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9qs9g2 | Can anyone confirm/debunk this historical snippet? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9qs9g2/can_anyone_confirmdebunk_this_historical_snippet/ | {
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"There is no known footage of Hitler's remains, and his body was cremated shortly after his suicide.\n\n/u/Georgy_K_Zhukov has discussed Hitler's death and remains in [exhaustive detail here.](_URL_0_)"
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4c5thc | why did saddam gas the kurds in his country? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4c5thc/eli5_why_did_saddam_gas_the_kurds_in_his_country/ | {
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"iraq has always had a problem of not having nationalism. the reason is because most of iraq's history has been under persian aka iranian rule, and for a short period of time, it was under arabic and turkic rule as well. this meant that iraq had no nationalism for itself, which is why so much of iraq is divided between KSA supporting parties (ISIS, Saddam) and Iranian supporting parties, the current administration which are Shia and Kurds which are mostly Sunni, but Iranian. \n \nSaddam tried to revive Iraqi nationalism by going back more than 4000 years to the times of the Babylonians, but Iraqi culture is so far from that that it kind of failed. You can't really revive that kind of cultural difference without getting rid of Islam first, because back then they were polytheistic, and worshiping polytheism in Islam is the equivalent to getting hanged. \n \nSo he tried to revive nationalism by getting rid of outside influence. He started by gassing not only Kurds, but all Iranians (Kurds are an Iranian people). Iranians are now the best capable of defending against a gas attack out of any country because of their experience during this war. By gassing Iranians, he pretty much acted like Hitler during his Poland invasion, simply wanting to kill in order to ethnically cleanse the area and establish a legitimate Iraq, without outside influence. The part where he failed miserably, was that his army was totally incompetent, probably because of the fact that they had no nationalism. The Iraqis had the 4th largest standing army, help from most countries including the USA, and were fighting a country that JUST had a revolution and was totally isolated, and still managed to lose the war (It was a stalemate, but if you usher a war and it's a stalemate, strategically it's pretty much a loss) \n \n\nKurds helping the Iranians was just because Kurds were targeted as well for not being Arab, and this resulted in what we see today A) Kurds wanting their own land away from Iraq. B) Kurds and Iranians both detest being considered Arab C) Saddam Hussein's countries progressive collapse after the Iran-Iraq War D) The international community talking about re fragmenting Iraq completely, but this will never happen because logically part of Iraq should be given to Iran, and the international community doesn't want to strengthen Iran further, even though Iran pretty much controls Iraq now."
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5ltk8s | why does china ban facebook, youtube, and tinder but not sites like reddit where there is potentially more controversial information? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ltk8s/eli5_why_does_china_ban_facebook_youtube_and/ | {
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"Chinese government censorship doesn't actually focus on suppressing competing ideologies, morals, or even dissent against the government. What they do actively censor is attempts to organize collective dissent or protest. You can complain all you want about the government until you try to band together at which point it shifts from cathartic release into a threat to government control.\n\nAs for Reddit being allowed it probably comes down to Reddit being small potatoes. In a month Reddit has 243 million users, while YouTube has more like a billion users."
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7dt269 | What happened to the inhabitants of Roman cities after the fall of the Roman Empire who now found themselves living in a barbarian kingdom. | I've been recently reading about the fall of Rome and understand that it was largely brought about by various barbarian tribes sweeping across Europe and settling in the various different regions, eventually leading to the Visigoths sacking Rome.
I also understand that many of these barbarian tribes after they settled the land lived in small farming villages and had very few large towns.
My question is, what happened to the populations of the Roman cities around this time? Did they carry on inhabiting the cities as normal and just swear fealty to these new kings, or did they abandon the cities largely?
The example that springs to mind is of a typical Roman family living in a Roman city in Gaul around the time that Clovis established the Frankish kingdom. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7dt269/what_happened_to_the_inhabitants_of_roman_cities/ | {
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"Good morning/afternoon/evening! The mission of /r/AskHistorians is to provide users with **in-depth and comprehensive responses**, and our [rules](/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules) are intended to facilitate that purpose. *We remove comments which don't follow them for reasons including unfounded speculation, shallowness, and of course, inaccuracy*. Making comments asking about the removed comments simply compounds this issue. So please, before you try your hand at posting, check out the [rules](/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules), as we don't want to have to warn you further.\n\nOf course, we know that it can be frustrating to come in here from your frontpage or /r/all and see only *[removed]*, but we ask for your patience and understanding. Great content is produced on this subreddit every day though, and we hope that while you wait, you'll check out places they are featured, including [Twitter](_URL_5_), the [Sunday Digest](_URL_4_), the [Monthly \"Best Of\"](_URL_3_) feature, and now, [Facebook](_URL_7_). It's [very rare that a decent answer doesn't result in due time](/r/AskHistorians/comments/6a5duv/a_statistical_analysis_of_10000_raskhistorians/), so please do come check back on this thread in a few hours. If you think you might forget, send a [Private Message](_URL_2_!) to the [Remind-Me bot](_URL_0_), and it will ensure you don't!\n\nWhile we always appreciate feedback, it's unfair to the OP to derail this thread with META conversation, so if you have more questions or concerns I would ask that they be directed to [modmail](_URL_6_), or a [META thread](_URL_1_[META]). Thank you!",
"As with most questions regarding late antiquity and the fall of Rome, the answer is \"It depends.\" More specifically, the answer is \"It depends on which part of the Roman world you're talking about.\"\n\nYou were helpful enough to specify which part you're talking about, but I'll discuss other parts of the Empire anyway, because the experience in Clovis' realm isn't typical of that in other parts.\n\nOne thing I should stress straight away though, is that the idea of \"it was largely brought about by various barbarian tribes sweeping across Europe and settling in the various different regions, eventually leading to the Visigoths sacking Rome\" is rather out-dated. For example, the Gothic (not \"Visigothic\", that's a later term) army that sacked Rome was a Roman army, led by a Goth and with a lot of Goths in it, that rebelled over lack of pay and because said leader felt he hadn't been given a high enough rank. After the sack they went back to serving Rome. And it is quite possible that the main reason they even got away with sacking Rome is that the various Roman elites (Eastern and Western) wanted to keep Alaric (the Gothic leader) around to use against eachother, if need be.\n\n[This earlier post](_URL_0_) I've written goes into much greater detail on the narrative of the fall of the Roman empire, and whether that term is even meaningful to use. (There's a nice bit of discussion with u/Shlin28 at the bottom of the page on this subject.) For the rest of this post I'll instead discuss your actual question, about the life of Romans in the provinces after the fall of the central Roman state.\n\nLet's start in the north, in **Britain:** Here, cities disappear altogether not long after the Roman period. People just stop living in them. Note that this does not mean all the cities were destroyed: Historians do not agree on how violent the Saxon conquest was, or to what extent it even was a conquest, but either way the archaeological record does not support the wide-spread destruction of cities in the fifth century. What exactly *did* happen is harder to tell, as the very extent of the upheaval means our written sources are few and unreliable. \n\nOne plausible scenario is that the fragmentation and loss of security that accompanies the Roman withdrawal from Britain resulted in vast economic upheavals that made the previous economic system of prosperous market towns supplied by and providing services to a surrounding countryside no longer viable. Britain fell apart in dozens of squabbling little polities, some run by former Roman garrisons, some by British noblemen become strongmen, some run by Saxons/Angles/etc, be they newly arrived invaders, settlers who have been living there for a generation or two already, or formerly allied soldiers who struck off on their own. With this fragmentation, the cities disappeared quite quickly, as without trade the people there simply could no longer support themselves.\n\nIn **Africa**, where the Vandals take over, city life continues to thrive, and a place like Carthage remains a very prosperous city. Although unlike the Goths or Franks, the Vandals actually were invaders more closely fitting the classic barbarian archetype, they quickly adapt to Roman culture and become effective rulers of this very rich part of the Roman world. The people likewise quickly adapt to their new overlords. Most of the ships used by the Vandal kings to wage their wars against the Romans must have been build by and crewed by North African Roman citizens. Guy Halsall half-jokingly calls the ensuing war in the mid fifth century \"The fourth Punic war\" and the only one won by the Carthaginians. However, there are significant religious struggles: the Vandals are Arian Christians, and although our sources can't be taken completely at face value, it does seem to be the case that the Vandals persecute some of the Nicean Christians. \n\nIn **Italy,** the Italian Romans were initially none too pleased when Odoacer supplanted the last emperor, but when the eastern Roman emperor sent Theoderic the Great (a Goth, though the meaning of that term in the late fifth century is ambiguous) they were much happier. Theoderic took great pains to emphasise his Romanness, his position as a Roman consul, and the importance of the Italian nobility to his cause. Initially, this policy was very effective, and the Italian people and the Goths integrated quite effectively and worked together more peacefully than they had with previous Roman military regimes. (Also often enough consisting of Goths or other \"barbarians.\") At this late stage of Roman history, there simply wasn't much of a difference between a Gothic army and a Roman army, since the Goths had fought for (and sometimes rebelled against) the empire for over a century and were not much more (or less) alien to the Romans than other soldiers were. \n\nThat said, as time went on, the idea of Theoderic's Gothic kingdom being a continuation of the Roman state started to lose some of its luster, and after his death it became more and more clear that things were changing and a nasty succession crisis took hold. In the end, though, it took Justinian's Roman armies invading and proclaiming they were restoring the Roman empire, to definitively scuttle any claims the Goths had to representing the Roman empire. The ensuing thirty years of brutal war did more to destroy the Roman way of life in Italy than Odoacer and Theoderic had ever done.\n\nIn **Gaul,** there is a significant difference between the experience of the rich, urbanised south, and the poorer, colder, militarised north. The northern parts of the province, where Clovis' kingdom originated, had slowly been slipping from Rome's grasp much earlier than the south, and in any case had never been quite the same as the heartlands of Italy, Africa, and southern Gaul. Even in the heydays of the empire, the north had been the region of the frontier, with an economy that revolved around and depended on the presence of the legions. When regions like Trier had experienced their golden age in the 4th century, it had been because the soldier-emperors of the later Roman empire had used it as one of their capitals and seats of government in their more military style of government. With the departure of the Roman central authorities, this way of life was upended almost as dramatically as it was in Britain... and our sources are, for the same reason, almost as bad.\n\nWe do know the Franks ended up becoming the most important power in the region, eventually establishing their kingdom under Clovis. The Franks had been long-standing allies of Rome, and as with the Goths the distinction between \"A Roman field army\" and \"a Frankish allied army\" had been blurring to the extent of them becoming interchangeable. As the central Roman authorities withdrew south in the wake of invasion and civil war, its seems these armies took over the region more or less by default, as they simply were the only authority left in the area. Of course, this does not mean they did so peacefully, as there were fierce wars to see *which* of the various strongmen and factions would end up in command, but most historians nowadays argue that there's no reason to interpret these events as as \"Frankish invaders conquering the Roman remnants\" and more as \"Various bits of the Roman army fighting it out amongst themselves and against Germans from across the frontiers, with one sub-set of the Franks eventually winning.\" But the Franks had been part of the Roman side of the frontier here, not the \"barbarian\" side.\n\nEither way, the world that emerged from these struggles was very different than it had been under the Roman emperors. One way of seeing the transformation of this region is to see it as an army take-over, with military culture supplanting civilian, and the way of life of the frontier extending south to encompass the whole, and the local civilians adapting this Romano-Frankish military culture more than than the other way around. \n\nThis was not the case in **southern Gaul,** though. There, whether it was in the Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse or later when they came under the sway of the Franks, the Roman way of life continued, with all its culture and sophistication. The Franks saw the value of having skilled and learned administrators in their realm, and civic careers in the church remained quite viable for the Roman elites. Even long after the Roman empire as a centralised state had fallen, the people in this region continued to see themselves as Romans and continued to live as Romans. \n\nIt did not last forever, as fragmentation and disruption continued apace, but for a century or so you could indeed be a Roman living in Clovis' kingdom as a Roman, serving a Frankish ruler instead of a Roman emperor, but otherwise living and behaving much as your forefathers had done. This was mostly possible in the south, but even in the north pockets of Romanness persisted, with aristocrats in Trier still calling themselves senators and maintaining the trappings of Roman life as late as the 7th century.\n\nSources:\n\n* Guy Halsall, *Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West 376-568*\n\n* Peter Heather, *The Fall of the Roman Empire*"
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2me8fq | Is there an evolutionary advantage to whales/dolphins breaching? | Is there any survival tactic or evolutionary advantage to jumping out of the water like whales and dolphins frequently do. I know fish would do this to evade predators, but with larger whales that same tactic wouldn't make much sense, right? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2me8fq/is_there_an_evolutionary_advantage_to/ | {
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"With dolphins at least, they do it for fun, it's one of the ways they play when they have extra energy reserves.\n\nAs for whales there is no definite theory to explain the behaviour. Again it could be for fun, but it has also been suggested they do it as dominance or competitive displays. They may also do it during hunting to help stun fish.\n\nIf anything these are learned social behaviours, rather than survival tactics."
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1wxhh0 | why can't we see the core of our galaxy with our naked eyes? | If the middle of our galaxy is so big and bright, how come we can't see it with our eyes? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wxhh0/why_cant_we_see_the_core_of_our_galaxy_with_our/ | {
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"You can see it in a lot of places that don't have too much light pollution. [Here's a picture](_URL_0_).",
"The actual center is blocked by dust between us and it. What we see in the sky are stars in a dense spiral arm that wraps around that side of the center from our vantage point.",
"There's interstellar dust that is opaque to the visible spectrum of light. There's enough of it between us and the galactic core to block our sight of it. However, using telescopes that see in infrared, for example, the core can be seen as the dust doesn't block infrared. "
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4z16i9 | How come astrophysical jet, like those from black holes, aren't curved? | [deleted] | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4z16i9/how_come_astrophysical_jet_like_those_from_black/ | {
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"Why would they be curved? What's the scenario you're thinking about?",
"In order for them to be curved, there would have to be some mechanism for them to be curved. The jets are typically directed along the axis of rotation of the body. As long as this axis remains constant, there's no reason for the jet to suddenly change direction."
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2rmglw | why are pandas so evolutionarily inept, yet we insist they are a species that must be saved? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rmglw/eli5_why_are_pandas_so_evolutionarily_inept_yet/ | {
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"They don't struggle to breed... They simply don't breed as much, just like many others... \nNo they are not supposed to die out. They have adapted to their environment, where bamboo is plentiful. Hence they are not inept but rather well suited.\n\nSo in short, no, they would not die out without human impact.",
"Pandas are supremely well adapted to their environment. They capitalize on a large, uncontested food source. Their breeding habits keep their number from exploding beyond what their environment can handle.\n\nThey are only in trouble because we fucked it up.",
"They're so cute! \n\nWell, either that or the little fuckers have some serious dirt on us they're blackmailing us with."
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21180f | "women, people of color, and lgbtq individuals are highly encouraged to apply" how is this statement legal on a job application? | This statement was on the **Career** section of a union website...not a fetish website
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21180f/eli5_women_people_of_color_and_lgbtq_individuals/ | {
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"What's behind this, and most types of what became known as \"affirmative action,\" is an attempt to break a cycle. Minorities are discriminated in the work place, don't make a lot of money and work in poor conditions. Therefore their kids don't get to go to good schools, to get decent healthcare, living conditions, and to make good networks. This exacerbates the problem, and these kids will have all that against them, on top of the prejudice. At the same time, those in the majority don't get to see minorities around them, so they don't create bonds of trust, friendship, respect. They will be that more likely to discriminate against what they don't know. It is a cycle and it is very difficult to break.\n\nOne way to break the cycle, it is proposed, is to implement the reverse of the discrimination. Some people will get good jobs despite of the prejudice and despite of their backgrounds. Their kids will have that much more opportunities, and those in the majority will get a chance to interact with minorities and gain trust, respect, maybe friendship.\n\nEventually, given time, the cycle might be broken.\n\nBefore you decapitate me, I'm not saying I agree or disagree with this. I don't know enough to have an opinion. But that is the rationale.",
"I think you're misreading the notice. Let me start with an illustration from the entertainment industry, where race is dealt with a little more above-the-board. \n\nLet's talk plays and movies. A common problem in casting is that unless it specifically says in a script that a character is black/asian/latino, directors almost always assume that a character is white. Actors of color quickly learn that it's a waste of their time to bother going out for a role that doesn't specifically say \"ethnic\" or their own race, even if they'd be really good for it. So if I want to see the full range of actors for a role - and open it up to a lot of really talented black, asian, and latino actors who otherwise wouldn't have shown up to the audition - I have to specifically announce in the notice that I'm looking for a whole range of ethnicities. \n\nThe message that you read isn't saying \"we'd prefer to hire a gay black lady.\" The message is more like \"don't be scared that we'll discriminate - we want to meet you!\" Many industries are traditionally male-dominated, or have histories of discrimination. [Studies have found that](_URL_0_) merely having a black-sounding name on a job application makes you less likely to receive a job that you're otherwise qualified for. \n\nOftentimes women, people of color, or gay/trans people will be so discouraged from prejudice in certain industries or from certain companies that they won't bother applying. A notice such as that is a \"don't worry, we'll give you a fair shake\" that allows you to get a wider pool of applicants. It also puts people who may have otherwise been nervous at the interview more confident and at ease, which means it's easier for you to see how well they can perform. Imagine being a latino transperson trying to get a job in a mechanic's shop, or a black man applying at a Mississippi gun range - that can be a scary and discouraging interview, unless you know for certain that you'll be given a fair shake. "
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p1liw | Does gravity redshift? | More generally, assuming that gravity propagates at c, would the Doppler effect be applicable to gravity, and if so, what are the consequences?
EDIT 1: This is now really starting to intrigue me...1) how would gravitons escape the extreme curvature of spacetime around a black hole, and 2) wouldn't a gravitational over-pressure exist around the singularity? Virtual gravitons may be able to cross the event horizon barrier (by moving > c), but surely this cannot account for the intensity of the gravitational field outside of the event horizon? It's starting to seem that "gravitons" are just bad news - most theories containing them are bust (due to the "high-energy incompatibilities" between GR and QM) - and it further appears that (since a graviton would be indistinguishable from *any* other 2-spin massless particle) it may be pointless to quantise gravity. On the other hand, String theory offers a viable alternative to the graviton, but its best efforts to address issues such as what happens to gravity under relativistic conditions are weak.
EDIT 2: **Thought Experiment**
A spaceship is (constantly) accelerating in a direction directly away from a massive black hole at such a rate that the gravitational acceleration towards the BH is negated, and the spaceship maintains a constant distance from it. At this distance the (constant) thrust of its motor cancels out the constant gravitational pull towards the BH. An observer is positioned so that the spaceship and its black hole are approaching him head-on at some relativistic speed. The observer has placed a "gravitational sensor" in the path of the oncoming black hole. The doppler effect dictates that the gravitational field should effectively be 'compressed' in the direction of travel. Therefore, there will either be a difference between the intensity of the gravitational field as measured by the sensor and that measured by the space ship, or there would be a difference between the distance the space ship is from the black hole, and the sensor's distance from the black hole. At the moment that the space ship passes the sensor, either the G intensities are different, or the distances to the BH are different, either of which is a contradiction. ?. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/p1liw/does_gravity_redshift/ | {
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"Gravitational radiation experiences the Doppler effect, but we're not at the point where we can detect this. ",
"Does gravitation have a frequency?",
"Does anyone actually know the physics behind gravitrons? I thought they hadn't really figured that out yet? I mean, they have some ideas, but no solid evidence? \n\nFurthermore, does it even make sense to think of gravitrons being affected by a gravitational field? I thought the current idea was that the gravitrons *caused* gravity to behanve the way it does, but that the gravitrons themselves werent bounded by their own field??\n\nI think we need more science in this thread.... "
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vwu8o | why we don't feel a stronger gravitational force at different times of day. | To make the title clearer, I mean when your side of the world is facing the direction that Earth is rotating around the sun.
edit: Wasn't clear enough. I know that Earth rotates around the sun at a pretty high speed, and when a high speed is being forced on top of you(?) that you feel g-forces. That's the stronger force that I'm talking about in the title.
[Here](_URL_0_)'s a quick sketch to kinda show what I mean. The force I'm talking about is represented by the red arrow.
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/vwu8o/eli5_why_we_dont_feel_a_stronger_gravitational/ | {
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"Because the gravity we feel is from the earth, not the sun. Our orbit is based on the sun, but our gravity is Earth's",
"I think I understand what you mean. Basically, it's because the force to which you're referring doesn't exist.\nOn Earth, when you're moving and you feel g-forces, it's due to the acceleration. As we orbit the Sun, we're not actually accelerating in the direction of our movement, but rather we're accelerating directly towards the sun itself, sort of like [this](_URL_0_).\n\nThe reason we don't feel **that** more strongly at certain times of day (say, local noon) is because the difference is so small as to be completely irrelevant."
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222r1p | At what age do humans become self-aware? | At what age are young infants able to identify with the idea of "self" in relation to their existence? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/222r1p/at_what_age_do_humans_become_selfaware/ | {
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"Usually it's suggested that it occurs at about six months, but sometimes may be even earlier. Studies have been done on rooting behavior: if you touch your hand to an infant's cheek, they move their head to where they will be nourished. \tRochat and Hespos (1997) did a study to see if an infant roots the same way with their own hand as to the touch of another. They said that since this can be done, it could only be because they can distinguish themselves from others. \n\nFull paper:\n_URL_0_\n",
"It's obviously very difficult to measure \"self-awareness,\" but you may be interested in the rouge test. Researchers place a red mark on the forehead of the child and prompt them to look in a mirror. Children don't recognize that it's them in the mirror until about 18 months of age, give or take a couple months. This is really the first age where a child recognizes the self.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Philosophy grad student here, but my work draws on some research in developmental psychology. In particular, I think Josef Perner's three-stage account of the development of mental representation gives a good framework for saying some useful things about self-awareness. He develops this account in his book *Understanding the Representational Mind*, which is unfortunately out of print, but he gives evidence for it in his articles, many of which are listed on his [Google Scholar page](_URL_0_).\n\nHis account, briefly, claims that infants are born with *primary representation*, a single updating model of the world. Between the ages of one and two years, they develop *secondary representation*, the ability to hold multiple updating models. And between the ages of three and four years they develop *metarepresentation*, the ability to hold models of models.\n\nEach stage allows for a different type of self-awareness. I can't speak much to primary representation, and Perner doesn't either, but it does provides the ability to distinguish between different objects, including one's own body, as suggested by /u/rubes6's reply.\n\nSecondary representation allows for perspective-taking. One can entertain a model of the world from a particular perspective and compare it to the world from one's own perspective. An example of this is mirror self-recognition, which /u/deedubya mentions. In the rouge test, there's a (primary) proprioceptive representation of the child's head and a (secondary) visual representation of the same, from the perspective of the mirror, and the child and compare and integrate the information from these distinct models and correctly identify where the mark is.\n\nIt also allows for a limited kind of introspection. Secondary representation allows toddlers to compare the representational content of their desires (secondary representations) with the way the world is (primary representation), whereas previously they didn't have this kind of mental access to the content of their desires. Perner hypothesises that this explains toddler tantrums because a toddler, but not an infant, is able to tell when their desires are unsatisfied.\n\nMetarepresentation allows us to say of our own (and other's) beliefs whether they're true or false. This allows for a kind of self-evaluation that's not possible with mere secondary representation.\n\nI suppose the main thing to take away from all this is that there's a bunch of distinct abilities that fit under the umbrella of \"self-awareness\", which develop at different times. It's important to identify the relevant kind for the task you're interested in and not to conflate it with the other types."
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],
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"http://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=pnWbK7sAAAAJ&hl=en"
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] | |
3zu0ev | how when a laptop's battery runs out, it can display a message showing the battery is dead. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3zu0ev/eli5_how_when_a_laptops_battery_runs_out_it_can/ | {
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"Essentially what's happening is your laptop is reserving a very small amount of energy in the battery to perform this action. That energy reserve cannot be used to boot the computer since there simply isn't enough. That message will use a very small amount of power. ",
"Laptop batteries use a chemistry called lithium ion. This technology becomes very upset indeed if it's allowed to flatten totally. These batteries can explode if under charged, over charged and all manner of other things. That's why you can't buy lithium ion rechargeable batteries (different from plain lithium non rechargeables) in AA or AAA format in your local convenience store. \n\n This is why laptop batteries are so expensive, because they have to have a lot of built in electronics to protect the battery. \n\nOne of these protections is not allowing it to go completely flat, and it does this by sending a Battery Dead signal to the computer. \n\nIn reality the battery will still have a single-figure percentage of life left in it, which is kept in order to preserve the life of the battery. "
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688maa | how can a normally healthy person get scared to death? is it common or rare? | I've stumbled upon an article which stated you can get scared to death despite not having any previous heart conditions.
I believe I grasp how that happens in general, the excess adrenaline from our fight or flight response can damage the heart and lead to calcifications/arrhythmia (like vfib).
Though shouldn't it be a really high survival rate in younger, healthy individuals with no prior disease, regardless of the intensity of the shock?
To me it just seems that such a misfortune is extremely rare provided you get treatment once the symptoms kick in, could someone explain me how the whole process is happening and whether that article is exaggerated or not?
Thank you in advance :) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/688maa/eli5_how_can_a_normally_healthy_person_get_scared/ | {
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"It sounds like you understand the situation properly. If you are in good health, with no hidden problems (like a heart weakness), your body's normal fear response is not strong enough to kill you. Evolution has already weeded out most of the genes that would grow a person who cannot survive a large fright."
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3ysq2h | Wouldn't Timetravel(to the past) violate the Law of Conservation of Energy? | My thoughts:
If you "move" mass, or let's say me, back in time, so that I would be able to interact with, for example, my past self, wouldn't it cause a Paradox, since my body was(or will be?) missing in the future, while there's twice of my body in the past than there's supposed to be?
I thought maybe it would cancel out, since my past self would go on to travel back, leaving the future with only 1 me.
Thought's?
Be harsh and show me contradictions :) | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3ysq2h/wouldnt_timetravelto_the_past_violate_the_law_of/ | {
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"Yes. If you can timetravel, global conservation laws are not guaranteed.\n\nTo be more formal: the time machine is a weird topological feature of spacetime. For it to exist it means that spacetime has sort of a \"handle\" (the time machine) connecting an instant to a previous time. There are timelike worldlines entering this handle and exiting in the past to reach the event where they started - closed timelike curves.\n\nThis weird spacetime can actually be built flat, so that there are no gravitational effects.\n\nWe locally have full Poincaré invariance, so we have local conservation of a stress-energy tensor. However, to talk about *global* conservation of the corresponding charge, we need the spacelike slice over which we integrate to be topologically trivial. It's not possible with this spacetime to choose a spacelike slice smoothly with time, because of the handle. (maybe later I can sketch a diagram of what I mean).\n\nThis corresponds to the intuitive feeling that the past mouth of the time machine \"creates\" energy and the future one \"destroys\" it.\n\nIf the domain is not trivial, it's hopeless to try and apply Stokes' theorem to turn the local conservation (div current = 0) into a global conservation, since there is no decent boundary to speak of. \"How much energy there is now in total\" does not make sense as a question because the answer depends on the choice of slice which is completely arbitrary. There are even choices for the slice which are self-intersecting!\n\n**EDIT**: [here](_URL_0_)'s that diagram. Sorry, neither an artist nor a calligrapher here. The four diagrams depicted are:\n\n* the shape of the spacetime (in 2d). This is not the simplest time machine one can imagine mathematically, it's just the easiest for me to draw right now. It's essentially a \"portal\" opening at the right edge of spacetime over two time intervals, the future being connected to the past. The metric is Minkowski and the light cones are normal.\n* A closed timelike curve (possible worldline for a time traveler). This proves our spacetime allows time travel. Since it's timelike it always stays inside the lightcones (never faster than light); nevertheless it reaches back to its starting event to form a closed loop precisely because the structure of our spacetime allows it.\n* Two pathological attempts to spacelike slices. \n\nA spacelike slice is a hypersurface (in this 2d case, 2-1=1 so it's a 1d curve) is what is mathematically understood as an \"instant in time\", or a set of events that can reasonably be called \"simultaneous\". It always has to go faster than light, so always outside the light cones. We define the total amount of something at a certain time by choosing one of these slices and integrating the density of that something over the slice. That something is **globally conserved** if this amount does not depend on the choice of slice. If spacetime is very nice topologically, something being **locally conserved** (in a very small region, the increase in that thing in the region being equal to what comes in minus what comes out) implies that is also **globally conserved**.\n\nThis implication fails miserably in our example, because the relevant piece of mathematics (Stokes' theorem) cannot be applied if the slices are unable to clearly cut spacetime in a \"before\" and \"after\". You can easily see from the \"topological\" diagrams on the right that the slices fail to do so."
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1e64wn | Do we naturally understand where hunger comes from, or do we learn to associate it with need for food? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1e64wn/do_we_naturally_understand_where_hunger_comes/ | {
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"There is certainly some degree of instinctual knowledge of what hunger is and how to alleviate it, since babies don't have to be subjected to any form of training in order to latch onto a nipple when hungry. That said, knowing exactly what is going through the brain of a newborn and how it translates (or even if it does) into adult thought is currently impossible, so exactly what point instinct ends and learning begins at is hard to say."
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3loc8t | sites like facebook and google have said their servers "can never be down." how can reddit constantly afford to? | From a business perspective, are Facebook and Google just wrong? Or is Reddit admin just lazy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3loc8t/eli5_sites_like_facebook_and_google_have_said/ | {
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"There is a 3d tour of the Google data center. Look through it. A lot of that has to go down to take down google. I also believe they have multiple data centers? I would have to double check that. Reddit I bet runs on far less infrastructure so they probably don't have the capability to assure 100% up time. "
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jiqxi | significant figures | Like how many significant figures does a number have if it has a decimal at the end, but no digits after it (5.) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jiqxi/eli5_significant_figures/ | {
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"That number is written improperly. If it were 5.0, it would have two significant digits. If it were 5, it would have one. \n\nSignificant figures are a way to show how accurate your measuring equipment is. \n\nFor example:\n\nSay I want to measure my pencil. I take out my ruler and measure it, and the tip of my pencil is somewhere between the mark for 6 inches, and the mark for 6 1/4 inches. \n\nI don't know exactly what length it is, so I put 6. That's one significant digit. With that ruler, I can tell you for certain that the pencil is at least six inches.\n\nNow say I come back with a measuring tape, and measure the pencil again. The measuring tape has more marks, dividing the inches up into smaller units, like 1/8 and 1/12. \n\nSo I measure my pencil again and the tip is right on the mark for 6 1/8 inch. Well, since we're doing science, we'll change that to a decimal and get 6.125. That's 4 significant digits, because we know that measuring tape is accurate to that point. \n\nThe reason this is important, is that sometimes you'll have to do math with these measurements, and you need to know how accurate your results are. We know that the 6 we had earlier isn't very accurate, and that it's going to affect the results of any math we do, so that whatever answers we get can't possibly be any more accurate than our least accurate measurement.\n I hope that makes sense.",
"You use the decimal at the end by no digits after it only if the decimal is preceded by a 0 (for example 50. makes sense but 5. doesn't)\n\nThe decimal implies that the 0 is also a significant digit, so 50 has 1 significant digit, but 50. has 2. 50.0 would have 3.",
"That number is written improperly. If it were 5.0, it would have two significant digits. If it were 5, it would have one. \n\nSignificant figures are a way to show how accurate your measuring equipment is. \n\nFor example:\n\nSay I want to measure my pencil. I take out my ruler and measure it, and the tip of my pencil is somewhere between the mark for 6 inches, and the mark for 6 1/4 inches. \n\nI don't know exactly what length it is, so I put 6. That's one significant digit. With that ruler, I can tell you for certain that the pencil is at least six inches.\n\nNow say I come back with a measuring tape, and measure the pencil again. The measuring tape has more marks, dividing the inches up into smaller units, like 1/8 and 1/12. \n\nSo I measure my pencil again and the tip is right on the mark for 6 1/8 inch. Well, since we're doing science, we'll change that to a decimal and get 6.125. That's 4 significant digits, because we know that measuring tape is accurate to that point. \n\nThe reason this is important, is that sometimes you'll have to do math with these measurements, and you need to know how accurate your results are. We know that the 6 we had earlier isn't very accurate, and that it's going to affect the results of any math we do, so that whatever answers we get can't possibly be any more accurate than our least accurate measurement.\n I hope that makes sense.",
"You use the decimal at the end by no digits after it only if the decimal is preceded by a 0 (for example 50. makes sense but 5. doesn't)\n\nThe decimal implies that the 0 is also a significant digit, so 50 has 1 significant digit, but 50. has 2. 50.0 would have 3."
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5hagoc | What Exactly is the Purpose of Green's Theorem? | So I am reviewing for my Calc III exam, and am still baffled as to the intent of this formula. Our applications in the class use it to find two-dimensional areas in three-dimensional space when considering various bounds. But what does it really mean? How does it work? What is its technical purpose? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5hagoc/what_exactly_is_the_purpose_of_greens_theorem/ | {
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"It lets you write a surface integral as a line integral, which can be easier to evaluate. Consider its 1-dimensional analog: The Fundamental Theorem of Calculus. \n\nIf we have an integral on an interval [A,B], then the boundary of the interval is just the two endpoints A and B. If we have a function F(x) that takes values on A and B, then we can think of the \"0-dimensional integral of F(x) on A and B\" to be just F(B)-F(A). Instead of looking at the area of F(x) under the 0-dimensional points A and B, we just sum up the values that the function takes on these points, and the minus sign acts like an orientation. We might even be loose and abuse notation by writing it [as an integral](_URL_4_). We then have the 1-dimensional integral which is the limit of Riemann sums of a function. (As seen in this special case [here](_URL_5_) with the expression for picking the rightmost point.) These can be pretty hard to evaluate, but the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus says that if f(x)=dF/dx, then we can evaluate the integral of f(x) across the integral [A,B] in terms of the 0-dimensional integral of F(x) along the boundary of [A,B], which is just A and B. [See this formula](_URL_2_). The integral on the left can be hard to compute, but the integral on the right is a dimension lower and is therefore easier to compute. So the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus takes the 1D integral on an interval of a function that can be expressed as a derivative and says it is equal to a 0-D integral on the boundary of the interval of the function it's a derivative of.\n\nThe same thing happens with Green's Theorem, just a dimension up. If you have a 2D integral of a function that can be expressed in a particular way as the derivatives of some other function, then it will be equal to the 1D integral of this function along the boundary. The 2D integral could be hard to do, but the 1D line integral will be easier.\n\nBoth the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus and Green's Theorem (and the Divergence Theorem) are special cases of a much more general theorem called [Stoke's Theorem](_URL_3_), which says that any integral of a derivative object in any dimension on any shape that has a boundary can be in terms of an integral on that boundary. The moral is that for nice functions, integrals over objects and the same as integrals along the boundary.\n\nThis more general idea has applications everywhere in physics. For instance, if you have a charged object, then you can compute its total charge by integrating it's charge density function over the entire object. But if we invoke Stoke's Theorem, we can turn this 3D integral into a 2D integral on the surface, and this will be the integral of the electric flux leaving the object. So we get an important explicit relationship between an electric field and the charge density generating it. In fact, all of [Maxwell's Equations](_URL_1_) can be seen as statements of Stoke's Theorem applied to different objects.\n\nIt is also related to integrals of functions on complex variables. In particular, if f(z) is a differentiable function on the complex plane, then Green's Theorem can be used to prove that the integral of f(z) along any closed curve (where f(z) is differentiable everywhere inside the curve) is always zero. This is [Cauchy's Theorem](_URL_0_)."
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell's_equations",
"https://latex.codecogs.com/gif.latex?%5Cdpi%7B100%7D%20%5CLARGE%20%5Cint_A%5EBF%27%28x%29dx%20%3D%20%5Cint_%7Bk%3DA%2CB%7DF%28k%29",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stokes%27_theorem",
... | |
11akqa | If I place two mirrors facing one another, and it creates the endless tunnel illusion, why does it fade away? Example in post | _URL_0_
Can't explain it that well, sorry. Why does the circle of LEDs fade so quickly down the "tunnel"? Does it have to do with size of mirror? Amount of light?
| askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/11akqa/if_i_place_two_mirrors_facing_one_another_and_it/ | {
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"Because a one-way mirror only reflects, say, 50% of the light and transmits the other 50% through. Which means each time you have a reflection, it's 50% weaker than the incoming light. This gives you a decay that can be written as a geometric series (50%, then 50%*50%, then (50%)^3 etc). You'll find this gets you close to 0 very quickly, which is the fading you see.",
"When light hits a mirror, much of it is reflected, but some of it is absorbed. With each repeated reflections, additional light is absorbed, till the amount of light left is too dim to see. You can see this process at play in your example by noticing that the lights get progressively dimmer with each reflection.",
"Other posters here have pointed out (correctly) that the light is absorbed by the mirror. This is true, but in some cases light can actually be transmitted as well. This is usually an almost negligible fraction, but it's enough to let us do very interesting things... Like building lasers!\n\nA laser cavity is essentially two highly reflective surfaces, filled with a substance that produces optical gain (that is, light in = > more light out. It's a pretty complicated process, but I can detail it if you're interested). The light is (mostly) reflected from each of the mirrors, and as it travels through the gain medium, it grows in intensity. The light transmitted through the mirror may only be a small amount per reflection, but when the light incident on the mirror is sufficiently intense, then the transmitted light becomes *very* bright, along with a few other neat properties that make lasers useful.\n\nLASERS, MAN."
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3wfo4i | Was it possible to falsely pass oneself off as nobility in medieval Europe? If so, what would it take? | I mean, could you find some recently-deceased baronet's signet ring, forge a letter, and claim that he married you just before he died or something? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3wfo4i/was_it_possible_to_falsely_pass_oneself_off_as/ | {
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"I know that Christopher Columbus put a great deal of effort into making himself look and sound aristocratic. When he traveled to Spain he was received in the court of Ferdinand and Isabel as someone who was clearly important, despite the fact that he was not. I think it would be possible, assuming one had the financial means, to travel to a different part of Europe and pass as a member of the elite class."
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88rtrp | how can people drive from one point to another point without remembering every detail of it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/88rtrp/eli5_how_can_people_drive_from_one_point_to/ | {
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"Highway hypnosis! Basically it's just muscle memory when you are driving and your brain zones out while your body does the normal reflexes of driving! You only remember every detail if things out of the ordinary happen then it sticks in your memory! ",
"Same places? I only remember what's different than the routine. But I also forget where I'm going too . Haha",
"People create memories better when there's some emotional association with it, so when you're driving on a plain highway often your brain doesn't pick out anything special to remember so it just forgets it. ",
"You have a short term and a long term memory. Unless you run into something driving usually has nothing that gets put into long-term memory. Same with walking somewhere. Your brain knows you don't need any of that info long-term. \n\nIt's like a computer with RAM and a Hard Drive; with your brain deciding when to Save or not just before the info gets dumped out of the RAM memory cue.",
"Your brain has two kinds of memory, short-term and long-term. Only the interesting short-term memories make it to long term. \n\nIf you are doing something boring and routine, you can be fully aware of it in the moment, but it just isn't notable enough to remember. \n\nNote that you are **not** on autopilot or zoned out. You are completely aware of your surroundings and would respond to unusual stimuli (and likely remember it). You simply don't remember those boring parts.",
"Drunk driving? Just kidding. TIL about highway hypnosis though. ",
"A technical term for it is \"script processing\". It's essentially the same thing as a computer running a program except it's your brain doing something.\n\nIt's only going to happen for drives you've done many times already, because your brain needs to memorize it before it can do it without conscious input. "
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2mfy1b | During the Age of Exploration how did mariners find out if their ships would be able to go up new rivers without sonar or modern devices to tell the rivers depth? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2mfy1b/during_the_age_of_exploration_how_did_mariners/ | {
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"The simple answer is a sounding line with a weight at the end. The weight takes it straight to the bottom, note how much rope went down and that's depth. If you want to see if a bay or river is navigable, send a boat out and measure with a sounding line to see if the area to see if the ship can pass. "
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3z1km6 | How did mothers living in an era before surgery is a common procedure cope with vaginal tear after giving birth? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3z1km6/how_did_mothers_living_in_an_era_before_surgery/ | {
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"Obstetric fistula and other genital tearing from childbirth are discussed in basically one medieval medical text, a section of the 12th-century *Trotula* known as *De curis mulierum* or *On the Treatments of Women*. The text, which scholar Monica Green argues is based on the teachings of an actual female physician called Trota of Salerno (although other scholars like Helen Jewell have countered sounds more pseudonymous), comments on tearing in a couple of places:\n\n > **On Dangerous Things Happening to Women Giving Birth**\n\n > For there are some women in whome the vagina and the anus become one opening and the same patheway...We give aid to such women by repositioning [the womb]. We put on the womb warm wine in which butter has been boiled, and diligently we foment it until the womb has been rendered soft, and then we replace it. Afterward we sew the rupture between the anus and the vagina in three or four places with a silk thread. Then let us smear it with liquid pitch. This makes the womb withdraw because of its stench. And we hear the rupture with a powder...and the woman should be place din bed so that her feet are higher.\n\nAnd then, for subsequent births, so it doesn't happen again:\n\n > Let a cloth be prepraed in the shape of an oblong ball and place it in the anus, so that in each effort of pushing out the child, it is to be pressed into the anus firmly so there not be a continuity of this kind.\n\nLater, in a section with a discomforting label:\n\n > **On Rupture of the Genitals After Birth**\n\n > Take root of comfrey, dry it and then pulverize it well, and put it with very fine powder of cumin and cinnamon in the vagina, and the rupture will be solidified.\n\nI'm not entirely sure what *ruptura* there is referring to that sprinkling spices and powder on it would help in a way that, as described above, stitches wouldn't, but there you go.\n\nNow, as I mentioned above, *Trotula* is a unique medieval text and comes out of a very specific and educated context, the medical community of Salerno in southern Italy at a time when Arabic medicine is beginning to have an impact in Latin Europe. It's tough to say how much the prescriptions here either reflect contemporary *practice*, or how effective they proved. Nevertheless, it seems apparent that the focus was on stopping the bleeding, preventing it from restarting (I did not quote a lengthy paragraph on how the woman must rest for a week, no seriously, she needs to stay in bed, no, I *mean it*, she shouldn't get up, and also no coughing)--and, in a wonderful show of optimism for the future, preventing tearing from happening the second time around.\n\n13th century author Gilbertus Anglicus does basically repeat much of the *Trotula* in his *Compendium of Medicine*, including some of the remarks on perineal tearing. He does add the detail that the thread used for stitching should be red."
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1a0u7u | What was there to do in colonial cities recreationally in the 1700s? | Lets say John Q. Publick and his wife have a little spending money and decide to travel into town for a weekend. Other than taking in a stage play, what was there to do for a couple? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1a0u7u/what_was_there_to_do_in_colonial_cities/ | {
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"Somewhat tangential to your question as that's more of a cultural history question, but I read In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes by David Waldstreicher in an American Colonial History class. It's a study analyzing the relationship of independence celebrations and festivals to forming an American 'identity' after the revolution. I really liked it and I recommend it if you're interested in learning about colonial partying.",
"Play cricket, watch a public execution, go to a cock fight, have a few drinks in one of the many public inns, various markets, various regional and seasonal fairs, the theatre, go for a walk, go to a public lecture on various subjects, go to a masked ball etc.\n\nYou'll find that the activities were much less varied than they are today because the idea of 'recreation' and actually having the free time to do things recreationally is a 19th century invention. For the vast majority of people in Colonial times, any spare time was spent doing mundane things with their family, church or drinking yourself stupid in the many, many pubs there were available. Furthermore the idea of travelling to visit different cities wasn't viable either, until well into the latter part of the 19th century unless you were a merchant or rich. In which case you'd probably be visiting balls, large dinner parties at other wealthy people's houses etc rather than slumming around by the docks of New York/Boston or hanging around in central Philadelphia.\n\nThe vast majority of non rich people living in the towns of the period would have based their recreation around the pub, family and church, those poorer people who lived out on the frontier probably only visited the town 2/3 times a year to deliver produce and buy goods they could only acquire in the towns."
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87tqot | Are there elements of paganism that got absorbed into or merged with Christianity? | I am specifically interested in Greek and Roman paganism: the gods and the customs and festivals honoring or surrounding them. Even though people weren't necessarily outright worshipping them during the Middle Ages, could their presence still be felt in Christianity at all? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/87tqot/are_there_elements_of_paganism_that_got_absorbed/ | {
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"This is quite frankly a ridiculously broad topic. Are there any specific areas that you're interested in? \n\nThe absorption of indigenous religious traditions into Christianity was after all not a uniform practice and the experiences of the Mexica were quite different from the experiences of the Norse who were in turn different from the neo-Platonists and so on.",
"you might want to check out some of the existing material from the wiki\n\n_URL_0_\n\nunder \n > Non-Abrahamic Influences on Christianity\n"
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iqzz5 | How did DNA first form? | Also, was DNA the first form of genetic coding or was there something before DNA which handled genetic coding? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/iqzz5/how_did_dna_first_form/ | {
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"Google the RNA world hypothesis. With our increasing understanding of ribozymes (RNA enzymes) it is believed that early life used RNA for genetic information as well as catalyzing most if not all reactions. It is possible, if not likely, that the earliest form of \"life\" was a simple ribozyme capable of replicating itself.\n\nThe theory follows that these self replicating ribozymes eventually created a cell (perhaps by being trapped in an \"artificial\" lipid layer?) and somehow eventually started making proteins (this is supported by the ribosome being mostly composed of RNA and all of the main reactions being catalyzed by the RNA components). Also, at some point DNA was traded for RNA due to long term stability. This is also exemplified by RNA still being used for protein synthesis (why don't we just make proteins directly from DNA?) as well as the continued importance of ribozymes in many of the most basic of functions including the ribosome and the spliceosome.",
"RNA was most likely used to create catalytic proteins before DNA took this role. Recently, some scientists were awarded with a Nobel prize for discovering the structure of the ribosome, which, as it turns out, is made almost completely of RNA with only a few proteins sprinkled around the outside.\n\nArs Technica wrote [a neat article discussing this](_URL_0_). Skip down to the section below the video if you want to read about the origin of life.",
"The [Miller-Urey experiment](_URL_0_) was performed by using water, ammonia, hydrogen, methane, and a bit of electricity - things that were in the earth's atmosphere before life formed (pre-biotic). The experiment found that over a week's time, some amino acids had formed, as well as sugars and liquids. Under the \"other experiments\" heading, the first one talks about how a biochemist, being inspired by that first experiment, was able to discover that RNA and DNA nucleobases could be obtained through more pre-biotic tests.",
"I don't have a good understanding of all of this but I found this [experiment](_URL_0_) to be amazing.",
"My favorite video on the subject of abiogenesis: \n_URL_0_"
]
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162z0m | We model the earth as having an infinite amount of charge for grounding purposes, but what would the actual limit be? How big a laundry machine would it take before you couldn't effectively use the earth as a ground? (x-post /r/AskScience) | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/162z0m/we_model_the_earth_as_having_an_infinite_amount/ | {
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"You couldn't. Whatever charge you put onto the laundry machine, the opposite charge has to go somewhere. In this case, it floods to the ground. The ground always has as much opposite charge as the total sum of all charged objects on the earth (assuming it has zero net charge to begin with, which is probably nearly accurate... of course the sum of all charged objects on the Earth is probably also very nearly zero).\n\nIf you are asking at what point you could no longer separate that charge, well, that's a bit more tricky. You can put a lot of charge on the Earth, the only limit I know of is that the Earth only has so many electrons, so there is a maximum amount of positive charge it can physically have (it would take absolutely massive amounts to get to that point) and vice versa a given system can only give the Earth so much negative charge. Roughly speaking, you would need an object the mass of the Earth, or one that can hold several magnitudes more charge than the Earth per unit mass and proportionately less massive (but again the Earth will make a less effective ground the more charged it becomes). But you'd always be able to ground that charge back into the Earth.",
"If you had some ideal voltage source that could supply a current to the Earth forever until it reached that voltage (and putting the negative charge somewhere not on the Earth)... the excess charge would build up on the surface, because of the shell theorem. This would cause everything on the surface to be charged, and to repel every other object. Everyone's hair stands on end, bits of paper start levitating, and there would be frequent lightning strikes until the atmosphere was also brought to that level. At higher voltages the ground would break apart and the repulsion would throw the Earth's outmost layer into space piece by piece. \n\nSo, before you would run out of charge, the Earth's surface effectively blows up because gravity isn't strong enough to prevent the charged objects from flying off into space from the voltage difference. ",
"The biggest issue is [earth potential rise](_URL_0_). That can shock nearby animals, require electronics to add isolation that normally wouldn't be needed, and cause galvanic corrosion of underground metal pipes. So regulations would limit the amount of current you could pull.\n\nIf you didn't worry about your neighbors and were only concerned about the washing machine though, good grounding systems are > 2Ω, so that limits the possible current. However, that current limit increases with voltage, (V = I · R) so get a high-voltage washing machine. An average lightning strike transfers ~100,000,000 volts and ~10,000 amps through the surface of the ground."
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244b85 | Did the Wright brothers and other early aviators understand the physics of flight? | I think without understanding Bernoulli's principle, wing design, etc. one could still manage to "discover" flight by experimentation. E.g. holding your hand out when traveling at speed you feel the effects of lift change as you change the angle of attack wind = > your hand. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/244b85/did_the_wright_brothers_and_other_early_aviators/ | {
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"The Wright brothers were clever fellows. Rather than starting with building a powered aircraft right away, they creeped up to the problem by building gliders first. When they were disappointed with their first gilders they [built](_URL_0_) their own wind tunnel to test different wing designs. After many tests and iterations they finally advanced to the Wright Flyer which flew under power in 1903. \n\nThe Wright Brothers were systemic in their design of aircraft. They kept detailed notes of their experiments for later use and improvement. Just bicycle mechanics they were not. ",
"The Wright Brothers studied the physics of flight extensively, and it can be argue that they understood it better than anyone alive at the time, leading to their eventual success. In fact, [they received 16 nominations for the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics. Here is an article exploring why they did not receive it.](_URL_0_)",
"It depends a bit on what you call 'physics of flight'. The Wright brothers were\nvery clever, systematic experimentators, as Asmalfly pointed out.\nThey understood that an engined aircraft is just a glider with a propellor and an\nengine, so they concentrated on glider design first. They also solved the question\nof controlling the plane with gliders. Many constructors didn't think of the question of how to steer the airplane, once it is in the air. This often led to short flights ending in a very hard landing.\nThey understood that a propellor is\njust a wing that rotates. They also managed managed to design their own\nengine, which was better than anything they could buy.\n\nAs for the physical question, why wings generate lift, the Wright brothers didn't\ncontribute to this question to the best of my knowledge. The flow pattern of the air along the wing possesses a property that is called 'circulation'. The lift (force that\nstands in 90 degrees to the air flow) is caused by the circulation. The mathematical theory of circulation and lift was developed by [Martin Kutta](_URL_2_) and [Nikolaj Zhukowski](_URL_0_). \n\nMartin Kutta formulated a principle called [Kutta condition](_URL_3_), which states that\nthe flow around a wing has exactly the amount of circulation that is needed \nto make the part of the flow that goes over the wing and the part of \nthe flow that goes belong the wing meet at the same speed at the end of the wing.\nIn order for this to happen, the end of the wing has to be sharp.\n\nThe question why the flow around a wing assumes exactly this amount\nof circulation was solved by [Ludwig Prandtl](_URL_1_). \nHe showed that little turbulences in the boundary layer\n(a small layer of air around the wing that stays glued to the wing due to friction) controls the circulation around the wing. Any flow pattern around the wing that does not fulfill the Kutta condition\nis corrected by little turbulences that fall out of the boundary layer. \n\nSo I would say that the main people who solved the question of physically\nunderstanding subsonic flight are Martin Kutta, Nikolaj Zhukowski and Ludwig Prandtl. \nThe Wright brothers were very smart, systematic experimentors, and they had a few\ngood insights, but I wouldn't say they physically understood flight. \n"
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aph8hn | How influential was Albert Einstein on the timeline of the creation of the atomic bomb? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/aph8hn/how_influential_was_albert_einstein_on_the/ | {
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"In very very brief: a lot less than most people think. No matter how you slice the question. \n\nI've [written at some length about this](_URL_0_). His physics (despite popular understanding) has essentially nothing to do with the feasibility or development of nuclear weapons; his letter to FDR did not really start the project and may have (some argued even at the time) slowed it down (by getting the government involved too early, when it was too speculative)."
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2epyq5 | what would happen to a bank if everyone who had an account there decided to withdraw their money all at the same day ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2epyq5/eli5_what_would_happen_to_a_bank_if_everyone_who/ | {
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"It's called a \"run\", and the bank would be closed by regulators for being inadequately capitalized. Note that this would happen *before* every depositor was able to withdraw their money.",
"Its called a run on the bank and depending on where the bank is different things can happen. In america all deposits are insured by the FDIC so they wouldn't have your money that day but you would within a few days. This is due to the fact that the bank does not carry that much cash on any given day. ",
"The Fed requires banks to hold \"reserves,\" as part of our fractional deserve banking system. In the past, runs have been allowed to happen unfettered. Recently, even the hint of a run will trigger government action: mergers to ensure confidence, shutting down banks, capping withdrawals. Runs will put a bank out of business immediately because they simply cannot store that many assets in liquid form.",
"Literally the Great Depression.",
"It would be like that scene from *It's A Wonderful Life*",
"A bank holiday would be declared since there isn't enough deposits to handle a run. This is the beauty of fractional reserve banking.",
"It's called a 'run on the bank' and basically, the bank has nowhere near enough liquid cash for everybody (because most of the money is electronic, and also a lot is invested/loaned, so they don't have it as liquid capital the vast majority of the time) so they have to quickly find a way to sort out the crisis.\n\nGenerally, they will either close the bank, set a limit to your withdrawls, and begin to borrow money to satisfy the customers.\n\nA bank generally only has to hold 10-20% of the money the actually own, since in day to day life, that amount is all that will be needed - the rest is simply a placeholder - your money has actually been invested or loaned.\n\nIt generally works well, since even if a millionaire wanted to withdraw all their life savings - the bank would have enough.\n\nThe only time it doesn't work is when everyone wants to cash out.\n\nIronically, the bank only fails because a run on the bank has already started. There is no reason for everyone to cash everything out, except the fact that everybody else is cashing all their stuff out.\n\nIf nobody tried to withdraw, the bank would be fine - however, if a run on the bank is in progress, you want to withdraw as much as you can because the bank is put in to a very precipitous position by it, even if there were 0 problems the day before.\n\nIt's kind of a weird quirk on the prisoner's dilemma.\n\nNobody has anything to gain by cashing out, unless everyone else is cashing out."
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9fzy8i | does other people see us like we see ourselves in the mirror or do they see us like a photo which taken by front camera of our phones (with mirror effect)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9fzy8i/eli5_does_other_people_see_us_like_we_see/ | {
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"Front camera. When we look at ourselves in the mirror we get a mirrored picture (of course) which is not how other people see us. If you take a photo and you find that you look different than when you take a look in the mirror then this is how other people see you.\n\nUsually, people find themselves to be more attractive when looking in the mirrior than a photo which results from the brain being used to the mirrored image we have from ourselves. The other people are used to the real you and findthis to be more attractive since they're used to it. Show them a mirrored picture and they will find it a little odd, even though you might like it better.",
"Neither. \n\nThe brain distorts what you see based on what you expect to see. A photo is closer to what you actually look like, but not what people actually see. The difference between photo-you and mirror-you is one example of how much the mind unconsciously alters reality. Everyone else also has an altered version of what you look like. If they like you (like, has a crush on you) then you will appear more beautiful to them. If they don't like you (like, the first time you met them you were doing something disgusting and they will never forget it), you will appear less beautiful to them.\n\nHence, \"beauty is in the eye of the beholder\"."
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51ak6u | When the Milky Way & Andromeda and their supermassive blackholes merge, how powerful will the gravitational waves it produces be? | Will they strong enough to affect neighbouring object by throwing their orbits off or cooking them or anything?
Is gravity so weak that even this event will just be a slightly bigger blip on the G Wave detectors? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/51ak6u/when_the_milky_way_andromeda_and_their/ | {
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"It depends on when you are observing the two in their orbits (are they close or far), what your distance is with respect to the two black holes, and what your orientation is with respect to the system. It's a bit ugly to derive this but I worked it out in the intro of my thesis for the exact reason that I would never have to do it again myself. If you assume two equal point masses in a circular orbit, you'll get that the gravitational wave strain (the fractional change of distance) is approximately given by [this formula](_URL_0_), where G is the gravitational constant, M is the mass of one of the black holes, c is the speed of light, R is the separation, and D is the distance you are from the system. You can write this in a bit of an easier form to handle in the second line, which says that given masses in units of 10^8 solar masses, distances of megaparsecs, and separations of milliparsecs, you'll get a strain of approximately 6x10^-16. \n\nThe black hole at the center of the Milky Way, [Sgr A*](_URL_15_) has a mass of 4x10^6 solar masses whereas Andromeda's [supermassive black hole](_URL_2_) is significantly more massive, around 10^8 solar masses. Since they are very different, I'll use the [chirp mass](_URL_5_) in the formula, which will equal roughly [1.4x10^7](_URL_13_) solar masses. For reference, the [Schwarzschild radii](_URL_14_) of the two black holes are [4x10^-7](_URL_1_) and [10^-5](_URL_12_) parsecs, so they can get to about a 0.01 mpc separation before they've merged. Lastly, let's pretend that we're measuring at a distance of 8.5 kpc, the distance the Earth is from the center of our galaxy. Note that by the time this occurs, the entire Solar System will be long gone, but I figured I'd provide numbers at our position anyway. Plugging in, we get a strain of about [1.4x10^-13](_URL_3_).\n\nSo what does that number mean? It means that distances will change by that fraction, so 1 meter will change by 200 femtometers, which is about [160 times the radius of a proton](_URL_11_). LIGO detected a signal that was around [10^-21](_URL_6_), which makes this strain incredibly large. However, LIGO detects gravitational waves in the Hz to kHz frequency band. The frequency of the gravitational wave in the approximations given above can be calculated by the use of [this formula](_URL_9_). So, plugging in, we get [about 40 microhertz](_URL_8_). WolframAlpha even nicely says that this is just outside the frequency range of [LISA](_URL_10_), which means that it will be unable to detect the merger. However, prior to merger when the frequency is a bit smaller, [pulsar timing arrays](_URL_4_) of current sensitivities should be able to detect the merger, mostly because that strain is actually quite enomorous for us. PTAs should also be able to see the product of the merger by detecting what's known as [gravitational wave memory](_URL_7_), in which there is a permanent deformation in spacetime after the merger from before. Current limits on the memory effect are much lower (so much improved) than the value above."
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32h7qb | Was there ever any effort to get native American nations to join the United States, and recognizing them as their own states? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/32h7qb/was_there_ever_any_effort_to_get_native_american/ | {
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"Idk the whole detail (ie later attempts and Seven Years War are murky) but I know this much about the thinking for an Indian state during the war of 1812: In the early 19th century the leader of the Shawnee, Tecumseh, formed a large confederation of nations to protect against the westward push of the US - and sought British help from neighbouring Canada. With this assistance they attempted to form a nation state, and he actively recruited tribes before and during the War of 1812, on the side of the British, with his friend and ally Isaac Brock. Tecumseh was an great warrior, good diplomat and embodied the noble savage and two held each other in very high regard. Tecumseh was seen as the only Indian who could ever unite the tribes under one banner but one the British could work with and allow them a buffer state against the ever expanding US. The two worked well together (see capture of Fort Detroit) and hopes in Canada of an Indian nation backed by Great Britain seemed not impossible, but likely, if British reinforcements from Europe could arrive soon enough. However, upon his death, and defeat of the joint AngloIndian alliance at the Thames, the confederacy fell through, most surrendering, and the confederacy ended soon after. Following the stalemate of the war of 1812 and the ensuing Treaty of Ghent, the British made no real effort to arm the Native Americans and, as the Great Lakes now were DMZs, the British did not want to antagonise their growing, and potentially a strong ally, neighbour. The Native Americans were, in effect, left to their demise and pushed again and again west by the US, until totally subdued.\n\nThis is just a short statement for more detailed research for uni that I did: any references/citations I'll dig them out\n\n***edit: realised I didn't really answer the question. Some attempts by other Indian tribes to join the US, (ie Harrison when he was governor of Indiana) were discouraged by Tecumseh and such plans put on hold. Give me 12 hrs and another edit will go more in depth on this. Sorry OP, it's 01:30 where I live, should be in my bed :)",
"**Comment synopsis:** first part is about the Cherokee and the Trail of Tears, concerning indigenous values of land. Second part is about Andrew Jackson and his land grabs, concerning white American policy in the early nineteenth century.\n\nI can think of one example where this outcome could have been a possibility, but ultimately wasn't used. The removal of the Cherokee people from Georgia in the late 1830s came as a result of white Americans wanting their land for various reasons, including agriculture and gold mining. \n\nThere had been interest voiced among the Cherokee for assimilation with the white population, *for the sole purpose of maintaining residence on their ancestral lands*. This is ~~often~~ always misunderstood by colonial governments. The colonisers come from a European background where land is an asset, and can be bought, sold, and traded. That interpretation of land doesn't gel with that of indigenous peoples from outside that capitalist background. The Maori, the Native Americans, First Nations - all of these have connections with the land that are beyond value. The land is where their people have been born, have lived, and have died. \n\nSo when the Cherokee made an effort to keep their land, they were instead given land beyond the Mississippi. Now, this could have been a larger amount of land, and it may even have had resources that were more valuable in later periods. But it wasn't *their* land. They had no connection to it. In fact, there was most likely another nation that did have a spiritual link to it.\n\nIn this example, the answer is no: they never had that intention. But they could have done it with the Cherokee in Georgia, except that would have obstructed access to the natural resources of the area as the Cherokee would have only had a state in that region. And if the intention had been to move the Cherokee and then create new states over the Mississippi, then the same state of affairs could have occurred with another nation, or with new resources at a later date, or it just wouldn't have worked because it wasn't Cherokee land. \n\n**EDIT**: Adding in some more information about land grabs which is coming direct from a text I have here and not just memory. Yay!\n\nThe worst perpetrator of the land grabs was most likely Andrew Jackson. While quelling American Indian rebellions in the early nineteenth century Jackson promised those who assisted him rewards of land. He also promised that \"...if either party, cherokees, friendly creeks, or whites, takes property of the Red Sticks, the property belongs to those who take it.\" The Red Sticks were a faction of the Creek Nation who opposed assimilation with white American expansion, preferring to hold onto their land and culture. So we immediately see here an opposition to (a) leaving the land, and (b) abandoning native society and its practices. \n\nBut wait, I hear you say, what about the Cherokee and the friendly Creeks who were promised land? Surely that amounts to a promise of land that could eventually become a state for those indigenous Nations members who were loyal to America! Well, yes... in a way. Except for a few factors, including slaves, Jackson, treaties, Jackson, settlers, and Jackson.\n\nJackson was in charge of making a treaty after the war in 1814 against the Creek Nation, which was won by friendly Cherokee who fought for him. While making the treaty, he managed to come out the other side with \"half the land of the Creek nation\" for America. His response to protests made by Creeks who had fought with him? \"The United States would have been justified by the Great Spirit had they taken all the lands of the nation [...] the great body of the Creek chiefs and warriors did not respect the power of the United States\". This was given in response to Creek warriors who had helped Jackson in return for keeping their lands. It essentially set a standard of no promises could be kept.\n\nSlavery was also still in play at this point, and when slaves escaped, they were often offered sanctuary in native villages and settlements. This was used as an excuse by Jackson(who commanded a sizable number of men), to raid into Florida(then a Spanish possession), as the Seminole were harbouring slaves. Jackson had continued making treaties with Indians, moving south as he did, and gradually coming up against Florida. Which he then took by the same methods. \n\nIn the words of Jackson, the treaties worked thus: \"...we addressed ourselves feelingly to the predominant and governing passion of all Indian tribes, i.e., their avarice or fear.\" Jackson and those under him encouraged settlers to move onto Indian land, and then when the Indians raised protest, they were told nothing could be done. This led to Indians signing new treaties to cede that land, and moving further away to maintain their autonomy. Then the process repeated. The result was a crawling mass of settlers that gradually inched their way through indigenous nations lands, pushing them further west. \n\nI realise this doesn't fully answer your question about the efforts to make a state, but it does show the mindset of the early white American settlers. Indians weren't respected: they were seen as people easily tricked. They were manipulated, and coerced, into moving. The best chance for Native Americans came early on, when Jefferson was Secretary of State. He said that \"where Indians lived within state boundaries they should not be interfered with, and that the government should remove white settlers who tried to encroach on them.\" So what happened? The number of white settlers increased to a point where this wasn't viable anymore. Land was needed, and white settlers needs came before those of the indigenous peoples.",
"I wish I could give a better overview on this subject. You could take a law approach and to get a feel for this type of question and figure out which time periods in U.S. History this idea would actually be viable.\n\nFor example take the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution as a data point. At this point in history the framers of the constitution did view the Indians as a \"Nation\" in they wanted to give congress sole power to regulate trade, and treaties with these \"Nations\". Perhaps at this time U.S. didn't feel a need to abbreviate and limit Indian ownership of land, and viewed them as equals.\n\nCertainly by the Marshal trilogy (1832?) (Johnson v. M'Intosh, Cherokee V. Georgia, and Worcester V. Georgia), Indian Nation status was very limited (domestic dependent nations, or a Nation within a Nation, basically very limited nation status), Indian title to land was not recognized, and they were only allowed tenancy. I believe at this point in history any serious discussion about having Indians joining the United State and having the rights of other States would be muted.\n\nOf course this type of discussion was held over Oklahoma Territory. That is the government wanted to put all Indians into that territory, and then eventually have an Indian state, but this was definitely on the U.S. Government terms and would have been a big conglomerate of various Indian tribes. \n\nIf you want an interesting data point where the Government gave special treatment to Indian land ownership and almost viewed Indians as equals you should look up the Osage Tribe. They were one the last tribes to be allotted ( this is the biggest Indian land grab in U.S. History e.g. Dawes Act ). It appears Congress has reservations allotting this tribe because they had indeed bought their land from the U.S. Government. Don't worry the government eventually relented and alloted this tribe, but their allotment act (Osage Allotment Act in 1906) is very different from any other allotment.\n\nI guess I have to say this as well to tie up loose ends. I believe the nail in the coffin for Indian Nation status would be the Lone Wolf V. Hitchcock case in 1903. Basically this case decided that Indians were wards of the state, and could no longer make their own decisions, that is congress knew what is best for Indians and their interests. \n\nAs for reference, you can look up these Indian cases. You can refer to the commerce clause in the U.S. Constitution, and you can refer to some basic of history of the State of Oklahoma. There is really nothing special about this stuff.",
"Around the area that's now Tallahassee, a man named [William Augustus Bowles](_URL_1_) attempted to create a nation called \"[The State of Muscogee](_URL_5_)\" which was going to be a pan-tribal political entity. Bowles had two wives; one was Muskogee Creek, the other, Cherokee. \n\nUnfortunately, Bowles himself was a Loyalist in the Revolutionary War - his attempts to establish the state were based on his ongoing *Firefly*-style war against the Spanish... and the Americans. Since he'd served in the Royal Navy (and, subsequently, as a trader/entertainer in Bahamas... and a privateer for the Crown), he tried to get [recognition from Britain](_URL_6_), and styled himself as an ambassador as well as \"director general\" of the new nation. He got enough support to become [a real headache to the Spanish](_URL_2_) for a while. \n\nHe even, according to Robert Owens' *Red Dreams, White Nightmares: Pan-Indian Alliances in the Anglo-American Mind, 1763–1815* - and pertinent to OP's question - reached out to the United States for some kind of recognition (no doubt hoping for military aid against the Spanish). But they weren't inclined to kindness toward him. For one thing, he'd been welcoming runaway slaves. \n\nUltimately, he was captured by the Spanish and [died in a Havana prison](_URL_3_). He was actually captured twice - once in an incident that ended with him taking over the Spanish ship he was being transported on and sailing home in it, but then a second time due to his... well, personal obnoxiousness. \n\nHe'd ticked off a group of traders and Creek dignitaries at a meeting by claiming himself as the rightful king of all present. A couple of his longstanding rivals set a trap and handed him over to Spanish officials. \n\nHis sons reportedly went on to be noted as leaders \"[among the Creeks and Cherokees](_URL_4_)\" during the Trail of Tears. \n\n(Probably worth mentioning that those removal policies were instituted by Andrew Jackson who, during raids in Pensacola, had to at least have [heard of Bowles](_URL_0_), as well as, later on, being personally involved in annexing Florida for the United States... something Bowles' little pan-Native pirate nation would have obstructed, had it been allowed to survive.)\n"
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"https://www.floridamemory.com/blog/2012/07/27/british-intrigue-and-the-events-at-prospect-bluff/#more-1782",
"http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/biography-of-general-william-augustus-bowles.htm",
"http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1992-06-14/news/9206130412_1_panton-creek-bowle... | ||
mjz9g | Sea-side stones with holes - what is the process that made them? | Around sea-shores, and sometimes on river-beds, you can find hard-type stones with circular holes. Some example here: _URL_0_ What is the process that creates them ? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/mjz9g/seaside_stones_with_holes_what_is_the_process/ | {
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"Those are caused by a variety of sea animals. Basically, bivalve molluscs. Though I only know that for where I live - there may be other animals that can do that in other places in the world.",
"Those are caused by a variety of sea animals. Basically, bivalve molluscs. Though I only know that for where I live - there may be other animals that can do that in other places in the world."
]
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"http://imgur.com/a/9q2Qy/"
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[],
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3pr6he | Atlantis and some latest 'research' special on TV | So in the recent past some channel had a special on Atlantis. I don't recall if it was the History Channel or Discovery (my guess is the History channel *cough*aliens*cough*) and my mother is damn well convinced now that Atlantis was a real place.
Did anyone watch this? I don't have the time to actually sit through the damn thing with my work schedule and she seems dead-set on telling me that Plato based his stories off an actual city that was destroyed by some volcano. And, despite me telling her he literally created the city as allegory for his views on why the republic was the best government and that saying he 'based' it off of an island city that was destroyed by a natural disaster is like saying Nostradomus predicted that the sun would rise a few more times, she seems to be 100% convinced in this stuff.
Call me a skeptic but the stuff she was saying about it made literally no sense. According to her, the piece showed that people who lived there were taller, had more advanced technology than Greece (Plato set his Atlantis 9000 years before his time IIRC so that'd be pretty damn revolutionary for a city to have better construction than a society that existed in the same place 9000 years later) and that the whole island was destroyed when the volcano underneath of it erupted (also convenient since we seem to have a lot of proof Pompei existed, where's this evidence?)
Yes, I'm starting off on the side of logic and I am sticking to the fact that a whole city cannot evade human detection in this day and age. BUT, if there is in fact some credibility to this, what is it? Also is any of this science peer-reviewed? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3pr6he/atlantis_and_some_latest_research_special_on_tv/ | {
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"I haven't seen that special, so I can't rebut anything particular in it. I also really don't have time to look it up and watch it. If anyone can find a summary, I'd be happy to provide rebuttals point-by-point.\n\nA long time ago, someone asked a similar question about Atlantis, and I did a little extra research to respond to their questions. [Here is the link to that thread](_URL_0_). You may find some useful info there.\n\nSome high points:\n\n* Plato is not a historian in this instance. It was universally acknowledged by the ancients that he was creating a hypothetical situation.\n\n* the scholars that write about this stuff almost never provide sources for their claims, or take things wildly out of context. Particular names I've run across that are panned for this are Frank Joseph and Rand Flem-Ath.\n\n* Pretty much any argument for some ancient uber-civilization has an already accepted explanation.\n\nAs I said, if someone can find a summary of claims made by the special, I can do a rebuttal. I'd especially like to see what they are using as evidence for taller people (which I've never heard of, and definitely doesn't exist) and more advanced technology. Do they have anything besides Plato's description of the city?"
]
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2u4d4u/is_there_a_historical_basis_for_an_atlantislike/"
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68sk1k | how were ancient people able to survive out on the glaciers between modern-day russia and america when they were migrating to america? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/68sk1k/eli5_how_were_ancient_people_able_to_survive_out/ | {
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"the connection wasn't always and completely ice and glaciers. It was a land bridge in a very real sense...not just a glacier bridge. Also it was possible (and theorized by leading anthropologists --Carl Chapman) that travel could be by seafaring peoples, who boated along the coast"
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a5q5zc | why can’t great britain just change their minds and not leave the eu? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a5q5zc/eli5_why_cant_great_britain_just_change_their/ | {
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"Short answer is that it would be political suicide. The people of the U.K voted and the majority of them said that they wanted to leave he EU. The government turning around and basically saying \"thanks for the input but nah\" would look awfully undemocratic and even if you are against brexit you would probably have a problem with the government undermining the will of the people. The people of the U.K decided they want to make bad decisions and now the government is going to begrudgingly make that bad decision. ",
"They can. There was originally some uncertainty as to whether a country exiting under Article 50 could say \"no, wait, we changed our mind\" before the two year period was up, or whether they'd have to petition for reentry, or whether letting them change their mind was subject to a vote of member countries , etc. \n\nBut that was settled a week or three back. The UK can, at any point prior to the March 29 deadline, abort the process and remain in the EU. \n\nUK politics make this very unlikely, but all it takes is them submitting that as their intention. "
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161383 | Did the Byzantine political system undergo any changes like the Roman political system did when it from Republic to Principate to Dominate? | I know the Roman political structure and theory changed quite a bit over the course of it's existence. It changed from the monarchy, to the republic, then principate, an intermediary phase of barack emperors, and finally the dominate. Each phase seemed to have different justifications as well.
But since Byzantium lasted until 1453, was there any changes to it's system or political justifications? Even if it was just subtle changes? Or was it pretty much the dominate system with it's "One God, one church, one emperor and one empire" till the end? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/161383/did_the_byzantine_political_system_undergo_any/ | {
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"Okay, so this is all going to be referring to the post-Justinian era. You sound like you're familiar with things up until that point.\n\nStarting with the emperors before him, but culminating in his reign, Heraclius led the organization of the empire into Themes. At the time of Heraclius (610 or so), the empire was essentially broke. On their western front, they were confronted with Slavs and Avars, and on the eastern, they had a long-running war with Persia. Ostrogorsky explains that this work begins in the frontier provinces: \"Like the exarchates of Ravenna and Carthage, the themes in Asia Minor were units of military administration, and they were each under the control of a stategus, corresponding to the exarch of the earlier arrangement.\" This was the first real break from the earlier, more Roman era, and it is often referred to as a sort of pseudo-feudalism. \n\nThings continue in this way up until the reign of Nicephorus (802-11). The whole previous century had been rocked by the Iconoclast controversy and the long-running war with Arabia on the frontier. Nicephorus recovers a lot of money in land granted to the church by Irene, and institutes/reinstates a hearth tax, payable collectively. In other words, your whole region was responsible for a certain sum, and if your neighbor didn't pay his share, you had to pay for him. Another really interesting thing about Nicephorus is that he established a state bond system (one of the first). He prohibited money-lending at interest, but, as Ostrogorsky tells us, \"the emperor compelled the rich shipbuilders of Constantinople to take up state loans of twelve pounds in gold and to pay interest on them at the rate of four keratia for each nomisma, i.e., at 16.66 per cent.\" Basically, a lot of reforms were put in place to fund government, and this remained the basis for much of the remainder of the Byzantine state.\n\nThings start to fall apart over the next 50 years, and Basil I (867-86) continues the process of centralization. This process involved increased conflicts with the church. Basil I underwent an intense purification of the laws, revising all the laws, which dated from Justinian, and updating them to the current time. Things continue in this way with his heirs, culminating in the reign of Basil II, which probably represented the peak of Byzantine power post-Justinian. Side note: Basil II's nickname is \"The Bulgar Slayer,\" which is pretty bad-ass.\n\nWhen Basil II died in 1025, things start to fall apart. The government is mostly run by the civil bureaucracy. The theme system implemented by Heraclius is allowed to slowly fall apart, resulting in a decay in the military preparedness of the frontier provinces. Ostrogorsky says, \"Byzantine imperial authority not only ceased its struggle to keep the feudal nobility in check, but became itself the tool of this powerful class.\" This is where you get the stuff about \"Byzantine\" politics. Ruler after ruler takes the throne, typically due to assassination of the previous ruler. Romanus III dies in his bath, and is succeeded by Michael IV, who was the previous Emperor's wife's lover. Stuff like this. There is a sort of constant, low-level war between the military and civil aristocracy, with each competing to place the head of their faction on the throne. It's pretty chaotic, and it does horrible things to the country, somewhat unsurprisingly.\n\nBy 1081, the military aristocracy seizes pretty firm control, and manages things until 1204. As you might recall, in [March of 1204](_URL_0_), the city fell to the Crusaders in what was called the Fourth Crusade, because the Crusaders were dicks. Venice and the Franks split the empire into several holdings, with an emperor elected by a college of six Franks and six Venetians. Due in part to its vastly reduced size, a number of political reforms were undertaken. At that time, the titled had changed to be Despot, but Theodore I styled himself as Emperor and Patriarch in 1204 or 1205. The old theme system was revived for use. In the area that had been the Byzantine Empire, there were three new empires, one Latin and two Greek. \n\nBy 1261, the empire was able to mostly re-assemble itself, with the help of an alliance with Genoa against Venice. Michael VIII (called Michael Paleologos) completed the restoration by around 1282.\n\nFrom there, it was a slow descent of poor rulers and indebtedness until 1453. Hope that answers your question?\n\nMy main reference work was George Ostrogorsky's *History of the Byzantine State,* published in 1957. I gather that it's been sort of supplanted, but it's what I had from undergrad, so it's what I used. Apologies if there are significant inaccuracies.\n\n\n"
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1qrw55 | Is fallout from a nuclear detonation (controlled or otherwise) more or less dangerous than fallout from a nuclear reactor meltdown. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1qrw55/is_fallout_from_a_nuclear_detonation_controlled/ | {
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"When a nuclear detonation occurs, all fuel is used instantly(or near instantly), radioactive residue resides in the environment. These residual substances.\n\n When a reactor explodes the fuel gets launched into the environment. This fuel is still reacting at a nuclear level and will keep emitting radiation until it is used up. Therefore the effects of a meltdown will last way longer."
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vm12c | Is there any effective way to estimate how large the creatures on the bottom of the ocean could be? If so what would the largest creature be estimated to be? | Without the ability to actually see into the deepest depths of the ocean it is possible that there are some creatures that are incredibly large. Understanding this I have to wonder what marine biologists believe in regards to how massive, or tiny for that matter. Is it believed that prehistoric creatures could still be alive today when you reach that dept in the ocean? How large is the largest creature scientists believe to exist in the ocean is my primary question, but naturally I am also interested in why the asswer is what it is and how the estimation came to be. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/vm12c/is_there_any_effective_way_to_estimate_how_large/ | {
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"The blue whale is thought to be the largest creature, with almost no controversy (if any) among scientists as to that. I don't know of any estimation of what the \"largest theoretical\" creature could be, because it depends a ton on the assumptions you make about the biology of the creature. \n\nAs far as prehistoric creatures, I assume you mean icthyosaurs and such? There is no chance they still exist, or anything else you would be excited about. Ancient fish to exist and are occasionally discovered in remote ocean locations, and it's perfectly possible some of the deep ocean fish we currently know about are quite ancient in biology. But they don't get preserved well in the fossil record so it's hard to say for sure."
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2c0uly | what is my computer doing while it is frozen? | It is obviously doing something because it is using power and still putting out warm air like it would under normal use. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2c0uly/eli5_what_is_my_computer_doing_while_it_is_frozen/ | {
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"It could be doing anything. All that can be said with certainty is that it's not responding to user input & producing identifiable output.",
"Depending on the condition, it could be stuck in an endless loop. Electricity is still moving through it, but in patterns that will never change. ",
"1. It's waiting on something outside it completing, that isn't. A system or peripheral device wont reply to commands.\n\n2. It's waiting on something inside it completing, that isn't. Endless loops in system and/or application processes.",
"Normally when a computer freezes it is either because it is stuck in an endless loop (program bug) or because it is overloaded and cannot process data fast enough. \n\nIf it is stuck in a loop (or a different program bug) it will normally try to solve the problem by running different routines defined in the system. \n\nThe second point can be because of multiple different reasons. One could be that it is overloaded with user input data (e.g. when you open something too many times). Or it could be overloaded from data you are processing (e.g. trying to download a huge file, opening a huge file etc.)",
"It's either working on something so hard that it doesn't output what going on or it is stuck in a loop. If the code is in a loop the system can be stuck until the process is killed manually or a timeout/fail-safe kills the looping process automatically.",
"Imagine your computer like a MacDonalds restaurant.\n\nThere are only so many people, so many resources and so many people they can serve at the same time.\n\nThey are in constant communication to get the food you want to the counter or window.\n\nYour computer is doing the same thing, but with data.\n\nYou computer needs to access the harddrive, the memory your GPU and multiple other devices.\n\nWhen It gets data from the hardrive to show you it first puts it into the memory where it will get processed into something nice and visual rather than 0101000101011.\n\nSometimes at macdonalds too many people come in at once, and people are left waiting.\n\nLikewise a computer is loading/processing too much and it simply freezes until it finishes (because it can't devote resources to making your data look pretty)\n\nThe solution at macdonalds to prevent people waiting is to manage food better (They usually have a table behind the counter with common meals ready for people) this means that while one person can be filling it up, another person can hand them out almost strait away.\n\nThe same can be done inside a computer, using threads on multiple CPU cores, memory can be loaded/processed into what is called a buffer. at the same time another process can be displaying that information (The Interface thread.)\n\nOf couse, this is just a simplification of what is going on and there are many other issues that can cause issues like programming bugs(Imagine if people loaded cheeseburgers into the milkshake machine by mistake which means people will be stood there wondering why their milkshake hasn't come yet.)",
"\"In an operating system, a deadlock is a situation which occurs when a process or thread enters a waiting state because a resource requested is being held by another waiting process, which in turn is waiting for another resource. If a process is unable to change its state indefinitely because the resources requested by it are being used by another waiting process, then the system is said to be in a deadlock.\"\n_URL_0_",
"There are three main ways in which a program can freeze:\n\n1\\. **Unresponsive UI**\n\nThe program becomes unresponsive in that the user interface doesn't appear to respond to input, it might not produce any output and in some cases a graphical user interface might stop being draw. In this case the program might still be running fine. This is often caused by poor programming, resulting in the program doing lots of work or waiting for something to complete on the same thread that's running the UI. The correct way to do this is to have a thread dedicated to handling the UI, while background work or blocking tasks are completed in a separate thread. This allows the UI to continue to respond even when other parts of the program are busy completing work or waiting for work to be completed.\n\n---\n\n2\\. **Infinite loop**\n\nThe program actually gets stuck in a loop, where it's just repeatedly doing the same thing over and over. There are several possible reasons why this might occur, but usually the problem is a program bug or poorly behaving code.\n\nAn example might be a retry loop without any retry counter. This is basically code which continues to retry the same operation until it works. The problem is, if the operation continues to fail for the same reason (e.g. the program is trying to access a server that's down), the program will just keep trying forever, while appearing frozen. A better way to handle this is to have the code only retry up to some maximum number of attempts before giving up and presenting an error to the user.\n\n---\n\n3\\. **Blocking Program** \n\nThe program gets stuck waiting for something to complete or some resource to be made available. Again, usually the problem is a program bug or poorly behaving code.\n\nConsider the following example. When there is a shared resource, but two different threads trying to use it at the same time, the resource has to be protected with some kind of lock, otherwise the two threads could trample over each other and corrupt the resource. Imagine, for example, if two separate threads were both trying to write the line \"Hello, world\" to a file at the same time. The expected result would be two lines containing \"Hello, world\", but if they both try to do it at the same time, the result might be garbled to something like \"Helhellolo, w,wororldld\". So both threads try to lock the file, and only one succeeds. The one that doesn't succeed is blocked until the lock is made available again by the first thread.\n\nSometimes threads will try to access multiple resource and need to lock several at the same time. A common programming bug occurs when thread A locks resource 1 and tries to then lock resource 2, while thread B locks resource 2 then tries to lock resource 1. A is blocked in its attempt to access resource 2 because it's locked by B, while at the same time B is blocked in its attempt to access resource 1 because it's locked by A. Neither thread can proceed and the 2 threads become stuck, waiting forever for the respective locks to be released. This is called a deadlock and is a frequent cause of frozen programs."
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2y65z4 | Are there any powers of pi that are rational? | It's obvious that some irrational numbers can be put to the power of rational numbers to make rational numbers (for example sqrt(2)^2, so is there an example of this being true for pi, or a proof that it's never true for pi? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2y65z4/are_there_any_powers_of_pi_that_are_rational/ | {
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"Nope, π is what is called [transcendental](_URL_0_), which means that there is no way to make π into the root of a polynomial with rational coefficients.\n\nIf π^n =p/q then π would be a zero of the polynomial x^n -p/q , which can't happen for a transcendental number.",
"/u/bananasluggers gave an excellent response. I'd like to note that if you want see even stronger statements than Pi being transcendental you should look at [Baker's theorem](_URL_1_) and [Schanuel's conjecture](_URL_0_) (still open).",
"pi^0 = 1, but I don't think that's what you meant."
]
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5wlil4 | In academia, is there are specific criteria that a state must meet for it to receive the moniker of "Empire" instead of "Kingdom?" | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5wlil4/in_academia_is_there_are_specific_criteria_that_a/ | {
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"Sorry, meant to say \"any\" not \"are.\"",
"The primary distinction would be that a kingdom, by definition, has a monarch. The United Kingdom has the Queen. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has the king, and so on and so forth. \n\nEmpires, on the other hand, do not necessarily have an emperor, rather, their defining feature is a single polity controlling other polities. So for example, the Roman Republic, before the time of Augustus, had already been an empire, just without an emperor, for centuries. The same thing applies to, say, the French Empire during the Third Republic, or American Empire. This also tends to apply to monarchies, so you have the German Empire, which was conceived of as an empire over and above its constituent kingdoms, or the British Empire, in which the United Kingdom ruled over various territories. \n\nThe one thing I'm not qualified to speak to is translations. So why is *tenno* in Japanese translated as Emperor while other terms are translated as king. "
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pz56m | Is there any real scientific reason NOT to get the HPV vaccine if you are a male? | I have reservations about it based in nothing and want to be reassured because I trust this community more than any other community. I want an answer. I had 1/3 of the shots and for no reason whatsoever I am paranoid. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/pz56m/is_there_any_real_scientific_reason_not_to_get/ | {
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"The following is from a CDC article in December (_URL_0_)\n\nClinical trial data in approximately 5,300 males found that the most common adverse events were mild or moderate, and were most commonly injection-site reactions (4). Headache and fever were the most commonly reported systemic adverse events in vaccine recipients and controls (4). Since licensure, at least 40 million doses of HPV4 have been distributed in the United States through September 2011. National postlicensure safety data indicate that HPV4 adverse events were similar to those from prelicensure trials (14). Postlicensure safety data from the Vaccine Safety Datalink study, including data from > 600,000 HPV4 doses administered, showed no statistically significant increased risk for the outcomes studied, including Guillain-Barré syndrome, stroke, venous thromboembolism, appendicitis, seizures, syncope, allergic reactions, and anaphylaxis (15). Postlicensure safety data from a manufacturer-sponsored study found no increased risk for outcomes such as anaphylaxis and venous thromboembolism; however, persons who were vaccinated with HPV4 were more likely to faint on the day they were vaccinated than another period in which vaccine was not administered (16). ACIP recommends that vaccination providers should consider observing patients for 15 minutes after all vaccinations, including HPV vaccination."
]
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"http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6050a3.htm"
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3an5vd | if someone were to "stand" on jupiter at the great red spot, what would the storm look like? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3an5vd/eli5_if_someone_were_to_stand_on_jupiter_at_the/ | {
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"Reddish cloud everywhere. \n\nDepending on your depth/altitude, you wouldn't be able to see much, you'd be lost in the fog. High enough and it looks like... you know... how we see it from space. \n\nClose enough and all that detail fades away as the gaseous nature of the atmosphere blurs it all together. Like how clouds look like solid beautiful things from a distance, but as your plane is flying through them it's just whips of fog. Same thing on Jupiter, just a heck of a lot more of it. \n\n",
"NDT's Cosmos did a great job creating it with CGI. Word is it may not be that accurate, though. In any case, [here you go.](_URL_0_)"
]
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[],
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"http://www.reddit.com/r/Cosmos/comments/2m306i/the_most_incredible_perspective_of_jupiters_great/"
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kygk6 | Why is the skin on the roof of the mouth so fragile? | It'll burn on hot soup or get scraped by a hard pizza crust. Why isn't that skin tougher? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/kygk6/why_is_the_skin_on_the_roof_of_the_mouth_so/ | {
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"It's not actually skin, it's mucous membrane - the same stuff that lines your insides. It doesn't have the hard, horny and waterproof layer of keratin that outside skin does. The mouth withstands hot stuff quite well - your outside skin doesn't cope well with hot soup either. It also heals very quickly, so scrapes do little active harm. ",
"Maybe because this is a [late evolution](_URL_0_). Having a thin palate is not perfect but better than nothing.",
"The skin on the palate is a very special kind of tissue called the mucoperiosteum. The epithelium and the bone are in very close contact which makes injuries very easy to sustain since there isn't much cushion room in which your skin can depress. Good thing is that it's still skin and will heal very quickly.",
"It's not actually skin, it's mucous membrane - the same stuff that lines your insides. It doesn't have the hard, horny and waterproof layer of keratin that outside skin does. The mouth withstands hot stuff quite well - your outside skin doesn't cope well with hot soup either. It also heals very quickly, so scrapes do little active harm. ",
"Maybe because this is a [late evolution](_URL_0_). Having a thin palate is not perfect but better than nothing.",
"The skin on the palate is a very special kind of tissue called the mucoperiosteum. The epithelium and the bone are in very close contact which makes injuries very easy to sustain since there isn't much cushion room in which your skin can depress. Good thing is that it's still skin and will heal very quickly."
]
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65v7ww | the whole erdogan powers thing | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/65v7ww/eli5_the_whole_erdogan_powers_thing/ | {
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"Ten more years of Erdogan. After that, another extension. Eventually he will retire and leave the post to his son.\n\nIn the meantime Turkey will become poorer, more religious, and more agressive with its neighbours to assert and increase its power. Especially now that he has the military under control."
]
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[]
] | ||
301sb3 | Did Japan know about the Holocaust? Did they care? | Since Japan and Germany were allies during WWII, I'm curious how much the Japanese knew about the Nazis' death machine and all the atrocities in Europe. And if they knew, what was the reaction of the Japanese brass? Did they feel indifferent, guilty by association, or anything else? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/301sb3/did_japan_know_about_the_holocaust_did_they_care/ | {
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"You might look up Chinue Sugihara as a rare example of a Japanese official (Japanese ambassador to Lithuania) who, in 1940, after the USSR occupied Lithuania but before the Nazi-Soviet pact broke up, gave up to six thousand Lithuanian Jews visas to travel through Japanese territory and negotiated to allow the Soviets to let those Jews use the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Sugihara did this with absolutely no instructions from his superiors and broke quite a few rules in the process."
]
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[]
] | |
1sum7b | Why do some poisons tell you NOT to induce vomiting? | Why are you suggested to induce vomiting for some poisons and not others?
EDIT: Wow this took off overnight. Thank you so much for the very in depth answers. The question came about after reading the warning on a bottle of bleach. I assumed that bleach is not something you want coming back up as it can cause damage but I've learned a lot about other chemicals/poisons still being dangerous coming back up despite not being a direct irritant.
Thank you all! | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1sum7b/why_do_some_poisons_tell_you_not_to_induce/ | {
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"It's very rare that they would advise vomiting for anything these days. In some cases the agent can cause more damage on the way up, but even so it's unlikely that vomiting will be enough benefit to outweigh the risk of aspiration for instance (accidentally inhaling stomach contents)",
"The ones that shouldn't be vomited up are the ones that will do even more damage coming back up than if left in the stomach until a proper pump can be used. The ones that call for inducing vomiting are absorbing in the stomach and going through the whole body doing damage. The difference is between local repairable damage and general destruction through out the body.",
"There are a couple of different reasons. Most of them boil down to protecting the lungs above all else.\n\nYou don't want someone who might be about to pass out to start vomiting because it will interfere with breathing.\n\nAlso remember that the stomach is very sturdy compared to the esophagus and lungs. For example, gasoline is not actually that poisonous, but gasoline vapor in the lungs is very dangerous. If it made it down without killing you then it might be best to leave it there for now.\n\n",
"Some agents that are physically damaging to the throat will cause damage going up, added to the damage they caused going down. Vomiting is also not ideal in situations where the person could pass out (risking the airway due to continued vomiting while unconscious) or in situations where the chemical can froth up into a foam or become a vapor easily (e.g. dish soap or gasoline, respectively) -- foam and vapor stick around the upper airway longer and can easily be aspirated, causing more problems. Once vomiting is started, it can be hard to stop, interfering with a more effective treatment a medical first responder or hospital staff member might administer (e.g. a charcoal solution) before having the stomach pumped.\n\nEDIT: Source: EMT student",
"A lot of the answers here are missing some key information. When one swallows, the airway is blocked momentarily. When vomiting, the airway remains open, and there is a chance some of the substance will find its way to the lungs are do some serious damage. \n\nThe physical damage to the esophagus is less of an issue than a lot of other answers are making out, the real danger from substances such as petrol or methylated spirits is damage to the lung's alveoli.",
"Hey there, I might be able to help. I'm an ER nurse and have a lil experience with this field. About every week (at least) I will personally be involved in treating someone who has poisoned themselves either accidentally or purposefully. Most of the time we, as well as poison control would rather the pt keep the poison down- We give a wonderful substance called Charcoal. The charcoal (In Layman's terms) absorbs the toxic substance and prevents it from causing damage to whatever it passes through. It also prevents absorption into the body. Some/lots of poisons cause much more damage coming up then they would just going down…\nHope this helps!\n\nAlso, adding to what previous poster stated- Gotta protect that airway!, one of the most important acronyms in the medical field in order of importance: ABC, Airway Breathing Circulation.",
"Clinical toxicologist here. This answer is modified from my comment on a [similar question](_URL_0_). The American Academy of Pediatrics released [an official statement](_URL_1_) in 2003 stating that vomiting should never be induced in the home after an accidental exposure. The American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC) followed suit soon after. Induction of emesis has now become a thing of the past, and is almost never used clinically for chemical, drug, or other ingestions.\n\nThe reason: After compiling years of data, it was found that:\n\n1) On average, induction of emesis only yields ~28% of the ingested amount, even when induced immediately after the ingestion.\n\n2) Emesis results in longer hospital stays and more complications (mostly due to aspiration, or inhaling stomach contents into the lungs). It also can increase the likelihood that you'll have to go to the hospital.\n\n3) There is absolutely no evidence that emesis can improve outcomes.\n\nI have personally never seen it used.",
"Pharm student here. Another argument against vomiting is the potential for the increased pressure from vomiting to promote gastric emptying - ie., opening of the stomach's sphincter to pass the toxin into the intestine. So you may have vomited up a small fraction of what was ingested, but you've also actually driven the majority of it further into the digestive tract where it's less accessible for removal (and will absorb faster into the bloodstream, leading to quicker toxicity). I'm not sure to what extent this factors into the treatment decision in your average ER, but it's true that vomiting is generally not considered an effective treatment for overdose/poisonings any longer. \n\nAnother quick point about activated charcoal -- it's not a magical cure-all for all toxins. Only the substances that bind to AC will be amenable to treatment, and definitely not all do. Even if the toxin does bind, sometimes the decision will be made to treat with supportive care only (02, fluids, etc.) because the risk of AC aspiration outweighs its potential benefit. \n",
"They just do double the damage on their way back out then what was already created on the way down. Bleach, for example, burns when you drink it, vomiting it out again would just burn more and create more damage on the way back out."
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],
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np4tt | Is there a limit to the density of photons in a given volume? If so, what happens at that limit? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/np4tt/is_there_a_limit_to_the_density_of_photons_in_a/ | {
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"I can think of one limit: given a high enough density of photons, they will form a black hole.\n\nIn general relativity, photons have energy, and so they contribute to the gravitational field just like anything else. If you have enough photons in one place, their gravity will be so strong they wont be able to escape. A black hole formed this way will look no different to a black hole from from an equal amount of matter.\n\nTo make this happen, you will need to cram some energy into a volume with a radius smaller than its [Schwarzchild radius](_URL_0_) (that article talks about mass rather than energy, so just convert between the two using E=mc^2 ).\n\nThis is not an easy feat to do. You could do it by putting 5*10^40 J (equal to the output of the Sun for 40 million years) into a volume 20 mm across in order to make a black hole with the mass of the Earth.",
"I can think of one limit: given a high enough density of photons, they will form a black hole.\n\nIn general relativity, photons have energy, and so they contribute to the gravitational field just like anything else. If you have enough photons in one place, their gravity will be so strong they wont be able to escape. A black hole formed this way will look no different to a black hole from from an equal amount of matter.\n\nTo make this happen, you will need to cram some energy into a volume with a radius smaller than its [Schwarzchild radius](_URL_0_) (that article talks about mass rather than energy, so just convert between the two using E=mc^2 ).\n\nThis is not an easy feat to do. You could do it by putting 5*10^40 J (equal to the output of the Sun for 40 million years) into a volume 20 mm across in order to make a black hole with the mass of the Earth."
]
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19fizj | How difficult would it be to send a probe to Europa? | I was just looking at the wikepedia page on [europa](_URL_0_ and it looks absoulutley likeley that there is life there, right now!
My reasoning for this is a combination of a lot of things but some of them are: Oxygen atmosphere, Not very many craters\impact sites, LIQUID WATER.The ice is very thick in places but scans from the Galileo mission show thin pats in the ice, easy for a small lander to penetrate with enough heat.
So my question is why aren't scientist in general paying more attention to Europa, it seems like a very easy target for a small probe, dedicated to taking orbital photographs(possibly even a landing)? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/19fizj/how_difficult_would_it_be_to_send_a_probe_to/ | {
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"The [Galileo probe](_URL_2_) was in the Jupiter system a little while ago and is where most of the current information on Europa has come from. More recently, [NASA and ESA announced support](_URL_1_) for a new mission concept arriving in the Jupiter system by 2030(ish). There is a [NASA mission concept for Europa](_URL_0_) that is currently proposed, but it's too early to tell; NASA's large planetary missions seem to be focused on Mars at the present, to the detriment of outer solar system exploration. If there were more funding to play with, the story would be very different.\n\n > it looks absoulutley likeley that there is life there, right now!\n\nThese mission concepts being announced will help find answers, but until a lander makes it down to Europa it's waaaaay too early to speculate."
]
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_spacecraft"
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3qgr78 | nmr spectroscopy | Please someone give me a run down of this. I feel like my brain melts when I look at my notes for my organic chemistry class. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qgr78/eli5_nmr_spectroscopy/ | {
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"In continuous wave NMR (old school), we place atoms into a strong uniform magnetic field. These nuclei align with the field. They can be excited by hitting them with radio frequency radiation. So, by sweeping over the radio spectrum, we can detect the frequencies corresponding to excitation of the atoms. The frequency corresponds to the atomic isotope and magnetic field strength (that's why it has to be very uniform). Each atom in a molecule experiences a different local magnetic field due to the presence of nearby atoms. This is what separates out the frequencies of all the atoms in a molecule to give a spectrum. \n\nIn modern FT-NMR we don't scan over the frequency range. Instead we hit the sample with a strong broad pulse that excites all of the nuclei at once. When the nuclei are knocked out of alignment with the magnetic field, we detect the rate at which they precess as they return to alignment. The precession rate is proportional to the magnetic field strength, so we get the same information (and more) about the local environment of each atom. "
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] | |
1rnqya | What would happen to degenerate matter if you could take it out of an extreme environment? | I've read a few places that a teaspoon of neutron-star material would weigh tons, if it were on earth. That got me thinking-- what would happen, if you could somehow set a teaspoon of the stuff on your kitchen table?
Without the influence of gravity, does it violently expand back into gas? Does it fall, crushing through your table (and everything else)? Does does it chemical, quantum, etc, with normal matter? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1rnqya/what_would_happen_to_degenerate_matter_if_you/ | {
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"The thing that keeps it so compact, is immense gravity, once that is gone it should expand very very rapidly. At the same time the chunk of neutron star is so dense that it should be able to push through any material (if it stayed compact ).",
"Without the immense gravity, the neutrons would beta decay into protons (and electrons and antineutrinos).\n\nThe question really is how much gravitational energy per proton was originally required to force them to electron-capture in the first place. I'm not sure how to calculate it, but it should give you the initial temperature of the resulting matter.\n\nPresumably it's hydrogen, but I guess it's dense enough for fusion to occur, if there's enough energy\n\nedit: Apparently neutron star material is already incredibly hot, so enjoy your explosion."
]
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1y0905 | Using gravitational lensing, can a black hole act as a mirror to let us look at ourselves in the past? | So black holes are so massive that the space around them is curved, and light travels in a curved trajectory around the singularity. At the event horizon, light can no longer travel fast enough to escape the singularity, or in other words, space is curved so drastically that it is looped in on itself.
But I don't care about that.
What I reason is that there must be a region near any black hole where space is just curved enough that light going past the black hole is perturbed exactly 180 degrees, and sent back to the object from whence it came. I guess this is a very thin sliver of space, from out point of view, but maybe with a larger black hole, the viewable area would be larger?
Shouldn't every black hole then have a mirror halo? And if the black hole is one billion light years away from us, then we should be able to see our own reflection in it, from two billion years ago? And if we could image enough black holes, we could watch our own history play out in what would appear to be real time. We should be able to look for a black hole 32.5 million light years away (65 Mly / 2) and watch the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs hit the earth?
*Edited for math reasons* | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1y0905/using_gravitational_lensing_can_a_black_hole_act/ | {
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"Suppose you did have a colossal mirror for a second. Due to the inverse square law, light from Earth will be rather dim by the time it gets there. It will dim by many orders of magnitude again on the way back.\n\nBlack holes are not that big either. There's some debate about how big Sagittarius A* (the largest one in the galaxy) really is, but the consensus is that the event horizon is smaller than the solar system. There's also a lot of gas and dust from here to there, and there would be light from many other stars swirling around it.\n\nSo no.",
"Let's imagine 5 types of radii for a black hole, distances from the black hole centre which will be crossed by our photon:\n\n1. The Schwarzchild radius, aka the event horizon. Any photon which crosses this is swallowed by the black hole.\n2. The photon sphere radius. Any photon entering this will have their trajectory altered so that they will be in permanent orbit of the black hole until it is swallowed.\n3. The radius where our photon will make more than half an orbit around the black hole.\n4. The radius where our photon will make exactly half an orbit and return exactly 180 degrees back to where it came from.\n5. The radius where our photon will make less than half an orbit.\n\nAs you can imagine the distance 4. where we will achieve a mirror effect is rather narrow. It is impossible for an optical telescope have arbitrarily high angular resolution due to the [diffraction limit](_URL_0_). For instance, the Hubble space telescope has a limit of 0.05 arcseconds."
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2y9xu3 | how does buzzfeed get away legally by posting .gifs from movies/sports/tv shows when that is all copyrighted source material. | Essentially, Buzzfeed takes premade copyrighted content and hosts it on their site embedded in the article and makes money on the ads surrounding the article. How is that legal when they are making money off of somebody else's matterial? Specifically, considering how complicated it is for Netflix to just get one movie streaming, how the heck can Buzzfeed get away with legally playing hundreds of gifs in their listical articles from multiple well known movies. Same thing regarding sports or tv shows. Do they have ridiculous amounts of contracts and rev share models with Universal, Disney, NFL, etc or are they just a million dollar lawsuit waiting to happen? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2y9xu3/eli5_how_does_buzzfeed_get_away_legally_by/ | {
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"Fair Use provisions allow you to incorporate parts of copyrighted work (e.g. short video clips / GIFs) for purposes of critical review, journalism / news reporting, parody/satire and for certain other uses without seeking explicit permission. This protection can be afforded even in the case of commercial distribution. Not all uses of video clips from movies/TV shows are protected by Fair Use though - for example, you typcally can't just post a video clip from some random movie and then not criticize, parodize or provide commentary on said clip.",
"From an IP law perspective, they could claim fair-use. If a journalist writing an article that reviews or comments on a copyrighted work, he does not need permission to use short sections of the work (with attribution) if he can demonstrate that a) his use of the copyrighted material is essential to his review or commentary, b) the sections used are small enough to not infringe the rights of the copyright owner. Even if his commentary is sold, he is selling the commentary itself, not the excerpts of copyrighted material.\n\nCalling Buzzfeed a review/commentary site may be stretching it. I don't visit \"aggregator\" sites so I'm not sure how much actual commentary they do, but with a good enough legal argument and the right judge, they probably could dodge any infringement claim."
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468tbb | why is china preventing chinese yuan from worth more? | Heard in the news a couple of times. Never understood why. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/468tbb/eli5_why_is_china_preventing_chinese_yuan_from/ | {
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"If the yuan goes up, it will become more expensive to purchase goods from China, since importers of Chinese goods will pay for them in yuan. That naturally means exports from China will decrease, and considering its export-based economy, that could be quite the shock. In the United States, we often worry about relying on Chinese imports--but China relies just as much on exporting to the U.S.",
"They dont want to create deflation (reduction in prices) which can be caused by the currency gaining in value. Most central banks aim for modest inflation (low to mid single digit percentages). By keeping the Yuan from rising in value too much they reduce the chance for deflation. "
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35kqif | why are some dangerous mammals, like tigers and wolves, able to be tamed from a young age, but not reptiles like alligators | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35kqif/eli5_why_are_some_dangerous_mammals_like_tigers/ | {
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"Apparently there are some cases of crocodiles being tame around trainers. I would guess it's due to intellegence. Cats have a much higher cognitive capacity than reptiles. Cats and most mammals also have a parent-child relationship that would make human interaction much easier and natural. Reptiles for the most part only ensure the birth of the young and then pretty much leave them to survive on their own.",
"Good one.. (correct me if im wrong) but my understanding is warm blooded mammals are taught at an early age and reptiles are more instinct driven.",
"Because people rarely identify well enough with reptiles to tame them. I was able to tame a snapping turtle that hatched from an egg in my hand - it would try to attack anyone else to the point of trying to chase after them but was always friendly toward me. Body language also has _a lot_ to do with it. Imagine if you were growling and snarling baring your teeth at every stray dog you came across - that's what you probably do to most reptiles without realizing it."
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v3nhh | Does LSD affect animals in the same way it affects us? Say, a dog or monkey? | No, I am not giving a dog LSD. Just wondering what the various chemical/neural/behavioral reaction differences would be, if any. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/v3nhh/does_lsd_affect_animals_in_the_same_way_it/ | {
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"I don't know anything about the physiological results of giving drugs to animals, but [here's](_URL_0_) an interesting series of images of spiders' webs while under the influence of different drugs."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.trinity.edu/jdunn/spiderdrugs.htm"
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5i1v4e | could a helicopter hover inches above earth and wind up on the other side of the planet? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5i1v4e/eli5_could_a_helicopter_hover_inches_above_earth/ | {
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"No...if that were to happen, everytime you jumped, you would move 1000 miles+. Everything is moving with the earth, the ground and the air itself.",
"When the helicopter rises up it's still carrying the momentum of moving with the earth. It's also surrounded by atmosphere which is moving with the earth.",
" > Theoretically, wouldn't Earth continue to spin under the helicopter?\n\nNo. Helicopters hover by remaining stationary with respect to the surrounding air, and all of the air is rotating along with the Earth (or else there would be constant 1000 mph winds as the Earth rotated through the atmosphere). So the helicopter will be carried along with the air around it as the air and Earth rotate together."
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zjim2 | Is it possible to trap sound waves inside of a container of some kind? | My coworker was pondering this earlier today and I admitted that I was not certain if a vessel could be conceivably constructed that could do it.
The idea would be that you have some kind of container, produce a sound (a few spoken words, for example) into it, seal it, and open it at a later time to hear the sound again.
The logic which my coworker followed to get to this was that if you are in a large room and you yell, often there is an echo where the sound waves have been reflected back to you (often several times as it bounces back and forth) - except an echo is usually fainter and much less crisp than the source. So would it be possible to, say, construct a material that perfectly reflects sound? Is is possible to have sound propagate through a medium that does not absorb energy from the sound waves, distorting them? and if so, could those components be combined to create a container that you could yell into, seal, and then re-open a few minutes later or an hour later and hear the sound escape? Even if it were muffled or badly degraded, would it be possible to "trap sound"? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/zjim2/is_it_possible_to_trap_sound_waves_inside_of_a/ | {
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"A container with 0 energy transmission? No, impossible. The sound waves oscillate everything they come into contact with, which includes any material known to exist. \n\nYou can, however, create devices that are drastically more effective at reflecting and maintaining waves. Look up \"cavity resonator.\"",
"No. Sound as you are representing it would exist in a fluid medium (liquid or gas). Even if you made a pure tone and stored it in a perfect container that did not absorb sound at all the sound would diminish because energy would be lost to friction within the fluid resulting in heat. No matter what, energy would be lost. In a phrase or a word, the sound would destroy itself through destructive interference because complex sounds are actually the sum of many different frequencies"
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3njzys | how large graham's number is using atoms, stars, blackholes etc. (or even a multiverse) | I was astounded by its vastness, so I need more explanation. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3njzys/eli5_how_large_grahams_number_is_using_atoms/ | {
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"The observable universe is \"only\" 4×10^80 m^3 in volume, and at about 6 protons average per m^3, that barely makes 2,4x10^81 protons in the universe.\n\nThese numbers aren't even as big as a googol (10^100), let alone a googolplex (10^10^100), let alone Graham's number. A googolplex is far and beyond the number of particles in the universe.\n\nYou may find some answers [in this Numberphile video](_URL_0_)\n\nSee how a googolplex is too big to write in plain numbers but easy to write with powers of 10?\nLet's say you want to write Graham's number. When \"counting\" Graham's number, you run out of writing space in the very early steps if you use powers of 10 we're used to, so you go to arrow notation (explained in the video), then you run out of space in the universe to fill with arrows by g1, and then no notation can help you anymore, so you just write g1, g2.... g64, and g64 is graham's number.",
"Okay:\n\nThe Planck volume is the theoretical smallest size anything can exist in. It is about 10^-105 m^3 .\n\nThe observable universe is about 93 billion light years across, and has a volume on the order of 10^80 m^3 .\n\nSo you can fit around 10^185 of the smallest possible thing into the Universe.\n\nSo, what if we make a number that was just 10^185 9s, written one after the other? How close to Graham's number would this be?\n\nNot even close, I'm afraid.\n\nIf you took that new number and wrote a new number by writing out that number of 9s ... it still wouldn't be close.\n\nIf you repeat the process another 50 or so times, you might get there, but my maths skills aren't quite there to work out how many times.",
"It's beyond comprehension. If your brain were able to parse all the digits of the number, it would become a black hole."
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108zur | how did republicans shift from being not so conservative to ridiculously conservative? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/108zur/eli5_how_did_republicans_shift_from_being_not_so/ | {
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"Here's the thing to understand: the real swing in their party was between being fiscally conservative and for personal liberty to being essentially a party of religious fanatics.\n\nIt happened because they tried to cater to religious voters, and ended up being overrun with them, to the point that the party's platform was shifted to reflect the interested of the religious fanatics they thought they could exploit.\n\nIronically, it was the Republicans (you know, 50 years ago) who pushed for many of the reproductive freedoms that the modern Republican party detests.",
"I can see three major reasons:\n\n1. For the last 20 years, the Democrats have been abandoning liberalism and moving to the center. This has alienated traditional Democratic base groups, but has allowed the Democrats to win the support of many independents, centrists, and former moderate Republicans. As a result, as many moderate Republicans become Democrats, the Republican party that is left behind is much more conservative, and Republican primaries reflect that. The Republican party of 30 years ago would have dismissed people like Santorum and Gingrich, not made them serious presidential contenders.\n\n2. As part of #1, as moderates drop off, the Christian Right has become the dominant force in the Republican party, and they are in a position to make real demands on candidates on the few issues that matter to them. They can draw a hard line on issues like abortion and gay marriage.\n\n3. The growth of conservative media - Fox News, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, National Review, Weekly Standard, right wing blogs, Rush Limbaugh and other talk radio hosts, etc. Those institutions keep Republicans in line - Republicans are afraid that if they take a position that offends that media, they will get attacked endlessly.",
"It's actually more complex than that. What's really going on is that both sides are shifting to the outside of the spectrum. The reason that is happening is because less and less people take part in the party system. \n\nElections in the US can largely be predicted using what's called the [Median Voter Theorem](_URL_0_). Essentially if you were to put people's political leanings on a line and assign them a number between one and ten (one being liberal ten being conservative) the candidate who wins the election will be the one who best caters to the median voter.\n\nThis applies just as well to primaries where we elect the candidates who will be on the ballot in November. The person who best plays to the median in their respective party usually wins the primary.\n\nThe problem is that fewer and fewer people are declaring parties. If you look at[ this graph from Gallup,](_URL_1_) you'll see that the percentage of voters who are independent is tied for a 30 year high. Meanwhile, the percentage of voters who are Republican or Democrat are at an all time low.\n\nIn addition it's important to know that political parties in the US are not really static like they are in most parts of the world. You tend to have a lot of subgroups acting under one umbrella. To really understand the dynamic shift in the Republican party you actually have to go back to the Great Depression. \n\nDuring the Great Depression, FDR was able to assemble a pretty powerful coalition of different political factions called the [New Deal Coalition.](_URL_2_) Essentially FDR was able to get labor groups, intellectuals, urban populations, minorities, the south, and the religious conservatives all to vote together. This actually worked really well for the Democrats. From '32 to the late '60s the only Republican to win the presidency was Eisenhower. However, as you can gather from that list, some of those factions have directly competing interests. In the 60's a lot of the underlying social tensions start to flair up. \n\nAs you can imagine, the minorities were pretty staunchly in favor of civil rights, but the south didn't really like that and hippies really didn't play well with either the religious right or a lot of the blue collar types. So what ends up happening is that the Democrats become a lot less about economic issues and a lot more about social issues which pisses off the social conservatives. \n\nMeanwhile, a lot of the more ardently anti-communist people are getting pretty unhappy with the general softening of the Democratic party, especially when it came to Vietnam and the USSR. \n\nUltimately the hippies and the minorities win out and a lot of the upset people leave the Democratic party. Meanwhile, the Republicans are all about beating the communists and while I won't go so far as to say they're against civil rights (Ike did integrate the military) they certainly weren't as big on it as the civil rights advocates in the Democratic party.\n\nSo what ends up happening is that the Democrats malcontents come over to the Republicans. Maybe the Republicans aren't going to agree with them on everything, but they tend to be more likely to support the troops and the war and they were also closer on economic issues. Meanwhile the Republicans who are already Republicans take these guys in for similar reasons. Maybe they're a little more socially radical than they'd like, but you need to win an election some time if you're not going to let the Democrats choke away the fight against communism.\n\nThe real issues within the Republican party don't flare up until the late 80's/early 90's. \n\nOn the state and local level it's sometimes pretty hard to find people that are willing to run for office. There are plenty of instances where someone might even run for office unopposed. This was definitely true of the Republicans in the early 90's. A lot of party offices and state level offices were really hard to fill because nobody wanted them.\n\nOr at least that used to be the case. As it turns out, the religious conservatives picked up on this and realized that if they started filling them, it'd become a lot easier to get the party to start pushing their agenda. All of the sudden religious conservative candidates start cropping for local offices all over the place. As a result they start gaining a lot of key positions in the party without the moderates really paying all that much attention. By the time the moderates realize what's going on it's pretty much too late. \n\nThe religious conservatives are hard to beat too. Keep in mind that like I said before, candidates are chosen by elections within the party. This becomes especially problematic because moderate Republicans are:\n\n1) More likely to register as independents than hardcore conservatives \n\n2) Less likely to vote in primaries.\n\nSo what ends up happening is that you have a highly motivated, highly organized group who controls a large portion of the party offices and is pretty much willing to do whatever it takes to win. Fast forward to the 2000s and the moderate Republicans are all pretty much in hiding. Like I said before, the political arena in general is becoming increasingly polarized, and the moderate conservatives are increasingly not registering as Republican which means that the moderate candidates almost never get out of the primaries.\n\nAs a result you never actually hear from the moderates because nobody cares about the guy who got curbstomped in a primary against someone who made a tour of all the churches in the state in the months leading up to election day.",
"There is nothing fiscally conservative about the modern GOP. They spent like drunken sailors when they had control. It's paying for that spending spree that they have a serious problem with and that conserves nothing but painful debt for the next generation."
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3s4b5n | what bad things are actually in mcdonalds now? is it really that bad? | I've just seen McDonalds' latest 'good to know' ad campaign, and a few things surprised me. All the chicken meat is chicken breast, the fries are just cut and fried potatoes... it's pretty different from the chemistry experiment I assumed I was eating.
Is there something I'm missing that means it is as unhealthy as I'd previously thought? I know the calories are way too high, and there's too much sugar in the drinks, but I don't eat it often enough to really care about that. I thought it was still all pink slime and chemicals, and now I can't tell if I'm being hoodwinked by mcdonalds PR... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3s4b5n/eli5_what_bad_things_are_actually_in_mcdonalds/ | {
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"AMOUNT. The 'bad thing' is AMOUNT. Meat is meat, but do you need half a pound of it? Potatoes are potatoes, but if they're fried and salted to the point of becoming unhealthy, it doesn't matter what they started as. It's not like the food is 'artificial', there's just too much of it, in forms that are so refined it's easy for the body to gain weight from eating it. \n\nA hamburger is nutritionally a pretty good piece of food, if you make it right. Nothing wrong with that. ",
"this is just ignorant conjecture...but, in my opinion, the worst part of a mcdonalds meal is the giant bucket of soda that comes with it...french fries aren't much better. I say eat your sandwich and get a smaller drink or drink water, ditch the fries...no fucks needed for giving...",
"I never liked the concept of labeling certain foods as good or bad, which fad diets love to do in order to scare people and/or sell merchandise. Such practices do people looking for honest advice about being healthy no favors. [Here are a few examples.\n](_URL_1_)\n\nMy fellow posters have already hit on the two major talking points here. With McDonalds and other fast food establishments, a bigger problem than composition is quantity. The standard burger, medium fries and soft drink in the U.S. can [easily be more than 1000 calories.](_URL_0_) Unless you are exercising enough to offset heavier meals, you are certain to gain weight.\n\nThe other talking point is processed meat, and it is one not specific to fast food. Ground meats come from multiple animals, be it hamburger, sausage, lamb, or your favorite brick of deli meat. Besides the increased chance of food-borne illness (due to the number of animals used in a single production run), processed food tends to lose some nutritional value along the way. \n\nTo illustrate, imagine a potato. Let's say you skin that potato before cooking it. You have processed it and reduced its nutritional value. Let's say you then microwave or boil the potato. That reduces nutritional value even further. Finally, lets say you mash up that potato with some salt and butter to taste. Now your potato has additives that may not be as wholesome or good for you as the original potato.\n\nTL:DR - it is less about the bad things in food and more about the quantity of food and the amount of processing the food goes through. And no, it is not particularly bad for you unless you eat big macs four times a day.\n",
"You may have been hoodwinked by someone other than McDonalds. You and I are made of chemicals. Nothing they serve is worse than what's in a supermarket. You have to choose wisely. \n\nI eat at the golden arches, but only get the salads and smaller sandwiches and no sugary drinks. Once in a while, I'll get a small order of no-salt french fries. In 40 years, I've never gotten food poisoning from it. Wish I could say the same about the \"organic\" grocery store. For me, [food borne illness](_URL_0_) is a much greater health risk than fast food."
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kg5n9 | why do dvds look fine on a tv bigger than my monitor? | Why does a DVD look fine on a 30" tv but when I play it on a 22" monitor on fullscreen, it looks very pixelized? When it plays on the computer in a smaller window like 1000 pixels, it looks fine but then it looks terrible when maximized. Are there more pixels in a tv than most lcd monitors? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/kg5n9/eli5_why_do_dvds_look_fine_on_a_tv_bigger_than_my/ | {
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"monitors use a higher resolution generally but the problem is probably that your dvd player and tv upscale things while your computer may not be for some reason. Though this would depend on your tv, dvd player, program your using on the computer.",
"You usually sit closer to your monitor. 2 feet from a 22\" monitor is going to be bigger to your eyes than 10 feet from a 30\" TV. This makes it easier to see every little imperfection.",
"Most DVD's have a resolution (number of pixels / dots on the screen) of 480p (720x480).\n\nThis means that there are 480 dots horizontally making up the video that you're watching.\n\nThe TV that you're using is more than likely standard definition (480p), or high definition (720p).\n\nBecause the source resolution (the dvd that you're watching) shares the same resolution as your television, the image clarity is fine and does not look distorted (or in the case of your TV being 720p, the dvd is only stretched/upscaled a very small amount, thus retaining a good level of quality anyway).\n\nNow, contrast this to your 22\" monitor. It more than likely has a resolution of 1680x1050 or over.\n\nIn this instance, you're taking your tiny 720x480 video and stretching it out to 1680x1050 pixels.\n\nThis means that your source video is being stretched a great deal more on your monitor, which causes a higher amount of distortion. Couple this with sitting close to your computer monitor, and the result is a very poor looking video.\n\nHope that makes sense.",
"monitors use a higher resolution generally but the problem is probably that your dvd player and tv upscale things while your computer may not be for some reason. Though this would depend on your tv, dvd player, program your using on the computer.",
"You usually sit closer to your monitor. 2 feet from a 22\" monitor is going to be bigger to your eyes than 10 feet from a 30\" TV. This makes it easier to see every little imperfection.",
"Most DVD's have a resolution (number of pixels / dots on the screen) of 480p (720x480).\n\nThis means that there are 480 dots horizontally making up the video that you're watching.\n\nThe TV that you're using is more than likely standard definition (480p), or high definition (720p).\n\nBecause the source resolution (the dvd that you're watching) shares the same resolution as your television, the image clarity is fine and does not look distorted (or in the case of your TV being 720p, the dvd is only stretched/upscaled a very small amount, thus retaining a good level of quality anyway).\n\nNow, contrast this to your 22\" monitor. It more than likely has a resolution of 1680x1050 or over.\n\nIn this instance, you're taking your tiny 720x480 video and stretching it out to 1680x1050 pixels.\n\nThis means that your source video is being stretched a great deal more on your monitor, which causes a higher amount of distortion. Couple this with sitting close to your computer monitor, and the result is a very poor looking video.\n\nHope that makes sense."
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18enef | If a binary star system began to swell into red giants at a similar time, what would happen? Would the stars envelop one another, collapse, or remain separate bodies and then begin to shrink into red dwarfs? | I'm curious as to what would happen if a binary star system began to turn into red giants at a relatively close time frame, if not simultaneously. Are binary stars even close enough that, if swollen into red giants, they would touch? If they did touch, would there be some sort of reaction? Would they eventually envelop one another, and if they did, would they separate once more if they shrunk into red dwarfs? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/18enef/if_a_binary_star_system_began_to_swell_into_red/ | {
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"If they're close enough, the outer layers would engulf one another, forming a contact binary system. The two cores would share a common envelope of outer atmosphere. From there, it's possible that it could evolve into an accreting binary system.\n\nAlso, as a side note, the phase after red giant would be **white** dwarf."
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3uomqs | if someone posts a sexual picture of a minor on a site like imgur (for example), would a regular person get in trouble for finding it while flipping through random stuff? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3uomqs/eli5_if_someone_posts_a_sexual_picture_of_a_minor/ | {
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"I don't think so, it's pretty evident when someone accidentally stumbles across something like that vs. When someone on purpose looks for something like that. For the most part if people who are not interested in that will report it as soon as they see it. ",
"Viewing child porn is not a crime. *Possessing* it is. \n\nEven though a copy is stored on your computer temporarily when you view it, it is not considered \"possession\". "
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2ij8qx | Why didn't China and the US have joint trials of Japanese war criminals after WWII? | I ask this because the trials of German War Criminals at the IMT were held with the joint allies of the European front, whereas the IMFTE was an entirely American run show. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ij8qx/why_didnt_china_and_the_us_have_joint_trials_of/ | {
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"I don't know why you think so, China, the Soviet Union, the UK, the US, Canada and several other nations had a judge and persecutor at the trial."
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1kum8q | why did bradley manning get a 35 year sentence? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kum8q/eli5_why_did_bradley_manning_get_a_35_year/ | {
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"He violated a number of federal laws which prevent disclosure of classified information. He pled guilty to violating some of the infractions he was charged with, and so the court martial moved to a sentencing phase. The sentence was a lot less than what prosecutors were asking for, and a bit more than what his defense attorney had requested. \n\nAs part of his guilty plea, Manning apologized to the court martial and to the US and the people he says he hurt, saying: \n\n > \"I am sorry that my actions hurt people. I'm sorry that they hurt the United States. I am sorry for the unintended consequences of my actions. When I made these decisions I believed I was going to help people, not hurt people. ... At the time of my decisions I was dealing with a lot of issues.\""
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yjlxm | At the dawn of Copyright, was it a right demanded by authors, publishers or maybe somebody else? How did others perceive this concept? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/yjlxm/at_the_dawn_of_copyright_was_it_a_right_demanded/ | {
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"Arguably, Mark Twain set the stage for what Americans would consider the current copyright predicament. I think we can all agree, that the current perversions of his lobbying to insulate artists from piracy is something we'd be more apt to read in one of his novels today, than expect it derived from his efforts, but here we are...\n\n[A fun source of this observation](_URL_0_)"
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1ev9yr | What are some of the funniest/most ridiculous examples of American propaganda during the Cold War? | One of the best I know of included a plan drafted to fake the second coming of Christ in Cuba, then announce to the stunned Cubans through a loudspeaker meant to be the voice of "Jesus," that "Jesus" was ordering them to revolt against communism. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ev9yr/what_are_some_of_the_funniestmost_ridiculous/ | {
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"[Is your washroom breeding bolsheviks?](_URL_0_)",
"[I was a communist for the FBI](_URL_0_). In this movie, communists are portrayed in the film as cynical opportunists, racists who are interested only in seizing power on behalf of the Soviets and not in improving social and labor conditions in the U.S. They are shown exploiting ethnic tensions to get their way, such as by wrapping copies of a Jewish newspaper around lead pipes used to beat up people during a strike. They also are shown fomenting discontent among blacks. Despite doing so, they are shown as cynical racists, calling blacks and Jews by derogatory names."
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84u0g0 | Stained Glass in cathedrals | Stained glass can show a lot of stories and events, sometimes with quite a lot of detail. But some of the windows are very high, sometimes too high for anyone to actually understand what they are looking at. So why go to all that effort?
Or was it more important for it to there, as part of the building, rather than to be 'read'. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/84u0g0/stained_glass_in_cathedrals/ | {
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"Here's an earlier thread that had the same question - _URL_0_"
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2ozgdr | why is there oversupply in oil right now? | I understand that the dropping oil prices are from oversupply of oil, but why is there an over supply? Did the world's oil usage suddenly drop? What from? Or is there some new kind of oil-extraction tech that made supply jump up? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ozgdr/eli5_why_is_there_oversupply_in_oil_right_now/ | {
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"Saudi Arabia (Saudi Aramco) has purposefully been producing additional oil, and OPEC has been as well to drive the price down for various reasons. If you're looking for reasons, there are 100s of threads on it already.",
"Production has gone up. Mainly this is because of fracking. Fracking, within the past 10 years, has gone from virtually unknown to a major oil production method. Lots of places in the US (and the world) have oil but it's locked in my gelogicial formations that prevent us from using standard drilling pratices. Now, with fracking we can get at some of this oil and those methods have started yelding results.\n\nSecondly many oil producing countries are upset by the new US oil production. Those countries know that fracking is only profitable when oil is above $60 or $70 a barrel. So those countries have decided to drill for MORE oil in hopes that it drives the price below the threshold where fracking is profitable. Thus driving the fracking companies out of businesses. No word yet on if this is working, and these countries historically have problems working together. \n\nThe oversupply exists because production is up, it's not about the demand side.",
"The world has for a long time had the capacity to produce more oil than is used on a given day/year. OPEC - as a result - controls daily output to stabilize prices. This has been very effective because the vast majority of OPECs oil can be got at relatively cheaply. However, with prices going higher and higher it has become cost-effective to get at more expensive-to-extract oil ala fracking, tar sands, deep water drilling and so on. So...as this has happened non-OPEC oil has flooded the market. OPEC thinks to themselves \"hey...theres is expensive to extract if the prices drop it won't make sense for them to continue production and we can return to favorable marketshare position by just waiting it out\". ",
"Trying to push American shale out sums it up pretty well.",
"My understanding is that there is always an oversupply of oil -- you just moderate how much you're willing to sell. Just like diamonds.",
"So I don't have the exact numbers, but I believe they are close. OPEC makes profit at $15 a barrel to put a tube in the ground and suck up oil. The US makes profit at $30 a barrel fracking, or whatever the new hot thing is now. Basically OPEC has an abundance of cheap oil, and knows that the US has higher costs. So, as the US just became the #1 producer, OPEC didn't cut production at all. To add, winter is here, and we use less oil then to begin with, as we switch from summer blends of gas. So what OPEC wants to do is drive the price so low that US producers stop, possibly bankrupt. \n\nTldr- too much supply, OPEC isn't cutting production to drive out US drillers\n",
"Economist here. US invading Libya pretty much capsized their oil exports. Plus there was the turmoil in Egypt and the ongoing Syrian conflicts. These events led a drop in the oil supply on the market. \n\n\n\nTo compensate that OPEC counties (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait) had to increase their oil production. \n\n\n\nNow thе Libyan oil is back on the market, The US is producing more and predictions for consumption are low. \n\n\n\nFact! The key point that sent oil plummeting was the OPEC decision to maintain current levels of production, thus creating an oversupply of oil.\n\n\n\nTheory! Because of the ongoing situation with Russia, The US \"encouraged\" Arab countries to maintain production. While they (arab) won't suffer that much and fracking in the us might get backtracked a few years, this was a huge blow to the already tense Russian economy."
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5r8q2f | why is the g string on a guitar the one that tends to go out tune the most. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5r8q2f/eli5_why_is_the_g_string_on_a_guitar_the_one_that/ | {
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"I've always assumed it was because of a couple things - \nThe g string has some pretty crucial notes in open chords. In an E major chord it's the third (so even if your guitar is tuned perfectly it would be a little sharp) and in an A major chord it'd have an octave (and out-of-tune octaves are particularly noticeable). In a G major chord it's the same problem - octaves. \n\nI'm sure there are some physical reasons that I don't know about, but I think that an out-of-tune G string would just be more noticeable than other strings. \n\n-- In addition, on most electric guitars, it's the lowest string that isn't wound. It requires the least amount of change in tension to change pitch. That would probably be the biggest reason. \nTo further explain - imagine putting a new string on your guitar. If you pluck the string as you're just tightening it, the first few turns change the pitch a lot more than the last few turns - it's because of some physics I don't really understand, but in short the same change in string tension will drop the pitch of the G string more than the E string. ",
"I have always come to the conclusion that because it's the thinnest wound string (on most electric and acoustic guitars)it has the thinnest core and thinnest wind,these are more prone to stretching due to the nature of the materials they are made from, than say the high e or b string which once stretched out it becomes more stable unlike the g string which has 2 types of material to stretch out,therefore making it the last one to stop stretching. Make sure you stretch the strings out when restringing thoroughly and you'll have the need to re-tune the guitar less. Been a guitar tech for nearly 10 years and it's the best answer I can piece together after speaking to the guys at rotosound in the UK. Hope this helps \n",
"Have your guitars professionally set up, and you won't have strings going out of tune. Tighten the keys, put a little bit of Vaseline with graphite shavings from a pencil, mix up and put in the nut. That will stop slipping. So as long as your keys are tight, you should stay in tune. There's a lot of things you can do to your guitar to get it to perform better."
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1k54ow | what is the point of captive breeding if the animals lose their ability to live in the wild? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1k54ow/eli5what_is_the_point_of_captive_breeding_if_the/ | {
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"If done properly, animals bred in captivity don't lose the ability to live in the wild. The wild California Condor population is growing due to captive breeding efforts and release into the wild."
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fitctg | I recently heard it said that Chinese and Muslim Astronomers discovered we live in a heliocentric solar system before capernicus. A Google search says nothing. Which is true? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fitctg/i_recently_heard_it_said_that_chinese_and_muslim/ | {
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"There were certainly people who put forward heliocentric ideas prior to Copernicus. Copernicus saw himself as a resurrector of ancient knowledge, not the creator of a new theory. Copernicus himself specifically references many Ancient Greek authors (Copernicus' approach is in many ways essentially Pythagorean) and scholars from the Muslim world, notably al-Bitruji, a Spanish-Muslim astronomer. Al-Bitruji was well-known to European astronomers in Copernicus' time; he attacked the Ptolemaic model and developed several other ways of understanding planetary motion, but was not heliocentric himself, though he did discuss the possibility of heliocentrism. Other Muslim scholars that Copernicus explicitly referenced in his book are Al-Battani and Ibn Rushd, both about planetary motions. Many Muslim scholars were critical of Ptolemy, and Copernicus seems to have found these criticisms generative. \n\nDid prior thinkers have heliocentric models? Some did. Aristarchus of Samos was said to have argued for heliocentricity in 200 BCE or so; Copernicus was aware of this argument, but did not mention him in the published version of his book (he had a small reference to him that got removed and not re-integrated until the 19th century). Nicholas Oresme, a medieval European scholar, also discussed the possibility of heliocentrism, though ultimately concluded that he preferred the geocentric model. \n\nTo get to your main question: did the Chinese or Muslim scholars explicitly outline heliocentric theories beyond what has been mentioned? I don't find solid reference to any, though it is hardly impossible. My searching through Joseph Needham's extensive _Science and Civilization in China_ does not turn up any examples of the Chinese thinking along these lines prior to the arrival of the Jesuits, and in general I think it is fair to say that this kind of cosmological speculation is not quite the sort of thing that the Chinese astronomers were concerned with prior to influence from Europe (their approach to astronomy was more bureaucratic/data-acquiring than theory-centric). It seems unlikely to me that, over the course of their long history of organized astronomy, nobody contemplated whether the Earth might move around the Sun, but I don't have a record of it at hand. \n\nBut I would take issue with the term \"discovered\" here. Did Copernicus discover that the universe was heliocentric? No. He hypothesized/theorized that it was. There is a big difference there. \"Discovered\" implies that some kind of decisive evidence was found — this was not the case. Copernicus' approach was based on aesthetics, not evidence. It did not provide better data than the dominant Ptolemaic model, and had many strikes against it from a physical point of view (because they did not have the physics necessary to account for questions about why, if the world is rotating rapidly on its axis and also whooshing around in space, we don't just fly off of it). It was a provocative proposal to people who shared Copernicus' aesthetic concerns, and to people (like Johannes Kepler) who were also essentially sun-worshippers in the Pythagorean mode. \n\nKepler's discovery of his principles of orbital dynamics is the more important \"discovery\" here, as it actually made a heliocentric model fit the data well for the first time, and Galileo's telescopic discovery of the phases of Venus decisively disproved the Ptolemaic model (but not the geocentric Tychonic model) — these are the \"discoveries\" that made heliocentrism a viable system for use. \n\nI only bring this up because there is a game in the history of science, often regarding national or ethnic priority, that involves searching for the first instance of an _idea_ being held, and then holding that person up as the \"discoverer\" of some truth we today believe is to some degree valid. This is mostly a waste of time and not insightful for the process of science or its history. Copernicus is important not because he was the first person to come up with this idea, but because there were those in the immediate generation afterwards who took up the idea further and actually made it work. Frankly Kepler ought to get more credit than Copernicus, and arguably more than even Galileo, for the success of heliocentric theory — _not_ because he was the first person to have an idea, but because he was the person whose subsequent work on said idea actually made it viable. (That Kepler stumbled across his laws while pursuing alternative hypotheses, and still saw the work through until the end despite it disproving what he had wanted to believe, is an additional mark in his favor, as I see it.)"
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5uzg6j | are the different shampoos and soap actually different or is it all just a marketing trick? | if they aren't then is there is any ultimate product that includes everything? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5uzg6j/eli5_are_the_different_shampoos_and_soap_actually/ | {
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"I assume it's the same for soap, but as a hairdresser I can say that yeah, shampoos and conditioners for different things actually are different, especially if it's a professional product -cheaper products may contain lower quality ingredients and are often much harsher but should still do the job of cleaning your hair.\n\nTo keep it simple a colour protecting shampoo will be sulfate free, a shampoo for fine hair may be silicone free while one for coarser hair may not be, shampoo for curly hair may be designed so that it won't lather as much, and one for damaged hair will contain more protein than a shampoo that isn't for damaged hair.\n\nDesigning a \"one size fits all\" product is very difficult since ingredients will contradict each other and using something good for one hair type could be terrible for another. For example, for damaged hair to really get the benefits of a shampoo there would have to be extra protein, and extra protein isn't good for healthy hair and can actually make it brittle since it's too much. ",
"I recently learned on Reddit that tide is more expensive because the enzymes and ingredients they use are more expensive then most other laundry soap. My son gets bloody noses frequently and tide gets his sheets clean every time. We have tried others and would love to save money on a cheaper detergent, but whatever they use in tide is unique and worth the price.",
"I bought shampoo at the dollar store and it wouldn't bubble or really spread through my hair. ",
"I think soaps all use the same detergents, just varying amounts of it. The cheap soaps have mostly fragrance & sulfates, while better soaps contain less sulfates (or none at all, like lye soaps) and more moisturizers. I buy most of my soaps locally, as they are cheap and I have very sensitive skin. You can make your own soap from a kit at Michael's and make your own scent. Better quality soaps are completely worth it and they aren't ridiculously more expensive for a better soap. \nShampoo is a completely different story and doing your research is tedious. Cheap brands are mostly water & bubbles. ",
"There are definitely differences. Most soaps/shampoos clean nearly the same, but some are better for people with sensitive skin than others, etc.",
"Depends. I have worked at a cosmetics company. Some soaps, shampoos, body washes all had the same formula, even in the same brand. Others did not.",
"Correct me if I'm wrong here:\n\nI was always taught shampoos/soaps that boasted about containing vitamins were bullshit because your skin/hair can't absorb them and it's all a marketing ploy. I've tried googling it, but of course all that pops up are beauty blogs talking about vitamin enriched products. ",
"Interesting, I just went to a soap making class yesterday. We made cold pressed soap using coconut oil, palm oil, olive oil, lye - this makes the soap, but it needs time to turn into soap. You add whatever color and fragrance to it that you want. \n\nMy teacher said that Dove and Irish Spring aren't real soaps, but instead fragrance bars. Something about their ingredients. I'm not too sure about the specifics of it, but it was something she was very adamant about. \n\nTo make cold pressed soap you can use a lot of different things. The oils I mentioned above or fats (like chicken fat) or even butters (like coco butters). \n\nThere's a whole online recipe guide that helps you pick ingredients for the type of soap you want. Creamy, more lather, for dry skin, etc. So yes there appears to be many differences. ",
"I worked for an industrial soap making company, and yes, each of our soaps were designed to lift a specific range of grimes from specific surfaces. There are surfactants which help wet a surface so the soap molecules can cosy up to the grime, chelates which help the molecules disperse the grime into solution, the soap molecules which are double ended. One end sticks to a bit of some kind of dirt, the other end sticks to water. Flush and rip dat dirt outta there.\nBut there are many other things that affect the performance of a detergent like moderating bits, protectors and conditioners for the clean surface, perfumes and colors.\n\nHeat improves activity in most chemistry so a temperature range for best results is according to the formulation.\n\nComplex stuff. Your mileage may vary.\n"
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1zd1xb | Why is it that superconductors allow electrons to move MORE freely when they get really cold, even though coldness means a reduction in microscopic kinetic energy? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1zd1xb/why_is_it_that_superconductors_allow_electrons_to/ | {
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"Electrical resistance is caused in part by electrons scattering off randomly vibrating atoms in the conductor. As the temperature decreases, these atoms don't vibrate as strongly, so there's a lower chance that an electron will randomly scatter off an atom. This is why conductors become more conductive at lower temperatures.\n",
"Superconductivity is fundamentally different from ordinary electrical conduction. Superconducting electrons aren't more \"free\" than conduction band electrons; in a sense they are much more tightly bound to the energy state that they inhabit. In a superconductor, paired electrons (\"cooper pairs\") interact with the lattice they move through by so-called electron-phonon coupling (phonons are simply the modes of the crystal lattice itself). Now, instead of an electron having certain mean-free-path before scattering off the lattice (a \"nearly free\" electron), cooper pairs have a wavefunction that is coupled to the lattice such that scattering is prohibited.\n\nThink about a train engine: it certainly has more degrees of freedom rumbling around in an open field, but it will move much, much faster when it is set in tracks.\n\nThe reason that superconductivity requires low temperatures, is that the coupling energy is typically much lower than thermal vibrations in the lattice; the train is easily pushed off the tracks."
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4o1w4p | why is it easier to read on paper vs. a screen? | Any time I am editing a paper, I print it out and find so many more errors than I do if I read on-screen. Why is that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4o1w4p/eli5_why_is_it_easier_to_read_on_paper_vs_a_screen/ | {
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"Here is a link to an article describing how a University of Stavanger (Norway) concluded reading comprehension was higher with paper-based text than with computer screen. Perhaps this also raises editing proficiency?\n\n_URL_0_"
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2d1rib | john d. rockefeller had a net work of, adjusted for inflation, $330 billion. where did he "keep" this sum of wealth? | I know he participated in a lot of philanthropy throughout his life, but at his most "wealthy," where did he keep his money? Was it tied up in company stock? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2d1rib/eli5_john_d_rockefeller_had_a_net_work_of/ | {
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"He owned a very large company. Standard Oil was the main source of his net worth. "
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3nnn0z | why do all deaf people speak with that specific tone in their voice? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nnn0z/eli5_why_do_all_deaf_people_speak_with_that/ | {
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"They can't hear, so they can't hear the voice inflections that we all have. This means they have never learned how to properly use voice inflection. Instead they have just been instructed on how to properly form letters and words. This is difficult enough to teach someone who can't hear, and voice inflections aren't totally necessary, so they get dropped in favor of spending more time on the pronunciations. "
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c01v7x | why does the us not officially recognize taiwan as a sovereign state? what would happen if the us decided to? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c01v7x/eli5_why_does_the_us_not_officially_recognize/ | {
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"It's because China says Taiwan is rightfully their territory, and that US has decided it's better to play along rather than risk relationships with China. Despite many disputes China continues to be a very important trade partner to the USA. Trade with Taiwan will pretty much never reach that of with China since Taiwan is much smaller and has less people.\n\nIf the US did decide to recognize Taiwan the Chinese would probably decide to veto any UN recognition of Taiwan. China would also probably get more hostile to the US and increase their military spending, something that the US doesn't want China to do.\n\nIt's also worth noting that the dispute between Taiwan and China comes from the Chinese Civil War. In the end there were two main factions, the communists and the right-wing KMT. The KMT were ultimately kicked out of China, except in Taiwan where they managed to survive. To this day Taiwan considers itself as the rightful government of all of China. The mainland Chinese government disagrees with this and considers Taiwan part of their territory.",
"We don't because China doesn't want us to. China is a major trade partner with the US, Taiwan is less so. If the US had an issue like the Taiwan/mainland separation, China would also acknowledge it's ownership. The Chinese government is extremely insistent that Taiwan is part of China.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nWhat would happen? Chances are China would fight a very large tariff war with the US until it relented. Trump actually did this early in his Presidency, and had to rescind it due to the Chinese backlash."
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329yg5 | If monkeys are our closest relative, what is our most distant relative? Is there even any way to figure that out? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/329yg5/if_monkeys_are_our_closest_relative_what_is_our/ | {
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"You can see \"closeness\" by making a phylogenetic tree, where you compare similar genes between organisms and look at where they diverge. You can look at this for [human populations](_URL_2_), [primates](_URL_1_), or even [all of life](_URL_0_) and you can see that the phylogenetic tree of all organisms has three main branches: eukaryots, bacteria, and archaea, and bacteria are the farthest from us, meaning they diverged the longest time ago.",
"Monkeys are not our closest relatives, the chimpanzees are. Like humans, chimps are apes, not monkeys. \nThe most distantly-related animals that are currently living are the sponges. The most distantly-related living things are a little bit more difficult to sort out. If you look at mitochondrial DNA, the archaea are most distant. If you look at nuclear DNA, the bacteria are most distant. This is because our nuclear genome is descended directly from the archaea, whereas our mitochondria are literally bacteria. The eukaryotes, of which we are members, were formed through an endosymbiosis event between archaea and bacteria. We could not exist without either of these components, so it is a bit of a philosophical question as to which one we are more closely related to. "
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3np5en | why do orthodontists put a permanent retainer on your bottom teeth, but not your top teeth? | I got my braces off a long time ago, and my ortho put a permanent retainer on my bottom teeth to prevent shifting, but for the top teeth, he made a removable retainer. I just don't understand why they don't put one up top too, it'd be very convenient. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3np5en/eli5_why_do_orthodontists_put_a_permanent/ | {
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"Uhh, I have a permanent retainer on my upper teeth. Maybe it's just you given your certain condition, the orthodontist decided it wasn't necessary. ",
"my sisters got their retainers on top and bottom, but mines just bottom. the orthodontist said it was because there wasn't enough room to comfortably fit on top. "
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nojg3 | Why do my fingers turn blue when they get cold? | Also, why does it hurt to warm them quickly afterwards? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/nojg3/why_do_my_fingers_turn_blue_when_they_get_cold/ | {
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"When your body is subjected to cold the vessels in your extremities will \nconstrict so that less blood is going out to places where it will cool off more. This is in an effort to keep as much heat in your chest and head which contain crucial functions and thus cannot afford to get cold. This decrease in the amount of blood in your fingers probably is the reason they look more blue than normal. (since blood is red...)\n\nWhile your fingers were cold they went on living and the cells there continued producing metabolic waste products which are normally swept away by the blood. With less blood flow, however, the sweeping is impeded as well so the waste builds up. When the fingers rewarm your fingers feel its worth the luxury of powering the pain receptors (basically) now that they have plenty of blood and your pain receptors say \"YOU IDIOT, THERE'S STUPID METABOLIC WASTE BUILT UP IN HERE\" and it hurts. It stops hurting once the waste has been swept away and the fingers are back to a happy state.\n\nMy credentials: I am a senior studying molecular biology.",
"Interesting aside, [Raynaud's phenomenon](_URL_0_) can cause finger tips to turn blue in response to cold weather and occurs in about 1 in 20 people. It is also associated with other color changes. \n\n[Here](_URL_1_) is an image. ",
"When your body is subjected to cold the vessels in your extremities will \nconstrict so that less blood is going out to places where it will cool off more. This is in an effort to keep as much heat in your chest and head which contain crucial functions and thus cannot afford to get cold. This decrease in the amount of blood in your fingers probably is the reason they look more blue than normal. (since blood is red...)\n\nWhile your fingers were cold they went on living and the cells there continued producing metabolic waste products which are normally swept away by the blood. With less blood flow, however, the sweeping is impeded as well so the waste builds up. When the fingers rewarm your fingers feel its worth the luxury of powering the pain receptors (basically) now that they have plenty of blood and your pain receptors say \"YOU IDIOT, THERE'S STUPID METABOLIC WASTE BUILT UP IN HERE\" and it hurts. It stops hurting once the waste has been swept away and the fingers are back to a happy state.\n\nMy credentials: I am a senior studying molecular biology.",
"Interesting aside, [Raynaud's phenomenon](_URL_0_) can cause finger tips to turn blue in response to cold weather and occurs in about 1 in 20 people. It is also associated with other color changes. \n\n[Here](_URL_1_) is an image. "
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8q0e8u | When did families start keeping animals purely as pets instead of working animals? What was the reason for having an animal ‘just because’ when for most people it was generally difficult to even feed the family, not including a pet? | My particular interest is for the U.K. and U.S. but of course want to hear history of other countries. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8q0e8u/when_did_families_start_keeping_animals_purely_as/ | {
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"I'm going to talk about dogs, for the very important and scholarly reason that I am allergic to cats.\n\nThe origins of dogs as \"just pets\", or companion animals, is...I don't want to say *debated*, because it's not really, but it's more that it depends on what criteria scholars want to use. In the West, Victorian, 18th century, Renaissance, Rome, and prehistoric are probably the most popular.\n\nTo give you an idea of some of the difficulty of identifying what it means to have \"just a pet\", I'll talk about a couple of examples.\n\nScholars would all agree that by the 20th century, we're firmly in companion animal territory. However, from 1914 to 1962, the most popular toy dog breed (a reasonable proxy for dog-as-pet) in the UK at that point was the Pekingese. Sarah Cheang argues that the immense popularity of the Pekingese was the result of colonialist nostalgia in England, with a nice twist of Orientalism for 'mystical Old China.' She quotes a 1931 \"history\" of the Pekingese:\n\n > How many people realize, as they walk abroad with that most uncannily clever four-footed friend, that they are in the company of one of\nan imperial race of the loftiest lineage, a race that for hundreds of years was never\nset eyes on by any but the most privileged persons of the royal court, a race that\nless than a hundred years ago was shrouded in mystery, the subject of endless\nspeculation by Chinese and foreigners alike?...We of a modern civilization may\nbe unaware of this, but the proud little Pekingese never forgets.\n\nSo is this floofy little lapdog really \"just\" a pet? Or is it playing some kind of symbolic role? Does that count as a \"job\"?\n\nAnother popular era for the onset of dog as \"pet\" is the Renaissance. Some solid evidence here is the wild proliferation at this time of toy and miniature dog breeds in Europe. Lapdogs for women are particularly noted and illustrated, and French and other royalty from the 16th century on became particularly linked with the Bichon breeds. But as John Friedman argued, collars and other clothing/accessories for Renaissance-era dogs served as an important sign of the way that dogs helped family construct a self-identity. Is that a \"job\" for a dog to have?\n\nSimilarly, Kathleen Meikle suggests that in the Middle Ages, dogs were a sign of what she calls \"ostentation\"--basically \"We're rich enough to waste food on this dog.\" (Has she ever had a dog? Mine would probably be A-OK eating *whatever*.) That's certainly reflected by how Chaucer describes the Prioress and her two little dogs in *Canterbury Tales*. But on the flip side, we read in the 13th century *Ancrenne Wisse*, an idealized prescription for the religious life of anchoresses (religious women who vowed to spend the rest of their lives in a single room/set of rooms attached to a church, praying and reading and hearing Mass) that they may not have dogs, but they may have a cat *specifically* to act as a mouser. The need to specify suggests that people were keeping animals for reasons that had nothing to do with rodent pests--but an anchoress would also have no need of a cat or dog for ostentation.\n\nSo I want to finish by mentioning one of my favorite pieces of prehistoric archaeological evidence for dogs as companion animals, at a 12,000 year old site in the upper Jordan River valley (modern-day Israel). The grave contains the skeletons of a human and a canine. The man is clearly elderly--not the kind to be out hunting or herding. The dog is a puppy, four to five months old. Not yet of much use around the household They are buried so that the man is curled up as if lying down in bed or relaxing. His hand is extended and rests on the dog--one wants to say, petting it.\n\nObviously we don't have the full story here. We don't *know* he was buried \"petting\" the puppy; we don't know if the puppy was his. But if those interpretations are correct, that points to pretty solid evidence for a human-animal connection that had little chance of involving more than companionship--he wasn't likely to need much of a working dog, and there was apparently no reason for the pupper by other members of the community once its probable-owner had passed.\n\nSo, I would say, the evidence for dogs as only pets in all these eras is ambivalent--dependent more on the criteria we pick than on reconstructable human-pupper relationships. One thing is definitely for sure, though--working breeds or not, humans and dogs have shared a special bond since time immemorial. Medieval hunting and veterinary texts from the Islamic world castigate their readers for using the best silks on dog clothing, and for having dogs jump on their owners' furniture and sleep in their beds.\n\nNot ideal, perhaps, for an orderly household or for the fiercest hunters; wonderful and fitting if your dog is/is also your pet.",
"Hellenistic tombstones and other evidence from ancient Greece and Rome suggest that the wealthy at least were able to keep animals as pets. \n\nOne of my favorite tombstones (which you can see on display at the Getty Villa) depicts a girl named [Apollonia](_URL_2_) gently petting a dove. The tenderness with which she is interacting with the animal implies that it is her pet. The image of children, particularly little girls, with pet doves is nothing new...a [5th century stele](_URL_1_) shows a girl cuddling with one dove while holding another on her finger. Children's pets were often included on gravestones, especially in the Hellenistic era. Art of that era focused on the delicate and precious, and the gravestones include these pets to reflect the innocence of the children who had died. \n\nAnother of my favorites is a stele for the boy [Moschion](_URL_0_). It depicts him playing with a little dog (and seemingly offering it a bird to eat, which seems cruel, but perhaps this was the ancient equivalent to Milk Bones?). Could he have been training this dog for a useful purpose, rather than just having it as a pet? Perhaps. But I do think it's important that he was so attached to it that it was depicted with him on this tombstone, much the same way people now form attachments to their pets. \n\nMoving onto ancient Rome, Petronius' *Satyricon* comes to mind when speaking of pet dogs. At a dinner party with the absurdly rich Trimalchio, the main character Encolpius observes a boy, Croesus, with a fat puppy named Pearl. Poor Pearl nearly gets torn apart by a big guard dog named Scylax, and the implication is that he has little use other than the amusement of the boy. It's just one of many illustrations that Trimalchio has more money than he knows what to do with; he can feed not only an army of guests and household slaves but also their pets.\n\nAnd, of course, every intermediate Latin student who's read Catullus knows about Lesbia's sparrow. While the sparrow is undoubtedly a sexual innuendo, it does remind us that Roman ladies kept birds as pets. \n\nOverall, I'd say there are two factors at work. The first is the attachment to pets that we still feel. The second is undoubtedly status display; someone who has a pet is able to feed both themselves and an otherwise useless animal without a problem. ",
"Also, when did people start treating pets as offsprings instead of pets? (Serious question)",
"Anthropology might provide some insight. The Yanamamo in the Orinoco Basin would keep a variety of pets. They had dogs, reptiles, birds. When missionaries brought them chickens they would eat the eggs but not the chickens themselves because any animals that lived in the village were considered part of the family and not to be eaten. These are people that were using stone tools up until a few generations ago. I think pets could be as old as language."
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"http://museum.classics.cam.ac.uk/collections/casts/girl-doves-stele",
"http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/7142/unknown-maker-grave-naiskos-of-apollonia-greek-about... | |
2kzw0r | what roadblocks hinder us from feeding dna (genome or snippet) into a computer and "running" the strand to see what it builds? | I think the question is pretty self-explanatory. Basically, do we currently have processes that allow us to "run" a DNA sequence like we run a program, and if not, what keeps us from doing this. Is it a lack of computing power? Do we not fully understand the mechanics? Does something moving toward this end goal exist now? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kzw0r/eli5_what_roadblocks_hinder_us_from_feeding_dna/ | {
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"You cannot just feed a genome sequence into a computer and ask it to \"run\". You need to know what you are looking for. You need to know how proteins fold after the DNA has been transcribed and translated which is an extremely complicated process involving millions of protein interactions. We do not even know how proteins precisely interact with each other. Proteins undergo several steps of folding and structural changes to make it super compact before it becomes functional. Reverse engineering that take a long time and something that computers cannot do, because there are way too many variables that it can account for.\n\nEDIT: my assumption was that OP was talking about the human genome.",
"We can determine the string of amino-acids that a DNA sequence encodes. Problem is this only gives us the primary structure of the protein. After (actually during) the construction of the primary structure the amino-acid chain interacts with a bunch of other proteins present in the cell that fold it in various ways, creating the secondary and tertiary structure of the proteins, and that these folds occur correctly is critical for the function of the protein.\n\nWe understand the construction of the primary amino-acid chain but not the protein interactions that produce the secondary, tertiary and quartenary structures. Beyond that we have no idea how the produced protein will interact with other proteins.",
"Several factors\n\n1. DNA gene sequences contain regions that don't code for anything (introns). These are removed during processing but if they stayed it would likely be a shitty protein not capabal of much\n\n2. Proteins sequences can give some information but not a lot. They can tell you the amino acids but how these amino acids arrange themselves is VERY VERY VERY VERY hard to determine on a large scale. you can look at a string and say \"oh that makes a certain structure\" but you also need to determine how the things that make up that structure interact with all of the others in the system.\n\n3. proteins undergoe modifications before they are used\n\n4. there are several possible confirmations for a protein\n\nOVERALL: not enough computing power. There are nearly infinite possible structures for even a short strand of sequence. Better algorithms need to be developed. ask more questions if you want ",
"We don't really understand how protein folding works, so our simulations don't get past the stage immediately after dna transcription when chains of amino acids take on the specific shapes which allow them to function as the proteins constituting living cells."
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8gsdr4 | do any other animals use a “baby voice” when interacting with their young? | EDIT: Thanks for your comments everyone, makes total sense! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8gsdr4/eli5_do_any_other_animals_use_a_baby_voice_when/ | {
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"cats do kind of a 'rrrroo' sound to their kitties. more like a purr mixed with a soft meow ",
"of a sort. animals don't have language the way we do, but they do have whole sets of behaviors around dealing with their young and this includes vocalizations. ",
"Humans actually do the baby voice (high pitched, slow and exagerated) because it allows the baby to learn language. They won't learn if you just talk to them normally. I don't know much about how animals learn communication though, except that it's a mixture of already knowing how to makes sounds and learning from others.",
"Mares nicker to their foals. It's that very deep, gentle \"wub wub wub\", llike a super cuddly quiet dubstep sound.\n\nAdult horses still do this if they're really happy or in the presence of someone ~~they love~~ who has snacks."
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62i1jp | what does the patriots act really do? | I get that it allows for the government to wiretap and monitor suspected terrorists. Why so much uproar about it, does it allow the government to monitor the common people? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/62i1jp/eli5_what_does_the_patriots_act_really_do/ | {
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"How do you suppose the government tells \"suspected terrorists\" from \"common people\"? They can't, unless they monitor everybody and see which people talk to ISIS Headquarters. If you talk to ISIS-HQ, then everybody you talk to are \"suspected terrorists\".",
"The Patriot act was enacted because the various intelligence agencies are limited in their power to monitor, detain and interrogate suspected terrorists. First it, this act first defines Terrorism and its actors , it also define their rights ( or should I say their lack of rights) and give the power to the president and a few people to declare an individual enemy of the state (which means hello Drone, goodbye life).\nIt was voted on and signed as a result of the 9/11 shock. Most senator and congressman that voted for it didn't read it nor figure out that some extremely large loopholes were left open to facilitate intelligence (like the massive surveillance of the NSA on every telecommunications that are happening within the USA and abroad). \nBasically, This act is a law that enables to the government to bypass the constitution against foreign individuals and US citizens that have their communication crossing any borders."
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1pnz2k | Do we really lose body heat faster through certain parts of your body? | Okay so I grew up being told you lose the most heat through your head, then when I was in high school, a biology teacher told me you lose it roughly all the same through different parts of your body. And now, my STCW basic safety teacher is telling me you lose it fastest through your head, neck, and other parts. I'm not asking so I can tell her off, because I have no interest, she started as a deckhand when woman were first getting on ships and got hazed pretty damn hard. She is also a captain in the coast guard and very decorated. Basically, she is really tough and deserves respect, and I wouldn't disrespect her by undermining her like that, plus she is probably right, I just want to know the truth. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1pnz2k/do_we_really_lose_body_heat_faster_through/ | {
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"Heat loss/transfer occurs all over your skin. The rate of heat transfer depends primarily on the surface area to volume ratio, and the density of capillaries (vascularization) in that particular area.\n\nThis naturally makes your hands colder and your armpits warmer. Hands are highly vascularized and have high surface area to volume ratio. The armpit area has major vessels, has a low surface area to volume ratio, and has a corner shape leading it to be shielded, thus being warmer.",
"Good question! Your biology teacher was correct, you do NOT lose most of your heat through your head. This myth developed from a flawed experiment back in the 1950s, where military personnel were bundled up all nice and cozy, with the tops of their heads exposed to frigid temperatures. Of course, in that situation, they lost an astounding amount of body heat through their heads, because that was the only exposed skin. Ever since, this myth has been widely propagated.\n\nYou can read a bit about it here: _URL_0_\n\nThis article says that it was an experiment conducted by the US military, but the first time I heard the story it was the Russians that did it. Not really relevant either way.\n\nSource: I'm a third year chemical engineering student, and I know a thing or two about heat transfer."
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2ff56d | why do most islamic terrorist groups target the u.s. when there are countries that discriminate much more on their muslim populations? ex thailand or arguably france | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ff56d/eli5_why_do_most_islamic_terrorist_groups_target/ | {
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"have you enumerated \"most\" ?\n\nspain, indonesia, phillipines, china, egypt, india, sweden, uk. \n\nUS attacks are: first WTC bombing, USS Cole, 9/11, Boston marathon. that's 4 out of 25. hardly \"most\" "
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br8kph | Cardinal Richelieu is often thought of as an evil, villainous character, due to his portrayal by Dumas in "The Three Musketeers." Would this be accurate in any sense? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/br8kph/cardinal_richelieu_is_often_thought_of_as_an_evil/ | {
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1xcvvo | why do we sometimes wake up with curvy lines randomly pressed into our body? | Anytime I have them, I usually get them on the arm I sleep on, my back, or my stomach. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xcvvo/eli5_why_do_we_sometimes_wake_up_with_curvy_lines/ | {
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"They're imprints in your skin from wrinkles in your sheets, or the way your skin is pressed against your bed. "
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39x149 | with all of the proof of torture and other terrible things going on in north korea, why don't we band together and demolish them and save the citizens? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39x149/eli5_with_all_of_the_proof_of_torture_and_other/ | {
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"Will you enlist? Will you make your kids enlist? Then why should anyone else?\n\nA pentagon war game predicted 500,000 US deaths with the note \"it'll get worse the longer we wait\" that report is several years old now. NK doesn't have new technology, they don't have new toys and tools but they have man power, a shit ton of man power. NK would lose, there's no question about that but now you have Seoul peppered with artillery fire, some number of nuclear detonations during the war either in SK or NK and the rebuilding of Berlin on crack. It'll cost a lot of lives on both sides and a SHIT TON of money afterwards. There's a rule in world politics, as long as you only kill your own people nobody cares."
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1g62m1 | Were there female leaders in early Christianity? | I've seen interesting points for female leaders, but a lot of sources on the issue seem to have either conservative or feminist bias.
What's the neutral historical stance? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1g62m1/were_there_female_leaders_in_early_christianity/ | {
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"Okay then…\n\nJunia in Romans 16:7 is almost certainly a female, and seems to be called an apostle (there is debate about how to take the phrase). Given that Paul also descries Timothy, Silvanus, Epaphroditus, and Barnabus as apostles, it is also probably that ‘apostle’ here is a non-technical term for a messenger or someone involved in travelling missionary work.\n\nPriscillia, of the Priscilla and Aquila combo team, seems to take a leading role, certainly she is working alongside her husband, as in Acts 18:26, where she is involved in furthering instruction to Apollos.\n\nPhoebe, mentioned in Romans 16:1-2 is described as a deacon and a patron. This probably indicates that Phoebe has enough wealth and influence that she is able to use it for visiting and local christians in catering to not only their physical needs as guests, but some help in political or social matters. Her role as deacon also likely involves carrying Paul’s letter to Rome (and possibly explaining parts of it).\n\nThe New Testament contains some other female figures, named and unnamed, who appear to functino along the lines of Graeco-Roman patronage, using wealth and influence to support the Christian community and advance its causes.\nMoving beyond the New Testament, there are few significant female leaders. The threefold pattern of bishop-presbyter-deacon emerges relatively quickly after the NT, so that you see this kind of pattern in the 2nd century writings. So that kind of structural position is mostly closed within early mainstream Christianity. Noteable exceptions include the Montanists, a late 2nd century movement that emphasises continuing revelation, strict moralism, and Phrygia as the location of the New Jerusalem. Prominent among the leaders were Prisc(ill)a and Maximilla, two leading prophetic figures. One might conjecture that the status of ‘prophet’ was a way for a woman to exercise teaching/leadership authority and sidestep the (still-emerging) structure of local churches.\n\nYou also tend to see the emergence of the ideals of martyrdom, then asceticism, and virginity, which creates alternate spaces for women to be seen as significant figures within early christianity. So martyrdom offered one way in which women, not so much as leaders, but as exemplars, might fulfil their Christian calling and become role-models to others. Women such as Perpetua and Felicitia. (3rd century martyrs). In the later 3rd century you see more of the development of asceticism, and someone like Olympias the Deaconess (ca 361-408) shows the kind of leadership a woman might exercise. This social power was increased by being either a dedicated virgin or else a widow, since in those two cases a woman was freed from certain social bonds, and thus occupied a more independent social position.\n\nDoes this start to address your question? Most of what I’ve written can be derived from general dictionaries of early christianity, biographies of early christian figures, etc.. And obviously the New Testament stuff is right there for anyone who cares to read the NT.\n"
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sdq6d | Question about ensuring the accuracy of statistical surveys | When scientists launch a statistical survey through letters or the Internet, there will be people who doesn't respond, they will just ignore the request.
How many does that? Does the people who ignore those requests tend to have different opinions than other people?
Is this a problem? Is there a risk that there are a subset of non-responding people with different opinions which, when taken into account, would produce different results? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/sdq6d/question_about_ensuring_the_accuracy_of/ | {
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"Yes. It is called non-response bias.\n\nA blatant example would be the question \"are you too busy to answer this question\" with 100% saying no."
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hepkh | High school student here, where/what should I go into if I want to study stem cell research? | Because I have no idea. I've always been interested in it, and I know that St. Jude Children's Hospital here in Memphis has a couple positions stem cell related, so ideally I was to work there. I just don't exactly know what to go into for college, or what schools are good about teaching it.
Thanks for any help! | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/hepkh/high_school_student_here_wherewhat_should_i_go/ | {
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"My friends in biology (PhD, doctors, and professionals) say: *go to college*, study cell biology, and keep an open mind. Worry about where to work later. And good luck!",
"As others have stated, try to keep an open mind about what you want to do in terms of science later on.\n\nIn terms of my personal experience:\n\nI remember thinking in high school that stem cell research was too vogue-ish and too widely studied for me to go into it. Also, I absolutely hated developmental biology. Here's the funny thing.... I'm now doing stem cell and developmental biology research, and I absolutely love it.\n\nAs an undergrad, I majored in biochemistry, but if you're really passionate about working with stem cells, make sure to find internships or research experiences for undergraduates (REU's) as soon as possible. I fully regret only doing one of these experiences when I could have probably done 3 (during the summer). You can't really go wrong in terms of an undergraduate institution, since all biochem/biology/chemistry degrees teach much of the same stuff. The real difference is the research experiences that you can get, but as I said, you can apply for summer internships.\n\nTry to do as much primary literature reading as possible in order to understand what's currently being done in stem cell biology (Nature, Cell, Science, and Development are probably the best journals to find good stem cell articles). Understanding developmental, cell, and molecular biology is a must, and if you really want to be good, I would suggest doing a lot of reading outside of required course material.\n\nIn terms of looking for internships, I would suggest searching for stem cell institutes or institutes for regenerative medicine.\n\nAs a side note, make sure that you find some way to do research with the cells themselves in order to find out if you really like it. Stem cells in culture are extremely picky, and you essentially have to feed them fresh media every day or every other day. It makes maintaining cultures extremely cumbersome and annoying, and if you aren't willing to put in the work, then you'll be extremely dissatisfied with what you chose. That's the beauty of summer research experiences.\n\nIf you have any specific questions, feel free to PM me. Like I said, I have experience in this area, and I wouldn't mind helping.",
"I believe I can give you some advice as a stem cell researcher. I went to the University of Missouri and, as an undergrad, worked in a lab that used stem cells. First lab, first try.\n\nMy story is *incredibly rare* and I was incredibly lucky. You need to immediately work in a lab as soon as you get to college, no matter what area, and even do it without pay if need be. After you get lab experience, start looking at the professors in the biology department and find one that matches your interests. Get in contact with them, and try and set up an appointment, let them know you exist.\n\nThere are few stem cell labs throughout the country, so research colleges that you are interested in and look through the professors' research areas. Keep an open mind and read up on the literature.",
"Consider also studying bioengineering with a focus in Tissue Engineering. Tissue Engineering tries to apply stem cell knowledge into building organs for transplantation. It is still considered by many to be a voodoo science, but I feel that it is very interesting work.\n\nThe most important aspect of your undergraduate career will be laboratory research if you intend to study stem cells. Keep in mind that there are many different labs that use stem cells for various reasons. Some microfluidics labs are designing unique microfluidic devices that allow the researcher to see how single cells behave in unique microenvironments. Biologists will tear apart the stem cell and look at its DNA, RNA, and protein expression to understand what it is doing. Tissue engineers will try to give the stem cells the right environment to turn into tissues that need replacing (liver, muscle, kidney, etc).\n\n\nThere are no qualified academic programs to teach stem cells. Why do I say this? Stem cell research is still in its infancy. Just last week a paper published in Nature showed that iPs (induced pluripotent stem cells) trigger an immune reaction, and therefore could not be used for autologous transplantation. Embryonic stem cells are notoriously difficult to culture. They do not divide particularly fast, and they will differentiate even when you do not want them to. Anyways, I digress.\n\nMost of the advice here is good, especially ender776's post, and it appears he is directly working with stem cell research. I have friends working in stem cell research, and my particular lab has projects that work with induced pluripotent stem cells (regular adult cells that are reprogrammed to behave like embryonic stem cells).\n\n\nLike ender776, feel free to PM me if you have any questions. Oh yea, I should note that I've done some cell culture with adult stem cell lines (mouse MSC and human EPC), but no embryonic stem cell, or any of the really hot stem cell lines."
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34cr28 | Why does a book spin well when flipped on two of its three axes, but tumble on the other axis? | I watched [this video](_URL_0_) the other day and I couldn't quite figure out why the book tumbles on the last flip. The only thing I could think of was it was moving towards an axis with a lower moment of inertia. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/34cr28/why_does_a_book_spin_well_when_flipped_on_two_of/ | {
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"There was a paper about this:\n\nThe Tumbling Box\nSusan Jane Colley\nThe American Mathematical Monthly\nVol. 94, No. 1 (Jan., 1987), pp. 62-68\n_URL_0_ (probably behind a paywall)\n\nThe jist of it is that rotations about one axis are an unstable equilibrium. ",
"You can find a pretty straightforward explanation [here](_URL_0_) if you know a bit of classical mechanics. \n\nThe upshot is that in general for rigid bodies (assuming they don't possess certain symmetries), the moments of inertia about the three principle axes are not identical. \n\nFor all three moments, if you spin the body *perfectly* about the associated axes, with no rotation about the other axes, then they'll spin about that axis with no changes to angular speed. \n\nWhen one perturbs this ideal, meaning imparting a tiny amount of rotation about the other axes, then for two of the axes, the perturbations remain bounded (and tiny, for small initial perturbations). For the third, however, even a very small amount of rotation about the other axes leads to an unstable situation where the perturbation grows exponentially. This leads, ultimately, to the tumbling motion that you observe. What determines whether the perturbations grow or stay bounded is the relative size of the moment of inertia about that axis with respect to the other two. "
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],
[
"http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/67957/stability-of-rotation-of-a-rectangular-prism"
]
] | |
20f48r | . after a boil water order has been lifted, why don't you need to flush your pipes? | My city just lifted a boil water order and there was nothing stating we needed to let our pipes run, for example, to flush out the "dirty" water. How can this be? Thanks in advance! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20f48r/eli5_after_a_boil_water_order_has_been_lifted_why/ | {
"a_id": [
"cg2mlwd"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"because they probably assume that you have been using water, just boiling it first. The order doesn't get lifted the moment the source is safe, they wait until they think all of the bad water is out of the system. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
26vxhu | why is it so difficult to go from flying altitude to space? why can't we reinforce a strong cargoplane, jam a big rocket in the rear and fly it of into space? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26vxhu/eli5_why_is_it_so_difficult_to_go_from_flying/ | {
"a_id": [
"chuyzvn"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Does [this](_URL_0_) answer your question?"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://what-if.xkcd.com/58/"
]
] |
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