q_id stringlengths 5 6 | title stringlengths 3 301 | selftext stringlengths 0 39.2k | document stringclasses 1 value | subreddit stringclasses 3 values | url stringlengths 4 132 | answers dict | title_urls list | selftext_urls list | answers_urls list |
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7o0jqu | How do digital alarm clocks remain so accurate over extended periods of time? | I was wondering about my $5 alarm clock today. It is cheaply made, but has consistently shown the correct time since I bought it. If an alarm clock was off by a mere second every hour, it would only be 1/3600th or about .03% off every hour. That seems so insignificant, but that would make the clock off by a minute after just 2.5 days, and off by over 2 hours in a year. | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7o0jqu/how_do_digital_alarm_clocks_remain_so_accurate/ | {
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"At the core you have a quartz crystal oscillator which will have a bit of drift over time but we're talking a few minutes every year. \n\nThe frequency of the oscillator depends on the physical dimensions of the crystal which are precision engineered to extremely accurate frequencies. Clocking is just a matter of counting oscillations. Because computers need reliable and fast clocks, quartz oscillators are extremely cheap today. They make literally billions of them every year. ",
"The main thing which will cause the quartz oscillator to vibrate at the 'wrong' speed is a big change in temperature. Super-precise quartz oscillators are temperature-controlled. Indoor clocks and wristwatches are lucky to mostly be confined to a small range of temperatures.\n\nI have had a number of wristwatches that gained a second a day while being worn, but lost a second a day if taken off and set in a drawer."
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2aleyp | What was the climate like in ancient Greece? Was it the same as today? | I just came back from a holiday in Greece where it is 40° Celsius at the moment and expected to get even hotter in late july and august. It's next to impossible to do any manual labor outside during the day. Athens (again) opened up airconditioned public buildings as shelter for those at risk of heart disease.
Were temperatures the same some 2500 years ago? How did the ancient Greek handle it? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2aleyp/what_was_the_climate_like_in_ancient_greece_was/ | {
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"I would love to see an answer to this. I, for one, have always been curious if thousands of years have had an effect on the taste of fruits and vegetables. As in, back when 100% of the fresh water on the planet was unpolluted by industry, did a tomato taste different? ",
"Yeah, more or less. Granted, it is impossible to pinpoint something as specific as the temperature in a particular area, but the recent global warming issue means that there are [lots of descriptions of climate history](_URL_0_).\n\nI know it feels like it is impossible to do farm labor, but if you go outside of Athens you will see people doing it all the same. I have personally done archaeological work in more punishing climates than that and it is really just something you get used to an wear a big hat."
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"http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/iceagebook/history_of_climate.html"
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1wgzy6 | how do stormproof matches work and should i be adding them to my normal survival kit? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wgzy6/eli5_how_do_stormproof_matches_work_and_should_i/ | {
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"Stormproof matches are basically regular matches with a light coating of wax to keep them waterproof. Scratching the match on a surface removes the wax, then simply strike like normal. You can easily make your own waterproof matches by simply dipping regular matches in melted candle wax. Cover the head of the match in a thin but complete layer of wax. Simple enough.\n\nYour survival kit should always include multiple ways to start a fire, especially in bad weather. Waterproof matches are good. Cotton balls with a bit of petroleum jelly (vaseline) on them make for great tinder. Finally, a flint striker is also very easy to include in any kit. Redundancy in your fire starting capabilities (as well as your water collection capabilities) can mean a big difference if you are in a situation where you need to use the survival kit. "
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3lbxgd | Why did France sold Louisiana and other regions to US, when in 18th and 19th century, every nation wanted to control as much as land possible. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3lbxgd/why_did_france_sold_louisiana_and_other_regions/ | {
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"Nations didn't just want land for land's sake, they wanted the resources attached to that land. The primary resource produced by Louisiana in the 18th century was grain. Louisiana was a huge stretch of land, and it takes money to administer and defend such a large territory. And grain's not a particularly valuable or rare resource. So the real question is what use did France have for Louisiana in the first place? The answer is that Louisiana wasn't anything special on its own, but it was incredibly valuable for *supporting* France's more important colonies in the Caribbean, particularly Saint-Domingue (modern Haiti).\n\nSaint-Domingue was a tiny colony with a dense population, most of whom were slaves. There wasn't much farmable land there-- most of it is mountains-- but what farmable land Saint-Domingue had was some of the best in the world. In particular, it was perfect for growing three valuable cash crops: coffee, indigo, and most importantly sugar. Saint-Domingue produced about 40% of the world's sugar at a time when sugar was an expensive luxury. It was the most valuable colony in the world, and France wasn't going to waste one inch of that scarce land growing cheap crops like grain. So instead France used grain from Louisiana, which wasn't as good for stuff like sugar, to feed their Caribbean colonies.\n\nBut in 1791 the slaves of Saint-Domingue revolted in what would become the Haitian Revolution. Ex-slave armies destroyed many plantations and drove most of the landowners off the island, and Spain and Britain leapt at the chance to try to conquer Saint-Domingue. By 1800 the island was back under control, under the leadership of the former slave general Toussaint Louverture. Toussaint was nominally loyal to France, but maintained a great degree of independence, and Napoleon sent his brother-in-law to reconquer the island and re-enslave the population. When this expedition was crushed by a combination of yellow fever and savvy guerrilla warfare, Napoleon gave up on Saint-Domingue (which in 1804 became the independent Empire of Haiti).\n\nWith no Saint-Domingue left to feed, Louisiana was a lot less valuable. Napoleon might have kept it around, except that he fully expected that either Britain or the US would eventually conquer it anyway, and France was stretched too thin by the Napoleonic Wars to defend it properly. So rather than wasting time defending it only to see it lost for no gain, Napoleon decided to throw the US a bone and sell it to them on the cheap."
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46v3wv | why do some plants die even though you take good care of them while others grow all over even though you try to keep them down? | How can some be so weak and others so strong | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/46v3wv/eli5_why_do_some_plants_die_even_though_you_take/ | {
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"There are so many variables that are very different for every plant. First is type of soil, how well it drains and ph. Second is the ph of the water and amount of water you give it, most plants do not like their roots soaked all the time. Third is what type of nutrients the plant needs and whether its getting needed nutrients from the soil or you have to supplement them via fertilizer. Fourth is how much light they get both in intensity and duration. Fifth is air temperature, for instance cold weather is what makes apples sweet, if you grow an apple tree in a warm climate it may fruit but it will be sour, similarly in you grow a coconut palm in a climate too cool it will not yield any coconuts. Last is pests, I have many plants that were destroyed by insects, grubs, mole crickets and animals; I had racoons knaw off the base of corn stalks until it fell over then they ate the corn, bastards killed 1/2 acre of sweet corn.",
"Factor 1: Soil. Many plants are adapted to very specific soil compositions, including the balance of organic matter, the microorganisms in the soil, and most importantly the way the soil holds or drains water. Some plants are adapted to a wider range of soil types while others are capable of thriving only in a certain area. Grasses, for example, are pretty well adapted to various conditions. A cactus will be much pickier and need soil that doesn't hold water long at all. \n\n\nFactor 2: Light. Some plants come from regions that they are very precisely adapted to. Plants growing in a jungle floor expect different light than those that might grow on a riverbank or a hillside. This is difficult to replicate. Again, this will come down to the evolutionary history of that species and the kind of environmental variance that it's ancestors encountered.\n\nFactor 3: Air temperature, air flow, + humidity - again, this is all about adaptation. A plant that has a varied ancestral lineage might be able to handle lots of temperature or humidity fluctuations, whereas one that has stuck in a single environment (dessert, jungle) may not be able to respond properly to changes in air quality as easily.\n\nFactor 4: quality vs quantity. Some plants are adapted to produce few offspring but to have those offspring be very robust. Some plants have continued to survive by producing thousands of offspring with the chance that a couple will survive. If you are trying to grow a single specimen of this latter type of plant, you might expect that the odds are against you.\n\nFactor 5: Luck. Seriously, sometimes it's just about luck.\n\nTl;Dr - all plants are \"strong\" when they are in the environment that thry are adapted for. Trying to grow them outside that environment will reveal the ways that thry are \"weak\"\n\n\nEdit: fixed font size nightmare."
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6ebx20 | how come we never see ups vehicles at gas stations? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ebx20/eli5_how_come_we_never_see_ups_vehicles_at_gas/ | {
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"they have pumps at the distribution center. Fill up when they get back at the end of the shift so the truck is ready to go for the next day.\n\nthey buy enough gas its worth it to buy direct. no reason to cut a 3rd party in on their gas payments.",
"They have their own \"gas stations\" that are privately owned to cut costs. They buy the gas in bulk because it is cheaper.\n\nSame applies to cops, school buses, and other fleet vehicles."
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1zdnfw | Why camels don't often develop kidney stones? | Camels can go a long way without urinating, and when they do it's often a thick, syrup-like urine.
What kind of protection they have against the formation of kidney stones, since they are storing under-diluted minerals for a long time in their kidneys and bladder? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1zdnfw/why_camels_dont_often_develop_kidney_stones/ | {
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"Unsurprisingly, camel urine is less closely studied than human urine. Surprisingly, to me, camel urine is mostly studied for its properties as a potential medicine. \n\nCamel kidneys are much better than human kidneys at concentrating urine, so if camel urine and bladder composition were identical to that of humans, they would have a serious stoney problem. \n\n[Human urine](_URL_0_), [Camel urine](_URL_1_)\n\nSo to answer your question, I don't know, but I sure did enjoy staying up late last night reading about camel urine. "
]
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"http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19710023044_1971023044.pdf",
"http://www.soas.ac.uk/camelconference2011/file84329.pdf"
]
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6njkhs | why some perfumes last for long time while the other dissappear after short time ? | I mean the the smell of that perfume and its strength also ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6njkhs/eli5_why_some_perfumes_last_for_long_time_while/ | {
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"Perfume is a complex substance made up of essential oils, extracts, alcohol, water, wax, and other complex molecules and they all evaporate at different rates. \n\nIn general the more volatile a molecule and the lower it's vapor pressure, the quicker it will evaporate, creating a strong scent, but not lasting as long. The lighter the molecule the faster it will evaporate and bring scent with it. The heavier and more resinous or oily the molecule, the longer it will last but the slower it will give up it's scent.\n\nThe scents usually come in one of 3 forms, water based, oil based, or alcohol based. Some extracts result in essential oil like rose oil. Others are extracted by soaking in fat to extract the scent, then using alcohol or ether to separate the fats from the scent, and these are usually the alcohol based ones. Still others like rose water are pretty much adding the natural substance to water and letting it steep, then filtering the resulting elixir. \n\nMost perfumes are made up of different chords of scents which are mixtures of individual scents or notes. The most volatile are the head notes, which are what you initially smell the most when you apply a perfume. These last a few minutes up to an hour usually.\n\nNext are the heart notes which are slightly heavier and less volatile and these are what you tend to smell a few minutes to a few hours after applying it. \n\nAn the very last are the bass notes which are the heaviest, most resinous scents which are less volatile, give up their scent very slowly, but may last for hours or days. \n\n\nThese differences in evaporation and volatility are the reason why many perfumes change scent over time or \"develop\". The amount of perfume oil or concentrated scent in proportion to water and alcohol also affect the strength of the scent and it's longevity. Eau de parfume (perfume water) tends to have a higher concentration of fragrance to alcohol and water than eau de toilet (bath water) for instance. So the parfume versions are more expensive as there is more scent in them, but they also last longer than the more watered down eau de toilet which in turn is stronger than the super weak aftershave/body lotion versions. Some perfumes are also available as oil, which is pure scent with maybe a little oil to water it down. These tend to be very strong and are applied sparingly. The word perfume itself comes from par fumer which means \"through smoke\" as in walking through incense smoke, which was one of the earlier ways people experienced scent. Smelling as if you walked through incense or perfume is a way of saying the scent lingers on you. \n\nFor instance if you mixed lemon grass, cedar oil, and patchouli together, the initial scent would be very citrusy, followed by a more woodsy smell for a few hours, and finally ending in a more dry and dark earthy smell. \n\nA persons body heat, body chemistry, the local temperature and humidity all will impact the longevity and sillage (how strong the scent is). Some scents are better suited to cold climates and winter time and others are more of a summer scent for use when it's warmer. For instance a scent which smells great in the winter, may be over powering if worn in the summer because it flashes into scent at a high rate making your eyes water. (Angel for men I'm looking at you!)\n\nSource - Im a grown man that loves perfume and cologne, has read many books on them, makes their own scents for fun, and is afraid to reveal how many bottles he owns. "
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2g8gky | what does the fluffy thing on my microphone do? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2g8gky/eli5what_does_the_fluffy_thing_on_my_microphone_do/ | {
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"Microphones measure pressure waves by responding to moving air. Wind also moves air. The fluffy things reduce the amount of wind noise the microphone picks up. "
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4val3v | Is there any other experiment that suggest wave-particle duality besides the double-slit experiment? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4val3v/is_there_any_other_experiment_that_suggest/ | {
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"There's [Davisson-Germer](_URL_0_). Basically all experiments today in nuclear/particle physics are examples of quantum-mechanical scattering, so both the wave-like and particle-like properties play a role.",
"I'd think it would make more sense to ask 'are there any experiments in the quantum realm that *don't* exhibit wave-particle duality?' Go small enough and you can't escape it.",
"The explanation of the photoelectric effect treats photons as particles. The explanation of diffraction patterns treats them as waves. The conflict between these two was one of the biggest conundrums of early twentieth century physics."
]
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cf0gti | why does decibel level multiply way past the point of the source when there are multiple sources even though they all have the same decibel. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cf0gti/eli5_why_does_decibel_level_multiply_way_past_the/ | {
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"Throw a pebble in a pond, and it will make waves. \n\nThrow two pebbles in that pond and when their waves meet, they'll make extra big waves and extra big troughs. \n\nThe bigger waves in this case and troughs are bigger pressure differences we hear as sound. \n\nSame idea. \n\nYou can actually align the speakers to cancel each other out which is how noise cancelling works (trough meets wave and they sum to zero)",
"Sound acts as a wave of energy. This is a logarithmic function which implies that as you add sources of sound (at the same volume) they add onto one another but as you increase the number of things, the addition of sound lessens off with each additional item. \n\nExample: person claps their hands. This is as loud as a single clap, repeating. Another person joins in. This is not twice as loud but it is louder than one! Now an audience of 2999 claps in unison for a concert. The concert has one more person join to make the claps of 3000 people, but no one noticed, even though there was an increase in volume."
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4gceqa | why are there no universally agreed on classic albums anymore? | When people look back upon the music of the 60's everyone can seem to agree on a few "classic" albums. "Sgt. Pepper", "Pet Sounds" and "Blonde on Blonde" just to name a few. In the last 20 years or so it seems that no album can reach a consensus like the ones I mentioned. The only recent albums I can think of that might be universally well received are "Kid A" by Radiohead and "To Pimp a Butterfly" by Kendrick Lamar.
Has nostalgia inflated the quality of "classic" albums or are music listeners more picky these days? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4gceqa/eli5_why_are_there_no_universally_agreed_on/ | {
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"I don't think it's a matter of nostalgia. Rather, it's a consequence of how music distribution has changed the fandom.\n\nFrom the 1920s to the 1970s or so, a great deal of people's exposure to music was through radio. And the radio stations aired certain songs, so those songs were heard by millions of people, and the best of them became insanely popular.\n\nBut in the 1980s, cassette tapes became widespread, allowing people to seek out music more closely associated with their personal tastes. And in the 1990s and onwards, the rise of the Internet and portable music players made this *ridiculously* easy. We're no longer all exposed to the same songs, because the distribution channels we get our music through now allow us to select precisely the kind of music we want, and ignore the rest. Jazz fans listen to jazz, metalheads listen to metal, people who like country or techno or rap find themselves country or techno or rap and listen to that, after their own tastes. As a result, the fandom is now *vastly* more heterogenous, with the best songs in each genre getting exposure among fans of that genre but not so much among the general population.",
"The newer music is the less time it has had to fully mature. Plus what I think is more important to consider is that tastes and accessibility have broaden considerably. So many sub-genres have emerged. There still certainly are classics in every era but instead, lets just say 100 people like 10 albums back then, now we have 100 liking 50. There are still Circles who praise an album, they just merely shrunk and spread out.\n\nSome \"Classics\" that appeal to my personal taste staring from the 90's:\n\nRust in Piece\n\nAeroplane Over the Sea\n\nNevermind\n\nIn Utero\n\nLowend Theory\n\nElephant\n\nAutomatic for the People\n\nPinkerton\n\nGrace\n\nDookie\n\nIs This It\n\nLift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven!\n\nLoveless\n\nWhatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not\n\nRage Against The Machine\n\n"
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[],
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18k271 | If I became a hermit in the woods, would I ever again get a cold or the flu? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/18k271/if_i_became_a_hermit_in_the_woods_would_i_ever/ | {
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"Yes. The flu and cold are only transmitted through close contact with other humans. However, this does not mean *all* diseases aren't going to reach you. Many illnesses can spread through birds, air, insects, etc... "
]
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91xq7s | what does the saying have your cake and it too mean? hell yeah i’d want to eat my cake. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/91xq7s/eli5_what_does_the_saying_have_your_cake_and_it/ | {
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"If you eat it you don’t “have” it anymore. Things meant to be used, should be used and enjoyed without remorse. ",
"I've heard that in Italian the phrase is \"he wants his wine unopened and his wife drunk.\"\n\nIt means you're gonna have to let go of one side of whatever you're talking about. You can't have both.",
"You can't have your cake and eat it too.\n\nIt means that life is not fair. You can't always get everything you want. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices to get what you want.\n\nYou want to get into a good college and you want to party every weekend. \nIf you party every weekend, you don't study. You don't study, you get bad grades. You get bad grades, you don't get into a good college. Now you have great social skills but no education so no great future.\n\nIf you dont go to parties, you study a lot. You study a lot, you get good grades. You get good grades, you go to a good college. But since you never partied, you never developed social skills. Now you have a great job but no family, or friends. So no great future.\n\nBasically it means that life just sucks all the way around."
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rq1m8 | Can you tell me how France became a Nation-State? | I'm doing a presentation on the birth of modern Nation-States (more specifically France), and I would like to hear what facts you have about that.
So far I've been using Braudel's and Perry Anderson's take on it. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rq1m8/can_you_tell_me_how_france_became_a_nationstate/ | {
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"When the feudal levy system fell out of favor and the army became a professional force relying on taxation for pay. All of the people under the military commanders' purview became subject to such taxation and were thus a nation."
]
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[]
] | |
1e4muf | Why is it dangerous for someone who has been exposed to a "starvation diet" to immediately return to a normal diet ? | If I remember correctly, the prisoners from the concentration camps in WWII sometimes ate themselves to death after they got out of the camps because the jump between the meals they got in the camps and the meals that were available outside of the camps was too big. What causes this? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1e4muf/why_is_it_dangerous_for_someone_who_has_been/ | {
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"There is concern for [refeeding syndrome](_URL_0_), in which a number of fluid and electrolyte abnormalities (particularly hypophosphatemia and fluid retention), which can result in cardiovascular, pulmonary, GI, muscular, and neurologic sequelae that may be fatal. A shared theme in these processes is that there is a decrease in available phosphorylated metabolites that causes organ dysfunction.",
"Very simply: your body keeps the levels of phosphates constant in your blood by draining phosphate from inside your cells during starvation. When you eat again, the cells all demand high phosphates so that they can start producing ATP again by breaking down the sugars. ATP (adenosine tri phosphate) is the energy currency of your cells. This causes the cells to drain the blood of phosphates which basically messes up the delicate balance that you must keep in your blood."
]
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refeeding_syndrome"
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5yfhqc | why do football team supporters fight each other? (uk) | I don't know if this is common in other countries, but in the UK the supporters of football teams fight each other. Usually it's planned, like they go to a certain location and get into a massive fight... But why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5yfhqc/eli5_why_do_football_team_supporters_fight_each/ | {
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"It is also a problem in other countries. I think that these people take things to serious.\nI mean, at the end of the day its just a sport and you won't have any disadvantages if your team loses. Just calm down and enjoy the sport.",
"I did this once, and to try and explain it - there is no where else in society where violence and aggression is tolerated. You cant just yell and scream at work, and if you do a meeting will probably be scheduled with the HR lady. \n\nGoing to football, you can pay 50 pounds for the right to hate those fuckers rights there. God every thing about them is horrible, and a nice song has been made about it wankers. \n\nIts an extension of these, a place where both hate and violence is tolerated in a fixed setting, and everyone there is \"not civilians\" \n\nThere are rules, no weapons or stomping on peoples heads. And lastly, when you do get hit in the head really hard - you suddenly know exactly what you want. - its a strange feeling of clarity. \n\nAfterwards you go have a beer with your WAR BUDDIES, and you tell stories of valor and glory - or it looked funny when mike got hit in the face. \n\nIts primitive as fuck, and the only reason where this sort of caveman behaviour has a place. ",
"These days genuine football violence is much more common in e.g. Brazil or Eastern Europe than in the UK - see [here] (_URL_0_) for a global overview from 2013. In some parts of the UK, the team rivalry is inextricably linked to cultural and ethnic divisions, most famously in Glasgow where Celtic = Irish/Catholic and Rangers = Scottish/Protestant. In other parts of the UK the rivalries have subsided over time e.g. Edinburgh (Hearts vs Hibs) or Liverpool (Liverpool vs Everton, where the rivalrly was [debateable] (_URL_1_) ). "
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"https://www.theguardian.com/football/2013/dec/19/football-violence-view-around-world",
"http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/soccer/english-soccer/question-of-religion-as-basis-for-support-still-contentious-1.1655070"
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1egdje | When did the modern notion of "the American dream" become popular and how has it shaped the way Americans conceptualize domestic politics? | Before asking this question I skimmed through the Wikipedia page on the subject and am looking for something a little more in depth. As with many ideals or values, the idea of the American Dream has changed over time. I'm more curious about the modern American Dream that focuses on the notion that if an individual works hard enough, there is no limit to the goals he/she can achieve. Ultimately, I'd like to know what created the modern idea of the American Dream and how it has influenced American society or politics. For instance, did the idea of the American Dream play any role in the rise of conservatism throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s? This is just one example, so if you have thoughts from other eras, I would be more than happy to hear them. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1egdje/when_did_the_modern_notion_of_the_american_dream/ | {
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"There is a related documentary from PBS: _URL_0_\n\nThere are many interesting books and publications by Hayek and his critics. They make good google searches.\n\nIn my own words, Europe and Asia had millennia old cast systems with serfs or the equivalent. To be a serf was similar in most respects to being a slave. \n\nThe American dream is a repudiation of hereditary casts system. It is theoretically possible for anyone to succeed. This contrasts with the notion that you are born into serfdom and you will die a serf regardless of any qualities of character or industriousness you possess.\n\nThe American dream has never been about certainties. It has been about possibilities and opportunities.\n\n",
"The American Dream (the concept, not necessarily the name) has been around before there was an America. The first settlers were Puritans who left England in search of religious freedom after Charles I ascended to the throne. Their values shaped the Protestant work ethic which emphasizes hard work, frugality, and prosperity as a display of a person’s salvation in the Christian faith. Puritans were very future-oriented, believing in predestination and working hard to earn their place in Heaven, with the idea that as long as they do God’s work, they will have earned it.\n\nEven though the US is no longer regarded as a Christian nation, [the Protestant work ethic is still highly influential in American culture](_URL_1_). The puritan ideal influenced foreigners who immigrated to the US when it was more prosperous, and when its economy was booming, and when it looked most affirming to the American Dream. Today, Americans are routinely the hardest working and most stressed people. Most worry about not having enough time to do the things they love, get enough sleep, or spend time with their family. But when asked what they would do with an extra day of the week, [80% of Americans](_URL_0_) said they would work harder, get more done, and realize their ambitions. \n",
"The American Dream is a very old idea, and has been around in this country for quite some time. It's why quite a bit of immigration happened. The entire idea of the Oregon Trail and the later Gold Rushes were people looking for that better future.\n\nIt really only became a really plausible accomplishment for the majority post-WWII. The GI Bill put millions into the classrooms and gave them the first college degree in their families. The Levittown, the first mass produced suburb, created affordable, suburban homes that really was the cornerstone of the American Dream - a home of your own.\n\nWhile this was great for millions, it was also still primarily a white accomplishment. This in turn lead to the Civil Rights movement, and the complacent success of this first big middle class may have triggered the counter-culture movements of the 60's and 70's.\n\nRealistically, the American Dream has always been this fantastic idea of a better life for you and your family that never really happened. It's always been an idea that you can rise to a higher class if you just work hard enough. Today it's nearly dead, as social mobility is lower than it ever has been in American history.",
"I was interested enough in this question a couple of months ago to see that there were two books that set out to answer this question (*The American Dream: A Cultural History* and *The American Dream: A Shory History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation*) but not interested enough to have actually checked out either. Has anyone read one or both of them? [Here's a really interesting review of the first book by the author of the second book](_URL_0_) that I recommend to anyone interested in the topic. \n\nEdit: here's one of the relevant sections of the review:\n\n > The second, and more interesting, theme is that the discourse of the Dream is relatively static, returning repeatedly to the same questions. Among the more pressing ones: Is it still alive? With the coming of every economic downturn, commentators repeatedly assert that the Dream frontier is closing (again). There was a lot of this talk in the 1970s. And in the early 1980s. And again in the early 1990s. And of course since the Great Recession of 2008. But there was also anxiety about it in the 1950s and 1960s. Samuel quotes a 1949 study showing that while 35 percent of teenagers expected to hold jobs in the professional class, the labor force only supported 10 percent of such workers (p. 67). Even at a time many in the West regard as a halcyon age of economic opportunity, there were concerns that aspirations outstripped reality.\n\n > Another question Samuel shows coming up repeatedly is just what the American Dream actually means: Is it about upward mobility, typically understood in terms of income? Is it about personal security, often expressed in terms of home ownership? The ability to follow one’s bliss, even if it isn’t remunerative? Not surprisingly, there’s no real consensus among the people Samuel quotes. Perhaps a little more surprisingly, he makes no real attempt to articulate his own definition of the term beyond making the apposite observation that basing a dream on pecuniary gain dooms one to frustration, since perceptions of wealth are always relative (p. 198).\n\nAs for the \"when\" the American dream about, Cullen reviewing Samuels says:\n\n > Samuel has very sensibly decided to focus his work on the segment of the American Dream saga that begins in 1931. Why 1931? Because that’s the year popular historian James Truslow Adams published *The Epic of America*. Whether or not he actually coined the term, it was Adams -- revealingly, he was rebuffed when he wanted to title his overview history of the nation *The American Dream* – who gave it currency, defining it as \"that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone.\" (3) Though it was not common before then, most analysts of the American Dream believe some such notion of the concept long precedes the 1930s; it looms large over John Winthrop’s famous sermon \"A model of Christian charity\" (1630) no less than F. Scott Fitzgerald’s *The Great Gatsby* (1925). But it was *The Epic of America*, released at the very nadir of the Great Depression, which crystallized the term in common parlance. Samuel’s first chapter makes clear that the book was greeted with widespread attention from the moment it was published, and that Adams remained its chief interpreter, for decades to come.",
"I felt like there was more we could go with this topic and I thought I would weigh in the bit that I at least know. I hope my answer will help answer your question to some capacity. \n\nThe American Dream is to a large extent the culmination of both Republican and Liberal ideology (Keep in mind I’m using the academic usage of these terms and not common American definitions). According to Philip Pettit’s *Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government*, Republicanism is a very old political concept that is largely dependent on the idea of ‘liberty’ as freedom from the arbitrary will of others, as opposed to Liberalism (which became popular more in the 19th c.) which defines it as freedom as non-interference. Republican ideology had a huge influence on the Founding Fathers and was often intertwined with their revolutionary struggle. As quoted from Eric Foner’s book *The Story of American Freedom*:\n > In rejecting the crown, as well as the principle of hereditary aristocracy, many Americans also rejected the very idea of human inequality and the society of privilege, patronage, and the fixed status that these venerable traditions embodied […] Inequality had been fundamental to the colonial social order; the Revolution in many ways made it illegitimate. Henceforth, American freedom would be inextricably linked with the idea of equality (at least from those within the circle of free citizens): equality before the law, equality in political rights, equality of economic opportunity, and, for some, equality of conditions. “Whenever I use the words freedom or rights,” Paine explained, “I desire to be understood to mean a perfect equality of them…The floor of Freedom is as level as water.”\n\nEconomic freedom was seen as particularly important to who would become the Anti-Federalists like Jefferson and Madison. In those days, economic freedom (and political freedom to a large extent) was highly intertwined with land:\n\n\n > Economic development, [Madison] warned the Constitutional Convention, would inevitably produce a society with a non-propertied majority and class conflict between rich and poor. How could government resting on the popular will survive when a democratic majority, resting its propertyless status, might seek to despoil the rich? For Madison, the answer was to structure government so as to prevent any single economic interest from achieving power […] But Madison and Jefferson also believed that the new nation’s unique circumstances could long delay the rise of economic inequalities on the scale of Great Britain and Europe. Westward expansion, an option obviously not available to the Old World, would underpin the “regime of liberty” in the new\n\n\nSo from the very beginning, the idea that people could be financially independent (if willing to go into the frontier and get that land for themselves) and were not subject to Old World class constraint is something that is firmly in the minds of the Founding Fathers and huge presence in American society as a whole. As the world gradually moved into the Industrial Revolution and Gilded Age, Liberalism started to become popular and morphed that dream. Liberalism, as previously stated, is VERY simply stated as the idea of freedom as non-interference, and the idea that, so long as an individual was not hurting others and was making choices by their own volition, then they should be allowed to practice as they wish. This ideology was picked up by many of the industrial capitalists and was gradually wormed into a new definition of the American Dream. This is where you start getting the narrative of the man who picked themselves up “by their own bootstraps,” worked hard, and eventually became an industrial titan ye olde Andrew Carnegie/JD Rockefeller – style. Furthermore, the clear exploitation of everyone else was justified through ideology like Social Darwinsim, and was legally protected by the very conservative courts at the time through ideas like “Freedom of Contract” which essentially said ‘tough luck young Irish immigrant, you knew what you were getting into when you signed up for the job, so it’s your own fault what happens to you.”\n\nAs the progressive era of the 1920s started, the idea started to take hold - at least in a minimal capacity - that without equal opportunities, such as the right to vote, or without an ability to assert oneself, like the right to unionize, then people cannot progress in society, and are once again subjects to arbitrary rule by the few. When the Great Depression hit and FDR came to office, this idea started to translate into actual policy. To quote Foner again:\n\n\n > The Depression discredited the idea that social progress rested on the unrestrained pursuit of wealth and transformed expectations of government, reinvigorating the Progressive conviction that the national state must protect Americans from the vicissitudes of the marketplace.\n\n\nAs a result of The Great Depression, The New Deal and World War II, The American Dream crystalized again into the idea that people can lift themselves up, only this time government can facilitate it through social safety nets and progressive policy, rather than just impede it (in fact, this is why Democrats call themselves “liberals,” because FDR considered himself as making true liberalism possible through these social programs). \n\nAs the 60s rolled on, the growing civil rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, etc. movements eventually worked to once again change The American Dream by making it (theoretically), attainable to ALL, not just native, white, protestant males. The gradual repeal of unfair pre-war restriction on immigration, particularly to Asian immigrants, also helped add the idea of the “immigrant story” to the growing tapestry of the American Dream (although, to be fair, Andrew Carnegie was Scottish). \n\nIn short, a concept of the American Dream has always existed in some capacity, and has always, at its core, been about potential for opportunity rather than actual material worth. Over the years however, it’s morphed to accommodate the societies of their days, and still continues to do so today. So in regards to your question about the conservative movement, Foner suggests that it was largely due to the growing influence of libertarianism and the religious right in response to what they saw as “the loss of morals and respect for authority” of the 60s. At least for libertarians, The recapturing of The American Dream from “big government” that was stifling true innovation was part of the ideology they used to eventually gain momentum during the 70s and 80s. People like Friedman and Hayek used concepts like freedom and The American Dream to further the idea that we should start “give people what they want” rather than what government thought they should have.\n\nI hope that helped! This was my first post on this sub that wasn’t a question link, so hopefully I did a good job. I'm also kind of exhausted after writing that post so if I see ways that it could be improved, I'll gladly go back and edit some more. \n\nEdit: Note to self, learn to proofread. \n"
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12k3zl | Can light encounter any form of friction? | I'm pretty sure that light has no mass and you need mass to have friction but does light have some other resistant force maybe dark energy? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/12k3zl/can_light_encounter_any_form_of_friction/ | {
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"No, light does not experience friction. Friction is a result of the electromagnetic interaction and/or the exchange interaction, and light does not experience either of those.\n\nIt's worth noting that friction is something that only occurs for large objects composed of many particles. Photons don't bind together to form large objects, so it doesn't even really make sense to talk about friction for photons.\n\nWhile light doesn't experience friction, it can be slowed down, at least on average. This is what happens in a transparent material.",
"If by \"resisted\" you mean \"loses energy as it travels\", then yes, light is resisted. This is called attenuation. It does not require anything exotic like dark energy, any transparent piece of matter will do. \n\nAll transparent materials attenuate light that travels through them. As the light travels further and further into the material more and more of its photons are absorbed by the material, causing the light to become dimmer and the material to become slightly warmer. So-called \"transparent\" materials are usually characterized by an attenuation length, the distance light must travel through the material before it loses a set fraction (usually 1/e) of its energy. This is why the deep ocean is pitch dark, because all the sunlight entering the surface of the ocean has been attenuated by that point."
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sun1m | Curious Thought, While Studying for AP Physics B (Frequencies and Waves) | I know this may sound like a dumb question, or maybe not, but I really want to try to understand the concept of waves, especially when discussing photons and De Broglie wavelengths.
From my awesome physics teacher, the best teacher at my school IMO, really helped me a lot with understanding concepts in physics (I'm the type who does not want to just learn equations but actually comprehend them). But wavelengths are one of the few that I can't "comprehend".
What I visualized wavelengths to be are like strings on a instruments. Vibrating in may frequencies with overtones, etc (which in itself confuses me). So, if a photon/light is a wave, how can it be a single long strand? I mean, even if it was a strand, wouldn't that strand be like a particle? or is it like a long particle? I know light has both particle and wave properties and "light" are many particles, but its also strand?
I hope my question makes sense to someone. I know I am not really wording it correctly, but I do not know how to ask the question.
Thanks. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/sun1m/curious_thought_while_studying_for_ap_physics_b/ | {
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"If you are talking about the wavelength of light, you are certainly thinking about it in the *wave* sense. We can return to the wave-particle duality in a moment after we define the wavelength of light.\n\nA wave of light is in fact a propagating *electromagnetic field* - it is this field which is \"waving\". The electric field oscillates in one plane while the magnetic field oscillates in a transverse plane. The wave itseld propagates in the direction transverse to both fields. [You can see a nice picture on the wiki page](_URL_1_). The wavelength is then defined as for all other waves - the distance from one (electric or magnetic) peak to the next.\n\nAs for particle-wave duality, photons can be thought of as discrete \"wave packets\" of light. Imagine a wave \"wrapped up\" in another wave - [again, great animations on wikipedia](_URL_0_). The wave packet is (as a whole) localized in space, while the wave \"within\" the packet has a defnite wavelength. Thus a photon can have a definite, pointlike location while also having a wavelength.\n\nThere are some caveats - in particular, if your packet is *extremely* localized, the contained wave has a very poorly defined wavelength. On the other hand, if we \"stretch out\" the packet to resolve the contained wavelength, the position of the packet becomes poorly defined! This is the crux of the famous uncertwinty principle. Alas, another topic for another thread."
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6ow229 | why are "special forces" and "special operation forces" considered different unit types? | I was reading about NATO field symbols, and according to wikipedia, "Special Forces" and "Special Operation Forces" have distinct symbols, but their respective links lead to the same page (Special Forces).
[The Wikipedia Page](_URL_0_)
[A picture of the table itself](_URL_1_)
Is this just a localized language thing? If so, why would it be represented in a universal military code? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ow229/eli5_why_are_special_forces_and_special_operation/ | {
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"Special forces are people with an elevated level of training and skill. They can be embedded within normal troop squads (for example, a sniper in overwatch of a squad or patrol area).\n\nSpecial Operation Forces are a team of Special Forces who are used with a specific mission (for example, go take this water pumping station behind enemy lines).\n\nedit for clarity: The question was not about US Special operation force types. The question is about NATO map marking symbols."
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"http://i.imgur.com/pbLxHDm.png"
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bjk4st | What would a mansion built in northern New York at 1850 by a member of the aristocracy most likely have looked like? | [deleted] | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bjk4st/what_would_a_mansion_built_in_northern_new_york/ | {
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"I'm not 100% sure what a \"member of the aristocracy\" means in the context of 1850s New York - a New York patroon? An exiled European aristocrat? Just a really rich person in New York?\n\nBut...if you are interested in what a well-to-do, prominent New Yorker might build for him or herself circa 1850, maybe take a look at the Martin Van Buren house, which is a [National Historic Site](_URL_0_) managed by the US National Parks Service in Kinderhook, New York. The building was built in 1841 (Van Buren moved to the estate after he left the Presidency) and is in an Italianate style, which was very popular in the period."
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3u13ke | when you open your mouth really wide to yawn and it feels like your eardrum pops, what is actually happening? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3u13ke/eli5_when_you_open_your_mouth_really_wide_to_yawn/ | {
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"Your sinuses and ears are connected via a thin tube called the eustachion tube. Sometimes the tube gets kinked like a hose and the free flow of air is blocked. A change in pressure outside your head, like flying in a plane, can make the air stuck in your head seem pressured. Yawning aligns the tube, allowing the extra pressure air in your head to flow out via your ears.",
"Did anyone else yawn when reading the title? you probably yawned now",
"Some of us can \"pop\" our ears on purpose and on demand. It's a tremendously useful ability, especially if you fly a lot.",
"If you have jaw / ear pain, TMJ, see an Osteopath ( like a chiropractor), a chiropractor that performs Graston tissue remodelling or a chiropractor that performs NUCCA, an adjustmennt to the neck. Treatments and 1x adjustments will get you out of pain permanently.\n\n\nAlso, Dentists can perform prolotherapy for TMJ though I haven't had that done."
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61mf1y | how do the eggs we get from the grocery store not have baby chicks in them? or if the baby chick is the yolk, how does that transformation happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61mf1y/eli5_how_do_the_eggs_we_get_from_the_grocery/ | {
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" > if the baby chick is the yolk\n\nIt's not. The yolk is *nutrients* for the baby chick as it develops inside the egg. Mammals get the nutrients they need from their mother's blood via the placenta, but for birds, they need a way to get those nutrients while inside an egg, and that comes from both the egg yolk and egg white.\n\nThe actual baby chick starts as a tiny clump of cells attached to the yolk.\n\nThe eggs we buy at the store were never fertilized by a rooster, so there's no embryo inside it. Just the yolk and white that would have been used as nutrients for the embryo if it had existed.",
"The eggs we get are unfertilized. The white would be the chicken. The yolk is the nutrient the baby chick would eat. Chickens lay eggs whether they are fertilized or not. They ovulate just like we do but more frequently. ",
"Chickens lay eggs regardless of being exposed to a rooster... so if there isn't a rooster with the chickens (which is the case in supermarket eggs).... then the egg is never fertilized therefore it will never result in a chick. So no worries!",
"If the eggs *are* fertilised then the embryo will be killed by the low temperatures and not develop into a chick. You won't see or taste any difference. The embryo only develops if the egg is kept warm (in nature by the hen sitting on it).",
"In many females species eggs are formed and need to be flushed for fresh eggs. In humans, this happens when a women has her period. In birds, it happens when they lay an egg. The yolk is not a baby bird, the yolk is the \"food\" that the baby bird would utilize if the egg had been fertilized by a male.\n\nThe eggs you get at the grocery store are generally from female chickens, no males to mate with, and they are all unfertilized. "
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dbrw0s | Was Septimius Severus Rome's Black Emperor? | I've heard a lot about Rome's "black emperor" Septimius Severus, though all I've been able to verify on my own is that he was from where we would now call Libya. Of course, photography didn't exist back then, so all we have are paintings, yet I've seen this man depicted with a dark skin tone in old depictions as well as lighter tones. Could somebody explain this to me? Thanks! | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dbrw0s/was_septimius_severus_romes_black_emperor/ | {
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"Not to discourage new answers, but I've partially addressed the perceptions of skin colour in the ancient world with reference to Septimius Severus before [here](_URL_1_). Likewise, /u/cleopatra_philopater has written a [much more extensive and nuanced discussion](_URL_0_) of perceptions of skin colour in the ancient world, focusing especially on Hellenistic/Roman Egypt"
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3ga346 | why do updates for computers come straight from microsoft or apple, yet i have to wait months for cell phone updates to come from google/apple and go through my service provider? | I just had to wait 3 fucking weeks for an important security update for Android make it through AT & T, why is this allowed? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ga346/eli5why_do_updates_for_computers_come_straight/ | {
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"Google is now trying to change that and force updates regardless of the carrier.\n\nThe problem is that many carriers include custom programming on their handsets, which may include custom apps, configurations, themes / user interface elements, etc.\n\nSome of these custom (carrier-specific) features may break upon updating the phone's Operating System so the phone/OS manufacturers often give carriers time (or the right to decide when) to push the update to their customers' handsets to make sure it doesn't break functionality or cause bugs etc. that may hurt the customer experience.",
"Updates from Apple never go through your service provider. Apple controls the software and hardware of the iphones. Service providers are not allowed to make any changes to ios so you get your updates directly and immediately when they are out.\n\nGoogle, on the other hand, allows service providers to add their own programs and applications to android. You need to wait for updates because your service provider also first needs to update any additional programming they have added before they can role out the complete update.",
"Specifically for Android.\n\nAndroid is open source. Which means that in simplified terms, Google will produce a \"base\" version of Android that cell phone makers then can modify and put on their phones. So this provides a first layer of variance. Then carriers will often modify the OS further before actually selling you the phone which creates a second layer of variance.\n\nAt this point if you were to create a blanket update to be applied to version X of android it likely would not be fully compatible with version X of cell phone model Y of carrier Z.\n\nSo essentially when Google identifies a weakness on Android OS, they can't simply create an update and force it onto your phone. They first have to present a version of the update to the cell phone makers and get approval for that update to be applied to a certain model of phones. Then they have to contact your carrier and get an even more specific version of the update specifically for that model and that carrier.\n\nThis layer of variance and of required bureacratic approval is why once a vulnerability has been identified it can take weeks for the update to actually be on your phone."
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guk7v | How do 'epigenetics' change our view of Darwinian evolution? | Edit: I have heard a lot lately about how it brings into question whether Lamarck was correct in saying that some acquired characteristics are inherited. Is this perspective presenting a good argument against Darwinian evolution? Are they really even that different schools of thought? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/guk7v/how_do_epigenetics_change_our_view_of_darwinian/ | {
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"I don't think it does. \r\n\r\nThe theory of natural selection doesn't specify the exact mechanism of heredity, it only \"requires\" some features already present in the genetic heredity: morphological features to be coded by discrete units, and \"mixing\" the features inherited from the parents to be also discrete (otherwise with no such aliasing, members of a \"species\" will equalize their features, ruining their chance for variety).\r\n\r\nSo, as long as you have mechanisms for ...\r\n\r\n- inheriting features (epigenetic < genetic), \r\n- adding variability (mutations < sex)\r\n- weeding the inefficient choices (environmental incidents < other species (predators, food, parasites) < competition within the same species)\r\n\r\n... you have darwinian evolution.\r\n\r\n(I'm just a science fanboy, might be missing something in the details, but the general answer still stands.)",
"Layman.\n\nEpigenetics is a mechanism involved in differentiation for short-term adaptation of species. It has been shown that there exists multi-generational epigenetic inheritance which can have an effect on overall evolution of a species. So epigenetic adaptations are passed along like any other adaptation. \n\nAn example is second-generation mice having impaired metabolic functioning due to their [father's diet](_URL_0_). It makes sense from an evolutionary point of view, environmental stress on the parents causes the offspring to hoard calories.\n\nIt is short term because the adaptations disappear over time if the original cause is removed."
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66tww3 | While talking with an old German WWII vet today, the man gave me a rather intersting tidbit of information that I'm hoping I can get some backstory on. | I was volunteering at a nursing home and saw a man sitting by himself playing a harmonica. I sat down and introduced myself, and after a little talking the man revealed he was in the middle of training to fight in the German Army in Romania when World War 2 came to an end.
He had many interesting tales (such as how he wtnessed a strafing run by an Allied fighter) but one thing I found very interesting. One man in the nursing home was singing an old tune on a piano, an African American man named Roger. The vet (who's name was Matt, short for Matthias) leaned over and said, "I remember the first time I saw a black man".
Now Matthias' accent is pretty thick, so I could only understand some of what he said, but he mentioned how they would follow the tanks and Matthias and his fellow soldiers were too afraid to shoot at them. He then mentioned their attire, looking for the word for what they would wear on their heads. Because he mentioned that they would follow the river, I figured that they might be of tribal origin, so I said "Leaves?" To which he replied "Ahhhh yes, leaves!"
Keeping in mind that I'm pretty sure Matthias stayed in Europe throughout the war, was Matthias in his old age (he is 94) recounting nonexistant memories? Or was this, perhaps, an actual occurence? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/66tww3/while_talking_with_an_old_german_wwii_vet_today/ | {
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"dgld8tt",
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"text": [
"I just want to clarify/simplify your question possibly.\n\nAre you asking if it is possible that Matthias really did see African-Americans in Europe at or near the end of WW2 who were wearing leaves on their heads?",
"OP, are you sure he didn't mean sticking leaves in a simple [helmet band](_URL_0_), [net](_URL_1_), [or cover](_URL_2_) for the purposes of camouflage?\n\nThe way you're phrasing the question is a little confusing to me, because it implies some sort of tribal head covering as opposed to a camouflage expedient"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://www.rangerjoes.com/Enhanced-Helmet-Band-2-Position-Coyote-Tan-P7482.aspx",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmet_cover",
"http://www.rangerjoes.com/MICH-Helmet-Cover-P7996.aspx"
]
] | |
1mxx8s | How has the public perception of mental illness changed over time? | I was involved in a discussion about psychiatry being a relatively young profession and became interested in how mental illnesses were handled throughout time. Were the mentally ill seen as just not trying hard enough? Was it seen as demons? Are there any notable historical figures who were probably suffering from some sort of mental illness?
I realize the question is a bit broad, so although I'm honestly curious about everything involved I suppose a slightly more specific question might help:
If I was the father of a very autistic child at various points throughout America's history (Let's say, Revolutionary era, Civil War era, beginning of the 20th century) how would I likely have handled such a child? What would I have thought their disease was? On a related note, what would be the worst mental illness in terms of treatment? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1mxx8s/how_has_the_public_perception_of_mental_illness/ | {
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"Public and private perceptions of mental illness during the medieval and early modern period differed greatly from current attitudes. During the early modern period (17th century, to be more precise), an increased medicalisation of the concept of \"mental illness\" began. For instance, suicide, which had been traditionally seen as a sign of diabolic intervention, was increasingly regarded as the result of \"melancholy\" - some kind of humoral disturbance in the body that made people \"mad\"(I use an umbrella term, there were different types of descriptions for the condition that led to suicide - depression). I'm not certain what the consensus on mental illness was during the Civil War era, but it might have been similar to attitudes encountered in Victorian England, for instance. Mental illness (or feebleness) was associated with the female figure, and became a relatively common trope in Victorian literature.\n\nYou might check out Michel Foucault's [*History of Madness*] (_URL_0_). I believe that this is the most comprehensive discussion of the evolution of the idea of madness and its public perception. \n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://books.google.ro/books/about/History_of_Madness.html?id=B5Pyfip2P1gC&redir_esc=y"
]
] | |
1y9x72 | why does a wireless internet connection provide worse results when videoconferencing (skype, etc.) as opposed to using a wired internet connection | Hi,
I was testing out how the video quality of videoconferencing is affected when you are connected to the video call via wired and wireless connections. Clearly, the wired connection is smoother and has less video stutter, but I don't really understand why. Everyone says a wired connection is more stable and faster, which I can see firsthand, but could someone explain WHY this is so? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1y9x72/eli5_why_does_a_wireless_internet_connection/ | {
"a_id": [
"cfim56k"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"Wireless Internet is transmitted via radio signal. Radio is easily disrupted, by microwaves, tvs, hell, even Christmas trees. It's a fickle thing. The second part to this is how this information is sent and received. It is transmitted via small \"packets\" of information. When the signal is disrupted, these packets can be lost, and you will end up lower via quality because it's missing some of the data. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
5nwd3j | scientifically speaking, why does a simple butter and flour roux make cheese melt better? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5nwd3j/eli5_scientifically_speaking_why_does_a_simple/ | {
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"A roux is made by taking oil (or butter) and flour, which is made up of several types of starch, and *slowly* evaporating all available water molecules in the flour by heating the oil-flour mixture. This causes the color to change from a white/creamy color, to a darker color. If the roux is heated too long, the starches will start to break down (burn).\n\nCheese is a mix of several types of molecules, like lactose sugars, proteins, and fats. Protein molecules like to stick together, and these proteins provides a framework for fats and sugars to spread out, since those two usually don't mix well together. The result of *slowly* adding cheese to a roux is the protein in the cheese can spread together with the starch in the roux, and allow the sugar and fat to \"ooze\" out and create a creamy sauce. \n\nThis article [here](_URL_0_) explains it well."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/food-dining/2016/01/25/better-macaroni-and-cheese-through-science/4ajKeGFOKChDzN1ZYXiWeK/story.html"
]
] | ||
5psjrs | when you press the unlock button on your keys, how does it only work on your car? | I'm guessing it unlocks it with a frequency value, but there must be something more? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5psjrs/eli5_when_you_press_the_unlock_button_on_your/ | {
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"text": [
" > I'm guessing it unlocks it with a frequency value, but there must be something more?\n\nIt's not just something more. It's everything more. There is no \"secret frequency\" that's used. Instead, the keyfob and car both have electronic circuits that create psuedo-random numbers. Both the circuits are initialized with the same value, so they both produce the same sequence of numbers. Every time you press the unlock button on your remote, it sends the next number. The car keeps a list of the next hundred or so numbers in the sequence, and if it sees one of those numbers, it unlocks, and resets the sequence to the next hundred numbers from there (so that you have some leeway to accidentally press the button a few times on your remote without getting locked out of the car)."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
2cyrhr | If I were on a spaceship travelling towards earth, would earth-time appear to speed up? | So assume that I have an amazing telescope that can see earth at street level from any distance.
And assume that the earth is at a fixed point in space, or that I am travelling faster than it is travelling away from me.
Also assume that I know how to fly a spaceship/operate a telescope.
Would earth-time, from my perspective, appear to be going faster? Would this be like a doppler effect, but with light? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2cyrhr/if_i_were_on_a_spaceship_travelling_towards_earth/ | {
"a_id": [
"cjke477"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"Yes, the Doppler effect would apply, and you would see clocks on Earth going faster. _URL_0_.\n\nOther posters might say that Earth clocks will be slowed, which is what \"happens\" in a very specific perspective (_URL_1_), but this is not what you would actually see."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_Doppler_effect",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation"
]
] | |
1n7q2m | Why is North Africa looked at as the "sanest" front of WWII? | As opposed to Europe and the Pacific, the North African front is always portrayed in pop culture as a chess match between Montgomery/Patton and Rommel. Is it purely the generals' influence that informs this view, or was it actually the "least insane" part of the war? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1n7q2m/why_is_north_africa_looked_at_as_the_sanest_front/ | {
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"Well, you have to compare it to the rest of the war: \n\nWestern Europe is under occupation, and there is little actual land fighting going on between 1941 and 1944 - the exception being the Dieppe debacle, and isolated resistance fighting until D-Day, and there was nothing typical about that. The main fight is the Battle of Britain and the retaliatory efforts, where each side just firebombs each others' cities. \n\nThe Eastern front was turning into an ethnic bloodbath unlike any other that had come before it - its a bitter, angry, racially charged cock fight at times between the Soviets and the Nazis who seem have no reservations about doing some awful, awful things. \n\nThen there's the Pacific theatre - Americans storming beaching trying to fight the Japanese who are more often than not coming out of trees and eventually flying kamikaze missions into ships. All this takes place on tiny little atolls in the South Pacific. \n\nNorth Africa, though it does have its idiosyncrasies, is much more traditional, in a sense - advantages were won by intelligence, well-trained men, and proper planning, rather than on the other fronts where different factors were going on that were more often than not unprecedented in modern warfare. ",
"Rommel described the war in North Africa as, \"Krieg ohne Hass,\" which means, \"War without hate.\"\n\nThere were possibly a number of reasons. \n\nOne being that Rommel was a not your typical \"Hollywood\" Nazi. Rommel disobeyed orders he felt were not honourable, such as executing prisoners. He had been ordered to execute captured commandos and prisoners from Jewish battalions. Rommel didn't carry through with those orders. \n\nAnother was the fluid nature of the battles in North Africa. They would seesaw back and force quite quickly. One minute you're taking some Germans prisoner and the next the battle changes and you're being taken prisoner. This also resulted in medics and doctors from both sides quite often working side by side. Cease fires would be called quite often so that the wounded could be collected off the battlefield and treated. \n\nThe SS and other special German units weren't deployed to North Africa. This meant Rommel never had to contend with cleansing operations. \n\nI'll end with 2 accounts I remember from the book 'Digger'. \n\nA German wrote a letter to his father telling of an encounter he had with some Australians at Tobruk. His patrol had been quickly hit by an Australian patrol who quickly bayoneted all the Germans and disappeared into the night. He was the only survivor and was wounded. Some time later an Australian came up to him and bandaged his wounds. The Australian told him that it had been his mate that had bayoneted him and he was worried that he'd only wounded him and left him to die. The Australian bandaging him had told the other Australian that he'd go looking for the German to treat him. After bandaging his wounds the Australian left as they heard German voices approaching. \n\nAnother account was after a battle, again at Tobruk. It'd been quite a large battle by the standards of Tobruk and afterwards the ground was littered with dead Germans and burnt out equipment. One Australian turned to the other and said, \"You know what? I don't even hate them.\" The other Australian replied, \"You don't have to hate them, just kill them.\""
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] | |
1wtmp8 | Were there any major attempts or developments by any other persons or governments when the Wright brothers were making their first flight? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1wtmp8/were_there_any_major_attempts_or_developments_by/ | {
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"A well-known attempt was by is Samuel P. Langley, who had had success with gliders and powered models. Was fond of 'tandem wing' designs (one wing behind another). His first serious manned attempt was in 1903, shortly before the Wright bros. He launched off of a houseboat/barge in the Patomac River. It dove straight into the river. \n\nReconstructed and currently in the Smithsonian:\n\n_URL_0_",
"Another well known attempt (at least in New Zealand) was by Richard Pearse in 1902/1903.\n\nHe had some success, but never achieved controlled flight for as long as the Wright brothers, nor did he organise media coverage to the same degree that the Wright brothers.\n\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://airandspace.si.edu/collections/artifact.cfm?id=A19180001000"
],
[
"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3307743.stm",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pearse"
]
] | ||
2zofwh | What makes a primary source? | I am currently confused about the definition of a primary and secondary source. Tacitus' Annals struck me as an example, I thought he was considered a primary source on the Roman empire. He describes Agrippina's 'supposed' murder of Claudius, however Tacitus was not present at the event. Is this actually a primary account? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2zofwh/what_makes_a_primary_source/ | {
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"text": [
"Tactitus would not be considered a primary source. He was writing 100 years after the first events he describes in *Annals*. While that makes him a significantly more valuable source than a historian writing 400 years later, it's still something classicists must keep in mind and factor into anything he reports.",
"[This might be of your interest](_URL_0_)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/theory#wiki_historiography_and_studying_primary_sources"
]
] | |
4al68e | why do colleges accept people in bulk rather than in smaller batches? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4al68e/eli5_why_do_colleges_accept_people_in_bulk_rather/ | {
"a_id": [
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"score": [
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"text": [
"most colleges do have rounds of acceptance... the notification is automated, easier to click the button for everyone in a group when your ready to. see how many accept first round and then send a 2nd round, and a third,"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
1r6vce | Magnetic Reversals | I was wondering when the next Polar-Magnetic reversal will occur for our planet. I have read they occur every 100K years or so? if I'm not mistaken. when is the best estimate for the next one and also what are your theories on why these occur. Thanks | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1r6vce/magnetic_reversals/ | {
"a_id": [
"cdkd57i"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"There are several problems with forecasting reversals. Firstly, they do not occur at regular intervals. \n\nI was going to post a big explanation with nice figures, but in searching for nice figures I found this, which does the job brilliantly. _URL_0_\n\nThe long and short is we can go for millions of years without reversals, and a reversal is not an instantaneous thing but can take decades to millenia to occur. \n\nThe causes are due to changes in convection direction in the outer core - convecting a fluid around a rotating sphere leads to instabilities. Then the bulk fluid direction changes, so does the field polarity.\n\nIt's worth noting that earth's field is currently not a true dipole either, there are significant positive and negative magnetic anomalies (particularly one over the South Atlantic), and if you look at the magnetic field at depth we are currently in a fairly multipolar condition, with several North and South magnetic poles. This may or may not be an indication that the poles are in the process of reversing. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://all-geo.org/highlyallochthonous/2009/02/is-the-earths-magnetic-field-about-to-flip/"
]
] | |
18nuuj | Why are planets all relatively small compared to stars? | I have never heard of a rock based planet that wasn't a tiny fraction of the size of the star it's orbiting. Are there planets comparable to the size of stars? To clarify, I mean planets like Earth or Mars, not like Jupiter or Saturn. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/18nuuj/why_are_planets_all_relatively_small_compared_to/ | {
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"text": [
"Jupiter and Saturn are also an insignificant fraction of the sun.\n\n > Jupiter's radius is about 1/10 the radius of the Sun,[24] and its mass is 0.001 times the mass of the Sun,\n\nIf Jupiter was ~13 times heavier it might be heavy enough to form the smallest brown dwarf, which is the smallest type of star. Didn't really answer your question, but somewhat related.",
"The simple answer is because if they were the same size, and had similar mass (and therefore, gravity) to a star, they'd become stars and cease being planets. Gas giants can grow much larger than rock planets because they have a low density as beyond their core, they usually have oceans of some chemical or another. Jupiter's ocean is hydrogen I believe."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] | |
32n9yb | What controls a transistor's input current? | I've learned a bit about transistors, and fully understand the whole process of the input current creating an "electron bridge" that allows electricity to flow from the source to sink through the doped metal.
However, I'm not seeing how the input current is controlled. A light switch can change from "on" to "off" but a person still needs to decide to flip it. What decides to send current to the transistor? The problem seems circular to me. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/32n9yb/what_controls_a_transistors_input_current/ | {
"a_id": [
"cqd0ebj"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"For most transistors, it's another transistor. \n\nThere is no universal answer to your question, as it's entirely dependent on the circuit in question. A transistor could be driven by an LDR (light dependent resistor), a potentiometer, a thermistor, a load cell, or any other component that can control current and/or voltage. To understand how a transistor is used, you don't only need to learn about transistors, but also about all the other common electronic components, and more importantly, how electronic circuits work in general.\n\nThe reason I'm saying most transistors are controlled by other transistors is that the majority of all transistors ever manufactured are actually inside integrated circuits like microcontrollers and processors, and in there the majority of the transistors are controlled by other transistors. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
1k220v | how a plasma cutter can achieve temperatures of over 45,000 degrees fahrenheit? | I was watching Man At Arms on YouTube and he briefly mentioned that his plasma cutter achieved temperatures of 45,000 degrees Fahrenheit. How is that possible? Wouldn't temperatures like that be too hot for a human to be around? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1k220v/eli5_how_a_plasma_cutter_can_achieve_temperatures/ | {
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"text": [
"A small plasma cutter requires ~2500 watts. A small space heater burns the same amount of electricity, so there isnt a lethal amount of energy. Also, with a plasma arc, the point that reaches extreme temps is very small, and the energy is quickly dissipated into the metal and the air. \n",
"You can imagine a match burning, it's flame is maybe a cubic inch. Well that is the stored energy in the match being turned into heat over the space of around a cubic inch and it burns for maybe 15 seconds and at maybe 1200F. Now if you were to take the amount of energy required to cause a flame for that time and temperature over that amount of space, and concentrate it to the size of a pencil tip and release it in 1/100th of a second instead of 15, well then the temperature goes way up because much fewer particles are being vibrated much much more rapidly. A plasma cutter gets so hot because it is a reasonable amount of energy being released really really rapidly in a very concentrated area. Hope that makes sense."
]
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[],
[]
] | |
b2a3v2 | what would the crew of a wwii tank be facing inside once they were hit? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b2a3v2/eli5_what_would_the_crew_of_a_wwii_tank_be_facing/ | {
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"If the armor is not pierced they would be jostled severely, but not much more than if they hit bad potholes. \n\nIf the armor is pierced then they would be facing the percussive energy of whatever pierced them. Shrapnel from that projectile as well as their own armor. There is a major risk of fire, which in turn means that all of the ammo they are carrying is at risk of exploding in addition to the threat of being in a confined space with smoke and fire. In general they will blow up and be ripped to shreds by their own ammo. ",
"Smoke and fire from the fuel and ammunition.\n\nAmmo can cook off when struck, not necessarily exploding but cooking like fireworks.\n\nExplosive force from the round itself can knock the crew around if not outright kill them.\n\nDebris and shrapnel bouncing around inside of the tank.\n\nEven if the tank wasn't penetrated the force of impact could throw the guys around or causing spalling which is when material from the inside face of the armor plating sheers off and flies around the inside of the tank like shrapnel.\n\nOne story from a Sherman crew states they were shot at by a Tigers 88mm gun. They heard a horrendous noise and then saw an 88mm hole in the front armor and matching one in the rear. The shell had passed clean through the tank and it's engine before exploding behind them. That's how much more powerful the German guns were compared to the American tanks armor.",
"Depends what they're hit by and where it hits. In most cases, you'll have dead or injured crew members, but there are a lot of cases that kill the whole crew but leave you a mostly functional tank\n\nTanks have the majority of their armor on the front with some on the sides but very little on the rear. A hit to the big front armored plate(glacis plate) isn't going to do nearly as much to the inside of the tank as a hit on the side will, that's why they put the big armor plate on the front.\n\nThere are 5 main types of tank shell - Armor Piercing(AP), High Explosive(HE), High Explosive Anti-Tank(HEAT), High Explosive Squash Head(HESH), and less commonly AP Shells with no explosives which were sometimes APCR.\n\nArmor Piercing shells generally had an explosive charge inside of them that would go off after they made it through the armor. If it penetrated into the main body of the tank and detonated that's it for the crew, and the ammo in the tank will likely go up as well.\n\nAn HE round will explode on contact, it'll jar the occupants of the tank and can break things on the outside of the tank or start fires. Its not really meant for hard(armored) targets like tanks\n\nHEAT rounds are HE rounds designed for Anti-Tank purposes(its literally in the name). They're shaped charges which means the explosive would focus a stream of hot metal to cut through the armor, once its through it'll start fires inside the tank and spray hot metal on the crew, generally bad.\n\nHESH rounds are interesting in that they aren't trying to get through the armor, they're letting the armor do the work. When you hit a piece of metal you will cause fragments to break off on the other side which is called spalling, if you hit a large piece of metal with a good sized explosion you'll cause lots of fragments to break off inside. HESH rounds would hit, squish, spread out along the armor, and then detonate turning the inside layer of the armor into a shotgun inside the tank. Very bad for the crew, not too bad for the physical tank.\n\nAPCR rounds didn't have an explosive charge but they were really good at punching through anything in their way. This includes but is not limited to engines, transmissions, crew, guns, ammunition racks, and the other side of the tank. They would often break up on the otherside of whatever they just hit and spray around the inside of the tank but sometimes they'd just go right through. They're good if you're shooting a tank bigger than you but not if your AP round could get through anyway."
]
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[],
[],
[]
] | ||
1am4ia | What was the involvement of Irish-America soldiers at the battle of Gettysburg? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1am4ia/what_was_the_involvement_of_irishamerica_soldiers/ | {
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"The Irish Brigade (with the 69th, 88th, and 63rd Regiment ) was made up of Irish men from NY.\n\nAt Gettysburg, they attacked and held a part of the battlefield known as Wheatfield, considered one of the bloodiest areas of the battle. They fought tooth and nail, losing around 30% of their mean -their regiment had already been depleted of men beforehand at Chancellorsville so after Gettysburg they had around 300 or so men left.\n\nThey did a lot of the dirty work and were known to be ferocious fighters.\n\n[Here is a report from Patrick Kelly](_URL_0_), one of the commanders of the brigade during the battle. There are other accounts from the battle from other officers in the brigade. Might give you more details on the war."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.history.army.mil/topics/ethnic/irish/Ir-gbg.htm"
]
] | ||
34pc3k | what is so big about the recent boxing fight? | I don't follow the sport, so can someone explain why this match was so hyped/ talked about (at least seen on the media, and my facebook news feeds/friends statuses).
What makes it so special and why is there so much hype surrounding it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34pc3k/eli5_what_is_so_big_about_the_recent_boxing_fight/ | {
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"If some one can answer please do? I am curious as well",
"For you and /u/spartan1124\n\n_URL_3_\n\n_URL_6_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_5_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_4_\n\nTl:dr They're both big boxers, the best of the best, who haven't happened to fight each other before. They will both get a lot of money no matter what, the fight is pay to view and they organisers will make a lot of money, the fighters over a million each. People don't like one of them because he beats up his wife.",
"This was a fight 5 years in the making between 2 of the best boxers of this era. Fans of the sport were extremely excited when this fight was finally announced and it was being dubbed the \"Fight of the Century\".\n\nUnfortunately, it didn't meet up to expectations because a lot of casual fans, including myself, didn't realize that Mayweather is a very technical boxer rather than an aggressive fighter like Pacquiao. For that reason, Mayweather won by unanimous decision even though most people were rooting for Pacqiao to win.\n\ntl;dr Big fight didn't live up to the hype surrounding it. "
]
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[],
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30epyp | why do not more regions of the world have different dialects of a language that persist today? considering a great many humans lived for centuries in smaller group conditions that lend themselves to variations in language (unlike today), why is, say, chinese more an exception than a norm? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30epyp/eli5_why_do_not_more_regions_of_the_world_have/ | {
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"The different \"dialects\" of Chinese are really different languages -- we group them together because they share the same writing system and are all related, but honestly, they can be just as different as, say, French and Italian. \n\nSo China isn't really an exception at all: it's just a great big region with a bunch of different languages spoken in it, like many other places in the world. ",
"Most, if not all, languages have dialects which often differ greatly, almost to the point of being almost mutually unintelligible.\n\nEnglish comes in a huge variety of dialects. I happen to speak more or less the standard Oxford British English with some Westcountry influence, but if you have ever heard Scouse, Geordie, Cockney, Brum or Glaswegian, you'd probably barely recognise them as being the same language. And that's just England and Scotland: in America, you have the standard General American dialect, and then you have things like New York, Yooper, South Midland, Tidewater, and so on.\n\nI live in Germany, and the German language family encompasses a wide variety of dialects (some, like Dutch, considered separate languages) divided into two broad groups: Low in the north and High in the south. I can give you an idea of what that entails by explaining my wife's dialect.\n\nMy wife speaks a West Germanic language. West Germanic includes German, Dutch, Flemish, English, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic and some other more obscure languages like Faroese.\n\nNarrowing it down, my wife's dialect is a High German dialect, part of a group of dialects spoken in Austria, Switzerland and southern parts of Germany. Narrowed down further, and it's a Central German dialect, spoken in a broad band stretching from Luxemburg in the west to the Polish border in the east. Specifically, it's a West Central dialect spoken in the western half of that band. Drilling further down, it's part of the Rhine-Franconian group, spoken in most of the state of Hesse and parts of Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Bavaria and over the French border in Lorraine. It can be further classified as Hessian, then South Hessian, then Lower Mainland; and if you go deeper than that, you're looking at individual villages, and those distinctions have now been blurred out -- but listening to older people, you can still tell (if you have a good ear) which end of the valley they were born in.\n\nThe point is, dialects and accents are alive and well, even if you don't realise it. Of course, when we talk about Chinese \"dialects\", we're really talking about a group of languages: in the same way that the Germanic family includes German, Dutch, Swedish and so on, so the Chinese family includes Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu and so on. It's roughly on that level.\n\nBy the way, there's no good way to define the difference between a dialect and a language. Dutch can be viewed as a dialect of German, or Portuguese as a dialect of Spanish; while Swiss German is so hard for Germans to understand, that they sometimes need subtitles."
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3d669d | Does a birds song usually stay within a key and possibly follow a chord progression? Are they just singing nonsense as far as music theory is concerned? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3d669d/does_a_birds_song_usually_stay_within_a_key_and/ | {
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"As far as human musicality is concerned they're pretty much singing nonsense. Many bird species don't necessarily 'sing' *per se* at all. A lot of it is simply mimicking sounds in their environment. Also, songs change with geographical location within a species. So their songs aren't really what we would call musical at all. \n \nBut some newer research is looking at the possibility that the birds have their own sense of musicality that just doesn't match our own. There aren't any kinds of chord progressions or even what would be real musical structure. There's \n \n > a sense of a periodic progression through the repertoire but no sequence of riffs was precisely the same as the next. \n \nBut, using a lot of data and pretty complicated statistical analyses there was found that \n \n > each song can be represented as a trajectory in rhythm-space (figure 2C). For example, by plotting the song presented in panel A we can see how the rhythm zigzags during the phrase of down-sweeps and then orbits into rapid three-state oscillations while performing the clicks.\n\n > This phase plot reveals a graceful transition from one rhythm state to the next: the zigzag pattern gradually accelerates until it enters into the orbit of the click phrase \n \nThese researchers are pretty much proposing a new paradigm through which to study birdsong and they're making an apt suggestion that similar musicality across species shouldn't be expected. \n \nThey're proposing that the emotional response of the birds should be considered and they offer some suggestions to go about studying and quantifying that. \n \nSo it may be that we find the birds have their own music theory. But that's all pretty speculative still and it's certainly not like ours. \n \n[Source: *Hearing Research* (2014)](_URL_0_)"
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3tb90w | the differences of a business trust versus an llc. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tb90w/eli5_the_differences_of_a_business_trust_versus/ | {
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"Both are entities under state law, so the answer will depend upon the state where they're organized as well as the state or states where they'd doing business. If this is something you need to know for decision making, you need to see a lawyer.\n\nBusiness trusts are a much older concept. They're both more complicated and more flexible. Because of this, they're usually just used in very specialized cases where the flexibility outweighs the complexity. Mutual funds are among the most common examples of business trusts. \n\nBecause of their simplicity, LLCs have become the most common organized entity for small businesses. It would be extremely rare for a small business to be advised to form a business trust instead of an LLC. LLCs are even recommended more often than S-Corps. \n\nThere are some legitimate practitioners who, for valid reasons, may recommend a business trust or a corporation instead of an LLC for a small business, but that's a minority opinion these days. There are also people who recommend business trusts as a vehicle for illegal tax evasion - which gives such trusts a bad name. "
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cbzamx | what happens when a child breaks his leg right before a big growth spurt? | Is the leg able to heal and grow at the same time? Is growth potential compromised in any way? Will the leg resume growing once the healing process ends? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cbzamx/eli5_what_happens_when_a_child_breaks_his_leg/ | {
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"Depends where the break is. Growth in long bones like the leg occurs at growth plates, so growth should continue if the plates weren't compromised.",
"A kid in my elementary school broke his leg before a growth spurt and they broke the other leg so that they would match. He missed the rest of the year and was in a wheelchair for a while.",
"Yeah, sometimes they break them both, though now they have a way to make the legs even in length—if one leg doesn’t grow longer, they can break the leg at some later point and then move the two pieces apart. You’re immobilized for months. Every day they move the bones apart a bit more, and every day your body tries to bridge the gap by growing to fill the space. Eventually the legs are the same length again and then you have to build up your muscles. \n\nThe problem happens when you break something they can’t do this with. I know someone who broke her hip as an adolescent. It stopped growing. Now she needs to not gain any weight because her hip won’t be able to support it. Sometimes she’s in a wheelchair. Its hard because she was like 100 pounds when it happened, so now she needs to be very skinny as an adult. She’s have to be in a wheelchair for pregnancy.",
"It completely depends on the location and size of the break. If it involves the growth plate, it could impact growth. If this is about your child, you’d get a more relevant answer by asking the doctor caring for him/her."
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88vef2 | how do all politicians become filthy rich while in office? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/88vef2/eli5_how_do_all_politicians_become_filthy_rich/ | {
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"Frequent, but that's not always the case.\n\nThe Clinton's claim to have been almost broke when they left the white house. They weren't made of money to begin with and even the 6 figure salary of the president wasn't enough to pay Bill's extensive legal bills, Chelsea's education etc.\n\nBut afterwards like many former heads of state and professional business people they began doing tours where they are paid significant amounts of money to do speeches. They sit on various boards etc like the Clinton foundation which pays them a salary. (I'm not going to discus it's dubious nature)\n\nLots of politicians end up getting jobs on various boards and committees or with corporations. Or getting an appointed position in a government owned organization. One of the upsides of accepting lobbying money is that they often take care of you financially after you leave office. Like getting a cushy executive job at a military contractor, pharmaceutical company, or big oil company etc that are profiting off legislation that you championed or helped push through.\n\nMany elite businessmen + lawyers who go into politics actually consider getting senate seat a retirement plan in and of itself because with the position comes a great benefits package and a government backed pension that only requires a few years of service to qualify for.",
"Very few do. Most were wealthy before they started politics. But they do get paid fairly high salaries so that helps to maintain their wealth. They also tend to make a lot of connections and when they get out of office they often make a lot of money on the private sector. "
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a5uze0 | How does a muscle attach to a tendon and how does a tendon attach to a bone? | Is it physical structures like microscopic hooks/anchors? Some kind of biological "adhesive"?
Edit: Question answered. Several very knowledgeable people have done a great job of explaining that there is no "attachment" rather there is no end between bone/tendon and muscle, they all just merge into each other. Which is pretty amazing when you think about it. Thanks everyone. | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/a5uze0/how_does_a_muscle_attach_to_a_tendon_and_how_does/ | {
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"There are sites on the bone called Enthesus that allow the connection of tendons and ligaments to the bone (Basically a rough patch on the bone, visually and by touch), but I am not sure exactly the technical details of how it attaches to the Enthesus.",
"At entheses, the tendon or attaches either directly to the bone or indirectly to it via the periosteum, i.e. the outermost layer of the bone. If you look at a histological section of it, there is no point of clear differentiation between where the bone ends and the tendon begins, but rather there is fibrocartilaginous tissue present at the site of entheses. The adhesives that you are probably looking for are zona adherens (adherent junctions) which are normally placed between most of the cells and not just at the enthesis.",
"Picture it like this. Each muscle cell is wrapped in the tendon like a Tootsie roll with really long tails. They're then grouped together with all the tails together and then that merges/bonds with a bigger Tootsie roll wrapper around all of it and this repeats a few times getting bigger and bigger until the entire muscle mass is achieved. Even though there's layers of wrapper all throughout the muscle we call it a tendon where it protrudes at the end and attaches to the bone on the rough patches of the bone. \n\nI forgot all the technical words, but that's the basic idea.",
"Tendons are something in between pure fibrous tissue and bone tissue. So they kinda stick to the respective bone as a very adhesive tissue that is interwoven with the bone cortex. As you follow the tendon to the where it connects with muscle, it is more fibrous is origin and resembles muscle itself in structure. Follow it towards bone, it becomes sturdier and more bone-like in quality.\n\nSo tendons are a kind of bridge between mucle and bone where in the outskirts the tissue flows in each other.",
"You can think of a muscle as if it were multiple sausages that had longer casing than meat, so it bulges in the middle with tapered ends. And then those sausages are wrapped in a bigger casing that holds everything together. The ends of the casings with no meat (tendons) interlace with the outer bone tissue layer and the inner tissue layer to form a really strong bond with strong cell connections that make almost a gradient between the bone and the tendon. ",
"\n\nEntheses (insertion sites, osteotendinous junctions, osteoligamentous junctions) are sites of stress concentration at the region where tendons and ligaments attach to bone.\n\nBest way to understand is explore a single structure.\n\n > Attachments. The superficial medial collateral ligament (sMCL) has one femoral and two tibial attachments. The femoral attachment is situated on the medial epicondyle. The proximal attachment blends into the semimembranosus tendon and the insertion of the distal attachment is at the posteromedial crest of the tibia.\n\n\nRead in depth:\n_URL_0_\n\n\n\n",
"Muscle, bone and tendon are all synonymous with each other. There is no glue or magical stuff that holds them together. If you think of how muscles bone and tendon are shown in lab books all with distinct breaks starts and ends is actually a bit misleading. We as humans created those breaks in muscle just so we in the scientific community have a way of communicating with each other so that we know exactly what we are talking about. That is the difference between dead person anatomy and living anatomy. In a live person one piece of muscle flows into the next and so on, that’s what makes it so durable. \nIf you were to biopsy where a muscle turns into a tendon, you would NOT be able to find a distinct break where you could definitively say this is muscle and this is bone. The fibers just happen to transition from stuff that represents muscle toward stuff that represents tendon and from stuff that represents tendon to bone in its chemical make up. \nBone tendon ligament and muscle are all made of the same parts of ground substance, but express them self differently based on the stresses that are placed through them. That’s why if a person has an ACL reconstruction an initial biopsy post surgery would show that it is still whatever was grafted there to help repair it. Fast forward several years after the reconstruction has had forces placed through it similar to what a traditional ACL would have, that biopsy would reveal that whatever was grafted there now has ligamentous type expression. \n\nHope that helps. ",
"Macroscopically there is a very distinct end to a bone and a tendon. We exploit this all the time in surgery. Microscopically it is more complicated. There are fibers (sharpeys) that interweave and connect tendons to bones. We cut these when doing tendon transfers etc. ",
"You don’t necessarily see the fibers. You can kinda of scrape the tendon off the bone with a scalpel. There is clearly bone and then tendon. Just like peeling an apple. It’s stuck to the white and you know when you’re on the apple versus the skin. ",
"Think about it like brownies in a baking dish.\n\nThe gooey center is your muscle. The drier cake-like portion is your tendons. The hard crispy part at the edge is like your bones. \n\nThere is no distinct attachment points but you can distinctly scrape off the softer cake-like consistency from the crispy hard baked parts just like you can scrape tendon from bone.\n\n",
"Dental student here. Histologically the fibers of a tendon connecting to muscle are as described by other people, the fibers become interwoven and may even encapsulate the muscle in a sheath. However, the tendon does not become one with bone. Instead the \"little anchors\" you mention are called Sharpey's Fibers. Microscopically they are harpoon shaped and anchor into bone for retention. Often times because they are anchored so well that when a muscle contracts too hard it will pull off a peice of bone it's attached to rather than snapping off. ",
"Muscle fibers are long and thin and run the length of the muscle. When they are hit with an electrical impulse from the nervous system, they contract and grow shorter. Muscles always pull, never push.\n\nThe muscle fibers are bound together in groups. Wrapped in connective tissue. Connective tissue is the tough stringy stuff that you run into sometimes when you eat a steak. You can see them in the picture below.\n\nAs the connective tissue that wraps the muscle fibers nears the end of the muscle, where it connects to the bone, all the connective tissue tubes begin to come together into one large, tough fiber. This is the tendon.\n\nSo the tendon, is really just the termination, the end point of all the individual connective tissue tubes that hold the muscle fibers.\n\nThe tendon then connects to the bone. Tendons look smooth on the outside, but they are really a large bundle of tiny fibers (like a smooth, shiny nylon rope that is really a bundle of tiny threads). Bones look smooth too, but they are really porous. They have lots of microscopic holes. The fibers from these tendons are fused into these holes. Individually, they're not very strong, but hundreds of thousands of them make a very tight connection between the tendon on the bone.\n\nSo, on the surface, we see muscle-tendon-bone. But on a microscopic level, there are a number of different types of tissues and membranes that all work together to form a very strong mechanical system.\n\nI hope this is helpful. I'm a nurse with 15 years of experience and loved my anatomy and physiology classes so much they seem like yesterday.\n\nHere's a picture to help.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n[_URL_1_](_URL_0_)\n\n & #x200B;\n\nEdit: spelling",
"Biological adhesive is exactly right. Adhesives we use are boring. Sure, some stick better than others and some are better for wood or metal. But cellular adhesives are so much more interesting. These adhesives compounds are like locks and keys. A given adhesive on a given cell membrane will “glue” itself only to a corresponding adhesive molecule. Sometimes this glue holds cell together in sheets and blocks of the same kind to make organs. And sometimes this glue sticks only to cells to a specific other type, like muscle to bone. Animals like humans have dozens of these exact match adhesives. Humans have something in the neighborhood of 80 unique adhesive proteins. "
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41v5pi | What was the state of battlefield medical care during the Napoleonic period? | If a soldier was shot but not something immediately fatal, what care could they expect immediately? Assuming they survived long enough to be removed from the battlefield, what treatment would they have in a field hospital, and then in a convalescent ward or similar?
Assuming they survive all that, maybe minus a leg, what benefits and care could they expect to be provided long term (I assume that would vary greatly country to country)? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/41v5pi/what_was_the_state_of_battlefield_medical_care/ | {
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"Although the Napoleonic period saw some of the first attempts at providing systematic battlefield care for the wounded, the general state for of battlefield medicine for all combatants was generally poor and inadequate. A typical Napoleonic era battalion or regiment had their own medical personnel attached to them, but their training was rather rudimentary. A number of armies had already instituted reforms for medical education in the military, such the Austrian Josephinium but the quality of personnel and their medical knowledge left much to be desired. Accounts from veterans of this period often spoke of the poor quality of military surgeons and the horrifying nature of field hospitals. Even ignoring deficits in training, the number of medical personnel seldom could meet the needs of the battlefield. Evacuation of the wounded from the battlefield was often *ad hoc* and stretcher-bearers were delegated to lightly wounded or units unfit for combat. \n\nThe main priority for Napoleonic era battlefield medicine was to evacuate the lightly wounded swiftly from the battlefield and quickly restore these men to the battlefield. Most armies of this period would establish rear-area field hospitals for this purpose, but they were often quite small. When coupled with increasing numbers of casualties, this meant a number of gravely wounded men were often left on the battlefield. A number of veterans' accounts attest to the frightening nature of the abandoned wounded. One extreme example of this was the Battle of Talaverra in which dry weather conditions caused the grass to set fire due to musket fire and burned many wounded alive. These abandoned men were often left on the battlefield and often subject to robbery and murder by various looters, whether civilian or military, leading to such grim items like [Waterloo teeth](_URL_0_) which were often reputed to have come from the corpses or near corpses of the wounded young men. Evacuated wounded often found that conditions in the field hospitals were seldom a source of relief. Overworked and sometimes ill-trained surgeons often had to quickly probe wounds for the ball or shrapnel, sometimes with crude instruments or with their own fingers. Naturally, such conditions lent themselves quite easily for infection. \n\nBoth Napoleon and Wellington instituted and fostered reforms of the medical services. The French reforms tended to build upon preexisting experiments in battlefield medicine of the Revolutionary period. Under the auspices of Dominique Jean Larrey, the French Army of the Rhine had begun experiments with *ambulances volantes* (flying ambulances) with special vehicles for battlefield organization and a more regimented system of medical personnel. Larrey's personal connection to Napoleon allowed Larrey to implement some elements of his reforms into the *Grande Armee*. The British reforms were likewise initiated under the care of Sir James McGrigor who pushed for the creation of more, smaller hospitals and more systematic training. Wellington encouraged these efforts in the Peninsula because he recognized that his own manpower reserves were far from infinite and the British and Portuguese forces needed to preserve its manpower.\n\nYet neither of the British or French reforms of battlefield care really have that much of a direct impact on the conditions for soldiers. Although Napoleon showered much praise upon Larrey and his fellow reformer Pierre-François Percy, the French emperor tended to underfund the medical services and *ambulances volantes* were much more the exception rather than the rule for battlefield medicine. Nor was Napoleon amenable to the creation of a permanent surgical corps or allow surgeons to hold rank within the army. Although Wellington allowed for the use of prefabricated hospitals to accompany the army's baggage train in its advance in 1813/14, the British commander balked at specialized ambulances like the French. Medical personnel in both the British and French armies were often short of material and personnel, and despite the reforms of the likes of Larrey and McGregor, medical care was still very much *ad hoc* and a low priority for Napoleonic generals. \n\nConvalescence and recovery from wounds was also rather haphazard. Sanitary conditions were often quite poor and thus became breeding houses for various infections. Added to this problem, Napoleonic armies were often housed in poor sanitary conditions and epidemic diseases like typhus were quite common. As usual in many militaries, officers enjoyed much better treatment than the rank and file. Wounded officers were sometimes billeted in private homes for convalescence and often had contact with more qualified physicians. Elite units like Guards also had more preferential care and resources devoted to them than regular units. The recovery rates for wounded soldiers were rather low given these conditions, often hovering around 50% according to Gunther Rothenberg. \n\nFor permanently wounded soldiers, there were some efforts to provide for them. Napoleon expanded the *ancien regime*'s hospital/retirement home system for disabled veterans (*Les Invalides*). Britain had the royal hospitals at Chelsea and Greenwich and a system of pensioning based upon service and type of wounds. However, like Larrey's reforms of battlefield medicine, these medical programs found it difficult to care for the sudden influx of discharged veterans after 1815. More often than not, care for these men was delegated either to private charities or through their own regimental support networks. \n\n*Sources*\n\nMuir, Rory. *Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon*. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1998. \n\nRothenberg, Gunther E. *The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon*. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978. \n\nRiaud, Xavier. \"Medicine on the battle field during the Napoleonic wars.\" *The Napoleon Society*. _URL_1_"
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14358p | Is there marble on the moon? | Are there metamorphic rocks on the moon? Does regolith have a metamorphic counterpoint the way some earth rocks turn into marble?
Are there gemstones on the moon that do not exist on earth? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/14358p/is_there_marble_on_the_moon/ | {
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"Absolutely not. Marble is a metamorphic rock made from limestone - which is a sedimentary rock made from the hard shells of marine animals. so to get marble we need both oceans & life on the moon. ",
"We don't yet fully understand the formation of the moon; however, if the moon formed due to a giant impact, it is unlikely that any metamorphic rocks from the event exist due to the fact that the entire surface of the moon was likely molten after the collision. It is likely that there are metamorphic rocks though, related to shock metamorphism from impact craters.\n\nMarble specifically would not be found on the moon, as others have explained."
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1yk99f | Why are berserkers depicted biting shields in Viking culture? | For example, the rooks in the Lewis chessmen. I live in York which was founded by vikings and there are also statues of berserkers biting their shields in fury.
Is this merely artistic interpretation or was this a way of intimidating enemies? Was this common? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1yk99f/why_are_berserkers_depicted_biting_shields_in/ | {
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"Was it common? Commonly depicted, certainly, in a wide range of written and visual art we can see in the surviving antiquities of the Viking Age. In trying to figure out what berserkers *really* did, though, it's important for us to remember that the historicity of berserkers is up for debate to begin with. They're referenced in retroactively-written chronicle sources from within post-Christian Scandinavia, but the boundaries between fact and fiction in medieval chronicles are often poorly drawn, as creative or literary flares to make the past exciting and readable were important elements of any good chronicler's repertoire. Many medieval chroniclers are guilty of transcribing folk myths and legends into the framework of their historical narrative -- that's just generic convention.\n\nThe warriors known as berserkers are most comprehensibly accounted for in Old Norse literature -- where they are, indeed, repeatedly referenced as gnawing on their shields like wild animals -- in which the concept is developed from their initial appearances in early Skaldic poetry to the later sagas of Sturlusson. But reference to these men occurs so frequently in our textual sources, across boundaries of time, space and culture, that there was almost certainly an element of truth that inspired these stories. Berserking is specifically outlawed in later Icelandic and Norwegian law codes and edicts, so even if their attested ability to resist the touch of fire and iron might have been exaggerated, the practice of *berserkergang* was certainly real enough to concern lawmaking elites.\n\nWhat did they *do*, then? They must have behaved in a way that inspired fear, revulsion and fascination, to be sure, and considering the Vikings were reputed for savage brutality throughout the rest of Europe, that's probably saying something. Distinguishing historical fact from literary device is an eternal challenge for medievalists considering the nature of the sources we deal with, but let's consider the image of the berserker that's consistently developed throughout the literature: \n\nThese were warriors who were so wild and bloodthirsty that they ceased to be merely men wearing the skins of wild animals, and began to more closely resemble wild animals wearing the skins of men. They were said to take blows that would kill weaker warriors without flinching and would give back just as viciously. They roared, howled and shrieked like inhuman beasts, and so trying to maul their own shields with their teeth is just another facet of their reputed animalistic behaviour.\n\nA bit of empathic imagination is handy when trying to conceptualise this sort of thing. Think about holding your shield up in front of you at chest height. The top rim is roughly level with your mouth. You want to get at the enemy -- to savage him, slaughter him, rip him to pieces. You're hungry for blood, hungry for a fight. As far as you're concerned, then, the shield is almost *in your way*. It's coming between you and your foe, and you're so damn angry that you could tear a chunk out of him with your teeth . . . well, if you're succumbing to a psychotic frenzy, then chomping down on the closest thing to your mouth isn't that much of a strange thing to do, is it?\n\nHonestly, though, we don't know what berserkers actually did. In fact, we don't know much about the precise mechanics of fighting and combat in the Viking Age at all, for a lack of any surviving martial treatises, so most of what we have to go on are to be found in the literary modes of chronicles, sagas and poems, all of which could play fast and lose with the precise details. Certainly, the image of a berserker biting his own shield is a pervasive one, and certainly, if we assume their depictions in these forms of literature have some factual basis, it doesn't seem unlikely that a berserker would be above that sort of behaviour.\n\nApart from that, I can tell you that depending on the social status of the Viking in question, his shield would either be edged with rawhide or rimmed with steel. Rawhide is now used as dog chew, funnily enough, but chomping down on steel might not do your dental plan any particular good . . . ;)\n\nSources:\nBrink, Stefan & Price, Neil (eds.), *The Viking World* (2008) -- various essays\n\nFrank, Roberta, 'Viking atrocity and Skaldic verse: The Rite of the Blood-Eagle', *English Historical Review* (1984)\n\nHalsall, Guy, 'Playing by whose rules? A further look at Viking atrocity in the ninth century.’ *Medieval History* vol.2, no.2 (1992)\n\nPalsson, Hermann (trans.), *Seven Viking Romances* (1985)"
]
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[]
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6nvj3t | what is a stock 'put' and how does it work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6nvj3t/eli5_what_is_a_stock_put_and_how_does_it_work/ | {
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"A put or put option is a contract that gives the holder the right to sell stock at a certain price to the other party in the contract, but without an obligation to sell (it's the buyer's choice) usually either on or before before an expiration date. \n\nBecause they give one party a right without creating an obligation, they're a form of protection or insurance. The buyer pays a premium and gets to sell their stock at a certain price if the price drops. \n\nFor an example, if you bought a put option on Tesla from me, you might pay $1850 to sell me 100 shares before August 18, 2017, at a price per share of $320. You would only want do this if the price dropped below $320/share, but if the price dropped, you would get $320 per share from me no matter how low the price got. ",
"A stock put is a type of stock option, that grants you the option to sell at a specified date for a set price. It's effectively a means of protecting stock you own, or for betting against a stock.\n\nLet's say you buy an 1 contract for August 140 puts on Apple. That means that the date August options expire, you would be able to sell 100 shares at $140 if you so choose. So if Apple drops to $125 by that time, you'd protect $15/share of gains. This might only cost you $1-2 per share to buy the contract.\n\nOr if you simply think the stock will fall, the put will increase in value as the strike price approaches \"in the money.\" So that $1-2/sh. you spend to buy the put option might be worth $10/share if the stock starts dropping and there's greater likelihood that it'll be below the $140 price. \n\nBecause there is a set expiration date, the values have a relationship to both the underlying stock and the time until the expiration. So a month out, the put option that's $10 in the money ($140 put, stock trading at $130) might cost $20 while the day of the expiration it'd be just about the difference between option value and stock itself."
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6kg6n1 | if a baby is born in canada to an american mother and the father has dual-citizenship in america and australia, what does that mean for the child's citizenship? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6kg6n1/eli5_if_a_baby_is_born_in_canada_to_an_american/ | {
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"In most cases, citizenship is not determined by international law, but only by the domestic law of the sovereign state granting a person citizenship of that state.\n\nThe child would be a Canadian citizen because it was born in Canada. The child would be a United States citizen because it was born the child of a U.S. citizen mother. And the child would be an Australian citizen because it was born to a father who is an Australian citizen.\n\nSome governments don't allow dual citizenship--they often make children elect which citizenship to keep at adulthood, or void the previous citizenship when the person becomes a citizen of another country. For example, this used to be the case in Australia. But currently that is not the case in either Canada, the U.S. or Australia--so it's entirely possible, if a bit unlikely, to be a Canadian, American as well as Australian citizen at the same time."
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8rn608 | Is the British monarch a direct male line descendant of Rollo the Conquer, the Viking who settled Normandy after being baptized? If not why? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8rn608/is_the_british_monarch_a_direct_male_line/ | {
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"No, Queen Elizabeth is not a direct male-line descendant of Rollo, or of Rollo's great-great-great-grandson William I the Conqueror. As you can see from [this family tree](_URL_0_), the throne has changed lines several times.\n\nHowever, you didn't ask whether Queen Elizabeth is descended through the eldest line from Rollo (she isn't, thanks to the Glorious Revolution); you asked whether she's a *direct male-line descendant*. She isn't, for the same reason that Prince Charles isn't a direct male-line descendant of George VI: the Crown sometimes descends through the female line.\n\nThe first time this happened was in the early twelfth century. William the Conqueror had three sons: the eldest, Robert, got Normandy; the second, William Rufus, got England; the third, Henry, succeeded to the English crown when William Rufus got assassinated while hunting. Unfortunately, Henry had no sons of his own. So, he made all his barons swear they'd accept his daughter Matilda (called \"Empress Matilda\" thanks to her previous marriage to the Holy Roman Emperor) as his successor and their queen - something very unusual at the time. To make a long story short, ~~Robert's son~~ Stephen *(a son of William's daughter Adela)* contested her claim, many of the barons followed him, and there was a long civil war called \"The Anarchy.\" At the end, Stephen got the crown for his life, but accepted Matilda's son Henry II as his successor. From that point on, the royal house was no longer in male-line descent from Rollo and William, because it had descended through the female line."
]
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jkkqz | How are we able to block out "noise" when talking together? | When I am talking a friend, it easy to "block out" other sounds, like say other people talking beside or between us, but when i am having a group conversation over the phone, skype ect. its impossible to focus on one voice, and block out the rest. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/jkkqz/how_are_we_able_to_block_out_noise_when_talking/ | {
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"This is called the Cocktail Party Effect. I did a bit of research on it a while back because I can't do it (I have [King-Kopetzky syndrome](_URL_0_)).\n\nIn normal brains, the incoming soundstream is parsed into tiny intervals, each just a split second long. You can distinguish between different sound sources by direction, distance, pitch, timbre etc. and your brain takes each of little chunks of sound and categorizes it depending on which source it thinks most of the sound in that interval came from. Then you can switch your attention between those labelled sub-streams depending on what seems interesting.\n\nYou can't do it on the phone because you're lacking most of cues that distinguish between sources. I can't do it because the little hairs in my ears that receive soundwaves aren't so agile causing noises to slop across intervals. Essentially, my ears mumble.",
"This is called the Cocktail Party Effect. I did a bit of research on it a while back because I can't do it (I have [King-Kopetzky syndrome](_URL_0_)).\n\nIn normal brains, the incoming soundstream is parsed into tiny intervals, each just a split second long. You can distinguish between different sound sources by direction, distance, pitch, timbre etc. and your brain takes each of little chunks of sound and categorizes it depending on which source it thinks most of the sound in that interval came from. Then you can switch your attention between those labelled sub-streams depending on what seems interesting.\n\nYou can't do it on the phone because you're lacking most of cues that distinguish between sources. I can't do it because the little hairs in my ears that receive soundwaves aren't so agile causing noises to slop across intervals. Essentially, my ears mumble."
]
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6bxoky | what actions constitute collusion? is collusion inherently illegal or does the action need to be illegal? | **I'm not asking if it happened or not, I'm asking what it could look like if it did happen.** I'm legitimately interested and hoping for an apolitical explanation without the speculation about what did/didn't happen. With that in mind, let's talk about Jill Stein colluding with Jamaica.
1. I've heard about Stein colluding with Jamaica but I don't understand what collusion actually is (what would have to be said/done). AFAIK candidates are allowed to talk to foreign leaders. Couldn't any of those conversations be considered collusion (e.g. foreign leader says "you should hold a rally in MI")? Did the candidate just collude with a foreign power by taking advice on where to campaign?
2. Is collusion inherently illegal or does it depend on the action being illegal?
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6bxoky/eli5_what_actions_constitute_collusion_is/ | {
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"Collusion just means working together in secret or behind the scenes. It's not inherently a crime. It can be used loosely to describe the crime of conspiracy, which is committed when two or more people agree to commit some unlawful act, and then take some action toward committing the unlawful act. \n\nConspiracies are usually secret and therefore usually fit the definition of collusion. However, there must be some *other* identified crime that the parties are working toward in order to constitute criminal conspiracy.",
"Collusion can be a legal term of art, but generally, it just means \"secretly working together,\" or something to that effect. It implies some degree of deception: outsiders are led to believe that the colluders are acting independently.\n\nIn some circumstances, it's important (or legally mandated) for two parties *not* to conspire against a third party: this comes up a lot in sports, where teams might collectively refuse to sign a certain player to push down his salary, not because they're trying to win, but to pay back a personal favor to each other.\n\nSometimes, it's just suspicious, and a sign that someone is not to be trusted."
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39r24w | Would a common roman (first century) be influenced by long distance trade, or was commercial access to benefits of Indian and eastern goods something exclusive to upper class luxuries? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/39r24w/would_a_common_roman_first_century_be_influenced/ | {
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"Ooo, one of my favorite questions, and the answer is: yeah, a bit. Now there is a bit of a cop-out answer in which you can say that common people would be affected do to economic ripples, in the same way that the price of houses in Florida can effect the fate of a second hand bookshop in Portland. The Eastern trade was a major locus of investment for those who could and for tax extraction, both of which had broad economic effects on the daily life of those in the empire. It is one of the many reasons I dislike the idea of \"luxury trade\".\n\nBut I think the question you are asking is whether a common person would actually be able to directly use the products of this trade, and the answer is that, situationally, yes. The primary good acquired from India was pepper which is today is exclusively used as a seasoning but in Roman times had a far more diverse set of uses, including medicinal and religious use. Pliny the Elder records the prince of black pepper as four denarii per Roman pound (which is roughly equivalent to twelve ounces). To help conceptualize that in modern terms, a Roman soldier would be paid about one denarius a day, and from a different perspective Matthew 20:1 has farmhands at a vineyard working for a denarius a day, so we can roughly say that was a stereotypical \"day's wages\". Four days labor for twelve ounces of pepper seems a lot, but that is an absurd amount of pepper--the shaker in my cabinet has one. So to reconceptualize further, the amount of pepper in a standard shaker is roughly equivalent to one third of a day's wage. Or, because I am sort of on a roll here, given a 9-5 job at US federal minimum wage a pepper shaker costs twenty dollars minus.\n\nNow, this is a lot for pepper when you think of it as a condiment, but what about as a medicine or a religious offering? In day to day life pepper was certainly outside of the budget of an average Roman, but it was available at a price that was reasonable for certain occasions.\n\nThe impression that Indian goods wasn't just for the elite fits the archaeology remarkably well. for one, the *horrea piperata* (pepper warehouse) in Rome is enormous, much larger that would be neccesary for merely the rich even given that Rome was a stop over point for other trade. And more strikingly, of the three pepper types mentioned in Pliny, black, white, and long, white and long are judged as both superior and much more expensive at seven and fifteen denarii per Roman pound respectively. But the pepper that has been recovered from Egypt and elsewhere is almost exclusively black, to the point where black pepper recovered from Berenike is recorded by the kilogram, while white and long pepper is recorded by the grain. So the pepper that was traded in significant quantities was also the cheapest one--if it was only destined for those who whom price was no object we would expect a little diversity.\n\nSo to sum up, pepper would have been expensive for the average person but given the diversity of its uses was by no means out of financial reach.\n\nA lot of this are my own conclusions but Steven Sidebotham's *Berenike* covers the data pretty well."
]
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fwdyi | Different transportation containers | This might seem like an extremely silly question, but I hope someone here has an answer for me. Why are solids transported in cubes, but liquids transported in cylinders?
And I'm not really referring to cans of soda, but on trucks and such. And trains. Why the cylinder for a liquid, and not a square? Doesn't the square provide more room, and decrease shipping costs? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fwdyi/different_transportation_containers/ | {
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"The main concern that I'm aware of is 'slosh'. The center of gravity is high with those containers. A truckload in the US would be between twenty and twenty-six tons, so you can imagine the force created by a sudden shift. Any decent tanker contains baffles to slow front-to-rear transfer also.",
"Interesting question. I did a bit of reading on wikipedia about tank cars but I'm still none the wiser.\n\nHowever, having thought about it a bit I think it's a question of pressure and strength. Solids generally push down on the floor of the container, but liquids push out on the walls, and the pressure of a large tank full of liquid can be quite significant. If you try to fill a big metal cube with water or oil then it would buckle the sides or (worse still) burst the seams at which the sides of the cube were welded together. Cylinders don't have this problem.",
"Corners are not good when transporting liquids. Case in point- milk. Why transport milk in a big cylinder? Because it would be hard as a motha to get the milk out of the corners when you empty the container. It would make the container more difficult to sanitize and it would make it more difficult to transport (as sumoshart mentioned, 'slosh'). Also, you have a lot of pressure in the bottom of the container, the corners are the most vulnerable to failure.",
"Are solids really transported in cubes? Surely it's a secondary packaging to tesselate or provide a protective container of simple construction. Usually things are packed in a fit-for-purpose manner and then encased in a \"cube\" to, as you say, decrease costs.\n\nFor liquids and gases a pressure vessel requires serious design and the best design is round. Note that containerised liquids on trains still have superstructure around cylinders which forms them into a \"cube\" for stacking, etc."
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902ojz | What did police work in Louis XIV's Paris look like and what makes a police force "modern? | Hi Historians! I have a couple of related questions about police work in 17th century Paris, and would welcome insights or book recommendations.
\-Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie, who became Lieutenant General of Police of Paris starting in 1667, is often credited with creating France's first modern police force. What did this mean in practical terms? How was La Reynie's approach to police work different from his predecessors', and what specific changes did he make to the police force?
\-What did an average day of police work look like? How was the police force organized, what would the police bureaucracy/paperwork have looked like, etc?
\-What was the relationship between police and citizens like? How reliable were they considered to be? How did one go about reporting a crime? What would some common points of friction between police and civilians from various social classes have been?
Thank you! | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/902ojz/what_did_police_work_in_louis_xivs_paris_look/ | {
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"**PART 1**\n\nFirst and foremost, we need to define what the word police meant in 17th-century France, which was not the same as today. Today, the word *police* is pretty much restricted to an institution or institution that has the missions to serve and p*rotect and repre*ssion/c*ontrol of the population. In 17th-century French and before, police and the verb to police was clos*er to *ru*le, mana*ge* or run in a political sense. The 1606 [*Thresor de la langue française*](_URL_1_) defines *police* as the act to rule the *res publica* (the public affairs, the common good of a society) and also as the rules and regulations of a state or community. In fact, the 17th-century word still had that relation to the Greek *polis* where government and order are closely tied to each other. The [Encyclopédie ](_URL_0_)written 150 years later shows us that the term had not changed that much yet, the changes would take place later in the 19th-century where the link to the Ancient *polis* slowly disappeared. As such, what Louis XIV established in 1667, transforming what previously existed, is not truly modern although it is the foundations of what would become a police force as we know it. Some of La Reynie and his successors missions are not foreign to us: population control, repression and political control, public order, censorship but also helping people, solving disputes, …etc. One of the most fundamental differences is that the 1667 police was created to \"help\" rule the city of Paris and the police can be said to be modern (one of the reasons) in that it is a new way for the royal power to get a hand on Paris, Louis' capital city which like everything else he wanted to control and shape to his image.\n\nHow were the police there to participate to running Paris? In the two previous links to definitions of *police*, it says that alongside its other more familiar prerogatives its role was to supervise the supplies of Paris in all things (food first, but also various products such as clothing, firewood, wares …etc.) and ensure that everyone can live safely. The [royal edict](_URL_0_) is also quite clear as to what the Lieutenance tasks were : supplies, weapon control, crowds and groups, public order, vices, religion, road network, public health and hygiene, trades. In short, the police could play a role in every aspect of the city life and also be involved in almost every administration of Paris.\n\nWhy? As you may or may not know, the relationship between the monarchy and Paris could be cordial but sometimes somewhat awkward or hostile. The memories of the Fronde were very much present in the minds of Louis XIV and Colbert (the mastermind behind the thinking of the Lieutenance) and its influence on the king should not be minimized. Also, there is a legacy of constant increase (or attempts) of the royal power since the last century that Louis inherited. These elements are important because it explains why the king wanted to increase his control over the capital just like over other sources of power such as the nobility for example. Paris was a city extremely jealous of its privileges inherited from its medieval charter and centuries of more or less happy relationship with the kings. Before 1667, three principal bodies were in charge of what Louis tasked the Lieutenance to do. The Parliament of Paris, the *prévôté et vicomté* (like a representative of the royal power who seats in the Châtelet, a castle) and the *prévôt des marchands* (who could almost be defined as a sort of mayor and representative of the urban society).\n\nThey did not always work well together. Like in many other aspects of the Ancien Régime, there were conflicts and unclear prerogatives as to whom had the right to judge, sentence, control whom and what. The *prévôt* of Paris, as a royal officer, was often in conflict with urban authorities. Among other things, this meant that public order was extremely low in Paris, there were daily murders, numerous burglaries and fights. At the same time the city was going through a demographic crisis (overpopulation) leading to sanitary concerns. Many Parisians complained of the situation and Louis XIV had a good reason to act. This was a perfect situation to increase royal control over Paris. What he did in 1667 was to centralize the policing matters into one new institution. Instead of having several (it would require a longer and more difficult explanation to detail the L*ieutenant civil*, the *Hôtel-de-Ville*, …etc.) there would be one that answers to the king.\n\nLegally, La Reynie was not granted extreme power. There still were issues with other institutions on some matters but therefore we can call this reform the creation of modern police. One institution with a skilled man at its head, that is entirely dedicated to policing. Also, what it means is that it grants a greater influence on the king over the population. In a mix of Christian ideals and Roman legacy of imperial control, French kings slowly increased their meddling with everyday life of their subjects through edicts (sometimes on small matters) and acts at the expense of lords, religious and urban authorities. In reality, the year 1667 does not change much to how the police worked on the field as most changes would happen in the next century, but it is a huge and so far, a unique political change for the Royal State, drastically increasing the bureaucracy and its influence on the capital.\n\nYou asked what the tasks of La Reynie's police were. In a few words, they worked for the Common Good of an ordered society. Practically it means that they had many different missions. Some of their most important tasks was to make sure the city was well supplied. The police would verify prices, the quality and the various terms of sales (ingredients of bread for example), they would watch over the stocks of grain, especially the corn exchange built in the second half of the 18-century. The Lieutenance was involved in the plans to build the corn exchange to gather the merchants as much as possible in one (circular) place. Still, the police did not have the mean nor the will to entirely transform the exchanges between merchants and customers. I am not saying that everything was transferred in the *Halles*. Regarding the urban space, one of the key mission of the police was to prevent fires and other hazards. They would enforce the ban to work at night (because of the candles) in the buildings still made from wood or prohibited people from having objects such as pots on their windows for example. They also inspected buildings and could write reports to have them demolished if considered dangerous (to prevent collapses). Nicolas Vidoni (see sources below) listed 3 records written by *commissaires* concerning dangerous buildings in 1699 and 109 in 1767. The Lieutenance was also key in providing instructions and councils to urban planners (paving the roads, ensuring the safety and efficiency of the street cleaners, keeping the streets accessible to both pedestrians and carriages. Antoine de Sartine, Lieutenant Général from 1759 to 1774, was very keen on keeping the streets as clean as possible for hygiene concerns but also lighted to discourage potential thieves (this especially in the wealthier neighbourhoods)."
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"http://portail.atilf.fr/cgi-bin/dico1look.pl?strippedhw=police&dicoid=NICOT1606"
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2iikyj | i clean about 2 pounds of dust from my room every month. what does this means for my lungs ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2iikyj/eli5_i_clean_about_2_pounds_of_dust_from_my_room/ | {
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"Not much, unless the dust is something allergen inducing (dander, mite poop), or with carcinogenic/irritating physical properties like asbestos. Or unless you have a compromised respiratory system, like from asthma or smoking. Healthy lungs do a great job handling everyday amounts of dust by using mucous to trap foreign particles and cilia (hair like appendages on cells) to push the dusty mucous out. Also, most of those two pounds of dust are settled on the ground where they aren't going to be inhaled.",
"Where is your room exactly that it has two poinds of dust a month?",
"ELI5: How did you figure 2 pounds of dust? Seems like way too much. Just curious.",
"I heard once (maybe from a movie?) that household dust is roughly 80% skin. true?",
"Two POUNDS. Of dust. Every MONTH ...what? Where the hell are you living?",
"Not to worry, thanks to the mucociliary escalator. There are millions of fingerlike projections in your airway that all beat upwards. Goodbye dusty old mucus and hello new clean mucus. [Here's a super cheesy animation](_URL_0_). \n\nAlso check your air filter that's a lot of dust!",
"I really hope someone answers this. I can dust my whole house every day and three days later there is a layer of dust on every surface a centimeter thick. I am not exaggerating but I wish I was.",
"Beakman can ELI5 on this one. _URL_0_"
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9356wm | why do humans see little perfect circles when there is light bloom irl? | I've always noticed these perfect discrete circles of light, especially when it's a light in a dark location. Can anyone explain why it seems to form these perfect circles which almost seem to spread out discretely? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9356wm/eli5_why_do_humans_see_little_perfect_circles/ | {
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"What little perfect circles are you talking about? I don't see them. I do see auras of light around very bright lamps, such as the street lamps at night. Is that what you're referring to?",
"When you look at a single small light spot in the dark, does it have an [Airy Disk](_URL_0_) pattern? If so, it means your eyes are optically really good!\n\nThe airy disk pattern shows up when a lens such as the eye focuses a single light source down to a spot. Because a limited column of light enters your eye, it cannot focus to a sharp single point and instead has some ripples from the center that show up as rings. The closer you are to a symmetric airy disk, you closer you are to having the best possible optical lens.\n\nEveryone's eyes are different so people will have a wide variety of spots that they see. For example, without my glasses, a single spot in the dark becomes a grid of 12 points!"
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3wpp8g | what is the piezoelectric effect | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wpp8g/eli5_what_is_the_piezoelectric_effect/ | {
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"Basically it's where a material will generate electricity if mechanical force is placed on it, and it will vibrate if electricity is placed on it. One of the more interesting aspects of physics, imo. If you get a piezoelectric material (generally quartz) of a specific thickness, it will vibrate at a specific frequency. Always. That's how we get quartz watches."
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eoe7l6 | why does chapstick/lip balm make your lips peel more than before you used it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eoe7l6/eli5_why_does_chapsticklip_balm_make_your_lips/ | {
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"You’re getting a lot of pretty bad responses. The answer is simply that many lip balms contain ingredients that actually dry out, irritate, or sensitize the skin. Common culprits include lanolin, camphor, menthol, vitamin E, artificial fragrances, limonene/linalool, fragrant plant oils, and castor oil. Not everyone will react to all these ingredients, but it’s hard to find products that don’t use at least a few. Fragrances/flavors can also promote lip-licking, which can cause dryness.",
"Oily / waxy substances like chapstick make the dead and dry layers of your lips softer, but they can't make them any less dead. They just make the dead layers peel off easier.\n\nI find that raw apple does a better job of exfoliating my dry lips and getting down to the live healthy layer of skin.",
"I work in a cosmetics manufacturing facility that produces Chapstick brand products for Pfizer (among other companies). I’m one of the people that compounds all the “raw materials” together into a finished product in mixing kettles. I can tell you first hand there’s a lot of nasty stuff that goes into some of these products, some of which can indeed cause skin irritation, as well as respiratory inflammation when they’re heated and give off fumes. PPE like gloves, goggles, and respirator masks are a MUST around this stuff.",
"I actually believe it is because the excess skin that was dry and damaged is falling off, while the chapstick hydrates and moisturizes the healthy skin underneathe.",
"Chapstick/lip balm doesn’t completely keep your lips safe from drying out, and by the time you’ve applied it your lips are already chapped. Then it feels like you need to keep adding coats of chapstick, which is why it feels like it’s having a negative effect.",
"There are many products for your lips that give temporary relief, but contain ingredients that make you reliant on the product. You have to use them more frequently for the same effect. I apologise for commenting without knowing the science, but I was on Accutane (Roaccutane), and I learned this the hard way. I got so addicted to an ordinary drug store product that I had to almost detox on Vaseline - which burned like hell because my lips were so cracked and peeling. Maybe you could research the product you are using to see if you are becoming reliant on it?",
"Besides bad substance issues, lip balms are meant to peel off dead skin cells without further hurting healthy cells. Those cells that are already peeled off and hanging on one's lip cannot go back to moist fresh skin. With lip balms, you can safely peel it off without seeing blood.",
"My wife had a bad reaction to chapstick (full red ring around her lips) the dermatologist recommended Aquaphor but it still has active ingredients. She put it on religiously and it just made things worse. She now uses Vaseline only and uses prescription lipstick. Some of these products are brutal.",
"Chapstick/lipbalm is a class A drug that'll get you hooked in no time. Sure you lips feels moist but then you need a little more and a little more until suddenly you are 50k in debt to your local lip product dealer and still your lips are dry. Be smart kids don't do lip products.",
"It is the mineral oils (usually a petrol derivative. Think Petrolatum Jelly Aka Vaseline) in your Chapstick/lip balm that does that. \nYour skin is unable to absorb them, so they just sit on your skin. Usually, your skin produce something to moisturize itself. But, after you used Chapstick with that kind of ingredients, it sees that there's already something doing its job. So it thinks \"my job is done here, I deserve a day off\"... The more you use it, the more your skin gets lazy. The more your skin gets lazy, the less it produce your lips' natural moisturizer. That is why your lips peel more after you used Chapstick than before you did.\nSource: I'm an esthetician",
"I used to use chapstick all the time and my lips were constantly needing it. I decided to try going without it and I've never gone back. \n\nMy lips get bad once or twice a year now but I just get through it without any product and when I come out the other side I'm all good usually till the next turn of the season. \n\nAny science to all this or is it just in my head and I'm bound to become an anti-vaxxer?"
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1ja3nj | what does the atf do and why are those 3 entities lumped together? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ja3nj/eli5_what_does_the_atf_do_and_why_are_those_3/ | {
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"The ATF is basically defined by just a couple of federal laws, primarily the Volstead Act (Booze), the 1934 National Firearms Act (machine guns, explosives, etc), and a bunch of random excise taxes. They are sort of a weird hybrid between the IRS criminal investigation division (finding tax evaders) and the FBI (prosecuting violations of federal laws). The unifying theme, though, is the taxes- since even the NFA relies on Congress' taxing powers (and is structured as a tax).",
"The ATF grew out of the Treasury Department's Bureau of Prohibition, and was re-purposed in 1968 after the passage of the Gun Control Act.\n\nEDIT: Now to move out of ELI5 territory to make this more comprehensive. The Bureau of Prohibition began under the Treasury Department, and after repeal, dealt solely with alcohol taxation. Then the IRS began to move into its territory. That was dealt with by making the IRS a investigative unit under Treasury's auspices, and the ATU (as the ATF was called at the time) was the enforcement arm. Then the Gun Control Act of 1968 came along, and firearms became taxable, therefore falling under the IRS/ATF umbrella. Tobacco kind of 'fell' into the ATF's purview under the same logic of alcohol taxation/enforcement. A slightly incomplete explanation, since it leaves out several layers of politics and a pissing contest between J. Edgar Hoover and Harry Anslinger, but it covers the process fairly well, I think. ",
"Thanks, you guys! I could keep asking a million questions and will, if you are willing to keep answering, but y'all answered my question very quickly. I actually woke up in the middle of the night wondering this and thought--don't forget to ask reddit tomorrow.",
"I have an interesting experience with the ATF that I think may help explain some of the things they do. Last year in february, I was arrested at my home for a noise violation and subsequently possession of marijuana (they found the stuff because the police saw my guncase and asked where the firearm was. \n\nI only have mine for home defense and sport, not in anyway related to drugs\\pot. About 7 or 8 months later, I went with my gf to go gun shopping as we spend a few weekends a month shooting for fun\\sport. I filled out the federal background check paperwork and was given the response of \"Delayed\". I had gotten approved before the drug incident, but as one of the questions asked \"Are you now a user or have you ever been addicted to a controlled substance\" or something along those lines. Seeing as how I wasnt addicted or smoking, I answered no. \n\n5 days later I called and was told I could come buy my Mossberg 710 .22lr. I picked it up for around $250 and all was well...\n\n2 months later I get a phone call from Special Agent \"Warren\" (different name) with the ATFE. He asks me about the purchase, and a few other questions and it turns out that by answering the background check question \"No\"and purchasing the rifle I had violated federal law and was looking at 10 years in federal prison. All while coding at my desk at work. \n\nTo make a long story short, he said I could go sell the gun back to vendor, (I got $150) and get rid of my ammunition. I had over 5,000 rounds of .22(about 10 boxes--this is when you could find it). So I'm pissed and mad but at the same time I avoided legal trouble and just went with the whole \"lesson learned\" mantra. \n\nA week goes by and the agent calls me again. He references the original police report where they had found my gun, and subsequently arrested me for possession. He then tells me I have to get rid of my .40 Sig Sauer that I've had for over 5 years. \n\nI can either sell it or transfer to a family member. Seeing as my sister is the only family near me, I get him and her connected and he sets up the transfer. We all meet at her house and fill out paper work for the gun, my background and hers. Once it's all done and finished he tells me I can have the gun back a year from the date of the arrest. \n\nHe then threatens to throw my sister and husband in jail along with me if they provide me access to the weapon at any time before that date. \n\nTHEN, he gives me a 25 minute lecture about the dangers of smoking pot, (which to this day I've stopped smoking as my career has lent itself to being more enticing) and he would have gone on for another hour it seemed before my brother in made him leave. Both of them defended the choices I've made as well as how I've changed things in my daily life. \n\nTL;DR The point is the ATFE enforces federal laws on substances and weapons. ",
"They are also the group distilleries report excise tax to. TTB is a subset of the ATF. ",
"Because no Government agency goes away once its created. ",
"5-year-old answer: The ATF grew out of the department of the treasury division responsible for collecting taxes/prosecuting offenders of dangerous tax stamp industries. These people were called \"revenoors\" and usually dealt with bootleggers who were trying to undercut legitimate businesses in the alcohol and tobacco industries at the turn of the 20th century. Typically these were people smuggling in booze or cigars and trying to avoid paying taxes.\n\nThen prohibition came, and the job changed. The ATU was formed from the original group in 1920 as america essentially created gangland violence out of thin air by making fun illegal, and where fun is illegal only criminals have fun. And booze. And machine guns.\n\nThe ATU was eventually moved from Treasury to Justice, and was even a division of the FBI for a few years until 1933 where famous members like Elliot Ness and the Untouchables fought gangsters for the right to collect taxes on imported alcohol and other forms of fun. In 1933 Prohibition ended and the ATU was returned to Treasury.\n\nAs the units of the ATU had proven highly successful in dealing with armed and combative tax-dodgers through the 20s and 30s, it was decided that tax collection and enforcement for guns would be their job as well, though this was really just an extension of their responsibilities related to gangland violence as the only taxed weapons were machine guns (i.e. they weren't enforcing private citizen access to rifles or handguns as the gun control act was still decades away).\n\nIn the 1950s, the government consolidated the enforcement of the tobacco industry into the ATU, creating the ATTD.\n\nIn 1968 congress enacted the Gun Control Act and placed new restrictions (i.e. taxes) on guns. The ATTD was turned into the ATF.\n\nIn 2003, the ATF was returned to Justice, rebranded the BATFE, and will probably be there for another decade before they go back to being tax collectors.\n\nGrown-up Answer: The ATF under whatever name is a bunch of tax collectors. The only way this country can actually OUTLAW something that would be considered a personal liberty (say, pot) is to have a tax stamp requirement that can't be met. This was the way prohibition ACTUALLY worked. If you want to stop private citizens from doing \"a thing\" you make the tax on that thing SUPER EXPENSIVE and IMPOSSIBLE to get, and then give heavily armed people the power to enforce the taxes that you won't let people pay even if they wanted to.\n\nWorks for alcohol, works for tobacco, works for things that go bang.\n\nPossession of marijuana is a tax violation. Possession of a machine gun is a tax violation. Some tax violations have fines. Some will send you to jail. The people who used to enforce those \"taxes\" were scary dudes with heavy weapons.\n\nRuby Ridge, Waco, every other separatists' wet-dream...were actually tax stamp enforcement actions. ATF. Not Justice. Not FBI...the freaking TREASURY department.\n\nIs the BATFE neutered? No...but it's just an arm of an often confused and self-defeating Justice department. Be afraid when they go back to Treasury...the tax man doesn't mess around."
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64dgzq | Are the effects of quantum entanglement instantaneous or are limited by the speed of light? | If two photons are entangled and are separated by a light-year, would it take a year for one photon to show the changes made to the other? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/64dgzq/are_the_effects_of_quantum_entanglement/ | {
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"The effect is instantaneous. Specifically, say two people separate two entangled particles some great distance apart without destroying the entanglement between them. They both agree to measure the same observable of the two particles, such as their spin along some axis. If the first measures their particle's spin as up, then that person knows that, know matter how soon the second person measures their particle (even if light could not have traveled between the two observers in that amount of time), the second person will certainly measure spin down. Of course, there's no useful information being transmitted faster-than-light here, since the two people can only confirm that the results of their measurements agree AFTER they've reunited, and that process of reuniting will certainly not violate the speed of light.",
"Two entangled particles do not influence each other. They are just correlated in a weird way, that is different from classical correlation, but acting on one half of an entangled pair will never affect the other in an observable way.",
"Entanglement is instantaneous. This is not a problem because physics is not inherently local. \n\nHowever, that does not mean that anything is travelling faster than the speed of light since no information can be gained through such a measurement. This is because when each observer performs the measurement independently, their result will be indistinguishable from what they would get measuring an unentangled photon. Only once they travel a light-year will they see that their photons were entangled. \n\nThis is what is meant by \"causality\".",
"If we use the Copenhagen Interpretation, the effects of measuring one half of an entangled pair is to instantaneously collapse the wave function of the other particle. However, there is no way for a single observer to tell that the particle they are measuring was collapsed by their own measurement or by the measurement of a distant observer on the entangled partner. \n\nFor entangled photons, the measurement would be to determine the polarization of each photon that hits a detector. Each observer just sees a series of photons, half of which are in one polarization and half in the orthogonal polarization. Each observer finds the polarization of the next photon is completely unpredictable, like a perfect coin toss. When they get together to compare notes later on, they will find that the measurements they each made are perfectly correlated with each other. But this is the only way to show that the particles were entangled at all. Without comparing notes there is nothing strange or unusual about entangled particles measured individually. ",
"It depends on whether the entanglement occurred during a full moon and whether eye of newt was used versus ginseng root. Various constellations are thought to modify the effect, however, this has yet to be proven."
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51yz37 | why is the iphone 7 waterproof in 1 meter deep water, but not any deeper? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/51yz37/eli5_why_is_the_iphone_7_waterproof_in_1_meter/ | {
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"Because water pressure increases the deeper you go into water and something that can withhold the pressure of 1M of water can't necessarily withhold the pressure of 10M of water. ",
"Add-on question: Why upto 30 mins? What changes after 30 minutes?",
"The deeper something is in water, the more pressure it's subjected to--there's more water weighing on top of it. (This is also true for other liquids and gases; air pressure on Mt. Everest is much lower than at sea level.) At a high water pressure, the water might be able to bypass seals and other protective measures, which is why things aren't \"waterproof\" in an absolute sense but only up to a certain pressure.\n\nKeep in mind that water depth in this case is just a way to express static pressure. You could subject the iPhone to more pressure even in water that's less deep, such as by spraying it with pressurized water or forcefully moving through water, and it wouldn't be waterproof under that circumstance."
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25kou3 | I've seen AskHistorians answer many questions, but never THE question: What can accurately be said to have caused the "Fall of Rome", and how drastic was this fall? |
Speaking of the collapse of the western roman empire in the 5th century, of course. What are the underlying changes occurring in western civilization and the world at that time that allowed this to happen? I know I'm opening a big door here, but this is the most reputable venue to pose this question outside of academic papers that are directed at other academics and assume a bit of prior knowledge.
This is probably the premier question in the study of history, and I don't mean to start a lot of arguments, but I'm interested in how catastrophic the collapse actually was, and what its causes were, the degree human agency played in the fall, and what basic social changes happened to make it happen.
| AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/25kou3/ive_seen_askhistorians_answer_many_questions_but/ | {
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"**What is the “fall of Rome”?** Of course, as any Byzantinist can tell you, the Roman Empire did not cease to exist in the 5th century; for this reason, I'll try to stick to the expression “fall of the WRE” (Western Roman Empire) for the remainder of this message. It is, however, somewhat tricky to give a definition of this fall. Certainly, it did not happen overnight. Apart from the occasional failure of central authority to guarantee its immediate security (*e.g.* in 410), we can say that Italy remained under relatively constant Roman rule during the majority of the 5th century; certainly, it ceased before in other areas (Britain is the archetype of this; as S. Esmonde Cleary sets out in his book *The Ending of Roman Britain*, regardless of the fuzzy nature of the written evidence, we do know that something certainly did happen c. 405-10 that cut Britain from the monetary network of the Empire). We should also acknowledge that the “fall” was never intended to be definitive in the first place; Britons still were trying to get the attention of Ætius in the mid-5th century (and it can be argued that in some ways, the Empire did fall in the 3rd century, but that it managed to reassemble; in fact, the Justinianic reconquest is a partial reproduction of this pattern).\n\nIf one wants to give a definition that could cope with the diversity of this process, without euphemising too much the certainty of a fall (yes, the Church survived, but it was not the Empire; yes, Roman influence remained overwhelmingly important, but *ditto*), I would say that looking towards models of state failure is a good idea. Basically, the WRE ceased to exist when people ceased to believe in it, and especially in its capacity to take care of them. *Bagaudæ*, peasant/servile insurgencies (well, that's what our sources tell us, but this is an issue on which they were so biased that it is hard to know what they might omit), were a sign of the collapse of (the belief in) central authority; so was the apparition of hilltop forts in Briton-held Britain, or the importance of holy (wo)men and bishops in Gaul, and, of course, the unopposed take-over of chunks of imperial provinces by Germanic peoples. I would therefore tend to argue that it is a regional process above all; and this, in turn, has an important bearing on our appreciation of the seriousness of the fall.\n\n**How drastic was this fall?** As you may know, views on the nature of the fall of the Western Roman Empire (WRE) have been subject to a lot of recent re-evaluation; for instance, it has been recognised that the irenic nature of barbarian settlement (a conception that was, at the time people like W. Goffart published their works, a very important stepforward) probably had been exaggerated. Most importantly, while continuity of Roman institutions or functions has been shown in many places, their break in quantity as well as quantity has been emphasised. A very powerful statement of this view can be found in Bryan-Perkins' work about *The Fall of Rome (and the End of Civilisation)*. The space occupied by cities was drastically reduced in Northern Gaul and the urban character of Britain all but disappeared (some continuists, like K. Dark, argue for extensive survival of cities; S. Loseby, normally a specialist of Late Antique Southern Gaul, basically answered something along the lines of “if Britain in the 6th century was an urban civilisation, then Marseilles at the same time was the equivalent of modern Tokyo”). Some basic techniques, like the potter's wheel, apparently disappeared from Britain; in general, international industries tended to dwindle in the North (while standardised Roman pottery like the ARS continued to be exchanged in the Mediterranean—it can still be found in non-negligeable quantities in 6th century Marseilles, for instance).\n\nAll in all, a rule of thumb along the lines of “the farther off from Italy, the tougher the fall” would probably be true. Certainly, some institutions survived everywhere; even Britain was still able to produce skilled rhetoricians such as Gildas, who may have been formed in the late 5th century. In Gaul, families can be followed from the 4th to the late 6th century (they certainly prospered after this date, but we cannot prove it). There is no doubt, however, that the general trend of the 5th and 6th century was that of regionalisation, in material culture, but also in language (more and more, linguists tend to think that c. 500 was a turning point in the evolution towards Romance, and that pre-500 regional differences may have been overstated; see, *e.g.* J. N. Adams, *The Regional Diversification of Latin 200 BC - AD 600*).\n\n**What caused it?** You seem to be looking for overarching social explanations; unfortunately, I don't think they exist. The concept of empire is an incredibly flexible thing; the ERE can be said to have remained truly “imperial” for at least 500 years after the fall of the West, and it is obvious that its social structure changed a lot during this very long period. To explain what happened in the 5th century West, there's really no way to avoid purely military and contingent factors (for a discussion of what made the West vulnerable, see [this post](_URL_0_) for some leads). Certainly, some historians have tried to find global explanations; some are convincing enough to be integrated as subsidary factors in more general models (*e.g.* the fact that *latifundia* were more common in the West, and that the concentration of landholdings made tax evasion more prevalent). If you are looking for a sweeping perspective, however, I would suggest that you look at the way empires tend to influence neighbouring peoples, something that has been thoroughly explored by people like Peter Heather. Imperial-“tribal” border zones tend to set off a series of processes—the military threat of the empire creates a new need for political unity; imperial attempts to undercut these attempts by choosing particular client tribe (to divide and rule) leads to a concentration of wealth in a few hands, and thus, ironically, to an eventual centralisation of power; and this gradually builds into a very dangerous situation."
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7i1kx9 | why are printers so much harder to configure than other appliances? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7i1kx9/eli5_why_are_printers_so_much_harder_to_configure/ | {
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"1. Printers aren't really an appliance. They're a computer peripheral.\n\n2. In what ways are printers hard to configure? Sometimes drivers can be a pain, but again, that's a computer thing, not an appliance thing. Once installed they're fairly simple to utilize. Print. Change color settings if you feel like it or just use defaults. Done. "
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8fy00z | how does a coil generate a magnetic force? | Most answers I've read assume I know what happens at the atomic level. I know about the flow of electricity sure, but I don't know why coils specifically have the same properties as a typical bar magnet. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8fy00z/eli5_how_does_a_coil_generate_a_magnetic_force/ | {
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"When electrical current flows through a conductor, it creates a magnetic field around the wire. This field is oriented such that the lines of Force revolve around the axis of the wire. When this wire is coiled, aligns all of these magnetic fields into one large magnetic field. Essentially, it adds the magnetic forces together. Vsauce has a very good video on this on YouTube.\n\nElectricity and magnetism are very closely related. If you are interested in learning more about the physics behind these phenomena, I suggest picking up a copy of a book I studied while I was in middle school, entitled “Physics Simplified”. It contained many helpful explanations. It served for me as an ELI5, except it was an ELI11 because I was 11. I believe a pdf May be available online, but I was unable to find it as I am on mobile. "
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qysos | The Mongols and Islam | Can someone point me in the right direction for English-language primary documents regarding the Mongol conquests from Iran and westward, mainly dealings with Islam? I'm actually not too picky about what they are I'm just looking for something to start with and from there I'm good. Thank you very much, I must have swallowed some stupid pills this past week and I'm failing pretty hard.
**Edit: I don't mean anything that was written in English at the time, I'm looking for primary documents that have been translated into English. ** | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/qysos/the_mongols_and_islam/ | {
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"Primary documents? In English regarding the Mongol conquests? Uh, I don't think so. The amount of writing done in the 1300s in English is... well, you know. Also, you'll also do better if you break it down to the different Khanates, since the Ilkhanate, the Golden Horde, and the Chagatai all converted at some point, I believe, so you might have to search for more specifics, like [Berke Khan of the Golden Horde](_URL_2_) and [Ghazan of the Ilkhanate](_URL_0_).\n\nThere might be primary French or Latin sources though, considering that Ghazan allied himself with the Crusaders in Outremer against the Mamluks. I haven't read the entire book, but I think Peter Jackson's [The Mongols and the West](_URL_1_) can be a start.",
"Not sure if this will be helpful at all, I haven't studied the mongols to any great extent, except insofar as they impacted Outremer. That being said, an interesting character that may or may not be helpful is [William of Rubruck](_URL_0_), he was a Franciscan monk who travelled to the Mongol court in ca 1253. I haven't read his account myself so I can't get to detailed about it, but I don't believe it is specifically about the conquests themselves.\n\nAlso, if you haven't already, there is a small section here: _URL_1_ Caliphate, devoted to the mongols.",
"Read the stuff about Ain Jalut, a battle between the mongols and the mamluks. If you can get your hands on a copy of this _URL_0_, you could probably find primary sources (most notably the famous letter calling for the surrender of the Mamluks by the Mongol Quetuba (sp?)).",
"[*The Travels of an Alchemist*](_URL_0_) (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1931) contains a translation of first hand accounts by Changchun of Mongol rule in C13th, but as far as I know there are no primary written sources before the early 1200s.",
"yes, yes i can, for this is what i do.\n\nyou will be wanting Rashid al-Din's compendium of chronicals, translated by wheeler thackston (what country are you in? this can be hard to find as the publishers went bust, but i know there are copies at SOAS, Oxford and Cambridge (not in the British Library), as well as Harvard and UWisconsin, Madison).\n\nyou will also want Mustaufi's Zafarnama, which you can download as a thesis (from back in the days when you could do a translation as a thesis) from the British Librarie's Ethos [thesis download system.](_URL_0_). \n\nAlso look at the travelogues of Rabban Sauma and some of the Georgian and Armenian court histories.\n\nIf you PM me, I can send you a pretty full bibliography.",
"A Muslim historian named Al-Juyvani provided an extensive account of the Mongol conquests in the middle-east. I used sections of his text when I taught my high-school students about Genghis Khan:\n\n_URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://books.google.com/books?id=fxC5_iUVY-YC&pg=PA253&dq=ghazan+islam&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6cdiT4HMLtDyrQfH09G9Bw&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=ghazan%20islam&f=false",
"http://books.google.com/books?id=7FLUMVIqIvwC&dq=The+Mongols+and+the+West&hl=en&sa=X&ei=nshiT9i... | |
40e9rm | Dinosaur carving on wall inside Angkor Wat? | Several months ago, my big brother travelled to Cambodia and took tons of photos of the magnificent temple of Angkor Wat. He took tons of picture of carvings. On one wall, it showed three animals (a hoofed animal, as it seems, and some reptile, and another animal that I forgot).
Engraved in the wall of the *some reptile* was what seemed to a *Stegosaurus*!. It clearly looked like one, with large plates on its back and a bulky body, and small head.
Is it just that the ancient Cambodians of this time made a carving of a *known* reptile native to Cambodia, and we *today* seem to look at this as the form of a *dinosaur*?
I've always heard theories of humans and dinosaurs living together (yes it sounds ridiculous).
But the carving is *clearly a stegosaurus*. It's really breathtaking, the photo of it that my big brother took, and I have no words for it. Historians, what are your thought?
Note* : Though I'm unable to upload my brother's photo right now, here's another [photo](_URL_0_) of it I found from Google Images. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/40e9rm/dinosaur_carving_on_wall_inside_angkor_wat/ | {
"a_id": [
"cytkvmm"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"There's numerous reasons that it's very clearly *not* a stegosaurus.\n\n* You mention a small head, but the animal depicted has a rather large one, with horns at that. It's much more of a rhino or boar head than anything a mildly talented artists would mistake as the stegosaur's [tiny](_URL_0_) head.\n\n* The other similar carvings have plenty going on in the background. The spines could just as easily be leaves. Well not just as easily- a lot more easily.\n\n* This temple in particular, Ta Prohm, has seen plenty of use by movie crews, and they have been known to alter the temple in unsavory ways against their contract.\n\n* In the end, it's just one image. Archaeologists *never* make any conclusions from single pieces of evidence, particularly when it's a conclusion as denied by every other data as this one."
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.paleo.cc/ce/cambo-mammal2.jpg"
] | [
[
"http://res.cloudinary.com/dk-find-out/image/upload/q_80,h_700/Stegosaurus1_gmj1la.jpg"
]
] | |
n1wqk | Do the symptoms your body creates during a flu help you get rid of the virus? | I know the flu causes stuffy nose, runny nose, cough, fever, sore throat and I also know that many of these things are a mechanism by the body as a result of the virus and not the virus itself doing these things. My question is do any of these symptoms actually help your body rid you of the virus? Would I die if I never developed a cough? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/n1wqk/do_the_symptoms_your_body_creates_during_a_flu/ | {
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"Yes, the symptoms do help you during infection.\n\nFever is useful for multiple reasons. One is that processes that the virus needs to replicate may not work as well at higher temperatures. A fever may also make you \"leaky\" which will make more fluid drain to lymph nodes, which is where a lot of your immune activation takes place.\n\nA sore throat or inflamed throat is the result of your immune system trying to clear the free virus and virally infected cells. The irritation is the by-product of the damage caused by the immune response.\n\nSwollen lymph nodes are also the result of your immune system activating in response to the virus. During infection your lymph nodes will swell because your immune cells are undergoing activation/replication at those sites.\n\nCongestion is the result of your body producing mucus which serve to coat and block any more pathogens from infecting your airways.\n\nIts interesting to think about, but all these symptoms are caused by the immune system, not the virus itself. That's not to say they aren't important. Without these symptoms the virus could basically cause wide-spread infection, which is serious business.\n\n",
"Most influenza symptoms are caused by the cytokine response to the virus (PMID:10799783). Some of these symptoms (like fever) actually aid in controlling the virus, while others are just side effects of the immune response. Fever specifically helps by reducing viral replication (_URL_0_). Interestingly, while the cytokine response usually helps clear the virus, in certain cases, it can actually get out of control and kill you (PMID:21075220). \n\nWhether the specific symptoms help you is dependent on what the symptom is. In the case of coughing, you would probably not die if you didn't cough, although you may develop a secondary infection that could kill you as a result of having a build-up of mucus/fluid in your lungs. Or you may take longer to recover, although this last part is just speculation.",
"Yes, the symptoms do help you during infection.\n\nFever is useful for multiple reasons. One is that processes that the virus needs to replicate may not work as well at higher temperatures. A fever may also make you \"leaky\" which will make more fluid drain to lymph nodes, which is where a lot of your immune activation takes place.\n\nA sore throat or inflamed throat is the result of your immune system trying to clear the free virus and virally infected cells. The irritation is the by-product of the damage caused by the immune response.\n\nSwollen lymph nodes are also the result of your immune system activating in response to the virus. During infection your lymph nodes will swell because your immune cells are undergoing activation/replication at those sites.\n\nCongestion is the result of your body producing mucus which serve to coat and block any more pathogens from infecting your airways.\n\nIts interesting to think about, but all these symptoms are caused by the immune system, not the virus itself. That's not to say they aren't important. Without these symptoms the virus could basically cause wide-spread infection, which is serious business.\n\n",
"Most influenza symptoms are caused by the cytokine response to the virus (PMID:10799783). Some of these symptoms (like fever) actually aid in controlling the virus, while others are just side effects of the immune response. Fever specifically helps by reducing viral replication (_URL_0_). Interestingly, while the cytokine response usually helps clear the virus, in certain cases, it can actually get out of control and kill you (PMID:21075220). \n\nWhether the specific symptoms help you is dependent on what the symptom is. In the case of coughing, you would probably not die if you didn't cough, although you may develop a secondary infection that could kill you as a result of having a build-up of mucus/fluid in your lungs. Or you may take longer to recover, although this last part is just speculation."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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"http://pathmicro.med.sc.edu/mayer/vir-host2000.htm"
],
[],
[
"http://pathmicro.med.sc.edu/mayer/vir-host2000.htm"
]
] | |
6hfmov | how come europeans measure everything with the metric system except screens/monitors and wheels? | I've lived in Europe for almost 4 years and these are the only exceptions I've noticed. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6hfmov/eli5_how_come_europeans_measure_everything_with/ | {
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"Industry Standards. Some regulations or standardization rules were developed first in areas where the metric system was not used, thus it became industry standard for an international company (even if they are in a country that uses the metric system) to report standardized figures in the original measuring system. This is really common for components for larger machines (wheels for cars have to fit around brake calipers, computer computer monitors have to fit in tight desks and require compatibility with a GPU, etc) because it would be nearly impossible for anyone to find the correct sized parts for a bigger machine like a car or computer if the measuring system were different for each part. ",
"I recall years ago Austin attemted to use a metric sized wheel here in the UK (I'm sure BMW have tried it too), But all this did was make the tyres harder to get and more expensive. Wheels have stayed in Inches because it's just too costly for everyone to change."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] | |
3yokeq | How safe was it for VIPs such as Churchill to visit active theatres of war during WW2? | I've recently seen footage of Churchill visiting troops in North Africa and it got me thinking about the logistics involved in ensuring someone as important as this was kept safe when visiting such places. Obviously I'm not an expert and so the first reaction I have to this is that's an unnecessary risk given that Europe was occupied by Axis forces at this time and the North African campaign was still ongoing, but maybe it wasn't as dangerous as I think it would have been? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3yokeq/how_safe_was_it_for_vips_such_as_churchill_to/ | {
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"text": [
"Churchill's trip to North Africa in August 1942 was probably the most potentially hazardous. He certainly passed through airspace where Axis aircraft patrolled including the Bay of Biscay and the Mediterranean. He could have taken a safer (from Axis activity) route via West Africa but that would have taken longer.\n\nPlanners would have relied on secrecy and mathematics to keep Churchill safe. Luftwaffe and *Reggia Aeronautica* patrols were limited over these areas, and Beaufighters could have been used in the Mediterranean to provide some cover (I am not certain if they were). Churchill's Liberator would have been very unlucky to have been interfered with.\n\nAllied air forces by this time were patrolling aggressively from Malta, which had been under acute bombardment just weeks before. This would have helped pin enemy aircraft on defensive duties.\n\nProbably a greater hazard than interception was the capriciousness of aircraft in 1942: it is not often appreciated that in World War II aircraft were lost to accidents *all the time*. Navigational errors, mechanical problems, crew inexperience and just bad luck saw thousands of air crew killed or just disappeared. Churchill's US-made Liberator would have had a top pilot and meticulous servicing, but the possibility of disaster was there any time a plane took off.\n\nThe purpose of Churchill's visit was to change the leadership of the 8th Army, which had been a great source of consternation for him for 18 months. As if to illustrate the above point, his choice for a new 8th Army leader, 'Straffer' Gott, was killed in an air accident at this time. The 8th's defeat at Gazala in June 1942 had been a great embarrassment for Churchill, at the time visiting Roosevelt in Canada (a trip he took in a battleship- a very safe way to travel as U-boats would have had a minimal chance of torpedoing a fast, armoured ship). He was moved to visit Egypt in August to put right the command problems with the Army ahead of Operation Torch, scheduled for November."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
n226l | Time and the Death of the Universe | I am by no means a science expert, but as I understand it, the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate. Eventually, all matter will decay back into energy, right? So my question is when we get to the point when the last particle decays and the universe is billions of times bigger than it is now, and expanding exponentially faster every second, how will time itself be affected? Will it become infinitely fast? Infinitely slow? Unaffected? Thanks. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/n226l/time_and_the_death_of_the_universe/ | {
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"text": [
" > all matter will decay back into energy\n\n[Only if the proton is not stable](_URL_0_).\n\n",
" > all matter will decay back into energy\n\n[Only if the proton is not stable](_URL_0_).\n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_decay"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_decay"
]
] | |
vapnf | Is the Islamic slaughtering of animals actually less painful than "regular" slaughtering? | Some time ago, professor Schultz and Dr. Hazim from the Hanover (Germany) did research on the subject of ritual slaughtering of animals. They concluded that in the Halal method of slaughtering, the group of test subjects felt less pain than those in the group that goth the method with CBP stunning.
I have a hard time believing that slicing someones veins and let them bleed to death is less painful than CBP stunning. I'm also worried about the reliability of the research itself, since I can only find the conclusions on Islamic sites and I'm unable to find the actual research.
That makes my question: Is the Islamic slaughtering of animals actually less painful than "regular" slaughtering?
Sources used: [Imam Reza Network](_URL_1_), [Radio Islam](_URL_0_) | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/vapnf/is_the_islamic_slaughtering_of_animals_actually/ | {
"a_id": [
"c5310qb"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"According to the Farm Animal Welfare Council, Halal and Kosher butchering processes cause more pain and suffering than newer methods.\n\n_URL_0_\n"
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.radioislam.org.za/a/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1558&Itemid=47",
"http://www.imamreza.net/eng/imamreza.php?id=7197"
] | [
[
"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2977086.stm"
]
] | |
t60g3 | How big are lake tides? | In answer to another question, someone said lakes have tides, but very small ones, compared to the ocean. This seems reasonable, but how big are they? Is there a formula that predicts how big a tide will be, based on the size of the lake? How would you go about measuring a lake tide, assuming the tide is so small it would be masked by the "noise" of ordinary waves? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/t60g3/how_big_are_lake_tides/ | {
"a_id": [
"c4jxfmu"
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"text": [
"Any body of water will have tides because of the response to tidal forcing. Because of reasonably complex orbital mechanics, the tidal forcing [has several constituent periods](_URL_1_).\n\nBy itself, that will create a small tide -- but it will almost certainly be imperceptible. In the ocean, we see larger tides because of [tidal resonance](_URL_2_), where one of the tidal periods is (approximately) a natural wavelength of the system. Because of the way the dynamical equations work, this is most likely with a [Kelvin wave](_URL_0_), which is a shoreline-trapped wave that propagates around the basin. (That's also why you're more likely to see high tides at the shoreline, compared to the middle of the ocean).\n\nNow, the trick is that with lakes the surface waves normally move too quickly for any kind of resonance with the tides. You'll be more likely to have a resonance with an [internal tide](_URL_3_) -- a wave seen in the boundary between warm surface water and colder, deeper water. Since hot water is less dense than cold water[1], you can see waves in that interface. But since the density difference isn't great, the waves are slow.\n\nTo see this kind of stratification, you'd need a deep-ish lake (10m+ depth should do it) during the late spring- > mid fall months.\n\nNow, actually measuring this is another matter, and since I haven't seen any research on internal tides in lakes I'm being very speculative here. To measure it, I imagine you'd need to take data over a very long period of time -- probably months -- and do a frequency analysis to look for spectral peaks at the appropriate tidal frequencies[2].\n\nThe biggest confounding factors for this analysis would be changes to the lake. The stratification gets stronger in summer and weaker in spring/fall, and that by itself will change resonance. The ideal lake for this kind of study would be one in a very steady climate that keeps more or less the same stratification year-round, without much in the way of unsteady weather.\n\n[1] -- You'll also see the effect with fresh versus salt water, but that's much less important in lakes.\n\n[2] -- Of course, the frequencies of the various diurnal and semi-diurnal tides are very close together, so distinguishing them will take a -very- long data set."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin_wave",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_tide#Tidal_constituents",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_resonance",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_tide"
]
] | |
43jtyt | how do the high explosive shells of naval artillery explode on impact? how do the armor piercing shells explode once they've penetrated armor and are inside a ship? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43jtyt/eli5_how_do_the_high_explosive_shells_of_naval/ | {
"a_id": [
"czipxg2"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Shells that go off on impact use a simple [contact fuze](_URL_2_). Armor-piercing shells (like HEAT rounds), however, don't actually explode inside anything. Rather, they explode just outside the armor, sending forward a jet of molten metal which does the actual penetration. These types of warheads are called shaped charges and take advantage of the [Munroe effect](_URL_0_). Here is a [video](_URL_1_) demonstrating how they operate.\n\nNote, there are other types of armor-piercing shells (like APFSDS rounds) that utilize pure kinetic energy--these are essentially ultra-high-powered metal darts."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaped_charge",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjH0tpnisLo",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_fuze"
]
] | ||
nissp | why don't people check wikipedia before submitting an eli5 post? | Hmm... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nissp/eli5_why_dont_people_check_wikipedia_before/ | {
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"text": [
"Did you look up human psychology and laziness/natural enegy conserving before posting this?",
"Did you look up human psychology and laziness/natural enegy conserving before posting this?"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] | |
1kp262 | When firing a bullet out of a gun, at which point does the bullet reach its maximum speed? Is it at the point the bullet leaves the barrel or is it a couple of feet later? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1kp262/when_firing_a_bullet_out_of_a_gun_at_which_point/ | {
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"text": [
"It depends on the length of the barrel and other factors like rifling, twist rate, smooth bore. It's possible the bullet could reach its maximum velocity somewhere in the barrel if it's long enough. Short barrelled guns like pistols will have the bullet reaching maximum velocity at the point where they exit the barrel. This is known as Muzzle Velocity. ",
"All of the accelerating force happens inside the gun - when the bullet is out of the barrel there is nothing to make it go faster than it was going at the moment it left the barrel."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] | ||
69om27 | how is the value of a new floating currency determined? | In forex trading, what determines the 'value' of a currency? Especially when it's being initially floated? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/69om27/eli5_how_is_the_value_of_a_new_floating_currency/ | {
"a_id": [
"dh8aseh"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"every morning in the market square they will auction off one forex. however many goats the winning bid is gets translated to their weight in salt and the salt is then sold on the open market. the value of the salt then becomes the price of one forex for the day. this process is repeated at 4:37 every morning.\n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
5pzk6v | how does our brain "edit out" our nose from our line of sight? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5pzk6v/eli5how_does_our_brain_edit_out_our_nose_from_our/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The same way you stop noticing anything else. It is always there completely unmoving and unchanged. It's there in your view and your brain sees it but compared to everything else in the view it's so unimportant that you ignore it. ",
"Its similar to [this image](_URL_0_) looking through binoculars. As long as you are looking straight ahead. In reality you do see your nose. Close one eye and look straight ahead at the computer screen. Do you see your nose? Of course you do. Its even there when both eyes are open but when both eyes are open the perspective viewpoint differences cancel each other out to some degree. Your nose is still there but it seems smaller or truncated."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=view+trough+binoculars&view=detailv2&&id=25BD60081D498498C2C80558258DC9CA2B06B085&selectedIndex=37&ccid=kEijzOBx&simid=608012996432169687&thid=OIP.kEijzOBxRdcIrmibWWvp1AEsCh&ajaxhist=0"
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bwq56v | What’s the best modern translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh? | I’m slightly obsessed with the Epic of Gilgamesh and own it in 3 translations already, including the 1960 Nancy Sandars translation, the 2003 (republished) Andrew George edition and the 2004 Stephen Mitchell version. Of them, I know the first is outdated (although some parts of the translation are still superb), the second is of high scholarly quality and the third is very much a *version* and not a *translation* (the author even positions himself as a new Sin-leqi-unninni) and should be enjoyed as its own piece of literature.
The modern versions make clear that new pieces of the story are being discovered all the time, and the *In Our Time* Gilgamesh episode from 2016 makes mention of recent new finds (without actually expanding on what they are though).
So is there anything more recent than Andrew George’s translation (which turns 20 this year!) incorporating the more recently discovered pieces of the story?
Alternatively, what are the best journal articles to read about developments on the story for a layperson/non-assyriologist like myself? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bwq56v/whats_the_best_modern_translation_of_the_epic_of/ | {
"a_id": [
"eq082bv"
],
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"text": [
"You have excellent timing. [A new edition by Benjamin Foster](_URL_1_) was published just last month. In addition to incorporating the new textual finds, it includes supplementary essays such as Gary Beckman's discussion of the Hittite fragments of the Gilgamesh epic (published as a separate edition [a few months ago](_URL_2_)).\n\nFor a thematic analysis of the Gilgamesh epic, Louise Pryke's recently published [book on Gilgamesh](_URL_0_) is well worth a read as well."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://books.google.com/books?id=gy6ODwAAQBAJ",
"https://books.wwnorton.com/books/webad.aspx?id=4294998181",
"https://books.google.com/books?id=P8fQuAEACAAJ"
]
] | |
2ryadv | deep sea exploration. what's being done and what has been done? | I'm just curious regarding the exploration of the deep deep sea, what has been done to uncover the secrets and is anything planned in the near future?
And what has been found so far. Why can't they just send a submarine down and see what they find? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ryadv/eli5_deep_sea_exploration_whats_being_done_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"cnkeitu"
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"text": [
"I have a friend who is a hadal (deep deep sea) ecologist so I'll answer with what I know from talking to her. \n\nWhat do we know? very little. Her PhD dissertation is trying to figure out what is down there and what they eat - in other words, the most basic ecological questions you could possibly ask. \n\nWhat's being done? Exploration. She has been on several cruises already in the past year to different trenches where they use a variety of equipment (including submarine type robot vehicles) to collect organisms and try to see what they can find. Once they have animals they do genetic analysis and look at stomach content, etc. \n\nThere's still a lot to be done - it is a branch of science that is wide open for discovery and will really start taking off soon. It's pretty amazing and exciting really, that with everything we know about the planet and beyond we are still at such a basic level of understanding about the deepest parts of the ocean."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
71gkfw | When/how was the Atlantic Ocean named? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/71gkfw/whenhow_was_the_atlantic_ocean_named/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"According to the Oxford English Dictionary *Atlantic* first appears in Late Middle English. It was adopted from the Latin *Atlanticus*, which in turn came from the Greek *Atlantikos*, which in turn came from *Atlant*- and the god Atlas.\n\nBut how did the god Atlas get associated with the what we call the Atlantic Ocean? I’m glad you asked. Atlas was the Titan who warred against the gods led by Zeus. When they were defeated, Atlas was condemned to carry the heavens upon his shoulders – the image of him holding a globe on his aching shoulders is very iconic.\n\nAtlas was associated with the sea from an early time. Some of the Homeric poems describes him as knowing the depths of the sea. The family tree of Greek gods is rather convoluted, to say the least, but in some versions Atlas is the god Oceanus’ nephew. Atlas coupled with the sea nymph Pleione, who gives birth to the Pleiades. The constellation Pleiades were important to the ancient mariners – Hesiod warns that when they dipped below the horizon in the winter it was a sign that sailing season was over. \n\nSo Atlas was vaguely associated with the ocean, but later authors begin to nail him down a bit more. Sometimes he is described as a mountain holding up the heavens. Where exactly this mountain was depends upon which writer you read, but eventually it become popular to say it was in northwest Africa. In fact, there is a mountain range there still called the Atlas Mountains. This geography was still a bit hazy, but Atlas is associated with the ocean and the far west (to the ancient Greeks). So there were writers as early as Herodotus who named the vast ocean past the pillars of Hercules after Atlas. By the early Roman Empire this seemed to be a common belief, and Valerius Flaccus placed Atlas off the African coast in the ocean which now bears his name.\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
9xberc | why do drafts of air extinguish small fires (e.g. candles) , yet intensify larger fires (e.g. bonfires)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9xberc/eli5_why_do_drafts_of_air_extinguish_small_fires/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Imagine a wave of food falling on a starving child. Imagine that same wave of food crashing into an obese person.",
"For most fires you have a _URL_0_ that illustrate what is needed for combustion. \n\n\nThat is heat, fuel, oxygen. if you remove one the fire can no longer burn. Blowing on a fire will reduce the temperature and it can no longer burn. \n\nLarge fire have a lot of mass that is warm so is is hard to cool them down. The speed they burn at is limited by the amount of oxygen that is available. So a wind will increase the amount of oxygen and it will burn more and produce more heat.\n\nA candle is not limited by oxygen but by fuel because the the was has to be wicked up the wick to the flame so extra oxygen do not increase the heat output to a high degree.\n\nSo if the extra heat that is produced is higher then the cooling from the air the fire will burn. \n\nIf you have a small fire and produce the ariflow your selfe by blowing or moving a tray to create a draft you can see that the ember that is hit first by the air will glow less or not at all because the get cooler but when the air get warmer the ember start to glow more as they have a increased amount of oxygen.\n\n\n\nWhen you put out a large fire with water the primary way you put is out is by cooling it down and not by removing the oxygen. It take a lot of energy to heat up water and to turn it into water vapor. That will cool down the fire so it will not longer burn.\n\n\n"
]
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[],
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4e5y07 | Was there any point during the Cold War where the US or the Soviet Union considered using the atomic bomb? | If there was such a point, why weren't the weapons used?
On a similar note, in what way would the absence of nuclear weapons have changed the dynamics of the cold war? My understanding is that the Soviet Union had far more troops than the Americans, and the atomic bomb acted as a deterrent to possible Soviet aggression. Would the absence of nuclear weapons led to direct armed conflict? I do realize that a lot of this might be speculation, but it would be interesting to get people's perspective on this. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4e5y07/was_there_any_point_during_the_cold_war_where_the/ | {
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"There were numerous \"close calls\" to the use of nuclear weapons. The Berlin airlift crisis, for example, as early as 1948. The Korean War. The Cuban Missle Crisis. Many more. Some of these came quite close to actual use, especially in a tactical roles by soldiers who felt they were at risk and has access to nuclear arms. In general, this kind of big nuclear strike was avoided in part because of the threat of retaliation.\n\nIn most cases it is easy to understand why the Soviets would not have been too tempted, at a political level, to use these weapons -- they were often quite out-gunned, surrounded, and were nearly guaranteed to suffer disasterous consequences, with little hope of getting much positive out of such use. The more interesting case is that of the United States, esp. in the earlier Cold War when there was nothing like nuclear parity between it and the USSR. With Berlin, it was not something the US would want to do unless it really did want to start another general war, one that would not yet look like a \"24 hour war,\" but would be a version of World War II with the occasional destruction of cities. It would still require huge manpower and force expenditures and a troublesome question of what to do next. This was not an appealing idea for Truman or his advisors.\n\nWhy didn't the US use atomic bombs in Korea, when the USSR lacked the practical ability to threaten the US in kind? The use of them was advocated by high-level military officials (including MacArthur) but vetoed by the President. Here we see a different set of considerations at play -- concerns about world opinion, concerns about the way atomic bombs should be considered as weapons (did we want to open the door to the USSR feeling that it was acceptable to use these weapons tactically against our allies?). In the end, the US came remarkably close to potentially using them -- Truman authorized sending bombs and bombers to carriers in the region -- but did not.\n\nThe creation and maintenance of the \"nuclear taboo\" was by no means obvious or destined. In the end, the persistent conclusion was that it was in the US interest to not \"normalize\" the use of nuclear weapons, even in a \"tactical\" situation (that is, not targeting cities), because it would ultimately set up precedents that would harm the long-term military interests of the US, and do great damage to arguments of moral superiority which were necessary for enrolling allies against the Soviets. This is separate from the issue of retaliation and deterrence and Mutually Assured Destruction, which only came into play a bit later in time. (By the 1960s the Soviets could probably have done a lot of damage to major US cities with their missiles but it is not really until the 1970s and beyond that they really coulda inflict an equal amount of damage to the US reliably as the US could inflict onto them.) \n\nNina Tannenwald's _The Nuclear Taboo_ is a systematic study of the creation and maintenance of the policy of the non-use of nuclear weapons, even in non-MAD situations, and the best resource on this topic that I know of."
]
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[]
] | |
2a0yn0 | if there have been no major flight terrorism incidents recently, why is the tsa still "beefing up" security measures constantly? | Maybe I'm not watching the right news, but there hasn't been much in last 5ish years of people trying to attack planes. Despite this, it seems like the Tsa is putting new requirements out every few weeks. The most recent of which, dead phones don't fly, made me think of this question. Why do they have all this power if what they are supposedly protecting us from isn't that big of a threat right now? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2a0yn0/eli5_if_there_have_been_no_major_flight_terrorism/ | {
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"Administration is pushing this story in the news and a media blitz about this \"new threat\" is part of it. The rise of ISIS as the #1 jihadi group has placed incredible pressure on the old-style Al-Qaeda groups, which face irrelevance in the near future if they don't get their shit together and do something high profile. \n\nTSA is designed to provide the feeling of security. Most of these measures are there just to make the public feel good about themselves. If the TSA is actually in a position to stop an attack, all our best preventative measures have already failed. The organization effectively only exists because no politician is willing to be the guy who voted to defund the TSA and then a terrorist attack hits."
]
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[]
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abnyrp | for the average person, what would be the basic steps between having a million dollar idea for a product, and manufacturing and selling that product? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/abnyrp/eli5_for_the_average_person_what_would_be_the/ | {
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"First you'd probably need to register as a business, through whatever method is existing in your jurisdiction (you don't have to, but I'd really, really recommend it).\n\nThen you'd need to figure out how you're producing it. Do you need to hire someone to produce it because you need facilities you don't have, or can you produce it in your garage?\n\nThen you need to set up a store page, either by making your own website or using something like etsy, ebay, or amazon.\n\nThat's about it really.",
"Just to give you a bit of perspective, the idea is probably the easiest part of bringing a product to market. Here is a quick (non-exhaustive list) of thing that are involved in going from idea to an actual product.\n\n* Creating a detailed engineering design for the product\n* Figuring out how to physically create the product\n* Finding a manufacturer or figuring out how to manufacture the product yourself\n* Raising money to finance the production\n* Figuring out the logistics of getting the finished product to your customer. (This is a big one that involves many sub-steps)\n* Testing the final product for functionality and safety\n* Advertising the product\n* Setting up customer service and returns"
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1o7lni | What is the earliest record of human contact with radioactive material? | Presumably humans had contact with uranium and other such material before they understood it's atomic potential. Did it have alternative uses? Was there anyone before Marie Curie who we think died of radiation sickness? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1o7lni/what_is_the_earliest_record_of_human_contact_with/ | {
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"Butugichag was apparently known of and avoided by the local nomads, as it made their deer, and themselves, sick. Presumably humans have died in locations similar to this for millennia.\n\nThere is a dubious tale that goes as follows: some people from Barry County, Missouri, were chasing a wild-cat which then went into a cave. They followed it in, saw what they thought were veins of silver, then became ill as a result. You can read the story [here](_URL_0_). I can't really find any information to back the tale up, so I am sceptical.",
"Not relying on historical sources here, but on sheer physics and geology.\n\nThere isnt really any significantly radioactive material concentrated on earth. Meaning that people or animals would have had a really hard time actually being exposed to significant levels of radiation.\n\nYou could settle a tribe around Chernobyl and they would not be the wiser, unless they descended into ground zero. And since ground zero for enriched uranium doesnt really exist on earths surface...\n\nThe effects of radiation are strongly overplayed by modern media.",
"[Uranium oxide was found in glass in a mural in Naples, dated to 79 CE](_URL_0_). It's in a concentration of 1.25%, which is enough to change the colour of the glass but not create a noticeable glow."
]
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3p7xi9 | why are adobe products so expensive? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3p7xi9/eli5why_are_adobe_products_so_expensive/ | {
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"There are many reasons why:\n\nAdobe's softwares are the results of a long time of research and programing, they are to say the least, products of great quality and gives other businesses tools to create their activity and make profit for themselves. \n\n\nAdobe's consumers are mainly businesses and they can afford a larger cost than individual people, the price is chosen in order to make adobe's products professional more than personal, the bigger your business is the most expensive it gets. \n\n\nAdobe changed how they priced: before you bought photoshop for example but now you monthly subscribe and you get many of adobe's products with photoshop, like premiere, after effects, indesign, illustrator, etc... And adobe's cloud capabilities. \n\n\nAdobe also gained a reputation, because their products are well known and give a certain level of quality, Adobe can easily rise their prices without risking a huge fall of their clients. ",
"1. **Money**. Could I say more about this?\n2. **Its target audience**. Adobe products aren't aimed at the average Joe that just needs to get the work done - this isn't Microsoft Office! For example, I doubt that an accountant would ever have to use Photoshop! Since its target audience is the \"professional\" crowd, they can charge more for a product for professionals.\n3. **Its \"seal of trust\"**. Nowadays, Adobe is a trusted company, which means that people are more likely to invest in Adobe - that is, buy their products and hope they do the job well. However, as other contenders (e.g GIMP, _URL_0_) don't have that \"seal of trust\", the professional crowd is less likely to invest in **those** programs."
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1y2y2q | Did people actually used to think that there were Martians on Mars? Or was that never actually a popular theory among scientists and/or the public? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1y2y2q/did_people_actually_used_to_think_that_there_were/ | {
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"There were at least a few respected scientists/philosophers of science during the 19th century who were somewhat confident that there either were martians living on Mars or that there had been martians at some point. I can remember Herschel and Whewell discussing martians but I'm fairly certain there were a few others as well."
]
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[]
] | ||
2y9zs5 | i get that muscles generate force, but how do they do it? why do bigger muscles mean more force generated? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2y9zs5/eli5i_get_that_muscles_generate_force_but_how_do/ | {
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"Not necessarily more force, but more force in a given period of time. Muscles generate force by processing and releasing stored energy, which causes them to contract, (for example, contracting your biceps pulls your forearm up). Generally, the bigger the muscles, the more energy can be released at once. I say \"generally\" because it isn't all about size. It's also about density. Bruce Lee, for example, didn't have very big muscles, but they were very dense due to all his training."
]
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[]
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1wntrz | Was "shell shock" it's own disorder, or was it an extreme case of PTSD? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1wntrz/was_shell_shock_its_own_disorder_or_was_it_an/ | {
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"First, most historians are very reticent to \"diagnose\" people of the past for two reasons. One, diagnosis and medical understandings are greatly influenced by cultural understandings of \"normality\" and \"health.\" Without similar definitions, one cannot opine a real diagnosis. Two, these differing understandings mean that different information or \"symptoms\" are collected than what medical professionals would consider to be relevant for current diseases and mental illnesses. Just look at the recent controversies regarding the updating of the DVSM for a small taste of changing norms and guidelines.\n\nSecond, World War I was a crucial period in the formation of modernity and psychiatry. Paul Lerner, Mark S. Micale, and Edgar Jones are prominent historians in this field. I suggest Micale's article in The Psychiatric Times: \"The New Historical Trauma Studies.\"",
"The term \"shell shock\" refers to a condition that VA mental health professionals now call PTSD. The term first came about during WWI and its aftermath when soldiers exhibited symptoms such as uncontrollable shaking, fugues, and panic induced by loud noises. After intense periods of enemy shelling, a spike rose in soldiers reporting these symptoms leading health officials to use the term \"shell shock.\" Doctors blamed the concussive blasts from the shelling for the symptoms and believed it was a physical problem, overcome by simply resting. \n \nAs the science of mental health improved over the century, doctors recognized the symptoms as a mental disorder that could be controlled with proper care. \n \nSources: \n \n1. Wade Davis, Into the Silence the Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), \n \n2. Adam Hochschild, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011). \n \n3. Barbara Wertheim Tuchman, The Guns of August (New York: Ballantine, 1994). \n \n4. Richard J Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (New York: The Penguin Press, 2009).",
"Depends what you mean under \"shell shock\" - at first, it has very narrow meaning and got applied more frivolously over time.\n\nOriginally, massive artillery barrages of WWI caused typical symptoms. Later other causes led to same symptoms - aerial bombardments, intensive machine gun fire, gas attacks, but results still were called \"shell shock\". Classical symptoms is what I'd call a \"narrow definition\".\n\n---\n\n*During the early stages of World War I, soldiers from the British Expeditionary Force began to report medical symptoms after combat, including tinnitus, amnesia, headache, dizziness, tremor, and hypersensitivity to noise. While these symptoms resembled those that would be expected after a physical wound to the brain, many of those reporting sick showed no signs of head wounds. By December 1914 as many as 10% of British officers and 4% of enlisted men were suffering from \"nervous and mental shock\"*\n\n---\n\nAlso note, that *shell shock* wording was banned by British war-time censors and *postconcussional syndrome* was used instead - even in medical journals.\n\n\nAfter WWI, \"shell shock\" was gradually expanded to all psychological traumas, related to the Great War and to other wars as well - for the lack of better terms. That's what I would call \"wide definition\".\n\nIn its original, \"narrow\" definition, I believe it could be classified as \"extreme case of PTSD\" in modern speak. In wider definition I see it as equal to PTSD (which is quite nebulous collection of very different psychiatric ailments, bunched together by their cause only).\n\nDuring WWII, *shell shock* was replaced with *combat stress reaction* - which better describes the phenomenon. And nowadays we arrived to PTSD - as you see, *combat* is gone completely, as same symptoms could be found in purely civilian population too.\n\n**Sources**\n\n1. [PDF - Jones, E, Fear, N and Wessely, S. \"Shell Shock and Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: A Historical Review\".](_URL_0_) American Journal of Psychiatry 2007; 164:1641–1645\n\n2. [Shell Shock during World War One - By Prof Joanna Bourke](_URL_1_). \n\n---\n\n*In the early years of World War One, shell shock was believed to be the result of a physical injury to the nerves. In other words, shell shock was the result of being buried alive or exposed to heavy bombardment. The term itself had been coined, in 1917, by a medical officer called Charles Myers*\n\n---"
]
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1zur50 | Did Japanese atrocities in China, such as Nanjing, continue at the same level throughout WWII or did it change over time? | The most famous Japanese atrocity occurred in Nanjing, but it occurred during the first year of the Second Sino-Japanese War. I know things like the comfort women continued throughout the war, but did Japanese troops sustain these kind of massive massacres whenever they captured cities? Or was there a shift over time (whether less or more), and if so, what caused it? Did the creation of the Reorganized National Government of China change anything in terms of the conduct of Japanese troops? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1zur50/did_japanese_atrocities_in_china_such_as_nanjing/ | {
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"In many ways, yes. After the fall of Wuhu in December 1937, for instance, an American missionary reported: \"During the first week of occupation, the ruthless treatment and slaughter of civilians and the wanton looting and destruction of the homes of the city far exceeded anything ever seen in my 20 years experience of China... Probably conditions in Wuhu have been less severe than in most places because there was little fighting here. The soldiers seemed especially to seek Chinese women for violation and the saving of these women became one of our major activities over a period of several days... I have kept in constant touch with the Japanese military authorities and the Japanese Consul who recently arrived... They assure me their soldiers are forbidden now to molest the Chinese or to force them to serve them, and most of the officers desire to prevent these offences. In spite of these promises, it is still not safe for any Chinese man and much less for a woman to go on the street...\"\n\nAfter the fall of Kaifeng in June 1938, another observer wrote: \"Women dare not go on the streets as they are attacked even in broad daylight in their homes, or dragged off the street to their homes by Japanese soldiers. I never guessed I would ever come into contact with such awful wickedness that is occurring day by day. Multiply anything you have heard about [the Japanese] by twenty and it is only half the truth. Small boys are kidnapped and along with young women are shipped by train to the east...\"\n\nThat same month, Lieutenant General Okabe Naosaburō (chief of staff of the North China Area Army) concluded that more \"comfort stations\" (military brothels) were needed to prevent further violence against Chinese women and thereby improve relations with the civilian population, though the Central China Area Army had already set up comfort stations for its units in December 1937. These measures apparently had little effect, however, despite several later attempts to impose harsher punishments for rape. In his 1940 pamphlet entitled \"Plan for Improving Discipline,\" Kawara Naoichi of the War Ministry acknowledged: \"Even though there has been an increase in the overall number of soldiers, the ratio of crime can be seen to have increased. From the outbreak of the China Incident to 1939, 420 men were punished by courts-martial for plundering or for plundering accompanied by rape resulting in death; 312 for rape or for rape resulting in death; and 494 men for gambling. Beside these we find other case of violence, incendiarism and murder inflicted on the Chinese.\" And these numbers only reflect cases that were actually investigated. \n\nBeginning in July 1941, in response to military operations by the Chinese Communists, the North China Area Army initiated a brutal counterinsurgency campaign that entailed the destruction of all villages suspected of harboring guerrillas (sometimes relocating the inhabitants) and the wholesale confiscation of food and crops. Although the Japanese authorities characterized their measures as a \"Three Prohibitions Campaign\"--\"admonishing the Chinese not to burn, commit, crimes, or kill,\" according to historian S. C. M. Paine--they were known to the Chinese as the \"Three Alls\": *kill all, burn all, loot all*. Indeed, when the policy received official approval from Emperor Hirohito on December 3 (as Imperial Headquarters Army Order Number 575), its stated purpose was to \"strengthen the containment of the enemy and destroy his will to continue fighting.\" In the end, the Japanese reign of terror caused immeasurable suffering for the civilian population and an estimated 2.7 million deaths, but it did effectively limit the Communists' ability to mount further offensives. By the end of 1942, the Red Army had been reduced from 500,000 soldiers to 300,000.\n\nFollowing the Doolittle Raid on April 18, 1942, and after Chinese civilians and soldiers had rescued the crashed American pilots, the Japanese army initiated vicious reprisals and destroyed Chinese-occupied airfields in Zhejiang and Jiangxi. Chiang Kai-shek was forced to commit thirty-four divisions to fight elements of the 11th and 13th Armies, and both sides suffered tens of thousands of losses. Claire Chennault reported: \"A quarter-million Chinese soldiers and civilians were killed in the three-month campaign. The Chinese paid a terrible price for the Doolittle raid, but they never complained.\" But Chiang, who had received no prior warning about the raid, did protest. In an angry message to George Marshall, he wrote: \"The Japanese slaughtered every man, woman, and child in these areas--let me repeat, every man, woman, and child.\"\n\nAs they did at Nanjing, the Japanese army regularly executed Chinese prisoners of war. Many captured soldiers were simply dubbed \"bandits\" and killed on the spot. Others served as slave laborers, and countless perished toiling under appalling conditions. The most unfortunate became human guinea pigs for biological experimentation. At the end of the Second World War, the Japanese apparently held only 56 Chinese in custody.\n\nThere are other actions that may or may not be construed as war crimes. On numerous occasions, the Japanese army utilized poison gas (known euphemistically as \"special smoke\") and tear gas against Chinese troops, all of which required explicit authorization from the Imperial General Headquarters. In 1938 alone, poison gas was employed 39 times in Jiangxi and 21 times in Henan, while in March 1939, Lieutenant General Okamura Yasuji of the 11th Army deployed over 15,000 canisters of gas in order to improve the morale of his soldiers and give them \"the feeling of victory.\" Sometimes the Emperor himself personally approved requests to deploy poison gas, though he evidently forbid its use against Western forces. The Japanese also experimented with biological warfare. In 1942, for example, they attempted to spread anthrax, plague, typhoid, and cholera in Zhejiang province by having aircraft drop infected fleas and having soldiers contaminate water supplies. However, the Japanese suffered 10,000 casualties after their soldiers were inadvertently exposed to the contagions.\n\nThe Japanese also employed terror bombing against Chinese cities, mainly Chongqing, Chiang Kai-shek's wartime capital. Between February 1938 and August 1943, Japanese bombers dropped roughly 21,600 bombs on Chongqing, resulting in an estimated 35,000 casualties (with 15,000 deaths). As most structures were built of wood and bamboo, incendiary bombs left large swathes of the city in ruins. \n\nFinally, the recollections of former Japanese soldiers often attest to widespread atrocities. According to one: \"Massacres of civilians were routine. They cooperated with the enemy, sheltered them in their houses, gave them information. We viewed them as the enemy. During combat, all villagers went into hiding. We pilfered anything useful from their houses or, in winter, burned them for firewood. If anyone was found wandering about, we captured and killed them. Spies! This was war.\" And another: \"On the battlefield, we never really considered the Chinese humans. When you're winning, the losers look really miserable. We concluded that the Yamato race was superior.\" \n\nIn the immediate aftermath of the conflict, the Nationalist government of China calculated 3.7 million military casualties (not exclusively deaths, it seems) and 9.1 million civilian casualties. On the other hand, pre- and post-war records suggest a 16-18 million loss in population. The war also produced over 95 million refugees, though the status was not necessarily permanent or long-term for every person.\n\nJapanese war crimes is an enormous (and politically and emotionally sensitive) topic, and I've tried my best to summarize important details here in relation to your question. This information comes from my notes, gathered from a wide range of sources, and I will be happy to supply citations if you need them. I unfortunately don't know whether Wang Jingwei and other collaborators ever protested to their Japanese overlords. I hope you find this helpful nonetheless! :)\n"
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t7247 | Is there any possibility of life in lava/magma? | I've been thinking, if bacteria can survive in the coldest temperatures on Earth, why not some of the hottest? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/t7247/is_there_any_possibility_of_life_in_lavamagma/ | {
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"Carbon based life would not be able to withstand the extreme temperature found in liquid rock, it would simply burn away. \n\nExtremophiles take advantage of all manner of seemingly inhospitable places but none of them could exist in lava. \n\n\nThe highest temperature organisms we know of (thermophiles) function around 60-80C\n\n\n_URL_0_\n",
"Magma temperature ranges between 1300 and 2400 F (depending on the composition). That, combined with the environment of highly toxic gases and no oxygen would make life pretty much impossible.\n\nAdditionally, you would need to consider that any life would need to consume something to survive - and there is little to consume in magma.",
"Life of our lineage is dependent on bonds formed between carbon; it doesn't seem possible that we could have relatives that live in magma. That temperature will vaporize water instantly which pretty much means that's there isn't a chance. The record for growth at high temperature is 122 degrees C, or about 250 degrees F. This requires pressurization of the water to keep it from boiling off. Getting from there to molten rock temperatures is really pretty crazy.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\nPerhaps there is a possibility that an independent lineage of life could do the job - but there isn't any evidence to support this and it would be strictly speculation.",
"Absolutely not. Even the most resilient microbes on our planet cannot survive temperatures higher than about 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Magma is usually 1500 degrees CELSIUS or higher, which is EXTREMELY hot, and far beyond what any life that we know of can survive.\n"
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1d9nmf | how tv ratings work | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1d9nmf/eli5_how_tv_ratings_work/ | {
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"For clarification: content ratings ([listed here](_URL_0_))? Or popularity ratings ([mentioned here](_URL_1_))? Both have more info if you search in the sidebar, but if someone has a good explanation then go for it!",
"There are two different ways Nielsen measures ratings in the United States, either by a set top box or someone takes a daily journal of what they watch and when.\n\n\nThese numbers are separated into two numbers, rating and share. Rating goes by points. One ratings point is one percent of the total number of households with TVs. So if a show has a rating of 5, that means that 5 percent of people with TVs are watching that show.\n\n\nShare is similar but the difference is share takes into account the percentage of people actually watching TV. So a show might have a rating of 5, or 5% of households with TVs, but it might have a 15 share, which is the percentage of people actually watching TV are tuned to that show.\n\n\nNetworks then use these numbers to determine how much they can charge of advertising time during shows. Higher ratings = ability to charge more. That's why Super Bowl ads are so expensive.\n\n\nEDIT: Grammar",
"Former Nielsen field representative (equipment installer) here, should anyone wish to know how the equipment & systems work. \n\nI was around long enough to have worked with the old systems that we literally had to solder onto the mainboards of VCRs, TVs, and DTS / Cable boxes. DVRs and flat-panel TV's destroyed that metering method, so Nielsen switched to a more passive metering solution that works off audio, to explain it simply."
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[]
] | ||
28lk1j | Did ancient civilizations such as Egypt, Rome, Greece, etc ever sail any amount into the Atlantic? | Did they? And if they did, did thy go very far and how would they describe / see the Atlantic ocean? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/28lk1j/did_ancient_civilizations_such_as_egypt_rome/ | {
"a_id": [
"cic7s72"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"This topic is one which has been of much debate; rather controversial truly. However we are certain that some ancients did in fact sail into the Atlantic; how far? That's the controversial debate. \nI will make a specific example of antiquated Greece, as that is the civilization which I hold primary specialty in; we have evidence that the Greeks traded with other peoples as far north as Britannia.\nThe Straits of Gibraltar are at times referenced as, \"The Pillars of Hercules/Heracles.\"; there are various myths which tell of heroes venturing beyond the Pillars. Typically, the myths regard the places beyond the Pillars as the ends of the Earth.\nIt isn't likely that the majority of Greeks would see beyond the Mediterranean and the East; as I said however, we have archaeological evidence suggesting that there was trade with what is now Britain, to an extent. \nThis of course is not very far into the Atlantic, but do bear in mind that I speak of the Greeks here, not of the Romans or Egyptians; perhaps other members may provide other information regarding a differing civilization? I can provide further information as well if this isn't satisfactory; I'll be sure to edit in a more detailed account when I have more time. \n\nFurther info: regarding the Romans, their campaigns in Britannia are widely known; to achieve this they must've sailed into the Atlantic to a point: the English Channel is a subdivision of the Atlantic, which serves as a passage from Gaul to Britannia, but is of course not far into the Atlantic as stated before. The Phoenicians furthermore also had trade with Britannia; I have a map of their trade routes if you're interested. Perhaps you notice a common theme here? We know certainly they ventured beyond the Mediterranean, but how far is debatable. What is certain is that they at least did venture far enough to reach Britannia and Hibernia (Ireland). Also, there are accounts of passage around Africa as well, not merely through the Straits. Again, I will edit in more information is this doesn't satisfy your inquiry."
]
} | [] | [] | [
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