). The acne lesions on our face also are in contact with sweat, dirt, oil and bacteria on our fingers, where on other parts of our body, not nearly as much. One time I kept pouring hydrogen peroxide on one on my face, thinking it would heal faster- but hydrogen peroxide should only be used once, because it will eat away at your skin if used repeatedly. I can’t remember what the term is for it...Best thing to do is wash 2-3 times a day, exfoliate gently, and try not to mess with them. ",
"Also, saliva is naturally antibacterial, that's why animals licks their wounds \n[_URL_0_](_URL_1_)",
"As a former sufferer who is now older and wiser (hopefully), I can only say one thing that always works to minimize acne: Don't touch your face with your hands. \n\nIf you have to, use a cloth or the inside of your shirt or an inanimate object. Your fingers will introduce infextion to your pores."
]
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[],
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wound\\_licking",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wound_licking"
],
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2npa9e | Do "antiparticle" black holes exist? What would happen if a antiparticle entered a "normal" particle black hole? | If "antiparticle" black holes exist, what would happen if one would collide with a "normal" black hole? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2npa9e/do_antiparticle_black_holes_exist_what_would/ | {
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"There is no distinction between a black hole formed from coalescing matter and one formed from coalescing antimatter. An incoming object -- whether matter or antimatter -- would increase the mass of the black hole.\n"
]
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[]
] | |
fne4sm | what does it mean when a company spends money on a buy back? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fne4sm/eli5_what_does_it_mean_when_a_company_spends/ | {
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"Companies issue shares of ownership of the stuff the company owns, called stock. They sell these ownership shares to people. These sales give the firm money to do stuff. The value of those shares also reflects the value of the company. High share prices can make it easier for firms to borrow money when they need it. \n\nFirms with a lot of cash on hand are under intense pressure to find a use for it (as money just sitting around isn't doing anything). One of the big things they can do with that cash is to buy those shares of ownership back from people that hold them. This can raise the price of the remaining shares and, overall, make investment in the company look more attractive.",
"They bought their own stock back on the open market. It's a method of enriching the company and putting control in the hands of fewer stockholders."
]
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[],
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6fiovc | how does dialing 9-1-1 always call police station of the city you are in if they all have the same phone number? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6fiovc/eli5_how_does_dialing_911_always_call_police/ | {
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"text": [
"Phone calls are routed by telecom equipment, starting with switches that are relatively close to you. Call a regular phone number and your switch routes you on to the next switch and the next until you reach your destination. With 911 your local switch knows to route it to the local 911 dispatch center. \n\n"
]
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3ye1k2 | what's sawn off on a sawn off shotgun? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ye1k2/eli5_whats_sawn_off_on_a_sawn_off_shotgun/ | {
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"You saw the barrel of the gun down so the whole weapon is about half the size. You can now conceal it easier.\n\nThe film Bronson gives a great example.",
"A sawn off shotgun has one, but sometimes two features. The first being a sawed off barrel that is short and concealable. The second being a sawed off stock in order to make the shotgun a pistol grip which adds to the concealable nature of the sawed off.\n\nAn offset of a sawed off shotgun is decreased accuracy and range to the increased spread of the shot and a decrease in accuracy due to the fact that you can't shoulder the weapon and fire like a long gun.\n\nThe main thing that the sawed off has going for its element of surprise and when used in close quarters it proves to be an effective weapon against any living thing there."
]
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c68j5i | why does the color black go with everything? is there a scientific or color-theory explanation for this or....??? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c68j5i/eli5_why_does_the_color_black_go_with_everything/ | {
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"text": [
"Black is considered a neutral color. Grays, whites, browns and blacks are neutral and tend to go with most colors. Typically certain neutral values look best with either corresponding or completely opposed values, but since black is just one value, it can go with everything."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
4a9v3h | Why were the Arabs able to so easily defeat the Roman and Persian Empires, when those empires had for the most part been unable to decisively defeat one another? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4a9v3h/why_were_the_arabs_able_to_so_easily_defeat_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"d0ylni5"
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"text": [
"I would be careful about describing it as 'easy'. It was won with blood and toil, and the Romans and the Persians certainly did not give up quickly! I outlined the main factors in this answer [here](_URL_2_), but it is by no means comprehensive, especially as many things in this field are still contested. I haven't read enough about Persia to write a comprehensive answer, but I noted some historians' arguments [here](_URL_3_). You might also be interested in this [essay](_URL_0_), which outlined some of the conceptual challenges about the conquest of Persia.\n\nIf you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them, or you can post in the current ongoing [AMA here](_URL_1_), as we have a few experts on early Islam there who are happy to help!"
]
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[
"http://www.mizanproject.org/the-arab-conquests-and-sasanian-iran-part-1/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4a8efw/beyond_the_dark_ages_the_transformation_of_the/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3tyehr/what_main_factors_led_to_islam_spreading_rapidly/",
"https:/... | ||
6rsikd | How were Asian-American students dealt with in the US during the time of segregated schools? | Did they go to white schools, black schools, or neither? Or was it dealt with on a case-by-case basis?
I'd also be interested in hearing answers about Latin Americans, but particularly interested in Asian Americans. Also, was treatment different based on where in Asia they were from (Indians vs. East Asians, for example)? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6rsikd/how_were_asianamerican_students_dealt_with_in_the/ | {
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"If it helps, I found these links for related questions that we asked our esteemed historians:\n\n[What was Jim Crow/segregation era America like for non-black minorities?](_URL_0_)\n\n[How were Asian Americans, Latinos, and other people of color treated during Jim Crow?](_URL_1_)\n\n[What was life like for Asians in America before and after the civil rights movement?](_URL_2_)\n\n[How were other minorities treated during America's period of racial segregation?](_URL_3_)\n\nToo many credits to adequately share, but among the contributors in these posts are u/SheldonNovick, u/pronhaul2012, u/elcapitansmirk, u/fufie, u/MrDowntown, u/flynavy88, u/slimshady2002 & u/Tynictansol. \n\nThe last writer I especially like for his inspiration and lessons to us all:\n\n > I'd argue it's also noteworthy that for going back a long ways those groups constituting 'white' or 'caucasian' can't always get along. Russian and Irish and Italian and German and others had quasi-ethnic nationalistic hostilities they either carried over from the 'old world' or picked up in a big city here in the 'states. I imagine that while not as destructive or abhorrent as the actions and policies toward 'nonwhite' races, the existence of these tensions lay out that we, as a country and as a species, like to try to find differences to point out among one another and that once those things are pointed out, there is no shortage of wormtongues out there waiting to turn us against one another.\n",
"In Seattle, Asian Americans were segregated through red lining just like black Americans, so they were victims of the same de-facto segregation. There is a [great website](_URL_0_) that discusses this from University of Washington that has a huge database of primary sources on segregation in Seattle. While this isn't in the \"Jim Crow\" region of De Jure segregation, northern states were (and still are) very segregated through other means. You are likely to find specific discrimination against Asian Americans pretty anywhere on the West Coast. \n\n Today this segregation is still reflected in our schools as Asian Americans from poorer immigrant backgrounds from countries like Cambodia, Vietnam or the Philippines attend schools that have a high percentage of people of color (these schools are very diverse other than there are no white people, high immigrant populations from all over the globe no one race), and students from wealthier Asian backgrounds, typically Chinese, Korean or Japanese attend schools that are primarily white and upper middle class/upper class Asian. "
]
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[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ufqv0/what_was_jim_crowsegregation_era_america_like_for/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2jgzpo/how_were_asian_americans_latinos_and_other_people/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1wu7gg/what_was_life_like_for_asian... | |
3jdshv | - why is avid life media (parent company of ashley madison) not facing any federal charges for scamming its members with fake profiles? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jdshv/eli5_why_is_avid_life_media_parent_company_of/ | {
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"It was in the EULA that those profiles existed for entertainment purposes. They signed the contract saying they read that part.",
"Give it time. Complicated crimes require months or longer for prosecutors to file charges. ",
"They might... for the \"paid delete.\" Litigation would be slow, and honestly, with $20 at issue per litigant, it wouldn't be worth it without class action certification, unless someone brings a huge case involving major damages like loss of employment/credit fraud from one of the \"deleted\" accounts. \n\nAs for their performance, they lucked out in that to avoid vice charges, they had to explicitly not guarantee relationships or encounters from use of the site. That said, their existence implied some level of success, regardless of the disclaimer- how much would be a thorny issue that sides are likely preparing for years-long litigation to sort out. ",
"For any kind of litigation, one would have to prove that those accounts were fake and intended to be fake. Unfortunately, it could be almost impossible to do that, since the hackers or whoever could have planted that info. Or the accounts in question could have been for debugging or some other form of testing. Basically any claim the company makes, no matter how ridiculous, would have to be proven false, and that is a horrible and laborius task for such a small reason."
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6ylndi | why in the english language do we use different letters or combinations of them to make the same sound | EG: Box / rocks...
Lei / lay | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ylndi/eli5_why_in_the_english_language_do_we_use/ | {
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"r/linguistics\n\nWhenever we talk about words in any language, we have to go study the etymology of the word to figure out why we pronounce, spell, or use that word in the modern fashion. As an example, the \"box/rocks\" question you've posed suggests two things. The first being different origin languages, and the second being different evolution from the origin language. \n\n\"Box\" comes from the Greek \"puxos\", whereas \"rock\" comes from the Medieval Latin \"rocca\". When words evolve over centuries, we tend to keep at least some of the original spelling, hence \"puxos\" becoming \"box\" to retain the \"x\", and \"rocca\" becoming \"rock\" to retain the hard \"c\". Adding \"s\" to pluralize \"rock\" comes from Modern English, so we're using a modern language rule to modify a Medieval language origin word. \n\n",
"\"Box\" is a word in its own right, but \"rocks\" is the word \"rock\" with an added \"s\". We don't respell the word \"rocks\" for the sake of efficiency.\n\n\"Lei\" is a word borrowed from Hawaiian, so follows the Hawaiian pronunciation as far as possible. The English word \"lay\", though, didn't start out sounding like \"lei\": in 1400, it would have sounded more like our word \"lie\", and \"lie\" would have sounded more like \"lee\".\n\nAll languages change over time, and between 1400 and 1600, the English language was affected by a profound change in pronunciation called the \"Great Vowel Shift\": most of the long vowels and some diphthongs (a sound made by blending two vowels together) changed, and some of them even merged so that we now have fewer vowel sounds than we used to. Even after the Great Vowel Shift itself, vowel sounds continued to change (this is a process of natural evolution, which never stops -- our language, like all languages, is still changing). However, we didn't change the way we spell the words.\n\nFor example, in 1400 the words \"see\" and \"sea\" were pronounced slightly differently from each other, a difference most modern English speakers probably wouldn't be able to detect. (Start saying the word \"said\", but instead of pronouncing the \"d\" just keep saying the vowel without moving any part of your mouth: that's the closest you're likely to get.) By 1700, the two sounds were being pronounced the same way -- but we didn't change the spelling. In effect, the way we spell our words is about 300 or 400 years behind the times.\n\nThis has totally messed up our vowel system, and is one of the reasons spelling is so difficult in English.\n\nAnother reason is that the alphabet we use wasn't developed for the English language: it's for the Latin language, and is perfect for that language. Before the Romans came we were using a different alphabet using letters called \"runes\", but then we just had to switch to the Latin alphabet. In many important ways, it's simply not a good match for the English language.\n\nAnd as vowels changed over time, so did consonants. Our language is littered with \"silent\" letters that were at one time pronounced, but no longer are -- but again, we didn't bother changing the spellings to keep up.\n\nOriginally, people just spelled words as they saw fit; it wasn't until the widespread introduction of printing that spellings became standardized. Unfortunately, different people had different ideas about whose spellings should become the standard, so we royally messed that one up. For example, we've ended up with \"disdain\" being the opposite of \"deign\" (the word is related to \"dignity\", which is where the \"g\" comes from).\n\nIn short, because there has never been a single authority regulating everything, and because English has never had a proper spelling reform, we've spent centuries making a pig's breakfast of our writing system."
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bgqknt | how does the 'recirculation' option work in car air cons? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bgqknt/eli5_how_does_the_recirculation_option_work_in/ | {
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"It pulls the already conditioned air in over by your feet, and recools that air, instead of cooling air from outside.",
"In the other setting the ventilation system takes air in from outside the car.\n\nIn recirculation, the air being fed to the aircon is air from inside the car cabin rather than air from outside.\n\nThis can be useful to heat or cool the car faster because it starts with the air it already partially heated or cooled, or can be very useful when driving through an area that has hazardous material in the air, like when passing near a big fire."
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wiy4r | why do inflated tires make riding a bike easier? | bear with me.
I've asked this question in /eli5 and did not receive satisfactory responses.
riding with inflated tires, as opposed to deflated tires, seems exponentially more efficient. where does this efficiency come from?
the amount of work I put into inflating the tires is almost nil (*maybe* 5 minutes on a bike pump, if that), so how does that translate into the hundreds and hundreds of minutes of easier riding I get on the bike? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/wiy4r/why_do_inflated_tires_make_riding_a_bike_easier/ | {
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"I think you may be under the misconception that the work you're putting into your tires is being used when you ride the bike. The work (energy) you put into the tires by putting it under pressure stays solely inside the tires, until the pressure leaks out slowly.\n\nWhen you ride the bike, all the energy used to push the bike forward comes from your body, and none comes from the tires.\n\nHad you not inflated the tires, more of your body's energy would be converted into heat through the friction on the road, as explained in the other comments.",
"Rolling friction is the result of energy lost when the wheel and surface deform. A more rigid tire deforms less, which is why it's easier to ride on an inflated tire.",
"This is a pretty good explanation _URL_0_",
"When you're riding a bike with inflated tires, the tire is very rigid, and rolls very efficiently. When the tires are deflated, they deform easily. When the tire deforms, it actually absorbs some of the energy you put into moving forward! This is because the squishing and stretching of the rubber of the tire isn't perfectly efficient -- the rubber itself absorbs some of the energy used to change its shape, and that lost energy results in losing speed.\n\nIt may help to imagine the difference between rolling a partially deflated beach ball, and rolling an inflated beach ball. Or, imagine a bowling ball covered in some sort of spongy foam -- it wouldn't roll as well as the bowling ball on its own."
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a0304e | What do we know of the level of belief amongst the average Nazi soldier in the values and messaging put out by Goebbels and Hitler? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a0304e/what_do_we_know_of_the_level_of_belief_amongst/ | {
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"Not to discourage further discussion, but you might be interested in [this previous answer](_URL_0_) by u/commiespaceinvader."
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x8fjb | By natural selection, wouldn't everyone have 20/20 vision or at least sharper vision by now? | I was just thinking about how much it probably sucked for people before glasses were invented, then I thought of this. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/x8fjb/by_natural_selection_wouldnt_everyone_have_2020/ | {
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"There's not necessarily any selective pressure for people to have better eyesight. Selection pressures are those which increase the probability of successful reproduction. Consider that throughout most of our existence as a species, reproduction occurred fairly early in life (teens onward), and most people had a life expectancy of < 40. Even if sight was selected for, it's likely there were many other, more important selection pressures.",
"Something else this reminded me of that perhaps someone working more in the biological / social science area could answer would be aren't a lot of the effects of modern science causing the reverse effect of conventional natural selection? I suppose one could argue the fundamental principle remains that if modern medicine is freely available then the effects of various biological flaws don't become an issue in the modern environment, but aren't we effectively concentrating worse genes each generation? "
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6fyfgt | What made Boston such a hotbed for dissent against the English Crown during and before the American Revolution? | While reading Wikipedia it has come to my attention that the Boston Tea Party, Boston Massacre, etc. was not the first time opposition to Royal control got violent.
(_URL_0_)
Is there a reason Boston instead of other cities in the American colonies, became such a focal point for protest and violence against Royal authority? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6fyfgt/what_made_boston_such_a_hotbed_for_dissent/ | {
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"So, there are two levels we can answer your question on. Let's start at the meta-gaming level first. New England is to a number of very old, very good schools with strong history programs. This meant that a lot of the history writing in this country in the 18th and 19th centuries was being done by New Englanders, drawn from available New England sources. Add onto this a fine dollop of Ralph Waldo Emerson style mythmaking, and you have ever schoolkid in America knowing mid-level Boston Sons of Liberty like Paul Revere while never having heard of big names in other states like Isaac Sears or Philip Schuyler. While there were protests, riots, and tea parties in other American towns and cities, Boston's either occurred first, where larger, or had MUCH better coverage in the press and later writing.\n\nThere is a bit of segue here into the reasons that New England, Massachusetts, and Boston in particular were hotbeds of Revolutionary activity. The two Massachusetts colonies and their offspring, Connecticut and Rhode Island, all adhered to the Protestant belief that all people should be educated enough to read the Bible. The result was, by the standards of the time, an astoundingly high literacy rate. This created a large, voracious audience for the political tracts that circulated through the Anglosphere in the eighteenth century. In the years before the Revolution, the intensity of the claims made in this tracts became increasingly sharp, alleging that Parliament and even the king were involved in a grand conspiracy to rob Americans of their natural, constitutionally-guaranteed rights.\n\nThis kind of fiery rhetoric found a receptive audience in Boston because of the economic slump that hit the region after the French and Indian War. Even before the war broke out, New England, particularly the areas closer to the Atlantic seaboard, had seemingly filled up: there was no unclaimed land for young men to move onto. Instead, they had move into the over-saturated unskilled labor market of Boston, sacrifice their time, freedom, and money to an apprenticeship, move so far west that they'd be outside of ready access to kin and patronage networks, or circle their families like vultures, waiting for someone to die and pass on land as inheritance. All of these options were, to a greater or lesser extent, frustrating and emasculating, particularly since they delayed marriage and starting a family. Things were made worse after the French and Indian war, as military service (in a provincial or regular regiment, in the Navy, or aboard a privateer) was no longer an option, and as people displaced, orphaned, or widowed by the war came to Boston. Joining the Sons of Liberty or more dedicated militia groups like the Minutemen gave these men something to do, a sense of purpose, and a sense that they were fulfilling their duties as men to defend their rights and their communities.\n\n**Sources**\nT. H. Breen, *The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence*\n\nCornelia H. Dayton and Sharon V. Salinger, *Robert Love’s Warning: Searching for Strangers in Colonial Boston*\n\nJack Greene, *The Constitutional Origins of the American Revolution*\n\nRobert A. Gross, *The Minutemen and Their World*\nEdmund S. Morgan, *Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America*\n\nGary Nash, *Urban Crucible: The Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American Revolution*\n\n"
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392tbq | If I am an 18 year old in early 1942 who signs up for the U.S. Army, what factors determine what unit I end up in? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/392tbq/if_i_am_an_18_year_old_in_early_1942_who_signs_up/ | {
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"Followup question: Were positions in the military doled out differently based on if someone volunteers or if they were drafted?",
"What race is the hypothetical 18-year-old in this scenario? The military was heavily segregated at this point, so that'll change the answer.",
"Did they have asvab scores or any other tests to consider ?",
"Hello everyone, \n\nIn this thread, there have been a large number of incorrect, speculative, or otherwise disallowed comments - including many asking about the deleted comments, which merely compound the issue - and as such, they were removed by the mod-team. Please, before you attempt answer the question, keep in mind [our rules](_URL_2_) concerning in-depth and comprehensive responses. Answers that do not meet the standards we ask for will be removed. \n\nAdditionally, it is unfair to the OP to further derail this thread with off topic conversation, so if anyone has further questions or concerns, I would ask that they be directed to [modmail](_URL_1_), or a [META thread](_URL_0_[META]). Thank you!",
" > what factors determine what unit I end up in?\n\nA battery of aptitude tests that determined one's suitability for particular roles demanded by the military, and the potential to utilize a recruit's pre-existing skills in order to minimize training time and cost.\n\nWhen a recruit arrived at the Reception Center, they'd sit the Army General Classification Test (AGCT), which measured, in broad terms, your current ability and potential to learn. You'd be quizzed on your grasp of language, arithmetic and spatial awareness. Based on the results of this test you would be graded from I-V, with I being the most capable candidates, III average (median = 100), and V the least. Associations of these results with I.Q., 'intelligence', and 'mental age' were explicitly forbidden, though perhaps, not inappropriate. If you graded I or II, you'd be considered a suitable officer candidate, technicians and specialists would be drawn from the top three grades, with the lower two being regarded as only suitable for semi/un-skilled roles. \n\nThe fact that the median grade of the AGCT was determined by studying exclusively white males undoubtedly has some interesting implications for the experience of women, negroes/other non-white Americans in the war, but I'm just not familiar enough with this aspect of it to expand on it.\n\nSo, based on the results of this test, and an accounting of one's pre-existing skills and training taken during an interview, a recruit would go on to take follow-up tests that assessed mechanical aptitude, radio/code aptitude, suitability for officer training, clerical ability etc. For some highly specialized roles (i.e. pilot, bombardier, navigator, intelligence officer, etc) specific vocational tests were formulated to further narrow-down the pool of suitable candidates.\n\nOne's civilian profession and education could heavily influence their eventual role in the military, but ultimately the needs of the army were the most important factor - if you were ideally qualified for X, the army desperately wanted Y and didn't need any X, and if you had shown aptitude for Y, chances are, you were going to be Y. \n\nFrom [*The Procurement and Training of Ground Combat Troops*](_URL_0_): \n\n > For further guidance of the reception centers Army Regulations 615-26, dated 15 September 1942, offered suggestions for assignment. For boilermakers, bricklayers, riveters, and steelworkers, the suggested assignment was the Corps of Engineers. For longshoremen it was the Quartermaster Corps. Detectives were thought to be peculiarly suitable for the Provost Marshal General's Office, and \"vice-squad patrolmen\" for the Military Police. Miners might fit into either the Engineers or the Infantry. Suited for the Infantry primarily, according to these suggestions, were a few \"specialists\" of infrequent occurrence in the civilian population, such as parachute jumpers and mountaineers. Bookkeepers, file clerks, piano tuners, shipping clerks, and teachers were recommended \"for any arm or service.\" White-collar workers were not needed by the Army in proportion to their frequency in civilian society. They stood, therefore, a somewhat better chance of being assigned to the Infantry than did boilermakers or longshoremen.\n\nMany MOS's ('military occupational specialties') had corresponding civilian equivalents, like auto mechanic or typist, but others did not, like rifleman and anti-tank gunner. MOS's were provided with serial numbers (SSN, 'specification serial number'), an SSN below 500 indicated a corresponding civilian occupation, numbers over 500 were military-exclusive jobs. A recruit would also receive an SSN following his interview, relating to his previous experiences, where appropriate they would be matched to the equivalent MOS, but in order to fill MOS's over 500, jobs often needed to be clustered in sets of which the required skills could be determined as compatible. For instance, a steward (124) could be recommended as a potential mess sergeant (824). The selection and assignment of MOS's was determined by the tables of organization (T/O's) that specified the jobs existing in each type of unit and how many men were required for each role, from these the Adjutant General's Office computed the quantitative requirements for each type of SSN per 1000 men, and the reception centers would sort and refer their new recruits according to these figures.\n\nInitially the distribution of candidates between the various services was even - so each arm of the military would receive a fair share of the ideal candidates, and also the less than ideal candidates. But according to changing strategic necessities this principle was often ignored - after 1942 the rapidly expanding USAAF (due to its relatively high demand for technicians and specialists) required 75% of its candidates to be class III (average/above average) or over, which naturally left a lopsided proportion of grade IV/V recruits for the ground forces.\n\nRead about the AGCT at:\n\nWalter V. Bingham, 'Personnel Classification Testing in the Army', *Science*, volume 100, September 29, 1944.\n\nThomas W. Harrel, 'Some History of the Army General Classification Test', *Journal of Applied Psychology*, December 1 1992. \n\n(Bingham and Harrel are two of the psychologists responsible for US WWII classification and selection methods)\n\nRobert R. Palmer, Bell I. Wiley and William R. Keast, *The Procurement and Training of Ground Combat Troops* ([link](_URL_0_) to .pdf)\n\nToday, US army vocational testing is called [ASVAB](_URL_2_). \n\nHere's a contemporary British movie explaining their selection process, which had much in common with the American system: _URL_1_"
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wd2jq | what's r/fearme all about? | Can tell what it's really about. Does it extend beyond its subreddit? Or even anything else. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/wd2jq/eli5_whats_rfearme_all_about/ | {
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1lsboa | when a tsunami hits power lines, why doesn't everything in the water become electrocuted? | I feel power lines have so much power in the lines at all times. I hear many stories on the news about someone working on a power line and turning into dust or having all the flesh of their entire body burned from the mass electricity surging through the body. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lsboa/eli5_when_a_tsunami_hits_power_lines_why_doesnt/ | {
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" > I hear many stories on the news about someone working on a power line and turning into dust\n\nThat doesn't happen.\n\n > or having all the flesh of their entire body burned from the mass electricity surging through the body.\n\nThat can.\n\nNow to address your question:\n\n > When a tsunami hits power lines, why doesn't everything in the water become electrocuted?\n\nElectricity always takes the path of least resistance to the \"ground\" (a technical term meaning some sort of electron sink that can absorb electricity without becoming noticeably more negatively charged). Most of the time, this is the actual ground, hence the name. But in the case of a tsunami, the water itself can act as a ground.\n\nSecondly, you have to understand that power lines operate on AC (alternating current), where the electrons quickly \"jiggle\" back and forth rather than flowing continuously in the same direction.\n\nSo in the case of a tsunami hitting power lines (and presumably snapping the line, exposing the actual conductor), the electrons will simply dissipate a short distance into the water, until the electric field is too weak to make them move anymore. If you're right next to the power line, you might get electrocuted, but it won't do much if you're even a moderate distance away.",
"Ok pure water (distilled) does not conduct electricity and acts as an insulator; it's the impurities in water that conducts. When regular water hits a power source the electrons jump to the impurities and cause a current to jump from one impurity to another through arching. When electricity arches out it's voltage will diminish little by little because the electrons are slowing down from each impurity they hit and the water insulating until it's virtually harmless. Lighting hitting the ocean spreads out in a ball aura because of this before disappearing. In most tsunamis and other disasters the power lines will fall at some point and break the connection of power to the rest of the powerlines.",
"No this is not true. Electricity finds the fastest path to the ground. Since your body is not a very good conductor and salt water is, the electricity will flow through the water into the ground.\n\nHere is a similar question.\n\n_URL_0_",
"There's a lot of talk here about electricity taking the path of least resistance to the ground. It's more accurate to say that electric current takes the path of least resistance **back to its source**, because electric currents must flow in closed loops. Ever see a power transmission line with just one wire? They do exist, and they do use the ground as the return path, but they're only used at low power levels because the ground (dirt) is not a very good conductor! \n\nMost real-world power lines actually have two or more wires. The current flows down one wire and back through another. If the line gets flooded, the current now has a very low resistance path from one wire straight to the other. So most of the current is going to flow in a straight line between the wires, with the amount becoming less as you get further away from that straight path. Once you're several feet away, the amount of current will be small enough that it's imperceptible."
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4uqvcj | When polyurethane foam off-gasses, what is in the gas? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4uqvcj/when_polyurethane_foam_offgasses_what_is_in_the/ | {
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"I'm not sure what you mean by off-gasses. Do you mean during the manufacturing process or after a polyurethane foam has been produced/ during it's life time?\n\nWith regards to it's manufacture, I believe polyerethane can be easily prepared as a foam via the creation of carbon dioxide gas. The CO2 is made from the reaction of polyisocyantes (present as monomers for the polymer) with water."
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19ea2u | Why are some Caribbean islands dominated by a black African population and others by a Hispanic population, despite being right next to each other? | Haiti and the Dominican Republic, for example? Cuba and Jamaica? Both very close together, but their racial makeup is entirely different. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/19ea2u/why_are_some_caribbean_islands_dominated_by_a/ | {
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"You are confusing two things. Race and ethnicity. Hispanic is an ethnicity. There are many black Cubans and Dominicans and they are Hispanic. ",
"It's more their cultural makeup than their racial makeup. Jamaica and Haiti were English resp. French colonies and they had much stricter segregation than the Spanish colonies. In the Spanish colonies, the populace mixed up much more which resulted in the typical latin-caribbean culture, which is neither Spanish nor Black nor Indigenous but a mixture of the three.\n\n*Edited to fix the problem Feelmy pointed out.*",
"While they were colonies Haiti and Jamaica both had agricultural (sugar and coffee plantations, etc.) economies that relied heavily on slave labor. The intense importation of slaves from Africa created large African populations, ones that dwarfed the indigenous and European populations. Wikipedia claims blacks outnumbered whites in Jamaica by 20:1 during the 19th century. \n",
"Someone else can go into further detail but the short answer is colonization by the European Countries. Most of these Islands had a thriving native population that were either kill by the Europeans, disease, assimilated though rape, marriage, and immigrations. A lot of these islands were used for cash crops such as sugar which required slave labor. In English and French colonies stricter relationship laws lead to limited intercultural relationships between the Europeans, Natives, and Africans. In Spanish and Portuguese colonies this was not the case and a lot of intercultural relationships happen. Other the years the Spanish and Portuguese colonies population became produce more mix-culture people while the English and French produced more segregated ones. When the rebellions began taking place, this lead to a mass exodus of Europeans which left the former slave population on the islands. The descendants of these population’s is what makes up most of the islands today. ",
"The Spanish originally tried to use native slaves, but they weren't suited to plantation-type work. Due to the [Inter caetera Papal Bull] (_URL_0_), they were forced to go through intermediaries to acquire African slaves as the W. coast of Africa was given to the Portuguese. This limited greatly their ability to acquire slaves in large numbers. It wasn't until the mid 1600s that Spain really got involved in African slave trading directly.\n\nThen Spaniards lost the monopoly on the Africa slave trade - the [Asiento](_URL_2_) - after the Treaty of Utrecht gave the British 30 years of uncontested monopoly in 1713. A lengthy legal look at the impact can be found [here](_URL_1_).\n\nTL;DR - The Pope gave (known) W. Africa to the Portuguese and native slaves weren't as suited for plantation work. The Spanish were just getting going in African slave trading when they lost the right to import slaves to the British. Therefore, the Spanish never had African slaves in the numbers of the French or British.",
"It's pretty simple, really.\n\nWhen Europeans colonized the Caribbean, they used these islands to grow cash crop (sugar being one of the big ones). These islands made a ridiculous amount of money for their empires, but the plantations there, particularly sugar plantations, require a *massive* amount of labor. The colonizers quickly overworked the native populations in many of these islands, while the indigenous people also suffered from European diseases they had no immunity to.\n\nSo the Europeans needed labor from somewhere. Luckily for them (and very unluckily for Africa), they discovered that west African peoples were willing to sell their slaves (mostly criminals, debtors, and prisoners of war). Africans were able to withstand European diseases much better, so Europeans started importing people. The slave trade exploded as the Europeans gave Africans weapons to pursue wars and raids to gain more slaves, and the Europeans kept buying more and more slaves to replace those worked to death in the colonies. European colonizers came to prefer African slaves to indigenous laborers for their plantations, and in some places the native population was able to survive.\n\nTe result has been a very ethnically mixed set of islands. People with very different genetic backgrounds have spent generations intermixing and sharing their culture, so you can find Cubans (for example) with African, European, indigenous, or mixed physical features, but they all consider themselves ethnically Cuban."
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6lez22 | torque in relation to a car's performance? | I've heard its something to do with rotatational force etc. but what does that actully mean. Is is the feeling of 'got some poke' when you accelerate in a decent car? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6lez22/eli5_torque_in_relation_to_a_cars_performance/ | {
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"ELI5:\n\nTorque: acceleration\n\nHorsepower: Top speed.\n\nFor older than 5, It's a bit more complicated than that, there's a \"torque curve\" meaning how much torque you have at any given RPM. If you have torque at low RPM, you can feel the push coming off of a redlight. If you have good torque at high RPM, you can get a push once you're already moving, good for passing on a highway. If you have a \"fat torque curve\" you have good torque at both low and high RPM, a good car for driving on curvy roads.\n",
"In terms of performance not much. What's import is the total power put out and where the power is on the rpm range. \n\nBreaking it down to a formula you have Power = torque x rpm. Torque being a measure of how much force each rotation of the engine exerts and power being the force output per second.\n\nWhen people say that an engine with high torque is better what the are generally actually talking about is an engine where the power is available across a wide band usually lower down the rpm range this is useful for towing for example as it saves the need for a large number of gear ratios to keep the engine at the required power.\n\nIf you wanted to you could use a small high reving motorbike engine with all it's power concentrated in a narrow band at a high rpm. You would just need a hell of a lot of gears to keep the rotating at the optimal speed.\n\nThis video explains much better than i could _URL_0_\nAt 20:56 it even answers the exact question in your post.",
"The acceleration you feel is down to the torque at the wheels which is a product of the engine torque and the total gearing (gear and diff ratios, wheel size etc.). This means talking about engine torque isn't very useful in isolation as you need to know what gearing you can use which is dictated by what rev range the engine can produce torque over. In other words you could have a very low torque engine but if it revs twice as high as an engine with twice the torque, you could get the same wheel torque as you could gear it twice as low. Power is just the product of torque*revs/5252 so basically it takes the revs into account which makes it a useful figure for directly comparing vehicles as you don't need to know what the gearing is or anything else to get a feel for if it's a fast car (assuming it has \"appropriate\" gearing). Basically torque is transformed by gearing but power is an absolute figure that tells you how much work the engine can actually do. Perfect example being F1 vs Nascar, low torque/high revs/low gearing vs high torque/low revs/high gearing but both make similar power and perform similarly. You would predict that if you looked at their power:weight ratios but you wouldn't predict it from their engine torque:weight ratios. \n\nTL:DR \"got some poke\" comes from wheel torque which is not necessarily the result of a lot of *engine* torque...it could be due to very low gearing. Power figures cover off that issue...high power:weight ratio = fast car.\n\n",
"For the average driver, given similar power and vehicle weights, the only difference is that a car with more torque will be fast whenever you press the gas pedal, while one with less torque will need to rev before accelerating as fast. so you need to shift more. in reality, engines with more torque also have a broader torque curve relative to their overall operating range, meaning they require fewer gears to take full advantage of their power.",
"A scalar quantity is a number. For example 9.81 is a scalar quantity.\n\nA vector quantity has a direction and a magnitude, so imagine an arrow of a given direction and of a given length.\n\nVelocity is a rate of change in position, a vector quantity, and we call the magnitude \"speed\". For example, 30 mph going west.\n\nForce is a vector quantity, and we call it's magnitude \"acceleration\". Force applied to a mass over time will change it's velocity. So 30 mph going west and increasing west at 5 mph per second. Torque is force applied to an axis, so you can see how torque is important to acceleration.\n\nWork, force applied over a distance, will become important in a moment. The base unit is the joule. So applying 20 Newtons of force over 2 meters = 20 joules of energy. You can double the work by either doubling the weight and keeping the distance, or keeping the weight and doubling the distance.\n\nPower is work over time. The base unit is the Watt, and horsepower is a derived unit, so the two are convertible. In order to cross a room in half the time, you have to perform twice the work. So in order to go 200 mph, you need to apply torque (force) more frequently in the given period of time.\n\nSo torque will increase your *speed*, but if you want to increase your *acceleration*, you need horsepower. You can have lots of torque, there are 14 cylinder cargo ship engines with pistons over 3' wide that produce ~8m ft/lbs of torque, and if that thing were fit to a car, it would absolutely get you to whatever speed you want to go, provided you had the appropriate gearing, but that doesn't mean it will accelerate you *quickly*.\n\nAnd this is why torque and horsepower are confusing, they're interrelated and explain the rate of change of different things.",
"Torque is a force at a radius. Torque multiplied by RPM(and a scaling factor) is power. \n\nSay you have 1 N*M of torque at the axle, and your wheel has a radius of 50cm That means there is 2N of force pushing the wheel forward. Divide that force by mass and you get acceleration. \n\nNow, when people say a car has a lot of torque, what they usually mean the car accelerates quickly from a standing start. This has more to do with power to mass ratio, plus the gearing ratios and the shape of the engine's torque curve. You get the most torque at the axle when the engine is running at its maximum power RPM, and geared to whatever speed you're moving, but unless you have a continuously variable transmission you won't be able to keep the engine at its optimal RPM for maximum power, so trading max HP for a better torque curve may be worth it. ",
"Horsepower determines how fast you hit the wall, \nTorque determines how far you take the wall with you",
"It's easier to conceptualise with a bicycle.\n\nOn a bicycle, your legs are the \"engine\" providing the torque. When accelerating from a slow speed, your legs are putting a lot of work into turning the pedals quite slowly, because your legs have a lot of resistance (inertia) to overcome. You're applying a lot of force but at low speed turning the pedals (low RPM).\n\nAs you speed up, you don't have to push down so forcefully to get the pedals to move, but the pedals are moving much faster. The *amount of work your legs are doing* (torque) is more or less the same, but the work you're doing is spread out over more turns of the pedal per second (RPM). So you might be turning the pedals twice as fast, but pushing down on the pedals with half as much force.*\n\nYou want to go faster, problem is your legs can't really pedal any faster than they are currently going. The faster you pedal, the less actual oomph you can give it. Your legs are moving a lot but they aren't actually applying much push any more. So you switch to a higher gear. \n\nThe higher gear slows down the speed the pedals need to move at to keep the bicycle travelling at the same speed. This means your legs don't need to move so fast, and you can resume giving it oomph. You've decreased the RPM, and increased the force of your pedalling. This allows you to push harder with your legs to accelerate even faster. \n\n**The work (torque) your legs are doing hasn't changed, only the way that work is being used.** You're burning the same amount of calories, but those calories are going less into pushing hard with your legs and more into moving your legs quickly.\n\nOnce you slow down again, you'll need to switch to a lower gear. That's because you'll need a tremendous amount of push just to keep the bicycle moving in a high gear travelling at a low speed. \n\nCars work just the same. The engine's doing the work/torque, instead of your legs, the pistons turning \"pedals\" exactly as your legs were. When driving it's still a balancing act to get the right amount of push for a particular speed. \n\nDriving at 30mph, you might have a choice between 3rd or 4th gear. 3rd gear you're needing more torque/power (poke, or oomph), tending to put your foot down on the gas a bit to ensure there's enough to keep the speed up. It's a bit wasteful and inefficient, because you're really using more pushing power/oomph (think back to the pedals on the bicycle) fighting just to keep the speed up. In bicycle terms you're now using more calories than you need to. \n\nOr you can switch to 4th gear, and start taking your foot off the gas, but not too far or the engine just won't have enough oomph to keep the wheels turning at all and the engine will stall. \n\nAnd that's basically it. The only other thing to understand is that the gears are transferring the torque from the engine to the wheels, and some of the torque is lost along the way. Different cars have different gear ratios and losses, changing how much \"poke\" the car gives at different speeds. There are graphs and the like that show what those differences are for each car, but really you just need to drive it to get a feel for what's happening.\n\nEDIT:\n\n*for simplicity's sake"
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berarp | What created the gasses and meteors in space after the big bang? | What I mean more specifically, is before the expansion started was there gasses, rocks, and other things? like how did these things come to be if there wasn't anything to start with? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/berarp/what_created_the_gasses_and_meteors_in_space/ | {
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"As the universe cooled, quarks bound together to form protons and neutrons. Cooling further, electrons were able to enter their orbits, forming the first atoms. Everything was hydrogen - with a slight exception of a bit of helium and lithium.\n\nWhile quite even, the universe wasn't perfectly smooth, and hydrogen began to clump, eventually forming enough mass to turn into the most massive stars, of which there will never exist again. The nuclear fusion that powered their hearts played fast and loose.\n\nHydrogen fuses to helium, helium fuses to heavier elements still. Lithium, carbon, oxygen, so forth. The light elements up to and including iron can be produced with stellar fusion. It ends there because producing iron via fusion is endothermic: it consumes more energy than it produces. This leads to core collapse and eventual explosion of the star.\n\nThe explosion is the key part. Not only does it scatter the metals of the star that have been produced, the intense energy output causes a veritable cornucopia of fusion to take place. Silicon, gold, platinum, neon, uranium... All the heavy elements.\n\nAgain, all the scattered stuff coalesces. The unfused gases recollect, adding potentially dozens of smaller mass stars from the corpse of the primordial giant. Dust and gas gets pushed by the new stellar winds, leaving denser material to clump and form planetoids and whatnot."
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5mext2 | why do we count seconds, hours, days, and weeks in weird terms like 60, 24, 7 and 52 but once we get to years we go into base ten (decades, centuries, etc.)? | Seems odd. Never thought about it until now.
Edit: Thanks for all the input! Had no idea our system for timekeeping had so much history from so many cultures behind it. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mext2/eli5_why_do_we_count_seconds_hours_days_and_weeks/ | {
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"24 and 60 are more easily divided into smaller amounts. With 10, you can divide by 5 and 2 but that's it. \n\nWe don't count anything by 52. It's just approx. How many weeks are in a year. \n\n",
"364/5 is defined by orbital mechanics.\n\nThe rest is courtesy of the Sumerian-Babylonian astronomers and mathematicians. Their commoners had rituals centered around the 7-day week but at the same time the mathematicians used a base-twelve arithmetic, creating favour for 5*12=60 minutes per hour.\n\nWhereas the roots for \"decade\", \"century\" and \"millennium\" all come from Latin, and Romans used baseless mathematics but favoured multiples of ten. \"Century\" for them basically meant \"a hundred dudes\", such as a unit of hundred Legionnaires led by a Centurion.",
"Putting 24 hours in a day came from the ancient Egyptians who split the day into 2 parts. Daytime was 10 hours with an hour of twilight on either side and nighttime was 12 hours. Nighttime was 12 hours based on 36 stars called \"decans\" that the Egyptians used to keep track of time based on when they rose in the sky. 18 decans would be visible at any given time of the year, but 3 were assigned to each side of twilight, so there 12 leftover for nighttime hours.\n\nThe 60 minutes in an hour and 60 seconds in a minute comes from the ancient Babylonians who liked to split things in base 60. They had a thing for the number 360 because they thought that's how many days there were in year. They also like 60 because, like 12, it can easily be divided into several other whole numbers (2, 3, 4, 6). \n\nThe 7-day week came up independently in a few ancient societies. It's unclear why exactly, but most likely because it's 1/4 of the lunar cycle. It just so happens that about 52 weeks fit in a year.\n\nPeople didn't start keeping track of years in their current form until significantly later on. The first person to start counting years from Jesus' birth was a Scythian monk named Dionysius Exiguus in 525 CE (and his system didn't become widespread until sometime later). Before that most people would count the number of years of the current king or other relevant ruler. So it would be something like the 10th year in the reign of King Virgo911. In Rome they would also sometimes count the number of years from the founding of the city. Most cultures around the world did this (counting years from a significant event or based on the ascension of a ruler or dynasty) and, in fact, that's what the current calendar does (counts years from a significant event, i.e. the birth of Jesus). We do it in base 10 because we're simply counting years from a reference point.\n\nEdit: Since this is picking up some steam, more fun facts. The Romans used an 8 day week during the Republic. They switched over to a 7 day week during the Empire (and officially adopted it in 321 CE).\n\nThe Mayans had two different length weeks. One of 13 days where the days were just numbered and one of 20 days where the days were named. I'm not really sure how that works in practice.\n\nThe Jews had a 7 day week because of the creation story taking place over 7 days. It's unclear where 7 came from.\n\nThe French tried to implement decimal time shortly after the French Revolution, but it never caught on. In decimal time there are 10 hours in a day, 100 minutes in an hour, and 100 seconds in a minute.",
"Days to years is pretty obvious. Days to weeks, and weeks to years makes sense because it's an easy to subdivide portions of the year so that they divide nicely with both the solar (year) and lunar (monthly) calendars.\n\nSeconds, minutes, and hours are all a function of Babylonian and Sumerian timekeepers, who liked base 12 and base 60 number systems. For whatever reason, we never really tried to move on from that until the French revolution, when Metrification started, and when they tried to include a concept of metric time. It failed miserably, although the rest of the unit system *did* end up working.",
"Solid top explanation. Sixty is divisible by 2, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30. You divide an hour into 60 smaller, more 'minute' equal time periods (minutes), and then do it a second time into 60 (seconds).",
"The Babylonians used a base 60 system, so to them that was a very natural number, like 10 to us. Once you define a week as having 7 days, which has been considered a special number for a very long time, 52 is just how many weeks are in a solar year, so that number isn't really an invention.",
"Another fun, somewhat related fact for you.\nI was told that if you take a look at deck of cards, then that represents a year as well.\n4 suites - 4 seasons\n52 cards - 52 weeks.",
"I just want to emphasize that some of these divisions are physical; that is, that's just how they are. The length of the day is fixed -- it's how long it takes for the Sun to move *all* the way around the Earth. At noon on day 1, the Sun is at its highest point. At noon on day 2, the Sun is again at its highest point. The length of the day is the time between these two. How we measure it is another matter. Notice that I didn't say that it's the time that it takes for the Earth to spin around its axis. That's because it actually takes less than a day to do that. It's just that, by the time it has spun around, it's also moved a bit in its orbit, so the point that was directly facing the Sun is now a little bit behind. Also, since the Earth's orbit is elliptical, the length of the day we use is really more of an average.\n\nThe other physical quantity we use today is the solar year. That's how long it takes for the Earth to go all the way around the Sun. The year is actually *not* exactly 365 days but a bit longer, which is why we add a day every four years or so (the rule for leap years is that we add one day whenever the year is a multiple of 4, unless it's a multiple of 100, in which case we add it only if it's a multiple of 400). Nobody thought, hm, let's make the year 365 days. 365 (and a bit) is just how long it takes for the Earth to go around the Sun.\n\nThe 7-day week is just something that stuck with us from ancient cultures. The ancient Israelites, for example, used a 7-day week, in which the 7th day was the day of rest. In the Abrahamic traditions, that 7-day week was kept, though Christians and Muslims both changed the position of the day of rest within that week. Other cultures had different weeks. The Mayans, for example, had a 13-day week and a 20-day month, making a 260-day ritual year (that obviously didn't line up with the solar year; they used a different system for that). It just so happened that the 7-day week is the one we use today, thanks in large part to the spread of Christianity, and the fact that there are 52 weeks in a year (plus a day, or two in leap years) is just coincidental.\n\nAnother physical quantity we use, but a lot less often, is the lunar month. This is how long it takes for the Moon to make its way around the Earth, kinda. Just like with the length of the day, the actual measure is how long it takes between new moon and new moon, when the relative position of the Sun, Earth, and Moon are the same. This is some quantity between 29 and 30 days. Many cultures use it, including the Jews, the Muslims, and the Chinese; the phases of the moon are a fairly reliable way to mark time. Have you ever seen those moon calendars that tell you the phase of the moon on a given day? These are completely unnecessary in lunar calendars -- you always know the phase of the moon because it's the same every month! (The word \"month\" is even derived from \"Moon\" in English!) At some point, the Christians moved to a solar calendar, and they got rid of the lunar months. The thing we call a month now is kind of arbitrary. The fact is that there are a few days less than 12 turns of the Moon around the Earth in one turn of the Earth around the Sun, so they split the solar year into 12 non-lunar months like we have today, each one with 30 or 31 days (I don't know why they made February have fewer), and they no longer line up with the Moon. But the cultures that still use the lunar calendar have to work out ways to deal with the difference. The Muslims simply don't. Their year doesn't line up with the solar year at all and they're OK with that. The Jews, on the other hand, insert a leap *month* 7 years out of every 19, and there are a few other months that get an added day in some cases, mostly in order to make various holidays not fall on various days of the week (the 21st day of the 7th month, Hoshana Rabah, isn't allowed to fall on Saturday, for example). The main impetus here is to make sure that the 1st (Biblical) month is actually in the spring (note that long, long ago, Jews switched to a calendar that begins on the 7th month, which begins in the fall), so a month is added if the 12th month ends too early.\n\nIn addition to this, I should mention that the division sexagesimal (meaning 60) division of minutes and seconds isn't *actually* from the Babylonians. Before decimals were invented by [John Napier](_URL_0_) in the late 1500's/early 1600's, people actually measured everything in fractions of 60. This included degrees of a circle and parts of the hour. So a time might be 4 hours and a bit. How much was a bit? 26 60ths and a bit. The first 60th subdivision was tiny so it was called a minute subdivision, and the second subdivision was called... well, they ran out of fucks to give so it was just the second subdivision. So the time could be 4 hours, 26 minute subdivisions of an hour, and 5 second subdivisions of an hour. Of course, you could also have third subdivisions of things and fourth subdivisions and so on, but there wasn't much reason to use them once decimals caught on. On the other hand, hours kept their subdivisions because they were in common use by regular people, and degrees kept theirs because they were used in navigational star charts and such.\n\nThe only number I haven't explained here is the 24 hours in a day, but I think other people already have so I'll leave it at that!",
"Technically, the Second isn't even based on astronomical observations and movements anymore. Officially, the SI second is now 9,192,631,770 transitions of a cesium atom, which pretty closely approximates 1/31.5M of the time between vernal points ^(known on Earth as the First Point of Aries.... which is actually in Pisces currently).\n\nAdditionally, the current time of day (TAI) is measured by the number of those seconds or fractions thereof, averaged across ~400 atomic clocks, since some semi-arbitrary point in time that we call January 1st, 1977. We apply a number of leap seconds to that (currently 37) to get UTC time, then we can apply a time-zone correction, and that's how we know the time and date today, technically speaking.\n\nWhile seemingly pedantic, this method actually is critically important to a variety of things. For instance, computers and machinery use it to coordinate events and in some cases motion control across systems. In radio communications, it can be used to synchronize the transmissions of multiple transmitters to allow for proper operation (both cell phones and LMRs make use of this in some situations). Typically it's either determined through a GPS receiver, a local high precision clock, NTP, or PTP, or a combination of those.",
"Somewhat random comment: The calendar should be 13 months of 28 days each (364 days). Leap year should simply add a free day between December and January that isn't in a month. Just a free day for everyone. \r\n\r\nBut no, 31, 28/9, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31 is way easier and much more logical.",
"Because you can't group years based on any naturally occurring phenomena so you just do it on what's the easiest for us to comprehend in numbers. It's usually easier to think about numbers in 10s, 100s, 1000s, etc.",
"How we came to use Base 10 is obvious, but if you want to use your hands for counting to more than this, then it's easier to use the thumb of one hand to count the 'segments' of the fingers on the same hand to get to twelve. Use the fingers of the other hand to count off five sets of twelve to get to 60.\n\nBase 12 and Base 60 come up often in life. If humans had evolved to have just three fingers, maybe Base 9 and 27 would be more prevalent.",
"A lot of people have great historical information, but are missing why some of these cultures used non-base 10 systems. \"They liked a different base\" is insufficient. 24 and 60 are both [highly composite numbers](_URL_0_) which is a number that has more divisors than any other number smaller than it. 24, for example, has 8 divisors (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 24), more than any lower number, such as 20, which only has 6 divisors (1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 20). \n \nThe advantage of HCM's is their usability is better for general use due to their divisibility. You can divide an hour in half, or quarters, or fifths... in fact, you can divide it into up equal parts 12 different ways (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, 60). \n \nThe Imperial Number system also uses a large amount of HCM's. Using the Imperial System to build a shelf with equal sections is much easier than building a shelf in the metric system with equal sections. Some one once challenged me on this by trying to go to base 10 \"What if the shelf is 10 feet, that doesn't divide evenly into 3 parts!\"... it does, 120 inches is a HCM! "
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2lbt2e | how can a porn star go atm without getting violently ill? | Going on the assumption that there is no magical cut scene where the actor washes his dick off before inserting it into her/his partner's mouth. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lbt2e/eli5_how_can_a_porn_star_go_atm_without_getting/ | {
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"You don't see the long, extensive, unsexy scene where she cleans out her asshole repeatedly with anti-bacterial soap.",
"Don't they get enemas first? So there's no shit in their for a good solid few inches.",
"Your assumption that there isn't a cut scene is why they don't get sick- there IS a cut scene involved. In fact, there's likely dozens of them. All kinds of stuff can happen. People watching porn don't want to see the blooper reel, so they edit out all the slips, banged knees, lost boners, etc."
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31sbc2 | if we already knew that mars had frozen ice caps, why is it such a big deal that we found water there? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31sbc2/eli5if_we_already_knew_that_mars_had_frozen_ice/ | {
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"Liquid water can support life, while ice cannot. There being life on Mars opens up the possibility of life elsewhere! ",
"Must have missed the news, was there really liquid water found on mars? Or just a few molecules like before? ",
"It's important to understand the density of the water. Part of understanding the water on Mars is understanding where the hell it all went. \n\nWhat we're finding now is that there is water that is much heavier than Earth's that's still there. The lighter water has all since disappeared through the atmosphere, which would've likely been close to Earth's. Earth has H2O, as you lovingly know, but Mars has HDO (the D is for Deuterium - so Hydrogen Deuterium and Oxygen verses 2 Hydrogen atoms and Oxygen).\n\nThis also helps us understand the geology. It's likely most of the Martian water likely disappeared before Cumberland (a Martian rock) formed about 3.9 billion to 4.6 billion years ago.\n\nWhat we're also starting to learn is just how much water Mars may have because of these discoveries. It's possible it had around the same amount as our Arctic ocean. So we're estimating that it's lost about 87% of its water.\n\n[Decent article](_URL_0_). [NASA](_URL_1_)",
"One thing to maybe keep in mind here is also that the ice caps grow in the winter thanks to \"dry ice\" forming, frozen CO2, not H2O. The dry ice then sublimates as it gets warmer again. The permanent ones are made of water ice though, yes, but much smaller. _URL_0_"
]
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],
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"http://image.slidesharecdn.com/marsplanet-120921115342-phpapp02/95/mars-planet-13... | ||
2bzoqu | how do websites like _url_0_ work? | I'm not sure the psychology about this website, similar to Coke's campaign for "clicking a button to give a Coke to a soldier".
---
If they have the ability to feed rice to millions of people, why do they need us to answer questions to get them to donate grains? Why don't they just do it?
**I'm not asking a loaded question, I'm honestly curious on how it works.** | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bzoqu/eli5_how_do_websites_like_freericecom_work/ | {
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"Hits (people visiting the page) generate a 'value' of a website for selling ad space. The more you click, the more money they make, thus being able to afford rice which is already relatively cheap. I think."
]
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"freerice.com"
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[]
] | |
svtrz | what is the new particle that was discovered at cern? | I was reading this [article](_URL_0_) and frankly the majority went over my head. Could any one explain to me, like im 5, what exactly they discovered? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/svtrz/eli5_what_is_the_new_particle_that_was_discovered/ | {
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"There's basic particles of the universe that aren't made up of anything else. They're called quarks and they are: up, down, strange, and charm. They're four different types of quarks. Think of these as like Helium, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen.\n\nIf you combine them together in different ways, they make different particles. One of these are called a \"baryon\" that are made up of Up, Strange, and ~~Down~~ *Edit: I believe it's not Down but Bottom* quarks. Think of this as like H2O (water).\n\nCERN discovered a new state of a baryon that is kind of weird. It's like if you found some water molecules that can be heated to 10,000 degrees and not evaporate. \n\nIt's not that you discovered a new element, you just discovered a new form of a known compound (H2O)."
]
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] | [
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12a8iy | did Stonehenge era Britains have a sense of land ownership and/or territory? | did the people of 2222BC Britain have a notion of different groups controlling different parts of the island, which people of other groups couldn't just move on to without creating conflict? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12a8iy/did_stonehenge_era_britains_have_a_sense_of_land/ | {
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"Yes. It's interesting you mention Stonehenge, as it and monuments like it are put forward as evidence of precisely this. You wouldn't invest so much effort in building a fixed structure if you didn't have some sense of a permanent, exclusive bond to that particular place.\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
3ep1wd | How corrupt was the Holy Roman Empire? Was it common for electors to be bribed into backing somebody for the Imperial throne? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ep1wd/how_corrupt_was_the_holy_roman_empire_was_it/ | {
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"Yes, a famous example being the election of 1521, featuring the famous rivalry between Charles V Habsburg (archduke of Austria, King of Castille, Aragon, Navarre, Naples, etc etc etc) and Francis I of France. While the Habsburg had held the HRE emperorship, Charles' father died young and his grandfather had not sufficient time to guarantee Charles' ascension before he too deceased. \n\nFrancis and Charles launched into a huge bidding war buying electors and their vote, and on Charles' side he took advantage of new world silver and Castille's revenue to guarantee majestically huge debts from the German Fuggers and Genoese bankers. This debt outlasted him, and together with debts to finance his many wars ended up burdening his son Philip II of Spain and beyond. "
]
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371xt2 | would it be possible to convert sex drive chemicals to drive you to do something else? | ^I'mprettysurethisisthestupidestquestioneveraskedbutimbored | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/371xt2/eli5would_it_be_possible_to_convert_sex_drive/ | {
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"Who knows, probably. As a fun sidenote, the idea that your brain does this automatically is the core message behind Freudian psychology, so its a common idea."
]
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[]
] | |
8cpx8l | if we removed a chunk of the sun (say like 1/4), what would happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8cpx8l/eli5_if_we_removed_a_chunk_of_the_sun_say_like_14/ | {
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"Gravity would force the sun into a sphere again.\n\nIn the long run the sun would continue to shine, but less brightly and it would have a longer life. \n\nIn the short run the energy released by the sun collapsing back into a sphere would almost certainly kill everything on Earth.",
"Yes, no, and yes. The sun isn't solid, so it would become spherical again under gravity. It's... always exploding, and the size of the sun to begin with is a balance between gravity wanting to compress it down, and the constant \"explosion\" wanting to push it out. It'd be unstable for a while but I imagine it would find equilibrium again (there are stars this size out there). We on Earth would certainly notice a change in brightness and heat, and it would probably be enough to make Earth no longer habitable.",
"The sun loosing mass would change the gravitational effect it has on the planets as well causing there orbits to change."
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1tosmf | What was the military intention of the Doolittle Raid? | It seems that many people believe that the Doolittle Raid was intended to boost morale. While psychological support is always important it seems that in retrospect of the failure of the operation that is what it more remembered for.
My question is barring morale boost, what were the military and strategic targets of the Doolittle Raid? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1tosmf/what_was_the_military_intention_of_the_doolittle/ | {
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"I'm going off of Craig Nelson's *The First Heroes* here, as well Colonel Greening's April 1942 USAF post-action report:\n The primary targets were shipyards and manufacturing plants, including the Nakajima aircraft factory near Kobe; a gunpowder factory in Tokyo; a steel mill; a chemical works; Tokyo military barracks; oil storage tanks near the Imperial palace; The Japanese Special Steel Works in Chiba district (surgical steel, other rare alloys); Tokyo bay oil refinery; Yokohoma oil refineries; Yokosuka Naval Base; the Mitsubishi aircraft factory near Nagoya castle; . \n\nThe most tangible tactical effect of the raid was the severe damage caused to the IJN Ryuho, a light aircraft carrier. It took a direct bomb hit, as well as several incendiaries. As a consequence, this aircraft carrier did not become operational until December 11th 1942. It is difficult to speculate on how the Ryuho's air-group might have affected outcomes at Midway, Guadalcanal, or the East Solomons.\n\nNo non-military or political targets were chosen, though incendiary bombs were used without regard for collateral damage.\n\nThe tactical conclusions of the USAF is that they spread the forces too far apart, doing minor damage at a number of places, but failing to concentrate bombing to cause devastation to any one target. "
]
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19oxy7 | How was the CIA involved in India? | I am writing a paper for my Espionage and Intelligence class and am working on creating a paper outline and doing some research. I am not asking for my homework to be done, but rather I asking for some information and for some other sources or places I can do extra research. I know that Bush authorized some actions during the '90s regarding nuclear tests and the CIA was somewhat involved during the Mumbai Attacks but am pretty much clueless besides that. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/19oxy7/how_was_the_cia_involved_in_india/ | {
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"The CIA trained and maintained a small force of Tibetan exiles in India and Nepal. These agents conducted reconnaissance for the CIA and encouraged resistance within Tibet. The CIA ended its support for the Tibetan guerrillas in 1970, as part of Nixon's detente with China.\n\nSee Mikel Dunham's *Buddha's Warriors*, Tsering Shakya's *The Dragon in the Land of Snows*, Kenneth Conboy's *The CIA's Secret War in Tibet*, and Carole McGranahan's *Arrested Histories*. \n\n"
]
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1fgqwt | Non-evolutionary archaeology and challenge of the terminology in the Andes? | I have been reviewing diverse archaeological works in the Andes, but I can't find sources that do not use an evolutionary perspective on the Andes, and, in spite of the Cities found BP 5000 or more, thesis about maize present in the Andes since BP 6000 or even 7000, etc. terminology remains that of "pre-ceramic", Archaic, Formative, etc. with chronologies that do not fit the diverse archaeological data I am reading about (is qualifying Caral of pre-ceramic a good categorization?). So I was wondering if there are sources, authors, who challenge these chronologies, terminologies, and socio-cultural evolutionist theories applied in the Andes?
I was also wondering if there are good films/documentaries about Ancient Andean civilizations and their knowledges (astronomy, mathematics, forms of literacy - quipu or other), technologies (infrastructures, roads, water management, etc.), politics and religion, etc.
Thank you. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1fgqwt/nonevolutionary_archaeology_and_challenge_of_the/ | {
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"There aren't many archaeologists on this sub and only two of us who do the Andes (that I know of), so I suggest posting this over at /r/askanthropology for other answers.\n\nBasically, we use evolutionary terminology in English-language works on the Andes because foreign archaeologists in the Andes have primarily been from the U.S. and Canada, and so come from the Americanist tradition of archaeology which has always been quite evolutionary. And the post-processual critique hasn't really had that much of an impact in the Andes (we are still doing culture history, in many ways), so everyone still uses the old terms.\\*\n\nSo the terminology is evolutionary, but don't worry because it doesn't mean anything. I'm not terribly familiar with the chronology devised by Luis Lumbreras (archaic- > formative- > classic- > post-classic or whatever it is), but the one that English-language Andeanists tend to use was developed by John Rowe in 1962 (this is the Pre-ceramic- > Cotton Preceramic/Late Archaic- > Initial Period- > Early Horizon- > Early Intermediate Period- > Middle Horizon- > Late Intermediate Period- > Late Horizon scheme). Rowe devised this chronology to be *purely* temporal. He did not mean for it to be evolutionary at all, or to be an explanatory mechanism for culture change, but rather to be a way of describing the major developments that we can see in the archaeological record. Each time period was defined as the appearance of whatever thing in the Ica Valley, and it was supposed to be a purely chronological scheme.\n\nWe still use that very heavily. And I don't think there's much push to move past it, even though it has some serious flaws and implies much more boundedness and cultural discontinuity than is really present. Hell, I'm a junior academic who is challenging the traditional evolutionary Andean perspective devised by Gordon Willey and James Ford (read: major evolutionists, especially in their early days) and challenging this notion of discontinuous cultures, and I'm not even abandoning the traditional terminology because it is convenient.\n\nSo it will be hard to find sources that don't use evolutionary terminology. I can't think of any off the top of my head, though I'm sure I could find some. But don't worry about it; the pre-ceramic is descriptive and while yes, it does prioritize one type of technology that archaeologists have always loved to prioritize, the reality is that there are no ceramics on sites like Caral, and ceramics do show up on later sites at around the same time that irrigation networks expand and agriculture becomes intensified, the Norte Chico (i.e. Caral and all the similar sites near it) architectural canons spread, etc., so it seems justified to talk about a Pre-ceramic period but without the baggage of evolutionary thought. It was a time period, not a cultural period. \n\nAs for films and stuff, I can think of some segments on those things in pretty bad documentaries that I've seen, and I can recall some better documentaries that don't necessarily cover those things too much. But I can't recall what any of these movies were called (I haven't yet taught an Andean archaeology class so I haven't sought these things out yet, and I don't remember the ones that I've seen). /u/Qhapaqocha does archaeoastronomy stuff in the Andes and may be able to point you to some things better than I can. Basically, though, for that sort of thing any info we have will be on the Inca alone with maybe some inferences to Tiwanaku and basically guesses on even earlier stuff, but that's how it goes in the Andes. \n\nAnd again, your question isn't historical, and is really about archaeological and evolutionary theory within the anthropological perspective, so I definitely recommend asking this at /r/askanthropology so that you can get answers from other people who know evolutionary archaeology too.\n\n\\* You sound like you know a bit about archaeology so I referred to the culture history, processualism, post-processualism thing and assumed that you at least have a basic idea of what those paradigms entail. I can explain them more if need be."
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7div4d | why does stale food taste bad? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7div4d/eli5_why_does_stale_food_taste_bad/ | {
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"I’ll take a shot. \n\nMost of what makes food taste good are actually “volatile” compounds meaning they’ll leave or degrade in some form or fashion. Essential oils evaporate off, oxygen begins to affect various molecules and the net result is that the “flavor” (interpreted molecular makeup) of the food is altered. ",
"TL;DR: Taste is more related to our mental representation of something than to its actual chemical structure.\n\n\nI know you flagged your question as chemistry related and seemed to accept a chemistry answer, but I would actually argue this has more to do with biology.\n\nTaste is a subjective representation of the benefits/adverse effects something has on your body when eaten. This representation is directly inherited from experience (e.g. if you eat something bad you will get sick and remember), culture (i.e. in different countries, people are more or less likely to like, let's say, spicy food) and evolution through genetics (i.e. the \"code\" of your taste buds, making them react in different ways to different chemical compounds).\n\nTo come back to your question, I believe our disgust of stale food comes from the fact that through evolution, people who \"liked\" to eat it were more likely to die from eating something rotten and therefore not being able to reproduce. This is basically how our body has over the millennia \"learned\" to recognize stale food.\n\nSo, as taste is a subjective representation, I would say that the chemical structure of a compound has nothing to do with its qualitative tasting properties other than allowing our taste buds to differentiate it from another compound."
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3dh0uj | Prior to the invention of recording technology, how was music spread? | Is there a single tune that might be considered most "well traveled"? I'm mainly curious about song, but would also be interested in information on any form of music. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3dh0uj/prior_to_the_invention_of_recording_technology/ | {
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"I cannot help with popular music of the past, and cannot tell you if there is a certain most well traveled piece of music. However... \n\nFor most of history (and before it), music is and has been communicated via oral traditions. That is, I sing/play something and you pick up... Now you know it, too. Then this music travels just like languages and stories (that is pretty complicated, and way out of my league). Music changes during its travels, just like languages and stories. You might want to also ask this question to linguistics, anthropologists, etc.\n\nModern Western music notation comes from one form of notation created to address the problem of spreading music in a controlled way. During the 9th century, forms of neumatic notation were developed. These were meant to be aides for people to remember music they had learned before. There were some standardization efforts during the so called Carolingian Renaissance, they tried to have musicians all across Europe singing the same chant (there were different versions, and different chanting traditions). \n\n[Gregorian chant](_URL_0_) was notated and it traveled all a lot. Musicians were trained in singing it AND reading the notations to be able to sing it properly. We aren't 100% sure how it's supposed to sound, even after all those attempts at standardization, a lot of details are lost in time (and in translation, and in transcription).\n\nNow, that's a repertoire, not a single tune. \n\nThe Follies of Spain come to mind. It's a musical idea from at least the 16th century, it traveled all over Europe and managed to cross the Atlantic, it is found even in music from the 20th century. [Here's an incomplete list of examples](_URL_4_) where we find this \"tune.\"\n\n[Here's a banging performance](_URL_2_) of a Sonata by Vivaldi (a venetian composer) that uses this musical idea. Compare it to [this interpretation](_URL_5_) of a sarabande (a dance from a suite) composed by Handel (a German composer that managed to conquer England). That music was composed relatively close in time.\n\n[Now listen to this music](_URL_1_), by a Mexican composer around 1931, about 200 years after the Vivaldi. [Here's more music](_URL_3_) using the same idea, this was composed by a super famous Russian musician (who was living in the US) about a year before the previous 1931 example.\n\nThere are PLENTY of settings for that musical idea.\n\nMusicians traveled before recording technology. Mozart, for example, could be considered TODAY as a very well traveled person. Notation allowed music to travel in an easier way, even without its creator or without the people who know it best. \n\nI listed a sarabande in the previous examples. Well, that type of dance was apparently invented in the New World, during the early 16th century (maybe earlier). And it was taken to Europe by the Spanish, where it developed into some rather different things. At first it was considered \"indecent\" in Europe, but it managed to become popular, and then it was not danced at all (it became more of a \"form\" for musicians to work with). It survived into the 19th and early 20th century (I guess we might still find it in the wild these days). The Follies of Spain were frequently set as a sarabande.\n",
"hi! you might be interested in these threads\n\n* sheet music [How did people hear new music before radio and record players?](_URL_1_) (there are actually several posts on the history of musical notation if you're interested in that topic)\n\n* player pianos [How did musicians respond to the player piano when it was first invented?](_URL_0_)"
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"http://imslp.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_with_the_theme_%22La_Follia%22",
"https://www.youtube.com/... | |
43q03q | in nature, why is there no opposite to “disease”, for example, a kind of virus or pathogen (but the opposite) that mentally or physically enhances our abilities? | I've never heard of a pathogen type thing or other blood-transmitted affliction that instead improves the health of humans. For example, gives us bigger brains, or better eye-sight, or super powers. Why do these things always work against us? What is the opposite of disease? Is there anything? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43q03q/eli5_in_nature_why_is_there_no_opposite_to/ | {
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"There is, it is called mutualism. Our intestines are lined with millions of bacteria, they help us break down our food and make it easier to digest. Oral flora can, for some people, prevent cavities or plaque buildup. There are many other bacterium and parasites that can benefit us. If you're at the store, take a look at the \"probiotics\" section.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Our gut is host to thousands of bacteria and other organisms that help us digest our food. These bacteria also help us keep other harmful bacteria and organisms in check. Which is why antibiotics often lead to people suffering from yeast infections or diarrhoea: the antibiotics have wiped out the good bacteria keeping everything in check as well and until everything gets back into proper balance, things are a little unpleasant.\n\nSo, it is not like we don't also have positive relations with certain bacteria, it's just that we don't really *notice* it. Well, not until they aren't there, at least. ",
"A key thing to remember is that a lot of these viruses and diseases are competing with us for resources. There is little benefit for something to one-sidedly improve us. But taking our resources for itself is very useful. ",
"Termites can digest wood only because of the bacteria in their stomach. There are many other Symbiotic Relationships in nature. In fact people sell probiotics that help with digestion.\n\nThe reason there aren't \"diseases\" that do stuff like make you see better, is because changes at the macroscopic level would require an extraordinary amount of cooperation between millions of bacteria.",
"Somewhat tangential but not off-topic is lateral gene transfer: _URL_0_\n\nThat is a sort of \"something interesting\" article. The phenomenon occurs among all types of organisms, but is most common in bacteria and single-celled organisms. More info than that and you would probably do well to pose a query over in r/askscience. ",
"Not sure if this was mentioned yet either. \nBut there are plants and fungi known as adaptogens and they help balance and regulate many functions within the body. Memory, stress, immunity, etc. \nCommon examples would include: eleuthero root, reishi mushroom (ganoderma lucidum) and there are others you can search for.\nI read on this bottle that only 1/10,000 plants contain this adaptogen property - whether it is accurate or not, I do not know. However not all plants contain this and those that do are indeed special. \nI make my own tinctures using these herbs and try and take them daily. ",
"Does the symbiotic relationship between humans and domesticated animals count? I was thinking about this and having a dog help us hunt or riding on a horse basically give us the abilities of that animal. I know this isn't what you're thinking of but I'd like to hear people's thoughts on this. ",
"Probably already mentioned, and not a pathogen but a genetic defect, but sickle cell anemia gives its victims natural immunity to malaria. ",
"Viruses probably played a mayor role in kick starting the (placental) mammal branch. The infection of a virus millions of years ago made it possible to create a placenta to nourish and grow an embryo right inside your body instead of having to lay an egg. \n\n8% in our DNA are fragments from past virus infections of our ancestors. There is reason to believe that there are even more \"features\" we accidentally gained from viruses because of advantageous side effects. \n\nHere is an interesting read about the topic: _URL_0_\n\nEDIT: changed to \"(placental) mammal\" as /u/EntropyDream /u/GoogleMeDoodle correctly pointed out that there are also other mammals like marsupials and monotremes who don't have a placenta.",
"There are a multitude of possible effects from pathogens and in the sea of these random effects, relatively few would potentially \"good\" or enhancing.\n\nThink of it like this: say a t-shirt is placed randomly in a room. There's an infinite number of possibilities for the location, but very few would be considered correct or \"good.\" It could be bunched up in the corner, hanging from the fan, on top of the cat, etc. Or it could be folded up neatly on the dresser. Randomness tends toward disorder, and disorder tends to be bad for the body.\n(I also use this scenario to explain entropy in class)",
"Bigger brains, better eye-sight and super powers (as far as imagination and travel goes). Sounds like psilocybin mushrooms. Its a few steps removed from pathogens etc but spores and then shrooms... Its as natural as it gets anyway",
"Have you tried drugs before?",
"There are a few things that fit this description. \n\nFor one, viruses are believed to be one of the driving forces of evolution due to their ability to transfer genetic material into host cells. It is theorized that some parts of the invader's genome could be taken up into the host's genome. This is, however, far more likely to be damaging than beneficial. To understand this, you need to realize that very, very few mutations are beneficial to an organism. We only see the beneficial mutations because these organisms survived. In other words, it's much easier to cause disease than to add a benefit. \n\nAnother cool thing is phage therapy. This is where they modify viruses that attack bacterial cells to target a specific pathogen. This is an up and coming field of study due to antibiotic resistance becoming a major problem. It has even been used effectively against some cancers.\n\nI wish I could give you some specific links, but being on mobile makes it challenging. However, r/microbiology and r/everythingscience post quite a bit of stuff related to this. \n\nEDIT: May have been thinking of the 'Microbiology and Immunology' page on Facebook. Hard to remember where I see these articles when I'm subscribed to so many sources. ",
"Great answers here about mutualism. But an explanation as to why there are fare MORE pathogenic microorganisms is because it's simply far easier to break complicated machinery than to improve it. Same goes for why evolution occurs so slowly yet we observe genetic mutations that cause problems all the time. ",
"Natural mutations that block one or both of the genes that code for Myostatin will increase our muscle mass and decrease fat mass with no known problems. Adapted from [Wikipedia](_URL_1_):\n > A natural deficiency in Myostatin is a protein responsible for inhibiting muscle differentiation and growth. Removing the myostatin gene or otherwise limiting its expression leads to an increase in hypertrophy and power in muscles. A German boy with a mutation in both copies of the myostatin gene was born with well-developed muscles. The advanced muscle growth continued after birth, and the boy could lift weights of 3 kg at the age of 4. Reducing or eliminating myostatin expression is thus seen as a possible future candidate for increasing muscle growth for the sake of increasing athletic performance in humans.\n\n\nFeel free to read more here, as this page explains it better: _URL_0_",
"Parasites can regulate the immune system and thus revert allergies and other autoimmune diseases. google helminthic therapy",
"Your gut bacteria help you digest food. [Some people have really great gut bacteria and it's actually beneficial to transfer their bacteria to your digestive tract to help lose weight.](_URL_0_)",
"You just haven't eaten the right \n\n\"Fresh\" \nEgg Salad \nSandwich. \n25¢\n\n_URL_0_",
"Luck as a Virus explained....via Red Dwarf...\n\n_URL_0_",
"Well, as others mentioned, the pathogen is first and foremost stealing from us, so most of the time they are purely negative. Howevetr, just as flowering turned pollen thieves into pollinators, sometimes we use pests to our advantage. Gut bacteria has already been mentioned, but there are three more examples I know of. First, sometimes virus dna permanemtly becomes a part of the host species' dna. Usually it just becomes junk dna, but sometimes it works like a mutation, some of which are favorable! The coolest example of this are braconid viruses. The dna for the virus is merged with a wasp's dna. The wasp can produce thes viruses and inject them into its catepillar prey to attack theyre immune system. Another example is miochondria, now a depedent organelle in eukaryotes, is actually closely related to typhus bacteria. Im not sure if they started as pathogens or prey of our single celled organisms.",
"Humans have tons of organisms that live in our guts and allow us to digest food. Without them, we would die. \n\nThe ones that help us, we don't think too much about. The ones that hurt us are the ones we are fighting against. ",
"Psilocybin from \"Magic Mushrooms\" increases eyesight to a degree at low doses.\n\"In the Sixties, Roland Fisher at the National Institute of Mental Health gave graduate students psilocybin and then a battery of eye tests. His results indicated that edges were visually detected more readily if a bit of psilocybin was present in the student's body. Well, edge detection is exactly what hunting animals in the grassland environments use to observe distant prey! So here you have this chemical factor; when added to the diet, it results in greater success in hunting.\" -Terrence Mckenna",
"I'm pretty late to the thread, but I did hear a cool thing about this on a podcast. I think it was RadioLab. The gist is that we don't usually seek help, cure, or even notice positive benefits. It's entirely possible that there are viruses or bacteria improving us in ways we would never know or care to correct.",
"Like the worms from Futurama?",
"It's worth noting, since this is a semantic question, that a virus or pathogen isn't quite a disease: a disease is what is *caused* by (maybe) a virus or pathogen.\n\nAs others said, \"mutualist\" (or \"mutualistic symbiote\") probably works as an antonym to \"pathogen\". (\"Virus\", on the other hand, is specific enough that there won't be any good antonyms, kind of like how there are no antonyms for \"bird\" or \"Larry\".)\n\nAn antonym for \"disease\" would simply be \"health\" or \"wellness\", although that doesn't carry the connotations you want of *greater* than normal health. That's probably because we think of good health as being \"normal\", which would in turn be because all the microorganisms that make us healthier (e.g. gut bacteria) are always present in healthy humans. It would be an uncommon coincidence to find a microorganism that helps humans that isn't already around us, because most of the time, if a microorganism helps us, it's because we evolved next to that microorganism, so its benefits are assumed when we define \"health\".\n\nCome to think of it, there are lots of organisms that function as \"anti-pathogens\" that we didn't evolve with: consider plants, fungi, and other things from which we make medicines. Many of these make us healthier than we would be without them, and yet we still say that they make us \"healthy\" rather than having a word for \"healthier than healthy.\" I guess we're not very imaginative!",
"We wouldn't be anywhere without bacteria! Current scientific understanding is that the mitochondria in our cells originate from our cells merging with a bacterial cell. In turn we're able to gain energy from consumption of food instead of from photosynthesis.\nEdit: link\n_URL_0_",
"What about psychedelics / hallucinagenics? If you have the mental discipline and ability to control yourself during the process, then you begin to realize that your pretty much functioning and processing reality at a much faster, more in depth, and more creative type of way. These substances are all found in nature and do in multiple ways advance our \"normal\" capabilities. There are theories out there that suggest hallucinagenics (mushrooms, L.S.A. etc...) are what caused pre-humans (apes/monkeys) to rapidly evolve into what we are today due to brain stimulation, which caused higher self awareness and a greater conceptualizing abilities. Extremely interesting to think about.",
"A \"good virus\" would spread through the population without much resistance. Once it reaches 100% infection it just becomes normal. Let a couple generations pass and no one would even remember it.",
"Another cool thing is that sometimes some disease keep you from getting other ones. \n\nSickle cell anemia is a problem in Africa but if you have it you cannot contract malaria",
"There are! They are called symbiotes rather than parasites or pathogens. Cows and other ungulates can only digest grass and leaves because of them. Blow-fish get their toxin from them. You can breathe because of ancient symbiotes that we call 'mitochondria'. Plants can use photosynthesis because of ancient symbiotes called chloroplasts. But your question is actually a great question! Why do most pathogens cause 'harm' rather than 'good'?? One way to think about it is that the 'symptoms' of most pathogens, sneezing and coughing and such, are really just ways for them to spread themselves. But why shouldn't they spread themselves by making a super-stud? I like this question! I shall ponder it further. I suspect it has something to do with entropy and the 2nd law. But on my 4th glass of wine, that is as far as I can go at the moment....\n",
"Here are a 3 pretty important examples of what might be considered great benefits humans have derived from microbes, such as viruses and bacteria, throughout our evolutionary development. \n\n1. Transposable Elements are gene regions in our DNA which have the ability to transcribe and translate proteins which then will code genetic material and insert them in random genetic sites. This ability is thought to have resulted in genetic mutations and ultimately adaptations our species enjoyed and is thought to have originated from viruses. \n\n2. Mitochondria, or the power plants of our cells, are thought to have originated from symbiosis of bacteria and early eukaryotes. They even resemble bacteria on microscopes and without them we wouldn't exist. \n\n3. \"Commensal\" bacteria are bacteria present on and in our bodies which offer us great benefits. For example bacteria in our gut produce Vitamin K (which we require to synthesize blood clotting factors) and fatty acids. Further, commensal bacteria in our gut outnumber more dangerous pathogenic bacteria that could harm us and their balance is tightly coordinated by our immune system. ",
"Interesting question! In addition to the mutualism process already discussed, there's an almost universally accepted theory that states the mitochondria (you might know it as the powerplant of the cell) was once a bacterium that infected the cells of one of our primordial ancestors. Then, through mutual benefits to both, mitochondria slowly lost many genes necessary for their individual survival and became integrated into all of our cells as an indispensable organelle. \n\nInitially, you could have looked at the invading mitochondrial ancestors as a type of infection. There's a similar theory about peroxisomes as well.",
"Mitochondria and chloroplasts are probably the two best and most important examples of originally independent, foreign organisms making another organism's body their permanent homes and thereby vastly improving life for them both.",
"There are plenty of micro-organisms that help us. They don't give us super powers or anything, but they exist and we interact with them every day.",
"In fact, there are examples in humans, but it's kinda relative. This parasites give us a improve in FRIENDSHIP to women and I-LIKE-OLD-CLOTHES buff to men, but they debuff us in SELF-PRESERVATION WHEN DRIVING [which could be see as COURAGEOUS, or FEARFUL, don't know. ] . \n\nArticle: _URL_0_ \n\nSo it depends on what's a enchance! Shout to the people at /r/Outside!",
"One theory, Symbiogenesis, suggests that we only came to be because of pathogens. Important organelles, such as mitochondria, were thought to be once free-living prokaryotic organisms, but are now important in the productivity of cells.\n\nAlso as mentioned before a lot of our digestion is aided by commensal bacteria which is only present after birth.",
"We have a lot of critters that \"infect\" us that are not just beneficial but vital to our survival. We just don't think about them like that because it's normal amd all the time. If you sterilized your intestines of all bacterial colonies, you would get sick and could even die because they give you the superpower of digesting oligosaccharides and immunity to certain diseases, nit to mention their antiinflammatory effects. You specified \"in nature\" but it's important to note that many new advances in medicine may be from the use of genetically engineered viruses that can add genes to our cells even perhaps to cure congenital disorders and this research has already been tested to some extent. Also note that a huge part of your DNA is probably from viruses that have infected our ancestors from the beginnings of life.",
"There's a genetic disease that increases muscle mass. No real side affects and you could probably enter a strong man competitor at the age of 6. I forget the name of it though ",
"Well DNA itself can be viewed as a virus that made itself useful. Over the course of evolution viral induced mutations have been incorporated into DNA. The reason you don't see beneficial viruses is because you now include them.",
"Mitochondria were likely originally a bacterial infection. I would say that is a good example of an infection enhancing our abilities.",
"Op question - \"why isn't there the opposite of a disease?\"\n\nPredictable top answer - \"gut bacteria can break down some things that you can't. That's totally on the same level as \"opposite of a disease\". One separates a complex carbohydrate....the other eats holes in your brain until you die. Totally equally oposite.\"\n\nOp to answer your question WHY: any long-term beneficial diseases would become part of the reproduction of both species. For example mitochondria is a completely foreign set of dna, and it reproduces along with all babbies and lives in almost every cell.",
"The entire bases of evolution revolves around the concept of mutations that help increase fitness relative to environment are retained and passed on. It happens every day. It's just slow and not as apparent as awful life debilitating diseases which have an acute affect on the organism. ",
"There are many examples of this. Here are a few off the top of my head:\n\n* probiotics that have been mentioned already\n* intestinal parasites (like hookworm) modulate the immune system and [lower the risk of autoimmune disease](_URL_2_) and have even been [used to settle down autoimmune disease like inflammatory bowel disease](_URL_0_), all for the price of a drop or 2 of your blood!\n* syphilis, in its quest to get the host to have more sex and spread the disease, will disinhibit the person so shy people may become more outgoing in the early stages or a mild infection (there was [a story about this](_URL_5_) in one of Oliver Sacks' books). Of course, you don't want to let it go on too long...\n* Toxoplasmosis (a parasite that normally travels between cats and rats by infecting rats' brains so they [seek out cat urine smell](_URL_3_)) that infects humans [causes many changes to behavior](_URL_4_) including increasing thrill-seeking behavior. Sure, it also increases the risk of attempted and successful suicide and schizophrenia, but maybe those are all just degrees of the same same thing. After all, the difference between a drug and a poison is dose.\n* PCP (which used to known angel dust) makes one feel strong and not feel pain, so in a sense it does give super powers. Of course, it makes people crazy, too, but watch of [video](_URL_1_) of someone on it being taken down and you'll see how hard it is to control them.\n* Of course narcotics mask pain so someone could break some bones but keep going. Remember that narcotics come from things like poppies...",
"If I understand the question correctly, it's not doubting other organisms can help us, just why aren't these benefits as SUDDEN and IMMIDIATELY impactful as the dangerous microbes that pop up in the news. So essentially \"Why do beneficial microbes work subtly over time, while harmful microbes blow up out of nowhere\".\n\nI'm an engineer, not a biologist; but if I had to guess, I'd attribute it to the complexity of our bodies. When any microbe toys with our system, it can either disrupt our normal processes, make essentially no changes, or change something that is not only compatible with our body's current operations but actually enhances it. Because our bodies are built with such staggering complexity, the chances of a microbe disrupting it's delicate balance far exceeds the off chance of it being completely compatible AND happening to do our body's job better than before. And even less so that it could build enough beneficial complexity onto our existing systems to give us superpowers in such a small window of time.",
"Bacteria and viruses are about as complex, compared to humans, as a stick is compared to a bicycle.\n\nYou're asking why jamming a stick between the spokes of the wheel on a bicycle isn't sometimes beneficial.\n\nTo be detrimental to us, all something else has to do is interfere in some way -- pretty much ANY way. To enhance our eyesight (to use your example) they would have to entirely re-form our eyes and brains or insert additional structures or something. That kind of insane complexity that must necessarily come at a great cost for the organism doing it to us is not going to arise at random, given natural selection (such an organism would be out-competed LONG before it ever got to the point of such extreme waste).",
"Because any sufficiently helpful \"pathogen\" actually becomes integrated into the organism or that organism's behavior.\n\nSEE:\n\nMitochondria\n\nInter-species Mutualism\n\nSymbiosis",
"-Mitochondria started as independent organisms, we liked them so much we adopted them.\n-Same goes for Parietal cells, the things that secrete HCL in your stomach. \"Of interest is that 19% of the human H+,K(+)-ATPase (alpha-subunit) comprises amino acid residues identical to those of the H(+)-ATPase found in Neurospora crassa. In addition, the amino acid sequence in the ATP binding sites of animal Na+,K(+)-ATPase and yeast H(+)-ATPase with phosphorylated intermediates is highly conserved. These data appear to indicate that the parietal cell might have originated from a microorganism that was parabiosed in a separate origin, having digestive organs, that was later incorporated into a stem cell.\"\n_URL_0_\n",
"I might be late to the party but read up on macrophages. They eat bad bacteria and viruses AND heal you. Most underrated cell out there. There's also stem cell cord blood which will heal shit the moment it gets injected. The challenge is to keep it stored.",
"There are such things; they are called symbiotic relationships. We just don't notice them because they get very much ingrained in us due to the process of evolution actively encouraging them. For example, there are bacteria in your gut that helps you with digestion. ",
"What do you mean there isn't?\n\nmitochondria is practically a cousin that lounges forever in our cell. It's family alright, but not exactly \"us\". It invited itself to our cell. Granted this coevolution probably happens when human was mere multicellular creature.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\nComplete sequences of numerous mitochondrial, many prokaryotic, and several nuclear genomes are now available. These data confirm that the mitochondrial genome originated from a eubacterial (specifically α-proteobacterial) ancestor but raise questions about the evolutionary antecedents of the mitochondrial proteome.\n\n.\n\nanother good example would be the entire bacterial ecosystem in out intestines. Try living without them... you'd be miserable.",
"The opposite of disease is called health. It comes from eating the correct nutrients, exercise and good genes. You could say all the nutrients, minerals and good bacteria are the opposite of pathogens. We have an incredible immune system which works well if supported by nutrients and exercise. Our immune system has a memory and never forgets a pathogen once stimulated by it. Disease is often the outcome of an impaired immune system.",
"H. Pylori, the bacteria which causes stomach ulcers, may protect against reflux disease, esophageal cancer, asthma, and other allergies.",
"Next time you open up the hood of your car, take a big wrench and hit it as hard as you can in a random place and tell me what happens. Did it get better or worse? 99.99% of the time it gets worse, because you're randomly fucking shit up. Maybe once in 10,000 hits you bend a pipe in such a way that the engine runs better, but chances are you're just fucking shit up. \n\nEvery once in a while we *do* get favorable diseases, and that's when evolution happens. We get favorable mutations, but 99.99% of mutations just fuck you up. We get favorable parasites (e.g. all those bacteria inside you that help you digest), and then the two species evolve together, but again, most parasites fuck you up or do nothing. We might get favorable viruses, but unless the DNA invades your gametes you won't be passing that on, so evolution doesn't happen, but there are examples out there of viruses that we get exposed to that immunize us against other, similar viruses. \n\nSo basically when you randomly fuck shit up, usually things get worse, but every once in a while it gets better, and really it's all tied into evolution.",
"What about the bacteria in our intestines that make vitamin k for us? It doesn't enhance us, but we require vitamin k to function and cannot produce it ourselves.",
"For the same reason there aren't car malfunctions that will accidentally make them better; it's not that it couldn't possibly happen, but it's very unlikely because it takes order and organization (less entropy) to make systems that do stuff, and breaking things tends to increase entropy.\n\nThis is gonna be buried anyway, but that's my take on it.",
"also look into the modern study of epigenics – most viruses are 'good' and make us into the superorganisms we are today. ",
"You know those deadly puffer fish? They're not deadly, a bacteria they allow to live in their body is deadly when in other animal's bodies.\n\nYou know those glow-in-the-dark squids? They're not, they have glow-in-the-dark microorganism living in them that they can turn on or off by providing them with nutrients (or oxygen, I forget the chemical details).\n\nYou know how you yourself have vitamin K in you? You can't digest vitamin K, a bacteria in your gut does, and you digest their dead bodies.\n\nWhen Russia was poor in the 90s and couldn't get the new and expensive antibiotics, they learned how to use viruses called phages that hunt and kill bacteria that is hurtfull to us, using that virus that isn't harful to us to kill what hurts us.\n\nEtc.",
"From some of the other Q & A going up and down the thread and new questions being asked...instead of buying it in a nested argument...\n\nThe thing about viruses and other infectious things is that, more or less, we are their food. They infect a cell, reprogram it to create more of itself. We lose enough cells, we get sick, we lose certain cells and we get sick really fast.\n\nWe eat part of a cow, 99.999999999999999999999999999% of the time it is going to be ultimately bad for it. That one time it's not, we're just castrating it and eating the nuts. The cow will never get super powers from any of that, for reasons that should be fairly obvious.\n\nThe virus or whatever isn't sentient, it is not trying to kill us. It is just doing it's best to reproduce. Arguably it doesn't even do that as it is a simple molecular reaction and not a purpose. EG crystals growing or even fire spreading, simple cause and effect when you get down to it. Bacteria are a bit more of a classic form of life as are other such single-cell organisms.",
"If you want an example of a 'disease' that is beneficial; the genetic disease known as sickle cell disease increases the resistance to another disease, malaria. This is why sickle cell disease is much more common in black populations. Malaria is much more common in Africa, and because of the natural resistance to Malaria, sickle cell disease remains in the gene pool. ",
"There is. Sickle Cell Anemia is a genetic disease, that has it's downsides. . . but it also protects people from malaria.",
"You're swimming in them mate. Your digestive tract is dependent on enslaved bacteria, fungi and even a few viruses for you to be healthy and properly digest your food. \n\nMethanobrevibacter smithii for example helps in the digestion of polysaccharides\n\nWhat you asked is in essence a description of your gut flora if they die out most likely so do you.",
"Ever heard of.... KOKAINE?!?!?",
"Not a pathogen but similar: native hunters in the Amazon use a number of natural drugs to help shoot spider monkeys. One is a caustic eyedrop that sharpens vision. ",
"Vitiligo could be useful camouflage?",
"Not humans, but plant viruses are being studied for their potential benefits to crops. \n\n_URL_0_",
"Viruses are very small and can lay dormant for years. Who knows, maybe there already are some beneficial viruses laying dormant in humans, or even benefiting us in ways we don't understand. I believe there is evidence that mitochondria were once bacteria that somehow integrated into the cell.",
"Isn't there some type of study being done about how viruses or virus like things have altered our DNA to make us who we are in evolution?\n\nThere's so much organic material in us that isn't us but is a part of us.",
"I have no reason for you to take anything I say as anything other than the blabbering of a stranger in the box because I didn't major in any scientific path so I offer nothing more than the average Joe. \n\nAren't we the summation of the opposite?",
"I'm going to take a different tack to the other commenters. This isn't a direct response to the pathogen part, but why we know so little about what makes normal people different from another.\n\n*Something* has to account for why certain people can do things at a much higher level than others. For example, maybe .01% of the population can reach Schwarzenegger's heyday physique, outmatch Einstein at physics, or can outdrink Ozzy (who is actually being studied to determine why he is not dead of alcohol poisoning). This lies in genes, which essentially sorta-determine your limits (terms and conditions may apply). \n\nThere are also idiot-savants (very rare) where altered brain chemistry results in some absolutely incredible abilities (at enormous losses). \n\nThe problem is that this area of research doesn't get nearly as much scientific attention as disease. Part of this is that it's much harder to study. We can give a mouse autism genes (break something) but making it speak (be smarter) is much harder. I'll expand on other causes of lack of scientific attention in the morning if anybody would like.",
"Not sure if it's already been suggested, but any change caused by an outside element is most likely a bad change. Our bodies are fairy complicated machines that have been finely tuned over countless generations by natural selection, and tinkering with it enough to get a noticable change will most likely not be an improvement. \n\nThere is no doubt symmetry in affects of different pathogens (some make your blood thinner, some make it thicker) but these don't result in a positive/negative symmetry in symptoms because more times than not, any deviation from the norm great enough to change the way we function will have a negative impact. Otherwise we would have adapted to have that change already.",
"They don't always work against us. It's estimated that [5-8% of the human genome is derived from retroviral infections. ](_URL_0_)",
"Part of this misconception is how the language and structure of modern medicine is designed around pathology. There is a vast history of the opposite happening. Such as the endosymbiosis theory between bacterial and human cells allowing for aerobic cellular respiration - a fundamental building block of multicellular organisms. ",
"I don't know any names off the top of my head, but sometimes I read articles on diseases that you can receive which seem to do nothing more than kill other diseases",
"I think there are though. There are symbiotic bacteria in our large intestines that make our shit not suck as much. ",
"What about steroids? They're not specifically a virus, but they do have almost the exact opposite effect of one. ",
"There are also advantageous mutations. These enable individuals to outperform other individuals in specific tasks and are often passed down via reproduction.",
"There is something called horizontal Gene Transfer that relates to your question.\n\n \"Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) refers to the transfer of genes between organisms in a manner other than traditional reproduction. Also termed lateral gene transfer (LGT), it contrasts with vertical transfer, the transmission of genes from the parental generation to offspring via sexual or asexual reproduction.\"\n\n\"Most thinking in genetics has focused upon vertical transfer, but there is a growing awareness that horizontal gene transfer is a highly significant phenomenon and among single-celled organisms perhaps the dominant form of genetic transfer.\"\n_URL_0_\n\nThis is often through virus or bacterial transfer of genetic material, but there are many interesting methods of transfer.",
"In short, when those systems exist, we generally incorporate them in to our structures. Gut bacteria is the best example as other people have pointed out. \n\nIf you caught a disease that made you super strong with no ill side effects, why would your body want to get rid of it? And why would you want to avoid the source? Eventually that'd just become a part of you as a human being rather than something like the flu. ",
"In yeast, a totivirus known as Yeast Killer Virus provides yeast with the ability to secrete toxin to kill other yeast and immunity from that toxin. These viruses, which provide hosts with a competitive edge, are quite common in single celled organisms. Shigella toxin is made by a virus that infects E coli. ",
"Well, at some point in evolution, it would appear but instead of it being a hindrance to procreation, it does the opposite. Soon enough, not having it, e.g. lacking a certain protein for digesting whatnot, becomes a 'defect'.",
"Well, absolutely not medically relevant but in the UK scifi show 'Red Dwarf' this is mentioned as 'positive viruses' (luck, hope,...).",
"A random wrench (pathogen) thrown into a fine-tuned machine (body) is far more likely to break something than make it better.",
"I mean, you can always try magic mushrooms and hop on a piano.\n\nAt the very least, you'll think you got good.",
"Yes, there is.. They re called probiotics. And therefore they are not considered pathogens anymore..",
"Not quite what you're looking for but...\nI used to teach epidemiology and in the first session we would discuss what disease is. We discussed that time, place and social standing can impact on how we define disease but ultimately it comes down to when you are not at ease - i.e. you are experiencing dis-ease for one reason or another. Maybe ease could be considered the opposite of disease?\n",
"I'm sure a few singers have contributed significantly to their career by recording a few songs with a cold.\n\nOh my mother fucking God. Coldplay. I am dying.\n\nEDIT: Nope, the Wikipedia article does *not* seem to say that this was the idea. But if you listen to the guy, how can't you be aware of some certain configuration in his general nose infrastructure?",
"Reminds me of an old Red Dwarf episode called Quarantine where luck is a virus that can be contracted! \n\n_URL_0_\nI'd of put a link on it, but the parenthesis cock it up.",
"There is. The gut flora in your intestinal track is made of billions of bacteria of many many different species. They help digest your food and work as part of your immune system. Without all those non-human cells, you'd be dead. ",
"This is exactly how genetic mutation and natural selection work. Most mutations are harmless and don't affect you either way, some are shitty and cause cancer or disease, but every once in a while... every once in a while there's a mutation that gives you a small edge over your neighbors. Not quite Cyclops' eye lasers but like... slightly denser retinal cells that sharpen your vision so you can avoid that lion in the distance.\n\nEvolution is the amassing of these small beneficial changes.\n\nYou don't notice the benefits because your scale is too small.",
"There is - mitochondria and for other species, chloroplasts. It's generally accepted fact that these started out as separate microbes that got eaten by our ancestor organisms and eventually decided it was a nice place to live forever. ",
"Whenever this question comes up, I feel like it's easiest to understand if we use balance (like a see saw) rather than up and down on a scale (like a thermometer) There are already a lot of terms used when talking about health that fit this view. Balanced diet, peak performance, etc. On a peak, any direction you go is down, same when balanced on a see saw. If something goes up, something else must go down.\n\nOk, so keeping that analogy in mind, we look at the whole body (macro) and the individual systems (micro). In the whole body, it's easy to question why diseases always bring us down in some way and why there aren't diseases that can bring us up. When you look at the micro level, like blood vessels for instance, it's a bit easier to see the effects of moving in opposing directions and how they're equally negative. Vasodialation (the expanding of blood vessels) decreases your blood pressure and can lead to all sorts of problems. Oppositely, vasoconstriction (the shrinking of blood vessels) raises blood pressure and causes all sorts of problems. There is a balance, in the \"middle\" so to speak, where things run optimally. This is the best place to be for blood to get where it needs to go, without causing your heart too much work.\n\nMany systems in your body work the same way. There is an optimal temperature for you to be, colder and you have issues, hotter and you have issues. Just right (Goldilocks?) and you survive. You can think of most of the systems in your body this way. It's the same when you think of water consumption. You have to drink water to be healthy, but you can even overdose on water. It's a wider margin than most things, but it's still relevant here. There is a balance that must be achieved to give your body what it needs to run optimally and not over work it. With so many systems in your body needing to be in balance for you to remain healthy, it's easy to see how throwing any one of them off, in any direction, can cause issues. \n\nThis is a very big generalization, but it's what I would tell a 5 year old when asked.",
"We have symbiotic relationships with all kinds of bacteria on our body. Some act as defensive agents that help fight off bad bacteria and things. Some aid us by digesting things that we cannot naturally digest and breaking them down giving us the nutrients we need from them. All of that is the opposite of disease. \n\n",
"Probiotics and healthy food? That stuff works wonders.",
"Probably because the whole mindset is \"things that make you sick\"....not bacteria, fungi, and viruses that are neutral or may in fact make things better. A parasite only survives if the host survives....we don't test for things that make us better...only worse. \n\nBTW, I've often wondered the same thing. Given our limited knowledge of all of the effects of all of the viruses and bacteria and fungi on earth upon the human condition, there have to be lots that actually do us some good, not just a handful of probiotics, for example. ",
"Isn't drugs like cocaine what you're looking for? Enhanced energy, resistant to pain, etc",
"A symbiotic relationship? We are who we are because of the mitochondria.",
"What about the mitochondria? It's got its own DNA and I always thought of it like a bacteria that got absorbed at some point and just stuck around.",
"Because our body and it's systems are in a highly ordered (low entropy) state. Almost all (99.99999999...pct) of deviations from this state are toward a less ordered, less functional configuration. ",
"Sci-fi movie/book/story: Virus gives people increased senses somehow (or something cool), and this is a major advantage to those that have been infected. But a good portion of the human population is naturally immune to the virus, and these people eventually form a sort of exploited under-class.",
"You mean like super powers?\n\nI would like this, although I think our imaginations have spoiled the real gifts that mother nature provides us through vitamins, minerals, protein, calcium, medicinal plants, etc.\n\nI guess what's important to understand in terms of perspective is how insanely hostile the universe is to life. Just for life to even exist, it requires extremely specific and rare conditions. And in order for life to sustain itself, it needs to consume other organic life. So every living thing is trying to bite off as much as it can chew from every other living thing that it is capable of digesting. A mutual symbiotic relationship is much less common thana parasitic one.",
"Build a house of cards.\n\nThen, throw a card at it. It's almost guaranteed that the card will knock it down, miss it completely, or bounce/slide off without knocking it over. It's very unlikely that the card will land in such a way to enhance the structure. It's possible, but highly unlikely. \n\nOur bodies are a like house of cards. In some ways, they're a house of cards that has been built by throwing cards over millions of years, and removing the ones that have just fallen over. In the highly unlikely situation that one provides structure to the house of cards, it has a chance to get copied, and have more cards thrown at it. \n\nThis analogy sounds a lot like genetic evolution, and it is, but it works similar with our relationship with viruses. As others have mentioned we have DNA that came from retroviruses, we have a host of \"good bacteria\" that help us to actually live. But these systems have grown over millions of years. Finding a new one is uncommon and might have only a marginally beneficial effect. The equivalent of adding a single new card in a helpful spot in our house of cards. On the other hand, one single card thrown at a support can take the whole structure down. ",
"Pretty simple, actually. If you randomly rearrange or substitute the gears in a clockwork, what are the chances that the clock will even work, much less keep accurate time?\n",
"Err, nutrients, vitamins, natural medicines, harmonious bacteria?"
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1cimsh | Was Marcus Aemilius Lepidus as useless and compliant in the Second Triumvirate as HBO's Rome portrays? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cimsh/was_marcus_aemilius_lepidus_as_useless_and/ | {
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"Not really. He just had the misfortune of being in the spotlight at the same time as other great figures like Caesar, Marcus Antonius and Octavianus. He wasn't incompetent, that's for sure. He was a skilled commander and he managed to get into the triumvirate during a very tumultuous period. That's nothing to be snuffed at. He even got Gallia Narbonensis and Hispania as his part of the empire at first, two very prestigious provinces. Problem was that he was overshadowed by Marcus Antonius and Octavianus. When they went to Greece to fight Brutus and Cassius, to kill those who killed Caesar, he stayed behind in Rome with only a few of his legions. He had to give up most of his legions to the other two Triumvirs to fight in Greece *and* he wasn't present at Philippi. That was a huge blow to his prestige and his influence. After a while, he was just left in the dust by the other two, he lost his provinces and only got Africa in return. Nobody wanted Africa. After this, he lost all power in the 'Triumvirate' and was only left in there because otherwise it wouldn't be a trium-virate.\n\nBut that wasn't the end for Lepidus. In 36 BC Octavianus called upon Lepidus and his twelve legions to join the fight against Sextus Pompeius in Sicily. Due to some storms, the legions led by Octavianus and Agrippa couldn't make it, but Lepidus did land and promptly took over the entire island. He even managed to get Sextus' eight legions to join him. Emboldened by this, he made a stand in an effort to regain his power in the Triumvirate. This was a mistake. Although he had his legions, they didn't trust him as a commander (which was unfair to his skills. He was certainly a better commander than Octavianus.) - and after much effort by Octavianus, they deserted en masse to his cause, mirroring the events with Marcus Antonius and Mutina. This left Lepidus without legions and at the mercy of the other two Triumvirs. He spent the rest of his life without influence in Circeii. \n\nBut really, that's all rather impressive. He certainly had the means to be one of the greats, he just didn't have the personality. He couldn't sell himself, nor could he inspire the kind of passion that MA and Octavianus inspired. But he wasn't useless or compliant and if he hadn't faced such tough competitors, he would've come out much more favourably. ",
"Poor Lepidus! Even historians don't respect him.\n\nNo, Rome definitely got that one wrong. For one, Lepidus willingly allied himself with Antony--they were old colleagues and it was quite natural. For another, the dynamic is generally misrepresented. Octavian did not get \"the West\" and Antony \"the East\", Octavian got Italy, Gaul, and Illyria, Antony got Asia, Macedonia and Syria, and Lepidus got Africa and Hispania. None of them really got the short end of the stick: Lepidus' provinces were highly prosperous and heavily militarized, Antony did not get Egypt but did get a rather difficult frontier with Parthia, and Octavian got both the most important province (Italy) and the least (Gaul). So the division was pretty fair, although the ends result--of Octavian taking Lepidus' territories and Antony consolidating his hold on Egypt--left Antony with a significant economic advantage and Octavian with a significant political and military one.\n\nUltimately of course, poor lepidus was a bit out of his depth, and we can hardly blame him. Still, he managed to live peacefully as Pontifex Maximus until 12 BCE, which is a pretty impressive feat in those days."
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1ktgnc | If I eat 1 pound of fat, is the maximum fat my body will store also 1 pound? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1ktgnc/if_i_eat_1_pound_of_fat_is_the_maximum_fat_my/ | {
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"If you physically ingest 1lb of any food you will weigh 1lb more then before you ate it (assuming you don't sweat or poop anything else out in the meantime).\n\nWith regards to actually storing and converting to bodyfat, based on 4100 calories of butter, if it is excess then yes it will be stored as fat. 3500 calories (of anything) will turn into one pound of bodyfat if it is in addition to your caloric maintenance needs.\n\nAnd no, eating 1lb of butter and then 1lb of broccoli wouldn't cause your body to store the calories from the broccoli per say. The body naturally wants to burn carbohydrates first as a primary energy source, but will burn through calories provided from any macro-nutrient source if necessary.",
"Firstly, no, the maximum you could gain is somewhere under that amount (though it'd be a very, very, tiny difference). The reason is because metabolic processes (cellular) continue and get rid of the waste through exhalation. \n\nThink of it like filling up a car with gasoline. If the car is stopped, then yes, you can actually put one gallon in it and it'd still be an exact one gallon stored (in a perfect situation). But, let's say the car is running and you started off with 10 gallons in the tank, but you put another gallon in. The net result would be less than 11 gallons because the car is still using the gas to run.\n\nSecondly, eating a pound of fat does not equal a pound of storage of fat. Our bodies are not that efficient. Also, the idea that broccoli is more nutritious than fat is also incorrect. Your body needs fat and also needs the substances in broccoli (in this case) to function. \"Healthy\" food is relative to the individual and the amounts being ingested.\n\nEDIT: The OP deleted the explanation of his question that included a part about whether eating fat and then eating broccoli (or any \"healthy\" food) would impact the absorption of the \"healthy\" products of the broccoli."
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502dtw | to put this simply, why cant life exist on other planets in different conditions? | This might be where the education system failed me but i always thought that life on this planet came about because the conditions were right for the single celled organisms to thrive.
They adapted and grew etc etc until you have us.
Now, why cant life adapt to OTHER conditions that we couldnt survive in? For example, just because we cant breathe the air on a certain planet why couldnt (to qoute Jurassic PArk) 'life find a way'? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/502dtw/eli5to_put_this_simply_why_cant_life_exist_on/ | {
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"There's no reason to believe that isn't the case. We look for Earth-like conditions in other places because we know for a fact that works. But nobody claims to have an exhaustive understanding of what forms life can take or what environments in which we may find it.\n\nA short story by Arthur C. Clarke talks about a fictional form of living matter that survived inside the sun, and once ejected in a solar flare into Earth's ocean, finds our environment to be deadly because it's so cold and dark.",
"Conditions were right for life **LIKE US**. Other places might have conditions favorable to forms of life that are very different from us. \n\nOf course, then you get into the question of what, exactly, is life? And almost every definition you can think of either excluded some things we think of as alive, or includes things we don't think of as alive. For instance, crystals in a matrix are self organizing and perpetuating anti entropic patterns, but most people don't think of them as being alive.\n\nIf you're looking for relatively similar forms of life, say, independent collections of matter that exist on the same time scale and size as human beings, then you pretty much need water or some other fluid, and a metabolic rate on the same order of magnitude, which implies roughly similar energy inputs and expenditures. \n\nBut in general, there's no theoretical limit. Stephen Baxter invented a race of intelligent patterns of mud bubbles that take over Earth, for instance.",
"They could have done just that.\n\nBut given that we only know of one set of parameters for life to exist (our own), those are the same criteria with which we judge other planets."
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4gh8v7 | why do nations make it so difficult for foreigners to get permanent residency and citizenship? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4gh8v7/eli5_why_do_nations_make_it_so_difficult_for/ | {
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"Short answer: If it were different, everybody would flock to the US, Europe and other rich countries. \n\nHowever, if a country really wants/needs you, the process can be much shorter. If you are highly qualified and a European company really wants to employ you, you can get residency quite quickly. \n\nIt can also help to be rich. In some countries if you invest something like $5 million, your path to citizenship can be much shorter. ",
"Because countries don't want people who can't contribute economically to show up, stay, and be a draw on their social services.\n\nIn sounds harsh, and it isn't about laziness or dishonesty. If you are an illiterate subsistence farmer you just don't have many skills to offer a modern economy. And if you if you work hard and get training and manage do become productive, there are a billion guys just like you...a country can't take them all in.",
"Lots of countries have relatively easy processes to become permanent residents. Panama, which was in the news a lot recently has an especially easy process for this.\n\nThe issues which make it so difficult to get permanent residency or citizenship in most rich countries is that with residency and citizenship usually come a lot of rights and entitlements.\n\nYou have these huge social welfare nets which were paid for by the people who live there and it is naturally to want to keep outsiders from coming there and taking advantage of that unless they have a very good reason like being a refugee from war (and even then, if it gets too much, many object as can be seen in Europe).\n\nThis is why many countries have relatively simply rules for becoming a legal resident if you are rich enough. If you can prove that you have enough money in a local bank they don't fear that you will take advantage of the system and are likely to bring in taxes instead and welcome you in.\n\nAnother factor that comes up is xenophobia, ethnocentrism and wanting to protect ones own culture and religion. People don't want others who are not like them to come into the country for a number of reasons. Japan is perhaps one of the hardest countries to gain citizenship in for outsiders partly because of this.\n\nThere are also more complex things at work. For example in the US entire industries and ways of life have been built upon the supply of cheap disenfranchised illegal immigrant labor. Making it easier for people to immigrate legally would endanger that supply of labor and thus lots of people have a vested interest in keeping it as hard and complicated as possible."
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zbbqx | Did rulers ever willingly and intentionally give up undesirable territory? | What I mean is, has any ruler in history surveyed his or her territories, seen that some of them were not very good, and subsequently let them go, declaring, "I am no longer the ruler of such-and-such lands," without first having an enemy invade those lands, or suffering a rebellion in those territories. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zbbqx/did_rulers_ever_willingly_and_intentionally_give/ | {
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"There is a state park in Oklahoma dedicated to how, when no one else would agree to govern the panhandle, the brave men of the Oklahoma state legislature boldly stepped forth and courageously agreed to govern it, bravely. \n\nThe language in the dedication plaque was not quite that absurd, but close. ",
"Well, I don't know if this fits your categories, but Napoleon sold the Louisiana Territories to the US because he had no use for them - France's main interests in the western hemisphere were in Haiti, with New Orleans being more of a supply port for an island that had nothing growing on it but sugar. Since Haiti rebelled and became independent a couple of years before Louisiana served no purpose to the already almost bankrupt Napoleon, so he sold it to the US.",
"All the time.\n\nThe British Empire had the odd rebellion but was mostly wound up peacefully. Of the 70+ countries that have had British rule, only about a dozen of them actually rebelled. _URL_0_. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, most of the African colonies, the West Indies, the Pacific islands, Hong Kong.\n\nIn the early days of the European colonial era, the nations were constantly taking, abandoning and swapping territories with each other. Take a look at the Treaty of Utrecht, as an example of the kind of random land swaps that went on.\n\nThe Roman Empire \"temporarily\" withdrew it's troops from the province of Brittania in 410 AD because they were needed elsewhere. They haven't come back, yet.",
"During the interregnum years in Denmark 1332-1340, the entire Kingdom was pawned off to various nobles (Danish and foreign).\n\nRussia sold Alaska to USA 1867.\n\nThe de-colonisation phase after ww2, especially for the British Empire, often consisted of getting rid of unprofitable colonies.\n\nSweden let go of Norway peacefully 1905.\n\nCzechoslovakia let go of Slovakia peacefully 1993.\n\nThere's also a lot of examples of large realms split by inheritance.\n\n",
"Lots of examples from Roman history.\n\n\nDacia was abandoned in 3rd century.\n\nHadrian retreated from the the newly established provinces of Mesopotamia and Armenia after the death of Trajan.\n\nBritain wasn't \"officially\" abandoned I think but the legions were removed."
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6jowlu | how do they match a single fingerprint against all the millions of fingerprints in the fingerprint database? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6jowlu/eli5_how_do_they_match_a_single_fingerprint/ | {
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"There's different ways a computer can do image comparison. One way is basically break down a fingerprint onto something like [grid paper](_URL_1_) with x,y positions.\n\nThen my fingerprint will say something like: Black at (4,5), Black at (4,6), White at (4,7), Black at (4,8) etc. hundreds or thousands of times. Like [this](_URL_0_).\n\nThen you can compare all these grid co-ordinates to another fingerprint. If say 99% of the squares are filled the same (Black or White) that's a good match.\n\nThis is obviously a lot of work, but computers are great at doing millions of simple fixed logical comparisons in a very fast time.\n\nThere's other ways to tackle this. There's also surrounding problems programmers need to solve too, like \"centering\" images so that they aren't off by one, how do you handle a fingerprint that's \"bolder with thicker lines\", etc.",
"By classifying different shapes and patterns that appear in fingerprints and using them to narrow the search. Fingerprint systems where created back the days when fingerprints where searched manually in books.\n\nFor a moment think about searching for a face. You have a million mugshots and you want someone (without a computer) to search for one that matchs a particular suspect. So you start classifying the features of the face: What color is the skin, is the nose flat or pointy, is the head oval, rectangular, triangular, are the lips thin or thick and so on. You give a letter or number to each of those features so that it creates a code, like WO7SK. Now there will be hundreds of faces that are identified as WO7SK but it has narrowed down the search by a lot. If you organize your mugshots using this system (so you have a cabinet for codes starting with W, with a binder for codes starting with WO, etc) you can find someone with only a short search.\n\nThe same is done for fingerprints, originally with a paper system and now with computers. A fingerprint is identified as being in one of three categories, an arch, a loop or a whorl and then from there into one of several subcategories (like a tented arch or radial loop). Further features within the fingerprint like the number of ridges or the shape of a delta or core will further narrow down the classification. From there either a human or a computer can manually compare the fingerprint with others that match that classification."
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15qf8q | Is the set of all integers the same size of the set of all natural numbers, if we assume each set to be infinite? | Hi, I'm not a trained mathematician by any means, but my friend is a math major and we were discussing this the other day. He claimed that if you had two infinte sets: one of all integers (1,2,3... and so on & -1, -2, -3... and so on), and one of all natural numbers (*only* 1, 2, 3... and so on) that they would be the same *size*. What I mean by this, is that if we gave each number an equal value in weight (say, 1lb or something), each set would have the same weight. Is this true? Are all sets, if considered infinite, the same "weight", in that case? Am I completely incorrect in how I've framed the question?
My friend mentioned something about Mapping the numbers to show me how why this was the case, but I'd love some more clarification, if possible! Thanks.
P.S. I'm a student of philosophy, not mathematics, so consider that in your answers please! | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/15qf8q/is_the_set_of_all_integers_the_same_size_of_the/ | {
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"Yes, the integers and natural numbers have the same size, or cardinal number. To test if two infinite sets A and B have the same size we need find a map that transforms the elements of A into the elements of B and ask\n\n* 1) Does every element of A get mapped to a unique element in B (one-to-one)?\n* 2) Does every element of B get mapped onto by some element from A (onto)?\n\nIf the answer is yes in both cases, then the sets have the same size.\n\nIn your case there are many possible mappings from integer to natural numbers, one example could be a piecewise function f:Z - > N such that\n\nf(x) = 2x when x > 0\n\nf(x) = -2x + 1 when x < = 0\n\n\nYou can verify that different integers will map to different natural numbers (one-to-one) and that each natural number is represented by the mapping (onto). Thus they both have the same cardinal number. \n\n\nYou could also do something similar with all even integers, all multiples of 7, all primes - any discrete infinite set will have the same cardinal number. However you won't be able to find a one-to-one and onto mapping between the integers and the real numbers. Gregor Cantor proved that the real numbers are larger with his [diagonal proof](_URL_0_), which IMO is one of the most elegant and beautiful proofs in all of math and worth looking into.\n",
"The question of measuring infinite sets is somewhat tricky. The solution your friend is thinking of is _cardinality_, discovered/invented in the late nineteenth century by Georg Cantor. Two sets are said to have the same cardinality if there is a one-to-one correspondence between their elements. For example, consider the set of days of the week and integers from 1 to 7. There is a one-to-one correspondence:\n\n Sunday < - > 1\n Monday < - > 2\n Tuesday < - > 3\n Wednesday < - > 4\n Thursday < - > 5\n Friday < - > 6\n Saturday < - > 7\n\nThe important thing to note about the correspondence is that each day of the week appears exactly once on the left, and each integer from 1 to 7 appears exactly once on the right. That is, each day of the week corresponds to one and only one integer from 1 to 7, and each integer from 1 to 7 corresponds to one and only one day of the week. So we would be justified in saying there are as many days in a week as there are integers from 1 to 7.\n\nNow suppose we only consider the working days Monday through Friday, but we still want to compare to integers from 1 to 7. Then we could start to write a correspondence:\n\n Monday < - > 1\n Tuesday < - > 2\n Wednesday < - > 3\n Thursday < - > 4\n Friday < - > 5\n ??? < - > 6\n ??? < - > 7\n\nHowever, we find nothing for 6 and 7 to correspond to. With some playing around, we could convince ourselves that there is no possible correspondence between these two sets. So we are justified in thinking the number of working days is different than the number of integers from 1 to 7. (With a little more finesse, we could show that it is strictly less.)\n\nSo for the integers and natural numbers, we might have a correspondence like:\n\n 0 < - > 0\n 1 < - > 1\n -1 < - > 2\n 2 < - > 3\n -2 < - > 4\n ...\n n < - > 2*n - 1 (when n > 0)\n n < - > 2*(-n) (when n < 0)\n ...\n\nBecause there are infinitely many elements, we can't write out the whole correspondence, but you can maybe see the pattern developing, and check that it matches the general forms at the end. And you can convince yourself that each integer appears exactly once on the left, and each natural number appears exactly once on the right. So we can say that these sets have the same cardinality, that they are the same size.\n\nFor any finite number n, you can consider the set [n] = {0,1,...,n-1} of all natural numbers less than n. Any set with the same cardinality as [n] is said to have cardinality n (i.e. it has n elements). These are the finite cardinalities. With a little work, it can be shown that the set of natural numbers does not have the same cardinality as any of the sets [n]. It has the first infinite cardinality, called aleph-null. (That is the Hebrew letter aleph with a subscript zero. It is also read aleph-zero or aleph-naught.)\n\nNow we could just call this infinity and stop there, but we might ask whether there is anything bigger. That is, are there infinite sets which are not in one-to-one correspondence with the natural numbers? Surprisingly, the answer turns out to be yes. This unexpected result of Cantor's created some controversy surrounding his set theory when first published, but is now generally accepted by the mathematical community. (There are some dissenters still who are mostly ready to give up the infinite entirely.)\n\nCantor's proof revolves around an idea so simple that it can be hard to grasp. Indeed, people come up with \"disproofs\" with some regularity. (One of the signs of a mathematical crank is they think they've found a logical flaw in this proof. The dissenters-in-good-standing generally have a problem with the premises rather than the logic.) But it boils down to a proof by contradiction. Suppose there were a correspondence between natural numbers on one side and real numbers 0 < = x < = 1 on the other. We would create a table like\n\n 0 < - > 0.1111111111...\n 1 < - > 0.1231231231...\n 2 < - > 0.1415926535...\n 3 < - > 0.7071067811...\n 4 < - > 0.6789699879...\n ...\n\nCantor suggests that we create a number by reading down the diagonal, that is, by taking the first digit from the first row, the second digit from the second row, and so on. So for this example we get 0.12116... And now the key trick: change each digit of this number in some way. For example we could add one to each digit, except 9 which we make 0. That gives us the number 0.23227... Now spring the trap. If our table was a one-to-one correspondence, this new number must appear somewhere in it. So where is it? Can it be the first row? No, by construction, the first digit of our number is different than the first digit of the first row. Can it be the second? No, the second digit is different than the second digit of the second row. Can it be the seventeenth? No, the seventeenth digit is different that the seventeenth digit of the seventeenth row. In fact it can't be anywhere in the table. So the table cannot have been a one-to-one correspondence.\n\nNow you might want to try just adding this new number to the table. Now you have a different table than you started with. But Cantor pulls the same trick on you to find a number than isn't in the new table. You can keep adding numbers, and Cantor can keep finding something you've missed. The key point is that Cantor's process for finding a new number works for any table, so there is no possible table that is \"finished\". So there is no one-to-one correspondence between the natural numbers and the real numbers between zero and one. So there is more than one kind of \"infinity\".\n\n(It should be noted that I've left out some technical details surrounding decimal representations of real numbers. They basically boil down to the 0.999 repeating equals 1 thing, and they mean that my naively constructed table might contain the same number more than once, and that the number constructed to not be in the table might actually be in the table. You can either work through these details to get a proof that the natural numbers are not in one-to-one correspondence with the reals, or you can adjust the above to work with infinite sequences of digits rather than real numbers. In that case, you've still seen that there is some infinite set which is not in one-to-one correspondence with the naturals, it just wasn't the real numbers.)\n\nSo we can say that the set of natural numbers is strictly smaller than the set of real numbers. We called the cardinality of the natural numbers aleph-zero; should we call the cardinality of the reals aleph-one? Perhaps not; there could be cardinalities \"between\" that of the naturals and that of the reals. Are there? It turns out that we can't prove it one way or the other. The statement that there are no cardinalities greater than the naturals and less than the reals is called the Continuum Hypothesis. (It deals with \"the cardinality of the continuum\".) It has been shown that the Continuum Hypothesis cannot be proved from the axioms of set theory and also that the opposite of the Continuum Hypothesis cannot be proved. (The result that there are such statements, neither provable nor disprovable, is interesting in its own right. It was shown by Kurt Goedel in 1931 that such statements exist in any system powerful enough to describe the natural numbers, but the Continuum Hypothesis wasn't completely shown to be an example until 1963.)\n\nIn the time I've been typing this, others have probably said much the same. Hopefully someone else has also pointed out other ways to measure infinite sets because I am going to stop here."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor's_diagonal_argument"
],
[]
] | |
ds5f7q | - what do people mean when they say that spring water is “filtered by the rocks”? how do you tell if water from a spring is good to drink without testing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ds5f7q/eli5_what_do_people_mean_when_they_say_that/ | {
"a_id": [
"f6nhdkb"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"There are a huge number of potential organisms that can contaminate water supplies - if it’s literally ‘welling up’ out of the ground, and surrounded by moss, then it’s usually fine, but in most of Europe (and now NZ) many of the previously safe streams are now infected with things like giardia (spelling?)\nThe other risk is fecal contamination by local fauna\n\nCarry a life straw with you, and you can filter out most contaminants and you will still get to enjoy the taste of really pure water - but use your best judgement."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
4kanhv | the unisex toilet situation in america | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4kanhv/eli5_the_unisex_toilet_situation_in_america/ | {
"a_id": [
"d3dh58e"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Nobody actually cares except a vocal minority for the purposes of misdirection. Nobody wants to report on the Panama Papers, CIA torture report mistakenly being destroyed, the situation in Brazil where we (the US) may have played a part.\n\nBut people can be uncomfortable if a person doesn't use the proper restroom"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
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