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67wp2k | why do people turn down the volume when they are looking for a street/house/etc? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67wp2k/eli5_why_do_people_turn_down_the_volume_when_they/ | {
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"Some people need to focus harder on the numbering of the street to find the right house. The loud stereo is easy to focus on because you have been listening to it so long, and it makes your brain focus on your ears as the main sense. Turning down the volume allows you to focus on seeing what you are searching for because you are thinking and comparing the house numbers to what you want."
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5ejr6h | why are hollywood movies allowed to show a penis and testicles on screen but not labia or a clitoris? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ejr6h/eli5_why_are_hollywood_movies_allowed_to_show_a/ | {
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"Partially because penises have two distinct \"modes,\" one explicitly sexual and the other, not. Vaginas, in comparison, have no such visible difference so people tend to err on the side of taboo.",
"For the same reason you can say \"damn it\" and \"God\" but not \"God damn it\". Because that's what someone wanted.",
"You can show a flaccid penis, but not erect. A vagina doesn't have the \"not turned on\" visual distinction, so it's banned. Not sure why THATS the line they draw, but hey. ",
"There are degrees of what you can show on screen. Breasts are generally OK, even in a PG-13 film (as long as they're only shown briefly; Titanic is probably the most infamous example). Buttocks are also OK, but male buttocks will tend to get a R-rating. Penises are pretty much an automatic R-rating. Spread vag is also an automatic R-rating. \n\nFemale genitalia are actually more likely to be seen than male, just the standard view you get when a woman's naked. Penises are very hard to find in American films (see what I did there), but they're a bit more common overseas, especially in French movies (god I love the French). \n\nBasically they're trying to draw an artificial distinction between film-making and porn; if it's explicit (showing the genitalia directly, actual intercourse, etc) that line gets *extremely* thin. ",
"Well. This is a thing based on the MPPA. Motion Picture Association of America. This is not a government organization and has been questioned by many as to how they work at all because they are secretive in their methods and view films behind closed doors and are not open to discussion as far as budging their ratings. If you want a really good documentary watch \"this film is not yet rated\". It is a good critical look at those who rate and influence popular film making in America. "
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2fqcpo | how do courts find juries that will be completely impartial and unbiased during court cases that hit international news, such as mass shootings, high profile murders etc. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fqcpo/eli5how_do_courts_find_juries_that_will_be/ | {
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"They are in fact fairly biased. The two lawyers get to decide who stays and goes, so they would ideally like a jury who is sympathetic to their side."
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3ufwbn | Other than light, what is the fastest thing we have ever observed? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3ufwbn/other_than_light_what_is_the_fastest_thing_we/ | {
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"That would be the [Oh-My-God particle](_URL_0_), which from what I can gather was traveling at 0.9999999999999999999999951 c. Although the source I got that from said it's a proton, and Wikipedia says it's an iron nucleus^([citation needed]), so that would be a bit fast.",
"Neutrinos would be a good bet. They are very light, and were thought to be massless for some time. No measurement has ever measured their speed as anything less than the speed of light. However, that isn't a very accurate measure, since it is hard to measure the difference between two large numbers. At these scales, we usually measure the energy of a particle, then infer its velocity later if we need it. This can't be done for neutrinos, since we do not yet know their mass.\n\nFor heavier particles, particularly fast cosmic rays would probably be a contender. We aren't exactly sure where they come from, but they have an absurd amount of kinetic energy. Imagine the kinetic energy of a baseball, concentrated on a single proton.\n\nAs a side-note, observations like this one are one reason why the worry about turning on the LHC a few years ago was unfounded. The collisions from particles like this one have 50 times more center-of-mass energy than collisions in the LHC. Therefore, if the LHC were any danger, we would have run into issues long ago from collisions in the upper atmosphere.\n\nSource: _URL_0_"
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2odpl3 | why is the "deep web" not as widely used/known about as the normal internet, and why is it not illegal to use? | As the title questions, why is this not known about?
I mean for example, if i was to ask every person who passed me in the street if they new that the internet/browsers we use, i.e Google, are actually only giving us a snippet of the information really out there, and there is actually a vast amount they would not even imagine was accessible, I can almost guarantee they would not have any idea this information or side of the web exists, in todays society how is this possible?
I understand the dangers involved in it, like the access to drugs, illegal porn ect, so I can understand why the media would be encouraged not to advertise it, but then why is it just not made illegal to use? Thanks!
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2odpl3/eli5_why_is_the_deep_web_not_as_widely_usedknown/ | {
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"I could bludgeon you to death with my phone. Should phones be illegal?\n\nI'm being facetious, obviously, but we don't make things illegal just because you can potentially do illegal things with them (guns, money, knives, cars, basically any object you can use to commit a crime would all have to be outlawed in that case).\n\nIt sounds like you're confusing the deep web with the dark net, by the way.",
"Because the vast majority of it is not drugs, illegal porn, etc.\n\nThe vast majority of the \"deep web\" is just databases. It's scientific data. It's company payrolls and internal networks. It's your reddit comment history.\n\nWhen Google's web trawler algorithms visit a webpage, the page can just say \"don't index me in your search functions\", and Google says \"OK!\" and goes on its merry way. It's not illegal because there are many legitimate reasons why you wouldn't want a certain page to be Googleable. The illegal stuff that happens on some pages is an unfortunate consequence, but it's not enough of a problem to force literally every webpage to be searchable.",
"1. it's not indexable by search sites like Google to begin with, so only the most Internet savy person would even know how to access it anyway.\n\n2. The Internet, all of the Internet, shall remain free and open to the public. And how can you make a part of the Internet illegal? There is no way to even enforce a law like that.",
"I think you're confusing the deep web with the dark web/dark net.\n\nThe so called \"dark net\" is the one with drugs/sex/guns etc for sale whereas the \"deep web\" is just websites that haven't been indexed (or indexed *properly*) by search engines. [This podcast explains the distinction in a lot of detail.](_URL_0_)"
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ulmxb | What causes urbanism? | I have been thinking about this for a while, and I am more or less at the point where I throw up my hands and decide there is no real "rule" of whether a society develops cities or not.
The answer here seems obvious. Agriculture leads to the city, right? Food surpluses lead to expanding population, and agriculture encourages sedentary behavior, which all leads to cities. However, while agriculture seems to be a necessary prerequisite of urbanism, it is not the sole cause. There have been plenty of agricultural societies without cities: Iron Age Britain and pre-colonial North America spring to mind (don't say Cahokia). So clearly that isn't the full story.
Then you can say, conflict leads to urbanism. Large scale conflict causes people to centralize and concentrate, which leads to political authority, which leads to cities. This argument is also advanced by the vast majority of early cities having walls--why have walls without conflict, and while correlation does not imply causation, in early Neolithic studies certain theoretical leaps are acceptable. Unfortunately, this falls under the same problem as the previous, as any theory that requires the Celts to be free of conflict is not very good.
So maybe urbanism follows political authority, and cities are created when societies are sufficiently centralized? An obvious early cause of centralization is collective agriculture, in other words irrigation, that requires large numbers of people to work in concert. But cities often develop where no such measures are needed--for examples we can look at the first cities in southern Anatolia.
Some people site early religious practices for why cities develop, but I see no reason to take this suggestion seriously.
Of course cultural diffusion can lead to cities--Roman Britain being a classical example. But this merely puts the question back one place, and doesn't really answer why cities develop in the first place.
Naturally, this topic is rather neolithic, but any examples of changes in population behavior can help. Also, I am aware that this is currently subject to debate, but it is an interesting question non the less and a fun one to discuss. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ulmxb/what_causes_urbanism/ | {
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"My impulse is to say that trade and exchange - once they reach a critical mass of some sort - can lead to urbanism.\n\nThe logic that I'm following here is that commodities first of all cause people to come together, and second of all are something for \"authority\" to exercise that authority over.\n\nEach commodity, and degree of complexity of said commodity, that a consuming agency could desire multiplies the number of interactions that the agency needs. Cities can thus form around hubs of exchange.",
"I agree - there is no true rule behind it - rather a multitude of factors that can all lead to the rise of civilization.\n\nI would like to approach the question from the other side: What are the causes of societies abandoning cities?\n\nParaphrasing Jared Diamond, this has happened in history due to agriculture collapsing (either due to climate change or human error such as deforestation), trade failing (thus making the city lose essential resources), violence and war and finally how citizens react to these challenges. These cover most of your points - take any of them away, and you're gonna have a bad time.\n\nThere is one exception though. You mentioned doubting religious practices, and I agree. While a holy site might influence the exact location of a city - no civilization has collapsed due to the fall of its religion (although some religious people see modern secularism as a threat to civilization)."
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4nw4es | Why do stars stop undergoing fusion at iron when the most stable nucleus is Ni-62? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4nw4es/why_do_stars_stop_undergoing_fusion_at_iron_when/ | {
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"They don't stop. Not exactly.\n\nFirst of all keep in mind the \"silicon burning\" process that produces ^52 Fe doesn't *just* produce iron. It also produces ^56 Ni and ^60 Zn. This is because it's not a simple fusion process, like, say, the proton-proton chain, which is what generates most of the helium our sun produces. It doesn't randomly generate much lithium or beryllium; Proton-proton *only* produces helium.\n\nBy contract, silicon burning consists overwhelmingly of silicon and other heavy nuclei being bombarded with alpha particles, which are produces from these same nuclei disintegrating from the environment. You can keep bombarding each of these \"ashes\" with alphas and you'll end up producing heavier and heavier elements.\n\nThe reason why the fusion chain stops at iron is that at that point the process is not exothermic. Specifically, the reaction:\n\n^56 Ni + ^4 α -- > ^60 Zn\n\nThis reaction *loses energy*.\n\nSo instead of holding back the collapse of the star, fusing the heavier elements produced in the \"ash\" of fusing iron actually *accelerates* the collapse. This is how you get elements even heavier than ^62 Ni; They are produced during the few seconds of the catastrophic implosion in a type II supernova. This is also why you don't get very much of them: Because you only have a few seconds to undergo the fusion before the star implodes, ejecting the majority of it's mass out into the cosmos and leaving behind just a neutron star or black hole."
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dn5i1j | how are tor hidden services anonymous in both directions? | Clearly some relay node along the way connects directly to the server how does that happen without knowing it's identity? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dn5i1j/eli5_how_are_tor_hidden_services_anonymous_in/ | {
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"The idea is that each node is only aware of the node imminently before it and after it. The first node knows who you are, but not who you're connecting to. The last node knows who you are connecting to, but not who you are. all the in-between nodes know neither. \n\n\nLet's say I want to send a message to Emily. My chain consists of Amy, Bob, and Charles. \n\nIn a simplified manner, I'll write the message to Emily. I'll then put that in to an envelope marked for her, put that in a different envelope for Charles, that in Bob's envelope, and finally the last envelope is for Amy.\n\nThen I send it off. Amy gets the message. She knows it's from me, but the front says Bob. She relays the message to Bob. He just got a message from Amy, but the message inside is a letter for Charles. Charles gets the message from Bob, and finally posts it to Emily. \n\nWhen Emily replies, she'll reply to Charles. Charles will relay to Bob, who relays to Amy, who finally relays it to me. None of my friends knew the entire thing, they just knew where the message came from and where to send it."
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y99so | what is the point of harvesting "likes" on facebook if you are not directly promoting a business? | Today on my feed I have a post from "I love dogs" with a pic of a sad dog in the rain captioned "Hit Like if you feel sorry for this dog! (We rescued him)". It has 225,800 likes. Is there any kind of way that someone has monetised this or is it just for fun? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/y99so/eli5_what_is_the_point_of_harvesting_likes_on/ | {
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"ALY5: It's the same reason that people try to get karma on Reddit, lad. They want recognition. They want to feel agreed with.",
"I know what you mean.On my feed people are putting pictures of sick children with captions like \"If you don't like this,you don't have a soul\" and \"Like if you think she's beautiful\".There was one pic of kid without legs smiling with caption \"1 like=one respect...Do you respect him? \".\n\n\nIt's just wrong.",
"Didn't you know, the number of likes you get is directly correlated to your penis size!",
"its the same thing as people harvesting karma. it doesnt do anything, but people do it anyways",
"For every like on fb God saves a kitten; which is good because he kills a kitten every time I fap, and I fap an awful lot.",
"Because when I \"like\" something, it shows up in my feed (\"ssflanders likes \"I Love Dogs\".) My FB friends who see this in their feed may click through to the \"Dogs\" post. They may also then \"like\" it, and their friends will see that, rinse, repeat.\n\nHere's how the money comes in: Someone probably bought a FB ad (say, a pet store) that displays on the page when that post is viewed. The more people who view the \"Dogs\" post, the more people are likely to click through the ad. So the \"dogs\" poster is driving ad clicks, and is getting paid for that.",
"Worst one I've seen was of a little girl whose hair was falling out under the caption \"You won't like me because I have cancer.\" I thought \"fuck, FB, you suck so much\", but it's not really FB's fault, is it? In my less ragey moments, I thought of making a pic of the water molecule and asking people to like \"if you need this to live.\" And I would if I wasn't so sure a lot wouldn't get it. "
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6b67a1 | perfect numbers | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6b67a1/eli5_perfect_numbers/ | {
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"\"A perfect number is a number that is equal to the sum of its proper divisors.\"\n\nLet's break that down by considering the smallest perfect number, 6.\n\nThe term \"proper divisor\" means a number's divisors other than itself. 6 is a divisor of 6, of course, but it's not a proper divisor.\n\nThe proper divisors of 6 are 1, 2, and 3. These numbers divide the number six without remainders.\n\nNotice that 1+2+3=6, and therefore 6 is a perfect number.\n\nThe next such number is 28, whose proper divisors are 1+2+4+7+14.\n\nAfter that, you don't see perfect numbers until 496 and 8128.\n\nHope that helped!",
"A perfect number is equal to the sum of its divisors. 1, 2, 3 and divide 6 evenly, and 1 + 2 + 3 = 6, making it a perfect number.\n\nThe first four perfect numbers are:\n\n* 6\n* 28\n* 496\n* 8128\n\nAll even perfect numbers are in the form 2^(n - 1) * 2^n - 1, when 2^n - 1 is a prime number and n > 1. For example, when n =3, 4 * 7 = 28.\n\nThere are no known odd perfect numbers. It is strongly suspected they don't exist, but this has not yet been proven. We do know if one exists, it is larger than 10^(1500). "
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3jeoa0 | how do cigarette lighters actually light a cigarette? | Cigarette lighters are used for everything from charging phones to, well, charging phones. Obviously they got their name from somewhere, so how do they actually light a cigarette? Does the cigarette connect an electrical circuit that heats up? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jeoa0/eli5_how_do_cigarette_lighters_actually_light_a/ | {
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"with the old school cigarette lighter, you pressed it in, and it heated some coils from the electricity. those coils are hot enough to light a cigarette. it's the same concept as an electric stove. electricity = > heating element = > causes stuff to get hot/burn.",
"There used to be a little plastic and metal thing that you push into the socket. The electrical current heats it up, so that when you pull it out it can be used to light a cigarette. Nobody really uses them to light cigarettes, so they don't actually include them with the car anymore.",
"Using the cigarette lighter socket for providing electrical power is a relative new invention. Originally, there was a handle with a metal coil attached to it that fit inside the socket. It looked like [this](_URL_0_).\n\nYou'd push the handle in like a button, which would lock it in place and start passing electricity through the coil, which would quickly heat up. After a few seconds, when it was hot enough, it would pop back out, and then you'd remove the coil by the plastic handle and touch the tip of your cigarette to the now-glowing-orange-hot coil to light it.",
"Car lighters come with a few parts. The initial part in most cars that have them is the socket; the socket itself is part of an electric circuit that commonly supports about 12 volts of DC electricity, from the battery/electric system of the car itself. Most gadgets that you can plug into your car through these sockets are not \"lighting a cigarette\", they're just leeching power from the battery, which as long as the car is running, the alternator replenishes easily enough.\n\nThe lighter itself is a plug for the socket. It contains a heating element that uses the same electric current as gadgets would use to heat up, and with some clever mechanical design, they automatically pop-out once they get hot enough. The heating element is, for a handful of seconds, hot enough to light a cigarette (or pretty much any other sufficiently dry, flammable material).",
" > Cigarette lighters are used for everything from charging phones to, well, charging phones.\n\nMake sure you aren't confusing an actual cigarette lighter (pictured in another top level comment) with just a power outlet. Phone chargers work in both outlets but cigarette lighters won't work in plain power outlets."
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48ul7a | the slow motion effect in videos, but in real time | Ever seen a music video where the singer is singing along with the real-time track, but it looks like it's all in slow motion? ELI5. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/48ul7a/eli5_the_slow_motion_effect_in_videos_but_in_real/ | {
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"The music track is played at double speed, and the singer/band practices lip syncing to the faster speed. \n\nWhile filming, you shoot at a higher frame per second, and have everyone lip sync to the fast music track.\n\nFinally, you play back the film at normal speed, so everything looks slow motion. But the music was fast, so it's now normal.",
"Possible reference video?"
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b9gv40 | why are roses so popular? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b9gv40/eli5_why_are_roses_so_popular/ | {
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"It's cultural, many countries associate it with something, for examples the in ancient Greece, the rose was closely associated with the goddess Aphrodite's."
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13cga1 | During the Hundred Schools of Thought period in China, was there ever a school of thought that advocated anything other than a centralized, monarchic rule? | So I've been reading about the Hundred Schools of Thought period, specifically about Confucius, Meng Zi, Mo Zi, Lao Zi and Legalism, in a university course about China. What I noticed is, with perhaps Lao Zi being a slight exception here, that all of those schools of thought support the establishment of a unified monarchic government over all of China. The governmental model they all aspired towards was very similar, even if the schools themselves were ideologically very different.
What I was wondering is whether an alternative model was ever suggested? Did any of the period's scholars preferred China to remain disunified? Was ever an alternative form of government discussed? For example, have any scholars advocated for something that Westerners might call a republic, or an oligarchy, or a democracy? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/13cga1/during_the_hundred_schools_of_thought_period_in/ | {
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"Finally! A question I am qualified to discuss. You are not wrong to notice some fundamental similarities between many of these schools of thought and many do seem to have a strong central state as the end goal. I'm not sure anyone explicitly argued for China to remain disunited directly, but, as I'll discuss, I don't think 'unity' was necessarily the end goal, and to at least some of them, unity/disunity may not have been that important. Let's start by looking broad strokes over the 'hundred schools' movement, as it were, and why many of the schools seem so similar.\n\nIt is generally axiomatic in classical Chinese philosophy that things were better in the past. The hundred schools phenomenon occurred during the Warring States period, which is to say, during a violent and generally unpleasant time. It is a common interpretation that the hundred schools came about specifically to answer the question of why it was that the Warring States period was so bad and how it could it be improved. Thinkers looked to the semi-mythical models of renowned rulers and basically asked 'how do we get things to be that good again?' Under the sage kings there was harmony and general prosperity, two things sorely lacking during the Warring States period, so how do we get them back? Confucius' answer was basically 'the sage kings got it right, let's do what they did.' He presents himself not as a new thinker but as a transmitter of old ideas. The ritual order the sage kings created, Confucius says, is the tool needed to order society as a whole. It is the natural state of things for there to be a ruler like a monarch ruling over the state just like it is natural for a family to have a father that rules over it. This is more than an idea for Confucius, this is nothing short of the 'will of heaven'.\n\nThese ideas did not come from Confucius, but through Confucius that central idea about what the 'natural order' of things is or should be was passed down into other, sometimes differing schools of thought. Mencius (Mengzi) is often read as expounding on Confucius rather than being of his own school, he is among the first wave of prominent 'Confucians'. He is often contrasted with Xunzi, a contemporary Confucian who disagreed with him on some crucial points. Han Feizi, the most prominent 'legalist', is meant to have studied under Xunzi. So, you could see legalism as coming out of the same tradition that 'Confucianism' came out, not in an abstract sense, but in the concrete sense that one of the most important shapers of legalist thought studied under a Confucian. As you rightly suggest, the difference between Confucianism a la Mencius and legalism is primarily one of method. I will add one significant difference, which is that for Mencius the monarch ruling over the unified state is something of a by-product of the natural order, the true king through the strength of his moral charisma will naturally attract people to him and naturally come to rule everything, while for Han Feizi it is a goal to be brought about by judiciously strengthening the state.\n\nOne note about a 'unified China'. 'China' the political entity as we understand it today did not exist in the Warring States period. The grand word all these philosophers used was *tian xia*, 'all under heaven', which is to say, everything that mattered. It goes without saying that the Chinese sage kings did not literally rule the whole world, and *tian xia* should not be seen as meaning 'everywhere' in a strict sense. Where is the boarder between 'all under heaven' and what doesn't matter enough to try and rule over? I get the sense reading a lot of the primary sources that there wasn't a specific geographic state, the China we might be talking about, that these thinkers had in mind. Their thinking was more general than that.\n\nThat having been said, did Mozi really care about unity? I'm not sure. He was certainly a monarchist, but he seems more concerned with general peace and prosperity than anything else. He derided Confucian ritual as wasting resources in a way that did not actually benefit the people. Similarly, he really disliked war as being fundamentally bad for the people. Mohists became known as anti-siege engineers; when cities were attacked, they would come and help defend the city. The unifying power of conquest did not for Mozi make up for the suffering caused by war (other thinkers at the time did not agree, and saw the military conquest of a true king as the means to the unified state they had in mind). That isn't to say that Mozi wouldn't have liked a unified state, just that you could see him putting that as a matter of secondary importance.\n\nI find it interesting that among the thinkers you list, Laozi is the one who doesn't quite fit, because unlike how most people imagine it, the *Dao De Jing* can be read as a guide to the ruler of a state which is in some ways much more autocratic than anything Confucius or Mencius ever suggested. The other major 'Daoist' thinker, Zhuangzi, however, is a great example of a thinker who saw no benefit in a strong state. In short, Zhuangzi doubts all human constructs, everything from the power of state down to the very written language he himself is using. A recurring theme in the *Zhuangzi* is 'the use of uselessness': the tree that is knotty and bent and therefore useless for wood won't be chopped down, the cripple who can't perform strenuous tasks won't be conscripted by the state, and, what's more, can beg for food and therefore doesn't even have to work! The state is nothing but an inconvenience to Zhuangzi, something that taxes and conscripts and does nothing productive, only disrupts the natural order. Zhuangzi goes so far as to suggest that maybe you should cripple yourself so as to avoid being bothered by the state. The *Zhuangzi* doesn't quite fit in with many of the other texts mentioned here because it is not a work of political philosophy concerned with the ordering of the state and has no political proscriptions. It's hard to say what 'government a la Zhuangzi' would look like. It probably would not be a strong, centralized monarchy though."
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4y7nxt | the icann transition | I'm seeing a lot of people concerned about ICANN becoming private and/or international, but I can't find a succinct explanation of the risks and consequences.
Is the web dependent on ICANN, or are there alternatives?
What parts of the web are affected by ICANN?
What is the risk associated with transitioning away from U.S. control?
How much damage could be done by ICANN if it was corrupted? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4y7nxt/eli5_the_icann_transition/ | {
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"ICANN is the organization responsible to hand out different addresses of various forms to others. If you want an Internet address so others can contact you on the Internet and you can contact other you have to make sure that nobody else is using that address. So you ask your ISP for an address, they again have to ask a regional registrar for a block of addresses who again have to ask ICANN. There is actually nothing enforcing this but it rarely ends well when multiple organizations use the same address. ICANN also owns the . domain. That is the domain above .com or .net. They are the ones who say that .com is owned by Verisign and publishes the list of Verisign name servers.\n\nIf it sounds like ICANN does not do much it is because they dont. They have delegated their responsibilities to a few other companies. Their only power is that they are the authoritative voice which is needed when delegating addresses. Nothing they say can be enforced and their decisions have not always been accepted by the telecom industry which have caused them to cave in. It is a bit deceptive to say that they are under US control, they are a US organization but their control comes from everyone following their decisions."
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4vyfja | how do some pictures look like the person in them is looking into your eyes no matter which angle you look from? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4vyfja/eli5_how_do_some_pictures_look_like_the_person_in/ | {
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"The person in the photo is probably looking directly into the lens. Just imagine the lens of the camera are a pair of eyes. The photo generated is exactly what the lens of the camera sees.",
"The dominant eye is placed in the very center of the photo. It's a common photographic composition technique used for exactly that purpose.",
"Draw a circle with a dot in the middle. Then tilt the paper 45 degrees. You now see an oval, but the dot is still in the exact center. This is why the pupils seem to follow you as you move around."
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4j8jeg | why are some zits white, some blackheads and some just clear oil? | Is the difference in how they're caused, how they're formed, the gunk in them, ect.? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4j8jeg/eli5_why_are_some_zits_white_some_blackheads_and/ | {
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"Yes. Blackheads are in a pore and are dirt build up and skin. Whiteheads are a mini-infection/abscess in a hair follicle."
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cnwxg9 | Is immunotherapy effective on brain tumors? | With extensive searches there is little information to find one way or another. Most sites discuss what scientists and medical facilities *hope* to achieve for patients, but little information about what is currently achievable.
Is immunotherapy a current and effective option for brain tumor patients? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/cnwxg9/is_immunotherapy_effective_on_brain_tumors/ | {
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"Yes, immunotherapy is a current and effective option for cancer patients. However, surgical resection should be considered as the first treatment option for brain tumors to get the best possible outcome.\n\nThere's a variety of immunotherapy cancer drugs on the market for current use. For head and neck cancers, Cetuximab (trade name: Erbitux) is a common immunotherapy drug that uses anti-EGFR antibodies. Interestingly, Cetuximab also works on colorectal cancers.\n\nErbitux works in three stages.\n\n1. Blocking growth receptors - Using an antibody to bind to and mark the cancer cell.\n2. activate complement - Complement attempts to destroy cancer cell.\n3. recruit phagocytes - Cancer cell is consumed.\n\nThe problem immunotherapies encounter is that cancer only occurs after a group of cells have already \"defeated/fooled\" the immune system, whether that strategy was to increase immunosuppressive cytokines (like IL-10 or TGF beta) or recruiting T regulatory cells to block the action of the immune system. So while immunotherapies are effective initially, the cancer already has an arsenal of tools available to fight off the immune system, and can modify its tactics against the immunotherapy. This means cancer is hard to eradicate through one treatment option alone, so combination therapies are often used. An immunotherapy might be used to shrink the tumor (often in combination with radiation therapy), and then surgery is used to resect the tumor. If immunotherapy is used alone and any cancer cells survive, they will certainly be immune to the immunotherapy and regrow unopposed.\n\nLastly, brain tumors are incredibly difficult to treat and there are case specific things to consider. Cancer patients should carefully consider the advice of their oncologist."
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6tu3fm | why some geographical locations have stunning clouds and sunrises/sunsets and others have mostly a boring sky? | I'm currently living and working in two different cities and I've noticed that one of them has pretty much all the time stunning sunrises and sunsets, beautiful clouds of all sorts of shapes and sizes, while the other has rarely a sky to notice.
Both cities have more or less the same elevation (around 400 - 500 ft) and terrain (level) and both are far inland.
Is there a common explanation for the difference? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6tu3fm/eli5_why_some_geographical_locations_have/ | {
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"Mainly has to do with climate. Humidity, pollution, and clouds have a big effect on the color of the sky. I've found that springtime and autumn are the best time of the year for photogenic sunsets where I live due to all of the above factors."
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2zzmzl | why can i "speedwalk" for miles and not get tired... but if i jog slightly faster i get winded in under a mile? | Am I psyching myself out? It's infuriating... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zzmzl/eli5_why_can_i_speedwalk_for_miles_and_not_get/ | {
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"Probably due to stamina. Essentially, speed walking has the same movement as average speed walking which we're used to, but once we begin to jog the body begins using more muscles.",
"No, by jogging you're spending more energy per movement. If you practice and build stamina, that will go away. Human beings are made to run. Theoretically, a very healthy person can run continuously. The world record is over 200 miles nonstop. \n\nEdit: it doesn't take that long. If you can keep up with it, you'll be surprised at what you can do. I ran three times a week for about six weeks. Each time, I would make it a little further between taking breaks, but then, out of nowhere, one day I went out to run, and never stopped. The furthest I had gone before then without stopping was half a mile, but I ran six miles straight that day, and I am *not* a healthy person. 5'4\" 200lbs, I'm overweight, trying to get in shape but I'm addicted to sugar, and still I could do 6 miles in one go, after some practice. You can too. That's a fact. ",
"When you walk, you're primarily pushing yourself forward. When most people jog or run, they tend to do it with poor form, bouncing up and down. That bouncing expends more energy, since you're pushing yourself up as well as forward."
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jefwx | what does it mean when a problem "is log(n)" | I quite often hear people say that a function is log(n) or something similar, and I know (or at least I think I do) that it refers to how well the function scales (ex. if you run it once, it'll take half a second, if you run it ten times it'll take 10 seconds, and if you run it 100 times it'll take 1000 seconds) - but how do you know how efficient it is (without simply measuring it), and what do the different mathematical expressions actually mean?
I'm not mathematically inclined; which is why I'm posting this here instead of in r/programming or something. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jefwx/eli5_what_does_it_mean_when_a_problem_is_logn/ | {
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"[Big O notation](_URL_0_).\n\nLog(n) means that if n is ten times bigger, the result will be just a little bigger. log(10) = 1, log(1000)=3 (because 10^3 = 1000). Execution time is not important in this field.\n\n",
"Fair warning - this isn't quite a five-year-old's answer. But then it wasn't quite a five-year-old's question.\n\nWhat running time actually refers to is how long a function takes to execute *relative to the size of its input*, in the worst case.\n\nSay you have a list of numbers. We'll call it A. *The metric for running time of an algorithm that uses A essentially boils down to this question: How many times do we have to examine each element in A?*\n\n**A constant-time function, O(1), takes exactly the same time to execute no matter how big A is.** Example: What is the first element in A? Well, all you're doing is looking at the first number in the list - so it doesn't matter if A is 100 numbers long or 100,000 numbers long.\n\n**A linear-time function, O(n), increases linearly in running time depending on how big A is.** Example: What is the smallest number in A? Well, you have to look at every single number in A once to find that out - so the function repeats itself once for each number that A happens to contain. If A is 100 elements long, it will repeat 100 times. If A is 1000 elements long, it will repeat 1000 times. If A has *n* elements, it will repeat *n* times. Hence, O(n).\n\n**A logarithmic-time function, O(log n), increases logarithmically in running time depending on how big A is.** This one's a bit tricky. Example: Does A contain the number 50, *given that A is already sorted in ascending order*? We can use a fun trick to help us out here.\n\nLook at the middle element, and see whether it's bigger than, smaller than, or equal to 50. If it's equal to 50, we're done - A contains the number 50. But say it's smaller than 50. Then if A contained 50, it would come later in the list (remember, A is sorted in ascending order). So now only look at the right-hand side of the list, examine the middle element in just that part of the list, and repeat. Vice versa if the middle element is bigger than 50; if A contains 50, it must appear earlier, so only look at the left-hand side. Repeat until you've either found 50, or until you can't divide into sub-lists any further. (This is called \"binary search\").\n\nIf A had 127 elements, it would take a maximum of 7 steps to find the number 50, because with each repetition, you're cutting the size of the list in half: 128 elements, then 64 (either the left half or the right half), then 32 (either the left or right half of that first half), then 16, 8, 4, 2, and 1. Log base 2 of 128 = 7. Similarly, if A had 1000 elements, it would take a maximum of 10 steps to find the number 50 (1000, 500, 250, 125, 62, 31, 15, 7, 3, 1). Log base 2 of 1000 (rounded up, for worst case) is 10. If A has *n* elements, it will take a maximum of log(*n*) steps. Hence, O(log n).\n\nSo logarithmic-time functions do increase in running time depending on input size, but not nearly as quickly as linear-time functions do.\n\n**A quadratic-time function, O( n^2 ), increases quadratically in running time depending on how big A is.** I'll spare the example this time. If A is 10 elements long, the function has to examine 100 elements (each element is examined 10 times). If A is 100 elements long, the function has to examine *10,000 elements* (each element 100 times).\n\nThere are all sorts of different variants of these running times. Most algorithms that sort lists of numbers run in O(n*log(n)) (each element is examined up to log(n) times). Unoptimized matrix-matrix multiplication algorithms run in O( n^3 ) (each of the n elements is examined n^2 times!).",
"[Big O notation](_URL_0_).\n\nLog(n) means that if n is ten times bigger, the result will be just a little bigger. log(10) = 1, log(1000)=3 (because 10^3 = 1000). Execution time is not important in this field.\n\n",
"Fair warning - this isn't quite a five-year-old's answer. But then it wasn't quite a five-year-old's question.\n\nWhat running time actually refers to is how long a function takes to execute *relative to the size of its input*, in the worst case.\n\nSay you have a list of numbers. We'll call it A. *The metric for running time of an algorithm that uses A essentially boils down to this question: How many times do we have to examine each element in A?*\n\n**A constant-time function, O(1), takes exactly the same time to execute no matter how big A is.** Example: What is the first element in A? Well, all you're doing is looking at the first number in the list - so it doesn't matter if A is 100 numbers long or 100,000 numbers long.\n\n**A linear-time function, O(n), increases linearly in running time depending on how big A is.** Example: What is the smallest number in A? Well, you have to look at every single number in A once to find that out - so the function repeats itself once for each number that A happens to contain. If A is 100 elements long, it will repeat 100 times. If A is 1000 elements long, it will repeat 1000 times. If A has *n* elements, it will repeat *n* times. Hence, O(n).\n\n**A logarithmic-time function, O(log n), increases logarithmically in running time depending on how big A is.** This one's a bit tricky. Example: Does A contain the number 50, *given that A is already sorted in ascending order*? We can use a fun trick to help us out here.\n\nLook at the middle element, and see whether it's bigger than, smaller than, or equal to 50. If it's equal to 50, we're done - A contains the number 50. But say it's smaller than 50. Then if A contained 50, it would come later in the list (remember, A is sorted in ascending order). So now only look at the right-hand side of the list, examine the middle element in just that part of the list, and repeat. Vice versa if the middle element is bigger than 50; if A contains 50, it must appear earlier, so only look at the left-hand side. Repeat until you've either found 50, or until you can't divide into sub-lists any further. (This is called \"binary search\").\n\nIf A had 127 elements, it would take a maximum of 7 steps to find the number 50, because with each repetition, you're cutting the size of the list in half: 128 elements, then 64 (either the left half or the right half), then 32 (either the left or right half of that first half), then 16, 8, 4, 2, and 1. Log base 2 of 128 = 7. Similarly, if A had 1000 elements, it would take a maximum of 10 steps to find the number 50 (1000, 500, 250, 125, 62, 31, 15, 7, 3, 1). Log base 2 of 1000 (rounded up, for worst case) is 10. If A has *n* elements, it will take a maximum of log(*n*) steps. Hence, O(log n).\n\nSo logarithmic-time functions do increase in running time depending on input size, but not nearly as quickly as linear-time functions do.\n\n**A quadratic-time function, O( n^2 ), increases quadratically in running time depending on how big A is.** I'll spare the example this time. If A is 10 elements long, the function has to examine 100 elements (each element is examined 10 times). If A is 100 elements long, the function has to examine *10,000 elements* (each element 100 times).\n\nThere are all sorts of different variants of these running times. Most algorithms that sort lists of numbers run in O(n*log(n)) (each element is examined up to log(n) times). Unoptimized matrix-matrix multiplication algorithms run in O( n^3 ) (each of the n elements is examined n^2 times!)."
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1hu5zb | how do professional gamers make money? | I understand how football players get a salary from the club, sponsorship for wearing shoes, tv commercials etc.
In game you cannot be been to wear certain clothing or drink certain drinks etc. While I suppose it is possible to use your summoner name to promote a product I have not seen this happening.
If they get a salary from a club/team how does the club/team get their money? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hu5zb/eli5_how_do_professional_gamers_make_money/ | {
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"They compete for cash prizes at tournaments and also receive sponsorship deals from companies to either promote or wear their product during these events. \n\n",
"Most are supported by cash prizes from tournaments. That means you need to win to make money.\n\nSome get sponsored by big companies (usually those that sell computer and gaming accessories like Razor or Alienware or Gunnar).\n\nOne that I am aware of (League of Legends) actually pays its players a baseline salary per \"season\". Currently, they are supposed to pay $175,000 to each team in the LCS, which is divided up between the players, though I'm not sure how.",
"Say i made an amateur team called Reddit Gaming and when i got big, i got sponsored by a company that sponsors other games and i become Team Reddit. I get paid by them to play under their name. Also tournaments, \"actual\" product sponsors, streaming ad revenue and maybe even the game company itself."
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5pw9ir | Would *Macbeth* audiences have considered Scotland to be an exotic location? | Obviously James I was himself Scottish, but would the rest of English society be familiar with Thanes/Thegns? Would they know anything about the historic Kings Duncan or Macbeth? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5pw9ir/would_macbeth_audiences_have_considered_scotland/ | {
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"related question: would *Hamlet* audience think that of Elsinore, Denmark? it's my town of birth and I've always been curious why Shakespeare choose the setting.",
"Great consternation surrounds the reasons exactly why Shakespeare chose to write a play like *Macbeth* just a few years into the reign of King James I. I'll try to outline some of the arguments.\n\n > Obviously James I was himself Scottish, but would the rest of English society be familiar with Thanes/Thegns?\n\nThe theory put forward by certain Shakespeare scholars like Charles Barrell and Eva Clark, Lilian Winstanley and Charlotte Carmichael Stopes, is that audiences didn't need to be familiar with 11th century Scotland, they just needed to be familiar with James I and in particular his mother Mary, Queen of Scots.\n\nThe reason I have put those scholars in sets of two is that Barrell and Clark were what is known as 'Oxfordians' in that they primarily believed that many of Shakespeare's plays, in particular *Macbeth*, were actually penned by Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. The other two, Winstanley and Stopes, are known as 'Stratfordians' who believed William Shakespeare to be the true author. As a side note, both Oxfordians and Stratfordians note that *Macbeth* contains a surprising amount of accurate information from someone (Shakespeare) who likely never visited Scotland. Stratfordians attribute this to Shakespeare's use of *Holinshed's Chronicles*, a work published in 1587 by Raphael Holinshed detailing the history of England, Scotland, and Ireland. What is interesting is that in 1567, when de Vere was 17, Raphael Holinshed served on a jury which found de Vere not guilty of murdering one of his household staff. It is certainly true that de Vere would have had a far greater knowledge of Scotland and it's history than William Shakespeare, though that isn't enough to entirely discount Shakespeare as the true author.\n\nAs to why a play like *Macbeth* should appear at this time? Some scholars believe it to subtly mock James I and his dubious parentage, others (Winstanley and Stopes) believe it was to mourn the passing of an age of 'refined' English monarchs into an age of 'barbaric' Scottish ones, by reminding the English commonfolk of the scandals of Scotland that had occurred under Mary, Queen of Scots. Few believe it was intended to celebrate James I as no record exists of the King having ever seen the play or even acknowledged its existence, this despite his position as patron of Shakespeare. This is besides the fact that James was well known to be terrified of assassinations/violent deaths, his father Lord Darnley was famously assassinated in 1567, while his mother was executed by his predecessor Queen Elizabeth I in 1587. So a play about two Kings being violently murdered is hardly likely to have pleased King James.\n\nThe murder of King Duncan, succeeded by his murderer Macbeth, is considered to be a allusion to the murder of Mary's husband Lord Darnley (himself a King consort), orchestrated by Mary's advisor Lord Bothwell who married Mary just three months later in May of 1567. By June of that same year many Scottish lords were outraged enough that Scotland was on the brink of civil war. Mary abdicated in favour of her infant son James, who could be considered much like that of the young Prince (now King) Malcolm at the end of *Macbeth*. Mary, seeking refuge in England, was held captive by her cousin Queen Elizabeth I for 19 years before being executed for treason.\n\nThe inclusion of witchcraft in *Macbeth* is also telling. James I, while still James VI of Scotland, wrote a treatise on witchcraft, [\"Daemonologie, In Forme of a Dialogue, Divided into three Books: By the High and Mighty Prince, James & c.\"](_URL_0_) which was published in succession to [\"Newes from Scotland\"](_URL_1_) about the 1590 witch trials of North Berwick, in which King James himself was intimately involved. This also takes the form of the character of Banquo (who at this time was believed to be a real person from whom the Stuart line was descended and an ancestor of King James) being told by the witches that his descendants would be kings.\n\nThere's also the matter of the Gunpowder plot of 1605 making subtle appearances here and there throughout the play. The most damning of these is [Lady Macbeth's line to her husband to \"look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't.\"](_URL_2_) Following the discovery and foiling of the Gunpowder plot, King James had a [commemorative medal struck featuring a snake hidden amongst flowers.](_URL_3_) Notably, daffodils and roses feature as the flowers, symbols of Wales and England, though I can't identify what the others are, they don't appear to be thistles (Scotland).\n\nAs with the best drama, *Macbeth* contains elements of truth relevant to the history of the new King James I and his parentage. The purpose of the play seems almost to be that of a warning to the English people that this new King comes with a history steeped with blood, not only of the last 20-40 years, but also stretching far back through the centuries of Scottish rule. ",
"There were two basic types of playhouse in Renaissance England. One is the stereotype you're probably familiar with, open to the air with a mosh pit of sorts for the hoi polloi (a ticket would have been about 1/10 of a day's wage for an artisan). There were also fully indoor theatres that served a more restrained and elite audience.\n\nI open with a consideration of the diversity of Shakespeare's likely audiences for Macbeth because, as Claire McEachern says, we can't talk about \"Scotland\" in early modern literature but rather *Scotlands*, plural, according to the background and the agenda of a particular person, including changing over time and texts.\n\nThe most important audience, in the sense of the person and group Shakespeare absolutely had on his mind during composition, was (scholars argue) newly ascended King James I, also James VI of Scotland. In contrast to contemporary plays like *Eastward Ho!* (...that would actually be spelled, Eastward Hoe), which actually got their authors into some hot water, *Macbeth* presents a much more equitable view of Scotland, Scottish nobles, and Scottish kings. When he moved his court to England, James brought with him a chunk of the Scottish nobility. To them, obviously, Scotland was anything but exotic.\n\nThe English nobility and intelligentsia are an interesting question. By 1603, there was, I'd say, more than a half century of really solid considerations of the potentials and pitfalls of an English-Scottish union from writers on both sides, taking into full consideration past (and present) enmity. Writers pursue different strategies to show why a union might actually work. Some authors stress Scottish unity and English unity and what good they could do together. More interesting and much more revealing, I think, are the writers who seek to align Scotland with England by portraying the Scottish lowlands as civilized and cultured in contrast to the barbarian, rustic highlands. That says a lot about the dominant cultural ideas that they believed they needed to write against at the same type they *reinforced* them.\n\nBut at the same time the angry/violent/barbarian stereotypes endure in some texts, other propagate a much more mundane, GTFO sort of attitude. Assuming that what offended James of \"Eastward Ho\" was its dialogue and not its staging, the general gist is just \"Gosh, these Scottish are such a bother, always underfoot wherever you go.\" In other words, a completely mundane presence. The back and forth flow of immigration across borders, especially Scots to England on account of the much stronger English economy, would certainly have contributed to that. When James traveled south for his coronation, he was viewed as...a king, not some creature with his face on his chest.\n\nBut we should never overestimate the actual presence of actual human beings to overcome stereotypes of exotic and violent. So when we push beyond the literate classes that leave us stylized written evidence of their views on Scotland, a most interesting clue appears: the witches.\n\nShakespeare's inspiration for Macbeth is the late-16C *Holinshed's Chronicles* (which is not, in general, as nice to the Scottish as *Macbeth*), and the *Chronicles* do have three \"Weird\" sisters who give prophecies to Macbeth. But they are nymphs--tricksters and tempermental and otherworldly, but not evil. Shakespeare adopts them as the *weyward* sisters and turns them into old, ugly hags in the manner of many swirling stereotypes of witches at the time.\n\nIt's popular and easy to view the witches' presence/new form as a nod to James, who was relentlessly afraid of witchcraft to the point of writing his own witch-hunting tome. But Shakespeare's desire to please his new king places the focus on the wrong place. Because nearly all of the witches' presence in Macbeth? Doesn't actually come from him.\n\nMacbeth was probably first performed around 1605-06, but our surviving copy comes from 1623. And plopped right into it are scenes ripped straight from Thomas Middleton's play *The Witch.* These included multiple songs by the witches, as well as an extensive scene where the goddess Hecate visits them.\n\nWhy did these scenes worm their way into a play they weren't part of? Because that was what audiences wanted to see, what readers wanted to read. And that's what they did, and those were the ideas that the play reinforced, even as it portrayed noble Scottish characters as \"real people\": a dark, violent, magical, Scotland."
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"https://oudonquijote.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/gunpowder_plot_medal_1605.jpg"
... | |
14bzd1 | Apparently all US Presidents, save one, are related. Given the time scale, is this really that remarkable? | Question is based on this video, _URL_0_
A fb friend prone to conspiracy theories posted it and I'm curious to get some insight on whether or not this is at all something by which to be impressed, especially given that the common ancestor was a British King from the 12th Century. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/14bzd1/apparently_all_us_presidents_save_one_are_related/ | {
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"No. It's not even the slightest bit remarkable.\n\nYou have two parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents, 16 great^2 grandparents, 32 great^3 grandparents, etc. In general, you have 2^(n+2) great^n grandparents.\n\nIf we take 25 years to be your average generation time, and start the clock in 1986 (when Obama was 25), then there have been on the order of (1986-1200)/25 ≈ 31 generations between 1200 and Barack Obama.\n\nLet's make it a round 30.\n\nThis means that 2^30 = 1,073,741,824 people alive in the year 1200 were Barack Obama's great^28 grandparents.\n\nBut that's almost certainly impossible, as [according to a variety of sources](_URL_1_) (links to the actual sources are in the wiki article), the population of the entire world was about 400,000,000 in the year 1200. \n\nWhat's happening here is that most of Obama's great^28 grandparents actually fulfill that role many time over, via independent routes through the pedigree. So although you can trace a billion different lines back through the pedigree from Barack Obama to the year 1200 (with half a billion going through each parent, a quarter of a billion going through each grandparent), many of them wind up merging back together just a few generations back up, because of this inbreeding phenomenon. So there certainly aren't a billion independent ancestors in the year 1200, but there are definitely hundreds of thousands, and probably many millions\n\nIn any case, it's clear that as you go back through time, the number of ancestors that any given individual has absolutely explodes. These approximations I've listed for Obama apply to all other US presidents as well, and all other individuals alive today.\n\nAs such, it's a virtual certainty that the pedigrees of different individuals would eventually start to overlap, no matter who they are, and given that all US presidents have been of European descent (Obama only 50%), I don't think this result is even the least bit surprising. She was guaranteed to find it. The only issue was exactly how far back she would have to go, and whether good records existed that far back. It seems almost certain that there were many other people alive at the same time as this British King who are also ancestors of most or all US presidents, but that the records are simply better in royal bloodlines, so that's who she found.\n\nJust for fun, [here's](_URL_0_) a recent paper by some folks in my lab about using genetic data to understand these sort of patterns of ancestry in Europe.",
"JJBerg is 100% correct. Absolutely unremarkable. [This](_URL_1_) is an excellent overview (written at the layman level) that you may want to send your friend.\n\nKey point:\n\n > Until you understand the fundamentals of genealogical math, you will likely remain impressed with these famous cousin connections, but once you do - not so much. In a nutshell, many people who lived more than three or four hundred years ago now have millions of descendants (yes, millions), and inevitably, a few of them will be famous. And while it used to at least be worthy of note that people would take the time to ferret out these hidden links among living progeny, the growing number of massive genealogical databases makes this less and less remarkable. Those on the prowl for potential headline-grabbing cousinships also know exactly where to look:\n\n > \"Colonial times in North America constitute a famous cousin sweet spot. They're long enough ago that genealogical math has had a chance to work its magic, but recent enough that there's often a paper trail to follow. That's why - if you pay attention the next time you hear a famous cousin revelation - the touted connections almost always involve a shared colonial American or French-Canadian ancestor. And the living celebrities will rarely be more closely related than seventh cousins. In fact, they're most often eighth, ninth or tenth cousins. About the only exceptions to this pattern are those who are related even more distantly, generally through a royal ancestor who lived back before America and Canada existed.\"*\n\nBy the way, I have colonial American ancestry and [here's](_URL_0_) a sampling of my \"famous relative\" breakdown from _URL_2_. It goes on for pages and pages.\n\n**TL;DR: we're all related.**",
"Just to tack on to the excellent analysis provided by the other commenters, you can reasonably expect pretty much everyone on earth to be not-so-distant cousins. The most recent genealogical common ancestor of all humans, i.e., the most recent guy who would appear in everyone's family tree, lived [only a few thousand years ago](_URL_0_).\n\nSo if one of your conspiracy theory friends suggests the Jews are controlling the world because Obama happens to be so-and-so's 60th cousin or whatever, you can justifiably smack him for being a moron on more than one level.",
"The fact of exponentially increasing number of ancestors is why, statistically, every person of European descent today is descended from Charlemagne."
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1zfltu | why the oscar award for best director is for different movie than the one who won best movie ? | Isnt it wierd?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zfltu/eli5_why_the_oscar_award_for_best_director_is_for/ | {
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"Best Director is for Directors. Best Picture is for Producers (and often the overall \"best picture\" by whatever definition the voters choose)",
"The director is just one aspect of the movie. A very important one, but not everything. \n\nImagine a movie is like a restaurant. The chef would be the director. A world class chef can make a restaurant into a wonderful experience. \n\nBut, there's more to it than that. There are things, many of which are outside the chef's control that affect the success of the restaurant. Is the building in good repair? Is it decorated well? Is the wait staff well trained? Is there sufficient marketing? Is there a good wine selection?\n\nYou can't have a great reastaurant/movie without a great chef/director. But to be the very best, everything -- not just the kitchen -- has to be excellent. ",
"Keep in mind that the Academy of 6,000 voters understands and appreciates that this \"competition\" (showcase) is subjective and political. They even advertise to the voters in Los Angeles. 12 years a slave and gravity were both phenomenal movies both worthy of winning either categories. So if I'm a voter, i put Curan for best director bc as far as an achievement in cinema he wins gravity was insane, and then I'll put 12 years a slave for best picture bc it's simply incredible and amazing and an important film. So they both win. This happens nearly every single year with these 2 categories.\n\n\nSource: I work in the industry ",
"9 times out of 10, Best Picture and Best Director are the same movie, but there are always Oscar suprises. I think it also happened in 2006. Crash was best picture (totally undeserved) but something by Martin Scorsese was best director. "
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74wajq | how do we know by preserving animal species we are not messing up natural "survival of the fittest" part of nature | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/74wajq/eli5_how_do_we_know_by_preserving_animal_species/ | {
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"Well, I'm no expert, but I do think that a good amount of the animals currently on their way to extinction, is due to us overhunting/overkilling them, so it's not \"natural order\" in that sense, I'd say",
"Trust me.. we have disrupted \"survival of the fittest\" in many ways.. of which this isn't really one.\n\nSurvival of the fittest refers to members of a species.. that the weak members of a species will die off/be killed and wont reproduce but the most fit ones will live and reproduce, making the species more healthy. Trophy hunters who kill the biggest and most healthy animals have really disrupted that.\n\nBreeders of pets and livestock have done some horrific things too - some species of livestock or domestic pet would never survive in the wild compared to the natural version of their species. This is because certain breeds have attributes we like but that don't help them survive in the wild - broiler chickens being a good example and laying hens being another. Broiler chickens are prone to heart attacks and cannot hardly walk well after a while. Laying hens don't sit on eggs to incubate them so would never hatch eggs.\n\nAs far as saving a species... it doesn't mean the species is unfit to survive in the wild, it means that we (humans) have messed up their environment so bad it's hard for them to live in it.. or we have hunted them unnecessarily to the brink of extinction (such as rhinos killed for only their horns).",
"\"Survival of the fittest\" is an outcome we cannot change. Changing the environment is what we've done. Which member/trait within a species or among different species is \"the fittest\" depends on the environment. So we are making nature choose those animals and plants that are most likely to survive in the mess we have created and wiping out others."
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2hbbbf | how you can make an sos call without phone service? | If you have no service on your phone how are you still able to call emergency numbers? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hbbbf/eli5_how_you_can_make_an_sos_call_without_phone/ | {
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"Just because you do not have service with your particular carrier, it does not mean that you are not in the coverage of another service network. By law, all cell phone carriers are required to allow emergency calls to be made on their networks regardless of the phone's primary carrier. \n\nEdit: Gold for this? Seriously? This isn't even rocket science and somebody thinks this is gold worthy? Goddammit, this is not the sort of comment I wanted to lose my Gilded-Virginity with.",
"When you turn your phone on, it attempts to connect to a carrier (cell phone company). Which carrier it chooses is based on a list on the SIM card. If you don't have a SIM card, the phone chooses the strongest carrier and electronically says \"hello, I'm here\".\n\nAll carriers keep track of the phones that try to connect to it. Some will allow certain numbers through, like 611. Others will redirect every call you make to their customer service department. But every one, as mandated by law in North America, must allow a 911 call to go through to the 911 operator in that area.\n\nThis is why a lot of phones will show \"SOS\" or \"Emergency calls only\" instead of No Service.",
"Thanks guys that makes a lot of sense to me now",
"If you are in an emergency situation you should also try to send a text for help. If you have 0 service your phone stores the txt till it gets a signal and can send it out in a split second. So your phone might get a signal for just a split second and try to send the text. Even if it doesn't go through your cell will ping the tower and if people are looking for you it will show up. I've seen this tip on many 60 minutes or 20/20 stories about people lost in the wilderness.",
"Also, every BS - base station (cell tower/antenna) has a limited number of channels. Every cellphone has to simultaneously send and receive voice/data. That is called full-duplex communication. \nNow, for example if every single channel is busy you would have no way of placing a call or sending sms/data, because there is no physical possibility. That is why emergency calls have priority and when the BS receives an emergency call, it immediately drops any other calls/data to make your call possible.\n\nSource - telecom engineer \n\np.s. I could go for days on awesome stuff in telecommunications ",
"This is probably common knowledge but 911 calls on pay phones are free, so if you don't have a cell phone at all, pay phones are available.",
"Another point that I don't see being mentioned is that for 911 calls the transmit power of your phone is set to maximum. This will drain the battery faster, but there is a much better chance of connecting to a tower at that point whether it's on your own carrier or not.\n\nAdditionally, (and someone can correct me if I'm wrong) the tower may also boost it's transmit power. If nothing else it could help triangulate your cell phone by pinging it even if there's not enough bandwidth for a call.",
"No service means that your carrier is not available at that location or has network issues or something. If you then make an emergency call, the phone will connect to the first carrier it manages to establish a connection to. Also emergency calls work without sim cards because well in case there is an emergency. I am not sure but I think that emergency calls also have priority over other calls in case the network is full.",
"If you have no service at all you can't.\n\nBut if you are in range of any cell carrier then your calls are being blocked by the accounting system, or by the switch because it doesn't recognize the serial number (MEID or IMSI) of your phone in connection with your phone number.\n\nWhen you are connected to any cellular network it stores a record called a VLR (visitor location register) that has your number, identifier and serial number as well as a list of your services and features (E.g. text messaging, data access, call waiting, international dialing). If you do not match a record the call is denied.\n\nDialing 911 bypasses this and connects the call directly, it is unbilled, and does not check to see if you have permission before connecting you.\n\nSource: I work technical and roaming user support for a regional cell carrier.\n\nCaveat: the details may vary slightly from network to network, this is how we do it. We're a CDMA network running rev. B and LTE for data. On a GSM network some details (like verifying MEID) will be different."
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5x5wkw | how does capsaicin cause intestinal cramps? | I've read that there are no nerve endings in our intestines and if there were we'd be able to feel our food moving through. So how does capsaicin cause intestinal pain? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5x5wkw/eli5_how_does_capsaicin_cause_intestinal_cramps/ | {
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"I'm afraid that your source is wrong. You can find sensory nerve endings all over your body, but they come in different types. To make it simple, let's say you have 2 types of sensory cells. One type gives you awareness of what you are touching. The other type sends pain signals to your brain when the receptors are getting stimulated enough to reach the threshold (nociceptors). \n\nBoth of these types have cells that react to different kinds of stimuli. Some examples: you can feel when someone touches you but it hurts when you get pinched (pressure), you can feel when something is warm/cold but it hurts when you hold an ice cube for too long (temperature). Nociceptors can also react to tissue damage and certain chemicals like capsaicin.\n\nThe question now: how is it that you can register pain in a part of you body when you can't 'feel' anything there? It's about the distribution of nerve endings and the usefullness of having them at that certain location. For instance, you want to have all the types of sensory cells and nociceptors your skin because touching is one of the main things that determines how we live and behave. On the other hand, having nerve endings that register pressure and temperature in your intestines is completely useless because you only need to know if the damn thing works or not. That's why nociceptors are everywhere, because 'pain' is a signal to let you know that something isn't right and you should probably check it. Getting back to your question: I don't know if capsaicin causes cramps and if they do, how. I don't think that chemical nociceptors are present in your intestines, probably just those that react to damage (perforation) and pressure (cramps). The only thing that I know for sure that capsaicin burns the hell out of my ass.",
"**CHILI PEPPERS**\n\nChili peppers are living plants, and to protect themselves from being eaten, they produce capsaicin. Capsaicin is a kind of poison that produces a burning sensation that most animals don't like. Some people eat chili peppers because they DO like the burning \"spicy\" feeling. Eating a lot of capsaicin can produce nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and burning diarrhea though, so be careful when eating chili peppers!\n & nbsp;\n\nCapsaicin produces a burning sensation in any tissue that it touches, so if you rub chili peppers on your hands, your hands might burn and sting. Similarly, if you eat capsaicin, your stomach and intestines might also burn and sting. People can develop a resistance to capsaicin over time, so with practice, someone can eat the hottest chili peppers in the world and enjoy it, but if an inexperienced person ate the same chili peppers, their throat might swell shut!\n\n & nbsp;\n\n**NERVE ENDINGS**\n\nThe human body has three type of nerves:\n\n1) Motor neurons\n\n2) Sensory neurons\n\n3) Autonomic neurons. \n\nThese nerves allow you to feel three kinds of pain:\n\n1) Somatic pain, such as when the skin is burned or punctured, or when muscle, joint, and bone tissues are injured. \n\n2) Visceral pain, such as problems with organs, stretching, oxygen deprivation, or inflammation.\n\n3) Neuropathic pain, such as injury or malfunction of the spinal cord and/or nerves.\n\nEvery part of your body contains nerves, except for your brain, and the non-living parts like nails, hair, and tooth enamel. Your gut contains 100 million neurons - more than your spinal cord!\n\n\n & nbsp;\n\n\n**POISON**\n\nYou have many nerve endings in your intestines, and when you eat something poisonous (such as capsaicin), your intestines may react by producing the sensation of pain. This pain can range from a dull ache to a sharp stabbing pain. \n\nIt usually takes 24 to 48 hours from the time you eat food to the time it leaves your body as waste. However, your body may react to poison by emptying the stomach and intestines as quickly as possible, resulting in vomiting and diarrhea. \n\nInterestingly, motion-sickness, like when you get sick from being on a boat, is caused when the signals from your eyes don't match the signals from your inner ears that allow you to balance. When that happens, your body might think you've been poisoned, and react by causing vomiting and diarrhea. Your body often has a \"better safe than sorry\" attitude towards dealing with poison!"
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92fihg | what causes people to want to stew in their negative emotions? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/92fihg/eli5_what_causes_people_to_want_to_stew_in_their/ | {
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"Because negative emotions cause fixation, which makes you unable to think outside the box and take on new perspectives. \n \nNegative emotions correspond to some threat to our well-being. Such threats can end our life, so the brain doesn't let us daydream and hope and wish and be optimistic. Instead, it focuses our attention on the threat and nothing else. It's an evolved response that kept our ancestors alive. \n \nBoth positive and negative emotions are positive feedback loops, meaning they self-reinforce. With negative emotions, fixation ensures continued suffering until the threat is gone. \n \nWith positive emotions, it's easier to think creatively, be empathic, forgiving, and generous, and otherwise do things that help us continue to feel good. \n \nIn a very real sense, there's wisdom in the phrase \"fake it till you make it\". Don't pretend to be happy. But if you can force yourself to do the things happy people would do, you'll often find you start to feel better. \n \nGive, forgive, be kind, be polite, be patient, love. I know it's hard to hear that when you're feeling down, but you essentially have three options: \n \n1. Eliminate the threat (not always applicable) \n \n2. Wait until it goes away, or someone else takes care of it, or it otherwise loses its effect on you because you get used to it or get over it \n \n3. Get to a place where you can think clearly enough to find a silver lining and get through it faster."
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20prs9 | why were the balkan nations allowed to break away from yugoslavia and serbia with western support, but crimea is not allowed to break away from ukraine? | Most of the people don't identify as Ukrainian. It has never historically been part of what we consider Ukraine until "gifted" to the Ukraine SSR by Khrushchev in 1950s. I distrust Putin as much as anybody, but shouldn't we respect what a large majority of the Crimean population wants? Didn't we bomb Serbia just to allow Kosovo that right to self determination. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20prs9/eli5_why_were_the_balkan_nations_allowed_to_break/ | {
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"Putin rolled an army in and conducted a vote that other leaders have called completely wrong. Is it really possible for 95 percent to agree to side with Russia and also have enough people to overthrow the pro Russian government? The tartans have publicly stated they refuse to participate in a clown show off a vote do almost all of them didn't vote. Russia has been carefully controlling the media that's leaving there, the vote was rigged (as most believe) and the parades and celebrations apparently organized by Russian spetznaz pretending to be self defense units not from Russia. It's not wrong to assist in a country stepping away from another, it is wrong to walk in pointing guns under the guise of protecting Russian speaking people to brow beat the opposition into backing down while you run a cat and dog show of a vote to convince people of something that isn't true. Long story short Putin is bullying those who don't agree to stay away do Russia can keep hold of their ONLY warm water port and what many consider the most important strategic point for Russia's defence against a sea based assault. It isn't about people for Putin it's about strategic assets and a warm water port."
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25dqdc | do "on demand" tv services affect ratings? | I know that ratings are (in a simple nutshell) used to determine a show's popularity, and to help shuffle timeslots per targeted viewing audience. Do "on demand" services still measure the number of watchers for a show/network/genre/etc? Also, does the use of "on demand" services make it difficult for networks to determine timeslots for shows? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25dqdc/eli5_do_on_demand_tv_services_affect_ratings/ | {
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"\"Live\" audience is still king when it comes to TV. Those are the numbers they use to sell commercial space\nPotential sponsirs can set up and distribute their commercials easily online, so online audience doesn't count. The provider basically buys the rights to rebroadcast \"on demand\", so the commericals there don't count for much to a potential sponsor.\n\nSo, it is still of vital importance to know who is watching a show during its broadcast timeslot (and to a smaller extent, rerun timeslot). That's where the big money is traded",
"[There are separate ratings that include on-demand figures.](_URL_0_)"
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2n5f2t | how come i can get really tired reading a book or watching tv, but when i try to go to sleep immediately after i toss and turn for hours before finally falling asleep? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2n5f2t/eli5_how_come_i_can_get_really_tired_reading_a/ | {
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"If you're like me, it's because your mind races. Reading or watching TV means something is effectively doing a lot of the \"thinking\" for you. You can start to doze and still have the thoughts be fed to you. When thinking in bed, some thoughts lead to more and it just spirals out of control. \n\nFunny thing is, when you're in bed and can't sleep and your mom texts you to take out the trash. Sleeping is almost instantaneous.",
"When you're watching TV or reading and you are tired anyway, you are not focusing on trying to sleep. You're sat nice and comfortably and you are relaxed so your body goes into sleep mode. When you are in bed and think about sleeping, you can be worried that you won't fall asleep and so you don't. Your mind needs to be relaxed.",
"I would expect this has a lot to do with two things:\n-One: that you are underestimating how much energy it takes to do something like processing information from any medium, like books or TV, your brain uses about 20% of the energy you expend daily, and much of that energy will be attributable to doing those exact kinds of things. It's like trying to lift furniture when you are too tired and just want to watch TV, but the next level down.\n-Two: when you are laying down completely, with your head down which it probably isn't during those other two activities, you have sharply improved blood-flow to the brain, because of gravity and because when your neck isn't straight it probably reduces circulation some. More oxygen means more cellular respiration means more energy to burn, plus some extra oxygen is added because you can breath more easily on your back usually.",
"I can't speak about reading, but I remember reading a study where the glow of a TV screen enters your retina and convinces your hypothalamus that it is still daytime, which inhibits your brains production of melatonin and other sleep hormones. ",
"The stimulation from prior activities makes your head weird and have to process all of those things, delaying sleep. This is a better question for realdeal /r/askscience/",
"Its your body way of telling you that you didn't reddit long enough. Go a head and take out your phone and open your favorite reedit app up and it will all go away.",
"Basically, you're trying to stay awake. And being the scumbag that our brains are, it wants to do the opposite. You wanna sleep? Let's stay up till 3. You want to stay awake? let's fall asleep in the next 11 seconds.",
"Pro tip: thinking about the future keeps you up. Thinking about the past helps you sleep. ",
"That is one of the most fucked up things in my life...\n"
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3aqo35 | Charlemagne, Christianity, Invasion of Saxony and the Viking Age? | I have a huge interest in Viking Age history but through my readings about the "Why did it start", there are many reasons that there were Scandinavians raiding places all over Europe but I have come across some explanations that I believe could be tied to White Supremacist narratives but am not sure if there is grounding in it or not. Here is the theory I want clarification on:
When Charlemagne came to power he sought to expand his empire and Christendom and invaded Saxony. Events such as the destruction of Irminsul and the Massacre of Verden (4000 men killed for not converting to Christianity) were events that created large tensions between Christians and Germanic heathens. Tensions arose more when Charlemagne banned trade between Christians and non-Christians (this point was told by a reenactment friend but I could not find documented evidence for this which if it exists, I want to know where from) eliminating previous trade with Scandinavians pushing them into poverty. The combined hatred for the foreignness of the Christian religion, what was done by Christendom to people of their faith (Saxony), and the fact that they were heading towards poverty because of the lack of previous trade partners pushed Northmen to engage in small ad hoc raids for supplementing their personal economy (and also showing their battle-worthiness for their society and their gods) but also made a point of targeting Christian targets, especially monasteries (the first recorded raid being at Lindisfarne monastery) because not only were they not well protected since there was the assumed notion of safety but also since they had a lot of wealth with relics and such.
The point of Charlemagne blocking trade against pagans was backed by another reenactment friend that said if you look at the Vendel period helmets, you see a lot of use of precious metals and number of gilded-items essentially cease to exist during the Viking Age. Thus you have the 3 Vendel helmets and only the one Viking Age Gjermundbu.
The other point that shows rising tensions between the Franks and Danes can be proven with the Danevirke and also the proliferation of Ring-forts around Denmark.
Thus how much can we say the (supposed) actions of Charlemagne were responsible for the initial raiding part of the Viking-Age? To what capacity would it be seen as a vengeance or defense of the Germanic heathen culture? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3aqo35/charlemagne_christianity_invasion_of_saxony_and/ | {
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"My answer to your question would be not much, although my knowledge is limited to the Frankish side but I will try to give you some additional context. First, the idea of Charlemagne invading Saxony to spread Christianity is a little bit more nuanced. The Saxons had been a problem for Charlemagne for quite some time. This was because the Saxons continuously raided into Frankish lands, so the invasion was not simply a power play by Charlemagne. Second, I haven't ever heard anything about Charlemagne banning trade between Christians and pagans, and there are several trade ports very close to Scandanavia (see Dorestad). Also I think its important to point out that the initial viking raids were directed at Anglo-Saxon England, not Francia. \n\nIn short, there is little that Charlemagne did that would \"force\" the northmen to raid, especially considering that the vikings were raiding pretty much simultaneously with Charlemagne. Its important to keep in mind that while the Verden Massacre takes place in 782, its not really another 20 or so years until Saxony is \"conquered.\" Also I am not too sure what the linkages were between the Saxons and the Danes/northmen. Hopefully that at least gives you some information on what you have heard!"
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1xnsv7 | how do small isps now entering the market expect to compete longterm with verizon and other gigantic isps? | I hate the monopolistic nature of Verizon and other ISPs, but don't fully understand how it all works behind the scenes. Will the government ever be able to regulate the internet like gas, water, and electricity? Why? Why not?
Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xnsv7/eli5_how_do_small_isps_now_entering_the_market/ | {
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"Smaller ISPs have to identify a market that is badly served by the existing providers and then serve that market. For most places in the country that's virtually impossible from a technical standpoint so the only thing they can really offer is either better customer service or a lower price. The margins on internet service are not good to begin with so offering a lower price is usually a quick trip to failure.\n\nCustomer service is a hard thing to sell. Most people find that most of the time their internet service \"just works\". There's very little customer service that most people ever need. It's hard to get someone to pay for something they don't use and don't need.\n\nYou could imagine a company that tried to provide customer service for the apps and operating systems on top of the internet stack but it would be fiendishly difficult to deliver that service - there are just so many variables, and even communicating with a customer about the problem can be maddening when the customer doesn't know enough about their system to answer questions helpfully or provide useful descriptions of the problems they are having.\n\nThere are pockets where you might be able to build an ISP with a technical advantage. Some rural areas are poorly served by existing ISPs. They're usually poorly served because the cost to run the wire to the homes is prohibitively high. I knew of a few small private ISPs that made a good business out of creating mesh wifi networks with cantennas and a lot of elbow grease in the 2003-2005 timeframe that were able to make some money in that kind of area, but I don't know if they remained viable over the long term.\n\nThe government will likely never regulate the internet like a utility. Unlike utilities where in general the best business model is a monopoly, internet service remains a market where competition from several providers and several technology platforms remains the best option (from a consumer's stand point)."
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41mw3e | why is when someone is being interviewed on a channel like cnn, is there a delay between when they ask a question and the response. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/41mw3e/eli5_why_is_when_someone_is_being_interviewed_on/ | {
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"Because the signal needs to go from where the question is asked, to a modem, to a cell tower or dish array, to space, back to a cell tower or dish array, to another modem, and then then to the speaker wherever the interviewee is.\n\nIt takes time for digital information to travel, even on \"live\" television. ",
"The speed of light is the fastest anything can go, including data and signals. You have to account for the time it takes for the signal to travel from interviewer to interviewee and then back. Then there is also probably some kind of technical processes (encoding and such) that would add a bit of delay.\n\nThen add in the reaction and thought time of the interviewee, their on TV, they are going to think about what they say before saying it."
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7nvapo | Now that it's been a few months with the JFK Assassination Files being released, is there anything we didn't already know? Anything groundbreaking? | Did Oliver Stone tell us everything we need to know? I feel like the administration made a big deal of making sure the papers were released on the 25th anniversary, but nothing after that. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7nvapo/now_that_its_been_a_few_months_with_the_jfk/ | {
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"I have a related question, given a large information dump like the JFK investigation, how do historians analyze the information these days?",
"While I certainly hope you were being glib with your Oliver Stone comment, the short answer to your question is: \"Not much.\" There certainly was no information that changed the official narrative of the assassination; though there were a lot of intriguing new bits of information about the case, and semi-unrelated cases.\n\nThe Washington Post did an absolutely terrific breakdown of the most notable revelations here:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nProbably the most notable, at least from my perspective, were documents detailing some of the various CIA plans and plots to kill Castro. This, of course, has long been known, but this particular document (the first one listed in the Washington Post piece) is an official 1975 internal examination of all the efforts and fleshes out the various plots in much greater detail than was ever known before.\n\nThe 82 page memo refers to another, unpublished 1967 memo by J. Edgar Hoover with the absolutely wonderfully title of \"Central Intelligence Agency's Intentions to Send Hoodlums to Cuba to Assassinate Castro.\" This, of course, speaks to the intra-agency conflicts between the FBI and the CIA on matters related to Cuba.\n\nBut your question is \"is there anything in these files that provides any type of indication of a conspiracy in the JFK assasination?\" and the answer is, \"No.\" The whole release dominated the news cycle for what, about a day? The level of revelations--dominated by interesting but not particularly revelatory minutiae--seems to indicate that this was about the appropriate level of general interest.\n\nKeep in mind that at the very last moment, Donald Trump elected to withhold numerous documents for further vetting. So until those specific documents are released, we are looking at a subset of all of the information still contained in the archives.",
"Perhaps nothing new in the US, but the released papers revealed and confirmed how deep was the involvement of the CIA with the Mexican government, and we are talking about presidential involvement, Harvey Lee Oswald and spying the embassies and communications from Soviet aligned countries in Mexico. \n\nThe papers, specially some telegraphs, confirmed the identities of LITENSOR, LITEMPO-8 and LITEMPO-2, code names for the Mexican president at the moment Adolfo López Mateos, former president Luis Echeverría, and Secretary of state Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (Who would become president the following term) respectively.\n\nThe telegraphs had a thorough description of Harvey's Lee Oswald activities in Mexico before JFKs assassination, and the communications held between all the possible actors specifically between the Cuban and Russian embassies in Mexico City. \n\nIf the identities of the spies were outrageous, the president and top political actors, and a sovereign country working for a foreign entity.... the fact that they were under the CIA payroll was, with their names and amounts detailed, ... just too much. \nThose papers were meant to be released around 1994s but the US Commission in charge of that put another 15 years of reserve to the documents. It's believed that it was an arrangement between the Mexican ruling party at the moment PRI and the CIA, as the elections were around the corner with the ruling party at that moment being the same as the one in the 70's. In addition, treason (aiding a foreign country) is the only crime for which a (ex)president can be held accountable for by the Mexican justice.\n\nThis is just the tip of the iceberg. The involvement of Mexican senators, governors, chiefs of police and presidents is starting to be confirmed. A good starting point in English could be Inside the Company from Philip Agee.\n\n *\n[Source](_URL_1_) 1 in Spanish \n* [Source](_URL_1_) 2 in Spanish \n* [Reference](_URL_0_) 1 in English",
"I'm curious, is there a way to make sure released documents haven't been modified?"
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8irjy4 | What is the history of the condom? | We all know in a general way that condoms were once made out of animal intestine and began to be made in rubber much later on, but how was this item developed, and how did it change? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8irjy4/what_is_the_history_of_the_condom/ | {
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"Today, the strangely-elongated bell shape of a condom is instantly recognizable. Condoms are the most-used sexual devices in the world, and in studies of sexuality and sex practices the vast majority of people report being familiar with condoms or have used one recently. The standard modern condom is made from latex and is used to prevent pregancy (with 98% effacacy if used correctly) and to act as a protection against most STDs. Polyurethane and lamb intestine condoms also exist for people allergic to latex or looking for a different experience, though the latter is not an effective barrier against STDs.\n\n\nUnfortunately, we have not always been blessed with easily-accessible and affordable condoms, and the history of condoms as a barrier device is a history spotted with many strange inventions, failures, and, well, babies.\n\n\nThere are records of glans-style condoms (which just go over the head of the penis) going back to the late third century BC, specifically one discovered at a funeral site in what is now Turkey, made of gold and silver. [You can see a picture of it here:](_URL_2_) Additionally, there is some research to suggest that use of oiled paper, leather or tortoiseshell condoms were common in China and Japan. \n\n\nBut I think you're more asking about the history of the modern condom, aren't you? The real (his)tory of condoms kicks off in the late 1400s when the French army invaded what is now Italy and came face to face (or genitals to genitals) with the massive syphilis epidemic that was just beginning to kick off there. The returning troops spread the disease across Europe and it has haunted us since then (but is much more treatable now). Probably as a direct result of this, the Italian anatomist and physician Gabriele Falloppio was the first to undisputedly discuss, research and advocate for condoms in his tract called The French Sickness (1564). The text ended up being published two years after his death--likely for it's frank (heh) discussion of birth control and condoms. Falloppio's condoms were made of linen and tied onto the erect penis with a string. [They would have looked like these.](_URL_0_)\n\n\nYou can imagine how unfortunately these would have felt for both the wearer and the person it was being used on. Regardless, Falloppio claimed that he had run experiments on his rudimentary condom by having and patently-absurd number of 1100 Italian men fitted with the devices, instructed on their use and then commanded to go out and Genesis 9:7 the earth. As he expected, none of them caught the disease. While it is unlikely that Falloppio's experiment would have held up to modern scientific scrutiny, it did introduce the idea and use of condoms to somewhat-general knowledge.\n\n\nEither way, Falloppio's condoms (can we call them floppy condoms?) made their way across Europe and the English Channel at the very least, as they begin appearing in the diaries of British libertines and rakes--they make various appearances in Lord Rochester's surviving records,and we begin to see quack doctors selling condoms alongside herbal erection treatments. By the way, the old tale about the name of the condom coming from a Dr. Condom providing them to King Charles II to help the king avoid children is a legend--Charles should have been trying harder for a heir, not avoiding it! English soldiers were known for using condoms made out of sheep and lambs intestine, and there was a privy dig that found examples going back to 1648.\n\n\nGiacomo Casanova, by the way, discusses how strongly he dislikes condoms in his diaries in several places, where he refers to them as 'french letters,' a common turn of phrase, But he also captures this strange evening where several women seem to agree with his judgement:\n\n\n > we set off to renew our voluptuous orgy. On the way he talked about modesty, and said,—\n\n > “That feeling which prevents our shewing those parts which we have been taught to cover from our childhood, may often proceed from virtue, but is weaker than the force of education, as it cannot resist an attack when the attacking party knows what he is about. I think the easiest way to vanquish modesty is to ignore its presence, to turn it into ridicule, to carry it by storm. Victory is certain. The hardihood of the assailer subdues the assailed, who usually only wishes to be conquered, and nearly always thanks you for your victory. . .\n\n > We found the three girls lightly clad and sitting on a large sopha, and we sat down opposite to them. Pleasant talk and a thousand amorous kisses occupied the half hour just before supper, and our combat did not begin till we had eaten a delicious repast, washed down with plenty of champagne.\n\n\n > We were sure of not being interrupted by the maid and we put ourselves at our ease, whilst our caresses became more lively and ardent. The syndic, like a careful man, drew a packet of fine French letters from his pocket, and delivered a long eulogium on this admirable preservative from an accident which might give rise to a terrible and fruitless repentance. The ladies knew them, and seemed to have no objection to the precaution; they laughed heartily to see the shape these articles took when they were blown out. [EPISODE 15 — WITH VOLTAIRE / CHAPTER XIX]\n\nBoswell also documents his struggles with using a condom versus not with prostitutes. In one account he talking about feeling good about it:\n\n > Tuesday 10 May 1763\n > At the bottom of the Haymarket I picked up a strong, jolly young damsel, and taking her under the arm I conducted her to Westminster Bridge, and then in armour complete did I engage her upon this noble edifice. The whim of doing it there with the Thames rolling below us amused me much.\n\n\nBut frequently for him he would forget or the prostitute would ask him not to use them (because of how uncomfortable they were, likely being linen), and he would scold himself for a week or more in his diary.\n\nBy the mid-to-late eighteenth century, however, condoms begin to become a problem. Well, they become a problem for upper-and-middle-class religious reformers. The focus now started to become on the use of the condom for contraceptive rather than protective purposes. First the Catholic Church, and then a number of Protestant figures, followed by secular doctors came out against the use of condoms as contraceptives. \n\nPart of this hysteria was a new emphasis on having sex over the perceived dangers of masturbation, the other part of it was that moral reformers recoiled at the thought of working class men and women purchasing condoms, which for years had been unaffordable to them (as they could cost up to a week's worth of pay). Prices began to sharply fall with the introduction of rubber condoms by the 1850's. These weren't quite up to the level of quality as we would expect, as they often had a long seam down the middle that could cause chafing on the male member. They were also stiffer, which meant less pleasure but more reusability.\n\n\nBy the 1860's in England and by 1873 in the United States (with the passing of the Comstock laws), the public campaign again condoms was in its full swing. In the United States it was against the law to mail even information about condoms through the federal mail system. And god forbid you mailed actual condoms--one way or the other Anthony Comstock and his Law would (and did) come down incredibly powerfully on the educators, manufacturers and distributors of contraceptive devices -- by the end of his reign he had destroyed hundreds of thousands of these devices, and chased sexual reformers like Victoria Woodhull out of the country and hounded others to death. \n\nIt wouldn't really be until World War I where governments began to see the risk of STDs to their (young and straight male) soldiers and embraced condoms as a preventive device while at the same time educating the recruits on the dangers of STDs. In the United States, a Supreme Court decision in 1918 in favor of Margaret Sanger (the founder of Planned Parenthood) allowed condoms to be distributed and used by the general public. It took until the late 1990s and the early 2000s however, before that aggressive marketing campaigns by Durex and Trojan would really establish the condom in the public's mind. \n\nSources:\n\nThe Humble Little Condom: A History Aine Collier\n\nThe history of the condom. -- Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine -- H Youssef. _URL_3_\n\nThe Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Casanova -- _URL_1_\n\nBoswell's London Journal -- James Boswell\n"
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4xqbml | why are there different events in gymnastics for men and women? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4xqbml/eli5_why_are_there_different_events_in_gymnastics/ | {
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"The amount of upper body strength needed to do rings and pommel horse. Historically I don't think women had that kind of strength. It's possible that some of the women who compete now might be able to pull off those apparatus. ",
"There's an emphasis for women on grace, and for men on upper body strength.",
"Simply male and female anatomy. Male events are primarily strength related (*especially* upper body strength) and females are generally smaller and more flexible so they correlate with those better. Now that's not to say neither can do either, but one sex will have a slight advantage due to that",
"Because in sports we are allowed to admit the basic scientific fact there are physical differences in male and female anatomy. . .\n\n\n\n-\n\n\n. . . for now.\n\n",
"Men and women have different centers of gravity. Men's are near the middle of the chest, women's are lower near the hips. This difference is key to certain gender specific events like the rings and pommel horse. "
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2gyaij | why is it acceptable for cats to scratch people, but when a dog bites someone it needs to be put down? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gyaij/eli5_why_is_it_acceptable_for_cats_to_scratch/ | {
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"I've known people who got rid of aggressive cats because they were about to have a baby. I'm sure there are plenty of people who have had to put cats down for scratching/biting.\n\nCats have to interact with the world with their claws. It's unavoidable. Of course they will scratch things sometimes, but usually it's by accident or the cat doesn't understand it's improper.\n\nIF the cat is intentionally *attacking* then of course that is a problem. But there is no way a dog bites you by accident.",
"Because dogs were bred to be hunting and guard animals, and therefore have the physical ability to do harm to a human that greatly surpasses that of a cat.",
"When cats attack a human it's usually more a \"hurt them enough to scare them away and/or run away myself,\" whereas big aggressive dogs can legitimately kill someone. Cats also tend to be more indoor animals, so if a person has a mean cat it's usually confined to that person's house. \n\nOne of the main points here is that dogs are much scarier than cats, for the most part. \n\n\n"
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1d59i0 | Do blind people get sleepy in the dark? | I've been hearing that ambient light has quite some impact on entering different cognitive states, what I mean is some intensity of light can tell a person that it's time to sleep, or some intensity and colour will make an environment feel "tense" or "relaxed" or "active" or "comfortable" and such. It's not an overwhelming effect but people at least do get sleepy when it's dark out - the main reason our sleep schedule is so all over the place is because of artificial light.
I've been wondering how this affects blind people, who don't see any light. Their skin can absorb light just as well (so I guess they can tell if they're standing in the sun) but they just don't see if it's dimly lit, or sunset or whatever, just darkness (I assume at least). Is there data on how this affects their daily schedule of activities, eating, sleeping and such? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1d59i0/do_blind_people_get_sleepy_in_the_dark/ | {
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"There are a host of reasons why people can have blindness, so there isn't a single answer to this. In short: Not all blind people are the same. \n\nThat said, yes, in some people with blindness the photoreceptor cells that signal to the brain to produce \"sleepy time\" chemicals can be intact and functional even though they are blind. Also, there are other zeitgebers, but light is a very important one.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n",
"Most blind people do have some residual light perception. [This website has the total number of blind individuals with no light perception as 15% of blind people](_URL_0_). Oddly enough, there's some debate if one should [blindfold blind people](_URL_1_) for learning. If you ask a blind person with residiual light perception, they tend to keep the lights on when they're awake, even though it provides no real benefit. So, to answer your question, just like sighted people, for 85% of blind people.",
"I have just the perfect source for anyone interested! Sleep scientist Charles Czeisler discusses the effect of light on circadian rhythms and also mentions studies focused on blind individuals.\n\n\nAt 15:20 he starts talking specifically about your question and anwers it perfectly:\n_URL_0_",
"People have touched on Circadian systems but I think the focus should be on [masking or acute response to light] (_URL_1_). /u/whatthefat below talks about ipRGCs these are also responsible for masking. As a conduit for [dark induced masking] (_URL_2_) and directly for [light induced masking] (_URL_4_) in mice. Masking is different between [diurnal (day-active) and nocturnal (night-active)] (_URL_3_) animals. How the ipRGC's function in diurnal animals is unknown. But you should read this cool review on a [nocturnal knockout that becomes diurnal](_URL_0_).\n\nEdit: In other words light and darkness wake you up or put you to sleep, respectively, using special light sensitive cells in your eyes. Depending on the deletion of the specific cell type, light- or dark-responses will be altered.\n\nTL;DR Blind mice that do not have rod and cones for will not respond to darkness, if they lack melanopsin they will not respond to light, and if the the melanopsin-containing cells are not present or destroyed they will not respond to light or darkness. Nothing is directly known about human masking to light and these cells."
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1iwiht | What did Roman military executions look like? | I was debating with some of my other historically-minded friends about the historical accuracy of films about ancient Rome and naturally Ridley Scott's *Gladiator* (2000) was brought up. One of my friends asked me whether the attempted execution of the central character, Maximus, was keeping with Roman military tradition. I myself have only read of stoning/beating soldiers to death and never the gladius-into-spine thrust depicted in the film. The main character refers to this as "a clean death, a soldier's death" yet I have consulted a few of my books on the topic and found no evidence this was practiced. Was this an accurate depiction of Roman military executions?
For the scene in question:
_URL_0_
| AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1iwiht/what_did_roman_military_executions_look_like/ | {
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"One of the downsides of me being at work all day is that I get home to see that you posted this right when I headed out :( Bah humbug. I'll still give you an answer though. \n\n---\n\nI do want to preface this with a note - *Gladiator* is about as historically accurate as Harry Potter. Taking ANYTHING from that movie as accurate is...probably not a good idea.\n\n---\n\nJust going off of the Roman military, there were a WIDE variety of punishments (including executions) that would be inflicted based on the crime. Even prior to the Marian Reforms, when every soldier was a citizen, **they subjected themselves to the harsh discipline of the legion.** Polybius describes this in [his sixth book](_URL_1_), in section 37:\n\n > A court-martial composed of all the tribunes at once meets to try him, and if he is found guilty he is punished by the bastinado ([fustuarium](_URL_3_)). This is inflicted as follows: The tribune takes a cudgel and just touches the condemned man with it, after which all in the camp beat or stone him, in most cases dispatching him in the camp itself. But even those who manage to escape are not saved thereby: impossible! for they are not allowed to return to their homes, and none of the family would dare to receive such a man in his house. So that those who have of course fallen into this misfortune are utterly ruined. The same punishment is inflicted on the optio and on the prefect of the squadron, if they do not give the proper orders at the right time to the patrols and the prefect of the next squadron. Thus, owing to the extreme severity and inevitableness of the penalty, the night watches of the Roman army are most scrupulously kept.\n\n > While the soldiers are subject to the tribune, the latter are subject to the consuls. A tribune, and in the case of the allies a prefect, has the right of inflicting fines, of demanding sureties, and of punishing by flogging. The bastinado is also inflicted on those who steal anything from the camp; on those who give false evidence; on young men who have abused their persons; and finally on anyone who has been punished thrice for the same fault. Those are the offences which are punished as crimes, the following being treated as unmanly acts and disgraceful in a soldier — when a man boasts falsely to the tribune of his valour in the field in order to gain distinction; when any men who have been placed in a covering force leave the station assigned to them from fear; likewise when anyone throws away from fear any of his arms in the actual battle.\n\n > Therefore the men in covering forces often face certain death, refusing to leave their ranks even when vastly outnumbered, owing to dread of the punishment they would meet with; and again in the battle men who have lost a shield or sword or any other arm often throw themselves into the midst of the enemy, hoping either to recover the lost object or to escape by death from inevitable disgrace and the taunts of their relations.\n\nDamned if you do and damned if you don't. The Romans had a military justice system that was fucking SCARY.\n\n > If the same thing ever happens to large bodies, and if entire maniples desert their posts when exceedingly hard pressed, the officers refrain from inflicting the bastinado or the death penalty on all, but find a solution of the difficulty which is both salutary and terror-striking. The tribune assembles the legion, and brings up those guilty of leaving the ranks, reproaches them sharply, and finally chooses by lots sometimes five, sometimes eight, sometimes twenty of the offenders, so adjusting the number thus chosen that they form as near as possible the tenth part of those guilty of cowardice. Those on whom the lot falls are bastinadoed mercilessly in the manner above described; the rest receive rations of barley instead of wheat and are ordered to encamp outside the camp on an unprotected spot. As therefore the danger and dread of drawing the fatal lot affects all equally, as it is uncertain on whom it will fall; and as the public disgrace of receiving barley rations falls on all alike, this practice is that best calculated both the inspire fear and to correct the mischief.\n\n(This last paragraph describes what we now know as decimation - it was carried out in a variety of different ways.)\n\n---\n\nThe entire reason for that big block of text was mostly to point out that the previous answer that was given was highly inaccurate, and for that, I apologize. The pre-Marian Legions subjected themselves to a disciplinary system that was extraordinarily harsh - and that was part of the agreement when they joined the legions. Their [citizen's rights](_URL_4_) were put to one side, and the rules of the military were paramount. \n\n---\n\nNow, moving on. I'll reiterate here - the 'execution' in *Gladiator* was one of the many ridiculous parts of the film. First off, it wouldn't be possible to \"randomly kill off lol\" a general. The Roman military was HIGHLY political - The top officers (Generals) were all politicians, the scions of the powerful classes. Russell Crowe would not have been a simple farmer, he would have been one of the Senatorial class, and as a (supposedly) successful general, would have been Rich. As. Fuck. AKA, a WAY bigger house and a TON of slaves. Also, he wouldn't have been wearing *lorica segmentata*. But I'm getting carried away here.\n\nIf the Romans were to behead someone (Which we really don't hear about all that much. If an army officer was bad, he would be politically destroyed. If the emperors didn't like an officer, they would just station him somewhere highly risky.), they would be far more likely to use a [spatha](_URL_0_) or just an axe. Though again, decapitation [would be reserved for citizens](_URL_2_), and would be far less likely to be used on a member of the military, because if you were executing someone in the military, you had a damn good reason. Plus, again....executing the Senatorial class was a no-no. \n\n**TL;DR** - no."
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"http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Fustuarium.html",
"http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/a... | |
2lgspr | How did the Soviet Air Force develop over the course of World War II? How did it compare to that of the other participants? | I was just reading this thread _URL_0_ and there was a bit of talk about the American military compared to the Soviets, and I realized that beyond being outclassed during Operation Barbarossa I haven't really read much about the Soviet Air Force's capabilities during the war. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2lgspr/how_did_the_soviet_air_force_develop_over_the/ | {
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"As you mentioned, the Soviet Air Force (VVS) was outclassed during the first part of the German invasion. This is principally attributable to the fact that like much of the Soviet military, the VVS was under a period of transition, in terms of equipment and in terms of personnel. I'll mainly focus on fighter aircraft because of the sexiness factor, but I can also go into bombers/ground-attack aircraft if there's an interest.\n\nIn the 1935-1940 period, the principal Soviet fighter aircraft were the Polikarpov [I-15](_URL_3_) and [I-16](_URL_1_). Like many WW2 biplanes, the I-15 was the pinnacle of biplane fighter technology, but was very much obsolete in 1941, unable to really compete with front-line German fighters unless the German pilot made a bad mistake. Depending on what you look at, the I-16 was the first mass-produced monoplane fighter with retractable landing gear, and was a very advanced and capable aircraft when it entered service in the mid-1930's. It too was clearly obsolete in 1941; pilots could use certain aspects to their advantage such as superior maneuverability, but the type wasn't fast enough, was under-powered, and quickly lost energy while maneuvering. Large numbers of both of these fighter types were still in service in the VVS at the time of Barbarossa, although in the process of being replaced.\n\nThe principal next-generation fighters that the VVS was desperately putting into service were the [Yak-1](_URL_0_), [Lagg-3](_URL_4_), and [Mig-3](_URL_5_). Although much better than the early Polikarpovs, each of these types had disadvantages that could be exploited by Germany's front-line fighter, the Bf-109. The Mig-3 was a very capable high-altitude fighter, though lightly armed and with little armor, but most engagements in the Eastern front occurred at low altitude, outside of it's best performance envelope and it was inferior to German equipment at typical combat altitudes. The Lagg-3 suffered from construction defects such as rotting and warping of wood paneling, and was notoriously under-powered as the engine it had been designed for was not ready for service, and was the worst of the types. The Yak-1 fared the best of the three in June 1941, in the hands of a skilled pilot able to essentially match the Bf-109 in low altitude combat, although not many were at front-line readiness when Germany invaded. Finally, the Soviet pilot pool was also in the middle of transition, and there was little time to train new pilots before throwing them into battle in the early, desperate days of summer-autumn 1941.\n\nAs the war went on, the VVS definately caught up to the Germans. By 1944 the pilot situation was improving at the same time as the standard of German pilots began to decline in the face of a long battle of attrition on multiple fronts. In terms of technology, late Soviet fighters very capable. It's always a tricky subject to directly compare aircraft, especially between different fronts where the nature, philosophies, and conditions of air combat were different, but it would be appropriate to put late Soviet fighters into the same category as the Fw-190, P-51, Spitfire, etc. After the disaster of the Lagg-3, the airframe was repurposed with more modern construction, and fitted with a more powerful Shvetsov radial engine and heavier cannon armament. The resulting [La-5](_URL_2_), sometimes seen as the Lagg-5, was a vast improvement. The subsequent refinement of the La-7 further improved performance, and the La-11, which entered service just after the war, saw service in Korea. The other \"branch\" of successful later-war fighters stemmed from the Yak-1, in the form of the Yak-7 and Yak-9. The Yak-9 especially was a fantastic aircraft, probably one of the best dogfighters of the war.",
"During the 1930s, the Red Army Air Force - VVS - was considered to be very advanced, with good pilots and innovative aircraft, due to a very strong push for a top of the line, modern air force by Stalin in the late 1920s/early 1930s. The [I-15](_URL_2_), and later iterations the [I-15*bis*](_URL_4_) and [I-153](_URL_3_), was an excellent biplane design which proved itself in the skies over Spain to be quite effective, and the [I-16](_URL_0_) monoplane was one of the most advanced fight aircraft in the world when it made its debut in 1935, and similarly made a respectable mark in Spain.\n\nBut come 1941, this all meant nothing. Design and innovation had slowed, in no small part to the purges. VVS command was not only weakened, but Stalin's interest in airpower became a stranglehold as no one wished to displease him. Prominent designers had been denounced and arrested, including Tupolev, Petlyakov and Polikarpov (initially denounced way back in 1929) - they still designed, just in special prisons. The next generation of fighter aircraft, mainly the [Yak-1](_URL_9_), [MiG-3,](_URL_5_) and [LaGG-3](_URL_7_) had barely entered production, leaving the I-16 as the backbone of the Soviet fleet when the Germans struck, making up roughly a third of the entire force. Almost half of the I-16s were destroyed in the first two days of combat, many of them on the ground, and those pilots fortunate enough to get into the air easily outclassed by the more modern Messerschmitt. The Yak-1 was the best the Soviets had at the time, and considered to be roughly comparable to the Me-109E by Soviet intelligence, but it too proved to be overpowered by the Me-109F which had just begun to appear on the front lines in time for Barbarossa, and regardless, most of the Yak-1s produced at that time were stationed near Moscow, with only 105 in the Western Military Districts at the outbreak of war.\n\nAs for the MiG-3 and LaGG-3, both were found to be lacking in combat with the Luftwaffe, especially at low altitudes, and both aircraft quickly gained an unpopular reputation from pilots. And besides that, just like the Yak-1, delivery was an issue. Less than 200 LaGG-3 had been delivered before Barbarossa, rather than the 593 promised, and even less had be assigned to the regiments yet. The MiG-3 had not suffered the same issues, with just under 1,000 in operation, but most were destroyed on the ground. The 9th Mixed Aviation Division, on the western border, lost 347 of its 409 aircraft on the first day, including almost all of their 233 MiGs. \n\nSo all in all, Soviet planners, who had evaluated the Soviet Air Force as being on par with the Germans, got a very [tough reality check in the summer of 1941.](_URL_8_) During just the *morning* of June 22nd, 222 aircraft were shot down, and 668 destroyed on the ground - with German losses of *18* aircraft. Losses by the end of the day were at least 1,200 lost by the Soviets (their own records) or nearly 1,500 as claimed by the Germans, who recorded 61 losses of their own. On the 23rd, another 1,000 of so were lost.\n\nThe I-15 family was very quickly phased out to second-line use, or as a ground attack aircraft, and while production of the I-16 continued for a time simply because *something* was better than nothing, it was phased out by 1942. Production was also hampered by the German advance, leading to the famous evacuation of entire factories to the east, which of course makes it hard to build an aircraft while moving. A number of factories had already been planned way out there, but almost none were completed by 1941, so the vast majority of Soviet production had been in the west.\n\nHowever, once production could be ramped up, the Soviet cranked our planes, especially the beloved Yak-1 (however it was tougher to build than the LaGG-3 as it required duralumin which the LaGG-3 didn't, which meant the latter remained in production too despite the hate), which became more and more the workhorse of the Soviets in the early days of the war. And designers also went into overdrive an in effort to get on par with the Germans, and they were generally successful! A number of excellent designs came out, most notably the [La-5](_URL_10_) and later [La-7](_URL_1_), and the [Yak-9.](_URL_6_)\n\nThe Lavochkin La-5 was a major improvement on the LaGG-3, increasing its speed, climb, handling... just about everything. Design work began after war broke out, very pointedly to fix the deficiencies of the Lagg-3 via-a-vis the Me-109F. The team worked quickly, and the La-5 was in production by the fall of 1942, and it was a success, immediately getting positive feedback on combat performance. It still had its issues, but a good pilot could go toe-to-toe with a Me-109F and not feel like he was suicidal. However, the -109G was now coming into production, along with the Fw 190, and it wasn't until the La-5FN, with the M-82FN engine, debuted in mid-1943 that the La-5 truly had achieved parity with the German opponents, being evaluated by the Germans as the most capable fighter that the Soviets had to counter the Fw 190A-4, having the upper-hand especially in low-altitude encounters. An effective tool for air superiority anyways, the Soviets got a major assist from the western allies at this point, as the strategic bombing campaign pulled off Luftwaffe resources necessary to protect Germany, meaning that new Fw 190s were a low priority for the eastern front.\n\nThe La-5 series was followed up with the La-7, which only debuted near the end of the war, flying its first sorties in fall of 1944, with the initial batch of 30 pilots scoring 55 victories for only 4 combat losses, in 462 sorties. While it certainly had its problems - engine failure causes a number of accidents for instance, as did defective wing-spars - it was evaluated as generally superior to both the Me-109 and Fw 190 that it was flying against, and Ivan Kozhedub, the top Allied Ace, downed an Me-262 in one (A Yak-9 pilot did too, so it isn't unique...). Its late deployment meant that it never made up more than 15 percent of the Soviet fighter fleet, but it is not unfair to evaluate the plane as one of the best fighter aircraft flown during the war, and certainly is in the running for the best the Soviets threw into the mix, challenged only by the Yak-9.\n\nAs for the Yak-9, it was at a very good fighter as well, and unlike the La-7, produced and deployed in great numbers, debuting in 1942 and being the most produced soviet fighter during the war. The highly popular Yak-1 had been improved into the Yak-7, and in this in turn formed the basis for the Yak-9, which were just improved versions of their predecessors rather than revolutionary designs. Three major plants were building the Yak-9, and by mid-1944, the series was 50 percent of the entire Soviet fighter fleet. As with the Yak-1, it retained the wonderful maneuverability that had endeared it to pilots, with the improved armament and survivability of the Yak-7, and all in a lighter package. Evaluated as being equal if not superior Me-109 and Fw 190 enemies, it proved to especially have the upper-hand in climbing fights - and won the grudging praise of its Luftwaffe opponents.\n\nSo yeah, that's about the sum of it, aircraft wise. I've tried not to get too nut-and-bolts in the evaluation of the planes, and just stuck with the general conclusions you'll find. The overall picture though, as I think is plain to see, is that the Soviets were stuck in the 1930s when war broke out, but were able to turn it around quickly, and by the end of the war were flying aircraft that any German pilot would envy (I've also talked only about fighter capabilities here. [I followed up about bombers and attack aircraft here](_URL_11_))\n\n*(Character limit)*\n\nEdit: Me grammar good. Dates.",
"From the better replies, it seems like the VVS was - at least on paper - pretty strong in 1939. \n\nA follow-up relating to that - why did Winter War go so badly in the air (as well) for the Soviets then? The Finnish Air Force was in a sorry state, flying Bristol Bulldogs and Fokker D.XXXI's and numerically overwhelmed."
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavochkin-Gorbunov-Gudkov_LaGG-3",
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30baqa | In the latest slow mo guys video, where they spin a cd fast and break it, what force is acting on the cd to cause it to break? | _URL_0_
What is actually going on here?
Also as kind of an off shoot question, would the same thing happen if the earth span really, really fast? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/30baqa/in_the_latest_slow_mo_guys_video_where_they_spin/ | {
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"Moving things want to continue moving in the same direction at the same speed, to keep moving in a straight line. In order to make them go around in a circle, you need to apply a force. In terms of a solid material spinning, that means there are stresses in the material (internal forces). A material can only take so much stress, up to its strength, before it breaks. When it breaks, the broken pieces are free to move in a straight line."
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7nyma1 | why do peeholes face up and down rather than side to side? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7nyma1/eli5_why_do_peeholes_face_up_and_down_rather_than/ | {
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"In short, it's vertical so that urine flows better. If it were side to side (horizontal), it could lead to issues with peeing, as it would require more force to pee. \n\nI googled this if you want further information (called the external meatus opening) "
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7dkr2q | Wouldn't electric cars be way more efficient if they had multiple gears? | I could imagine that an electric motor could save some power by simply having it run at slower speeds. | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7dkr2q/wouldnt_electric_cars_be_way_more_efficient_if/ | {
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"Whatever the speed of the engine is, you need the same amount of power to maintain the car at a certain speed. The issue with a regular thermal engine is that your engine might be very inefficient (or not have enough power) at that speed so you need gears to put it at a different speed. An electric engine has pretty much the same efficiency at all speeds so you don't need gears as much.",
"Not really. One of the big reasons for the huge difference between the power available at an engines flywheel and at a car's wheels is the massive amounts of power lost in the gearbox.\n\nThe main reasoning for the gearbox though is that a conventional internal combustion engine has almost no power or torque at very low rpms, and a very narrow \"power band\" which effectively means that an IC engine only really provides decent power at a very specific rpm. IC engines also runs out of capable RPMs very quickly, with most engines topping out at 6-7000.\n\nNow look at electrical motors. Firstly you can control the rpms very easily, which directly determines how fast the wheels could be turning. Also, an electrical motor provides the same amount of torque (Ability to turn the wheels) at practically any rpms. And the KW curve is extremely wide. Finally, most DC motors (more popular in cars) can reach well over 20000 rpms. and AC motors (popular in heavy load moving equipment like trains and mine trucks) insanely high torque values can be produced from 2rpm to 15000 or even 35000rpms.\n\nBasically this means that there is no need for a full gearbox with multiple gears in electric vehicles, and also no need for the reduction in available power that they cause.",
"No. Traditional transmissions with multiple gears is because a gasoline engine can only produce effective torque at certain speeds. The multiple gear transmission compensates for the variation in the gas engine speeds to deliver a constant speed and acceleration to the wheels.\n\nElectric motors do not have this limitation. They have full torque available at 0 RPM, unlike gas engines.\n\nPutting a continuous velocity transmission in a traditional gasoline engine might actually increase its gas mileage since the gasoline engine would be able to maintain more consistent RPM and acceleration. This would allow engineers to fine tune the gasoline engine for efficient running since its behavior is a little more predictable with a CVT in it."
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4ukidn | If 100 perfect coins were flipped with identical starting conditions, would they all land the same? | Assuming we have a model that the coin lands heads 50% of the time. | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4ukidn/if_100_perfect_coins_were_flipped_with_identical/ | {
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"There's a lot of assumptions in your question—but the spirit is that yes, coin flips, which obey Newtonian mechanics are deterministic. People have built robots that can pick which side they want their coin to land. Even more impressive, you can teach yourself to rig coin flips in your favor."
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1cgtvm | How did ancient Greek/Roman mythology survive until the Renaissance? | Sorry if this has already been asked before, but I didn't find any question like this using the search bar.
So, we have a gap of roughly one thousand years between the "legalisation" of Christianity in the Roman Empire and the Renaissance, a large part of it being what is commonly called the "Middle Ages". Pagan gods ceased to be worshipped within two or three hundred years after Constantine's decision to make Christianity legal, and people did their very best to suppress pagan religions or even deviations from Christian faith and theology. In this atmosphere, how come the stories of ancient Greek and Roman mythology have survived for more than one thousand years?
| AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cgtvm/how_did_ancient_greekroman_mythology_survive/ | {
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"Works like the Theogony (detailing many stories and divine geneologies) survived or were recovered by modern archaeologists. This [wiki article](_URL_0_) may be the thing that answers your questions, at least in regard to Greek mythology. You also have to keep in mind that the middle ages and Renaissance are both Eurocentric terms and methods of chronology. Just because Europe lost a lot of information doesn't mean the information was lost. Their Islamic neighbors translated many, MANY Roman and Greek texts on a variety of topics.\n\nThe TL;DR version is that non-Europeans preserved much of it, some of it was preserved through folk tradition, and the rest has been recovered at archaeological sites.",
"It's important to keep in mind that early Christians seldom sought to (or had the power to) erase pre-Christian literature with its stories of pre-Christian deities. In fact, early Christian scholars--the so-called \"Church Fathers\"--usually actively engaged these stories to prove their falsehood. Take for example Augustine of Hippo's massive, 5th-century *City of God,* which takes as one of its themes his attempt to prove that the embrace of the Christian God did not cause the ancient Gods to turn against the Empire and cause its collapse. In this book, Augustine tells lots of stories from classical mythology in order to refute them. \n\nMoreover, early Christians, like Augustine and the other Church Fathers, were steeped in classical learning since they were educated in classical schools (before their collapse in, say, the 6th century onwards). Educated pre-Christians themselves often took the fantastic stories of mythology with a grain of salt and regarded them as colorful allegories contained in works of high literary merit. Thus, Ovid's *Metamorphoses*, a veritable encyclopedia of Greco-Roman myths, was beloved both in antiquity and the Middle Ages but it was read as a work of literature, not theology, by both audiences. Medieval scholars did not reject classical literature; to the contrary they embraced it even as they rejected its underlying theology/mythology as error now supplanted by the True God. Their most beloved classical authors--for instance, Cicero--many regarded as sort of \"crypto-Christians,\" men of high virtue who only had the misfortune to be born before Jesus brought Christian salvation through his death and baptism. Christians thought Virgil's pre-Christian Fourth Eclogue, for example, predicted the birth of Christ. This is why Dante can have Virgil as his guide through the Inferno in the early 14th century and encounter Homer, Ovid, and Horace in \"Limbo,\" the non-suffering antechamber to Hell.\n\nThe love of medieval scholars for all things classical--including classical myths--is driven home by this fact: around 90% of the Latin works that survive from antiquity today survive because they were copied by Christian scholars during the so-called \"Carolingian Renaissance\" of the late-8th-early 9th centuries."
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e7q3bu | how does your muscle grow stronger/thicker upon being damaged? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e7q3bu/eli5_how_does_your_muscle_grow_strongerthicker/ | {
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"the muscle tissues get damaged. Then your body repairs them stronger so they don't get damaged as easily.",
"Take a ball of clay, shape it into a football shape. Then score it long ways (surface level cut) with a knife. That's in a sense what happens when you exercise but many times over and much much smaller tears (can't see with the naked eye). You basically damage your muscles.\n\nWhen your body goes to fix the tears, instead of just sticking the clay back together, your body adds more new clay to fill up the tear. Do this over and over and your lump of clay (muscle) will become noticeably bigger. And bigger muscles generally mean more strength.",
"To add to the other answers, nobody really knows if it is the damage that causes growth. Other competing factors are tension, metabolic stress, or other mechanisms that i frankly don't know.\n\nEdit: this study for example found that the body does not increase protein synthesis in muscles until after the microtraumata are rrepaired. This might indicate that one should maximize their training while trying to minimize muscle damage. _URL_0_"
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38wezj | How fast would you have to travel around the world to be constantly at the same time? | Edit.. I didn't come on here for a day and found this... Wow thanks for the responses! | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/38wezj/how_fast_would_you_have_to_travel_around_the/ | {
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"Your speed is going to depend on your latitude, assuming that your question means that you want to go back one timezone per hour, so that you have some sort of 'never ending hour.'\n\nIf you wanted to pick a latitude and stick with it, then the length of your lap around the world is just: \n\n L = 2 * pi * (radius of the earth) * cos(latitude)\n\nwhere that last piece is the [cosine](_URL_3_) of the latitude you want to travel at. Since you only need to do a global lap once every 24 hours, you can divide this by 24 hours to get: \n\n\n v = 2 * pi * (earth radius) * cosine(latitude of new york city)/24 hours\n\n[Math.](_URL_0_)\n\nAnd I plugged in the latitude for NYC, because why not, and it gave me 785 mph. Go ahead and tinker with that angle, try [London](_URL_1_) or [Mumbai](_URL_2_) or [Honolulu](_URL_4_) or [Stockholm](_URL_7_).\n\nBe careful when you pick your latitude though, because some countries span a large degree of longitude but have chosen the entire country to run on one timezone, such as [China and India.](_URL_5_) If you planned to pass through there in an hour you'd end up getting out of sync. \n\nOf course, as is common in physics, there is a simple limit for making this easy: go to the poles. [The timezones start and end there,](_URL_6_) meaning that you can walk as slow as you want, provided you're close enough to the pole. If you wanted to be able to do this on foot, walking through one timezone per hour, then the furthest you could feasibly be is 10 miles from the north pole - that would keep you walking at a brisk pace of 3 mph all day. If you were 10 feet from the pole, a snail could easy handle this pace.\n",
"At the equator - 1000 miles/hour.\n\nThere are 24 lines of longitude, 1000 miles apart, each representing 1 hour.",
"You could go to one of the poles and just do a slow twirl.",
"Just could do it without moving at all. Just stand at one of the poles.",
"If your at the north pole I'm pretty sure you could do it on foot. ",
"Alternatively, if you lost a bit of weight, travelling at the speed would keep you at the same time. Using special relativity you can see in Lorentz's transformations that as your speed tends to c, you experience more time dilation, and so at c you would remain at the same time.",
"Each time zone is 1,035 miles wide. As a case study, if we are starting from the east coast of the USA, we have approximately one hour to travel west and cross each time zone to stay within the same hour. \nThat means we need to be traveling an average of 1035 mph.",
"As fast as the Earth rotates. Like if you start at noon somewhere, you're basically just \"hanging\" in the air with the Sun at your back while the Earth spins below you.\n\nThe Earth rotates at around 1,040 mph, so depending on where you are on the planet, that's the maximum speed that someone on the ground could say you're traveling.\n\nAs others have pointed out, the more scientific approach involves your latitude in relation to the Earth's rotational axis. My answer is very simplified.",
"It depends on your latitude. If you're within a few kilometers of either pole, you can keep up with the clock just by walking.\n\nAt the equator, you have to go about 1670km/h to keep up with the clock. This is faster than the typical cruising speed of commercial airliners (about 900km/h), but not as fast as many supersonic military planes.",
"So if it's noon here, and I travel at the speed required to reach the next time zone before it turns 1pm, and keep on doing that continuously. When does it become the next day? Time surely passes and if I do it for more than 24 hours, it would be the next day. But I've never gotten to tomorrow at noon... ",
"I want to add something really quick from the rule of thumb I use to remember the circumference of the Earth.\n\nThe French [established the metre](_URL_0_) to be 10,000,000 units between the equator and the north pole. So you can then easily remember that a quarter of the way around the Earth is 10,000,000 metres, or 10,000 kilometres. So the circumference of the Earth is around 40,000 km.\n\nIn order to get from this to a speed to stay in the sunny side, recall that a day is 24 hours. So you get 40,000 km / 24 h = 1666 km/h. This works for the equator, but as the top comment points out, it depends on your latitude.",
"Pretty cool, given that the Earth rotates at about 1,000 mph at the equator, that a jet, at the equator, flying West at 1000mph, is basically motionless in space, only moving at that speed in relation to the ground. But from the Sun's POV the jet is hovering as the Earth spins beneath it. ",
"Based on your question, I assume you must mean relative to the local time. While you can maintain your same relative position to the Sun, you cannot stay at a constant *time*, even in the local time zone. A particular geography is in a specific timezone. As you move over the surface of the earth, keeping your position the same relative to the sun, time in the current timezone advances minute-by-minute. Suddenly you cross over a line defining the edge of a timezone, and time decreases by an hour (in some cases 30 minutes!). Unfortunately, these lines are not at all uniform (timezones are quite arbitrary), and if you are keeping at the same position relative to the sun, you may end up spending more or less than an hour in each time zone. Also, it is important to note that as you cross over the date line suddenly the date increases by one day.\n\nSo in short, it is not possible to remain at the same time. The closest you can come to this is repeating (parts) of the same hour (more or less) for 24 hours while the date increases each time you cross the date line. Others here have already answered the question of how fast you would need to travel to maintain your position relative to the sun. However, I thought it important to add the information about timezones and the fact that even the local time does not remain \"the same time\" as you travel around the world.",
"All this fancy math stuff aside, would it not be much simpler to say that you would simply need to be traveling the same speed as the earth rotates but in the opposite direction? This would theoretically keep you in the same place/time."
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"http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2*pi*%28earth+radius%29*cosine%28latitude+of+london%29%2F24+hours",
"http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2*pi*%28earth+radius%29*cosine%28latitude+of+... | |
40h2rr | Was owning slaves in the US limited solely to black people? Could somebody own white slaves? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/40h2rr/was_owning_slaves_in_the_us_limited_solely_to/ | {
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"It was not recognized by the United States' law, but Native American tribes had a practice of temporarily taking war captives as slaves, as these including all races of people. \n\nA relatively recent example is [Olive Ann Oatman (1837–1903)](_URL_0_), a European-American girl who was captured by the Yavapai along with her sister. They were forced to preform menial labor and eventually sold as slaves to the Mojave who treated them better.\n\nIn R. Halliburton Jr.'s excellent book, ''Red over Black: Black Slavery among the Cherokee Indians'', he describes instances in the 18th century, when Cherokees captured individual French or English men who were slaves, but served as interpreters and the situation was temporary. Chattel slavery was not a traditional practice among tribes.\n\nThe Indian slave trade was huge in the 16th through 18th centuries, and hopefully someone more knowledgeable can cover that subject, but thousands of Indians from the southeast mainland US were sent into slavery in the Caribbean. \n\nOne famous and more recent example of Indian slavery is [Sacagawea (Shoshone, 1788–1812)](_URL_1_), who helped guide the Lewis and Clark Expedition and is featured on the US dollar coin. She was enslaved by the Hidatsa and sold to Toussaint Charbonneau, a French-Canadian, who took her as a wife.",
"Well, let me be clear from the outset: the short and simple answer is no, it was not possible in the United States to own a white person as a slave. One of the features that makes slavery in the United States so distinctive and so unique in history is that it was constructed along racial lines; in fact, the very idea of race is so essential to the story of North American slavery that you really can’t separate them out at all.\n\nIt seems easy to imagine that we’ve always had the notion that there are ‘black people’ and ‘white people’ as racial identities. Everyone has a skin colour, right? Except before the 16th Century, Europeans really *don’t* have a notion of ‘race’ like we do today. A white European person from the 15th Century simply would not understand the racial framework we have in western society today. Race is a social construct, a means of categorising people according to a particular physical characteristic; there is no reason why we should have a concept of race and if you were to line everyone in the world up side by side, you simply wouldn’t be able to neatly categorise a vast swathe of people in the middle.\nThe western and particularly North American concept of race is intimately associated with the experience of New World slavery. Whilst it’s wrong to say that we only have a conception of ‘black’ and ‘white’ as racial categories because of slavery, you simply cannot unpick one neatly from the other; as slavery develops so too does the American sense of race, and racism.\n\nNew World slavery was a thoroughly, intrinsically racist system – it was constructed as a system of debasement and exploitation based on the notion that black Africans were inherently inferior and more acutely suited to intense labour than white Europeans. Particularly by the 19th Century in the South, to be black meant to be a slave; to be free was to be white. This is how slaveholding society conceptualised race. There were free black people certainly, but they were an abnormality, an aberration; they existed in a strange world between true freedom (which was the preserve of white people and especially white men) and enslavement. There is a symbiotic relationship between race and slavery in the United States, and many of the racial problems that plague the US today are the direct result of the racial construction of slavery. For that reason, we must be extremely careful about discussing notions of 'white slavery'.\n\nWhat you might have sometimes heard of referred to as ‘white slavery’ is a practice from the colonial period known as *indentured servitude*. As it was notionally constructed, this was a practice whereby white workers from Europe would agree to sign up to work as labourers in the New World for a fixed term, usually seven years, at the conclusion of which they would be given compensation for their services in the form of either land, cash or both. Essentially, indentured servants would go to the New World – to places like Barbados or Virginia – initially as labourers and workers, and at the end of their term of service, become settlers who could forge their own destiny and fortune in the New World.\nNow, despite this theoretically being a free arrangement, a great many of these indentured servants were – through a variety of means of coercion – sent to the New World against their will. \n\nLikewise, the conditions of work and life they experienced, particularly in the Caribbean, were far from ideal and were often intense and gruesome. This was certainly no working holiday; mortality rates were high for those workers going to the New World, their rights were certainly restricted and their masters had considerable jurisdiction over them for much of the colonial period. Institutional frameworks sprung up around indentured servitude to help enforce it in law and practice, frameworks which inspire the laws and mechanisms that helped to enforce slavery. So certainly, we can identify similarities with slavery. But this is not a system of slavery per se.\n\nOne of the fundamental differences is that indentured servitude comes with three implicit distinctions: it is intended to be a *temporary* arrangement, it is a contract entered into by two (theoretically) mutually consenting free persons, and the servant is not considered to be the legal property of their master; the servant retains a legal identity as a free person. Contrast that with African slavery. Slaves do not need to even theoretically consent to the arrangement of slavery, it is automatically construed to be servitude until death, and the slave is reduced to property. An indentured servant remains a person in law with rights and dignities – their employer’s power over them stems not from a condition of ownership, but rather from a contract into which the servant has entered. In slavery, the master’s owner stems from the fact that the slave is legally their property to do more or less with as they please. Furthermore, at least on paper, there is an implied mutually beneficial relationship in indentured servitude: the master gets low-cost labour for the better part of a decade, the servant gets considerable compensation at the end of their service.\n\nNow certainly, abuses were abound in this system. Many servants died from neglect or abuse before they ever came to the end of their service; others had employers who would try to cunningly trap servants into perpetual work by extending the length of their contracts as punishment for infractions against it, or as collateral against loans. We might say that some servants ended up suffering slave-like conditions. But again, we generally stress that this was not really slavery; the construction of the system and the institutional framework that surrounds it is qualitatively and substantially different. Slavery as it came to be practiced in the United States was characterised by a systematic and institutional degradation and dehumanisation of its victims in both practice and theory; they were literally reduced to Human property both legally and in practice. Whilst in some ways servants came to be treated as property, particularly in the British Caribbean, it is recognised that there were limits imposed by cultural and institutional frameworks.\n\nWhere there has been a more genuine and ongoing debate among historians is what the relationship between white indenture and black slavery is. Some conceptualise black slavery as having *begun* as a kind of indentured servitude; others (myself included) insist black slavery was always functionally distinct from white servitude. But in the historiography a distinction is broadly maintained between indentured servants and African slaves; Hilary Beckles conceives indenture as a form of \"proto-slavery\" but stops short of describing it as the same system. And indeed, whichever side you take in that debate, there are points where servitude and slavery exist side by side - and contemporaries certainly make qualitative differences between the two. Indentured servitude has similar features and it helped to shape the development of racial slavery, but it is not inherently the same as the system of racial African slavery (or, for that matter, Native American slavery, which was also practiced). They are related, but distinct, forms of unfree labour.\n\n**Selected sources:**\n\n* Winthrop Jordan, *White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550 - 1812* (1968).\n* Winthrop Jordan, *The White Man's Burden: Historical Origins of Racism in the United States* (1974) [this is an abridged reconstruction of the above book, more suitable for general readerships]\n* Christopher Tomlins, *Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonising English America, 1580 – 1865* (2010).\n* Hilary Beckles, *White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados 1627 - 1715* (1990).\n* Hilary Beckles, \"Plantation Production and White \"Proto-Slavery\": White Indentured Servants and the Colonisation of the English West Indies, 1624 - 1645\", *The Americas* 4, no. 3 (1995): 21 - 45.\n* Alden Vaughan, \"The Origins Debate: Slavery and Racism in Seventeenth-Century Virginia\", *The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography* 97, no. 3 (1989): 311 - 354.\n\nEDIT: I am busy tonight. Replies may be slow but will come to follow-up questions.\n\nEDIT 2: Some fantastic following up questions are being asked! I'm British so I don't have time to answer tonight, but I promise I will address all of them tomorrow (I have the day off) starting first thing in the morning.\n\nEDIT 3: Due to the enormous interest in this thread, we are practising active moderation. If your follow-up hasn't appeared yet, it just means we need to approve it. We aren't deleting follow-up questions, don't worry."
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"http://www.pbs.org/lewisandclark/inside/saca.html"
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8r5xrk | how come rechargable batteries like in our phones don't "overcharge" when left in the charger at 100%? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8r5xrk/eli5_how_come_rechargable_batteries_like_in_our/ | {
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"There's a circuit in the phone which monitors the battery voltage. When it reaches the goal, it cuts off charging any more. ",
"Whem you plug your phone in, a couple of active devices in the phone monitor the voltage of the battery and modify the current going in, and when they detect the battery voltage is at its highest point, they disconnect the battery from its supply",
"They can, but you have to try to do it. If you put your phone to sleep and let it stay in the charger, it'll stop charging after a point.\n\nIf on the other hand you keep it on, have it doing something like playing movies, and leave it on overnight while being charged.. That can cause problems.\n\nIts why I had to replace my 3DS. The battery pretty much inflated to the point where it nearly broke the case.",
"They did overcharge older rechargeable batteries. I remember when mobile phones started becoming mainstream you had to make sure not to leave them at 100% for too long once they fully charged.\n\nToday there is a circuit that stops electricity once the battery is fully charged."
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1l34l7 | why is it harder to do things that are more beneficial for us? for example, why is it easier to sit at home and watch tv than to run and exercise, or to eat a double cheeseburger than a salad? | I've always wondered this. Obviously there are some exceptions, like causing physical pain to ourselves is harder than not doing anything at all. But, it seems like most of the beneficial things to people in general (losing weight, building muscle, studying hard, work, etc.) almost seem like chores, and something we have to constantly struggle with ourselves to do. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1l34l7/eli5_why_is_it_harder_to_do_things_that_are_more/ | {
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"Generally speaking, animals try to maximize energy intake (cheeseburger) and minimize energy expenditure (watch tv). Rich(ish) humans in modern 1st world countries are kind of a unique outlier among animals in that they have *too* *many* calories than is healthy. We haven't adapted to that yet.",
"Because using as little energy as possible while taking in as much energy as possible is what our brains believe is necessary to survive.\n\nThroughout 99.99% of human history, it was important to eat foods high in sugar and fat, as it provides humans with lots of energy. If you didn't crave the taste of fats and sugars, then you would have less energy and be less likely to reproduce. We are descendants of those early humans who actively sought fatty and sugary foods.\n\nWe don't like exercising because we are hardwired to conserve as much energy as possible. We might run into a predator and need to flee, or run into some prey and chase it down at any moment. Our brains tell us that we can't afford to use this precious energy on something that wont feed us or help us reproduce.",
"There's a lot of evolutionary instincts involved here that stopped us from being animals that eat, procreate and sleep for their lifetimes. \n\nIn a simple answer to your question, you prefer to sit at home and watch TV because you're rewarded instantly from your (small) effort: you get information and spend less energy, whereas with going outside and running you're not only spending a lot of energy, but the reward you get is not instantaneous: your heart muscle only strengthens with many sessions. \n\nIn really short words, you feel accomplished instantly when you sit down and do what you feel like rather than finding motivation to use energy for gains that you will only see weeks after. "
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f77s05 | How does a PC obtain an IP address? | I am pretty new when it comes to IT, but I am trying.
The question is - According to what data does DHCP assign an IP address to your PC? Is it according to some components inside?
And if so, when I upgrade my PC over time, how does my IPv4 stay the same when there are not the same components inside? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/f77s05/how_does_a_pc_obtain_an_ip_address/ | {
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"There’s no guarantee that your computer will keep its IP address even if no hardware is changed. If it’s disconnected from the internet for long enough its lease will expire and its address could be assigned to another computer before yours connects again.",
" > According to what data does DHCP assign an IP address to your PC? Is it according to some components inside?\n\n_If_ your box follows the [DHCP](_URL_2_) protocol, then it's pretty cut out for it. It's a four-stage procedure:\n\n1. Client broadcasts a discovery message (`DHCPDISCOVER`). It contains an identifier named `CHADDR` for \"client hardware address\" which intends to identify it to the DHCP server(s), and optionally a requested IP address; some clients attempt to request their last known IP address. CHADDR is most commonly an interface's MAC address, but that is not always the case. It may be another unique identifier or it may be empty (e.g. _URL_0_)\n\n2. The server(s) send an offer (`DHCPOFFER`) of an address and a lease duration for the supplied CHADDR. It may commonly provide other optional data in the offer, like NTP servers, DNS servers, etc. See _URL_3_\n\n3. In response to one or more offers, the client will request one address with a `DHCPREQUEST` message broadcast. All servers are informed which server offer the client accepts via the included _server-identification_ option. Thus they are informed the address(es) they offered are still available for their respective pool(s).\n\n4. The server acknowledges the request with a `DHCPACK` message, which may include additional options.\n\nDHCP servers may be configured to reserve an address for a specific CHADDR - a so-called _static_ IP address.\n\nIf your box doesn't use DHCP but still seems to maintain a persistent address, in all likelihood there is some [zero-configuration technology](_URL_1_) generating an address that is locally unique. It could also be that it is statically & persistently configured.\n\n > And if so, when I upgrade my PC over time, how does my IPv4 stay the same when there are not the same components inside?\n\nAnswers vary. It depends on your environment, not only your PC."
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f93ux9 | how are artists able to recreate what someone would have looked like from solely having their skull to work with? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f93ux9/eli5_how_are_artists_able_to_recreate_what/ | {
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"They can't. Those forensic facial reconstructions you see are approximations of what a person *might* have looked like based on mostly educated guesswork and artistry. There are some things we know, like the placement of muscles in the face which gives us a rough idea of the shape, but they have to guess as to the tissue thickness, and things like skin, cartilage, eyes, and hair are also largely guesswork."
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372512 | There were slaves owned by African Americans. How were those slaves treated? | When slaves became free, some of them went on to become slave owners and sellers themselves. How did those free-men treat their slaves? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/372512/there_were_slaves_owned_by_african_americans_how/ | {
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"Henry Louis Gates did a good write up with links to the relevant articles of Blacks who owned slaves [here](_URL_0_)\n\nBasically it seems most Black people who owned slaves owned their relatives, or purchased a slave to ease that slave's burden. Some of these owners did require some work or some sort of payment from the slave. There are also a few instances of Black people owning their relatives and then selling their relative off for some reason. There were also a few Black slave owners who owned many slaves and ran farms/plantations with that labor, especially in Louisiana. It seems that these owners had expectations of their slaves not too dissimilar to white owners. "
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drhr4m | when and why did the greek economy start to tank? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/drhr4m/eli5_when_and_why_did_the_greek_economy_start_to/ | {
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"Well it was during the 2008 recession. At that point most European countries had economic difficulties, but by 2010 most of them had recovered while Greece was still in difficulties. It's at this time that Greece debt increased, but when other countries stabilised their debt by 2011, Greece kept getting more and more debt, their inflation started to drop and went into deflation in 2013. At this point, they should have been able to recover, but since they were using the Euro, they couldn't do what they want with it to fix their deflation problems, which lasted until 2017.\n\nThat said, I'm don't know if Greece could have fix the problem faster is they were not in the Euro zone, because they have an horrible track record when it come to inflation control. From mid 70s to mid 90s they had over 10% inflation, going up to 35% at some point. Greece was never a stable economy.",
"I came across this video recently, offers some really interesting historical context for this subject:\n\n _URL_0_",
" \n\nImagine I tell you I'm about to get a great new job, and if you loan me some money, I'll totally be able to pay you back, and then some. It's looks like a pretty sweet job, so you say why not.\n\nI start living large, nice house, fancy cars, so that job must be working out. I am making my payments, with interest, but I am also asking for more loans. I show you spreadsheets that prove how the money is flowing in, and since I am offering to pay interest, you keep up with the loans.\n\nFast forward several years. I've kept on living large, but I owe you a *lot* of money, more than you think I can pay back. On paper, it is a good investment because of the interest, but you are starting to get suspicious. You snoop around, and find out I completely lied to get the job, wasn't doing very well at it, and those spreadsheets I showed you were completely made up. I am a total fraud, living a lie so you would loan me the money that supported my opulent lifestyle.\n\nSo what do you do?\n\nYou could cut me off. I'd lose my house and car, probably my job, and you would be out a lot of money.\n\nOr you could keep loaning me some money, on the condition I cut back, get my act together and get into a position where I can pay you back. You might even forgive part of the debt in the hope of seeing at least some of it.\n\nThe problem is, I really like my house and car, and don't want to move into an apartment and ride the bus. Every time you try to get me to cut back, I drag my feet, throw tantrums, call you a bully, come up with wild, unworkable alternatives, and take no real responsibility for my actions. Each month, when the bills come due, I threaten to just not pay anyone and become homeless if you don't do things my way. You are pretty fed up with me, and figure things will end badly no matter what, so why throw good money after bad?\n\nThat is pretty what happened with Greece. They lied their way into the eurozone and lied about their economy, all the while using their eurozone clout to borrow money like crazy and spend it on useless public sector jobs and tax evasion. When they were found out, they blamed the lenders and instead of trying to change their ways elected leaders who promised they could solve the problem with fairy dust and unicorn farts."
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ebiff3 | how does something like this double rock happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ebiff3/eli5_how_does_something_like_this_double_rock/ | {
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"When a mommy rock and a daddy rock love each other very much,.....\n\n\nThe rock was encased in sandstone. And the outer layer hardened, and eroded."
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1x55my | What caused the ice age to dissipate to warmer temperatures and cause the glaciers and such to melt? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1x55my/what_caused_the_ice_age_to_dissipate_to_warmer/ | {
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"there are several mechanisms that can lead to the degradation of an ice age. i don't know if you meant a specific ice age or just in general, so i'm gonna answer for the latter. \n\nincreased levels of greenhouse gases (methane, carbon-dioxide, water vapor) trap more terrestrial radiation thereby raising the temperature at the surface. these processes can induce feedback mechanisms which systematically enhance the amount of solar radiation in the earth system. i.e. snow (which act as a reflector) melts revealing more dark surfaces (which act as to absorb), allowing more radiation to become trapped... this process continues ad nauseam. these feedback loops can be tied to volcanism, which acts to supply the greenhouse gases.\n\nother reasons include the [milankovitch cycles](_URL_0_), which describe the nature of earth's orbit as well as the \"wobble\" of earth's axial tilt. \n\nanother reason has to do with the orientation of the continents themselves. topography/landmass distribution drives ocean gyres as well as atmospheric circulations. for example the shape of [brazil's coast line](_URL_1_) helps to enhance the north atlantic gyre, driving more water northward...which in turn strengthens the gulf stream...which in turn allows europe to be as fruitful despite its latitude. if the coastline was oriented differently, this wouldn't be the case. \n\nsorry for the long winded response, hope i helped clarify! \n\ntldr; changes in earth's radiation budget as a result of living on a dynamic planet\n\nedit: forgot a word :-)",
"Ice ages come and go every few ten thousand years. It is generally accepted that *Milankovitch Cycles* are responsible for long-term climate changes, driving glacials and interglacials. The Milankovitch Cycle is a combination of the Earth's axial tilt, orbit eccentricity and equinox procession. Orbit eccentricity determines the amount of solar received by Earth, the other two determine the distribution of solar energy. Each of these have different periodicities, therefore, when Earth is at its closest to the Sun (eccentricity) and least tilted, extreme northern latitudes receive relatively high solar energy. More can be read about it [here](_URL_0_). \n\nThe Ruddiman Hypothesis offers a different take, arguing that early human civilisations were responsible for large scale warming, through the release of methane and carbon dioxide from rice cultivation, deforestation etc. It's much disputed and more can be read about it [here](ftp://_URL_1_) (not sure if this is open access). \n"
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7m4h7q | How has the discovery of Göbekli Tepe rewritten/altered our understanding of early human civilization? | [deleted] | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7m4h7q/how_has_the_discovery_of_göbekli_tepe/ | {
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"Hi there -- this gets asked here fairly often. You may gain some insight from this post from u/RioAbajo, and might also consider cross-posting this to r/AskAnthropology. (The site is old enough to predate written history.)\n_URL_2_\n\nHere are a couple of other threads on it, as well: \n\n_URL_0_\n\nand \n\n_URL_1_"
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4yk5vt/any_explanation_for_göbekli_tepe/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5ry6g4/what_are_your_thoughts_on_gobekli_tepe/",
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aenhlk | Were there any cultures where intimate relationships between adults of the same sex were tolerated, rather than just pederasty? | For example, Ancient Greece and Shogunate Japan are often described as being tolerant of homosexuality, when in reality these cultures only tolerated relationships between grown men and teenage boys, prostitutes or slaves. A man had to be the active partner in the relationship, and if he allowed himself to be the passive, penetrated partner he would face great shame.
So, were there any cultures that tolerated or accepted what might be described as "egalitarian" homosexual relationships between free adults, with no particular stigma reserved for the "passive" partner?
I've also noticed that a lot of ancient writers seemed to be totally unable to understand how lesbian sex might work. Were there any cultures where same-sex relationships between women were tolerated, or at least understood? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/aenhlk/were_there_any_cultures_where_intimate/ | {
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"It would also be interesting to know how the Sacred Band of Thebes and other armies of homosexual pairs were perceived. Were the soldiers' relationships generally accepted, or even perceived as something common and normal? How did other peoples react to these soldiers' sexualities?\n\n & #x200B;\n\n(By the way, this might be an example for \"egalitarian\" homosexual relationships in ancient Greece.)",
"This [answer](_URL_1_) from /u/[cthulhushrugged](_URL_0_) could interest you. ",
"I've actually just written a little about this in answering another question, and I'll copy in what I wrote there, with some added detail. For women in much of the Victorian period, it would have been tolerated to live together, swear love to each other, even exchange rings and call themselves \"married.\"\n\nI will give you all a moment to find the monocles you no doubt just had pop out, and I'll begin.\n\nAs Sharon Marcus shows in her book *Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England* (2007), the intense expression of love and affection between women was encouraged by society, and women were invited to enjoy looking at the bodies of other women, even in sadistic/masochistic acts--adult women whipping younger girls was a popular topic in pornographic books for women. Reviewers of books that describe female-female desire often made horrified protests against characters they saw as \"monstrous\" and overcome by horrific sexual desire, but despite such printed protestations the lived reality was very different, and women living in long-term relationships with each other were often accepted and acknowledged by society. Marcus suggests what was shocking to Victorians was not the female-female physical desire in itself but the idea of sexual desire outside of a stable relationship; excessive love of sex was considered deviant and dangerous, and the female desire for women outside a monogamous relationship was thought to be a result of sexual desires overflowing their proper channels. \n\nMarcus describes women who exchanged rings and called themselves married. As Marcus writes, \"Women who established longterm relationships with other women, by contrast, saw themselves, and were seen by others, as placid embodiments of the middle-class ideal of marriage: a bond defined by sex that also had the power to sanctify sex\" (21). Friendship, love, and even physical desire were expressed freely in letters, and hand-holding and kissing were not considered shocking, but the norm for female friends. For two women to sleep in the same bed, even touching and kissing, was not in itself considered problematic, and was even encouraged. In short, \"Sexual relationships of all stripes were most acceptable when their sexual nature was least visible as such but was instead manifested in terms of marital acts such as cohabitation, fidelity, financial solidarity, and adherence to middle-class norms of respectability\" (49). Out of propriety, such pairs would have been referred to by others as \"friends,\" which can make it tricky for historians to separate romantic relationships from close friendships. \n\nMarcus uses the example of Rosa Bonheur and Nathalie Micas, who are written about as having a \"higher levels of involvement and intimacy than even the closest of female friends\" (50). They lived together, shared their finances, designated each other as their heirs, and arranged to be buried together. Friends referred to the couple's \"deep affection\" and \"long companionship\", even calling them a \"couple.\" Bonheur even referred to Micas's mother as her \"mother-in-law\" (51). Marcus uses as another example Frances Power Cobbe and Mary Lloyd, who were acknowledged as \"a conjugal unit who lived and traveled together and were to be jointly saluted in correspondence\" (51), and Cobbe even referred to Lloyd as \"my old woman,\" \"husband,\" and \"my *wife*\" (52, emphasis in original). Others writing about and to them referred to them in the plural, and referred to \"their\" house, garden, etc.\n\nIn another example, this time from the United States, the obituary of Annie Hindle from 1892 writes that she was married to Annie Ryan \"by a minister of the gospel, Rev. E.H. Brooks\" in 1886. Annie Hindle was known as a \"male impersonator\" and would often wear \"men's\" clothing and adopt a masculine name, but the obituary points out that \"That they could live together openly as man and wife, the husband always in female attire, and yet cause no scandal, is the best proof of the esteem in which those around them held them\" (Marcus 200). That the article comments on the possibility of a scandal shows the shifting attitudes about this at the end of the century, and I will address more of this later.\n\nIt should be noted that the stigma you mention attached to certain sexual roles would not have been applied, as discussion of the sexual roles of others in this period would have been very taboo and very strongly censured.\n\nOther letters and memoirs write of attraction, infatuation, and intimate encounters, although they usually express these much later and in a veiled way. The use of euphemisms is key, and it's interesting to me that Victorian propriety not only swept details under the rug but made it possible to express those very things in a socially acceptable way, even to the point of relationships being acknowledged and accepted by society. Marcus alludes to the fact that, given the Victorian stereotype of lesbians as \"mannish\" and degenerate, supposdely exhibiting such physically signs as unnaturally large clitorises, the fact that women did not appear this way \"allowed them to go beyond the limits assigned to their gender without being perceived as mannish or unladylike\" (56).\n\nIn her article \"The Trials of Alice Mitchell: Sensationalism, Sexology, and the Lesbian Subject in Turn-of-the-Century America\", Lisa Duggan makes the argument that the concept of lesbianism first really took shape at the turn-of-the-century, and that the public emergence of the idea of \"the lesbian\" in the 1890s turned female-female relationships into a potential source of shock and condemnation, such as the trial of Alice Mitchell for insanity in the United States after killing her lover. Mitchell's trial characterized her as demonic and dangerous, with a pathology for violence linked with her transgressive desire. Thus, once a figure was created in the public imagination, the euphemisms and taboos that made female-female relationships possible faded. Duggan writes that the broader use of the \"mannish lesbian\" image was itself double-edged: it was used to condemn lesbians as deviant and unnatural, and also by lesbians themselves as a subversize self-identification to form an identity.\n\nIt must be mentioned that the above Victorian acceptance of female-female intimate relationships generally applied to upper-class and middle-class women, but it did not hold true for the working class. Marcus writes that, \"A few working-class women wrote about intimate friends in their lifewriting, but most avoided overt displays of affect and mentioned female friendships only briefly, focusing instead on relationships with female employers and coworkers that did not lend themselves to unreserved expressions of feeling\" (69). The working class simply didn't have the distance from others that would have created the space in which an intimate relationship could emerge.\n\nMale-male relationships could also be tolerated and even acknowledged if they were very discreet, but to a lesser degree and with more social censure, as well as including the stigma you suggested for the passive partner.",
"Yes. The precolonial Philippines certainly did (and really, more than tolerated). In fact, the role of what we would call probably LGBT people in the modern West was rather prominent in the society. Many were in leadership roles, along with women (women were even more prominent in leadership). For example, a religious leader was, in general, supposed to be a woman. If the person wanting to be a leader was not a woman, then they would need to take up the social role of “being a woman”, that is, taking up the dress and social behaviors of women. Sex and sexuality was generally pretty egalitarian in the Philippines prior to Western influence. I have written in this sub previously on these topics, so I will link one of those below:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nSomething I will add, and which is discussed in the source I cite in the link (the source in part reviews sources on Philippine sexuality), is that just because relations between various genders were pretty egalitarian, it does not mean that there were not gender expectations. “Performing gender” was in fact a huge part of the society, as discussion on religion shows. Part of performing gender would include sexual behavior, as gender and sexuality were/are linked in the conceptualizations in “classical” Philippine cultures. There were expectations of who religious leaders were, for example. However, perceived gender and sexuality differences were not generally used as a tool of oppression, which I think is what your question seems to be about. "
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lqvo1 | Why doesn't entropy negate evolution? | I was debatig a creationist today, and he raised the problem of entropy (that all complex systems eventually disintegrate into simpler ones). I know there's a refutation, but for the life of me I couldn't think of it. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/lqvo1/why_doesnt_entropy_negate_evolution/ | {
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"Because evolution doesn't take place in a closed system---we have a source of heat. The Earth is an open system.",
"There's a massive ball of burning plasma that is providing energy to the Earth.",
"By the same logic, I could prove that it's impossible for you to clean your room.",
"I think you are misinterpreting both evolution and entropy.\n\nEntropy can be defined as [increasing disorder or chaos within a system](_URL_0_\n\nMutation - the mechanism for evolution - is actually a very disordered process. Every mutation enters new, random, chaotic variation into the system and biodiversity (ecological entropy) is increased. It is not directional or intentionally done. Evolution can be towards increasing complexity or decreasing complexity, and the vast majority of mutations kill or decrease the fitness of the organism. This results in stasis at the species level since the old variant will still be the majority allele and the new one quickly removed, not some kind of downward evolution.\n\nWhat *matters* to evolution, is whether the new variant: \n\n- allows the organism to function and survive to reproductive age\n- reproduce successfully, passing on the variant to new offspring\n- become reproductively isolated (chromosomal rearrangements, ability to exploit new geographic niches, genetic drift, etc) *or* outcompete the pre-existing variants in terms of reproductive fitness (increased odds of survival, increased number of lifetime offspring), increasing the allele frequency of the new mutant.\n\nThere is no \"god of evolution\" that decides the new variant is better and evolves the species, it simply means that *if* the newly appearing variant is more fit than the previous - even by a small margin, the new variant will gradually replace the old by virtue of having more offspring survive to reproduce. \n\n*This definition has come under criticism, and is really best replaced by the more physics based \"dispersion of the energy available to do work\", but from a conceptual approximation point of view, I think it's still sufficient - and probably corresponds to your friend's view on the practical definition of entropy.",
"The photons striking life/earth are high-energy photons from the sun. This energy is absorbed by life and re-emitted as low-energy, infra-red photons. This energy, in the form of infra-red photons, has a much higher entropy than the energy leaving the sun. (I can explain why if you are interested). Life, in other words exploits the low entropy of the sun's rays, converting it into high-entropy radiation. Life is therefore consistent with the 2nd law of thermodynamics.",
"I think you mean \"Doesn't the Second Law of Thermodynamics mean Evolution is impossible?\" That's one of the classic creationist arguments (it's not really an argument for creationism). \n\nThe first flaw (that **iorgfeflkd** and **Angry_Grammarian** have pointed out) is that the Earth is being considered a closed system when, in actuality, the Earth is receiving a heck of a lot of energy from the sun. \n\nI would say another flaw is that the creationist is arbitrarily deciding that evolution = lower entropy. Looking at order/disorder on the macroscale (an global scale, even!) can be pretty a pretty poor indication of whether or not entropy in the system is actually increasing or decreasing. The classical example is the ordering of a water/oil mixture into two phases. It seems to us that the system is ordering itself - the segregated layers seem ordered. However, the system is actually maximizing entropy. I suspect that \"Is evolution a positive or negative entropic process?\" is a question that is practically impossible to answer. Unless the creationist has managed to answer this, he is choosing arbitrarily that evolution = lower entropy. \n\nAll this is besides the point. It's still not an argument *for* creationism/intelligent design. The creationist argument pits evolution against thermodynamics. The assertion is that either evolution or thermodynamics is wrong - or possibly both. Even if they were both invalidated (they have not been) and we accept that neither accurately describes reality (they do), we still have no evidence in support of creationism. It remains a bald assertion. \n\n**tl;dr?** Other than its popularity with creationists, this argument has nothing to do with creationism so you don't have to refute it. (but you can!)\n\n\n",
"Because evolution doesn't take place in a closed system---we have a source of heat. The Earth is an open system.",
"There's a massive ball of burning plasma that is providing energy to the Earth.",
"By the same logic, I could prove that it's impossible for you to clean your room.",
"I think you are misinterpreting both evolution and entropy.\n\nEntropy can be defined as [increasing disorder or chaos within a system](_URL_0_\n\nMutation - the mechanism for evolution - is actually a very disordered process. Every mutation enters new, random, chaotic variation into the system and biodiversity (ecological entropy) is increased. It is not directional or intentionally done. Evolution can be towards increasing complexity or decreasing complexity, and the vast majority of mutations kill or decrease the fitness of the organism. This results in stasis at the species level since the old variant will still be the majority allele and the new one quickly removed, not some kind of downward evolution.\n\nWhat *matters* to evolution, is whether the new variant: \n\n- allows the organism to function and survive to reproductive age\n- reproduce successfully, passing on the variant to new offspring\n- become reproductively isolated (chromosomal rearrangements, ability to exploit new geographic niches, genetic drift, etc) *or* outcompete the pre-existing variants in terms of reproductive fitness (increased odds of survival, increased number of lifetime offspring), increasing the allele frequency of the new mutant.\n\nThere is no \"god of evolution\" that decides the new variant is better and evolves the species, it simply means that *if* the newly appearing variant is more fit than the previous - even by a small margin, the new variant will gradually replace the old by virtue of having more offspring survive to reproduce. \n\n*This definition has come under criticism, and is really best replaced by the more physics based \"dispersion of the energy available to do work\", but from a conceptual approximation point of view, I think it's still sufficient - and probably corresponds to your friend's view on the practical definition of entropy.",
"The photons striking life/earth are high-energy photons from the sun. This energy is absorbed by life and re-emitted as low-energy, infra-red photons. This energy, in the form of infra-red photons, has a much higher entropy than the energy leaving the sun. (I can explain why if you are interested). Life, in other words exploits the low entropy of the sun's rays, converting it into high-entropy radiation. Life is therefore consistent with the 2nd law of thermodynamics.",
"I think you mean \"Doesn't the Second Law of Thermodynamics mean Evolution is impossible?\" That's one of the classic creationist arguments (it's not really an argument for creationism). \n\nThe first flaw (that **iorgfeflkd** and **Angry_Grammarian** have pointed out) is that the Earth is being considered a closed system when, in actuality, the Earth is receiving a heck of a lot of energy from the sun. \n\nI would say another flaw is that the creationist is arbitrarily deciding that evolution = lower entropy. Looking at order/disorder on the macroscale (an global scale, even!) can be pretty a pretty poor indication of whether or not entropy in the system is actually increasing or decreasing. The classical example is the ordering of a water/oil mixture into two phases. It seems to us that the system is ordering itself - the segregated layers seem ordered. However, the system is actually maximizing entropy. I suspect that \"Is evolution a positive or negative entropic process?\" is a question that is practically impossible to answer. Unless the creationist has managed to answer this, he is choosing arbitrarily that evolution = lower entropy. \n\nAll this is besides the point. It's still not an argument *for* creationism/intelligent design. The creationist argument pits evolution against thermodynamics. The assertion is that either evolution or thermodynamics is wrong - or possibly both. Even if they were both invalidated (they have not been) and we accept that neither accurately describes reality (they do), we still have no evidence in support of creationism. It remains a bald assertion. \n\n**tl;dr?** Other than its popularity with creationists, this argument has nothing to do with creationism so you don't have to refute it. (but you can!)\n\n\n"
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3pro51 | How did the newly formed United States define citizenship? | Was everyone automatically citizens? Or was it not until later that it was formed. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3pro51/how_did_the_newly_formed_united_states_define/ | {
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"In 1804, the Supreme Court had to decide *Murray v. The Charming Betsey*, 6 U.S. (2 Cranch) 64, a case involving Jared Shattuck, a man who was born in Connecticut, and who moved to the Danish-controlled island of St. Thomas as an \"infant\" (then the legal term for anyone under 21) in 1789 or 1790. While there, he \"carried on trade as a Danish subject, had married a wife and acquired real property on the island, and also taken the oath of allegiance to the Crown of Denmark in 1797.\"\n\nThe actual dispute was about government seizure of a vessel owned by Jared Shattuck. The seizure of the vessel was legal if Shattuck was a U.S. citizen (subject to an embargo), but was illegal if Shattuck was a Danish citizen (not subject to the embargo).\n\nThe Supreme Court seemed to take for granted that a person born in Connecticut was a citizen of the U.S. at least until he left and took an oath of allegiance to another sovereign power, but held that Shattuck had done whatever was necessary to take him outside of the protection of the U.S. government.\n\nIn the 1833 case of *Inglis v. Trustees of Sailor's Snug Harbor*, 28 U.S. (3 Pet.) 99, describes as \"settled doctrine\" that anyone born on U.S. soil who left its territory before the Declaration of Independence is not a U.S. citizen, but that anyone who remained had the right to elect whether they would remain British subjects (by leaving the United States) or citizens of their state (by remaining within the state) and ultimately citizens of the United States. There are some other wrinkles about how to prove that someone elected for one option or another, but basically moving away sometime between 1776 and the signing of the treaty where the crown recognized American independence was seen as electing to be a British, rather than an American, citizen.\n\nBetween those two cases, it seems to just assume that anyone born in the U.S. is a U.S. citizen, with a few exceptions discussed in more detail in *Wong Kim Ark v. United States*, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), where the Supreme Court decided that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil, except Indians born on reservations, children of foreign diplomats, and children of hostile military occupiers."
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enth3j | Was it true that knights were allowed to pay someone to go to war for them? If so, for how much and who could they pay to do this? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/enth3j/was_it_true_that_knights_were_allowed_to_pay/ | {
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"I described the process of raising medieval armies, and paying scutage [HERE](_URL_0_)\n\nThe section of my answer that directly handles this query: \n\n > Alternatively, if you could not provide the requisite number of men, either because you needed them at home, or did not have enough able-bodied men who could be equipped in time, you could pay *scutage* instead. In the second half of the 12th Century, the going rate was £ 1 for the 40 day term of service. In Richard I's reign, this was characterized more as a fine that a lord paid to not participate in a campaign. The King could then use this revenue to pay for mercenaries, equipment, supplies, etc. The King might also grant his vassals permission to use scutage among their own underlings, with the caveat that the tenant-in-chief was still required to produce the requisite number of men."
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6r05s0 | why do the ads never have an issue loading but other content does in bad connection areas? | So I'm in a pretty bad area right now for reception. 1 bar on the LTE and for some reason my phone won't drop to standard 4G.
But the kicker? Every single web ad still loads fine, even if the images or text does not. Why is it that for some reason I can't get text comments to load while at the same time, there is no delay in the animated ad for a D & D-esque ripoff of Clash of Clans? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6r05s0/eli5_why_do_the_ads_never_have_an_issue_loading/ | {
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"The way it's been described to me in a previous post similar to this is that the ad content is more localised and because of that it is essentially pre-buffered. I think the correct terminology was that the ad data was already cached on the site because those ads will get played more often and the actual video data isn't cached because it isn't as often used.\n\nForgive me for having anything incorrect but this is what I can remember of how it was described to me as I had often wondered the same thing."
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2wvl2d | how does dr.oz, who has been proven to spout completely inaccurate information to the public, keep his license? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wvl2d/eli5_how_does_droz_who_has_been_proven_to_spout/ | {
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"As silly as it might sound, all it takes is a disclaimer. Feel free to read it on his website, _URL_0_, just search for the title \"NO MEDICAL ADVICE\".\n\nBasically, because you're not paying, visiting, or speaking with Dr. Oz, no doctor-client relationship is made, thus none of the \"advice\" he gives is medical advice.\n\nHe's been sued many times over the things he says, and they get thrown out, thanks to the disclaimer.",
"[Vox explained it](_URL_0_):\n > The fact that Oz hasn't lost any credentials speaks to a larger challenge in modern medicine: Once you get a medical license, its actually really difficult to lose it.\n\n > \"This has been a longstanding complaint with medicine and the professional regulation. You either need to have sex with patients who file a complaint, be a really bad substance-using person... or you're malpractice-level bad as a doctor,\" David Jones, professor of culture of medicine at Harvard University, says. \"Nothing in Dr. Oz's conduct is even close to getting the attention of the state boards because they are dealing with sex criminals, alcoholics, and gross misconduct.\"...\n\n > Oz is not practicing medicine when he calls supplements \"magic weight loss cures\" or \"lightening in a bottle\" on TV. He also denies any financial stake in the products he features on his show, so the state regulator has no grounds on which to go after him",
"Not to mention that he's a Cardiologist. Which makes me seriously question why anyone takes any non cardiology advice from the man.",
"He performed a quadruple bypass on my father a while back and it's heartbreaking to see how he destroyed all of his credibility. He was once well-respected in his field but that's shot to shit now. "
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1qnr75 | Why is BMI still used? | Isn't it practically worthless at this point with all the new nutritional and physiological knowledge? I mean it's simply mass(kg)/height(m) squared. It completely omits whether or not the person has high body fat percentage. That means someone who has tons of muscle and is 6% body fat is considered extremely obese.
Why do so many people still use it? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1qnr75/why_is_bmi_still_used/ | {
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"It is used so often because it is extremely easy to measure those two variables, and the ratio still gives you a pretty good indication of overall health. For example, those two measurements are usually recorded whenever someone gets a drivers license, allowing the potential for large amounts of data for any study on BMI (I'm not sure if this data is actually used in this way, just a thought).",
"Of course, there are methods to measure % body fat such as densitometry or imaging, but those are prohibitively expensive if you ever want to get a good sample size.\n\nAnthropometric methods like waist circumference and BMI often do (believe it or not) just a good a job as predicting things like CVD mortality for a fraction of the cost, and it suffices for large scale nutritional studies.\n\nIn the end, money is the main reason.",
"BMI doesn't work very well for individuals, but it works very well when stratifying populations into risk factor groups for hypertension/diabetes/colon cancer and tons of other diseases.\n\nA very muscular person has a high bmi but they make up the very small minority of people with high BMIs. In general it's still a very useful tool for assessing populations.",
"Because it's easy. Here are some of the other major options for estimating or measuring body fat:\n\n* Calipers can be used to take measurements used to estimate body fat. For this, you need someone who's trained to do the measurements and a place to do them. The person being measured will have to go to that place, take most of their clothes off, and stand for a few minutes. You're going to end up with a bunch of numbers that have to be written down and/or input into a computer. If you measure twice, you're not going to get the same numbers both times.\n\n* Body fat meters--run a mild current through the person being measured and use the impedance to determine their body composition. You need to buy a device for this, and accurate ones are expensive. It's going to be inaccurate if the person being measured is dehydrated, and it's going to change depending on how long it's been since they last ate or exerted themselves. You'll probably need someone to do the measurements.\n\n* Dunk the person in water and measure their displacement, Archimedes-style. This is good because it's a direct measurement! But you're going to need a big tank of water. The person being measured is going to have to put a swimsuit on (they'll need a place to change) and has to be willing and able to be completely immersed in water. And again, you need a trained person there to take down the measurements.\n\nThere's a longer list of techniques [here](_URL_2_), but they all have similar issues: you need an expensive device, you need a person to take the measurement, the method isn't accurate or precise, etc. \n\nCompare that to BMI: all you need to know is weight and height! It's two numbers in a simple equation--no complicated math! We already take those automatically at every doctor's visit! Using inexpensive, accurate devices! You don't even need to take a measurement--you can just ask people what their weight and height are! We've been recording weight and height for tens or hundreds of thousands of people for a hundred years!\n\nIs it the best method? Of course not--that would be underwater dunking, for my money. But if you want a quick and dirty way to [identify potential anorexics](_URL_0_), or [estimate obesity rates in large populations](_URL_3_) or [perform longitudinal studies over decades](_URL_1_), it's hard to come up with a better method.",
"Because very few people have tons of muscle and 6% body fat. BMI is still a good rule-of-thumb for the general population. If it obviously doesn't apply to someone then it shouldn't be used (obviously)."
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2me9p7 | Thatcher threatening to nuke Argentina if she wasn't handed some code to deactivate Exocet missiles by the French? | Someone made this claim in another subreddit and I find it suspicious, do you (historians), have any opinion/information about the credibility of this claim ?
Here is the source of the claim: _URL_0_
If you have anything about the story of the technical team repairing the launchers (here _URL_1_ ) I am interested as well.
More generally, any information/clarification about the specificities/extent of the collaboration of France with the UK during the Falkland war is welcome as well.
| AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2me9p7/thatcher_threatening_to_nuke_argentina_if_she/ | {
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"The idea of using nuclear weapons over the Falklands is ridiculous. Britain was reluctant enough to fight the war in the first place, and international support was very shaky. The use of nuclear weapons - on what exactly? - would have been hugely disproportionate and turned public opinion against the war and international opinion massively against the UK.\n\nThe source still *might* be correct, but if so this has to be seen as a deliberate exaggeration by Thatcher, and probably passed on by Mitterand just to show how stubborn she was.\n\nEven the idea that exocets *had* some kind of code to \"deactivate\" them is open to question - see [this thread](_URL_0_).",
"In approaching this kind of source, would it be reasonable to infer that Mitterand would have good reason to embellish his claim, or would that have to be found in a source first?"
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9p508s | why do monks have such a long tradition of brewing beer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9p508s/eli5_why_do_monks_have_such_a_long_tradition_of/ | {
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"You’re celibate as a monk... sooooo what else you gonna do?",
"AFAIK anything non-alcoholic or not boiled was not safe to drink back then (Also, beer was allowed during fasting). Beer was the standard beverage in any community for that reason, and since monks lived in \"closed economies\" (i.e. they were supposed to produce all their goods themselves), they brewed beer. At first only for themselves, then for pilgrims and finally they became known for it and produced it for everyone. ",
"Free labor + access to science + a need to provide some finance to the monestary. Interestingly, for some time in some monestaries, beer was permissable during the lenteen fast. Woohoo!",
"They sure do make good beer, I know that much. Weihenstephaner, absolutely superb. The Dunkel is the best. ",
"Water used to be dangerous unless boiled. Beer and wine have alcohol, so it was safer and could be stored. The church hasn't always frowned on alcohol--Christ's first miracle was to turn water into wine.",
"Christians used to fast a lot during the middle ages. Beer didn't technically count as eating, as it was a beverage, but still had high calorie intake.",
"Clergy were the most educated people of the time. They developed beer and wine making to a science (which is ironic in a way) and the only people with enough of an education to pass the knowledge on to were other monks. \n\nIn some wine regions the soils and local/regional microclimates were mapped out by the monks to such precision that they knew which rows of grapes would do better than the others right beside them, so accurate that fruit from individual rows can fetch premium prices to this day.",
"Churches owned a lot of property (incl. farmland) and had the human and material resources to churn out products like bread, cheese, wine and beer on a large scale. Monasteries became small factories where the monks were producing not only for themselves but also for resale to fund the church’s operations and interests (maintenance, expansion, missions, etc...). \n\nAs other have pointed out, earlier wines and beers were very weak compared to today so they were commonly drunk by all ages throughout the day.\n\nThe discovery of yeast by Louis Pasteur was a game-changer for brewing because the brewers/ monks could replicate the flavour of beer and make a consistent product. Monasteries were early adopters and as a result they produced very high quality beer. They had the knowledge, experience and resources to make a delicious and repeatable product. Today many monastic beers are highly prized and some of the proceeds are still used in the same ways as they have been for centuries.",
"Honestly, monestaries were pillars of economy back then, they had massive plots of land, large amounts of labour and access to some of the most advanced technology, it shouldn't be surprising that they brewed beer, made wine, stitched fabrics, forged tools, crafted furniture, etc \n\nThey did practically everything. Beer just stayed as one of the ones they did forever"
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jdok8 | two graphics cards in sli or crossfire. | 1 card = 2 monitors AND one card speed
2 cards = 4 monitors AND ?? cards speed
2 cards in SLI or Crossfire = 2 monitors AND ?? cards speed
Help please :) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jdok8/eli5_two_graphics_cards_in_sli_or_crossfire/ | {
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"Let me see if I can explain this without getting too technical.\n\nLet's say a graphics card is car manufacturing line, and the cars that come off the line are the frames per second. The line can only produce so many cars at a time. The cars can look really good, but the plant would have to go slower and you would get less cars per hour. This is the same with the graphics card, you can make your game look really good, but you get less frame rates. On the other hand, you could have the manufacturing line go really fast, but the cars that come out won't look as good. This is the same with the graphics card, you can have more frames per second if you lower the quality. \n\nNow, assume you wanted to get better looking cars, and a lot more of them at once. Your plant can't make all those cars with the one machine you have already, so you go and buy another machine that is the exact same make and model (EG: If you have an Nvidia 460, you go and buy another Nvidia 460). You then connect these two machines together with a cable, allowing them to talk and coordinate the instructions of how to make the cars. By doing this, the two machines work efficiently to produce more cars that look really good. This is the same as SLI/Crossfire. Instead of leaving all the heavy duty work to one graphics card, you give that graphics card a \"buddy\" of sorts that he can offload some of the work too, thus having two cards producing images instead of one.",
"Let me see if I can explain this without getting too technical.\n\nLet's say a graphics card is car manufacturing line, and the cars that come off the line are the frames per second. The line can only produce so many cars at a time. The cars can look really good, but the plant would have to go slower and you would get less cars per hour. This is the same with the graphics card, you can make your game look really good, but you get less frame rates. On the other hand, you could have the manufacturing line go really fast, but the cars that come out won't look as good. This is the same with the graphics card, you can have more frames per second if you lower the quality. \n\nNow, assume you wanted to get better looking cars, and a lot more of them at once. Your plant can't make all those cars with the one machine you have already, so you go and buy another machine that is the exact same make and model (EG: If you have an Nvidia 460, you go and buy another Nvidia 460). You then connect these two machines together with a cable, allowing them to talk and coordinate the instructions of how to make the cars. By doing this, the two machines work efficiently to produce more cars that look really good. This is the same as SLI/Crossfire. Instead of leaving all the heavy duty work to one graphics card, you give that graphics card a \"buddy\" of sorts that he can offload some of the work too, thus having two cards producing images instead of one."
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angbh5 | Why do tires deflate with cold air despite the temperature outside of the tire dropping as well? | This is something that has always confused me. I understand that temperature is, in simpler terms, the rate at which molecules hit off of one another, which would mean that in turn at a lower temperature the molecules would be moving less which means that there would be less molecules colliding with the inside of the tire per unit of time. This means less pressure. However, the tire is not a isolated system. There is the atmospheric pressure that is what is pushing on the outside of the tire as well. If the temperature changes the same both inside and outside of the tire, shouldn't the decrease in the number of molecules inside and outside of the tire make the change in pressure the same on both sides equaling a net zero change in tire pressure? Plz send help. | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/angbh5/why_do_tires_deflate_with_cold_air_despite_the/ | {
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"This is due to the ideal gas law, PV=nRT, which establishes the relationship between pressure, volume, temperature, and number of moles in an ideal gas where P=pressure, V=volume, n is the number of moles, R is the ideal gas constant, and T=Temperature. \nDue to the relationship between T and P, assuming the other variables, V and R, remain constant (R is a constant by definition of about 8.3 J/(K*mol)) — as T decreases P will decrease and vice versa. So in your example, when it goes from warm to cold outside, the decrease in temperature will cause a decrease in pressure. \n\nAn example using 1m^3 for V and 20 moles for n:\n\nAt 25C, P will equal about 7.19 psi\nAt 5C, P will equal about 6.71 psi. \n\n\nNote: Low temperatures do not imply a low pressure. When evaluating pressure, all variables must be taken into consideration. However, because we are assuming volume and number of moles will remain constant, we can ‘kind of’ ignore them. ",
"Ideal gas law:\n\npV = nRT\n\np is pressure\n\nV is volume\n\nn is the amount of gas\n\nR is some constant\n\nT is temperature\n\nYou've got a closed tire, i.e. the amount of gas (n) inside of the tire stays the same. As the temperature goes down, p\\*V portion of the equation needs to go down with it in order for left and right side of the equation remain equal.\n\nIf you had a rigid container (a steel bottle), only pressure would go down because volume wouldn't be able to change.\n\nSince we're talking about tires which can stretch and contract a little bit, both volume and pressure go down by a certain amount, proportional to the difference in temperature T, but mostly the pressure changes because car tires don't stretch all that much. They can be squished, but that's just the change of shape, not volume change.",
"The inside of the tyre is a closed container, subject to the ideal gas law. The outside air is, on the scale of a car, *not* a closed container and so its temperature and pressure do not have to follow the gas law. The pressure and temperature can be somewhat independently influenced by much larger scale weather conditions and air movements.",
"This question is a bit more subtle than the replies are giving it credit for: the questioner is asking about *gauge* pressure -- pressure difference between inside and outside -- not absolute.\n\nThe air inside the tire has higher pressure and higher density than the air outside. Changing the temperature causes a proportional change in absolute pressure, but the key word is *proportional*. Absolute pressure inside the tire might be 45 PSI, absolute pressure outside might be 15 PSI. If the temperature changes by 10%, the pressure will change by 10%, but that's 4.5 PSI inside, 1.5 PSI outside -- the difference between them, the gauge pressure, has changed by 3 PSI.\n\n... Plus the atmosphere moves, redistributing pressure around the globe to keep it pretty constant despite the temperature change."
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9dmrup | how does gravity bend light if light is massless? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9dmrup/eli5_how_does_gravity_bend_light_if_light_is/ | {
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"Because gravity bends space-time itself. \n\nThe light is still going straight, by its own point of view, but the space-time is curved by the gravity, so something traveling straight through curved space-time alters its direction relative to an observer outside the curved region. \n\nBlack holes basically curve space-time inward to the point that there's no getting back out of that gravity well. ",
"Gravity bends spacetime. Light moves through spacetime, so the light bends because the space it's traveling through bends. \n\nThis was predicted by Einstein and then confirmed by an [eclipse](_URL_0_).",
"Also, light isn't truly massless. Light doesn't have a rest mass, which is mass of a relatively stationary object and light is always moving at the speed of light. But photons have/are energy, and energy is also mass in special relativity. So light has a mass that depends on it's frequency.\n\nEdit: As u/AirborneRodent points out, this post uses outdated terminology. I am referring to light having a relativistic mass, which is apparently no longer really used. From what I can tell, relativistic mass was used as an intermediary conceptual step between Newtonian gravity between two masses and gravity affecting energy as in relativity (Due to E = mc squared being well known). This is no longer taught. ",
"The key here is to remember that gravity doesn't only act on mass, but energy in general. So if you have a gravitational source, anything with energy will be attracted to it. Since light carries energy, it feels gravity.\n\nAnother way of looking at it is by saying that light (and everything else for that matter) wants to travel in straight lines. But since a gravitational source will bend spacetime, what the light thinks is straight doesn't look straight to an outside observer. Therefore, the observer says that the light's path was \"bent\" (even though it is just traveling on its preferred path).",
"Picture walking along a flat, featureless surface like a road. Going down it, you're traveling 'along the road'. Add a gently curving hill. Though you're still traveling in the same direction (along the road) you're also moving vertically, because the road is bent.",
"Gravity is an illusion that appears to work on Mass. In reality gravity is a curvature of space-time. \n\nAll things passing through this curvature are affected, light curves around it, massive objects fall toward its center (which is what we perceive as gravitational force/acceleration due to gravity)\n\nEdit: I guess illusion is too strong a word. but trying to ELI5",
"Push down in the center of your mattress.\n\nNow roll a ball straight across the mattress.\n\nOh, you can’t? The ball wobbles near the center where you’re pushing down?\n\nBut why does it? After all, you’re not touching the ball at all!\n\nSame thing with gravity bending space. The light doesn’t change direction - the space it’s moving through is warped.",
"I'm curious. We known the mass of the sun bends spacetime. What if the sun were to vanish would this space-time still be bent or is there a time limit until the flatten out again? \n\nAlso can something as small like a photon or electron bend space-time?",
"Why does light have to follow spacetime?",
"I think the best way to answer this question is to accept that there is no gravity. Stay with me for a second.\n\nWe call the apparent force that mass has on time itself as gravity. But in reality it is just space-time. I never was able to grasp the idea of space-time until Vsauce came out with [this](_URL_0_) video. It blew me away.\n\nHe concludes the video by saying, \"...you feel as though you're being pushed into the ground not because of a force called 'gravity', but because time is moving faster for your head than for your feet.\"\n\nIf that peaks your interest please watch the video.",
"It's worth mentioning that even in classical mechanics, no quantum and no relativity, the equations of physics still say gravity should bend light. The only disagreement is how much of an effect gravity has (larger in relativity, but by extraordinarily tiny amounts. You need really sensitive equipment to measure it.)\n\nUsually, things with momentum also have mass. In fact, one usual definition of momentum is (mass)*(speed). This starts to break down in classical E & M, where electric and magnetic fields also carry momentum. I'm not saying electric fields move around charges and give them speed and momentum, I'm saying that there are ways to construct physical systems where particles begin and end with different total momentum, violating the holy law of conservation of momentum. The only thing that saves you is to recognize that the electric field also has momentum, which is sorta like saying that if you were to jump really hard in a direction that isn't just straight up, the Earth's gravitational field, not the Earth but rather just the gravitational field, would start moving around. If that sounds weird, it's because it is.\n\nLight is just an oscillating electric field, so it definitely has momentum. Anything with momentum also has energy. In truth, these are the quantities that gravity acts on (and also pressure, but that plays no role here). You can take a look at Newton's equation of gravity and notice that if you have two objects and one of them has a mass of 0, the gravitational force between them is 0. That's very nearly true, the force on massless objects is very tiny, but this is just an approximation. Massless objects are very, very strange so it's useful to not use the more complex equations that describe objects with energy or momentum but no mass. However, this absolutely can be done inside Newtonian mechanics if you're more careful.\n\nAgain, no quantum and no relativity needed. The answers that classical mechanics are numerically incorrect almost all the time for the bending of light, but the basic jist of the calculations are there. Relativity can be looked at as a slight correction to Newtonian mechanics, and quantum can be looked at as a slightly different correction. Most of the time these corrections are negligible, here they aren't. But they just amount to adding more terms in the equations, there's nothing fundamentally wrong about Newtonian mechanics that these corrections bring to light, at least not in relation to your question.",
"Gravity doesn’t move things, the warp in space created by gravity moves things. You don’t need mass to be affected by gravity",
"Also, if light is massless, how come if you hold a studio flash up to a cymbal and trigger it the cymbal does *ding?*",
"Because light isn't really \"massless\" in the way you're thinking about it.\n\nAnyone who knows at least a tiny number of facts about Albert Einstein generally knows his most famous equation: E=mc^2.\n\nThe entirety of this equation tells us that energy (E) relates to mass (m) in a direct way. (c) represents the speed of light, and is a constant. If you can agree that light has energy (not really a big idea), you can see that the energy in a single photon of light can be assigned a given amount of mass equal to its energy divided by the speed of light (300,000 kilometers per second) squared: **E/c^2 =m**.\n\nThe speed of light squared is an ENORMOUS number: 90,000,000,000. We're going to strip the units off for this, because they're not really important for the math.\n\nWorking through a hypothetical: let's assign the energy of a single photon of light as being equal to 1 (again, without worrying about \"one of what?\"). It's \"mass equivalent\" then, is 1/90,000,000,000. This is TINY -- but it is NOT ZERO.\n\ntldr: Gravity affects everything with either mass or energy.",
"[Here's a previous thread](_URL_0_) discussing this from just a couple of days ago.",
"It may be easier to find some YouTube videos that depict this put picture a wide cloth that is stretched out flat. The cloth is what we will call “spacetime”. Now imagine a heavy-ish object lime a baseball and drop it in the center of the cloth. The cloth isn’t flat anymore. It’s concave. Now take a few marbles and imagine throwing them in a circular motion around the cloth. They won’t go in a seemingly straight line because they will be riding along a curved surface since the baseball is weighing the cloth down.\n\nLight follows the same idea. Our sun is the baseball and the marbles can be thought of as the planets. Now each of those marbles actually are warping the cloth around them but by a smaller amount. So mass does not matter, it’s about the plane that the light is traveling on and in our case, this plane is warped by heavy objects in space (planets, the sun, etc) ",
"Gravity isn't actually a force. Well, it is but it isn't. The consensus is that Gravity is most likely an effect that mass has on space-time. The fact that it causes things to orbit or \"move towards each other\" is just a side effect of it's effects on space-time. \n\nSpace-time is this 4 dimensional \"stuff\" that we are in, the planets are in it, space itself is in it, the whole universe is composed of this space-time \"stuff\". You can try to imagine it like a 3 dimensional grid paper with planets and stuff inside this 3d lattice - that's not literally how it looks but it's a good way to visualize the effects that gravity has on it. The 4th dimension is thought of as time, which isn't necessarily important for this explanation, but just know it's \"there\" somewhere.\n\nNow you have this nice uniform grid of space-time that extends up and down, left and right, forward and backward. Now imagine you try to squeeze a big planet in there - it's going to displace those nice grid lines and cause them to bend around the shape of the planet. So now you have a large \"empty\" space but in the middle there's a big giant \"curvy\" part because you put the planet there. Now imagine there's a beam of photons (light) that starts wayyyyyy off in the distance somewhere, and it's headed straight for this curvy part where the planet is at. \n\nThe light travels perfectly straight until it reaches this curved part, and then when we watch it pass by the edge of this planet we notice that the light doesn't move straight and hit the planet, it actually follows that curve around it. If you were riding on top of one of the photons, you wouldn't really notice anything. It would seem like you just kept going straight. But outside that bent portion of space-time you do actually see that the light in fact followed a curved path.\n\nThis isn't because gravity bent the light, but it's because the medium the light is traveling through was bent by gravity.\n\nThis is a really general example and doesn't take into account any of the other weird stuff that happens in reality, but it shows you that you can do some really weird stuff to space-time and make it seem like some weird stuff is happening to the light or matter within it, when in reality the light or matter is still perfectly following the laws of physics.\n\nAnother cool example of this is faster than light travel. Everyone knows that nothing (information, more specifically) can't travel faster than light in a vacuum. *Or can it?* Well, no, it can't...but you can trick information into traveling faster than light! Like I said before, space-time can pretty much be manipulated and do anything it wants, it can bend, twist, morph, tear (theoretically), and you can use these weird abilities to get between two points in space faster than light would normal take to get there. You can take two points in space that are 2 lightyears apart, bend them together (still working out the details), so that they are actually right next to each other, and then travel between the two points, and it seems like you traveled 2 lightyears in an instant. This is the whole \"wormhole\" theory. \n\nI could go on for hours, but I'm getting off topic. I'm not a scientist so if any want to correct anything I've said incorrectly please do so. I hope this helped you visualize what's happening when we say \"light is bent\" by gravity.\n",
"Who says light doesn't have mass? It just has very little mass. "
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349hyy | why does a clock exist in the cpu? | Can't there not be a clock so the computer doesn't need to wait for any sort of signal to process an instruction? Surely that will allow the CPU to compute instructions without any factor of *waiting* for a clock tick? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/349hyy/eli5_why_does_a_clock_exist_in_the_cpu/ | {
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"Well, that is a bit like saying \"Why do you have to wait for your left leg before you take a step with your right? Wouldn't you run faster if you simply didn't do it in steps?\"\n\nThe tick is what keeps the processor synchronized. It does one calculation after the other, the ticks are the calculations being made. It's not waiting in between.\n\nWhat you do to make your CPU work faster is make it tick faster. But you can only increase it so much before the signal doesn't reliably come though and it start crashing.",
"Imagine a chain of old timey villagers between with a river and a house on fire. They line up between the river and the fire and pass buckets between themselves, getting the full buckets upstream to the fire, and empty buckets downstream to the river. \n\nWith synchronous computing (which is all of mainstream CPUs today), everyone is going at exactly the same speed at exactly the same time, tick, pass the full bucket up one person, tock, pass the empty bucket down one person. It's very efficient and beautiful to watch, but the major downside is that you can't move any faster than Timmy the slow village idiot, so everything moves only as fast as the slowest part of the chain allows.\n\nWith asynchronous computing, everyone moves at their own pace, and parts of the chain can ferry those buckets much faster than Timmy the idiot, especially those strapping young lads from the local Olympic bucket-passing team. look at them go! The downside is that it looks like chaos, and if everyone is not vigilant about who they're passing to and from, passing buckets more slowly than their max speed to poor old Timmy, Timmy's going to get his hands full and collapse, breaking the entire chain, and the house burns down.\n\nSo, in a nutshell, following a clock is nice and simple, and pretty good, not using a clock is vastly more complicated. I haven't heard anything about it since about 2002 when it was a big talking point in computer research, though, although some parts of CPUs may be clockless nowadays. ",
"[This is actually possible](_URL_1_), but these sorts of systems are much harder to design. \n\nLogic gates all have a propagation delay, and the clock signal ensures all components have settled into a stable state before the next step of the computation.\n\nIf there is no clock, there is a risk of a [race condition](_URL_0_), where the result of the computation depends on which of two operations completes first. Asynchronuous systems must be designed to prevent this happening.\n"
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13vgmp | How much of a stretch were the Cheka from the Okhrana? | I remember writing a paper in high school about the NKVD, and as a part of the paper I looked into the background of special police forces in Russia. Recently read something more about the subject, and I was curious; how much did the Cheka/NKVD differ from the Imperial Okhrana? Obviously the Cheka and its successor, NKVD were **terr**ible police forces, but how much of a stretch was this for the Russian peoples?
Essentially, were the Cheka feared any more than the Okhrana had been feared during the Imperial regime? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/13vgmp/how_much_of_a_stretch_were_the_cheka_from_the/ | {
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"YES YES YES. The Cheka were feared because they were very arbitrary and known to harass revolutionaries at will. To quote Kravanskii: “The years 1876 and 1877 were the darkest and most mournful for the Russian Socialists. The propagandist movement cost immense sacrifices. An entire generation was mown down by Despotism in a fit of delirious fear.”\n\nAnd Kropotkin: “The young generation, as a whole, were treated as 'suspects,' and the elder generation feared to have anything to do with them...cropped hair and blue spectacles worn by a girl...were evidence of nihilist implicitly and democracy, were denounced as tokens of 'political unreliability...' The slight suspicion of political unreliability was sufficient grounds...to send him to a remote province of the Urals.”\n\nThat said however, the Cheka were not nearly as well organized and there are cases where they nearly destroyed investigations by not informing the local police forces and had either their informants/undercover agents agents arrested. The Cheka did a great job at getting rid of the known terrorist groups, namely the SR Party's terrorist wing (Aziz affair is a GREAT GREAT place to begin your research) and the People's Will. That said however, they were not as invasive at going after the anarchists and the communists because they did not fear their actions organizing the people as much as taking out political terrorists.\n\nSome great books about the involvement of the terrorists at the time include the following:\n\nManfred Hildermeier, \"The Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party Before the First World War\" (St. Martin's Press, 2000)\n\nKravchinskii (also spelt Kravchinsky or Stepniak), \"Underground Russia\" (Ballantyne Press, 1890) A great book, written by a terrorist however my copy is from 1896 that I got through my university library. I do not know how easy this book would be to find.\n\nMargaret Maxwell, \"Naradniki Women: Russian Women who Sacrificed Themselves for the Dream of Freedom\" (Pergamon Press, 1990)\n\nNurit Schleifman, \"Undercover Agents in the Russian Revolutionary Movement: The SR Party, 1902-14\" (St. Martin's Press, 1988).\n\nONE THING I MUST STRESS: A topic such as this is filled with a **huge** and I mean ***huge*** amount of bias: be careful with how carefully you read into these books especially the last three I mentioned. That said, these books have INVALUABLE information for you to use. Good luck! (I do not have any books pre-WWI sadly because the topic of my research ends prior to that, hope this helps!)\n"
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28gkr7 | Can/should we describe ancient Carthage as a republic? | I read that Aristotle considered Carthage a republic (I am aware that this term is problematic in Greek), is there credence to this claim? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/28gkr7/canshould_we_describe_ancient_carthage_as_a/ | {
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"Yes! Carthage was indeed a republic, albeit an oligarchic one (as Aristotle suggests). Its government was similar to that of other Phoenician cities in the Western Mediterranean: two annually elected \"judges\" (*špṭm* in Punic, Latinized as *suffetes*) served concurrently as the city's chief magistrates, who presided alongside the Senate (*’drm*, the \"Mighty [Ones]\") on matters of legislation and diplomacy. According to Aristotle, the judges (whom he calls \"kings) and the Senate could decide whether to submit proposals to the popular assembly (known officially as the *‘m qrtḥdšt*, \"People of Carthage\"), at which point the assembly could debate, amend, and ratify these proposals as they saw fit; a particular idiosyncrasy was that if the judges and the Senate could not agree on whether to bring legislation to the People, decision-making powers automatically fell to the People. There is some evidence that the judges were popularly elected, perhaps through the assembly or some other process, whereas the Senate apparently replenished its ranks through co-option. \n\nIn practice, the politicians all seem to have come from the same social-economic class, and certain families were apparently able to monopolize political and religious offices generation after generation. One inscription (unfortunately undated) records, for example, that a chief priestess named Batbaal was the daughter of Himilkat the *rb* (an honorific title; he was probably a senator or general) and wife of Himilkat the *špṭ*, whose father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had also served as *špṭm*. Our sources also note that bribery and embezzlement were commonplace and that political offices could be bought. Thus, while the People wielded relatively broad authority in theory, this authority only applied if the judges and senators (who presumably shared the same interests) allowed it or if deadlock forced the issue down to the assembly. \n\nI hope you find this helpful! :)"
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a6ngt4 | why are canadians so stereotyped? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a6ngt4/eli5why_are_canadians_so_stereotyped/ | {
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"we dont have much going on except igloos, the tundra, tim hortons, poutine and snow which makes us humble and therefore polite.",
"Even if you say something that's innacurate we won't correct you in case we hurt your feelings.",
"If you're American, it's because you tend to have a better idea/more stereotypes about the people around you. People from other countries won't have as many associations about Canadians, other than those pushed by American media.\n\nBasically, when you think about your classmates, you have way more things you can think of to stereotype them. You have much less of an idea about stereotypes for kids in a different class, and that's why you think there are more stereotypes for kids around you and less stereotypes for kids in a different class."
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7yg0rd | ~6 months later why haven't gas prices gone back to what they were before hurricane harvey? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7yg0rd/eli5_6_months_later_why_havent_gas_prices_gone/ | {
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"Oil prices are a bit higher than 6 months ago. It was $50 a barrel now its about $62 i think. So slightly higher."
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m2ktd | If the major event that triggered the extinction of the dinosaurs never happened, could they have evolved to our level of intelligence? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/m2ktd/if_the_major_event_that_triggered_the_extinction/ | {
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"That is in fact one of the biggest puzzles in the speculation about extraterrestial life. For us humans, being intelligent seems to be a pretty neat trick in the survival of the fittest. So why is everything else so dumb? As far as we know, we are the only intelligent civilized species in the history of life on earth. Which is *long*: 3.8 billion years is the best guess now. \n\nThere are three possible answers to this:\n\na) We only find intelligence important because *we* have it. Elephants (if they were intelligent) would probably wondering why there are no other land creatures with trunks, despite trunks obviously being useful and beautiful. \n\nb) It *did* evolve, but geological time just bulldozered over it. A dinosaur civilization with agriculture, oral traditions and the habit of burying its members with flowers would be pretty darn intelligent by our standards. But our chances of finding those dinos are small, let alone our chances of finding out about their intelligence. \n\nc) This one actually borders on (a): intelligence is not that big a deal. Every other animal on the planet seems to cope just fine without it. Dinos had already existed for millions of years without big brains, why would they suddenly start making them now?",
"Could they have? Sure. Would they have? Trends indicate no. They had *millions* of years during which they do not appear to have had any selection pressure towards intelligence.",
" < IAMNOTASCIENTIST > \n\nTime doesn't necessarily equal intelligence. For instance the alligator has been around for about 200 million years, about the same amount of time as mammals. For a really stark example, jellyfish have been around for about 500 million years.\n\nIntelligence seems to be a chance occurrence and not directly related to time. That being said more years does equal more genetic mutations which means more of a chance for intelligence to evolve.\n\n < /BUTIWISHIWAS > ",
"I study paleontology at UT Austin. There is a chance that intelligence may not even be a successful trait for us humans. Intelligent people seem to have less children and we, as the only intelligent species, may be multiplying to the point of self extinction. ",
"Serious question: If evolution is SOLELY driven by environment and natural selection, how and why did humans develop intelligence and conscious thought while other species didn't?",
"Evolution doesn't care.\n\nIt doesn't care how big you are. How fast you can run. What colour you are. Whether you can swim. Whether you eat meat or plants. Or how intelligent you are.\n\nAll it cares about is how well suited you are to your environment relative to others in the same environment. In the case of humans, intelligence has allowed us to adapt where nature doesn't - to clothe and shelter ourselves when otherwise we may die of exposure, to use tools to get food where otherwise none would exist - and as such it's a fantastic survival trait. But there's plenty of creatures that have been around much longer than man, that are fantastically well suited to their environment yet couldn't be described as intelligent by any stretch - crocodiles, sharks, jellyfish for instance.",
"I think the best way to look at this is by comparing us to say Orcas. Orcas have highly sophisticated forms of communication and have been shown to pass down from generation to generation. They also teach their young hunting techniques and so on. Sure they don't drive submarines or have tools, but why would they need it? They have all the tools necessary to survive and thrive in their environment. \n\nNow look at humans. We have nothing compared to any other wild animal. We are slow, we have no claws, our teeth are practically useless for defense, and we lack fur for protection. We are basically a walking bag of meat. So we adapt and develop tools to survive. We developed bigger and better tools to protect us first from the wild and then from each other. \n\nSince now our biggest threat is other humans we are forced to continually advance our technology to out compete our rivals and reproduce. I would argue that it's likely there were many intelligent forms of dinosaur, they just never had the need for tool creation because they had everything they needed to survive. Why make fire when you have a thick hide or a soft layer of feathers. Why make a spear when you have 12 inch serrated teeth and claws? \n\nIntelligence is a byproduct of a hostile environment, it's main function is to keep us alive. I'd argue that many animals have high intelligence but we are just too stupid to recognize it.\n\nSome citations:\nRendell, Luke, and Hal Whitehead (2001). \"Culture in whales and dolphins\". Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (2): 309–324.\n\nHeimlich, Sara; Boran, James (2001). Killer Whales. Stillwater, MN: Voyageur Press.",
"As the others have said here, strictly speaking they could have developed intelligence, but there would have had to have been selective pressure for it. The popular (and incorrect) view of evolution is that of a steady progression towards more complicated life forms, culminating eventually in an intelligent species (i.e. us). It's very arrogant (and natural) of us to assume that we are at the apex of a process that exists solely to produce us. It's easy to see why: we completely dominate our planet, but this trait of intelligence that has allowed us to do so has only existed for a geological blink of the eye and may -- in the long run -- have only transient relevance.\n\nThere are many strategies to survive successfully, and intelligence is only one of them. It is by no means an assured outcome, and we have yet to see whether it remains a permanent feature once it emerges.",
"This, and many of the comments I have read, assume that intelligence is beneficial to the survival of a species. Taking for granted we are talking about humans and the characteristics we assign to intelligence we could evaluate this claim. Does our level of intelligence promote the survival of the human race?\n\n\nFor example, the development of societies. Of course, society has increased the quality of life for many, led to a great number of discoveries, and... well.. See John Locke's 2nd Treatise of Gov't (property rights!). But let's consider the fact that societies have also facilitated the development of weapons of mass destruction, (most likely) contributed to climate change, and ignited famines (see Mao's China) and genocide.",
"Well there still is a living branch of dinosaurs (birds) and there are some birds that display much greater intelligence than many mammals. That being said I think your question gets at a common misconception about evolution in that it seems assume that all the dinosaurs would miraculously evolve at once high intelligence. If mammalian evolution has anything to say about that, it would have been just one small clade among a much larger group that would be capable of attaining that level of intelligence. And it wouldn't be like T rex gaining intelligence, it would be a long process where some possible derivative species of T rex could have been the one to evolve intelligence. And really, who is to say that some time in the distant future, a species of bird won't develop that rivals what we are at this time in earth's history?",
"Hi, I studied neurobiology and did evolution/genetics research until recently. COULD dinosaurs evolve intelligence? Anything could. WOULD they have? A second asteroid would kill them before that happened. \n\nEvolution is more structured than people realize. While random mutations are indeed a fundamental source of evolution, they tend to enhance or remove existing features (not spring them up from nowhere). Our intelligence is an enhancement of memory, communication, motor control, internal regulation, and the senses.* Inventive survival techniques and the ability to communicate that knowledge to other members of the species is the \"reason\" we evolved intelligence. And so, there was both a clear place to start from and an immediate use for the outcome.\n\nNeither start nor finish points existed for intelligence in dinosaurs. Perhaps they could have evolved into a totally different organism, but I think paro's question is imagining T-Rex reading the morning paper. Not to trivialize it, but dinosaurs were NOT moving towards intelligence because A) their brains did not have a structure adaptable to hosting intelligence and more importantly B) there was no reason for them to evolve intelligence.\n\n\n\n*This sloppy breakdown of intelligence comes from my personal view of the mammalian brain, having studied it from more of an anatomical and evolutionary (rather than functional) standpoint.",
"That is in fact one of the biggest puzzles in the speculation about extraterrestial life. For us humans, being intelligent seems to be a pretty neat trick in the survival of the fittest. So why is everything else so dumb? As far as we know, we are the only intelligent civilized species in the history of life on earth. Which is *long*: 3.8 billion years is the best guess now. \n\nThere are three possible answers to this:\n\na) We only find intelligence important because *we* have it. Elephants (if they were intelligent) would probably wondering why there are no other land creatures with trunks, despite trunks obviously being useful and beautiful. \n\nb) It *did* evolve, but geological time just bulldozered over it. A dinosaur civilization with agriculture, oral traditions and the habit of burying its members with flowers would be pretty darn intelligent by our standards. But our chances of finding those dinos are small, let alone our chances of finding out about their intelligence. \n\nc) This one actually borders on (a): intelligence is not that big a deal. Every other animal on the planet seems to cope just fine without it. Dinos had already existed for millions of years without big brains, why would they suddenly start making them now?",
"Could they have? Sure. Would they have? Trends indicate no. They had *millions* of years during which they do not appear to have had any selection pressure towards intelligence.",
" < IAMNOTASCIENTIST > \n\nTime doesn't necessarily equal intelligence. For instance the alligator has been around for about 200 million years, about the same amount of time as mammals. For a really stark example, jellyfish have been around for about 500 million years.\n\nIntelligence seems to be a chance occurrence and not directly related to time. That being said more years does equal more genetic mutations which means more of a chance for intelligence to evolve.\n\n < /BUTIWISHIWAS > ",
"I study paleontology at UT Austin. There is a chance that intelligence may not even be a successful trait for us humans. Intelligent people seem to have less children and we, as the only intelligent species, may be multiplying to the point of self extinction. ",
"Serious question: If evolution is SOLELY driven by environment and natural selection, how and why did humans develop intelligence and conscious thought while other species didn't?",
"Evolution doesn't care.\n\nIt doesn't care how big you are. How fast you can run. What colour you are. Whether you can swim. Whether you eat meat or plants. Or how intelligent you are.\n\nAll it cares about is how well suited you are to your environment relative to others in the same environment. In the case of humans, intelligence has allowed us to adapt where nature doesn't - to clothe and shelter ourselves when otherwise we may die of exposure, to use tools to get food where otherwise none would exist - and as such it's a fantastic survival trait. But there's plenty of creatures that have been around much longer than man, that are fantastically well suited to their environment yet couldn't be described as intelligent by any stretch - crocodiles, sharks, jellyfish for instance.",
"I think the best way to look at this is by comparing us to say Orcas. Orcas have highly sophisticated forms of communication and have been shown to pass down from generation to generation. They also teach their young hunting techniques and so on. Sure they don't drive submarines or have tools, but why would they need it? They have all the tools necessary to survive and thrive in their environment. \n\nNow look at humans. We have nothing compared to any other wild animal. We are slow, we have no claws, our teeth are practically useless for defense, and we lack fur for protection. We are basically a walking bag of meat. So we adapt and develop tools to survive. We developed bigger and better tools to protect us first from the wild and then from each other. \n\nSince now our biggest threat is other humans we are forced to continually advance our technology to out compete our rivals and reproduce. I would argue that it's likely there were many intelligent forms of dinosaur, they just never had the need for tool creation because they had everything they needed to survive. Why make fire when you have a thick hide or a soft layer of feathers. Why make a spear when you have 12 inch serrated teeth and claws? \n\nIntelligence is a byproduct of a hostile environment, it's main function is to keep us alive. I'd argue that many animals have high intelligence but we are just too stupid to recognize it.\n\nSome citations:\nRendell, Luke, and Hal Whitehead (2001). \"Culture in whales and dolphins\". Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (2): 309–324.\n\nHeimlich, Sara; Boran, James (2001). Killer Whales. Stillwater, MN: Voyageur Press.",
"As the others have said here, strictly speaking they could have developed intelligence, but there would have had to have been selective pressure for it. The popular (and incorrect) view of evolution is that of a steady progression towards more complicated life forms, culminating eventually in an intelligent species (i.e. us). It's very arrogant (and natural) of us to assume that we are at the apex of a process that exists solely to produce us. It's easy to see why: we completely dominate our planet, but this trait of intelligence that has allowed us to do so has only existed for a geological blink of the eye and may -- in the long run -- have only transient relevance.\n\nThere are many strategies to survive successfully, and intelligence is only one of them. It is by no means an assured outcome, and we have yet to see whether it remains a permanent feature once it emerges.",
"This, and many of the comments I have read, assume that intelligence is beneficial to the survival of a species. Taking for granted we are talking about humans and the characteristics we assign to intelligence we could evaluate this claim. Does our level of intelligence promote the survival of the human race?\n\n\nFor example, the development of societies. Of course, society has increased the quality of life for many, led to a great number of discoveries, and... well.. See John Locke's 2nd Treatise of Gov't (property rights!). But let's consider the fact that societies have also facilitated the development of weapons of mass destruction, (most likely) contributed to climate change, and ignited famines (see Mao's China) and genocide.",
"Well there still is a living branch of dinosaurs (birds) and there are some birds that display much greater intelligence than many mammals. That being said I think your question gets at a common misconception about evolution in that it seems assume that all the dinosaurs would miraculously evolve at once high intelligence. If mammalian evolution has anything to say about that, it would have been just one small clade among a much larger group that would be capable of attaining that level of intelligence. And it wouldn't be like T rex gaining intelligence, it would be a long process where some possible derivative species of T rex could have been the one to evolve intelligence. And really, who is to say that some time in the distant future, a species of bird won't develop that rivals what we are at this time in earth's history?",
"Hi, I studied neurobiology and did evolution/genetics research until recently. COULD dinosaurs evolve intelligence? Anything could. WOULD they have? A second asteroid would kill them before that happened. \n\nEvolution is more structured than people realize. While random mutations are indeed a fundamental source of evolution, they tend to enhance or remove existing features (not spring them up from nowhere). Our intelligence is an enhancement of memory, communication, motor control, internal regulation, and the senses.* Inventive survival techniques and the ability to communicate that knowledge to other members of the species is the \"reason\" we evolved intelligence. And so, there was both a clear place to start from and an immediate use for the outcome.\n\nNeither start nor finish points existed for intelligence in dinosaurs. Perhaps they could have evolved into a totally different organism, but I think paro's question is imagining T-Rex reading the morning paper. Not to trivialize it, but dinosaurs were NOT moving towards intelligence because A) their brains did not have a structure adaptable to hosting intelligence and more importantly B) there was no reason for them to evolve intelligence.\n\n\n\n*This sloppy breakdown of intelligence comes from my personal view of the mammalian brain, having studied it from more of an anatomical and evolutionary (rather than functional) standpoint."
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56sh1j | i wear eye glasses, why do colors red and blue move the closer they get to the edge of my lenses? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/56sh1j/eli5i_wear_eye_glasses_why_do_colors_red_and_blue/ | {
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"The refractive index of the glass is dependent on the wavelength. Blue light will get bent further by the glass then the red light. In the extreme case in a prism it looks like [this](_URL_0_). The lens in your glasses will bend the light first one way then the next way so it should not be as visible as with a prism but there can still be a notable shift. This is also part of the reason why expensive lens assemblies in cameras or binoculars have a lot of different lenses. Some of the geometry is to correct the different wavelengths so that they all stay in place and in focus. You might notice it on some camera images that there is a red or a blue frame around certain objects."
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2zg3n8 | what makes a man's sperm come out so quickly? is there some kind of pumping mechanism? | When a man ejaculates, he -normally- pumps out sperm at a very high speed. What is in the body that makes it come out so fast? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zg3n8/eli5what_makes_a_mans_sperm_come_out_so_quickly/ | {
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"You know how you can form your hands in a pool such that simply squeezing shut your hand causes the water to squirt out quite rapidly? It's like that. It doesn't take a lot of muscle power but quick compressions with a small opening."
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2s6ojm | why can we not combine 2 or more wifis to get 1 super fast wifi? | Basically, I know my 2 neighbors passwords and would love to be able to combine all three of our wifis to make a super wifi, why is this not possible? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2s6ojm/eli5_why_can_we_not_combine_2_or_more_wifis_to/ | {
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"There actually is, but it's still new so almost nothing supports it.\n\nThe way the Internet works, it's basically sending messages to addresses (where each address corresponds to one Internet connection). The idea of a single device having multiple addresses wasn't planned when the foundations for the Internet were designed in the 70s. The Internet Engineering Task Force published a Request for Comments on what they call [multipath TCP](_URL_0_) a couple years ago. It's still considered experimental. Newer iPhones use it to allow more seamless switching between wi-fi and cellular data, but that's the only use of it that I know of. ",
"It is, it's just not easy.\n\nYou can connect a computer to 2 difirent networks. The problem is, it then becomes very complicated to mantain 2 connections and 2 athuntetations and ensure that the packets from the 2 connections are assembeled in the correct order. Basiclly everything become an order of magnituade more complex. Because this is not a common thing there is really no consumer friendly software that does it so you need to be very techinicaly profissent to accomplish it.",
"It's sort of possible, but you need specific hardware to achieve it. Your computer probably only has one wireless receiver built into it, which can only connect to one wireless network at any one time. Incidentally, if you're not familiar with how networks work, here's a super brief explanation. Networks operate by sending and receiving packets of information. Routers are in charge of taking those packets and forwarding them to the correct destination. When you watch a YouTube video you are receiving packets of information from a content provider's servers. Data packets are sent from there through multiple routers (including your home router), eventually hitting your computer. In order to link together multiple Internet connections you'd need to set up something like...\n\nMulti-WAN or multi-homing, which allows you to \"bond\" multiple lines into what is effectively one line with increased bandwidth. However, there are several caveats:\n\n* Without support from your ISP (which wouldn't happen in your case since you have at the very least multiple accounts in use through one ISP and at worst multiple ISPs), you will not see tripled speeds on downloads, only what one connection supplies. However, you can run three downloads, and each will run at the maximum speed one WAN connection can handle at the same time. The router can route new requests over whichever of the two lines has the most available bandwidth if you set up the load-balancer correctly.\n\n* Most residential routers do not support multi-homing (at least with stock firmware). If you have a router which supports DD-WRT, I believe it is possible, but still very tricky to configure correctly. I'm not sure if a residential router can support it even with DD-WRT, given that they generally only have 1 WAN port and the rest are switched internally.\n* Sticky connections are necessary for much of today's web, and might be difficult to set up depending on what software you're running on your router.\n\nI honestly don't know of a device that can do this with **wireless** WAN links, although it can be done via wired connections.\n\n\n\nWhat you wish to accomplish may also be achieved by setting up load balancing on a per packet basis, but you must have a server that handles incoming packets from all WAN links and reassembles the data into one unified stream. It's fairly complicated and it definitely cannot be done over wireless connections."
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ms7nm | If life has a single origin, when did plants evolve into animals? | How did plants evolve into animals? or were the two always separate? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ms7nm/if_life_has_a_single_origin_when_did_plants/ | {
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"[Phylogenetic tree of life](_URL_0_) which is the best visualization for how evolution shook out.\n\nYou should also look at [Eukaryote](_URL_1_) which has sections on differences among eukaryotic cells and on origin and evolution.\n ",
"The last common ancestor to plants and animals would have been a single celled [eukaryote](_URL_1_). All plants, animals, protists and fungi share the same basic eukaryotic cell structures, as opposed to bacteria and archaea in which cell components vary in structure and type.\n\n\"The eukaryotes thus came to be composed of four kingdoms:\nKingdom Protista, \nKingdom Plantae, \nKingdom Fungi, and\nKingdom Animalia\"\n\nExtant single celled eukaryotes are represented by the [protists](_URL_2_). \"The protists do not have much in common besides a relatively simple organization[3]—either they are unicellular, or they are multicellular without specialized tissues. This simple cellular organization distinguishes the protists from other eukaryotes, such as fungi, animals and plants.\"\n\nLater in the first wiki article you can [read about the differences in plant, animal and fungi cells](_URL_0_). These differences accumulated after our split with this last common ancestor. Thus making plants and animals different. It is more likely that we split from this single celled eukaryotic ancestor, rather then plants evolving into animals. \n\nIn fact, animals and fungi are thought to share a closer last common ancestor, then animals and plants. Thus plants split off first - accumulating their unique characteristics, and the other \"unknown\" organism continued down its evolutionary path until it split into what would later become all of the animals (both extinct and extant) and fungi (both extinct and extant). After this second split, animals and fungi each accumulated their own unique characteristics that would distinguish them from all other eukaryotic life.\n\nHere is another [tree of life](_URL_3_)",
"...aaaand I'm the third commenter to post a tree of life, but this one is interactive: Check out [TimeTree](_URL_1_), which e.g. finds that [cats and carrots split 1.5 billion years ago](_URL_0_).\n\nEdit: To be more precise, \"the genetic lineages that would eventually lead to cats and carrots, respectively\".",
"*Never.*\n\nWe share a *common ancestor.*\n\nPlants and animals share a common unicellular ancestor, which was neither a plant nor an animal.",
"[Phylogenetic tree of life](_URL_0_) which is the best visualization for how evolution shook out.\n\nYou should also look at [Eukaryote](_URL_1_) which has sections on differences among eukaryotic cells and on origin and evolution.\n ",
"The last common ancestor to plants and animals would have been a single celled [eukaryote](_URL_1_). All plants, animals, protists and fungi share the same basic eukaryotic cell structures, as opposed to bacteria and archaea in which cell components vary in structure and type.\n\n\"The eukaryotes thus came to be composed of four kingdoms:\nKingdom Protista, \nKingdom Plantae, \nKingdom Fungi, and\nKingdom Animalia\"\n\nExtant single celled eukaryotes are represented by the [protists](_URL_2_). \"The protists do not have much in common besides a relatively simple organization[3]—either they are unicellular, or they are multicellular without specialized tissues. This simple cellular organization distinguishes the protists from other eukaryotes, such as fungi, animals and plants.\"\n\nLater in the first wiki article you can [read about the differences in plant, animal and fungi cells](_URL_0_). These differences accumulated after our split with this last common ancestor. Thus making plants and animals different. It is more likely that we split from this single celled eukaryotic ancestor, rather then plants evolving into animals. \n\nIn fact, animals and fungi are thought to share a closer last common ancestor, then animals and plants. Thus plants split off first - accumulating their unique characteristics, and the other \"unknown\" organism continued down its evolutionary path until it split into what would later become all of the animals (both extinct and extant) and fungi (both extinct and extant). After this second split, animals and fungi each accumulated their own unique characteristics that would distinguish them from all other eukaryotic life.\n\nHere is another [tree of life](_URL_3_)",
"...aaaand I'm the third commenter to post a tree of life, but this one is interactive: Check out [TimeTree](_URL_1_), which e.g. finds that [cats and carrots split 1.5 billion years ago](_URL_0_).\n\nEdit: To be more precise, \"the genetic lineages that would eventually lead to cats and carrots, respectively\".",
"*Never.*\n\nWe share a *common ancestor.*\n\nPlants and animals share a common unicellular ancestor, which was neither a plant nor an animal."
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protist",
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batqj5 | Are there any history lectures by victor Davis Hanson available? | [deleted] | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/batqj5/are_there_any_history_lectures_by_victor_davis/ | {
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"A quick search doesn't turn up any recordings of his lectures on ancient history. I'm not sure that they exist. VDH has been doing very little public work over the last 20 years that isn't about modern issues - whether overtly or by implication - because that is how he sees the role of the Classicist in society. In the past, he taught courses on Greek language and history at CSU Fresno, but in recent decades he has shifted his focus, and he is now effectively a professional pundit who uses his knowledge of history as a resource to make arguments about modern politics and the modern academy. \n\nAll of the above is simple fact and I am not trying to break our rules with a political agenda of my own. VDH can say what he likes. However, I would be a bad scholar of Greek history if I failed to mention that his views on history have been largely disavowed by others in the discipline who recognise the importance of modern politics in his interpretation of the past. His work on all periods and subjects is irredeemably coloured by his political views and should be handled with extreme caution. I recently did an [AskHistorians podcast](_URL_1_) explaining this in more detail. In that post you can find links to several threads in which I address particular aspects of VDH's view of Greek history.\n\nInstead of feeding your brain on outdated views distorted by an ideological filter, I would recommend seeking out the work of other professional historians. Excellent free online courses on the Classical world are available from places like the [Open University](_URL_0_)."
]
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"https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/classical-studies/introducing-the-classical-world/content-section-0?active-tab=description-tab",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/axg0v7/askhistorians_podcast_131_a_scholar_and_a_pundit/"
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7vsmd9 | Why is the first ionization enthalpy of an oxygen atom lower than that of a nitrogen atom? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7vsmd9/why_is_the_first_ionization_enthalpy_of_an_oxygen/ | {
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"Because nitrogen has a particularly high ionization energy, which is the same thing as saying it has relatively stable valence electrons. This is because it has 3 of 6 p-orbitals occupied and half-filled shells are particularly stable as the electrons are maximally spread out from each other, meaning less electron-electron repulsion and less screening of the nucleus' charge from electrons by other electrons. \n\n"
]
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42wf0r | How did scientists in say the 1600s attempt to standardize length remotely? | Could they have used astronomical measurements to convent lengths as small as a foot? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/42wf0r/how_did_scientists_in_say_the_1600s_attempt_to/ | {
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"Generally, the lengths simply were not standardized too well until a global standard was agreed upon. Feet and hands were measured by actual feet and hands, and could vary by the artisan.\n\nBut, you can use astronomy to make some small measurements. For example, we could \"agree\" that a sun-unit of length is the distance the shadow of a foot long stick travels in one hour, judging from the point the sun is at its highest in the sky."
]
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1gm2ei | What's the difference between a Roman family and a Roman Tribe or "gens." | I just looked up some information on Roman names and it said that they had two last names, a nomen and a cognomen. The nomen is for the "clan or gens" name and the cognomen for the family name.
So what are clans within families? This concept is just really confusing to me. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1gm2ei/whats_the_difference_between_a_roman_family_and_a/ | {
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"Okay, let's clear some things up first. Number one: Not all Romans had a *cognomen*. In fact, many very prominent people didn't, some of whom were patricians. The use of the *cognomen* was almost always the mark (until the Principate) of a high-born patrician family. Second thing is that \"tribe\" and \"clan\" are completely different things. *Gens* does *not* mean \"tribe,\" but instead \"clan.\" The use of the word \"tribe\" should be restricted to designating the Roman political tribes, which were the bodies of voting citizens within the city.\n\nNow to business. The way Roman names worked is that you had a personal name, or *praenomen* first. There were only a few of these. Gaius, Gnaeus, Titus, Tiberius, etc. Maybe two or three dozen at most. Then came your *nomen*. The *nomen* designated which family you came from, whether it was the Cornelii, the Julii, the Falerii, whatever. For most Romans that would do the trick. But there weren't a lot of patrician or noble families, so it was necessary to further identify youself if, say, you were a Cornelius. *Which Cornelius*? \n\nThe solution was that during the early and middle Republic prominent members of a family would recieve nicknames, which from a fairly early date became senatorially appointed titles. Often these names referred to some physical feature (e.g. *Cicero*, or \"garbanzo bean,\" probably referring to some growth on the original member of the family's nose--or, *Calvus*, \"bald\") or some important deed (e.g. *Fabius Cunctator*, the \"Delayer,\" referring to his scorched-earth tactics against Hannibal). Later on many titles were given as *cognomines* to prominent generals or winners of triumphs for the region of their military campaigns (e.g. \"Africanus\"). \n\nAlthough *cognomines* were originally titles or nicknames attributed to a specific individual, they very quickly became associated with the line of descent from that individual, who was often dated far back to the early Republic or beyond. Thus, by Caesar's time the *cognomen* of a noble designated his specific line of descent within the family of which he was part--i.e. his \"clan.\" *Cognomines* were still awarded occasionally, as with Pompey's \"*Magnus*\", but this became rarer and rarer as Rome moved into the Principate."
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51ptug | During the Cold War, Americans referred to their Soviet counterparts as "Ruskies" or "Commies." What pejorative terms were used for Americans in the Soviet Union? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/51ptug/during_the_cold_war_americans_referred_to_their/ | {
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"As a follow-up, where did the term \"pinko\" come from, as it relates to \"pinko commie\"?\n\nI know that personal anecdotes aren't allowed, but it's relevant to what prompted this question. I was in Moscow and there was a Pinko store in a mall."
]
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4i39pl | how come when children cough they seem to cough for longer than adults? | I've always noticed that when a child is coughing, they seem to cough for long periods of time uncontrollably, whereas adults seem to only cough once or twice, unless they're sick. Why is this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4i39pl/eli5_how_come_when_children_cough_they_seem_to/ | {
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"Children don't have the same level of control. They are not as good at repelling irritants, which cause coughs. And then they react more strongly when they do get an irritant. "
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e4wv15 | (1) Is history a science? (2) What makes a good historian? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/e4wv15/1_is_history_a_science_2_what_makes_a_good/ | {
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"Taken from [a previous answer](_URL_0_) that might be informative about the first of your two questions:\n\nIt depends both how you define history and how you define science, and there are whole fields - historiography and the philosophy of science, respectively - that have spent decades arguing about what exactly history is and what science is. \n\nThere's a certain ...archetype or stereotype of science that you might have in your head, that involves *experiments* where stuff is subjected to *measurement* that is done to confirm or disconfirm *hypotheses* based on *theories* that are *mathematical*. Galileo dropping things of different weights from a tower in order to figure out whether they fall at the same rate, for example. \n\nBut ultimately, science is more complicated than that. Certainly, there are sciences like geology or palaeontology where experiments are impossible because the topic matter is *historical* - you can't do experiments on dinosaurs, though you can measure them in various ways, and new discoveries can confirm or disconfirm previous hypotheses. Similarly, sometimes science doesn't involve much measurement - there's almost no mention of maths in Darwin's *Origin Of Species* - it's all based on logical extrapolations from observations (though after the Modern Synthesis, there is now evolutionary mathematics, because you *can* count the DNA sequences that Darwin didn't know existed).\n\nAnd of course, part of what makes science *science* is that it is a social endeavour - science is a community of people who've agreed to follow certain rules about how to behave, who have a set of procedures in place meant to improve the quality of the science that occurs (peer review, reports with enough information so that others can potentially replicate the experiment, standardised statistical procedures, etc etc.) which do not always occur.\n\nAnyway, as a result, strict definitions of science usually fail at some level to encompass all the things that most people want to encompass as science. For example, the Vienna School of philosophers of science in the early 20th century argued for quite a strict definition of science which (very briefly) argued that science boiled down to mathematical formulae that explained the relationship between observations. But in the end this fell by the wayside because not all the things that seem like us to be science fit in that box. This eventually led some philosophers of science to go hard in the other direction of defining science; the philosopher Paul Feyerabend in *Against Method* in the 1970s had a rather anarchic view of science - instead of demarcating between science and not-science, his theory of science was 'anything goes'. So for the Vienna School positivists would have said \"history is definitely not science\", but Feyerabend would have said \"sure, why not?\"\n\nPersonally, I like the philosopher of science Susan Haack's definition - which is broad enough to encompass most science but not so broad as to encompass bullshit: \n > \"Inquiry in the sciences is like empirical inquiry of the most ordinary, everyday kind – only conducted with greater care, detail, precision, and persistence, and often by many people within and across generations.\"\n\nThis is not so different from what E. H. Carr says in his 1961 book *What Is History?*:\n > \"The study of history is a study of causes. The historian, as I said at the end of my last lecture, continuously asks the question 'Why?'; and so long as he hopes for an answer, he cannot rest. The great historian - or perhaps I should say more broadly, the great thinker - is the man who asks the question 'Why?' about new things or in new contexts.\"\n\nWhat both Haack and Carr are basically saying here is that science and history, respectively, are both about trying to understand the world around us based on evidence, while trying as hard as we can to not make errors. So if we take those definitions, both disciplines are fundamentally similar.\n\nBut remember that there is no widespread agreement that these are the right definitions.\n\nThe main difference, to me, between history and science - and I'm a psychologist who does behavioural experiments, and so I at least think I'm a scientist - is the nature of the methods that are needed in order to (accurately, with few errors) find out stuff in the very different topic areas of, say, Ancient Rome in 45 BC and, I dunno, the behaviour of gas at high temperatures. \n\nHistory is ultimately full of people imbuing things with meaning, and so historians have developed a sophisticated toolbox designed to interrogate that meaning and relate that meaning to the events that happened. For example, people recording events often tell outright lies, stretch the truth, omit key parts of the issue, etc. - 'fake news' is not new - and historians have a high-class of training at, well, calling bullshit. \n\nIn contrast, scientists in a given discipline will be trained in trying to reduce a different set of errors, usually to do with the precision of the measurement of a natural phenomenon. In most sciences this is mostly about trying to measure as precisely as possible, in conditions that are as generic as possible - e.g., if you want to measure how long it takes for something to fall to the ground, you have to deal with wind resistance, so there's various ways in which scientists can reduce that error.\n\nFor a psychologist like me, reducing error in measurement in order to be scientific is bloody hard - human minds are very complex. If we want to understand a small bit of that complexity - which is about as much as we can hope for in a single experiment - we need to isolate it as much as possible. So psychologists try to properly design an experiment to make sure as much as possible that it's testing what we want it to test and not something else (because if you *don't* isolate the thing you actually want to test, your statistics very well might be showing you something different entirely). And psychologists use analytical statistics because those statistics allow you to find trends in noisy data (and of course human behaviour is *noisy* in this sense because, as I mentioned, human minds are complex). \n\nIn contrast, historians, for better or worse, don't have the option of giving Julius Caesar an IQ test, what with our general lack of TARDISes or working DeLorean-based time machines. So, where psychologists try to isolate a particular mental phenomenon by putting people in a context that systematically strips away other context and meaning, historians can't do this - it's an impossibility given the nature of the evidence. Instead, historians embrace that context and meaning in trying to understand human behaviour - this is at the heart of E. H. Carr's quote above.\n\nWhich is to say that I think historians and scientists aren't that different in terms of their overall aim - to understand something about the world - but their methodology in trying to achieve that aim is very different, because of the different topic matter involved. And so to finally answer your question: it's basically a matter of debate as to whether science is about a certain philosophical attitude in a social context or methodological approach. Obviously history has a very different methodology to the stereotypical scientific image of dudes in white coats with jars of chemicals. But the philosophical approach - use evidence and critical thinking to come up with the best theories to understand why something happens - isn't that dissimilar at heart."
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3b712y | Did the Roman Empire fund rebellions and insurgencies in other countries (like the US did during the Cold War)? | **EDIT**: 137 upvotes and not a single reply...? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3b712y/did_the_roman_empire_fund_rebellions_and/ | {
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"I think no one has replied because the question doesn't quite work. The US funded revolutions etc in the context of a bipolar world; that didn't really exist for Rome.\n\nRome did, of course, support some countries or tribes against others (Caesar assisted the Gauls against Ariovistus, for instance), but there wasn't the kind of ideological problem that existed between the US and the USSR. Even when Rome was fighting with the Parthians, I can't imagine an ideological dispute - it was just territory that mattered, as far as I know. If someone out there knows more I will appreciate being corrected."
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9mlx77 | why are many japanese companies active in so many different, unrelated industries? like yamaha, which makes musical instruments and motorcycles | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9mlx77/eli5_why_are_many_japanese_companies_active_in_so/ | {
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"all sorts of strange conglomerates like that exist around the world. Sometimes its because of matched proficiencies or technology (Agfa materials for example makes printer ink, cameras, and medical imaging devices, because that all derived from really old camera tech).\n\nSometimes its just families/companies buying up random stuff where they see opportunity (Irving is a canadian company that is in ship building, forestry, oil, and toilet paper, and a couple more I forget).\n\nEDIT: in Yamaha's specific case the CEO repurposed machinery used for wartime production (they were required to help the war effort) into making motorcycles, so option b with a little help.",
"A lot of times it's because of war. BMW used to make planes for the war effort so that's why their emblem is a propeller. Sometimes the companies just dont stop. ",
"The large conglomerates are known as Zaibatsu. The big 4 Zaibatsu (Sumitomo, Mitsui, Mitsubishi and Yasuda) have roots in imperial Japan, where they were employed by the government to collect taxes and produce military equipment. At one point in time, virtually all business was conducted by these 4 conglomerates, who had unstoppable monopoly power.\n\nAfter WW2, America dissolved the large conglomerates to encourage capitalistic competition, but the supply chain and business relations were so intertwined that the split businesses just fell back into place and the conglomerates were reborn.",
"It happens all over the world, but a lot of western conglomerates have big companies you've never heard of owning a bunch of little brands you're more familiar with."
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4zlhuh | [Computer Science] Why do torrents slow down as you're reaching the very end? | followup question: Are there any clients that intentionally employ "bad torrent practices" to ensure the best download speed for the individual at the expense of the swarm?
| askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4zlhuh/computer_science_why_do_torrents_slow_down_as/ | {
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"Because you need a specific bit.\n\nThe more specific a bit you need, the less likely it is that people who are not done with the torrent have that bit\n\nSince the people who share the most, are the people still getting the torrent (most people stop sharing after done) the fewer bits are left, the smaller the chance that a lot of people have that bit to share with you",
"Most people close out of torrents as soon as they're completed. By remaining as a peer with a large percentage of the file completed, the torrent is \"healthier\". Also, you're in a queue for a very specific sequence with few peers able to service the request, who also have many other requests to fulfill.",
"Torrents download files by downloading small pieces of the files in your download. Seeders host many pieces on their machines for download.\n\nWhen your download starts, any piece of the torrent available can be downloaded. As the torrent goes on, it's seeking more and more specific pieces instead of being able to download almost anything that is available.\n\nAlso, over time as the torrent is seeded and leeched, some pieces become more common than others so there's a smaller pool of peers for some pieces. Not all peers who are seeding have 100% of the file, many are waiting on the less common pieces.\n\nWhile most clients download in a random order or just what is available, some better clients attempt to download the rarest pieces of a torrent first, but over time will still slow due to the search for specific pieces.\n\n[How torrents work](_URL_0_) \n",
"The answers so far are no more than partly correct. There *is* a real effect caused by a lack of 100% seeders, but it's not the main effect in play here. You don't mean a gradual slowdown, like in the last 10-20%, but rather your DL rate cutting to almost nothing in the last 0.25-0.50%, right? I know what you mean. \n\nUsually, when you're downloading, you're getting chunks from peers at a *lot* of different speeds. One peer might be sending you chunks at 2mbps, one at 500kbps, and 3 at 10kbps each. Now suppose you're in the last 1% of a download, and you're downloading all the remaining chunks at once from these peers. The chunks from the fast peers finish quickly, and you're left with just a couple of chunks from the slow peers - and so your download rate slows dramatically. \n\nIn theory, a client could just drop the chunk from a slow peer, and download it again from one of the fast ones, but I don't think any of them do this and it's considered a bad practice - I could see it messing up the ratio tracking a lot of trackers do. ",
"Torrents let you download from multiple sources, some send you parts of the middle, some from the end and so on. When the File is almost done, usually some sources have sent their part faster and the remaining bit isn't large enough to establish new connections, so you have only one or two slow sources left. This is why the speed decreases in the last seconds.",
"Picture passing around the pieces of 1000 1000 piece puzzles in a group of 1000 people. Some people have a complete puzzle, and others are still collecting pieces. \n\nAt the start, you have nothing and so literally all 999 other people can give you stuff and you'll fly through the first percentage points. Eventually though you'll reach a point where if 900 of the other people are also still working on the puzzle, you will start looking for pieces many people don't have. That's okay, there's a hundred or so people that do have that piece, but they are also helping the other 900 so you need to wait in line. Eventually all you have left is those pieces that only the 100 people have and there's 900 people standing in line. You'll get them, but it is just going to take a bit longer."
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dbiqf5 | why we don't replace the blood in a sick person (hiv, cancer) with clean blood. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dbiqf5/eli5_why_we_dont_replace_the_blood_in_a_sick/ | {
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"They actually do this for leukemia (cancer in white blood cells) by giving them clean bone marrow. It is just expensive",
"It would take a LOT of blood to replace it, there are rejection and infection risks with doing it, possibly also risk of blood clots and similar.\n\nAnd to what end? Few diseases are only in the blood. Most of the disease or cancer will be in their tissues, muscles, skin, lymph nodes etc All you'd be doing is exposing them to all the risks of a major transfusion in exchange for maybe a slight decrease in viruses in their body for a few days."
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215nx0 | What pop culture references did Shakespeare weave into his works? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/215nx0/what_pop_culture_references_did_shakespeare_weave/ | {
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"Depends what you mean by 450yr old \"pop culture\". But there's at least one instance when he did refer directly to a \"contemporary\" artist:\n\n > **Third Gentleman**\n\n > No: the princess hearing of her mother's statue,\n\n > which is in the keeping of Paulina,--a piece many\n\n > years in doing and now newly performed by that rare\n\n > Italian master, *Julio Romano*, who, had he himself\n\n > eternity and could put breath into his work, would\n\n > beguile Nature of her custom, so perfectly he is her\n\n > ape: he so near to Hermione hath done Hermione that\n\n > they say one would speak to her and stand in hope of\n\n > answer: thither with all greediness of affection\n\n > are they gone, and there they intend to sup.\n\n(Winter's Tale)\n\n[Giulio Romano](_URL_0_) died in 1546, but was certainly a real person the audience would have recognized. Although he wasn't known for sculpture.\n\n"
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rxfpx | Before there were monsters written into movies, books, and even oral stories, did kids still have an innate fear of them? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/rxfpx/before_there_were_monsters_written_into_movies/ | {
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"It is genetically advantageous to be afraid of the unknown.",
"I'm pretty sure the oral stories about monsters started around the same time we gained sapience."
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[]
] | ||
3aam9v | Why did the Allies think it was so important to place leading Nazis on trial? Why not just line them up against a wall and execute them? | From what I understand, pre-WWII wars were usually resolved by the losing leaders either being sent into exile or immediately murdered by the winning army. Why was the aftermath of WWII so different? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3aam9v/why_did_the_allies_think_it_was_so_important_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"csat2ng"
],
"score": [
23
],
"text": [
"When a war is set between two sides, there are rules and regulations conducted by conventions and corporations such as The Geneva Convention, UN, Red Cross, et cetera. They make sure that war is in a civilized boundaries and crimes against humanity are not broken (e.g. Chemical Warfare and treatment of POWs). During WWII, many Japanese and German officers mandated and partook in crimes against humanity. The holocaust, massacres, chemical experimentations, etc. \n\nThe point of setting these rules and conferences is to keep humanity at a certain set of morals and understanding compassion to one another. Just putting them up against a wall and shooting them without a trial to bring their crimes to the light and charging them for it is against the point of all the rules set in place in the first place. Even though the result is the same, committing an act like this doesn't separate the winning side from killing merciless or in a more humane light. \n\nActually, things like this were done after wars. For example, there was an International Tribunal after World War I in Paris to convict all those who committed violations of war. It was called the Leipzig War Crime Trials. It was an outrage to many countries because only Germans were being convicted, some seemed biased and it never got a true spectrum of the war of which sides actually committed violations. \n\nFrom a source of the significance of the tribunal/Nuremburg Trials: \n\n > The Nuremberg Trials have had a great impact on international law as a whole. Crime against humanity was given a legal definition. For the first time in history, the pre-eminence of individual rights and their being subject to codified law was established, in an area which hitherto only recognized the rights of States.\nFundamental principles which emanated from the Nuremberg Trials include individual responsibility for international crimes, the right of the Accused to a fair trial, the historic declaration whereby the position of a Head of State or a high level government official, does not guarantee immunity and finally, respect for human rights principles which have now become universal.\n\nI hope this helped. \n\nHere are my sources: \n\n1) _URL_1_\n\n2) _URL_0_\n\nMy first post mods, please tell me I did everything right. Go easy on me haha"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leipzig_War_Crimes_Trials",
"http://www.trial-ch.org/en/resources/tribunals/international-military-tribunals/tribunal-militaire-international-de-nuremberg/the-significance-and-legacy-of-the-tribunal.html"
]
] | |
94ngz4 | Did Native Americans ever domesticate turkeys? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/94ngz4/did_native_americans_ever_domesticate_turkeys/ | {
"a_id": [
"e3sg8ci"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"The quick answer to your question is yes, Native Americans indeed were the people that originally domesticated turkeys. Then, European explorers took the domesticated bird with them back to Europe where it became a sensation that spread to the rest of the world. However, where exactly did turkeys were domesticated is still a bit of a mystery, primarily due to the lack of work on the subject. While it has been suggested that turkeys were originally domesticated in central Mexico, given the presence of bones in archaeological sites dating to around 800-100 BC, studies in the North American Southwest (around the Four Corners Area) suggest that Pueblo ancestors may have also domesticated turkeys separately from their Mesoamerican counterparts. This would imply at least two domestication episodes, but given the problems of identifying wild turkeys (Meleagris ocellata) from the domesticated variety (Meleagris gallopavo), it is difficult to securely assess the timing of the domestication of the specie. Suffice is to say that by the time Europeans arrive to the Americas, domesticated turkeys had become an important part in Native cuisines."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
6s6n9e | how do police body cameras record 30 seconds prior to being turned on? | Recently in the news there was a incident where a Baltimore police officer was caught planting drugs at the scene of an arrest.
From what I gathered, the officer turned his body camera on right after he planted them (then proceeded to walk back and pretended to discover them). The officer was caught because apparently when they activate their camera, it records 30 seconds prior.
How does this work? Is the camera always filming, but not saving the footage? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6s6n9e/eli5_how_do_police_body_cameras_record_30_seconds/ | {
"a_id": [
"dlael5t",
"dlaepp9"
],
"score": [
7,
8
],
"text": [
"The camera is always filming and automatically deletes any footage after 30 seconds. When the camera is turned on, the deletion process is stopped, even for the still-present footage from the 30 seconds before the camera was turned on.",
"Yes. There's a \"buffer\" which is constantly holding the most recent 30 seconds, but it is not normally saved. It is constantly recording into that buffer and overwriting the old video. When the camera is activated, the most recent 30 seconds is saved along with whatever follows until the device is turned off or it fills up. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] | |
1n6huc | Pope Francis, a Jesuit, seems to be trying to change the trajectory of the Catholic church. For example his emphasis on poverty and lower priority on issues such as abortions and homosexuality. How are these changes seen in light of the historic role the Jesuit order played in the Catholic world? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1n6huc/pope_francis_a_jesuit_seems_to_be_trying_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"ccfwujc",
"ccg5m23"
],
"score": [
21,
2
],
"text": [
"As a Catholic who has worked within the Church for a number of years, I hope that my perspective (based mostly on firsthand and secondhand experience across the country/world, as well as two degrees' worth of reading Church documents) might prove helpful.\n\nPope Francis is not changing any teachings or anything, as he himself admits. In fact, he's said literally nothing that Pope Benedict didn't say in different words.\n\nPope Francis's is a different style of leadership, which is formed by his Jesuit training, and he is focusing more on God's love and mercy. These have always been prominent parts of Catholic teaching, even if the media doesn't usually highlight this to non-Catholics.\n\nAnd to address your other point: Yes, there are plenty of Jesuits who don't agree with all the Church's teachings, but Pope Francis isn't one of them (as can be seen by looking at his previous assignments, which reveal some of the politics within the order).\n\nEDIT: AskHistorians Guidelines (first post on this sub)",
"I've deleted your post due to some concerns that it violates our 20-year rule, which aims to avoid current politics, and the fact that it is not attracting historical answers at all. You are welcome to rephrase and repost to focus more on the historical question. For example, \"Is there a historic schism between the Jesuits and other areas of the Catholic church and if so, why?\" You can mention Pope Francis as the impetus for the question, but avoid making the question *itself* about the recent interview and reactions.\n\nThank you."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] | ||
61ygum | how do pronunciation characters work in dictionaries? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61ygum/eli5_how_do_pronunciation_characters_work_in/ | {
"a_id": [
"dfi9fd8"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"The Oxford version uses the [International Phonetic Alphabet](_URL_1_) which, while more complicated, is also more precise.\n\nFor example, in the more 'layman friendly' _URL_0_ version, how is _per_ pronounced? Does it rhyme with _fur_, or _air_?\n\nThe IPA symbol ə tells us precisely that it's a schwa, the kind of relaxed sound we'd use for comm_a_ or _a_-fraid."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"dictionary.com",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet"
]
] | ||
25y9hz | What influenced Nikita Khrushchev to develop liberal reforms in Soviet Russia? | Nikita Krushchev was an advocate for many of Stalin's policies during his reign. However, he then became the most important figure for Russian liberalization. What possibly influenced him to do so?
edit: Any sources that could help me further investigate this question?
| AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/25y9hz/what_influenced_nikita_khrushchev_to_develop/ | {
"a_id": [
"chlyxm7"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Krushchev was not an advocate for Stalin's policies, he denounced Stalin shortly after taking power. His domestic policy of his tenure is referred to as Destalinization. It was a process that included amnesty for prisoners, the end of forced labor in the gulags, the liberalizing of the institutionalized art censorship (however not as much a Gorbachev's Glasnost and Perestroika). He also most famously removed Stalin's body from Lenin's tomb. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
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