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What military technology, if any, where the Japanese more advanced then the other countries during ww2?
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You cannot really ignore ships for your question. Ships is one of the places where one of the best Japanese weapons of the war was deployed, the Type 93 "Long Lance" torpedo.
The type 93 had a heavier warhead, better range, and better speed than any other torpedo in the war. It gave Japanese light fleet element devastating punch at nearly twice the reach of their allied counterparts.
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How does a pregnant body "decide" when it's time to go into labor?
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The body doesn't the baby does. When the baby starts to get cramped for space it gets stressed and releases the stress hormone cortisol. The cortisol from the baby then starts a cascade of events in the mother that leads to birth.
EDIT: sorry I'm a veterinary student. This is how a lot of other species initiate parturition and I thought it was the same for humans but I guess not.
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Did Pearl Harbour have the same effect on Americans' perception of security as 9/11 did?
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Sorta. It certainly put some American citizens of the mind that the Japanese were "the other", just like many Americans did regarding Muslims in the days and months(and until today, really) after 9/11.
Since 9/11 is within the past 20 years or so(which makes it verboten for discussion), I'll simply point out that the US [rounded up residents of Japanese ancestry](_URL_0_) out of fear that they were a 5th Column. The argument could be made that is was a shift of perception of security.
Before the war US aviation assets tended to be on the flightlines [bunched together, the better to keep an eye out for sabotage](_URL_1_). After the attack, the US switched to a dispersion technique so it would be harder for someone to bomb a bunch of them at once.
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Are there many cases of a 'food taster' actually consuming poison and dying on the spot?
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For some reason, people seem to want to fill this thread with things they've heard, movie anecdotes, and statistics on the speed of various poisons. None of these things actually answers the question, which involves whether a food taster ever *actually consumed poison and died*. If you cannot answer the question, please refrain from posting.
Thank you.
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When the Mongols were poised to attack Europe, how aware was western Europe of the impending attack?
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They were on the whole pretty unconcious of the threat. The only prior knowledge Europe had had of the Mongols came from garbled stories that Crusaders had heard about Mongol conquests in the East. As they had very little idea as to what was actually going on they came up with a distinctly distorted image. The rumors of Christians being present in these mysterious armies (indeed many Mongols were Nestorians, an eastern branch of Christianity) and the fact that these armies were also attacking the Islamic world lead them to see them as the armies of Prester John. Prester John was a European tale of a rich and powerful Christian king who ruled far off in the East.
So clearly when the Mongols rock up in Europe the Europeans have no idea what's going on. This is reflected in the panicked chronicles written at the time, the gist of them is that they've been hit by suprise and don't know what's going on. This is reflected in the monk's attempts to work out who these invaders are. The sheer foreigness and lack of knowledge of the Mongols meant we get some interesting guesses. We have suggestions ranging from their being the armies of the Antichrist heralding the apocalypse to their being one of the lost tribes of Israel (this idea inspires a few pogroms). This complete lack of knowledge indicates that Europe had no idea what hit it.
When I get home I'll see if I can find more details for you.
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Did Henry VIII make divorce legal only for himself, or for the whole nation under the Church of England?
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Just to make a distinction... Henry VIII never actually divorced any of his wives.
* Catherine's was an annulment. It was declared an invalid marriage due to her previous marriage to Henry's brother, Arthur.
* Anne Boylen's was an annulment. It was declared an invalid marriage due to her (supposedly) incestuous relationship with *her* brother George.
* Anne of Cleve's was also an annulment, due to never having been consummated.
* Catherine Howard was executed without divorce or annulment.
Anyone in Henry's realm could seek an annulment. But the grounds for such were fairly difficult to prove, and courts were reluctant to grant them in general. Apparently only a handful of annulments a year were granted in all of England. The most common form of legal action was a type of legal separation called "divorce from bread and board." That allowed the spouses to set up separate homes, but they didn't allow the parties to remarry. Even that was only granted upon proof of adultery or extreme cruelty. Divorce itself required an act of parliament and was almost never granted, and certainly wasn't granted to the common folk. As far as I can tell there was no change in any of the laws or the application of the laws during Henry's reign. Both annulments and separations remained very rare. In Tudor England it really was "Til death do you part" unless one was the king.
Sources.
Martin Ingram, *Church Courts, Sex and Marriage*
Lawrence Stone, *The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800*
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if pain is your body's way of telling you to stop doing something, then why does exercise hurt?
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Med student currently procrastinating from my dissertation on pain here. Pain is a signal warning you of potential damage. In the case of exercise, you are ripping muscle fibres among other things, hence it is painful. In a wider sense your body cannot tell if something will be good long term, only short term, this is why large brains and the ability to plan are such an evolutionary advantage.
Edit: This is a response I posted further down, going to put it here so people will see it and hopefully it will clear up some things.
"Lactic acid is thought to be a factor in the early stages, however evidence suggest that a variety of factors are at work. These include arachidonic acid derivatives and other inflammatory pain inducing chemicals from the torn muscle fibres, the build up of lactic acid, ionic imbalance, free radical damage etc. Delayed onset muscle pain is very much from the inflammation of muscles in response to damage. However this is ELI5 so I skipped over most of it."
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Did ancient civilians get PTSD? What do we know of the psychological effects of war on noncombatants, and how they dealt with them?
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*Content warning: mention of sexual violence, suicide, casual misogyny*
& nbsp;
PTSD is a label we use to describe a group of symptoms connected to trauma and moral injury. The label was created in the 1970s to get Vietnam veterans in the US the support and mental health treatment they needed. As such, it was originally focused on making sense of the symptoms shown by soldiers, and connected to earlier diagnoses like shell shock and battle fatigue. Only when the label was well-established did people begin to realise that victims of other traumatic experiences (accidents, crime, violence, loss, abuse) often showed the same combination of symptoms. Today the most common causes of PTSD are domestic violence and sexual abuse. But the origin of the term in the treatment of veterans means it's still most commonly associated with war trauma.
The scholarly search for *historical* PTSD has the same origin. When Jonathan Shay wrote his groundbreaking *Achilles in Vietnam* (1994), it was not to examine Antiquity for its own sake, but to explore similarities in ancient and modern experience in order to help modern veterans. Shay is not a historian but a clinical psychologist; his work was prompted by his own practice treating veterans in Boston. Understandably, his focus was on warriors and their experiences with war and combat. The Ancient Greeks have helpfully left us a rich collection of material on just that topic, which allows us to examine their thoughts on warfare in detail.
Later scholars followed Shay's lead. Classicists and ancient historians arguing over whether or not the Greek experience was comparable to that of modern soldiers have made this a debate about war trauma rather than trauma in general. Their search for evidence has been focused entirely on trauma in men returning from war. As debate raged over whether Greek soruces really described war-related psychological disorders (on which see [this great post](_URL_1_) by u/hillsonghoods as well as the answers in [our FAQ section on PTSD in past societies](_URL_3_)), the fact that there are many recognised causes of PTSD besides war has been largely ignored.
The result is that we don't (yet) know the answer to your question. Put simply, there is no study of trauma and the effects of moral injury in Antiquity that does not focus on warriors. The search for specifically *military* experiences was baked into the question when it was first asked. It's only now that the study of the psychology of Antiquity has become more established that scholars have started looking beyond this extremely limited perspective and considered that there were other groups in Ancient society besides warriors.
We do know that there were many potential causes of moral injury in Antiquity. In a world of endemic violence, high mortality and little protection for vulnerable groups, in which enslavement was common and sexual violence was an accepted part of the relation between the powerful and the powerless, many people would have experienced things traumatic enough to leave lasting psychological damage. War made this particularly true for non-combatants, since it was understood that a defeated population was [subject to rape, enslavement and murder](_URL_2_). Many tragedies written in 5th-century Athens contain women lamenting their fate if their city were to fall, or bitterly grieving for themselves and their relatives once their city has fallen. The horrors that awaited a city that fell into the hands of the enemy were enough to inspire radical acts of defiance including [women taking up arms to defend their city](_URL_0_) or, in a final act of desperation, choosing mass suicide over enslavement.
But unfortunately there is almost nothing that tells us how non-combatants dealt with their traumatic memories afterwards. There is no parallel to the cases of lasting changes in personality or lasting psychological disorders that have prompted modern authors to argue that Greek warriors suffered from what we would call PTSD. Since most of those scholars use partial and tenuous evidence to build their case to an excessive degree of confidence, it seems quite likely they might be able to do the same with what scraps of evidence we have for non-combatants' lives after trauma. But the evidence is even thinner, since our best evidence is for war, and since ancient sources overwhelmingly focus on the experiences of elite men of military age. So if this study were ever undertaken, no doubt its basis would be extremely thin. For instance, a study by Ustinova and Cardeña^1 - while still entirely focused on warriors and military experience - cites Hippokrates' *On Diseases in Maidens* 5-10 as evidence for ancient awareness of trauma-related psychological disorder in teenage girls:
> My topic relates to (...) terrors of the sort that people fear so strongly, that they are beside themselves and seem to see certain hostile spirits, sometimes by night, sometimes by day, and sometimes at both times. Then as a result of this kind of vision, many have already hanged themselves, more women than men, for female nature is weaker and more troublesome. (tr. Rebecca Flemming)
But what Hippokrates goes on to describe is blood going the wrong places inside the body and causing these fears and suicidal thoughts. He does not identify any traumatic experience as the cause, and does not regard the problem as one of mental health. His solution, moreover, is for young girls who suffer this form of disorder to get married and get pregnant as quickly as possible, for "if they become pregnant, they become healthy" (42-3). This hardly counts as treatment - especially if, as we may suppose, the cause of the girls' unexplained terrors is not past trauma but the anticipation of marriage into a strange home and pregnancy at an early age. But even if we do consider these symptoms to be caused by some unspoken trauma, they fall very far short of the requirements for a modern diagnosis.
In other words, a study of the possible effects of trauma on non-combatants in Antiquity has not been done; it would be an uphill struggle both against the scholarly tradition as it stands, and against the source base available. I hope it will one day be undertaken. Myhtic stories such as that of Klytemnestra, Penelope and Persephone will probably end up being very important, since they represent some of the few examinations of what it was like to be a non-combatant and a dependant in a brutish patriarchy - but how closely such stories reflect real experiences will always be a matter of debate.
& nbsp;
1) Y. Ustinova, E. Cardeña, 'Combat stress disorders and their treatment in Ancient Greece', *Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice and Policy* (2014), 1-10.
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Did Ethiopians know much about the state of Christendom outside East Africa before regular contact with Portugal was established?
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This is a difficult question to answer directly: we have basically no surviving manuscripts from the early/high medieval period in Ethiopia. This will change in a big way in the 13th-14th century, in conjunction with the flourishing of the Ethiopian state and a renaissance in its Church.
The Ethiopic Church is of course one of the most ancient in Christianity, and was tied into the greater Christian hierarchy from initial evangelization. Most importantly, medieval Ethiopia could not ordain its own priests or consecrate its monks. It depended on the periodic arrival of an abuna or metropolitan, a delegate from the patriarchate down in Alexandria (Egypt). Initially, of course, this was no problem. Coptic abunas brought the power to ordain, but also Christian intellectual culture. Some early texts, like the Book of Enoch, are basically unknown in the rest of medieval Christendom but survive in abundance in Ethiopian translations! It is not a stretch to argue that if the abunas are bringing Christian culture, they are also bringing news of the outside world.
This connection became both more important and more threatened after the seventh century. The cascade of Islamic caliphates across Egypt, Kush, Arabia sharply isolated Ethiopia (Aksum) from the outside world for centuries. We know abunas from Egypt occasionally made it through, but their visits were rare and *precious*.
Although their mission was theoretically religious, it becomes apparent that there was much more involved. The Ethiopian rulers basically kept a lockdown on the visitors, requiring potential monks and priests seeking orders to come to the royal palace to receive them; prohibiting the abuna from leaving. The reasons for this are lost to history, but you can probably imagine a combination of not wanting the outsider to gain intelligence (for whom?) on Ethiopian society/church, and seeing the visitor as too precious with knowledge to be wasted on traipsing around to monasteries.
So periodically, Ethiopian *rulers* would have received an injection of news from the outside Christian world, although it would have been necessarily limited to one person's perspective and knowledge. Beyond the royal court, though, the average person would have had basically no way to know.
The Ethiopian revival of the 13th and 14th century brings a lot of changes, especially to the Ethiopian church. A handful of charismatic and talented native emperors and Egyptian abunas headline a state/Church-wide revival of military, monastic, intellectual might. At that point, it seems likely that a few more Ethiopians, though probably still more upper-crust level, are gaining an awareness of the outside world. We have surviving Christian manuscripts again, this time translated from Arabic!
Of course, a 15th century translation from Arabic of a 12th century French text that claims to be written by a 7th century Spanish saint is a book of religious stories, not a status report on Christianity around the Mediterranean. Nevertheless, books don't travel in isolation in the Middle Ages. They are carried from one place to another by people who bring news and ideas and gossip far beyond the text. In that way, the trickle of abunas from Egypt throughout the isolated Middle Ages and then the dynamite abunas Ya'iqob and Salama in the 14th century linked Ethiopia's rulers, at least, to wider Christendom.
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why is the ocean sometimes really dark, like in the north atlantic yet in some places a turquoise colour like in the caribbean or south pacific?
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It’s because dead animals and plants sink in water. That might seem obvious, but it means that any nutrients in sea water are rapidly used up by animals and plants and when those organisms die they sink to the bottom taking the nutrients with them. The only way those lost nutrients can be replaced is if water from the ocean bottom, where all those dead organisms go, can be moved to the surface again.
That cycling can’t happen in warmer regions because the surface water is warm and warm water floats on the cold water of the ocean bottom. As a result warmer waters very rapidly become nutrient deficient.
Because they are nutrient deficient very little actually lives in tropical waters. Very few algae, very little plankton and so forth. And because nothing much lives in tropical waters they remain clear. That means that light can get go waayyy down into the depths, and as light passes through the water the blue wavelengths get scattered. That produces a vivid turquoise blue ocean.
In contrast cold waters are dirty and full of life due to the upwelling of water from the ocean bottom. All that dirt and all the life it supports absorbs sunlight very fast. Light will only penetrate a few meters in cold waters. With very little penetration the light also doesn’t have much chance to scatter. That produces an ocean that is very dark colored, and where the blue wavelengths are muted by the reds and greens to produce a muddy blue-gray.
So what it all comes down to is that tropical waters are clear, and they are clear because they are sterile and nutrient deficient. Coral reefs thrive in tropical waters precisely because they are clear and sterile and that allows enough sunlight for the photosynthetic symbiotic algae that live in the coral and that provide most of their food.
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When and how did 750 mL become the standard size for wine and liquor bottles?
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Moderator note: This is an AskHistorians thread. We expect answers to be in-depth, comprehensive and, more to the point this time around, *actually answering the question the OP asked*.
So far, we have had to remove endless discussions about *where* 750 mL is a standard size, *whether* it is at all, what you call it, what regions use which dialectal terms, Canada's somewhat erratic metricization, various countries' laws surrounding the size of a pint, and Dragon Ball Z. None of these help a whit to answer the question and that is why this thread is a comment graveyard.
Please, if you are coming here to post a response, only do so if you have an answer. Save the other comments for more appropriate venues.
Thank you.
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why are astronaut's movements in space seemingly slow motion when there's no air/water resistance to slow them down?
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There are a few reasons. Their suits are pressurized. The joints of these suits want to fully extend due to this pressure. This makes it difficult to move and do things, and reduces precision substantially. Not only this, but the suits are quite heavy, and have inertia to slow movements. Lastly, the astronauts do not have anything to stand on. Fast movements will make their bodies start to rotate and further reduce the precision of their motions.
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why a company like nestlè can take water out of a state/province for $2.25 per million litres, only to sell it back at a profit. who is letting this happen?
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This is an explanation not just for this specific case but for large companies in general. These companies create jobs, and will also be paying taxes on a myriad of things. Sometimes the government will therefore sweeten the pot by reducing certain costs, knowing full well that overall they and the community will benefit from the implementation. This can end up being tax breaks, public utility rate break, favorable loans, etc.
**There are often a lot of benefits of having a large company implemented in the region, and as such local or state governments will often try to create incentives for that to happen.**
**Edit:** -Just thought I should add a couple of things based on some of the replies I've been getting. I replied to the OP in very general terms about why businesses might be given incentives because I assumed that was what was happening in this case, without looking up the specific example of Nestle in BC. I've now taken five minutes to look things up. This cost is associated with the Water Sustainabilty Act coming into effect in 2016. The 2.25$ is the current maximum cost in the province, so Nestle are not getting any special favors.
I also want to mention that a lot of people have been talking about corruption etc. Honestly that's completely off topic. Yes in general corruption in the world does exist, but assuming that everyone and everything is corrupt just makes you sound like a conspiracy theorist in an RV with a tin foil hat (that sounds like it's straight out of a game of clue).
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In ancient times, say for the Inca. What would happen if human sacrifice did not appease the Gods and relieve the drought?
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**I. In which I question the underlying assumptions and chronology of your question**
First thing first, the Inca Empire had its heyday from the 15th to 16th Centuries CE, which is not "ancient." Second, the nature of Inca theology was not one that necessarily included a direct transactional relationship. Benson ([2001](_URL_2_)) notes -- while also making a connection between agriculture and the supernatural -- that the Inca pantheon was less a collection of individual personalities than it was forces of nature personified. Thus, periodic, seasonal sacrifices were a given, but these were less appeasement or payment than they were themselves simply part of the advancement of the calendar. One of our Andeans can expand on that, but I will note that a similarly non-personal relationship to deities existed a few thousand kilometers North, in Central Mexico. There, sacrifices were not so much direct payments to gods as they were assurances that the universe itself would continue; you honored the gods, you did not bargain with them.
**II. In which I redirect to something I know, also foreshadowing**
Speaking of Post-Classic Central Mexico (i.e. Ye Olde But Still Not "Ancient" Aztec Times), it provides an excellent test of what happens when a society that practices human sacrifice is confronted with a prolonged drought. As many people know ([and has been covered in this community before](_URL_5_)), human sacrifice was an integral part of Aztec culture, arguably surpassing every other human culture in its scale and overt intentionality. Certainly this would be a civilization that would quickly become uncivilized when a multi-year drought combined with early frosts left mid-15th Century Aztecs starving? Well, maybe not.
**III. In which we examine the overt response to the "Curse of Ce Tochtli," which means One-Rabbit, but don't read to much into that and the user name, we are not related, it's just a calender date**
In the year 1454 CE, or Ce Totchli in the Xiuhpohualli, the Aztec Empire was in a rough state. Duran (1994 Heyden trans.) notes that starting in that year "and for the next two years the drought was so intense in this land that the clouds remained closed as they did in the time of Elijah." If you are not as conversant with the Old Testament as a 16th Spanish Friar, however, he helpfully explains that this means that "it rained not at all" and notes that streams, rivers, and springs dried up, plants withered, and wildfires burned the land. Hassig ([1981](_URL_0_)) goes even further, delving into the calendrics to state that this was simply the culmination of a few bad years for crops and that the drought may have started back in 10-Rabbit (1450). He also notes that there was a plague of locusts in 6-Rabbit (1446) and a massive flood that submerged most of Tenochtitlan in 9-House (1449). Like I said, it was a rough time.
At the time, the Tlatoani (ruler) of Tenochtitlan -- the principle Aztec city alongside Texcoco -- was Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina, more colloquially known as Montezuma I. He had been the chief general of the Aztec forces before becoming Tlatoani, was responsible for the first significant territorial gains outside the Valley of Mexico, had declared perpetual holy war on the Tlaxcallans, and authored the sumptuary laws that would later sharply divide the elites from the commoners in Aztec society. Naturally, his response to an on-going famine was to... open the granaries for a grain dole and impose export controls?
Well, yes, that's what he did. In 1454 Moctecuhzoma used the stores in the state granaries to supply maize and chia to the populace of the city, while also ordering that no maize was to leave the city, on pain of death. As Duran puts its, Motecuhzoma "put certain authorities in charge, to distribute the food. These men went to the different barrios and gathered the poor people, old and young, children and adults, and distributed the tamales according to the needs of each one. And a large bowl of gruel was given to each child."
As the drought continued though, the grain stores could not continue to support the city, so one last dole was given and a public announcement was given that there would be no more, and the poor of the city were released to leave the city in search of sustenance. Many of them ended up selling themselves, their children, or both as slaves to the Totonacs on the Gulf Coast, who had enjoyed abundant harvests.
**IV. In which we note what did, and did not, occur and ponder reasons why it did, or did not**
You'll note that nowhere in the above summary narrative was there an intensification of sacrifice. Instead, there was an organized state response to a public health concern. When that proved inadequate, practical -- if sad -- measures were taken by the citizens themselves. There are a few key reasons for this, the first of which comes directly from Duran ("quoting" the hugely influential politician-priest Tlacaelel):
> The nobility and merchants will not starve since they have their own granaries, foodstuffs, supplies. The people we pity, who need our assistance, are the old men, the old women, the little boys and girls who live in poverty and who have no place to go.
The famine, in other words, was not equally affecting all levels of society. Nor was it affecting all parts of the geographic region, as we can see from the Totonacs. Those who had the means to stockpile before, and trade throughout, the drought were insulated from its effects. Thus, there was no dire impetus from the upper classes to intensify religous sacrifice. In addition, there was the nature of Aztec sacrifice to consider.
As noted earlier, human sacrifices in Mesoamerica followed a calender cycle, so any intensification would have coincided with the cycle of the years, not necessarily the panic of the people. Furthermore, Aztec sacrifice was outwardly focused. While the Aztecs themselves partook in religious auto-sacrifice through cutting and piercing themselves, victims of mortal sacrifice were primarily outsiders. Thus, an intensification of human sacrifice during a famine would be undercut by the inability to wage war. At the same time, any ramp-up of internal sacrifices would be mediated by the fact that the most vulnerable persons (the very young and very old) to sacrifice were also mitigated by those groups being most vulnerable to the famine to begin with.
So what we see is a rational response by society to the long drought, followed by steps to prevent it in the future. Those steps included things such as intensifying agriculture in the Valley of Mexico itself, through terracing, irrigation, and dam building (see [Smith \(2003\)](_URL_1_)) as well as targeting the rich, wet lands of the coast for future conquests.
**V. OK, so maybe some extra people got sacrificed**
There are a few hints as to potential increases in human sacrifices during the 1454 famine. Townsend ([2009](_URL_3_)) points out additional emphasis on the rain god Tlaloc in a site right outside Texcoco. At the same time, De La Cruz et al. ([2008](_URL_4_)) have identified remains that suggest the child sacrifices to Tlaloc-Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl may have intensified during this period. We still, however, do not see a massive breakdown of society or an apocalyptic scenario of slaughter and sacrifice though, simply hints of additional fervor to already long standing religous rituals happening against the backdrop of more practical responses.
**VI. A glib suggestion for further responses**
I'd love to have a medievalist tackle this question in the context of "Ancient" Europe, such as during the Black Death when the Flaggelants rose to prominence. That scenario has the advantage of a truly unprecedented event in the form of a pandemic, rather than something like drought, which was was an expected part of agricultural societies.
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Why exactly did the Soviet Union go to war with Finland? Why were they so ill prepared?
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> What did they seek to gain out of it?
Finland had been part of the Russian Empire (as a sort of pseudo-autonomous Grand Duchy, whose Grand Duke just happened to be the Tsar) until 1917 and, when Russia descended into revolution and civil war, so did Finland, only there the reds lost.
(Fun fact, this is why Finland's flag is blue and white, when throughout most of her history the Finnish national colours were yellow and red)
Stalin spent some time in the early part of the war, having secured an alliance of sorts with Germany, trying to recover the borders of the old Tsarist empire. As well as occupying the parts of Eastern Poland that the USSR had lost in the Polish-Soviet war of 1919-20, he also forced the Baltic states to accept "treaties of mutual assistance" that essentially amounted to military occupation.
Finland was essentially supposed to be more of the same. The USSR asked for some "minor" territorial concessions (Petsamo, Viipuri and Hanko) and used them as a pretext for war, assuming that their large armies would have little difficulty crushing the Finns and Finland would be added back to the new Russian Empire.
> Why did nobody foresee the terrain being an issue and how could a super power have been so ill prepared to invade?
Stalin had led massive purges of all parts of the administration of the USSR from 1935-39, aimed at weeding out anyone politically "suspect", and had in particular gutted the higher echelons of the Red Army, removing three of the five marshals, 13 of 15 army commanders, 8 of 9 admirals, 50 of 57 corps commanders, 154 out of 186 divisional commanders and 25 of 28 Army Corps commissars.
Although most of the men thus removed were only expelled from the party, not shot as was believed for some time, eventually returned to the service, and only represented a smallish percentage of all officers, a climate was created: fear of even seeming to criticise or disagree with Stalin.
The Soviet invasion of Poland had gone well with under 1,000 casualties, and Stalin and military strategist Voroshilov were confident that Finland would be equally easy. Some of the generals on the ground warned of the difficulties of terrain but were told to get on with it. Fearful for their jobs and lives, they did as they were told. Moreover, the dual-command system, with military decisions having to be ratified by political commissars on their political merit, also discouraged independence of command.
Finally, the Soviet leadership were mesmerised by the success of Germany's *Blitzkrieg* and were determined to try this themselves in Finland. The armies were thus grouped to carry out this kind of operation, entirely oblivious of the fact that the Finnish lakes and forests were nothing like the Polish steppe; that *Blitzkrieg* required an independence of action at junior command level which they had just finished stamping out; and that their air arm, the "flying artillery", was nothing like as effective as the Luftwaffe.
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How old is the oldest DNA/RNA that has been extracted? Is it the same as the molecules all living organisms have in their cells now? Did nucleic acids evolve or are they the same as they were when life began 4 billion years ago.
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DNA will break down over time. The oldest DNA ever reliably recovered was a couple hundred thousand years old, so fantasies of recovering 100 million year old dinosaur DNA are not realistic.
Even in creatures that have stayed relatively unchanged over time (like crocodiles) their DNA continues to mutate and change slightly over time.
It is hypothesized that the primitive life-like cells used RNA. Thus quickly evolved to use DNA and has remained so for probably billions of years. It is really all just speculation, but the general idea is that primordial goop had RNA that started self replicating. This quickly led to variants that recruited or made proteins to make replication more efficient. This then recruited using DNA to stabilize the required information. Thus led to complexes that were able to protect themselves using a lipid and protein membrane...these would be considered the first real cells. DNA took over the role of encoding the plans for future cells while RNA controlled the actual construction of cells and proteins became the structure of cells inside a membrane.
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- why do public restrooms have automatic soap dispensers if you will wash your hands directly after applying the soap?
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Perceived convince and portion control.
A huge problem for businesses is users who take way more of bathroom goods that they actually would need, wasting goods and leading to more frequent empty situations.
Automatic dispensers usually have some delay between dispensing portions of a product, making it more difficult to take a ridiculous amount of soap or towels.
Users may also percive automatic dispensers as cleaner even if it isn't necessarily true
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How does the cold war 'communism' scare compare to today's 'war on terror'?
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*Nothing is so irretrievably lost to a society as the sense of fear it felt about a grave danger that was subsequently coped with.* -- George Will.
Reddit's demographic skews young, and people here don't often have the experience to be able to compare the modern "war on terror" to the "war on communism." The truth of the matter is that the war on terror is largely a peripheral concern in the United States, to a degree that Americans between, say, 1950 and 1989 would have loved to have. (As an aside, this is not to say that terrorism wasn't happening during the exact same period -- airplane hijackings in particular were relatively common during this forty-year period, and the thought process that developed on how to handle them played its own sad role on 9/11 -- just that it didn't filter to American cultural consciousness in a way that the "Soviet threat" did.) Yes, you see it on the nightly news, and yes, comedians make jokes about it and it informs both public and foreign policy -- but not to anywhere near the extent that communism did.
**What the Americans saw:** The USSR was, for at least a portion of its history, an aggressively expansionist and often foul-tempered entity with a largely opaque political process, a history of "disappearing" dissidents, and a united cadre of communist nations to back it up. Or at least, *that was the American political establishment's experience with it.* With the opening of the Soviet archives, we know a lot more now about the disagreements and infighting behind the scenes, and that what we thought of as being an unstoppable and belligerent empire was anything but. The Soviets didn't really want to go to war any more than we did (of course, exceptions existed on both sides), and each nation thought of the other as having all its ducks in a row and a united set of allies. Nope. Disagreements between the Soviets and Chinese over what to do about North Korea are pretty representative of stuff the Americans didn't know. It turns out the Soviets were no fools about what Kim il-Sung was up to and that they spent a lot of time trying to rein the crazy in. It didn't work and they sorely regretted having put him (and others around the world) in power, in much the same way that the Americans came to regret having supported their own batch of crazies in the interests of countering communism.
**Not as crazy as it looks:** This all looks insane with the benefit of 20+ years' worth of hindsight, but -- the more you study the era and how politicians on both side acted and why they did, the more you start to understand that, given the insanity of the time itself, just about all parties involved were actually behaving pretty rationally. The Soviets and Americans both behaved in a manner that made perfect sense for how their nations saw the world and their place in it. Or, to put it another way, look at the game theory governing [mutual assured destruction](_URL_2_). The idea of mass war with nuclear weapons is insane, but how people thought through it, and in essence, designed a system to prevent it, was actually pretty smart. Also smart was how quickly people on both sides recognized that the world was changing. I love to cite [this article](_URL_0_) from 1989 as an example of the almost creepy prescience with which the U.S. military accurately predicted what it'd be doing today.
**The Cold War's effect on the American perspective:**
- Think about a forty year national nightmare with Soviet spies in the American nuclear program, nuclear weapons being moved to Cuba and within easy range of the continental United States (probably the closest the two countries came to all-out war before Khrushchev blinked), the "space race," and dick-swinging contests over Olympic athletes and scientific and cultural accomplishments.
- Think about [Dead Hand](_URL_1_) and the rivers of ink spilled by commenters, academics, and polemicists for forty years about the potential for a Soviet-American War and what it would look like.
- Think about the German army's bald admission that it existed largely for the purpose of slowing the Soviet tank advance in the event of an invasion of western Europe.
It was something rather more all-consuming than the current "war on terror." The modern CIA owes its existence to the USSR, as do generations of American politicians and policymakers. Condoleeza Rice, for example, is fluent in Russian, as are many in the State Department around her age. There's been a mass scramble to reorient the CIA around Chinese, Dari, Pashto, and Arabic lately. Hint, hint.
The world as a whole is safer and less violent than it's ever been, to a degree I think very few people truly appreciate. And if you want my honest opinion, future historians will see the modern "war on terror" as an inevitable development of the post-colonial world. They, too, will be writing in a period where that threat has passed and people are largely insensible to why it informed politics and culture the way it did. We are already starting to forget why the Cold War was as scary as it was.
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why do businesses build skyscrapers in cities when it would be much cheaper to build their offices further out where land is cheaper?
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There are a lot of advantages to having an office in a central downtown area like this.
1) Free advertising
2) Good public transit/ease of access for employees
3) You can rent out unused floors and are likely to fill them as the space is in higher demand
4) Skyscrapers can be more efficient/more compact than wider, shorter buildings
5) It acts a "status" symbol for the company in a sort of industry dick measuring contest
EDIT: Formatting
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[META] This is one of the few subreddits that has maintained a high level of quality and professionalism over time, thank you.
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The mods deserve a huge congratulations on this one as well. The flaired members are huge sources of content that is always well-thought out, well-sourced and comprehensive, but the mods take a *lot* of time to remove comments that are none of these things and just come from the average redditor. So great job mods on /r/AskHistorians and thank you for your work in keeping one of my favorite subs clean!
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Are there any "dead" sports? Sports that were huge at one time but then stopped being played?
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Chariot racing used to be very, very popular in the Roman and Byzantine empires. Here's a couple anecdotes:
* The highest-paid athlete in all of history was likely the charioteer [Gaius Appuleius Diocles](_URL_1_) (2nd century AD). He earned enough in his lifetime (about 15 billion in today's dollars) that he could have fed all of Rome for a year.
* During the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian (482-565), the supporters of the chariot teams, the Blues and the Greens, were so numerous that they were able to [threaten the stability of the empire during the Nika Riots](_URL_0_). Justinian allegedly nearly fled the empire in fear of the rioting fans, but his wife convinced him to stay and orchestrate a massacre of the partisans instead. 30,000 rioters (about 10% of Constantinople's population) were killed while gathered inside the Hippodrome, the capital's chariot-racing arena.
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Everyone knows about Roman slavery, and the Transanlantic Slave Trade. But how about slavery in Medieval times?
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Many enslaved women in the late medieval Mediterranean were forced into work as wet nurses. This is an excerpt from a longer article I wrote on wet nursing in Latin Europe:
For enslaved women forced to serve as wet nurses, the situation was even more demeaning than that of the municipal nurses. Since 1179, canon law had forbidden Christians from hiring Jews and Muslims to nurse their children (although the frequency of reiterations—from Christian and Jewish authorities alike—points to the frequently-informal shared breastfeeding duties among Christian and Jewish women neighbors). And yet from the thirteenth century into the early modern era, slaves in the Christian Mediterranean were almost always purchased or captured Muslims. To Christian parents, the solution was simple: forced baptism.
And even beyond this indignity, evidence concerning baptized Muslim wet nurses indicates the growing tendency to classify and judge people by skin color. The humour and heat imbalances in darker-skinned women made them bad mothers, according to medical authorities. And since wet nurses were understood as little more than biological appendages of real mothers, over and over, slave purchase and rental contracts demonstrate a keen preference for light-skinned baptizatae of nursing age.
Yes, rental contracts. Enslaved women pressed into service as wet nurses weren’t always just serving the family they at least knew and were comfortable with. Owners might hire out a *baptizata* as a nurse for some extra cash, or sell her altogether if the price was attractive enough.
And if no wet nurse was available? The brutal, systematic, and endemic sexual exploitation of enslaved women in Iberia could be—was—turned to economic use. When the foundling hospital of Perpignan was so financially overwhelmed in 1456 that it appealed to the city for extra money, the rectors made it bleedingly clear that aristocratic men bringing in their own bastard children were to blame. One man in 1400 Barcelona openly admitted sending away his own child so the baby's mother, an enslaved woman, would be free to nurse his legitimate heir.
And therein lay the cruelest blow of medieval wet nursing practice. Medical thought and popular religious teaching alike forbade women from nursing more than one child at the same time. All these wet nurses, all these “mothers who weren’t,” were mothers. They were mothers who weaned their children too early and quickly in order to make some money for the family; they were mothers who lost a child in infancy and had milk but no one suckle; they were mothers sold away from their newborns forever.
*(n.b. I'm super busy today so it will be a little while before I can get to follow-up questions if there are any; my apologies in advance for the delay.)*
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Are Sociopaths aware of their lack of empathy and other human emotions due to environmental observation of other people?
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I've found one research project where researchers investigates self-insight amongst teens diagnosed as psychopaths and their parents opinions of them. Three was little agreement, teens weren't as aware of their callousness and unemotional traits as their parents were.
> Our findings revealed low levels of parent–child agreement on these measures (ICC values ranging from .02 to .30 for psychopathic traits; ICC values ranging from .09 to .30 for externalizing behaviors).
However, I've not found a similar investigation involving adults. It's possible some develop insight as adults and this knowledge compounds their psychopathic traits. Indeed, diagnostic questionnaires of psychopathy require the subject to describe themselves.
That said, would Moores murderer, Ian Brady, have described himself as a psychopath? From reading what he wrote of himself, he obviously didn't think he was a psychopath. He tight himself as superior, a narcissistic psychopath. He had no insight at, then again he was an extreme case.
Ref.:
Ooi, Y.P., Glenn, A.L., Ang, R.P., Vanzetti, S., Falcone, T., Gaab, J. and Fung, D.S., 2017. Agreement between parent-and self-reports of psychopathic traits and externalizing behaviors in a clinical sample. Child Psychiatry & Human Development, 48(1), pp.151-165.
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Do the contents of our blood have any affect on mosquitos after they drink it? Do drunk people make drunk mosquitos?
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I think the answer is, "[we don't know](_URL_0_)," but it seems that mosquitoes are more attracted to drunk people, than sober people, and according to the article I linked fruit flies do get drunk, but have a high tolerance.
Same article also says, "Any liquid other than blood is diverted first to a separate digestive pouch where enzymes break it down. So it is likely the alcohol is neutralised before it hits the insect’s nervous system."
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You are a fairly well-off Londoner in Victorian times. How would you "park" your horse-drawn carriage without it being stolen? Did someone have to stay with it at all times?
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For a short visit like a social call, your driver (and possibly footmen) would stay with the horses outside. For a longer event, like a dinner party, ball or night at the theatre your carriage would drop you off, then return and collect you at a pre-arranged time, which is why grand formal invitations still say 'carriages at x time' so you know when to tell your coach to pick you up.
The houses of the kind of people who had their own carriages had stable buildings attached, usually around the back and accessed from a side street. These buildings included stables for the horses, a place for the carriage and accommodation for the driver, groom etc on an upper floor. Lots of these private urban stables still exist, they have mostly been converted into homes and are known as 'mews houses'.
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the ISS is a pretty well closed system. Every astronaut has brought their own microbiome, do we know anything about what they leave behind and what survives?
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[_URL_2_](_URL_2_)
[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)
& #x200B;
EDIT: Found the paper I describe below -- [_URL_1_](_URL_1_)
Going to space also makes bacteria much more resistant to antibiotics. I'm guessing that has something to do with gravity as well, with antibiotics ending up "walled in" by clumps of dead cells that then don't wash away as they would in an earth environment.
\---End Edit
& #x200B;
Can't find the exact paper, but in addition to those articles, bacteria that had been to space was found to be more aggressive, more virulent, and more deadly than it's earthly equivalent. It also spreads much more quickly, because a bacterial colony can easily grow in 3D without having to deal with gravity. The samples maintained their increased virulence for some time after returning to earth.
Based on my own logic, I would assume that space-bacteria colonies would have issues with waste elimination (no gravity to make it flow away), but I am not certain that this would be a big issue for bacteria. It might be that they grow those column-and-canopy (described in the first link) structures specifically for waste management reasons. Bacteria are, after all, simpler than humans.
By the way, speaking of waste management, one of the first things discovered in space was that the feeling of needing to go to the bathroom requires gravity. I read an interview with a (recent) astronaut, I wanna say the guy that posts youtube videos playing guitar from the ISS, who described "an odd bloating sensation a few days after arrival, which I soon deduced was the result of me not going to the bathroom for some time" as there was no gravity to make the poop push against the inside of his butt and trigger the "I wanna go" feeling.
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how do animals like ants and birds instinctually know how to build their dwellings/homes?
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They have inherited the knowledge in their genes, but they learn through trial and error, at least that is what we assume. There's quite a lot we don't know about ourselves and nature, but that's why we keep studying.
They're really fascinating animals. We had a bird in our garden that made a square nest, for no reason, and then he did it again. He lived in our garden, it was quite the sight.
Something to read up on:
^_URL_1_
^_URL_3_ ^(yep ^it's ^the ^Daily ^Fail ^sorry)
^_URL_0_
^_URL_2_
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Which time period did drinking tavern/inns become a thing in Europe as depicted in fantasy stories such as LOTR?
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* [Medieval Pubs: Ireland](_URL_2_) by /u/gothwalk
* [I'm a peasant visiting a 14th century alehouse. How would I be charged for my drinks and how easily could I skip the bill?](_URL_0_) by /u/sunagainstgold
* [What wrong ideas about medieval Europe might one get from popular works of "medieval fantasy"?](_URL_1_) by /u/vonadler
... But I couldn't find the post I was actually looking for, which was about medieval irish inns and how they existed to put up traveling aristocrats, and didn't charge but rather operated on prestige and rubbing elbows (iirc).
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Can fish live (or at least breathe) in liquids that are not water? For example milk
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No. Fish can’t even live in water that has the wrong amount of salt or dissolved oxygen in it. Putting a fish in a liquid other than the correct water would be like putting a human in the Venus atmosphere. Sure it’s “air” but the concentration of oxygen, nitrogen, CO2, etc are all wrong. Every animal, especially fish, are evolved to very specific environments, and putting them in something they are not adapted to survive in will kill them
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What happened to Roman soldiers who were non-fatally injured, but who couldn't keep up with the pace of the legion when marching?
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Not to discourage any further answers but you'll probably enjoy
[You are a Roman solider marching a long distance. Your leg breaks for whatever reason; what happens?](_URL_0_)
[How likely would a Roman soldier be to survive injury on the battlefield?](_URL_1_)
By /u/Celebreth
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What did Medieval soldiers do during sieges waiting for the fort/castle/city to starve?
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I can give you an idea of what a crusader army was doing and you may be surprised by how much activity was necessary to keep a besieging army in the field, even when it was static.
**Food and water**: Although we might think of those trapped within a city as being desperate for food, it was often the other way round in reality. A good-sized Medieval army was unlikely to take a settlement by surprise; during certain stretches of the march through Palestine the Europeans were managing well under 10 miles per day. This meant, when you came before the walls, your enemy was inside with food and you were outside with precious little.
The force which [laid siege to Jerusalem in 1099](_URL_8_), for example, probably contained at least 16,000 men, not counting the myriad other followers, pilgrims, churchmen, attendants etc. The arid surroundings, often hostile local populations and stifling heat of summer made provisioning the host difficult.
Which brings us to our first answer: soldiers would be actively foraging for food sources and establishing supplies of fresh water. Foraging parties would seek out whatever sustenance they could for the besieging army, which could be slim-pickings if your foe had been expecting you. It was also dangerous; in September 1191 a foraging expedition of the [Third Crusade](_URL_4_) ran into a detachment of [Saladin's](_URL_0_) army in an orchard. [Richard I of England](_URL_3_) rode out to their aid and was only just able to extricate himself to safety.
Likewise, water supplies could not be relied upon with great certainty while in the field. The siege of Jerusalem required 'elaborate schemes of water-carrying over large distances' and any such resources had to be maintained and also defended (Tyerman, p.155). To just keep a large host fed and watered in hostile territory will therefore have occupied a great deal of the time of many in a Medieval army.
**Combat**: It may seem obvious but a considerable deal of fighting could be expected during sieges, regardless of whether a storm or assault was in progress. Settlements with requisite supplies and manpower would often launch raids or 'forays' out of their fortifications to inflict surprise injuries against the besieging force. For this reason, even an army at rest outside the walls of a city frequently required active defense and patrol.
Take for example the [siege of Antioch in 1097-98](_URL_7_). At no point was the entirety of the city blockaded by the crusaders because of the scale of the fortifications, which meant soldiers had to be constantly vigilant to movements in and out of the city. Defenders could ambush their attackers or assault them with missiles with a considerable degree of freedom. The somewhat traditional view of static and unchanging battle lines in siege warfare is quite often inaccurate.
Sometimes the state of affairs was more fractious still. If we consider the [siege of Acre in 1189-91](_URL_6_), during which a Muslim garrison was besieged by [Guy de Lusignan](_URL_1_) who himself in turn was besieged by Saladin, soldiers will have been spending a great deal of time creating and manning trenches, counter-trenches and other fortifications. No-man's land and territorial demarcations shifted. The experience here for the fighting men was less that of inactivity and more one of 'frequent raids and close-combat skirmishes' (Tyerman, p.411).
**Siege engines and ladders**: Of course a well-provisioned and defended settlement has the luxury of time for inactivity, if they so choose, because it is the besieging force's duty to ultimately take by assault what cannot be taken by blockade. To this end, Medieval soldiers at siege would spend time building, maintaining and deploying siege engines.
It obviously follows that the materials for these weapons, such as wood, also needed to be foraged for, as with food and water sources mentioned above. This was a serous logistical undertaking in terms of manpower, with the Frankish army 'ferrying in timber by the camel-load' as the First Crusade reached its climax (Asbridge, p.95).
[Godfrey de Bouillon's](_URL_2_) siege tower had to be assembled from smaller, collapsible pieces to aid in its mobility. The soldiers were also engaged in building a huge iron-clad battering ram with which to assault the outer fortifications, under supervision from Genoese craftsmen. Together with catapults and ladders, this undertaking represented 'a furious programme of construction' over three weeks (Asbridge, p.95).
**Sex**
This is not my particular area, certainly others will know far more about women in siege camps, but considerable numbers of prostitutes would gather wherever a field army assembled, to engage in their business. This was acknowledged (and often loathed) by chroniclers: Gillingham quotes [Ambroise](_URL_5_) on the Third Crusade army, 'Back to the host the women came, To ply their trade of lust and shame'. We may say that from antiquity to the modern day that death and sex are often found in the same places, being the oldest professions as they are.
Hopefully this was a useful flavour of how much activity could be observed in a besieging army, as well as the sheer logistical efforts needed to keep it functioning. Other people might be able to impart additional information on things like religious services in camp, or perhaps leisure/gambling? These were some of the more pragmatic realities of sieges from campaigns I'm familiar with.
**Read more**:
C. Tyerman, *God's War* (2007)
I. Gillingham, *Richard I* (2002)
T. Asbridge, *The Crusades* (2012)
R. C. Smail, *Crusading Warfare* (1995)
Edit: Formatting.
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If I were traveling at near the speed of light (enough to significantly slow time), would I be able to "think" normally? Would I be able to tell that time is slowing down?
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As long as you were moving at a constant velocity, then nothing would appear "strange" to you. A key point of [special relativity](_URL_2_) is that the laws of physics work the same in any (i.e. non-accelerating) inertial frame of reference. So yes, if you have a spaceship that is moving *relative* to a planet, then the clock on the spaceship would tick more slowly than a clock on the planet due to [time dilation](_URL_3_). But for the people on the spaceship, nothing would change, they would perceive time as passing normally.
**edit:** Even though it's a bit late, I hope this follow-up can clear up some of the questions that have come up since my initial reply:
One of the consequences of the fact that the speed of light must be equal in all frames of reference is that the very notion of [simultaneity is relative](_URL_0_). In other words the idea that two distant events happen at the "same time" is not an absolute, but depends on our frame of reference. This is the key to understanding one of the apparent paradoxes of physics, namely the so-called [twin paradox](_URL_1_). In the most general terms, the "paradox" is that if you have two objects say A and B, which are moving relative to each other, then from the perspective of an observer on A, it is B that is moving, and hence time on B should run slower due to [time dilation](_URL_3_), but by the same token for an observer on B, it is the time on A that is moving more slowly. The fact that both perspectives are equally valid physically goes goes to the heart of special relativity and to the idea that there are no "privileged frames of reference."
Let's go back to the classical example of a person leaving the Earth on a spaceship and making a roundtrip and to the question of who would be older, a person on the ship or a person left on Earth. If the spacecraft is moving close to the speed of light, for an observer on Earth events on the spaceship would be unfolding in "slow motion" due to time dilation while life on Earth would continue at a normal pace. On the other hand, for a person on the spacecraft, it would appear as though things on on the ship would unravel at a normal pace, while it would be events on Earth that were happening more slowly! The resolution to this apparent contradiction is that once again, simultaneity is relative. It is not until the traveler would switch reference frames first by changing direction to return back to Earth and then again when stopping that a person on the spacecraft and a "stationary" observer on Earth could agree on the time. In that case they would find that it was the person on the spacecraft that would actually be younger than the one on Earth. Switching reference frames effectively creates discrete jumps in the apparent time.
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Do the animals (mammals, mostly) that we keep as pets exhibit behavior that is akin to that of a human suffering from Stockholm Syndrome?
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As /u/Nixie9 has already pointed out, definitely, without a doubt. That said, saying so is slightly problematic.
One of the most common mistakes people make when trying to understand animals and animal behavior is assigning human feelings and characteristics to them; personification of non-persons is always a little wonky because it's sort of ignoring the animals' own massive genetic history.
Yes, dogs display symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome in your home, but wild dogs display all of those same symptoms toward their alpha male. Saying your dog has Stockholm Syndrome is like saying your dog loves you; it appears true, but at the end of the day it's more of a metaphor for our perception of that animal than an actual description of how the animal feels.
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why do lips get chapped in cold weather compared to hot? doesn’t the hot air absorb the moisture more?
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Hot air does make moisture move more, but that also includes nearby water sources, making the air more humid.
The higher water content of the warm air doesn't suck from your lips as much as the very dry cold air.
Plus, when it's warmer, you're sweating more, applying moisture more directly.
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why do employers ask to upload resume and also fill out employment history, school information, etc... that is already listed on the resume?
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Not all resumes include all of the information they want. My resume hardly says anything about my schooling, and only lists my current position, as my prior employment was in different industries.
Resumes are always different, and the job seeker has a lot of wiggle room regarding what they can put on it. Some people add jobs without clear start or end dates, most people don't include contact information for those jobs -- these are all things that the potential employer may or may not want to know.
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To create artificial gravity in space, why cant the spaceship be rotated at high speeds generating centripetal forces that 'pull' the occupants to the edges?
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> why isn't this ever talked of as a possibility?
It is! It's a really common sci-fi trope, for a start. Recently, there was a proposal put to NASA in 2011 for a spacecraft called [Nautilus-X](_URL_0_), which had with a big spinning wheel. I'm sure it's just one design of many over the decades.
Unfortunately, the other non-inertial forces can cause motion sickness, and the whole thing is very expensive and would have to be inflatable (inflatable spacecraft is a technology still in its infancy).
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Is it more fuel efficient for a car to accelerate more before going up a hill or maintain a constant speed before and during the climb?
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In order to maximize fuel efficiency, rather than keeping a constant speed, aim for a constant engine speed by looking at your tachometer (RPM gauge). Fuel efficiency is best at maximum torque, so keep your RPM's around 2500-3000 (the exact number isn't as important as keeping it constant) regardless of if you are going uphill or downhill. This is even easier if you have a manual transmission, because you won't have to worry about unexpected shifts.
Edit: more science. Recall Newton's second law from high school physics. Force = mass times acceleration. We are trying to minimize the force. The force is being generated by your motor. Mass is a constant, so the only way to reduce force is to reduce acceleration of the motor, which you do by keeping the angular velocity of your motor constant.
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Why do abandoned buildings seem to decay so quickly when people live in buildings that are centuries old?
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Buildings that are not abandoned are maintained. Wood is protected from rotting, iron and steel is shielded from the environment to slow down rusting, plants are prevented from growing and breaking apart concrete and mortar, etc.
Basically, most man-made structures are not designed to be able to withstand the harsh effects of nature without intervention (maintenance).
See also: Life After People, Aftermath, other similar television series.
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If we don't know the exact value for Pi, how can we know the exact area of a circle if that is 2(pi) Rad?
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We *do* know the exact value of pi. It's... pi. You are most likely conflating "knowing an exact value" with "having a terminating or repeating decimal representation". A number that lacks the latter is no less exact than any other number. Also, we may compute the decimal representation of pi for an arbitrarily large number of decimal places if we really wanted. There's rarely any point though.
(Finally, note that we may show that in planar Euclidean geometry, the ratio of circumference to radius is the same for all circles. So we may *define* 2\*pi to be that number such that C/r = 2\*pi. So whether you were able to calculate a decimal representation of pi or not, we know that C = 2\*pi\*r because we have defined it to be that.)
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How difficult was it to design Chess? Was there multiple, evolving versions of it? How did it spread across the globe like it has?
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Chess was most likely created in modern-day India roughly 1500 years ago, where it was called "four members" (chaturanga), referring to the 4 parts of an army: cavalry, elephants, chariots, and infantry. The earliest rule sets are lost to time, but it looked similar to modern chess. It was played on an 8 by 8 board with a row of 8 infantry (pawns) and a row of more powerful pieces: 2 chariots (rooks), 2 horsemen (knights), 2 elephants (bishops), the king, and the king's adviser (queen). The elephants probably moved exactly 2 spaces diagonally, without jumping, the adviser probably moved exactly 1 space in any direction, there was no en puissant move for the infantry, and it's not clear whether the horsemen could jump over other pieces.
Clearly this was meant to simulate militaries of the time, with an emphasis on the importance of chariots. The elephants/bishops and adviser/queen were much less powerful in early versions of the game, thus placing a much greater importance on the chariots/rooks, which could move quickly across the battlefield, and served as mobile archery platforms for elite bowmen.
From there it spread west to become the Persian game shatranj, and probably spread east to become the Chinese game xiangqi ("elephant game"), also called Chinese chess. However, some Chinese sources claim that xiangqi was invented independently. Xiangqi is played on a 9 by 9 grid with 5 infantry spaced out, 2 cannons that must jump over other pieces to attack, and a back row of 2 chariots, 2 horsemen, 2 elephants, 2 guards/advisers, and the general, which serves the same role as the king.
_URL_0_
According to legend, the general was originally called "king" or "emperor", but one day the Chinese emperor overheard two people playing the game, and one exclaimed, "I killed your emperor!" And that's when the piece was renamed to "general."
But xiangqi is quite similar to chaturanga, in particular with the elephants moving exactly 2 spaces diagonally. Although in xiangqi they're not allowed to cross the center row (the "river"). Xiangqi spread to Korea to become janggi, and to Japan to become shogi, both of which have somewhat different rules from xiangqi.
To the west, the game spread throughout the Muslim world, and "chaturanga" became "shatranj" became "shah", which eventually became "chess". This is when the pieces became abstracted rather than statuettes, due to the Muslim ban on idolatry and iconography. The game was introduced to Europe through Spain with the Umayyad conquest of the Iberian peninsula, but it also spread northward into modern-day Russia.
But it's in Spain that Chess began to change into its modern version. This is where the adviser/vizier transformed into the queen, the elephants transformed into bishops, and the chariots (Persian "rukh") became towers (Italian "rocca"). Especially, the reign of Isabella -- combined with a desire to speed the game up -- led to the creation of the modern rules for the chess queen, where the queen is the most powerful piece. This was also where the bishops became more powerful, and castling and en puissant were introduced.
The modern rule set was formalized in Europe by the 19th century, but I also want to mention an Ethiopian variant of the game -- senterej. This is quite similar to modern chess, but during the opening phase, players may set up their pieces within the first 4 ranks however they like, without regard to how many moves are made. They're just not allowed to cross the center line of the board.
For sources and further reading, I highly recommend:
Birth of the Chess Queen, 2004, by Marilyn Yalom
Chinese Chess, 1985, H.T. Lau
Chariot, 2005, Arthur Cotterell
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In 1604 there was a supernova that caused a star to be bright enough to be seen during day time. How was this interpreted at the time? Did any figures or groups try to capitalise on it for political or spiritual influence?
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Hopefully more people will be along to provide other perspectives!
Apparently, physican Baldassare Capra used the nova as an excuse to attack Galileo and make himself look better. Given the number of you who have heard of Galileo versus the number familiar with Capra, I think we can guess how *that* turned out.
There is, of course, a larger story here, one that is about either (1) what the "new star" was, whether it was actually new, was it a miraculous creation or the product of natural motions of the universe (2) which set of academics could explain it better, or (3) you see? you SEE? THE WORLD IS GOING TO END. LIKE, NOW.
Capra's accusation had nothing to do with any of that. He just wanted people to know that he had seen it first.
As Capra told the story, he had observed it one day along with his informal mentor and a non-academic but very rich Italian man. In his excitement, he later pointed it out to Giacomo Corano (another rich Italian man), and only then did Corano tell Galileo. But, Capra claimed angrily, Galileo had made no mention of his help in his lecture series.
Galileo *probably* ignored this attack publicly. (We'll get to that.) But one imagines that it contributed at least somewhat to the title he unleashed on a later publication aimed against Capra: *Defense against the Slanders and Deceits of Baldassare Capra.* Especially because, after demonstrating conclusively that Capra had plagiarized Galileo's (other) work, he stuck in a jibe about the "priority in discovery" episode. And he stuck in a jibe about the *writing style in which Capra made the accusation*:
> I do not know in what school Capra has learned these brutish manners.
The lower the stakes, the more everything matters.
(As well might also be applied re: the surprisingly vigorous modern debate over which texts in the actual *scientific* controversy over the nova were published under pen names.)
The broader context of the impact of the nova in western Europe, unsurprisingly, involves various levels of religion. In the academy, it became a flashpoint for the waning days of credible astrology, and whether mathematicians or philosophers had the better claim for explaining astronomical events.
Beyond academia, even less surprisingly, the question tended to be less "what does it mean" than "where do I build my apocalypse bunker."
Wonders in the heavens were a traditional sign of Bad Things To Come in Christian Europe. Early 1500s Augsburg, for example, witness the *Kreuzfall*--"cross-fall"--in which red and black (ash?) cross-shaped...things...fell across the land, on people, etc. This was immediately publicized as a sign of God's anger at the Augsburgers, and if they did not repent, he would send down *real*punishment. The event did not lead to "real" punishment, although it did lead to a woman named Anna Laminit claiming prophetic authority to interpet the *Kreuzfall*, becoming hugely famous to the extent that the emperor and empress became followers of her...until she was debunked as a fraud by, for real, the duchess of Bavaria.
But I digress because that's one of my favorite historical stories. More revelant to, you know, *the next century*: from the mid-1500s to the mid (ish)-1600s in particular (the 1400s are NOT excluded here, though), European popular pamphlets are rife with descriptions, fears, and expectations of weird things in the sky and/or astrological phenomena (alignments of the planets, and such). And these fears are centered around one thing: they all signal the coming apocalypse.
Oh, and now that we have progressed from academic pettiness to the deepest darkest places of religion, let's go to...cults?
Because yeah. The early Rosicrucian pamphlets, from 1614 and 1615, *especially* love citing 1604 as the herald or the actual dawning of a new, millennarian age. Which is not to avoid the apocalypse, but rather, to project a good time before the end.
The texts' link between the nova and the apocalypse signals its ongoing importance--either to the author of the texts actually believing in the philosophy they espoused, or to understanding how useful it could be to play on the imaginations of its audience.
Reminding one, rather, of Anna Laminit a century before, convincing the Augsburg upper class to give her a fancy house and a prime place at church...and convincing Martin Luther to visit her in search of prophecy and wisdom.
~~
Further Reading:
* Robert Westman's *The Copernican Question: Prognostication, Skepticism, and Celestial Order* (2011) parses the Capra/Galileo controversy within the context of the mathematician vs. natural philosophy debate (they were actually on the same side in that? More or less?). It's just Chapter 14; don't be intimidated by the whole book!
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Were any Jewish athletes who participated in the 1936 Berlin Olympics killed during the Holocaust?
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Yes, there were many Jewish athletes from countries in Europe, America, and North Africa who competed. For example, Bronislaw Czech, from Poland, was a downhill skier who competed in the '28, '32, and '36 olympics. During the holocaust he was sent to Auschwitz, and died there after refusing to train German skiers.
Source-The Hamsa, by E.S. Kraay
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what is so special about baking soda? why does it have such amazing properties for everything?
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> how has something so awesome stayed so cheap also.
Baking soda is made from a reaction of easily obtainable items, so costs to produce are low. If I recall correctly, its carbon dioxide, salt and ammonia.
Some commodities stay low in price, regardless of their high demand and large scale production of an item, generally lowers the price per gram; producing 1kg would be more expensive compared to producing 10,000 tons. I don't know enough about economics to explain this further.
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When did Italians start identifying as Italian instead of Latin or Roman? When did they begin to see themselves as fundamentally different from the Romans in Constantinople?
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That's a million euro question. The issue of Italian identity has been controversial and debated for a very long time. Italians themselves seem to be unsure: there are examples of Independence and Unification champions travelling to other regions and describing them as "different as Japan" and that was the Age of Nationalism.
There are generally two different attitudes that are common. One is to identify as Italians against non-Italians. This happens generally abroad and there are examples of this as far back as Boccaccio's novels where even Sicilians are included in the lot. Although the first use if the words Italy and Italians (Italici) dates back to the Bellum Socialis in Roman times.
The other is raising differences when confronting Italians from other regions. This is also reported as far back as early Middle Ages, with a "Lombard" or “Frankish" north and a "Greek" (Byzantine) south and a "Roman" central area that reached as far as Ravenna. The kingdom of Italy, successor if the Lombard kingdom, had its southern border in Tuscany and Marche, and that lasted in Cavour's project in 1850s. The inclusion of southern Italy and Rome in the kingdom was a diversion of Garibaldi and not in the plan of the Piedmontese elites.
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Is the Roman Catholoic tradition of canonizing saints connected to the Roman (pagan?) tradition of deifying state heroes?
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Before Christianity was ever centered in Rome, it spread throughout the Middle East, made its way across the former Persian empire to India and traveled south, deep into Africa. Although Rome was the center of the Roman empire, Roman culture was not shared by large swathes of the ancient Christian world. However, the Christian practice of venerating saints existed even among the ancient Christian communities in the Middle East, Far East and Africa (many of these communities still exist today). It is highly unlikely that a specifically Roman pagan practice would have been adopted across the entire ancient Christian world.
Info Source: "The Story of Christianity" by David Bentley Hart
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There are Glasses that make Colorblind People see colors. Do they work the other way around too?
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The most common form of colorblindness is [to see red and green as the same color](_URL_3_).
Sometimes it's because the red or green cone cells are missing, but usually it's because [they respond to almost the same color light](_URL_1_) (vs [normal vision](_URL_2_))
How the glasses work is by blocking [colors between red and green where there is the most overlap](_URL_0_) it allows the faulty red and green cones to see enough difference to distinguish red from green.
Now if you wanted to change how you see colors with glasses you'd never be able to create exactly what a colorblind person sees (that would require "creating" light), but if you wore glasses that were strongly tinted green then technically you would be seeing in monochrome (black and green of course, not black and white). Same goes for red or blue.
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How did Michel Ney, a competent commander his whole career, screw up so badly at Waterloo?
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Michel Ney, *les brave des braves*, was a rather interesting character in the Napoleonic Wars. Being in the original class of the Marshalate, he was unique that he didn't serve directly under Napoleon nor was particularly famous in France as being a competent commander, rather he was known within the French army as a daring and audacious commander. So, his rise to Marshal has more to do with popularity rather than skill at command.
From here, he would serve in a good capacity in many major battles during the Prussian campaign of 1806/7 against Prussia and Russia, often being a flanking corps commander. However, he wasn't known for being a quality commander. Napoleon himself said that Ney was "too immoral, too stupid to be able to succeed" and that "he was good for a command of 10,000 men, but beyond that he was out of his depth." The ten thousand men is an rough size for a French division as a corps could number from twenty to forty thousand men depending on campaign requirements and losses. Beyond the "immoral and stupid" comment, the comment about ten thousand men seems to be best. He has been described as an ideal infantry division commander, often leading from the front with the men rather than being sensible and leading from behind a few lines of infantry.
The thing he's most famous for is his rear guard not just in Russia but in Spain. In 1808 when the French intervention in Spain, Marshal Massena left Ney behind to cover the retreat of the French army, but rather than getting destroyed he showed extraordinary skill at rear guard actions. This would be a test for his future in Russia where he would lead one of the best rear guard actions in all of military history. However, this rear guard action would cost something.
The rear guard action took toll on Ney, with a force of a couple thousand, it would slowly fall to a hand full of men no more than a couple hundred. Combine that with a constant need to be ready to act and the physical exhaustion from the Russian winter, Ney would have been worn out more than any other commander. After Russia, he would serve and get wounded several times, but was the leader of the push for Napoleon to abdicate.
So, now we come to The Hundred Days. At first, Ney was shown to be a pet of the Bourbon Restoration, swearing to bring back Napoleon in a cage. We know he didn't and turned in favor of his commander, however this could be the final straw that would unravel him.
At Quatre Bras, he was known to have said aloud that he wished a ball would find it's way to kill him on the spot. Then at Waterloo, you see the poorly made cavalry charge (done way too soon and as you said, poorly supported) that did little to change the situation (by not spiking the guns). This cavalry charge might give the ultimate clue, as you said he didn't spike the guns but he was famously shown to be slapping the side of the guns with the flat of his sword. Later in the day, rather than call his men to retreat, he would cry out (after his fourth horse has been killed) "Come and see how a marshal of France dies", which is nicely portrayed in the Waterloo section of *Les Miserables*.
As a result of these confusing actions, the only thing that can be surmised is that the years of war and the excessive risk he put himself through finally started to cause him to crack, leading to the theory that he was experiencing PTSD. He did have a few symptoms of PTSD, such as suicidal actions (see the quote, willing to fight the British to the death), shame or guilt (seen by the ball quote), irrational anger (slapping the gun with his sword) and general negative thoughts about the venture (see all of the above combined into a semi-suicidal madman).
So, the problem is compounded with a mediocre leader and a possible case of PTSD.
Edit: reguard =/= rear guard, make appropriate fixes.
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(nsfw) why is it that men "get back to their senses" after ejaculation?
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[This comment](_URL_0_) summarizes it relatively simply. It comes down to the limbic system, which is a set of brain structures responsible for controlling instinct and mood. Basically, when you're that horny, some areas of your brain have less blood and oxygen going to them, and as soon as you ejaculate, the limbic system allows normal flow to the brain again, and you're back to thinking normally, for better or for worse. I would assume that this also explains why sometimes you may feel light headed right after ejaculation - there is a rush of blood back to the brain. In the end though, always remember to masturbate before making any important decision.
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If a moderately well-off citizen of ancient Rome wanted to take his family on a vacation, what sort of options would be open to him?
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not discouraging anyonen with specific information about vacation options in ancient Rome, but FYI there have been several questions about vacations in ye olde days. I've taken this opportunity to do a general roundup (with an eye to adding them to the "popular questions" wiki); I've indicated which ones include responses mentioning Rome, so you'll find lots of ideas here:
**Vacations in general**
[When did traveling for pleasure become popular?](_URL_2_) Rome
[At what point in time did traveling for leisure become normal?](_URL_4_) Rome
[When were vacations (as we know them) "invented"?](_URL_5_) no
[When and where did tourism start?](_URL_8_) Rome
[When and why did people start leaving home for short vacations?](_URL_0_) Rome
[When did tourism become a large part of countries incomes?](_URL_9_) no
[Did people use boats and ships as pleasure craft before modern times?](_URL_10_) Rome
**Going to the beach**
[Did ancient peoples "go to the beach" as we do today?](_URL_6_) Rome
[When did we start going to the beach?](_URL_11_) Rome
[When did "going to the beach" become a popular, recreational activity?](_URL_1_) no
[Question about beach culture in England.](_URL_7_) no
[When did "going to the beach" become a popular way to spend time?](_URL_3_) no
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Pretend I'm a fish and get swallowed whole by a shark... How long do I live inside the shark/what ultimately kills me?
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> Most sharks swallow their food whole or bite it into relatively large pieces. Sharks have U-shaped stomachs that use very strong acids and enzymes to dissolve most of what is eaten.
Doesn't sound like a very long time.
Source: _URL_0_
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Besides Solar, and Hydro, are we likely to develop a method of generating electricity that isn't ultimately steam turning a fan?
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Maybe not forever, but for the foreseeable future... yeah probably. All of those things generate heat, and there are only so many things you can do with thermal energy. You can directly convert it to electricity via the [Seebeck effect](_URL_1_), as is used in [RTGs](_URL_4_), but it's extremely inefficient. The conversion method of (blah) - > steam - > electricity is generally fairly efficient, well understood, and lots and lots of engineering work has gone into it.
Edit: A note on efficiency. In a normal [PWR nuclear reactor](_URL_3_), the heat extracted from the core raises the coolant temperature to typically around 600K. Thermal efficiency for converting that heat to electricity is limited by the [Carnot efficiency](_URL_0_), which is about 50% given the coolant temperature. Actual end-to-end efficiencies tend to be around 30-35%, which isn't bad considering the hard theoretical limit. To increase over efficiency, you can increase the core temperature, decrease the sink temp (pretty much impossible), or increase conversion efficiency (the steam part). The conversion efficiency really isn't going to change much, so increasing core temp is the way to go. There are some cool [Gen IV](_URL_2_) ideas that do this -- I've done some work on coolant piping metallurgy that says 650-700'C is doable, which could make 50% end-to-end efficiency a reality.... if anyone ever builds them.
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why in some countries people just wipe but in some countries they use a bidet and wipe?
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Just cultural anomalies. I live in England, and we bought a house recently which came with a bidet. This is unusual in the UK, and we don't use the bidet...we've discussed taking it out when we remodel the bathroom in a couple years, making room for a larger bath, perhaps.
#
However, I can objectively see why a bidet would be more desirable, especially if that's what you're used to. If you simply use toilet paper, there will undoubtedly be at least a trace amount of your faecal matter remaining. Realistically, if you're wiping "until the paper comes away clean", this should be a negligible amount and it will be 'contained' within the buttocks. It's not as though you 'spread it around'. Also, with daily showering, any sane person will be washing the area between their buttocks with soap and water anyway.
#
**Edit:** This thread has inspired me. May try my bidet out for the first time.
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If we can't put anymore transistors on a microchip because the transistors are physically too small, why don't we just make bigger microchips?
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they can make them larger...but that wont make them faster. Think of it like this....you work downtown....you live within the city center...you commute to work. The city becomes increasingly crowded and people move further from the city center....and their commute to work is longer and longer the bigger the city gets.
thats a chip with the same scale
now imagine if the public transit system of your city could double its speed with a new higher power engine...if you could do that it would be AS IF the city was half the size....commuters would speed to work.
In the microchip world instead of increasing the size of the engine in the train....they seek to shrink the city. But at this point the way we know buildings (transistors) doesnt allow us to shrink them much more....so unless someone figures out how to build smaller houses, or faster roads.....
Bigger chip = more processing at the same speeds. Essentially without some breakthrough in microchip technology.....the new path forward becomes parallel computing. Our current multicore processor computers are rarely given dynamic multithreaded tasks....most software is single thread. So it would require a paradigm shift in programming but....thats likely the future...
at least as far as I can tell.
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how do they make weed killer that they can spray on grass and plants that only kill weeds without hurting the grass or plants?
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There are two major families of flowering plants, called dicots and monocots. There are a lot of subtle differences between them, but one of the easiest ways to tell is the [shape of the leaves](_URL_0_) EDIT: and the way the veins are arranged
Grasses and almost all grain crops, like corn, wheat, and rice, are monocots. Most "weed" species are dicots. The most common types of weed killers only kill dicots, and leave monocots unharmed.
Other types of weed killers will kill almost all plants, but they've genetically engineered certain crops to be resistant to that weed killer. If you've planted those genetically engineered crops, you can spray the weed killer all over your field and only the things you don't want growing will die.
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why is it that sitting for extended periods can cause blood clots but laying down sleeping for 6-8 hours a night doesn’t?
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When you sleep your blood does not have to flow upwards, your body is mostly straight and you are still moving alot in sleep. So If your leg is broken and you can't move a little your chance developing cloths is higher. That's why they give you shots in hospital every day. While sitting the legs aren't moved much, they are angled and the blood have to flow upwards.
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on old fashioned ships from the 1600s pirate times etc i’m guessing they had fires to keep warm how did they keep these safe and protect the wooden ship from burning?
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In the age of sail, ship's cabins were poorly ventilated, and dozens (or even hundreds) of men would keep the cabin more than warm enough with their body heat alone when they were sleeping. When walking about the deck of the ship, warm clothing was about all that could be relied on.
Ships were extremely flammable, with not just wood and cloth but also tar for waterproofing the ship.
While there were ovens introduced later on, they were more for cooking and were not designed for heating the ship.
You can find more info here: [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)
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How and why was the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth formed? What lead to its demise?
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Poland and Lithuania had a personal union under Sigismund II. A personal union means that two countries share a monarchy, such as Austria-Hungary having the Empire of Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary as two separate entities, ruled by one person who was simultaneously the Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary.
Around the time of the Union of Lublin, Lithuania was under severe pressure from the Russians. However, the Polish nobility didn't really want to help without some sort of concession from the Lithuanians. Sigismund decided to try and manipulate the nobles to agree to join the two countries into one, which was achieve at the Union of Lublin. However, when Sigismund died without an heir, it was decided to have the nobles of Poland-Lithuania elect the next king-thus rendering the Commonwealth an elective monarchy. And that structure remained the system of the Commonwealth until its eventual dismemberment.
The problem with the structure is that, while granting a large number of liberties to the nobles allowed for the elections to take place mostly undisputed, the nobles often acted autonomously and would feud with each other and the king. Often times the king's military was essentially limited to his personal levy and whatever his allies would be able to dig up. There was also a clause in the Polish Parliament, the Sejm, that required all the nobles to agree on legislation. This resulted in what was known as a liberum veto, where any noble could veto any legislation single-handedly. Foreign influenced nobles (from Prussia, Austria, and Russia) often invoked this veto whenever Poland tried to reform, thus preventing any real internal change or development.
Meanwhile, Poland's foreign policy was in chaos. After a failed attempt to add the crown of Russia to the Commonwealth, Poland experienced a time of instability. Ukrainian cossacks revolted against the Poles and swore loyalty to the Russians, resulting in an extremely costly war that depleted the Polish military. Meanwhile, Swedish troops swept into Poland proper, sacking and burning valuable and wealthy Polish territories, in what became known as the Deluge. The result was a severely weakened Commonwealth that became easily manipulable by its neighbors, which eventually resulted in the Partitions of Poland by Prussia, Austria, and Russia.
The Winged Hussars were primarily effective because of their military discipline and the fact that they were superior cavalry to most other countries at the time. For instance, at the Battle of Kircholm, the extremely strong and disciplined Swedish army was routed within half an hour by a massive Polish cavalry charge despite outnumbering the Poles by more than 2:1. The Swedish cavalry simply didn't have the power to engage the Polish lancers and shattered, exposing the infantry's flanks and causing a total collapse of the line. This battle among others inspired the Swedes to change their cavalry tactics from the sword and pistol reiters to lance equipped chargers. However, the main disadvantage of the hussars was that due to the need to maintain powerful war horses, only some of the Polish nobility, or szlachta, were able to maintain them, thus limiting their numbers and use. In addition, as infantry rate of fire started to increase, cavalry as a whole became less effective, especially the frontal charges favored by the Poles.
After World War I, both Poland and Lithuania received independence from Germany and Russia. However, the two quickly got involved in a border dispute over the city of Vilnus/Wilno. This sparked a war between Poland and Lithuania, which Poland won, securing both Vilnus/Wilno and the Suwalki region for Poland, and earning the ire of the Lithuanians. Specifically, the Polish leader, Pilsudski, was born in Wilno, and arranged a military seizure of Vilnus by a group of so-called Polish mutineers that declared independence from Lithuania and held a "referendum" to join Poland. This did not go over well and polluted Polish-Lithuanian relations for some time.
Sources:
Frost, Robert. After the Deluge: Poland-Lithuania and the Second Northern War
Davies, Norman: White Eagle and Red Star
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why when we become self-aware of something, such as blinking, we have an increased urge to do it?
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Take a second to think about blinking. Now that you’re thinking about it, you probably stopped blinking to see what would happen. In this time, you may have missed several blinks that would’ve happened naturally and not really even been noticed. Now, you’re brain is going to go “oh crap, I didn’t blink! Let me make up for it right now!” and you’ll blink several times to “get caught up” from the blinks you “missed.” Now that your brain has reset itself on blinking, you’ll think “have o blinked enough? Maybe I should throw in a couple more JUST IN CASE,” this the increased urge to do it.
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scientifically speaking, what determines the color a leaf will change to in the fall and do trees always change the same color year after year?
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Well I don't remember too much about leaf senescence and pigments right now, but here is a quick answer to hold you over until someone comes along and corrects me.
Basically, leaves have colour because of pigments. Different pigments absorb different colours (wavelengths) of light. They also reflect other colours. Leaves are generally green because of the well known pigment chlorophyll . It reflects green light, hence why it appears green. However there are two main types of chlorophyll, A and B. Red maple trees have...red leaves. They have mainly chlorophyll B, and anthocyanins, and other pigments. So for any given tree, it has chlorophyll (A, B, or both) in different amounts, along with other pigments that are not as "strong" as chlorophyll (present in lesser concentration s). Once a leaf begins to senesce (prepare to fall off), chlorophyll "dies off" (breaks down) and leaves the other pigments you could not see because of the over powering chlorophyll. Mostly red, yellow and orange reflecting pigments are left. Hence the colours.
A specific tree will generally stay the same colour every year, but a plant can have different amounts of pigment in a leaf (or cell), at a different time of day! So the colour can change year to year. but not too much usually.
Hope somebody can correct me, as I'm going from a course I took 3 years ago by memory. I haven't studied this area in quite a while.
Source: Msc student studying plant metabolism
TLDR: once main pigment chlorophyll is gone, the accessory pigments show up and give pretty colours.
Edit: just to add the accessory pigments (anthocyanins, xanthophylls, and carotenoids) are there to absorb more wavelengths of light that chlorophyll can't do well. Chlorophyll A and B absorb similar, but different ranges of wavelengths. The compliment of all pigments creates a wider range of wavelengths to be used in photosynthesis, so more food for the plant is made.
Edit 2: there are some really good comments below adding to this and explaining this more in depth. Check em out.
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Why does a standard computer keyboard have 12 function keys (F1 - F12)?
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Holy guacamole, I can actually answer this one. But first we have to go back to mainframes...
Back in the days of yore, desktop computers weren't a thing. Instead, you'd have a keyboard and monitor connected to a terminal of one sort or another. There were two main categories: *character-oriented* terminals and *block (or data stream)-oriented* terminals. The former was cheaper to make due to the smaller component count and simply transmitted each keypress to the connected mainframe or (later on) minicomputer.
*Block-oriented* terminals were an interesting development. In exchange for adding a bit more circuitry to each terminal, the demands on a mainframe's time could be decreased. For example, consider an airline ticketing system. A booking agent wants to search for flights from JFK to SFO, deparing on 7/5/74. A *character-oriented* terminal would interrupt the mainframe each time a character was pressed, leading to expensive context switches as the mainframe had to service requests from each active terminal. A *block-oriented* terminal would be able to present a form with fillable fields for origin, destination, and date, which would only interrupt the mainframe when all data was submitted at once. IBM was able to take advantage of this to allow a single mainframe to serve a massive amount of terminals, but this meant that any interaction represented a relatively significant expense as compared to *character-oriented* terminals. (Consider the case of typing a paragraph of text and saving it. On a *character-oriented* terminal, the "save" command would be just one interrupt, after the interrupts for each letter. On a *block-oriented* terminal, the "save" command would be the *only* interrupt.)
This meant it was to IBM's benefit to be able to accomplish tasks with as few interactions as possible. Interactive time-sharing applications of the time such as ISPF could present menus, but navigating a hierarchical menu meant the mainframe would have to do more work. The solution was shortcut keys. Depending on context, a mainframe's numbered PF keys would accomplish different tasks. A user would memorize the ones they used most frequently, while common shortcuts could be displayed at the bottom of the screen, both resulting in fewer interrupts for the mainframe.
How did we get from mainframes to PCs? When the original IBM PC launched, it had 10 function keys in a bank on one side of the keyboard. PCs didn't have time-sharing capabilities, and each keystroke generated an interrupt, but users still enjoyed the ability to streamline frequent tasks when supported by a given application. A subsequent model, the PC/AT, contained a standard keyboard layout with exactly half of the 24 function keys that were common on 3270-series terminals of the time, arranged in one bank rather than two. ETA: As /u/OnlyDeanCanLayEggs notes below, this particular keyboard is sufficiently well-known that its model name, "Model M", is still widely recognized today.
Edit: Terminology.
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why when i'm trying to fall asleep do i begin reliving cringe-worthy moments in my past?
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There are lots of reasons - one of the primary ones being that in our history as humans, avoiding pain was a much higher priority than seeking pleasure as pain. So it makes sense that our subconsciousness tends to focus on negatives rather than positives, especially as back when evolutionary pressure was at its highest on humans, something like a broken leg likely meant death. You can see this phenomenon playing out in people who are highly risk averse, even when the risk is small and the rewards are potentially great (making career moves, dating moves, etc).
As long as you reproduce, your DNA doesn't care how pleasurable your life is. Pain inhibits your ability to reproduce far more than pleasure helps it, or least that was the case back when evolutionary pressure was stronger for us and natural selection was ruthlessly weeding out unfavorable traits.
As for why you're focusing on social shame, when it comes to questions of the subconscious, the rule of thumb is to look back at what your concerns would have meant for a caveman. Back in the tribal days, if you were not accepted by your tribe, it meant you were far less likely to reproduce - and not only that, but if you weren't accepted by your tribe it was overwhelmingly likely that you would never be accepted by anyone as most people lived and died exclusively with the tribe they were raised in.
Also, your subconscious is smart enough to know what things are important for you to resolve. This does not mean that every thought pattern is beneficial - only that you can gain insight about how to proceed by analyzing your thought patterns. Your subconscious seems burdened by some bad memories and is bringing them up again in order to encourage some type of action on your part. That action is for you to decide, and there are professionals who can help you with that if you decide you want to do that.
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how come mammals’ fur doesn’t come in a wider array of colors like green, blue, pink or purple?
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The only reason reptiles like snakes are brightly colored is to alert predators that they are poisonous. Birds are brightly colored to attract mates. Fish are brightly colored to attract mates and alert predators they are poisonous. Amphibians like frogs are brightly colored to alert predators they are poisonous.
Mammals need to be camouflaged to better hunt and survive because food isn’t as easily found and predators are numerous.
Edit: am stupid and confused frogs for reptiles.
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Is there any record of Joseph Stalin ever expressing any remorse for his executions, repressions, or for the death of his son Yakov?
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I'm going to recommend you (or anyone else interested in this topic) read [*Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar* by Simon Sebag Montefiore](_URL_0_).
The word "remorse" does not appear in that book.
However, "sorrow" does show up on page 525 of the 2007 edition:
> "Yet Stalin talked about their acquaintances murdered during the thirties 'with the calm detachment of a historian, showing neither sorrow nor rage, just a light humour.' Once he wandered up to one of his marshals who had been arrested and released: 'I heard you were recently in confinement?'
> 'Yes, Comrade Stalin, I was, but they figured out my case and released me. But how many good and remarkable people perished there.'
> 'Yes,' mused Stalin thoughtfully, 'we've lost a lot of good and remarkable people.' Then he walked out of the room into the garden. The courtiers turned on the Marshal. 'What did you say to Comrade Stalin?' demanded Malenkov who always behaved like the school prefect. 'Why?' Then Stalin reappeared holding a bouquet of roses which he presented to the Marshal as a weird sort of apology."
You ask about Yakov in particular, and that's referenced in the first two pages of the 40th chapter:
> "After the war, a Georgian confidant plucked up the courage to ask Stalin if the Paulus offer was a myth.
> "He 'hung his head,' answering 'in a sad, piercing voice': 'Not a myth ... just think how many sons ended in camps! Who would swap them for Paulus? Were they worse than Yakov? I had to refuse ... what would they have said of me, our millions of Party fathers, if having forgotten about them, I had agreed to swapping Yakov? No, I had no right ...' Then he again showed the struggle between the nervy, angry, tormented man within and the persona he had become: 'Otherwise I'd no longer be "Stalin."' He added: 'I so pitied Yasha!'"
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Attention loyal citizens of AskHistorians, it is time to come pay homage to your New Mods!
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I’m no longer the new guy! It’s like that Recess episode. I get my name back, the hazing ends, I don’t need to be Zhukov’s stool or fetch coffees, or any of the other things I was told are traditional.
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why i can buy a new tv for $300, new tablet for $500 but a new phone costs $700?
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A new phone does not cost $700 dollars. *Certain* phones cost $700 dollars, just like there will also be high end TVs that cost $2000 dollars and low end phones that cost $30. And those high end phones cost that much because that is how much people are willing to pay in that market segment.
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What is the difference between modern day wine and its ancient (BC and first couple hundred years of AD) counterpart?
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Here's a very interesting AMA from last month :
_URL_0_
Answers from /u/Queniden :
> * Reports of wine made in amphoras is that they are **much more oxidized** (sherry-like) than what we are used to now.
> * **Both wine and beer has changed tremendously in style over time.** Even over the last few decades. In many cases I don't think you would want to drink what was made in ancient times (**oxidized wine cut with seawater and flavored with burnt tree resin**) or we simply do not know what was in them
> * The ratio of wine to water depended on context. If you were quite poor the ratio would be higher. During wine drinking parties there was attendant who was in charge of taking measure of the room's mood and if the event was getting rowdy they would increase the proportion of water or if conversation was lagging they would increase it.
> * *Is there a good way to get a taste of historical alcohols today?*
> Look for a book named "Uncorking the Past" by Patrick E. McGovern. It is a great read and in the book he and his team did analysis of residues in ancient containers to discover what the ingredients were. He then teamed up with some local breweries to try and recreate these beverages.** You could probably find some of these still being produced but note that they change the recipes somewhat to account for modern tastes and have access to quality control measures that didn't exist then.**
> * **It seems though in all cases it was diluted. It was simply considered uncivilized to not dilute it.** It would be like going to a fine restaurant of picking up a steak and eating it with your hands.
> What might be the most similar wine today to something Greeks (let's say ~500BC) or Romans (perhaps 200BC-200AD) might have consumed?
> Greek or Roman wine varied a bit by time and place but if you wanted a typical wine experience one thing you could do is find some madeira, cut it with seawater, add a bit of wine grape concentrate and then boil it with some burnt pine resin.
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Why didn't the killer bees ever move any further north in the US?
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Beekeeper here. Killer bees do, in fact, move further north, but the difference of climate and environment actually change the bees' behavior and they end up behaving just like a normal honeybee. I've moved bees from Texas to Colorado and have seen many hives get to Colorado and behave like killer bees, except after several weeks they start to act like regular bees. It's strange, I know, but it's what happens.
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When was the last time a notable american publicly advocated for the institution of slavery? Did southerners stop bothering to ethically argue for it during reconstruction?
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I feel like you might get better results if you rephrased the questions. The 13th Amendment banned slavery, so people who were clamoring for its return were just being nostalgic.
As far as last notable American advocating for slavery, does that include a Lost Cause narrative? I'm sure you can find examples of Strom Thurmond saying slavery was a good thing while stumping for Jim Crow laws. Southern politicians regularly relied on the mythology of the South when running for office after the war and well into the 1960's. It would also have been a prominent theme of any Lost Cause history, including books like *Southern by the Grace of God* by Michael Grissom (published 1989) or Jefferson Davis's history of the war. (edited to remove an anecdotal comment)
If the question is, when after the Civil War did the South give up on slavery and the notion of actually bringing it back, then it's a little trickier. At first they just re instituted slavery via a complex series of laws, generally called the black codes. These were thrown out in 1866 by the Republicans and new laws had to be passed. There is a period of experimenting with different labor systems before sharecropping is settled on.
After that point, black people are voting much more in mass, have moved to new locations, formed communities, and generally became a lot more independent. White politicians shifted into racist diatribes and were grappling with bigger issues like the vote and retaking office from Republicans. Slavery was dead and banned, so they shifted into oppressing their voting and political rights to keep them working for low wages.
Source: Eric Foner's *Resconstruction*, David Blight's *Race and Reunion*.
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I keep seeing people accusing /r/AskHistorians of being Marxist in nature, can someone help me explain why this isn't true?
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As it states on [our rules page](_URL_5_): /r/Askhistorians is a forum that aims to provide serious, academic-level answers to questions about history. In line with that the mod team understands the core mission of this sub as educational outreach in the historic profession. Our main mission, our sense and purpose, is to provide and curate a space where people who have demonstrable expertise address and answer questions of people who seek knowledge and answers to their historical questions.
[Our rules](_URL_5_), our [system of flairing people](_URL_0_), who have shown expertise on a subject, our weekly threads, our [podcast](_URL_8_), our [FAQ](_URL_7_), our [Books and Resources List](_URL_3_), and our [twitter feed](_URL_9_) have all been created and are maintained with the above described mission in mind.
We strive to be transparent and open about why our rules are the way they are and how we enforce them via our frequent [Rules Roundtable](_URL_2_) as well as through posting removal reasons for every question we remove and frequently posting comments that explain why we removed a contribution as well as top level comments in threads where lots of contributions are removed. We frequently conduct [a census](_URL_1_) in which we ask our user base to tell us who they are, their feedback on our moderation and sub culture and what we can do better. We also address every META post about this sub and try to engage the community of over 500.000 subscribers as best and often as possible.
We have an incredibly diverse mod team comprised of 35 moderators, men and women, with a wide range of age, cultural, national, and educational background, and political opinion. Internally, our team is not structured hierarchically but along the principle of "one voice - one vote" in a democratic process.
Additionally, we have a team of over 200 flaired users from an even wider range of backgrounds and political opinions and also many non-flaired contributors with – I image – an equally diverse background.
With all this in mind, the idea that even if us 35 moderators could agree on a political agenda – and one that has such a specific connotation in history as Marxism to boot – and then be able to enforce among such a heterogeneous group of contributors and users borders on the absurd.
The only major consensus in this vast group of moderators, flaired users, non-flaired users, and readers – all in all over half a million people – is that writing, reading, and learning about history is important, it's fun, and it's interesting.
Marxism as an ideology and a political program that aims to abolish the private ownership of the means of production has a specific reading of history – one that is based on an interpretation of history leaning heavily towards a materialistic and economic-based reading of history as well as asserting a specific historical process based on the successions of different regimes of production: From a slave economy, through a feudal economy, to a capitalist economy.
Even if we as the people who run this sub could agree on the above – which we certainly would not be able to –, enforcing this interpretation of history as the only valid one would cost us many treasured contributors and most of our user base – to say nothing about not being in-line with our educational mission that includes providing a diverse pallet of historical interpretations and not limiting it to one that is glorified as the only valid one.
But from experience, it is my very strong suspicion that the people you are talking about – and I'd be really interested in some links to Facebook, which you mentioned – are not talking about Marxism in any classical sense at all. I strongly assume that what they are accusing us of is "cultural Marxism". "Cultural Marxism" – as is explained in-depth in [this post](_URL_6_) as well as [this one](_URL_4_) – is a conspiracy theory developed by William Lind and Pat Buchanan that essentially claims that anything in the humanities that is critical towards currently existing conditions and does not affirm their view of the world is part of an effort of "political correctness" intended to destroy Western civilization as it should be.
Now, the reasons why we are accused of this are manifold:
a.) We as a sub and out community of contributors embrace – as the humanities en large – a wide range of theories and approaches to our subject matter. This includes but is by no means limited to feminist approaches and theories; approaches and theories that study racism and racial inequality; and post-modernist and post-structuralist theories and approaches – all things adherents of the above mentioned CM conspiracy theory claim are specifically intended to destroy Western civilization by spreading "political correctness".
b.) In line with our core mission of education and the spread of historical knowledge, we do not allow and take a stand against racism, sexism, and all other forms of bigotry. Seeing as we are a sub that wants to educate people and promote the spread of academic knowledge, these things have no place here. Seeing as how adherents of the "cultural Marxism" conspiracy theory often fall into these categories, they are not too happy about that.
c.) Also in line with our education mission, we do not allow our sub to be used as a soapbox to spread a political agenda. This has earned us the ire of people ranging from staunch orthodox Stalinists to hardcore Nazis, and also, of course, from adherents of the CM conspiracy since their contributions would fall along this line.
The reasons why this is absurd and blatantly untrue are that none such conspiracy exists (which would be obvious had any adherents of the CM conspiracy even read critical theory); that our whole rule set that is geared towards people having to provide their sources (if asked but better yet, right away), which opens up everything they wrote to public scrutiny (the way every science operates in principle: Give your audience every opportunity to falsify every claim you make by arguing on the base of evidence and referencing said evidence); our transparency in formulating and enforcing these rules; and that even if we wanted, enforcing a coherent political agenda in this sub would be impossible due to the sheer number of people in our team, contributing, and reading.
We are here and do what we do to spread knowledge about history and educate people and attempt to do so in accordance with academic, scientific, and in-depth standards; the notion that is a nefarious agenda aimed at the destruction of Western civilization or anything resembling Marxism in whatever form should strike any person, who's mind has not been filled with lies, as absurd on the face of it.
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Does purposely letting my laptop 'drain' the battery actually help it last longer unplugged than keeping it charged when I can?
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No. Lithium-ion batteries (almost certainly what's in your laptop) gain no advantage from being discharged fully before charging.
Older Ni-Cad batteries (and possibly also older NiMH batteries) suffered from a so-called 'memory-effect' that could give them less capacity if not fully discharged before charging, but even those technologies have improved in recent years.
Edit: Please read on into this thread for some really good discussion and information provided by many users, some of whom really know their stuff.
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If you were to fall into a black hole, just as anyone watching would see your time slow down until you stop forever on the event horizon, would you in turn see the entire future of the universe pan out in front of you? If not, why does the mathematics not allow this reversal of perspective?
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No.
* The premise is wrong. No one will see you stopping forever. This is a purely mathematical result. Yes, the intensity of light you expect far away will never reach exactly zero. But it will quickly become ridiculously low ( < 10^-10^100 ). You will quickly receive the last photon ever, afterwards the object has fallen in for all practical purposes.
* If you fall in freely, it won't look that special. The dark region will occupy more and more of your field of vision, all the light appears to come from smaller and smaller regions of space as you fall in. Time dilation approaches a factor of just 2 (and you need to be inside to get close to that), and if I remember correctly it is redshifted, not blueshifted: You see *less* than you would outside.
From the outside people will see you slow down as you fall towards the black hole - but that also applies to the light behind you, and it is mainly something special about the outside view. For people falling into a black hole it is way less special than for people watching it from the outside.
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Is there a way of determining the boiling point of any(known) substance other than trying?
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For a material we don't know the boiling point?
You can predict the melting point using [Lindemann's criterion](_URL_0_) (for crystalline solids) by looking at the how the vibrational frequency of atoms vary with temperature. At some temperature, the atoms could occupy the same space, so the material melts.
However, I am not sure of the accuracy of the estimate
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Jews were expelled and banned from England in 1290 by Edward I until Cromwell began to readmit them in 1655. Given medieval era Jews' roles as lenders and merchant bankers did their 366 year absence have any noticeable affect on the English economy?
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After the expulsion of the Jews in the middle ages the vacuum was filled by Italian merchants, Lombard Street in the 'City of London' (the financial district of London) is named after Lombardy where many hailed from.
The laws against usury prevented them from charging interest on loans until 1546, when Henry VIII repealed them, but they had other means of making profits such as skimming some off the top when they exchanged foreign currencies for clients.
There were in fact ethnic Jewish communities reintroduced to England from the late 15th c, the 'conversos' Iberian Jews who had been converted to Christianity, were allowed to settle. Many worshipped as Jews in secret, despite being publicly Christian and evidence of this is still found in Street names such as 'Jacob's Well'
There is not consensus on whether Cromwell officially readmitted the Jews allowing them to worship openly, although he was petitioned to do so the first formal declarations to that effect were issued by Charles II, not Cromwell.
As to whether it affected the economy - it does not seem so, England experienced periods of substantial economic growth throughout this period, with major set-backs being accounted for by environmental factors such as epidemic disease affecting the workforce and famine reducing productivity. The expulsion of the Jews happened at a time when the Crown and Parliament was already shifting their money raising activities from acquiring loans to relying on direct taxation based on land tenure (tallage), because of this, along with the use of tactics such as blatant extortion, the Jewish community did not have the profits that money lending to the government had brought in previous generations and so they were declining financially and running out of money to lend. This meant that there was little incentive for the government to keep them in England with an anti-semitic general population.
_URL_3_
_URL_2_
_URL_0_
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why can you "taste" certain foods after burping, even when it is hours later and you have eaten or drank several other types of food and beverages after eating the initial food?
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Smell is a major component of how you"taste" foods. Food can stay in your stomach a long while, especially if you're having a hard time digesting it.
Gases from your stomach carry with it the smells of the food in your stomach when you burp. You smell it again, so recall the tasting of the food.
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Why do babies say double-syllable words like "mama" and "dada" when one syllable would seemingly be easier?
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It depends on what stage of language development the kid is at.
As children age, they go through distinct stages of learning, and they acquire the ability to recognize, and later produce, words of increasing phonetic complexity.
For example, it's easier for a child to say a 'd' sound than it is to say a 'th' sound. It's easier for a child to say something like 'see' than it is for a child to say 'spree', or 'seat' or 'street'. Often, a child can easily HEAR the difference between a word like 'see' and 'seat' but the child can only say 'see' for both cases.
Invariably, the ability to comprehend words of a given complexity exceeds the ability to pronounce them. Repeating a syllable 'like mama' is often a way for the child to approximate a word that has more than one syllable, like 'mother'-- They can get the first part down pat, but saying the whole thing is often a bit too tricky, so they say the first part twice-- this is called 'reduplication', and it shows that the child has awareness of the syllable structure of a word, but doesn't yet have the ability to properly articulate it yet. (it's also easier to say 'mama' than it is to say 'mommy' (two different vowel sounds in the second word))
Kids can also reduplicate because adults find it cute and give them attention when they do it. Search for 'child language acquisition' for more info!.
Hope this helps! Back to thesis writing.
EDIT: a bit late on this one, but it seems some people are getting hung up on the example 'mama' for 'mother'-- It's kind of a bad example, 'mother' isn't a common form in infants' input. A better example would be something like 'wawa' for 'water'.
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Will spiders use already formed webs that they have found (whether the web is from the same species or not) or do spiders only use webs that they themselves have made?
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I did a bit of research, and I want to offer an expanded and more in depth answer.
As I mentioned in my first post, web building spiders tend to build and rebuild there webs. This is true, but not all web building spiders; some spiders, once the web is built, tend to just repair the web where it's damaged.
To answer your question, the answer is yes; several genuses of spiders, like that of Portia, will invade other spider's webs. Usually, these spiders are of the jumping spider variety, and don't usually build webs of their own. They also tend to eat the spider who made the web.
Other species display 'kleptoparasitic' behaviour, which describes the spider stealing food from other spiders, living on their webs and so forth. The spider family Theridiidae's subfamily, Argyrodinae, has a well documented history of doing such. And they're not the only spiders to practice this.
I hope this answers your question more fully.
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when radio stations say they have 12 million listeners, how do they know?
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[_URL_1_](_URL_0_)
There are basically two methods:
* Surveys. The company asks a representative sample of people "which radio shows did you hear last week"? A similar method is diaries, where each person in the survey keeps a list of every show they hear.
* People meters. Each person in the survey has a special machine that tracks which channel they tune to. This was usually done for TV, not radio. A new method has a machine listening the whole time, and it recognises which show, song or advertisement is heard.
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how the "helicopter effect" happens in a car when you have a window open.
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Imagine the air entering your windows. It gets sucked in because you have compressed the air in front of you and it wants to expand. Nothing in nature is perfectly symmetrical so one side gets more pressure than the other for now. However, because of the shape of your car (it's not streamlined with your windows open), the air from the winning side ends up swirling inside your car. That creates a low pressure area toward the OTHER side. The winning side gets pushed out by the other side - which becomes the new winning side, does the same thing, and the cycle continues. You have just formed a "[bluff body vortex shedding](_URL_0_)" event.
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During the World Wars, did the female nurses face the risk of sexual violence from soldier of their own countries?
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There is certainly much that can be said for other nations, but having written previously on the Red Army, I'll repost what I have written on that topic as regards women in uniform and sexual relations. Not just rape and sexual violence, but also consensual relationships. It also isn't solely about nurses, although to be sure, nurses made up a large proportion of Soviet women in uniform, especially at and near the frontlines.
As you're likely aware, the Red Army was by far the most extensively integrated military of World War II, gender wise, but while they may have been willing to utilize women in positions, and to a degree, unseen with other countries such as the Axis, or the Western Allies, the integration was my no means without problems, both institutional and personal. I've addressed some aspects of this before - you can find discussion of the demobilization of female Red Army personnel [here](_URL_0_) - but sexual relations were of course a product of their presence that cannot be overlooked, and one which was certainly seen as problematic, not just due to nonconsensual incidents or coercisive relationships, but also those which were more mutual.
Let's start at the top first. While the women who served in combat positions - snipers, pilots, tankers, machine-gunners, etc. - are generally the best known, countless more worked in the rear, operating radios, driving vehicles, manning anti-aircraft installations, and filling the countless other support roles necessary to keep an army of millions in the field. While women, in limited capacities, were allowed in combat, more generally their utility was seen as freeing up a position to allow another man to carry a Mosin against the Hitlerites. These women, especially those who were young and attractive, were quick to come to the attention of male officers who would take them on as their mistresses, "compensated" with easy duties, or outright imaginary roles to simply keep them on the officer's staff. In a crude pun on the PPSh, officers' mistresses became known as PPZh, an abbreviation of "*pokhodno-polevye zheny*", translated as "mobile/marching field wives", and while being attached to a specific officer offered protection from the attentions or abuse of other, often sex deprived soldiers, behind their backs they were commonly denigrated as whores and sluts, a reputation that would carry on well past the end of the war, and come to be attached to the entire female component of the Red Army.
The practice of taking a "PPZh" was quite common in the officer corps, although seen as negative by the command, who of course were not immune to hypocrisy. Marshal G.K. Zhukov, Stalin's Deputy Commander, wrote harshly of the practice, while at the same time maintaining Lida (or Lidia) Zakharova as his mistress during the war, and his personal physician, although if confronted he would likely say that he didn't allow his attentions to Lida to distract from his duties, which was at the core of his criticism of officers who would prefer to cavort with women behind the lines rather than give military matters their attention. Even then, it could take quite extreme behavior before an officer was punished for flouting discipline. One such example from a report in 1943 was a Lt. Morosov who had cycled through four "PPZhs" in succession before eventually being demoted and kicked from the party, although only after 9 earlier reprimands, and in the end likely just as much for the abusive language he had used with party officials as for "cohabitation with subordinates." As the war progressed, more attention came to be paid on the practice by leadership, but it was never stamped out.
And while it should be said that it was an accommodation that some of the women were happy to agree to, or at least willingly acceded, it was exceedingly hard to put off the attentions of an interested officer, and as such some of these relationships absolutely were coercive in nature, with the women feeling there was little alternative. The aforementioned Morosov, when recruiting a new mistress, would demote any woman who refused, or else give them the absolute worst duties in the unit. These 'kept women', while on the one hand could enjoy special privileges and shielded from the worst experiences of the war, at the same time could be subject to the very authoritarian whims of their officer. Recollecting the war, Ilya Nemanov noted that his officer's mistress, a young woman by the name of Nina, was kept isolated from contact with others, Ilya nearly being shot after socializing with her once. Although enlisted men were quite resentful and disdainful, surely some of it was sour grapes at their own deprivation of companionship, and often the most critical voices of the 'PPZh' were women themselves, especially against those who would flaunt the privileges granted them, as the female soldiers felt that it degraded the position of all women in the service - an unfortunate truth, in perception at least, as will be touched on later. Those few 'PPZh' relationships which were perceived to be "genuine" might be allowed a pass, but they are the minority in most recollections.
For the common soldiers on the frontlines, life was quite different. Officially at least, sexual relations were entirely forbidden, but it was only explicit about relationships with civilians, and when it came to those between soldiers, guidance was far less clear (quite possibly as commanders didn't wish to jeopardize their own arrangements). In regions near the front, civilian women were deported if there was reason to believe they were sleeping with soldiers. That of course didn't stop men when they had the chance though. The diagnosis of a STI would result in harsh punishment (for a soldier. An officer, especially with connections, was quite immune), but in practical terms it just meant diseases like syphilis went untreated and could often run rampant. For the women serving in the frontline areas, theirs' was a precarious position that could run the gamut. For some at least, especially those small numbers who were combat troops, their mostly male units guarded them zealously, and within those close-knit groups, the women were often viewed as, if not asexual, at least little sisters ("sestry" or "sestrechka") or daughters ("dochery") to be protected, not sexual persued. In what official recognition existed of women's frontline roles in the Soviet historiography, this is the exclusive picture painted, and while not a lie, certainly the rosey ideal of gender relations at the front
Things were, of course, much more complicated than that idealized situation. Outside of the "PPZh" "mistresses", any number of circumstances happened. Within units, between the lower level soldiery, women might develop a relationship with a man in the unit. Between units, it was of course nigh impossible to stop fraternization of men with the all-woman units that might be posted in close proximity, although it of course could hamper the prospect of anything beyond a fleeting assignation. While some wanted something serious, many simply wanted a moment of intimacy, not something lasting, with such an uncertain future ahead of them anyways. Looking back on wartime 'romances', a physician (as an aside, some 40 percent of frontline doctors were female in the Red Army) Vera Ivanovna Malakhova poetically waxed *"Legitimate, illegitimate, it [earthly love] existed at the front, and it degraded people and elevated people and saved their lives."* Voluntary relationships often would be remembered fondly by veterans even if the romance didn't survive the war. Years after the war Malakhova happily remembered a fellow doctor with whom she was involved who, stationed together in Stalingrad, had swum the Volga to bring her a birthday present when she was recovering from injury in a hospital on the far side. He would, sadly, die during the war, passing away in her arms. For enlisted personnel though, however, any lasting relationship had to be kept if not hidden, at least subtle, as discovery would be grounds for transfer. Most commanders, at least, would turn a blind eye to a relationship that was not flaunted.
Even a woman in the frontlines might come to the attention of an officer looking for his next "PPZh", but relationships were not exclusively between male officers and their female subordinates. In some cases, female officers would start relationships with their male counterparts in a unit, on something of a more equal footing - although rarely truly equal in the chauvinistic environment of the Red Army - and no more immune to the accusations of dereliction of duty either. Although they didn't maintain 'kept men', it also ought to be noted that some women, especially younger officers, mirrored their male counterparts in some regards. Some, especially those not on the front who were able to maintain some sort of social functions, would pick up male soldiers, behavior which could result in being put before a 'court of honor', but a punishment which didn't stem such behavior. Reports by political officers chalked the behavior up to a desire to not "let go of their youth", frankly a perfectly understandable impulse in the wartime environment, where every day might be their last. Pregnancy was an always present concern, but while severely restricted, abortions were easy to obtain in the military hospitals - although some women likely were happy to get an excuse to be sent home, although Red Army policy was to retain pregnant women in rearline roles until they reached 7 months, to eek out as much utility as possible.
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when you read that flu has killed otherwise healthy people, what are the symptoms that actually take them out? are they drowning in lung fluid or exhaustion from coughing, or what?
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A few ways. The flu can cause intense inflammation in your lungs and you can die from respiratory failure. That's the most direct way (along with heart or organ failure, also brought on by inflammation).
But the flu can kill you by making you susceptible to other bad stuff, too, because your body is weak and slow from trying to fight off the flu. In fact the most common way to die from the flu is to get it and then get pneumonia as a result. that's how the elderly usually go when it happens to them.
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why do marvel movies (and other heavily cgi- and animation-based films) cost so much to produce? where do the hundreds of millions of dollars go to, exactly?
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CG is very expensive. CG artists are specialists and in high demand. Making a big budget CG blockbuster like an Avengers film employs hundreds of them for years. The personnel costs alone are crazy.
Actually rendering all that CG also eats up a huge amount of time on very valuable, very powerful computers.
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How did the different knightly orders cope with the modernising world? (with the Teutonic knights and the Hospitallers surviving long after their crusading times were over)
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Henry Sire recently published a book called *The Knights of Malta: A Modern Resurrection* about just this topic (for the Knights Hospitaller, at least).
A brief background: The Knights Hospitaller staged a centuries-long retreat from the Holy Land, ending up in Cyprus (as the Knights of Cyprus) and Rhodes (ditto), before they obtained the island of Malta in 1530 from the King of Spain (rented for an annual tribute of one Maltese Falcon.)
But in 1798 Napoleon redrew the map of Europe and the Knights lost Malta--they also lost all their priories in France, almost all in Europe, and wound up in Russia for a bit because the Tsar wanted to be the head of the order... finally they wind up in Rome. They worked in hospitals and care for the sick, as they had earlier. (There are also Protestant orders, that's a bit beyond our scope.) So they were now officially the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
Men were still joining the order in the 19th and 20th century, but the Knights of Malta still had major nobility requirements to become a fully professed Knight--I believe these weren't removed until the 1990s. According to Sire, it was not unknown for older Italian and German noblemen, who had been widowed, to join the Order as a sort of retirement community. Apparently they spoke English amongst themselves, read P. G. Wodehouse, and referred to one particularly bustling Prior as "Mother" behind his back.
This contrasts with the other work of the Order in founding hospital services and ambulance services in other countries like Ireland. I believe these services took charge of transporting sick pilgrims to Lourdes, among other work. But one didn't need to be noble, or commit to a religious life, to join these auxiliary orders. Many people still work for the Knights of Malta in some capacity, but without taking religious vows or joining as any sort of knight.
In any case the Order has been given Observer status by the UN, and can issue passports, etc.
I believe that's one of the main tensions now--how the Order will change and grow to function in a more democratic, less religious world.
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why aren't you allowed have contact with an organ donor for years after the transplant?
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I'm actually in the middle of all my tests to donate one of my organs, so I had this conversation somewhat recently with my coordinator.
It depends on the particular hospital and program you are using, but you absolutely can have contact between donor and recipient if both agree to it. The initial contact is organized through the transplant center, so that neither side feels "obligated" to talk to the other if they don't want to. If both agree, then it is off to the races.
Some people choose not to, though. You have to go through _a lot_ of psychological testing to donate because they want to ensure that you aren't going to be upset if the recipient doesn't live their life in a way you feel is "befitting" the gift you gave them. Recipients may not want that kind of pressure, or they may not want to talk to them out of guilt or a sense of debt.
It is a really personal decision and I can totally understand why people may not want to be contacted.
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how is it that we put salt in ice cream machines to make the ice colder, but we also put salt on our sidewalks and streets to melt the ice?
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Because you're not making the ice colder in the ice cream machine. In both cases your goal is to make liquid water colder, but the reasons for wanting colder liquid water are different.
In the case of the ice cream maker, there's always at least a thin layer of liquid between the cream container and the solid ice, so colder liquid water means more heat transfers out of the ice cream and into the liquid water (so the ice cream freezes fast enough to freeze the air bubbles into the mix which is why ice cream has such great texture).
In the case of the sidewalks, colder liquid water means more ice melts and flows off the sidewalk and melting continues at lower temperatures, reducing the slipping hazard.
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Would a child from 10,000 years ago fit in if raised from birth in today's society, 100,000 years? How far back could we go before we have a significant degradation of cognitive ability?
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I think probably from about 200,000 - 100,000 years ago cognitvely, as this lines up with migrations out of Africa. However in terms of a decent immune system you are probably looking at about 10,000 - 7,000 years ago as this lines us with the first instances of livestock rearing by humans and therefore the development of some immunity to alot of modern day pathogens.
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Is this true? Did Britain really replace India's education system and caused the decline of social values?
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This image does not appear to be accurate. I went and tried to look up the Parliamentary record for February 1835 and it seems that [Parliament was in fact not in session on the 2nd February 1835](_URL_2_). On the FAQs for the Parliamentary Archives [the question of Lord Macaulay's alleged speech is actually dealt with specifically](_URL_1_) (they must have had a few enquiries about it already!): it doesn't address the question of when Parliament was in session in 1835 but advises that Lord Macaulay was not a Member of Parliament in 1835.
Helpfully, it goes on to add that Macaulay *was* a member of the Supreme Council in India in 1835, and on the 2nd February he did in fact deliver [an education-flavoured Minute to the Supreme Council](_URL_0_), on the subject of an Act of Parliament which apportioned public funds for teaching in India. I have no knowledge of the wider context here, but from reading the Minute it appears that there was at this time a controversy over whether the funds should go to "European" institutions which taught in English, or "Oriental" institutions which taught mainly in Sanskrit and Arabic. The wording of the Act itself appears to have been silent on this issue.
Anyway Macaulay was as contemptuous of Indian culture as this image suggests, but from a completely different direction: rather than fearing the rich, ancient culture of India, and desiring to destroy its traditional education so as to break the self-esteem of the Indians and thus better dominate them (as per the image), he in fact thought Indian education was essentially valueless, and that assigning public funds to the propagation of it was a waste of money and effort. He remarks (at paragraph 10 of the Minute as set out in the link above):
*"I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed, both here and at home, with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the oriental learning at the valuation of the orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is indeed fully admitted by those members of the committee who support the oriental plan of education."*
The Minute continues on in this theme, and to lift one more quote evocative of the whole, he remarks in his summing-up (at paragraph 33 of the link):
*"I think it clear that... we are free to employ our funds as we choose, that we ought to employ them in teaching what is best worth knowing, that English is better worth knowing than Sanscrit or Arabic, that the natives are desirous to be taught English, and are not desirous to be taught Sanscrit or Arabic, that neither as the languages of law nor as the languages of religion have the Sanscrit and Arabic any peculiar claim to our encouragement, that it is possible to make natives of this country thoroughly good English scholars, and that to this end our efforts ought to be directed."*
The actual quote in the image does not feature anywhere in the Minute and seems to have been entirely fabricated with a view to flattering Indian readers.
I hope somebody more intelligent than me can comment more generally on British educational policy in India in the period in question, but I can say that the linked image is very misleading: it claims Macaulay's remarks were given in a much more high-level situation than they actually were (a speech in Parliament as opposed to a minute delivered to the Indian governing body), and it claims that Macaulay was fearful of pre-existing education in India (most likely by completely fabricating a quote), rather than dismissive of it, as he actually seems to have been.
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Are the secret doors, complex puzzle locks, deadly traps, and other ancient mechanisms that we see in movies based in reality?
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There are some very old stories about actual traps. One of the most famous is the claim that [the tomb of the Qin Emperor had crossbow traps](_URL_0_). At present excavation of what is strongly believed to be the site is ongoing but very slowly, due to among other issues extremely high mercury levels. I don't know of any confirmed reports of any traps there.
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Why are elementary-aged students in the US knowingly taught a version of US History that middle and high schools have to completely contradict and reexplain?
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I am not a historian per se, but I am a teacher, so hopefully I can answer this question in a way that the mods will allow to remain. If not, forgive me.
Teachers in all states of the United States are required by law to teach certain standards (standards may vary). I'm based in the state of Texas and we are required to teach the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills in our classrooms. You can find a comprehensive list of those skills here: _URL_0_
To be more specific, you requested information regarding why students in elementary schools are taught that Columbus discovered the earth was round, Ben Franklin and electricity, etc. In short, they aren't. Here is the link to the TEKS for Grade Level 6: _URL_1_
Columbus isn't a topic for 6th graders in Texas, but if you scroll down to section 4, topic B, you'll see that the only mention of Benjamin Franklin refers to his role in the American Revolution.
While I will admit that these requirements are simply a framework, there is also a system for teachers called the TEKS Resource System, which serves to clarify the TEKS for all Texas teachers. Some teachers will supplement lessons with the textbook, while others will use their own research conducted through college to decide which specific details they will teach.
It is worth nothing that these skills are updated and corrected over time, although I would have to assume that there was never a TEK that said, "Teach that Columbus discovered the world was round," since that fact has been well-known for decades prior to your own experience.
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what is the white stuff (i assume it's ice) that i always see falling off of space shuttles at take off and what does it do?
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It's ice. It forms on the fuel tanks becauce the fuel is very cold. What does it do? It falls off.
Edit: Our benevolent overlords have required more details about the fuel and tank. Very well, but no peeking in this section if you are under five. The fuel consists of liquid hydrogen, along with a liquid oxygen oxidiser, both of which have very low boiling points at pressures typically encountered on earth. In order to be liquid at the pressures inside the fuel tank, the fuel and oxidiser are kept at an extremely low temperature. This, combined with relatively thin fuel tank walls (gotta save weight on rockets), means the outer surface of the fuel tank will be very cold, bringing the temperature of the water vapor in the air around it low enough that ice forms on the tank and then falls off as the whole contraption shakes mightily as it takes off. There's no purpose to the ice, it's just a byproduct of the fuel used.
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why does placing a plastic bag over a credit card help a device read its magnetic stripe better?
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The black rectangle on your card holds a number. Actually it's a set of numbers separated by delimiters, but that's not important. Just pretend it's one number.
If your card gets damaged, gaps appear in the electrical reading of the black strip, which means that inconsistencies appear in the number. That's no good; that's cause for error detection to throw the whole thing out.
Putting a plastic bag around the card spreads out the electrical influence of each individual atom in the card. This neutralizes (to some degree) degradation the card, because while the interaction with the reader is reduced as a whole, the relative reduction between the bad parts and the good parts are reduced. Consequently, the machine can read it.
To simulate what's happening, open up Microsoft Paint (assuming you're on Windows). Write, in huge size font. a number. Doesn't matter what.
Now scribble all over one or two of the characters. I'll bet it it's hard to read the number! Now zoom out until you can just barely make out the numbers. I'll bet you can get the original number you wrote.
It's the same effect, but through electricity instead of your eyes.
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why did russia decide in the late 1500's to attempt to conquer siberia - an unimaginably large & frigid territory - which would increase the size of its kingdom by ~17x?
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The time of Russian territorial expansion was a time of colonialism for all the great powers of Europe. Russia was not well situated to become a maritime power like most of Western Europe, but it did have essentially exclusive access to "unclaimed" territory to its east. While Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands were creating empires for themselves in the Americas and to a lesser extent in Africa and Asia, Russia spread east to Siberia. They were seeking what everyone was seeking, new lands to colonize and cultivate, new resources to tap, new people to spread the gospel of their religion to.
And it was "available", so to speak. There were not, at the time, any great empires or powerful states laying claim to the territory. Only relatively undeveloped societies, mainly herders and hunter-gatherers, who could be easily conquered and subjugated. Just as Spain and France had laid massive territorial claims in North and South America, so did Russia to the vast northern expanse of Asia.
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Has science now come to the certainty of 100% that an asteroid or meteor colliding with Earth was the cause of the dinosaur extinction?
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It's a little more complicated than that. All dinosaur species didn't -go- extinct, as their decendants are still with us today, and many others went extinct long before the Chicxulub impact. But it is widely agreed that the mass extinction at the end of the cretaceous period was caused by the change in climate triggered by a massive asteroid impact on the coast of the gulf of Mexico.
There's no such thing as 100% certainty in science, but we're as certain as the K-Pg impact as we are of anything. It left a layer of material in the geological record, we know where the impact was, we've identified the crater and determined the approximate size of the impactor, we know what the environmental effects were, we know the non-avian dinosaur species went extinct at the time. It's pretty settled.
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How do Olympiads keep breaking world records? Won't there come a point where they can be broken no longer?
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Of course there *is* a limit, but the limit can be pushed further and further with the proper technology, diet and training. Maybe someone discovers a new technique for sprinting, or a better way to propel yourself at the start of the race. Or a new method of acceleration? Or perhaps someone discovers a diet that gives the sprinter a slight advantage. And then there's the occasional genetically exceptional athlete.
It's pretty difficult to truly know when we've hit the limit. Athletes have been steadily improving over the last 100 years. If we're still pretty much in the same place in 30 years with regards to world records, there's a pretty good chance we're nearing our limits.
But who says we can't host transhumanist Olympics?
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We often hear of "killing the messenger," but how dangerous was it, really, to be a messenger bearing bad news or unwelcome demands in Classical or Medieval Europe/Near East/North Africa?
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Follow up question: Did the "this is Sparta!!" scene actually happen? Did Leonidas actually kill Xerxes' messenger or was it just a heated argument that was glorified in the movie? In general, was it common for messengers to get killed when the message they brought would lead to a declaration of war?
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why is the body of a 400-lb person able to carry around 200 lbs extra day after day, but a healthy 200-lb person who weight trains extensively would be exhausted carrying 200 lbs for an hour?
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A 400lb man's weight is centralized to his frame, spread throughout his entire body. There would probably be excess around his mid frame, which causes a lot of overweight men to have back problems.
because of this increase in mass, the overweight person has more blood with which to oxygenate his muscles, making it possible for him to heft his heavier body around.
I postulate that a 200lb man that is in peak physical condition could indeed carry 200lbs around with him all day if the weight was closely tied to his frame, such as with a weight vest. Because the weight would not throw off his center of balance, fatigue would be much lower.
Carrying around a 200lb backpack is not about the extra weight, but the rotational forces it places on your spine due to changing your center of gravity so much.
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Because of the curvature of the Earth, are nearby skyscrapers closer together at the base than they are at the top?
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Yes.
If the two 100-floor buildings are one NYC block apart, which is 0.05 mile or 1/500000 of Earth's circumference, their 100th floors, which are .2 mile higher than their first floors, are going to be 2 * .2 mi * pi / 500000 further apart than their first floors, which comes out to .16 inches or 4 mm.
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Why is it that the American colonies with the highest Puritan populations are now the least religious and most liberal states in the country?
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That's a fantastic question. I've also wondered about this myself. I'm very interested in how the Puritans, once the MOST conservative religion in Western countries, became the MOST liberal religions: Unitarians and Congregationalists.
The lesson here is that tribes of people and their practices and cultures can change drastically over time.
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"Prussian discipline" is a term that comes up quite a bit. In what ways was Prussian society more disciplinarian than other European cultures of the age?
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Prussian discipline referred to both the state of Prussia and its inhabitants as well as the army. But it was used first for the army and then transferred to state - which is not really surprising given how highly militarized Prussia was. The French Marquis de Mirabeau (edit: I falsely attributed the quote to Voltaire, don't even know how I messed that up. I am sorry, I fixed it!) once said "Where some states have an army, the Prussian army has a state.".
During this time Prussia was ruled by Friedrich Wilhelm I., called the "soldier king" (and that was in the time no positive thing, it mostly referred to him having the bad manners of a soldier, while his love of his army was pretty normal for a monarch of the time), despite never fighting a major war. But he did love his army. And also, he loved Calvinistic virtues, and tried to brand them onto the country. These virtues contained stuff like discipline, industriousness, austerity, sense of duty and justice, subordination, modesty, loyalty and many more along those lines.
Theodor Fontane let one of his characters, an officer, say: "Was uns obliegt, ist nicht die Lust des Lebens, auch nicht einmal die Liebe, die wirkliche, sondern lediglich die Pflicht. Es ist dies außerdem etwas speziell Preußisches." (What lies upon us is not the joy of life, not even love, the true one, but only duty. It is that, which is specifically Prussian.).
In the civilian society, the "Prussian virtues" were at first frowned upon, but by and by, they began to seep in. The son of the "Soldier King", Friedrich II., used the highly drilled and disciplined Prussian army his father left him behind to achieve victory over Austria in the seven years war. In that war, the fabled Prussian discipline really became what the Prussians were known for, since they would, in line with the Prussian virtues, almost blindly follow every order. In German, this brought forth the term "Kadavergehorsam", which translates to "following orders as if you were a dead body with no own will whatsoever".
Fast forward some time until the reform era of "oh shit, Napoleon kicked our asses from the Rhineland to Königsberg" and the introduction of the levy system. With that levy system, almost every Prussian male got at some point in his life exposed to the harsh discipline of the Prussian army - and took it back with him into his civilian life when his duty ended. This was also due to the Prussian army trying to be extremely lawful, some injustices of superiors against soldiers were even taken in front of the parliament. So the idea was, that you had to succumb to the order and be disciplined, but in turn you enjoyed the same rigorous discipline by your superiors.
Now, for examples of Prussia's military discipline, they changed quite a bit over the time.
During the era before Napoleon, they would consist of the same old "run through this alley of your fellow soldiers who will beat you with sticks until you're dead" and such.
But after the defeat by Napoleon and the introduction of the levy system, that changed a lot. After that, the Prussians would mostly use jail time and additional drill and exercises as means of punishment. During the German War of 1866, there was the saying that the "Prussians are slow to shoot", which referred to them very rarely executing soldiers but rather punish by different means such as not to "waste" a soldier. Being a soldier was meant to be an honorable job - in contrast to the Austrian army consisting of men mostly pressed into service and only kept in line by draconic punishments.
So all in all, the Prussians were not really exceptionally harsh in their treatment of the soldiers, they obtained discipline in different ways, one of which was the infusing of the population with "soldatic virtues".
There once was a french saying: "It is an honor to be a Prussian, but it is no joy."
Sources (sorry, only got German ones due to me being German and studying in Germany):
Schoeps, Hans-Joachim: "Preußen - Geschichte eines Staates"
Jany, Curt und Jany, Eberhardt: Geschichte der Preußischen Armee vom 15. Jahrhundert bis 1914"
Willems, Emilio: "Der preußisch-deutsche Militarismus. Ein Kulturkomplex im sozialen Wandel"
Büsch, Otto: "Moderne Preußische Geschichte 1648–1947. (Band 2: Militärsystem und Gesellschaftsordnung.)"
In English I can only give you:
Craig, Gordon: "The Politics of the Prussian Army 1640—1945"
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Did ancient Roman women shave their legs, armpits, and/or pubic hair? What was considered the fashion vis-a-vis body hair for women of the ancient world?
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Hello everyone,
In this thread, there have been a large number of incorrect, speculative, or otherwise disallowed comments, and as such, they were removed by the mod-team. Additionally, many have simply commented about the deleted comments, which serve to merely compound the issue. Please, before you attempt answer the question, keep in mind [our rules](_URL_3_) concerning in-depth and comprehensive responses. In regards to quotations from primary sources, we love those! *But*, [we do require there be some level of contextualization for the answer to stand](_URL_2_). Answers that do not meet the standards we ask for will be removed.
Finally, it is unfair to the OP to further derail this thread with off topic conversation, so if anyone has further questions or concerns, I would ask that they be directed to [modmail](_URL_0_), or a [META thread](_URL_1_[META]). Thank you!
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If I was to travel back to 12th century England, would we be able to easily understand each other's use of the English Language?
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No, you would not be able to understand the language nor would you be understood. You would be hearing Middle English, and early Middle English at that (as the transition between Old English and Middle English happens around the 11th century). You might hear a word here or there, but the majority of the language would be incomprehensible.
For an example of a 12th Century work in Middle English, you would look at *The Ormulum,* a biblical interpretation by Orm, an English monk.
_URL_3_
To hear how it sounds, this is one of the few audio links I could find of *The Ormulum:*
_URL_2_
This presents a good image of English pronunciation following a major phonetic shift post-Norman conquest of England
For an example of how the English language developed from the 12th Century, take a look at Chaucer's *The Canterbury Tales,* written in the late 14th century:
_URL_4_
This represents two hundred years more development toward Early Modern English (Shakespeare's plays) than the 12th century would. It is a bit more comprehensible than *The Ormulum,* and we can begin to hear (and see) the shift toward Early Modern English.
Here is a reading of the prologue of Chaucer's *The Canterbury Tales* for comparison:
_URL_1_
Moreover, if you want to progress into Early Modern English (Shakespearean English), you may be surprised to find that the pronunciation is not what you expect as well. As a bonus, here's a video from a Shakespearean scholar explaining the difference between Shakespeare's pronunciation and modern pronunciation:
_URL_0_
As you can hear, the original Shakespearean pronunciation is a direct phonetic descendant of what we hear in *The Canterbury Tales.*
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