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2idv02 | When a woman, who has had her womb transplanted, has a child, will the child share her DNA or the DNA of the organ donor? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2idv02/when_a_woman_who_has_had_her_womb_transplanted/ | {
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"The womb is also called the [uterus](_URL_1_). This is the organ in which the fetus develops, but it does not contribute to the genetic make up of the child. A fetus is created by the combination of sperm and egg. Eggs are created and stored in the [ovaries](_URL_2_). \n\nThe [woman who just successfully had a child after a womb transplant](_URL_0_) had functioning ovaries. The child is genetically hers as an egg from her ovaries (and her husband's sperm) was used to create embryos which were implanted in the transplanted womb (In Vitro fertilization)."
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"http://www.bbc.com/news/health-29485996",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uterus",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovary"
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aqmzrr | Why did bayonets mostly replace pikes as an anti-cavalry weapon by the end of the 17th century? | As far as I'm concerned pikes have a larger reach and we're likely more of a threat to cavalry, so why were they mostly completely replaced by bayonets? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/aqmzrr/why_did_bayonets_mostly_replace_pikes_as_an/ | {
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"The early modern period-- the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th century is often referred to as a time of \"military revolution\", a term associated with Michael Roberts' 1955 lecture of the same name. While Geoffrey Parker and others have raised good points about some of the more exuberant claims, the core of the military revolution argument remains intact-- armies in 1750 looked very different than they did in 1600.\n\nThe most immediately obvious of these changes was that the pike had largely disappeared from the battlefield\n\nSome reasons for this change spring to mind as most important:\n\n1. A musket and pike formation has much less firepower than an all musket formation. The musket with bayonet is less capable than the pike, but it's adequate, and \"adequate + more firepower\" is better than \"some pikes with a longer reach and less firepower\"\n2. The challenges of commanding a combined musket and pike formation like the Spanish *tercio* were very, very complex, requiring a high degree of skill and training. Getting musketeers to firing position was a challenge. The musket and pike formations were the province of skilled professional soldiers, but as armies got bigger and recruited less experienced men, less complex formations were favored.\n3. Firearms steadily improved in quality, and armies got better at using them. Starting from the rather finicky, expensive and esoteric arquebus firepower evolved to much more easily manufactured, economical and reliable muskets: firepower got better, while pikes didn't. It was readily understood that firepower was increasing in capability, whereas polearms were little different from Alexander's *sarissa*\n4. As firepower increased in efficacy, fewer battles were decided by melee. In the musket and pike formations, the notion had been that firepower was essentially an auxiliary force, a way of harassing and attriting the enemy, but that the decisive blow would be delivered by the collision of forces. 18th and 19th century forces did still come to blows hand to hand, but they typically fired many more rounds and did far more damage to the enemy by firepower before that happened. Many formations broke without ever having reached the enemy, or like Napoleon's Guard at Waterloo, were so bloodied and shaky from losses due to firepower that they had little shock effectiveness left when they finally reached the enemy.\n5. As firepower improved, the threat from cavalry diminished. Horse are big targets, and by the end of the 18th century, cavalry was largely unable to break a well formed square-- in the Napoleonic wars, if memory serves, that happened only once, at the skirmish/battle of Garcia Hernandez in 1812. If bayonets and firepower were good enough to ward off cavalry, that was good enough; and they were most of the time. Cavalry had to surprise unprepared infantry, or run down broken formations to be effective-- against prepared infantry, they became progressively less effective in the 16th and 17th centuries.\n\nSources:\n\n[\"Doctors of the Military Discipline\": Technical Expertise and the Paradigm of the Spanish Soldier in the Early Modern Period](_URL_3_)\n\n[Tactical Evolution in the French Army, 1560-1660](_URL_4_)\n\n[Close Order and Close Quarter: The Culture of Combat in the West](_URL_1_)\n\n[Michael Roberts- The Military Revolution, 1560-1660](_URL_0_)\n\n[The \"Military Revolution,\" 1560-1660--a Myth?](_URL_2_)"
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"https://www.scribd.com/document/334551719/Michael-Roberts-The-Military-Revolution-1560-1660",
"https://www.jstor.org/stable/40109603?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=musket&searchText=pike&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dmusket%2Bpike&ab_segments=0%2Ftbsub-1%2Frelevance_config_with_tbsub&refreqid=search%3A1e568c9eea8f3545a13f15cff9e4e315",
"https://www.jstor.org/stable/1879826?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=musket&searchText=pike&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dmusket%2Bpike&ab_segments=0%2Ftbsub-1%2Frelevance_config_with_tbsub&refreqid=search%3A1e568c9eea8f3545a13f15cff9e4e315",
"https://www.jstor.org/stable/2544269?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=spanish&searchText=tercio&searchText=pike&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dspanish%2Btercio%2Bpike%26amp%3Bgroup%3Dnone%26amp%3Bacc%3Don%26amp%3Bwc%3Don%26amp%3Bfc%3Doff&ab_segments=0%2Ftbsub-1%2Frelevance_config_with_tbsub&refreqid=search%3A898a217ad7b51cccd6ea487629f08f78",
"https://www.jstor.org/stable/286581?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=spanish&searchText=tercio&searchText=pike&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dspanish%2Btercio%2Bpike%26amp%3Bgroup%3Dnone%26amp%3Bacc%3Don%26amp%3Bwc%3Don%26amp%3Bfc%3Doff&ab_segments=0%2Ftbsub-1%2Frelevance_config_with_tbsub&refreqid=search%3A898a217ad7b51cccd6ea487629f08f78"
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5kvvq3 | since there is a color that is all colors combined, is there a scent that is all scents combined, and what would it smell like? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5kvvq3/eli5_since_there_is_a_color_that_is_all_colors/ | {
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" > By color of all colors I'm referring to black since this is the color you see when all waves of color (visible light) are reflected back to your eye.\n\nYou mean white, not black. White light is all wavelengths of visible light (or, at least, equal levels of the three you do sense).\n\nScents are a bit different, since they're a combination of various chemical interactions, and there are far, far more different scent receptors in our noses.\n\nThere's also five taste receptors on the tongue, but flavour typically also includes things like temperature, roughness and texture, astringency, moistness, and so on, which all contribute to how something tastes. Just being a combination of all five tastes (sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami) isn't going to taste like a single thing the way white light is perceived as white. It's just going to taste like a sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami thing. Kind of like how lemonade is sour and sweet.",
"Well see, when you eat things that smell yummy on their own, your tummy puts them all together for you to push out later, and it smells like shit. "
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1ttcsf | the process of photo restoration | How does one take a 100 year old photo that is cracked, folded, faded and even has some parts missing but they can perfectly make it look like it was just created. How do they do it?
Thanks for the responses guys. It does make understanding the process easier. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ttcsf/eli5_the_process_of_photo_restoration/ | {
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"Cracks and folds are removed by carefully hiding them, either hand-painting over them, or simply copying nearby textures over them. Missing parts are painted.\n\nFaded parts of the foto are simply restored by taking the color that are present, and amplifying them (like turning up the volume).\n\nThere are tools in the popular photo editing software Photoshop that help with this (healing brush, clone stamp, and various adjustment layers)",
"Old photos tend to be black and white and that makes the process a lot easier. It requires a reasonable understanding of the tools available in Photoshop but doesn't take long to get decent results. The most important part is getting a high res scan of the original image. Tidying/cropping ripped edges, setting the white balance and removing noise/grain are the first simple things that make the most improvement.\n\nLines, creases and folds are quite easy to repair as you can usually select the correct grayscale shades from either side of the white crease line using the colour picker and then 'paint' in the missing parts. \n\nA lot of photo restoration is guesswork, trying to add in parts that blend and don't draw attention. \n\nWhen you repair a photo you're moving the focus back to the subject of the photo where as before the focus was on the damage to the image. \n\nStains & ink blots can be drawn around and then the colour de-saturaturated just from that small area i.e removing the blue hue. It takes trial and error to get it to match the sepia or black and white tone of the rest of the image.\n\nIntricate patterns (wallpaper, clothing, carpet) can be difficult however if you have a reference point elsewhere in a picture you can use that to copy and paste over the small damaged section small section.\n\nThe toughest bits are where damage/creases obscure features of a face and then the missing bits have to be re-imagined. \n\nHowever the Photoshop 'Content Aware Fill' tool can produce some amazing results. Highlight an area and it will try to automatically fill in what it thinks should be there based on the pixels around it! This is especially good for removing distracting elements, filling in textures like sky/grass within an image. \n\nThe art of restoration can go a lot deeper into colorisation (colouring black & white images) and painting in elements that were not there to begin with. These take a lot of time & patience and talent.\n\nTL DR; You can recreate a lot by copying similar tones/elements within the picture.",
"Zoom in to 400 - 800%. Rubber Stamp tool with a soft edge."
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77jb19 | how do bacteria think? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/77jb19/eli5_how_do_bacteria_think/ | {
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"There is a grievous, fundamental misunderstanding of biology here. I don't know what you think thoughts are, but they are really not at all related to the immune system, performing \"actions,\" or bacteria. \n\nLet's start with a really simple chemical reaction. When you mix baking soda and vinegar, it makes the classic science fair volcano. Mixing these two chemicals causes foam to form. There are no thoughts related to this process. It just happens, like how ice melts or things fall down when you let go of them. \n\nLiving things are like that too, only *way* more complicated. Lots of bacteria have genes that, when they enter a potential host, are turned on. The genes can produce molecules that do things like help the bacteria stick to your own cells to infect them, or physically form a shield around it so your immune system can't reach them. There's no thought involved. ",
"They don't think in the way we do because they don't have nervous systems.\n\nThey hide from our immune cells because they have evolved the ability to do that because it helps them survive. They have also evolved the ability to sense when a good time to hide is, because they survive better when they hide at a good time. Their actions seem intelligent because they help them survive and can be quite complex, but they are just evolved mechanical responses to stimuli.\n\n(Some people think the same about our actions! But that's another discussion.)",
"Short answer: they don't. \n\nLong answer: They do it by what you might consider a very basic instinct, (far from a thought as you know it) - think a slug avoiding salt, but even dumber. "
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1xu04i | does the weather/environment determine the development of our personality? | Just like Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), our behaviour is generally defined depending on the season. If my ancestors lived in an environment that was predominantly wet, cold with very short light hours, would the progression of evolution have an affect on my personality today? Would I be more pessimistic than those who come from very sunny and hot countries, with ancestors who lived in those environments as well? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xu04i/eli5_does_the_weatherenvironment_determine_the/ | {
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"[From John Grohol, PSY.D](_URL_0_): I was browsing a blog the other day and saw an undated (recent?) entry suggesting that research shows that “weather has little effect on our mood.” The entry relied heavily on a recent study (Denissen et al., 2008) that shows that although a correlation between mood and weather does exist, it’s a small one (not nearly as large as conventional wisdom might suggest). The entry quotes almost exclusively and entirely from the one study.\n\nI’m familiar with this area of research, so I found the entry’s conclusions a little simplistic and not really doing justice to this topic. There’s a fair amount of research in this area (more than the 3 or 4 studies mentioned in the blog), and I think the overall preponderance of evidence suggests that weather can have more than just a “little effect” on your mood.\n\nSome previous research confirms the blog entry’s conclusion that weather may have little effect on our moods. For instance, Hardt & Gerbershagen (1999) looked at 3,000 chronic pain patients who came to a hospital over a 5-year period. The researchers had patients fill out a depression questionnaire, and then analyzed the results. They found no correlation between depression and the time of the year, nor the amount of daily hours of sunshine. But the researchers only examined depression, and didn’t measure how much time subjects spent outside (a factor that some have suggested might influence how much the weather impacts us).\n\nOther research paints a very different picture.\n\nHoward and Hoffman (1984) had 24 college students keep track of their mood (by filling out a mood questionnaire) over 11 consecutive days. They found a significant effect on mood correlated with the weather, especially with regards to humidity (a component of weather not always measured):\n\n Humidity, temperature, and hours of sunshine had the greatest effect on mood. High levels of humidity lowered scores on concentration while increasing reports of sleepiness. Rising temperatures lowered anxiety and skepticism mood scores. [...]\n\n The number of hours of sunshine was found to predict optimism scores significantly. As the number of hours of sunshine increased, optimism scores also increased. [...]\n\n Mood scores on the depression and anxiety scales were not predicted by any weather variable. \n\nAnother study by Sanders and Brizzolara (1982) on 30 college students also found similar findings — that high humidity was a predictor for lack of vigor, elation, and affection.\n\nBut you may dismiss these studies as small, or on unrepresentative samples (college students). You’d have a harder time making that argument against Faust et al.’s (1974) study on 16,000 students in Basle City, Switzerland. Although not the most robust study designed, the researchers nonetheless found that nearly one-third of the girls and one fifth of the boys responded negatively to certain weather conditions. Symptoms reported included poor sleep, irritability, and dysphoric (depressed) mood.\n\nIf you noticed that higher humidity is associated with certain mood states, you won’t be surprised to hear there is also a good body of research that has investigated the link between heat and different types of human behavior, especially aggression (see, for example, Rotton & Cohn, 2004; Cohn & Rotton, 2005; Anderson, 1987; etc.). While there’s some debate as to how strong a relationship exists between heat and violence, this is a relationship that been undergoing research since the 1970s. At this point, it’s not in question whether a link exists, just how strong and what the relationship exactly looks like (and whether it’s mediated by other factors, like time of day).\n\nThe Weather Can Affect You Negatively and Positively\n\nKeller and his colleagues (2005) examined 605 participants responses in three separate studies to examine the connection between mood states, a person’s thinking and the weather. They found that:\n\n [...P]leasant weather (higher temperature or barometric pressure) was related to higher mood, better memory, and ‘‘broadened’’ cognitive style during the spring as time spent outside increased. The same relationships between mood and weather were not observed during other times of year, and indeed hotter weather was associated with lower mood in the summer.\n\n These results are consistent with findings on seasonal affective disorder, and suggest that pleasant weather improves mood and broadens cognition in the spring because people have been deprived of such weather during the winter. \n\nSo while Denissen et al. (2008) found no general ability for the weather itself to lift us into a more positive mood (contrary to both Howard & Hoffman and Keller’s findings above), the researchers did find that the weather can impact our moods negatively. And while that effect in the present study was small, it confirms the same effect found in a multitude of other studies (some of which are mentioned above).\n\nAnother way to look at it is that Denissen and colleagues confirmed prior research that showed that people’s moods and emotions can definitely be affected by the weather. The strength of that relationship varies from person to person. But a study’s design has a lot to do with trying to find this relationship in the data. And while Denissen’s design was good, it wasn’t foolproof. Its problems include the over-representation of women in the sample (89%), suggesting a skewed and biased sample, and the response rate, with participants submitting on average half the number of surveys needed by the study’s design. In other words, the data may not be the most robust in the world either (despite the large sample size).\n\nSo, sorry, yes, weather does appear to impact our moods. And that effect may become serious. Look no further for evidence of this than the very real condition called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). SAD is characterized by feelings of sadness and depression that occur in the winter months when the temperatures drop and the days grow short. This specific form of depression is often associated with excessive eating or sleeping and weight gain. Women are twice to three times more likely to suffer from the winter blues than men. If SAD is merely a “culturally transmitted idea” (as the blog quotes the researchers as suggesting), then so is every mental disorder to one extent or another.\n\nThe new research provides some contradictory data to previous findings. And when such discrepancies arise, the answer is not to conclude the matter settled, but to go and conduct more research. So what Denissen’s study really shows is that more research is needed to better determine the strength of the link, and whether it affects people in different geographical regions (and countries).\n\nSo no, you’re not crazy if you think your mood is affected by the weather. Nearly 40 years of research suggests there’s a strong link. And one that, in some people, can lead to significant seasonal problems."
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27irwn | How important was the transfer of equipment/capital that the allies gave to the USSR during World War 2? Was the USSR dependent on it? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/27irwn/how_important_was_the_transfer_of/ | {
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"Hello!\nAnother related question, how much did the supply of Allied apparel affect the combat strength of the Soviet army during the continuation war against Finland? I've heard anecdotes that one of the key reasons Finland was forced into an armistice was that the useful equipment used in the continuation war was primarily US -supplied military gear "
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cndd9x | What advancements allowed aerial warfare to evolve from triplanes to precision drones within a century? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cndd9x/what_advancements_allowed_aerial_warfare_to/ | {
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"You may want to be more specific - countless technological advancements have contributed to the kind of combat aircraft we see today. If we ignore electronics (which nowadays are arguably the most important part of combat aircraft design) and armament, the biggest areas of improvement are engines and propulsion, aerodynamic design, and materials. I'll try to do a broad overview of things - let me know if there's anything specific you want me to elaborate on. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe triplanes made famous in WW1 - the Sopwith Triplane and Fokker Dr.I - were alarmingly simple aircraft. They were largely made of canvas stretched over a wood frame with wires spanning around the aircraft to provide structural support to critical areas like the wings. Structural support would be the driving reason behind the biplane and triplane layouts, as the wings could be braced off of eachother with wires and struts. Airfoils - the cross-section of the wing - were very rudimentary, often consisting of just a single layer of canvas stretched over the top of an airfoil-shaped wood frame. Engines were perhaps the most terrifying feature of these designs - the rotary engines popular during WW1 were mounted in such a way that they spun with the propeller. Combined with the very light construction of the airframe, the several hundred pounds of engine spinning at the same speed as the propeller on the front of the plane led to dangerous gyroscopic effects that made the aircraft very difficult to control at low speeds. On the topic of the propulsion, propellers of the time were simple fixed-pitch propellers and almost always two-bladed.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nGoing forward, every aspect of these aircraft would be improved upon. Better structural design and materials would allow for simpler biplane structures with fewer wires and struts or even monoplane designs if the wings were made thick enough. New materials contributed to this, particularly the aluminum alloy known as Duralumin, which would make the use of metal in aircraft structures feasible. The first all-metal aircraft - the Junkers J I - appeared during WW1 and in fact was a monoplane, but metal construction would catch on more commonly by replacing the wood structure underneath the canvas with metal tubing. All-metal designs would become the norm during WW2, although control surfaces often remained canvas-covered frames even in otherwise all-metal designs. Aerodynamic design massively improved, with groups like NACA (predecessor to America's NASA) doing huge amounts of research in the design of airfoils, engine cowlings, and various other aerodynamic features. New developments in propulsion would allow engineers to make the most of these new aerodynamic developments. Through the interwar period, engines became significantly more powerful and, perhaps more critically, significantly more reliable. During WW1 and the early interwar period, it was common for large multi-engined aircraft to have the engines serviceable in flight (see many of the Riesenflugzeug Germany used in WW1). Come WW2, however, such a feature is unheard of on aircraft - engines were reliable enough for even long endurance flights. Whereas the Fokker Dr.I mounted a 110 hp rotary engine in 1917 and the one of the premier aircraft engines at the end of the war was the American 400hp Liberty engine, fighter engines by 1939 were of the 1,000 hp class - the DB 601, Rolls-Royce Merlin, and Hispano-Suiza 12Y. By the end of the war, engines like the Wasp Major were pushing to nearly 4,000 hp. Just as important as added engine power was improved propeller design. Variable-pitch propellers would become commonplace in the interwar period, allowing the pitch of the propeller to be tailored to factors like the speed of the aircraft, air density, and RPM of the propeller. The ultimate result of these developments in propulsion was that aircraft were able to become faster and - more significantly - heavier. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nOnce we get to the postwar era, some new factors become important. The increasing speed of aircraft during WW2 had seen aircraft pushing up against supersonic flight at the extremes of their performance, but it wouldn't be until after WW2 that engineers were really capable of designing for transonic flight. The theory of supersonic flight had largely been figured out during the interwar period, but the kind of understanding of transonic flight necessary for supersonic aircraft wasn't developed until after WW2. Developments like swept wings, conically-cambered delta wings, and area-ruling would further contribute to high-speed flight, and would have applications outside of supersonic aircraft (as we see with modern airliners). New propulsion also drastically changed flight profiles. Both piston engines and turbines lose power as altitude increases, but turbines proved more suited to high altitudes thanks to their greater power/thrust output. Jet engines replaced propellers for most applications, and where propellers remained, they were most often replaced by turoprops - effectively a propeller powered by a jet turbine - to provide a more powerful powerplant in a more compact and lighter package.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nFrom there, however, surprisingly little has changed in the grand scheme of things. Most of the advances for several decades have been the introduction finite-element-analysis using supercomputers for aerodynamic analysis (alongside wind tunnels), new materials improving structures and powerplants, and electronics (both hardware and software) improving capabilities of airframes."
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10c5it | What would happen if a nuclear weapon was detonated next to a nuclear power plant or next to another nuclear weapon? | Would this situation be different from a more vanilla nuclear detonation in any way? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/10c5it/what_would_happen_if_a_nuclear_weapon_was/ | {
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"The only real difference would be the increased fallout and radiation from the spread of radioactive material during the explosion. The other material wouldn't achieve the critical pressures/temperatures required to set off a chain reaction and it would just get blown into the atmosphere by the blast. "
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2lngen | Is time quantized on extremely small (quantum) scales? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2lngen/is_time_quantized_on_extremely_small_quantum/ | {
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"As far as we know, and according to our current models, time is continuous. There are some proposed models of quantum gravity where time is quantized at very small scales, like around the Planck scale, but we lack the experimental accuracy needed to access those scales, so as of now we can't know for sure."
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8btc3j | why does the air from my table fan feel cold? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8btc3j/eli5_why_does_the_air_from_my_table_fan_feel_cold/ | {
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"Sweat can be a factor (evaporation cools you, of course).\n\nHowever, more commonly, it's because the air is far below your body temperature, so the more air per minute you're exposed to, the more cooling effect there is. Your body doesn't perceive external temperature, per se, but the rate and direction of heat exchange with the environment. \n\nAir below body temperature then will always cool you. Air above body temperature will still cool you because of evaporation and sweat. However, air with a wet bulb temperature (that's basically the temperature you can reach with sweating) near body temperature is eventually fatal and the more it flows the faster you die. "
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2smsp6 | paying a copay instead of full deductible. | 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 | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2smsp6/eli5paying_a_copay_instead_of_full_deductible/ | {
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"Your policy will tell you when the copay applies, and when the deductible applies. You need to check there, as almost every policy is different.\n\nWith that said, typically things like normal visits (annual physicals, OB/GYN visits, etc.) only require the copay, while unscheduled emergency count against your deductible.",
"Generally anything preventative is not applied to the deductable, removing a mole to prevent cancer. Reactive, however, applies to the deductable, like casting a broken arm. Furthermore, many doctors will call a lot more things preventative, so it does not apply. A very easy way to convince your GF her visit will be covered is to call the office, give them your insuance information and they can tell you right then and there! (or in a few minutes depending on how busy they are)",
"Your girlfriend's OB/GYN visit is covered 100% with no out of pocket costs. This is part of the new ACA law.\nsrc: i'm licensed and fully ACA certified with CMS. i sell health insurance.",
"It depends on the plan--your paperwork is more reliable than anything I could tell you-- but generally a copay works independently of the deductible. The trick is that the copy ONLY covers those things that the copay covers and everything else is subject to the deductible. So if it is $30/$50 and preventive care is 100% covered, your girlfriend will pay nothing for an annual checkup and routine screenings at the OB/GYN, but $30 or $50 for any other visits (depending on whether OB/GYN is considered specialist or primary care). Any lab tests or procedures that are not routine screenings are usually subject to the deductible separately of the office visit copay. Under the ACA birth control is supposed to be 100% covered, but other procedures/diagnostic tests may not be and will be subject to the deductible and coinsurance. \n\nEdited to add: Back when we had this sort of plan, we would pay the specialist office visit copay for my son's cardiologist, and later be billed (deductible + coinsurance) for the echocardiogram and EKG since these were not covered by the office visit copay.",
"Get out your packet of information or go to your plan's website. Generally your charges are going to fall into two categories: services with a copay and services with coinsurance. \r\rAny time you have a copay, this is the most you will pay for that service, and it almost never applies to a deductible. So your $15 (or whatever) primary care physician copay won't count against your deductible unless specified.\r\rAny time there is coinsurance, is when your deductible comes into play. So if you have a $500 deductible with 80/20 coinsurance and you get a $1000 bill, you will pay $600 [$500+(0.20*$500)] and your insurance will pay the remaining $400 (0.80*500). Any other coinsurance bills the rest of the year will just be you (0.20*X) and insurance (0.80*X).\r\rYour plan will generally cover preventative services such as mammograms, pap smears, colonoscopies, etc on a schedule i.e. 1-2x a year or every other year. Many preventative checkups are covered free or low copay if you follow the schedule. \r\rTwo other notes. \rIf you have a critical illness policy(cancer, heart disease, etc) they will usually pay you to get preventative checkups. It's usually capped (like one a year or $100) but if you're already getting the free checkup, may as well get the money. \r\rMost of the time, the bigger the building, the bigger the bill. Avoid hospitals if possible in favor of your primary care physician or even a specialist with an office not at a hospital. It's amazing the price difference sometimes (like $50 copay for a diagnostic test vs $250 copay).\r\rSource: Insurance license.\r\r",
"Hearing aid specialist here. \n\nAlways check for additional deductibles as well. Some insurances have put sneaky stuff for hearing aids like \"100% coverage after meeting the hearing aid deductible (of $6000). \n\nIt isn't the regular deductible that you can whittle down with other stuff. It's specific to hearing aids - and it's dishonest as fuck since most hearing aids are cheaper than that. \n\nAny time you see percentages thrown around, check for more solid dollar amounts. 100% coverage usually ain't. "
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580yf0 | In Battlefield 1 the military phonetic alphabet is quite a bit differnt as we know it today (Apples instead of Alpha, Butter instead of Bravo, etc). When was it changed into what it is today? Why was it changed? Or does Battlefield's version have no basis on historical reality? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/580yf0/in_battlefield_1_the_military_phonetic_alphabet/ | {
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"Yes, this is based in history. The British went through numerous versions of the phonetic alphabet and during the WWI period, it was indeed Apples, Butter, Charlie, Duff, etc. [Tables here](_URL_0_)\n\nDue to issues with differences in the phonetic alphabet, and difficulty in pronouncing certain words, after WW2, the newly formed International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) drafted up a new phonetic alphabet, which is frequently called the NATO alphabet as NATO was one of the first major organizations to adopt it in full for all of its militaries. [History here from ICAO](_URL_1_)"
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1ed443 | what exactly do the brackets mean when used in interviews like this: "[we want to] change social attitudes toward downloading." | I honestly just don't get it. Is it used to sum up some words or connect spots in between? It makes me feel like someone is just making shit up to make the article more appealing or convincing.
Is this how people use things "out of context" as well?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ed443/eli5_what_exactly_do_the_brackets_mean_when_used/ | {
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"It is a way to shorten a longer quote. For example, if the original quote was:\n\n\"We at the university, through partnership with both the intellectual property holders and the telecom providers, feel the best approach is to change social attitudes towards downloading.\"\n\nSo the stuff in brackets shows the gist of the first part of the sentence, but makes it clear it is not a direct quote.",
"I often see it used to add words the speaker left out. A sentence like \"They have a right to happiness\" doesn't confer the idea of the speaker without more context so it might be quoted in print as \"[Gays] have the right to happiness\". It's used to show added or substituted words for clarity. When used properly it will add understanding without changing the intent of the statement. "
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5qdh99 | When did Europeans figure out that certain birds were migratory and where did they think the birds migrated to? Where did they believe the birds went in winter before that? | This question is totally inspired by "Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail" | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5qdh99/when_did_europeans_figure_out_that_certain_birds/ | {
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"Pliny the Elder in Natural History seems well aware of bird migration in the first century AD. He claims cranes fly from the east of India: \n\n > The tracts over which they travel must be immense, if we only consider that they come all the way from the Eastern Sea.\n\nBut he doesn’t know where storks come from:\n\n > Up to the present time it has not been ascertained from what place the storks come, or whither they go when they leave us. There can be no doubt but that, like the cranes, they come from a very great distance, the cranes being our winter, the storks our summer, guests.\n\nHe thinks swallows don’t migrate that far:\n\n > The swallow, the only bird that is carnivorous among those which have not hooked talons, takes its departure also during the winter months; but it only goes to neighbouring countries, seeking sunny retreats there on the mountain sides; sometimes they have been found in such spots bare and quite unfledged.\n\n…and claims the thrush winters in the north, not the south:\n\n > they are often to be seen in places where they seek their food during the winter: hence it is that in winter, more especially, the thrush is so often to be seen in Germany.\n\nPliny also points out that geese and swans migrate, and interestingly even knows the V-formation makes for easier flying.\n\n > The flocks, forming a point, move along with great impetus, much, indeed, after the manner of our Liburnian beaked galleys; and it is by doing so that they are enabled to cleave the air more easily than if they presented to it a broad front. The flight gradually enlarges in the rear, much in the form of a wedge, presenting a vast surface to the breeze, as it impels them onward; those that follow place their necks on those that go before, while the leading birds, as they become weary, fall to the rear. \n\nPliny actually categorises some birds on their migration, or non-migration, which you can see in [Book X](_URL_0_).\n\n"
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6gzxh8 | how does a plant 'know' how old it is? | I'm currently propagating some fig trees from cuttings. Figs stop producing well after 15-20 years, but if I cut off a branch and get it to root, then that new tree will be producing fruit again in a couple of years.
How does that branch 'know' that it's a new tree and can produce fruit, rather than still a part of the old tree that soon won't be able to? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6gzxh8/eli5_how_does_a_plant_know_how_old_it_is/ | {
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"It doesn't. Plants don't age the way animals do. They show symptoms of aging as their structure becomes too large and woody to carry out its functions, but their growing cells are no older now than they were when it first sprouted. There are plants that have been cloning themselves for tens if not hundreds of thousands of years, and other plants that could live forever unless something kills them."
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4kp12u | different types of alcohol. i just got a job at a duty free, and i need a crash course quick! | Gin, rum, rye, different types of wines, dry, single-malt, etc...I have no clue what *any* of this means.
I got a job at a Duty Free and people ask me questions about alcohol that I cannot answer. I need to know.
Thanks. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4kp12u/eli5_different_types_of_alcohol_i_just_got_a_job/ | {
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"In a broad sense, **dry** is the opposite of **sweet**. Sweet alcohols are just that- sweeter. Dry is literally a lack of sweetness, not necessarily a taste on its own. Dry and sweet are often used to describe wine and gin, among other alcohols.\n\n**Wine** is made from fermented grapes. It can be red, white, or rose (pronounced \"ro-ZAY\") and there are numerous varieties within those groups, such as pinot noir, zinfandel, and chardonney. Wine is usually consumed straight (no additions). Red is drunk at room temperature, while white is usually chilled. \"Champagne\" is usually used as a shorthand for sparkling (carbonated) white wine. You can also get sparkling rose, or sparkling red, but the latter is uncommon.\n\n**Gin** is a clear liquor made from distilled juniper berries. It's very herby and floral, and can be dry or sweet. It's popular for cocktails, including the martini (gin+vermouth, and often olives), Tom Collins (basically gin+lemonade) and the gin & tonic (often with lime). People don't often drink gin straight.\n\n**Whiskey** is any number of fermented grain alcohols. They tend to be bitter and smoky, and often burn a little. **Rye** is a type of whiskey made with rye, and **bourbon** is made with corn. **Malt whiskey** is made from malted (partly germinated) barley. Whiskey can be consumed straight, either at plain room temperature (\"neat\") or over ice (\"on the rocks\"), and is also often used for cocktails, such as the whiskey sour (whiskey+lemon+sugar) and the Manhattan (whiskey+vermouth+bitters). \n\n**Rum** is a distilled alcohol made from molasses. It's sweet and spicy, and is very popular for cocktails, and sometimes cooking. It can be clear or dark.\n\n**Vodka** is a clear distilled alcohol that is made from cereal grains or potatoes. Good vodka ideally has very little taste, other than the taste of alcohol. This makes it a very popular tool for cocktails, because you can mix it with almost anything without the flavors fighting. Vodka is about as neutral as an alcohol gets. \n\n**Brandy** is alcohol made from... other alcohol, actually. You take wine (which is fermented) and then distill that to get brandy. Not very popular anymore, except as an accent or additive to cocktails.\n\n**Tequila** is a distilled alcohol made from the agave plant. Like rum it can be light or dark, and is sweet and spicy. Likewise to rum, it's popular for cocktails. It doesn't taste that much like rum, mind you. The most popular tequila cocktail by far, you'll likely know, is the margarita (tequila+triple sec+citrus juice, often with ice in a glass with a salted rim).\n\nEDIT: I'll edit to keep adding more.",
"You've got your main spirits:\n\nVodka - Clear colourless liquid, normally around 37% alcohol(in the UK at least). Made from fermented grains or potato. Smells like well alcohol. Normally mixed with various sodas or drunk straight(usually very cold). Can be flavoured with various sweet tastes like fruits or caramel. \n\nGin - Again clear and colourless, smells like flowers. Made from juniper berries. Normally mixed with soda. Again around 37%. \n\nRum - Made from fermented sugar cane. Can be white, spiced or dark. Bacardi is a common white rum. Captain Morgans is a common spiced rum but they also do a dark rum(and probably a white version too). Mixed with various sodas similar to vodka and again 37% \n\nWhisky/Whiskey - Ok things get tricky, it's easier to split these into 2 groups; Bourbon and Scotch(I hate to call it that as a Scottish person but its easier for explanation purposes). Bourbon is generally American whiskeys made from a corn mash; similar to Jack Daniels or Old Turkey. Its very sweet and normally drunk straight or with coke. \nScotch is more european, the most common types are Scottish Whisky or Irish Whiskey(but you get them from everywhere including America). This is made from malted barley, a single casket produces a single malt ie 1 type of barley grain used. If you blend a few different types together you get a blended malt. Either way it's normally drunk straight, with a bit of ice or a splash of water but never mixed with soda! A single malt tastes a lot more harsh where as a blend is normally less so. These are normally a lot higher percentage of alcohol. Colour wise they're all most commonly golden brown similar to a spiced rum. \n\nWine - 3 main types; Red, Rose and White. Made from fermented grapes, I think the colour comes from the grape type but I may be wrong. Drunk straight or as a spritzer, Normally around 12%. Red wine is a lot deeper and complex in taste whereas white wines are fruitier and lighter. Come from all over the world big areas though are Italy, France, South Africa, Australia and California. Champagne is a special type of white wine that is fizzy, as far as the EU goes this can only be made in the Champagne region of France to be called such otherwise it's fizzy wine, Cava is a similar wine from Spain. I don't think the same restrictions apply in the US though. \n\nMy suggestion to you would be to go to a bar and start trying things particularly rums, gins and vodkas.",
"There are two VERY basic differences between different types of alcoholic beverages. a) What they are primarily made from (fruit, grain, etc.) and b) How they are processed. What they all have in common is some sort of sugar (starch is a sugar) base that allows yeast to thrive and convert the sugar into alcohol (fermentation).\n\nSome basic examples: Wine is primarily produced from fruit. Fruits contain simple sugars. Beer, whiskey (there are tons of variations of whiskey) are produced from grain, which contain complex sugars. Gin is made from juniper berries. Tequila is made from agave, a type of cactus plant. Rum is made from molasses, which is essentially sugar cane.\n\nDifferent types of grain (read: starch) can be used as a base such as wheat, rye, barley, rice, corn, potato. Each will yield a different result. Whiskey, rye, beer, vodka, etc.\n\nDifferent processes yield different sub-types. For example, the type of vessel used for aging will affect the outcome. Bourbon is a type of whiskey that is aged in oak barrels that have been burned on the inside. The end result is a very distinct flavor compared to other whiskeys. \n\nSingle malt and double malt are just that, one type of malt is used or two. \n\nMost wines are either red or white. (The difference between the two depends on the type of grape or whether or not the grape skins are included in the process. The other basic description is sweet or dry (not sweet).\n\nPut all of these together in various combinations and the various possibilites are endless.\n\nThere are many exceptions to this but this is an ELI3 explanation.\n\n",
"Most people already have an idea what they want, so just expand on what they're asking for.\n\nBut here's a primer.\n\nWines:\n\nAnything red for big flavour foods (dark meat, game meat, old or stinky cheeses).\n\nWhite is for lighter flavours (white wine doesn't have a stong taste so it doesnt drown a meal). Seafood or fruits.\n\nRose (pronounce Rose- EH) is usually a blend of red and white. Best in summer served chilled. Women love it.\n\nChampagne vs sparkling wine: only fizzy wine made in Champagne can be called so. Hence 'sparkling wine' for everyone else.\n\n(Sparkling wine vs cider: wine is from grapes, cider is other fruits (usually apple) and also difference in alcohol percentage).\n\nHard Bars:\n\nVodka- potato base. Some cleaner taete than others. You get what you pay for, usually.\n\nGin- from Juniper berries. Very distinct flavour.\n\nWhiskeys: no way around it, read this _URL_0_\n\nSake: Japanese fermented rice alcoholic something\n\nPort / Sherry: sweeter, cant remember why or how. \n\nTequila: Mexican fermented Agave drink. Most women's clothing are allergic: watch for flying articles of clothing.\n\nBeers: \nThe lighter the beer, the lighter the taste, usually.\n\nI'm not getting any more indepth because it is as bad as wine making now.\n\n*This guide is meant to be a very bare-bones quick guide. OP asked for an \"Alcohol for dummies\" and I tried to give basic things shop employees can pass with, at least until they get more experience and exposure to the different nuances etc. I'm not about to explain California vs French vs Italian vs Chilean wines, etc."
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27v7ix | how does a park like disneyland know when everyone has left the park. | I just got back from a few days Disneyland Paris and walking out with probably 50.000 or more other people I started to wonder.
What if I just hide somewhere, who is ever going to find me?
I'm sure they count people going in and out, but people go in and out all day long. People get stamps and don't use their tickets.
Does that counter really evens out at 0 at the end of the day? What if it doesn't.
Or don't they care if someone is left behind (on purpose or not)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27v7ix/eli5_how_does_a_park_like_disneyland_know_when/ | {
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"They actually have an after hours crew of around 600 that maintain the park. If someone were left behind, they'd be caught. ",
"And they have video surveillance. ",
"On another note, how do they keep losing money year after year when they have a LOT of visitors, everything is very overpriced and they don't really add or renew things."
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3c1c63 | What was the first democracy where over 50% of the population could vote? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3c1c63/what_was_the_first_democracy_where_over_50_of_the/ | {
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"Do you mean \"where over 50% of the adult population could vote\"?\n\nSince in most democracies approximately half the adult population are women, your question can be re-phrased as which democracy first had both, broad adult suffrage and women voters? That would be the British colony of New Zealand in 1893, followed by the colony of South Australia in 1894 and then the Commonwealth of Australia (no longer a colony) in 1903."
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ecyvny | What of the era of Biblical Judges is corroborated by archeological or textual evidence? | I’ve heard of Tel Dan and The House of David but not much of the - seemingly related to the conquest of Canaan - Judges in anthropological terms. Is this simply a “Mediterranean Dark Age” hole in the textual record? Are Ruth, Judges, Kings, Samuel etc regarded with more historic credibility than other parts of the Bible? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ecyvny/what_of_the_era_of_biblical_judges_is/ | {
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"The historical accuracy of events portrayed in the Bible change depending on the books and division of the Bible. Generally, the farther back in the past a Biblical story takes place, the more likely it is the details of the story are inaccurate if the story has any basis in history at all. For example, the invasion of Jerusalem by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar II in 597 BC is an unquestioned historic fact, it is an event recounted throughout several books in the Hebrew Bible, as well as being chronicled by the Babylonians themselves. Whereas the events in the Torah/Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) are largely agreed to have not happened in the way the Bible describes them. What is worth noting, however, is that though the stories of the Pentateuch did not happen as they are portrayed, it is likely that many of the stories of the Pentateuch are mythologized accounts loosely based off of real world events. For example, there is no archaeological evidence for the figure Abraham, Abraham’s journey, though, is described in Genesis as a journey from Mesopotamia (“Ur of the Chaldeans”) to the land of Canaan. Archaeological evidence has shown similar migration patterns among the Amorites, who likewise migrated from Mesopotamia to Canaan. It is theorized the Biblical authors had some kind of awareness to these migration patterns, but that Abraham was a later edition to the story.\n\nThe Book of Judges is placed in the Historical Books section of the Christian Old Testament (The Historical Books are the books from Joshua to Esther, in the Hebrew Bible/TaNaKh, Judges is placed within the Nevi'im (prophetic books)) Judges is a continuation of the narrative presented in Joshua. The description of the Israelites under Joshua taking over Canaan has been under great academic skepticism. Current archaeological evidence suggests that rather than the Israelites taking over Canaan by force, they integrated into the land over the span of many generations. If Joshua is like Genesis in that the stories presented often contain mythologized accounts of history, then it is possible the conquest of Canaan as described in Joshua may be dramatized renditions of small scale revolts that sporadically happened during the transition of the Canaanites controlling the land to the Israelites.\n\nSeveral of the kings described in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles have been identified as real figures (such as Omri of Israel, Josiah of Judah, and Zedekiah of Judah), but the existence of the earlier kings (such as in 1 Kings, and especially in 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel) is much more controversial. The books of Samuel describe Israel as being a united monarchy from Syria to Edom (Edom being south of Jerusalem). Apart from the Hebrew Bible, however, there are no major sources of the United Kingdom of Israel, what has been theorized is that David, if he existed, rather than being the king of all Israel, was likely a tribal king who controlled a much smaller portion of land than the dimensions given in the Biblical account. It has been speculated that the story of David was promoted by later kings of Judah to validate their rule (the kings of Judah saw themselves as being part of the “House of David”), and to potentially control the northern Kingdom of Israel as David, after all, was said to have ruled all Israel as well as what was then Judah.\n\nMuch like the account of the first kings of Israel, the Book of Judges presents Israel as a sort of unity. Whenever a judge is described, they are never described as judging the specific tribe they are from, but Israel, in the story of Othniel becoming the first judge of Israel, it is stated “and he \\[Othniel\\] judged Israel” (Judges 3:10, NRSV). The judges period appears to serve as a sort of prologue as to why Israel was ruled by kings, the judges are contrasted by kings in a few ways\n\n1. The judges are chosen by God: Whenever a dynasty in Israel lost popularity with the populous, the books of Kings and Chronicles tells of how they would be overthrown, and a new dynasty of kings would take over. The judges are described as being determined not by overthrowing the current ruler, or gaining popularity, but by being men (and women, as Deborah was among the judges named) handpicked by God Himself.\n2. The judges did not rule by hereditary rule: The judges described did not belong in the same family as each other, Judges portrays God as choosing who should judge Israel not based on familial ties and lineages, but by those God sees as worthy to judge.\n\n1 Samuel tells of the end of the period of judges with the abdication of Samuel the final judge of Israel, and the coronation of Saul the first king of Israel. The kings are contrasted with the judges, the judges are depicted as righteous leaders chosen by God, whereas several of the kings of Judah and all of the kings of Northern Israel are described as sinful. Again, if the figures in Judges were based on actual historical figures, it is unlikely they would have ruled the whole land of Canaan as the Book of Judges implies, especially when one considers the commonly accepted time period the Israelites entered Canaan (circa 1250 BC) and compare it to when Judges would have taken place when using Biblical chronology (circa 1500-1000 BC).\n\nApologies if much of my answer seems speculative, though scholars are pretty much certain that the events in the Pentateuch did not happen in the way the Bible describes it, the time period between the judges and kings of Israel is much more uncertain, and is hotly debated.\n\nSources\n\n“ABC 5 (Jerusalem Chronicle).” *Livius*, 26 July 2017, [_URL_4_](_URL_4_).\n\n“Archeology of the Hebrew Bible.” *PBS*, Public Broadcasting Service, 18 Nov. 2008, [_URL_3_](_URL_3_).\n\nAstle, Cynthia. “Is There Archaeological Evidence About the Story of Abraham?” *Learn Religions*, Learn Religions, 4 May 2019, [_URL_1_](_URL_1_).\n\nDever, William G. “Archaeology and the Israelite 'Conquest'.” *W.Dever Archaelogy & Conquest ABD*, [_URL_5_](_URL_0_).\n\n“The City of David and Solomon.” *David and Solomon: Myth or Reality*, [_URL_6_](_URL_6_).\n\nThe Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Canaan.” *Encyclopædia Britannica*, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 11 Oct. 2019, [_URL_2_](_URL_2_)."
]
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[
"http://individual.utoronto.ca/mfkolarcik/texts/WDeverArchaeology_ConquestABD.html",
"https://www.learnreligions.com/archaeological-evidence-abraham-bible-4590053",
"https://www.britannica.com/place/Canaan-historical-region-Middle-East",
"https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/archeology-hebrew-bible/",
"https://www.livius.org/sources/content/mesopotamian-chronicles-content/abc-5-jerusalem-chronicle/",
"http://individual.utoronto.ca/mfkolarcik/texts/WDeverArchaeology\\_ConquestABD.html",
"https://www.bu.edu/mzank/Jerusalem/cp/DavidSolomonmyth.html"
]
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57u2i3 | why not everybody is capable of moving their ears and other body parts? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/57u2i3/eli5_why_not_everybody_is_capable_of_moving_their/ | {
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"Some of it is due to lack of practice and realizing you can. Physical therapy for instance helps people locate weakened or atrophied muscles using electrical stimulation so you can find them and learn to use them again.\n\nSo for those that can raise a single eyebrow or whatnot, it comes with practice. \n\nFor something like wiggling your ears, not everyone can do that. The muscles responsible for that are vestigial in many people, from the time that we could move our ears in response to sound. They did experiments highlighting that sound does activate those muscles in everyone, but very few could actually move their ears with said muscles, because they usually just don't work. I'm sure there are a few other muscles that are similar as far as genetics go."
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197pyz | How did Imperial Germany Treat its Minorities? | I know Germany had ethnic minorities such as Poles, Danes, and Jews along with smaller groups such as Sorbs, but I'm having trouble finding out how Germany actually dealt with them. Did it try to incorporate them into Germany, did it attempt to exclude them, did it attempt deportation, etc.
| AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/197pyz/how_did_imperial_germany_treat_its_minorities/ | {
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"I'm mostly familiar with things from the minority-side of things, not the German side. But Imperial Germany did emancipate its Jews, giving them political rights, along with other countries during this era. This (along with the enlightenment) produced new religious movements in Judaism, particularly the Reform movement. The result of this was that Jews tried to re-identify themselves as \"Germans of the Mosaic faith\" (the same nationality and ethnicity as their neighbors, but a different religion). This meant that Jews in Imperial Germany were meaningfully participating in German society, which at the time was fairly new in Europe (but was occurring at roughly the same time in Europe). German Jews started to be more German culturally, and started replacing Western Yiddish with High German. [This guy](_URL_1_) is a good example of a proponent of this.\n\nI really don't know to what extent this was encouraged by the German government, but given that they emancipated the Jews I imagine it was. So they essentially wanted to incorporate the Jews into being a sub-grouping of Germans, rather than a group on their own. Of course, the pendulum ultimately swung the other way, and in the early 1900s the dualling philosophies among the Jewish thinkers were whether Jews ought to be part of nationalist movements (adopting the national identity of their countries of residence. Note that non-Jewish nationalists sometimes opposed this) or develop a Jewish nationalist movement, namely Zionism. Various events and convincing writers caused the latter to become dominant in the end, but in Imperial Germany the two views were very much both present, with the former being dominant.\n\nedit: See [here](_URL_2_) and [here](_URL_0_) for sources and more information",
"Yes, the German Empire was far from being a homogeneous society (if there ever was one ...) after its unification in 1871. First, you have to keep in mind that \"the Germans\" themselves (or rather Prussians, Hessians, Bavarians, Franconians etc.) were split almost evenly into Catholics and Protestants. Unified by protestant Prussia, the German states with catholic majorities remained uneasy with the hegemony of Protestantism in the new German state. The fact, that the early Empire (still under Chancellor Otto v. Bismarck) waged a \"culture war\" against Catholicism, deeming Catholics as unpatriotic and thralls of Rome, did not help either.\n\nIn relation to the Catholicism issue Germany's minorities are less important, although in the case of the Polish minority (which was also Germany's largest minority) both issues are inseperably connected, as most Poles are Catholics. The Polish minority of Germany was mainly a part of the Prussian state, whose territories stretched eastwards. The Prussian authorities did in fact try to stamp out Polish identity and significance. This \"Germanization\" policy included laws to enshrine German as exclusive institutional and court language, attempts to outlaw any foreign language clubs and of course general institutional discrimination of Poles to push them out of business and land ownership. As of now, off the top of my head, I can't judge the effectiveness of these measures (although I don't remember them to be), until I can look it up more precisely. Anyway, Polish communities, clubs, societies and newspapers were significant in East Prussia and in the Ruhr Area (due to labour migration) well into the 1930s. Only the National Socialists destroyed them in the end.\n\nThe German Empire had no laws regarding Jews or any other religious affiliation. Full legal equality of all German citizens, Christian or not, was provided for -- in theory. Anti-Semitism ran rampant (as it did in other parts of Europe as well), race and eugenics theorists tinkered with ideas how to \"deal\" with the \"Jewish question\", i.e. if Jews could be a part of German society or were alien to it by nature. Long story short, while there was no legal discrimination of Jews, the climate of late 19th/early 20th century Germany was hostile to Jews and especially open \"Jewishness\". "
]
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Jews#From_Moses_Mendelssohn_.281778.29_to_the_Nazis_.281933.29",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Rathenau",
"http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/germany.html"
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3kseu2 | why is ford's stock (~$30) significantly cheaper than nissan's stock (~$1,100)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kseu2/eli5_why_is_fords_stock_30_significantly_cheaper/ | {
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"Prices of individual shares are not as relevant as the overall market cap of the company. Share prices can be driven downward by having stock splits, which most companies do when the per share price becomes high. ",
"Simple. Stock price is a function of total number of shares. More shares means less price per share. ",
"Stock is like slice a pizza.\n\nYou can cut a big pizza into a much of little slices, and a little pizza into big slices. The fact the smaller pizza has bigger slices doesn't mean there is more pizza.",
"The price of Nissan is ~$18.50. What you are looking at is the price of Nissan in Japanese yen. I think that might clear something up \n\n_URL_0_"
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1r3vm4 | What discoveries in the natural sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Biology) have had evident and dramatic impacts on the course of history? | Full disclosure: I am doing an essay for Physics on this, and personally am saying mass-energy equivalence due to the resulting bomb and its effect on the twentieth century. Another popular one is the transistor, but I'm curious about other earlier examples we may have?
The idea of the question is when has a scientific breakthrough (or false alarm) dramatically changed the political or social institutions of the time and into the future? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1r3vm4/what_discoveries_in_the_natural_sciences_physics/ | {
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"In physics I would note electricity, and electromagnetic theory (which allows radio) is perhaps a separate discovery. The steam engine is also an obvious one, or if you prefer theory you could say thermodynamics - but the applications side was clearly first here. I guess this could also be considered engineering, as could the internal combustion engine, which also shades into chemistry. Going back into prehistory, you have the lever! Or, more generally, mechanical advantage, which allows the spear thrower, the bow, the crossbow, and the catapult. \n\nChemistry: Gunpowder is perhaps debatable, being discovered well before modern science per se. Antibiotics, although you could consider it biology. Plastics, oh boy. Condoms without latex really suck.\n\nBiology: Genetic engineering - take your pick: The old-fashioned kind with crossbreeding and culling that created all the modern cereals and cattle breeds, or the kind that people get hysterical about that uses pipettes. The latter is perhaps mostly a false alarm so far. The Pill! (Possibly chemistry?) Machine guns are not really practical without smokeless powder - the residue of black powder will foul it very quickly - but I don't know if this gives you the social change you want; at any rate it's pretty indirect. ",
"1911: Rutherford's gold foil experiment, which lead to the Bohr model and modern quantum mechanics...\n\nMendelev's periodic table: The first periodic table identifies several previously unknown elements and eventually grows to the current form\n\nLavoisier (1794.): Discovered oxygen, moved chemistry towards quantitative science, helped develop the metric system now used in science.\n\nOrganic chemistry: Revolutionised how we see the world, allowing the development of polymers, drugs etc.\n\nThese are a few chemistry based discoveries which I think are important."
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17xbjk | how a double-blind study works, and why it is considered so reliable | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17xbjk/eli5_how_a_doubleblind_study_works_and_why_it_is/ | {
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" A double blind study is when neither the scientist nor the participants know what the study is about. \n Say that we have researchers studying the effects of a new drug. group A will receive the drug, and group B will get a placebo. No one in the test groups know who has which.\n If the researchers know who has what drug, they may accidentally report false findings. Because they know that group A has the real drug, they report that group A did well in the study. The researchers do this subconsciously.\n If the researchers do not know which group has the placebo, they cannot make this mistake. This is why double blind studies are more reliable. ",
"Double-blind studies are usually used in medicine. They are to control for the placebo effect.\n\nLet's say you have a new drug and you want to test how well it treats a disease. So, you get a whole bunch of patients with that disease. You give half of them the new drug and half of them a sugar pill (you could also give them the old drug if you want to compare against that instead). The patient doesn't know which pill they got, so that's the first blind. The second blind is that the doctor that gave them the pill also doesn't know which pill they got.\n\nThe reason for the second blind is that the doctor's actions might influence the patient. So, if neither the patient nor the doctor know whether they got the new drug or not you can be sure that any effects are from the drug itself and not from the placebo effect.",
"if a test subject knows that they are getting a placebo, they will tend to report no changes in whatever areas the study is testing. if they know they have the real pill, they'll report that they were affected by what they got. if they don't know what they have, they won't be influenced by the knowledge of what they got and they will tell the truth. \nthat's the first blind. the second blind is where the person administering the pill doesn't know if they are giving the test subjects a placebo or the real thing either, so they won't skew the results that they get from the subjects. \n\nbasically, if nobody knows if they got the real thing or gave the real thing, you get results much closer to the truth. ",
"Let's say you and your best friend each bring in your moms' recipe of chocolate chip cookies to recess. You would like to see which recipe is better received. So you give a group of your mutual friends the cookies — half get your cookie, the other half get your best friend's. Then you see their reactions when they eat the cookies.\n\nIf you know who is getting what type of cookie, it may affect the results... as hard as you try not to be influenced, you may say the friends who ate your cookies reacted better than the others. Or, if the cookie eaters knew whose cookies they were eating, they may give a different result... maybe they like your best friend better, so they act more excited when they eat his cookies. But, if you have the recess monitor mix the cookies up, split them up amongst your friends and keep track of who got which cookie, you'd get a more natural result. Neither the testers (you and your best friend) or the test subjects (your group of mutual friends) know who got what, so both sides are considered \"blind\".\n\nThis is usually used to test medical drugs. One group of patients are given a new drug, the other group gets a placebo (or an old drug). Neither the patients nor the scientists testing the results know who got what. They just record the results. It creates results that are more \"pure\". Not perfect, but it tries to get opinions and preconceived notions out of the picture.",
"One of the hardest things to do in science is show that A, and only A, caused B. If I drink some herbal tea, and my headache goes away, it is very hard to say whether it was the tea that helped, something else I did, or if the headache just went away on its own.\n\nDouble blind studies help rule out the external factors. \n\nThe patients are blind, meaning they don't know if they are getting the treatment or not. This prevents them from changing their behavior and expectations based on whether they got the treatment or not.\n\nThe researchers are also blind. They don't know which patients are getting the real treatment, so they don't react to the patients differently, and aren't biased when they evaluate progress."
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8sa19r | Why is the fine structure constant called "fine structure"? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8sa19r/why_is_the_fine_structure_constant_called_fine/ | {
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"Atomic spectra have gross, fine and hyperfine structure.\n\nThe gross structure corresponds to the energy levels which result from non-relativistic solutions to the Schrodinger equation, with no allowance for the effects of electron spin.\n\nFine structure results from taking account of relativistic effects, and of interactions between electron spin and orbital angular momentum. This has the effect of splitting what would otherwise be single energy levels into closely spaced ones. It is the fact that these levels - and hence the resulting spectral lines - are closely spaced that leads to it being referred to as fine structure.\n\nHyperfine structure is an even smaller effect due to interactions with the nucleus.\n\nThe fine structure constant was given that name because it appears in the equations for calculating the size of fine structure corrections."
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uc90a | What happens when a charged particle moves faster than the speed of light in a material? (Cherenkov radiation) | I know that a charged particle moving faster than the phase velocity of light in a material leads to Cherenkov radiation.
What is going on at the atomic level in the material that causes this?
What happens if the particle is not charged?
How fast does the charged particle slow down to sub-luminal speeds?
**edit:** As a reminder, **please don't speculate** | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/uc90a/what_happens_when_a_charged_particle_moves_faster/ | {
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"The particle is \"trying\" to generate a wavefront that is propagating faster than light could in that medium. Since that can't happen, you get higher energy emissions instead.",
" > What is going on at the atomic level in the material that causes this?\n\nThe electric field of the charged particle distorts the atoms. When the atoms relax back to equilibrium the excess energy of the disruption is released as photons.\n\n > What happens if the particle is not charged?\n\nUncharged molecules won't disrupt atoms. \n\n > How fast does the charged particle slow down to sub-luminal speeds?\n\nIt depends on how how much kinetic energy they start with. The rule of thumb is that muons loose 2 MeV/cm in water. Electrons loose energy considerably faster. "
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d6pscg | How did Tobacco come to Japan in the 19th century? | In the 53 stations of Tokaido Fukuroi depicts men smoking and lighting pipes, where would the tobacco they are smoking come from? How did Tobacco Enter Japanese society? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/d6pscg/how_did_tobacco_come_to_japan_in_the_19th_century/ | {
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"It isn't known exactly how tobacco first came to Japan. In the mid-to-late 16th century, tobacco was spreading in East Asia and South-East Asia, probably through multiple routes: Portuguese sailors/traders from Europe or Brazil, Dutch sailors/traders, Spanish sailors/traders from Mexico and the Philippines, and Arab and Indian sailors/traders. By one or more (and most likely it was through multiple routes), tobacco was known around the East and SE Asian maritime world in the 16th century. But the early 16th century it was being grown in China and Japan.\n\nThe 16th century also saw the rise of the tea ceremony in Japan. Tea already had a long history in Japan, having been introduced from China and grown in Japan in the early 9th century. The classic tea of the tea ceremony, made with *matcha* powder, arrived in China in the 12th century, and was drunk by Buddhist priests. It spread to the samurai class in the 13th century, and was popular in the 14th century. The tea ceremony, as opposed to merely drinking tea, was assuming a recognisably modern form in the 16th century, brought into this shape by the first recognised tea masters. Perhaps the most famous and influential of these tea masters was Rikyū, who smoked, and might have introduced smoking tobacco to the tea ceremony. Smoking as part of the tea ceremony did help spread smoking in cultured elite circles in Japan. If Rikyū was responsible, the inclusion of smoking in the tea ceremony took place before his death in 1591.\n\nJapan was already exporting tobacco to SE Asia by 1634, so production was well-established by then.\n\nFor a brief summary of the introduction of tobacco to Japan, see\n\n* Barnabas Tatsuya Suzuki, \"Tobacco culture in Japan\", pp 76-83 in Sander L. Gilman and Zhou Xun, *Smoke: A Global History of Smoking*, Reaktion, 2004. Further chapters discuss Edo Period smoking in Japan, and also modern Japan.\n\nThere is also discussion of the early history of tobacco in East Asia in\n\n* Benedict, Carol, *Golden-Silk Smoke: A History of Tobacco in China, 1550-2010*, University of California Press, 2011. \n\nIn both of these books, one thing that stands out is that we don't know much about the details of the introduction of tobacco in either Japan or China. By the time we have good evidence, it's already there, and being smoked."
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2xijbz | why are there still "living fossils that have barely evolved in 100s of millions of years? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xijbz/eli5why_are_there_still_living_fossils_that_have/ | {
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"If there's a species is still quite a good fit for their environment and no string of beneficial mutations come up to eventually mold a new species, the species just sort of stays the same."
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3463ba | Are there any animals that can see microwaves? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3463ba/are_there_any_animals_that_can_see_microwaves/ | {
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"the wavelength of microwaves is about 12 centimeters, so you'd need an animal that had rods/cones that big, right? maybe a blue whale or something.\n\nlight is in the 500 terahertz range, microwaves are in the hundreds of mhz range. That's orders of magnitude difference.",
"Humans have been known to [hear microwaves](_URL_1_). There is a sense called [electroreception](_URL_0_) which detects frequencies a few orders of magnitude lower than microwaves. It's very different from sight."
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1peopq | how was tim tebow so successful in college but not in the nfl? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1peopq/eli5how_was_tim_tebow_so_successful_in_college/ | {
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"The NFL is a much more competitive league. Just because he was great in College doesn't mean he will necessarily be able to compete at the NFL level",
"Because he doesn't have an accurate enough arm or a quick enough release for the nfl. You can get away with that in college as long as you are an athlete and in the right system but not in the \"league\". ",
"The NFL has a much higher skill level of players than college. This means that plays and strategies you can run in the college game simply do not work in the pros. Tim Tebow was a great quarterback in college because he could exploit these weaknesses in the opponents game. When he transitioned to the NFL he was unable to keep up with the pace, intensity, and skill set needed to be an NFL quarterback. ",
"College football teams favor running more than passing more often than not and a lot of quarterbacks can be starters based on their ability to run even if they struggle throwing the ball. Tebow was passable as a quarterback throwing the ball in college but he wasn't even close to many of the other NFL quarterback prospects, and since are better suited to stop quarterbacks who like to run in the NFL, a lot of what made him a really good college quarterback was useless. ",
"Tebow is a great athlete. His throwing mechanics and accuracy weren't good, but he was stronger and faster than most other players in college.\n\nThe problem was that the gap in ability at the NFL level is so small in general. Even the worst NFL team is made up of the best college players. Since he could no longer simply be the best athlete on the field and win, he had to rely on his mechanics to win and that was always the weakest part of his game.",
"While the rules are similar between NCAA and NFL football, there's a big difference in strategies. In college, there are lots of teams and not everyone is all that good. In the NFL, the players have more experience, have more physical strength and speed, and only made it to the NFL by being great in college. Combine that with the fact that players can stay on teams for more than 4 years and everyone's concentrated into 32 teams and the result is a lot of really good athletes. \n\nNow that that's established, how does the quality of the players relate to strategy? In college, there is a heavy emphasis on plays like the option. Without getting into too much detail, an option is a play where the running back is near the quarterback and the quarterback, based on what the defense does, either runs with the ball or gives it to the running back. In college, these plays work great because if a player is aiming for the wrong guy, he can't recover and reach the actual ballcarrier. In the NFL, everyone's fast enough where you may be able to do a few option plays throughout the game, but you can't use the college-style strategy of just doing it on every other play.\n\nSo where does Tebow fit into this? Tebow has good speed and strength for a quarterback. In college, when he needed to run with the ball, he could knock over potential tacklers. In the NFL, the defensive players are bigger, stronger, and faster. Tebow's no weakling, but he's not going to run over a 300lb defensive lineman or blow by a linebacker. In short, NFL quarterbacks need to rely on passing. Simply put, Tebow was never an exceptional passer. His accuracy was ok and his throwing motion takes much more time than a typical NFL quarterback. \n\nTL;DR: Tebow was a good running QB by college standards. He's not so impressive by NFL standards. Due to strategic differences between the leagues, NFL QBs need to rely on passing ability, which is Tebow's weakness. "
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9s35e7 | how are westerner's "chinese" name decided ans given? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9s35e7/eli5_how_are_westerners_chinese_name_decided_ans/ | {
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"Yep mostly phonetic. Generic names such as Mark is normally translated to 马克 (Mah-Ker) while Paul is translated to 保罗 (Bao-Luo). Same thing applies for names that aren't common as well...but im not sure who decides for the famous ppl oops",
"According to someone I know who does business in China, they make them up, but perhaps base it on something. Maybe they'll choose a name that sounds a little like part of their given name, maybe it'll be the name of their favorite western movie star, maybe it'll be just something that *sounds* good to them.\n\n"
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1zj7no | What was the "known world" for Asian people in ancient times, roman times, etc. ? | Did they know about Europe or Africa? I know Roman glass beads have been found in an Ancient Japanese tomb, so I'm wondering if maybe they atleast knew about some of the empires in the west, or the cartography. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1zj7no/what_was_the_known_world_for_asian_people_in/ | {
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"The Han Chinese knew a decent amount, but largely shrouded in myth. Here is a list of historical documents:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe ones translated by John Hill are the best. There are descriptions and names for the chief cities of the Eastern empire, primary exports, notable flora, some not entirely nonsensical reports about the Roman political system, and so on.\n\nThe Japanese, at least as late as the Heian period, knew very little about the world beyond China, Korea, and Central Asia. One writer has his character shipwrecked in Persia while sailing from Japan to China, which should give you an idea."
]
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"http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/texts.html"
]
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332i1t | what's the 'clicky' noise when shaking some types of aerosol cans? | (on phone, wont let me post without text, silly baconit...) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/332i1t/eli5_whats_the_clicky_noise_when_shaking_some/ | {
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"Metal marble in the can to help stir the paint",
"It's a ball bearing, it's there to help stir up the product. Inside the can, there's a solvent, the product, and a propellant. When the can sits idle, the product separates out from the solvent. \n\nWhen you shake it, the ball bearing helps stir the product and the solvent together."
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1mkv61 | How was Erotic Literature received by the public in the 17th Century? | I was wondering since the 17th century is when erotic fiction was being published, do to the invention of printers, what was the public's attitude towards it? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1mkv61/how_was_erotic_literature_received_by_the_public/ | {
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"\nHey! A question on my field!\n\nFirst, 'erotic literature' (very good use of the correct term) was first printed in the late 1490's, the pioneer in the field being Pietro Aretino, of course.\n\nThe short answer is... What public?\n\nThe public, by and large could not read. Reading was still mostly limited to the upper classes, though it becomes much more widespread in the 18th century (1700's), and you see booksellers like Edmund Curll making a living selling erotic and controversial books. In the 1600's however, the seventeenth century, there was not really a reading 'public.'\n\nMost of what was published (in England) was in Latin and Italian, many of them reprints of Aretino's works. Some of the more famous works were written in this era, like *Nashe's Dildoe*, and *The School of Venus* (1680). \n\nWhat does survive from the seventeenth century (again, England), however, are erotic manuscripts. These manuscripts were absolutely fascinating items. You could think of them as group-notebooks. What this means is that maybe there would be a group of male college students (and these manuscripts are mostly found intact in University records), and individuals would write various things in them for everyone to read. Some things erotic, some things not. For example, there may be a recipe for \"cleaning the quente (cunt)\" alongside a long erotic poem. Another manuscript might have a recipe for curing a hangover alongside of a copied letter, a political satire. There was no real organization or coherence to them, although towards the end of the era, tables of contents began to be imposed after the fact.\n\nErotic manuscripts were essentially not 'literature' as they had a lack of coherence to them. They were, however, erotic 'discourse.' What I mean by this is that pornography might be used to launch social. religious, or political criticism. \n\nThe most famous of these might be Rochester's Satyr (Satire) on Charles II, in which he says: \n\"In th' isle of Britain, long since famous grown/ For breeding the best cunts in Christendom,/ There reigns, and oh! long may he reign and thrive, / The easiest King and best-bred man alive.\" and uses erotic discourse to accuse of the King of being too busy fucking and not busy enough overseeing the affairs of state."
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7v6gog | how do airlines get your checked luggage on the right plane when there is a short layover? | I know they scan the barcode and that tells them what plane and stuff, but what is the process that happens that gets the bag from one plane to another, accurately and on time?
And yes I know it’s not ALWAYS accurate. But it is very accurate. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7v6gog/eli5_how_do_airlines_get_your_checked_luggage_on/ | {
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"If you fly a lot you notice the flight to LA on Spirit airlines always leaves from gate A2 for example. Most connections you make are with the same airline. The guys handling the bags at a landing sort the bags. Most are headed to the local baggage pickup. Most of the remaining ones are headed to a gate close by. A carrier truck runs those over to the gate where a flight is headed to your destination. If you are changing carriers along your route you are usually told to wait for your checked bag at the gate where you arrive and gate check onto your next flight as baggage handlers can't go driving clear across the airport to find the gate and flight on another airline, but you can.",
"They usually sort it at the departing gate. They know which luggage needs to be taken out first. That information is sent to arrive airport. They also compartmentalize the bags. Ie, belt, terminal 1, terminal 2, etc. So this way, its easy to put the bags in correct cart and take it to correct place. ",
"the bag comes off the arriving plane and is bar code scanned. the arriving airport systems know what the gate the connecting flight is. so the handlers just have to put it on a truck giong to that gate. \n\nbags that are for transfers can also loaded in last into the airplane cargo hold so they're near the airplane cargo door. those containers or bags are the first ones off ",
"There's sometimes a physical component here too. Your short connection is you running across a network of concourses, maybe terminals. The bag carts can often use tunnels to physically travel less distance than passengers for the same gate to gate trips",
"Depending on the airport, it’s a complex conveyor belt system that helps gets the bags from one area to another. Here’s a cool video of it.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nEdit: spelling of words.",
"Alright so here's my question, and I'm sure only someone in the industry will know.\n\nLet's say you have one of those hacker fares, where you're on one airline for the first flight, then another for the second. Since luggage is transported by the individual airlines, how does that work when the layover is short? Unlike flying with the same airline, the planes in the hacker's case could be on the other side of a space that's thousands of acres large.\n\nWould the connecting airline be waiting on the tarmac to transport the bag? The airline from the first flight? I doubt they could care less about one bag that won't be flying with them again.",
"As some one who works for a major airline this is something that I can answer, if you have a short layover our system is if it is less than an hour till departure the bag gets taken off the arriving plane it’s scanned and given to a runner who then takes it to the departure gate right from the plane. \nSorry about formatting am on mobile. "
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3c4e58 | When (and where) did the concept of "paper money" began? | How was did that transition worked? Did people just went to the bank and traded their coins for a paper saying how much it was worth? Also, since there was (I guess) no way of creating hard-to-reproduce patterns, how was counterfeit money dealt with? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3c4e58/when_and_where_did_the_concept_of_paper_money/ | {
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"You might want to check out:\n\n- [When did the Monetary system using \"paper money\" we have today start?](_URL_0_)\n\n- [What are the earliest dates for paper money?](_URL_1_)\n\n- [How did they prevent counterfeiting of paper money before modern things like holograms, fluorescent ink, and microprinting?](_URL_2_)"
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1r87lu/when_did_the_monetary_system_using_paper_money_we/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/103vfh/what_are_the_earliest_dates_for_paper_money/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1s7vbr/how_did_they_prevent_counterfeiting_of_paper/"
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sbaut | How do optical illusions appear to be moving? | _URL_0_ like these | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/sbaut/how_do_optical_illusions_appear_to_be_moving/ | {
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"I'm an artist who creates optical illusions. The big reason this particular type of illusion works is because the value of the lines lead the eye. Other moving illusions can force the perspective with the thickness of the lines. It is the same principle shown in [this famous illusion](_URL_0_) but much simplified. If you look at that one you can see the white color on one side and the black on the other. When you focus on one part of the drawing, your area of view is much smaller and your brain then imposes what it thinks should be in that place instead. It's similar but not quite exactly like the lens of a camera rack focusing. The big difference is that your brain also interpolates what it thinks it should be seeing. ",
"If I stare at an optical illusion long enough, will I get used to it, and see it as a regular, picture which doesn't move?"
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6fyoxo | Are their any instances where a historian has run for public office in the US or elsewhere? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6fyoxo/are_their_any_instances_where_a_historian_has_run/ | {
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"Former speaker Newt Gingrich was an assistant professor of history at West Georgia College before being elected to Congress."
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2f8c1r | why are deer extremely sensitive to even the quietest sounds (rustling leaves), but run out in front of cars like they don't hear them? | Please excuse me or let me know if this has been posted before. I did both a reddit search and a google search and found nothing. If this has already been addressed, let me know and I'll just delete this post.
So, deer are notoriously sensitive to even the slightest sounds, right. But cars are loud. Cars traveling at higher speeds on highways are loud. Still deer run out in front of them despite how much louder cars are than, you know, light footsteps on leaves, for example.
But why? Is their hearing more sensitive to a certain kind of sound than others or something?
**EDIT** I'm not asking about the deer in the headlights thing, or deer's vision, I'm asking about hearing. It has been established repeatedly that deer don't see well. Examine the title of this post and the text above this edit. Hearing. Not sight. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2f8c1r/eli5_why_are_deer_extremely_sensitive_to_even_the/ | {
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"Maybe they hear the car but think it's farther away so they don't care. Like they hear it, 100 feet away and think the car can't possibly travel at 70 mph to hit me in time, so I'll just run across this road.",
"Every creature's ears are sensitive to different frequency ranges. It's possible that deer don't hear the sound of a car because the pitch is outside their hearing range. This is the same reason you won't hear a dog whistle, no matter how loudly it's blown.",
"I think that they just don't know what cars are and don't know how to react to them. \n\nor they are just looking for an adrenaline rush. ",
"I think it's to do with their primitive nature. Rustling of leaves, food steps, to deer, means \"something is coming to eat me!\" while the sound of a engine, car honk means nothing to them, so it's ignored.",
"The deer will run away from cars and such in daylight as typically only the running lamps are on, however at night the deer become hypnotized by the headlights and instead just keep on staring at them instead of running away as would he expected due to their timid nature. ",
"when they're startled and run they don't always make good decisions about where they run. I've seen them run into fences and trees in daylight",
"Deer don't understand roads or vehicles. They eat the vegetation along the road and really aren't all that frightened by road noise. \n\nWhat probably happens is they get spooked by some of the rustling you mentioned and their instincts tell them to run from the predator, but not away from the road they have been grazing next to. \n\nAlso, their eyes are greatly dilated at night, which means when headlights shine on them they can't see SHIT. So if a deer is standing in the road at night and a car comes around the corner with its high beams on, it instinctively freezes \"like a deer in headlights\" while it's eyes try to adjust. \n\nThe best thing to do, is of course, try to avoid slamming into a deer. I don't mean swerving! I'm talking about slowing down at night, paying attention to those yellow animal x-ing signs and watching out for reflecting eyes.",
"I recently watched a documentary about deer. IIRC they don't have good vision but excellent hearing and smell. And when they headlights come on because of their small brains they cant comprehend what is the bright light because it stimulates their brains so much they sort of are in a trance. almost certain it was this one _URL_0_\n something interesting is older deer begin to understand the danger of roads and will be vvery cautious when crossing and even look both ways while younger deer following will just dart across without looking. I always wondered why deer dont learn that roads are dangerous.",
"Deers aren't \"used\" to cars. They run like hell if they hear a human or an other animal. ",
"Cars aren't very loud, especially when they're coming toward you. Go stand on the side of the road, close your eyes, and then open them when you hear a car coming. Even if you're specifically listening for cars, chances are you wont hear the car until it's quite close. Now imagine you're some dumb deer looking for food. The sound of an approaching car probably sounds like a gust of wind to it. What's that bright-ass light over there? I don't know. I can't make out shit, but I see that bright-ass light every morning when the sun comes up... guess it's time for be----BAM.",
"You ever notice how ambulances sound different if they're coming than going? It's called 'the doppler effect' - the car is catching up with it's own sound a bit, and it makes it sound different.\n\nNow, a car that's coming doesn't make a lot more noise than rushing wind until it's pretty close, and the noise builds up slowly. A deer is a tremendously high-strung beast, but it notices sudden noises like a twig snapping a lot more than constant noises like a stream or the wind. \n\nWhen the deer first heard the car, it sounded like the rustling of wind in the distance. It hardly noticed the changes to the ongoing noise until the car passed - it's after the car's passing that the engine's roar is heard.",
"From observation I am pretty sure that many animals, not just deer, feel an instincive urge to run across the path of anything going down a path. For example, when I walk down a sidewalk, some of the geckos hiding in the grass on either side of the path will run in front of me to get to the other side as I'm walking. They realize that I am dangerous to them, but they cross my path anyway. My guess is they are running to seek shelter, thinking I am hunting them or something, and trying to get better cover. For deer it is likely the same way, as deer tend to like to stay hidden. While they are already hiding, however, they will be on high alert trying to hear predators approaching.",
"Deer have instincts to tell them rustling leaves may mean a predator, but they haven't developed instincts for cars. Kind of like how lots of people are afraid of spiders, but aren't afraid of stuff like a bottle of medicine they could overdose on. (A person may be weary of taking too much medicine, but it wouldn't evoke the same primal fear by just looking at it)",
"They have sensitive hearing they cannot control. The loud noises from a highway confuse them and make them run where ever in fright. It's their \"flight mechanism\" taking over and going wild. Deer will usually just sit there and eat grass if it's a deserted highway and you're the only car. But to be sure, begin braking when you see one."
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214eu8 | If two galaxies collided, would there be collisions? | I heard somewhere that if two galaxies, like The Milky Way and Andromeda were to collide, there would be very few collisions between planets, stars, ect... as they initially pass each other. I understand how huge the distance between things is in space, but with all the matter floating around up there, I'm still skeptical. Is this true? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/214eu8/if_two_galaxies_collided_would_there_be_collisions/ | {
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"It's really true. The space between stars is really quite large.",
"If you count molecular hydrogen, yes there are collisions. The clouds of hydrogen will press against each other, eventually increasing in pressure (mass accumulated in one region), and new stars will be born. Otherwise, it is so very unlikely that two objects will interact with each other that one can say that it never happens.",
"To give you a perspective of how much space there is on average between stars.\n\nImagine that the largest by radius star (UY Scuti, with 1708 solar radii) was the size of a 2 meter long human.\n\nThe average distance between humans then would be 4000 kilometers.\n\nA star the size of our sun would be only 0.12 centimeters.\n_________________________________________________\nThing get slightly less \"far away\" if we consider not just the sun but the entire solar system as one object, but the distances are still quite serious.",
"Not any collisions in the sense of physical stars and planets directly hitting each other, no. \n\nHowever, nebulae will collide, compressing gas and causing an intense burst of star formation in both of the colliding galaxies.\n\nSome systems also may be gravitationally affected, i.e. a star passes close to another system and disturbs the orbits of long-period comets, but the distances really are vast enough that actual violent stellar collisions will be extremely, *extremely* rare if they even occur at all. The average galaxy just simply isn't dense enough.",
"I always wondered what happens with the supermassive black hole(SBH) of the galaxy being devoured? \n\nI assume it eventually makes its way to the supermassive black hole(SBH) of the dominate galaxy. \n\nDoes the smaller SBH get absorbed first or last?\n\nIf the SBH of the smaller system makes its way to the dominate SBH it must cause immense damage on its way to the center. \n\nOr, does the smaller SBH never join the dominant system, and simply gets flung into space?\n\nIt would seem that if a universe slows and begins to collapse, that given enough time, all matter and all black holes would meet and matter would lose that battle eventually. "
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49dyw6 | Where can I go to research famine, persecution, and diaspora around the time of German Unification (~1870s). | Wiki gives us one small line that begs to be expanded. Working on getting a copy of the source, "Rhineland radicals" by Sperber.
"The economic, social and cultural dislocation of ordinary people, the economic hardship of an economy in transition, and the pressures of meteorological disasters all contributed to growing problems in Central Europe." | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/49dyw6/where_can_i_go_to_research_famine_persecution_and/ | {
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"Additional question (if permitted by mod overlords, please delete if not): is there a good english language book on this that does not look at this purely in reference to the lead up to the world wars?",
"\"The Long Nineteenth Century\" by Blackburn is a general history of Germany, ending with WW1. You'll find plenty of information to get started in the book, as it is well sourced. I don't recall it being too specific in that area, but would certainly not hurt to start your search. "
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51tzo1 | why are chip bags so loud? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/51tzo1/eli5_why_are_chip_bags_so_loud/ | {
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"Its because of the type of plastic that they use to make the bags. Because chips go stale rather quickly when exposed to oxygen they use a a high density plastic and pack them with gas(not sure what kind nitrogen?) To keep them fresh until you open them. The type of plastic they use is stiff so it makes a krinkley noise when moved. Hope that helps"
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20kpti | Do we have any primary sources which explicitly accuse Edward II of being a homosexual or is this theory based on innuendo and conjecture? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/20kpti/do_we_have_any_primary_sources_which_explicitly/ | {
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"An anonymous chronicler writing during the civil wars of the 1320s, wrote that:\n\n > ...upon looking on him [Piers Gaveston] the son of the king immediately felt such love for him that he entered into a covenant of constancy, and bound himself with him before all other mortals with a bond of indissoluble love, firmly drawn up and fastened with a knot.\n\nThe modern judgement on this by Edward's biographer [J. R. S. Phillips](_URL_0_) is that: \n\n > Such comments have led to the modern assumption that their relationship was definitely sexual. The evidence for this, however, is far from clear. While some of the chroniclers' remarks about Edward II can be interpreted as implying homosexuality or bisexuality, too many of them are either much later in date or the product of hostility, or a combination of the two, and thus not acceptable at face value."
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1ol505 | the difference between standard deviation, standard error and variance. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ol505/eli5_the_difference_between_standard_deviation/ | {
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"Standard deviation and standard error are both functions of the variance, so we can start by trying to understand the variance first.\n\nThe variance is something that, intuitively, measures the \"spread\" of a distribution. It is how far away on average points from your sample will be from the mean of your distribution, where we say \"how far away\" in this case means \"squared distance.\" Now there are a whole host of reasons for using the squared distance for this type of thing, an example being that it is *additive* (i.e., var(X+Y) = var(X)+var(Y) for uncorrelated X and Y). This is something we don't get with standard deviation.\n\nHowever, the variance is not a linear map in that for a constant c, \n\n var(c*X) = c^2 * var(X) \n\nand not \n\n var(c*X) = c*var(X). \n\nWe can get this with the standard deviation, which is the square root of the variance. This scale property can be useful because this statistic will then have the same units as your data, so we can say things like \"Z number of standard deviations away from the mean\" as the units are now consistent.\n\nFinally, the standard error is typically defined as the standard deviation of a given statistic defined from a sample. For example, the standard error of the sample mean is the population standard deviation divided by the square root of the sample size, since the variance of the sample mean is the population variance divided by the sample size. Standard errors are also useful in that they have the same units as elements of your sample, and often statistical tests are based around how many standard errors a point is from a given statistic.",
"Standard deviation is the square root of the variance. It's there so the units make sense. The way it's calculated, you take the average of all the numbers, then for each number, you want to know how far away from the average that number is. Since some will be above and some will be below, and you want to add them, you need them all to be positive. Why not absolute value, you say? Because you want the numbers that are farther away to count more. You're trying to get a good description of the spread of the data. When you get to the end, your variance then will be the square of your original unit of measure. That's good, and it's descriptive, but not meaningful to a lot of people. You wouldn't say, \"I usually drive 50 miles a day, with a variance of 9 square miles.\" You could say \"I usually drive 50 miles a day with a standard deviation of 3 miles\" though, and that would make a lot more sense.\n\nThe thing about variances though, is that you can do math with them that you can't do with standard deviations. You can't add stdevs, but you *can* add variances, for example.\n\nAs to standard error, remember that everything follows a distribution, and you only typically have a sampling of that. Standard error takes that into account. It's got to do with the likelyhood that, based on your sample standard deviation and average, your sample is truly representative.\n\n(I do applied stats for a living)",
"Standard Deviation: on average, how far off you are from the average.\n\nVariance: How far apart your numbers are spread out from the average (square root of Standard Deviation).\n\nStandard Error: because standard deviation is never 100% accurate, you find the standard error to see how accurate your SD is.",
"Variance:\nI you measure the height of 100 men you will end up with 100 different numbers (e.g. between 170 cm and 210 cm). If you measure 100 animals that cross your path by chance you will also end up with 100 different numbers. These numbers will however most likely be spread over a larger range (e.g. from 2 mm (ant) to 30 meters (blue whale)). The difference between the two ranges is a difference in variance.\n\nstandard deviation:\nIs an other measure of variance.\n\nstandard error:\ntake these 100 men from above again and select only one individual. then go and measure this single individual 100 times. Most likely you will not get 100 identical numbers since you make errors in the measurement. The standard error is the number that gives you the precision with with you can measure. ",
"The standard deviation is a number derived from a series of measurements, (of the same thing, or different things, doesn't matter.) If you take 100 men and measure their height you first calculate the mean, and then you take the differences between each measured height and the mean, and square each number. Then you add them all up, divide by the number of measurements, and take the square root of that.\n\nThere's no hand-waving, back of the envelope explanation of what the standard deviation is, except the formula. The number is **defined** by the calculations made in deriving it. I'm sorry if that doesn't help you, but the standard deviation is the standard deviation is the standard deviation :(\n\nHere's a simple example: 100 men, 50 are 68 inches tall, 50 are 72 inches tall. The mean (average) is obviously 70 inches.\n\n\nThe standard deviation is:\n\nSD = ( (( 50 * 2^2 ) + ( 50 * 2^2 ))/100 )^1/2 = (400/100)^1/2 = 2\n\nNow let's say 25 are 68, 25 are 69, 25 are 71, and 25 are 72 inches each. Now you have:\n\nSD = ( (( 25 * 2^2 ) + ( 25 * 1^2 ) + ( 25 * 1^2 ) + ( 25 * 2^2 ))/100 )^1/2 = (250/100)^1/2 = 1.58\n\nAs you can see, when the group (as a whole) moves closer to the mean, the standard deviation gets smaller.\n\n\nNow, the two examples I've given are degenerate: They don't occur in the real world, for the most part. In the real world if you measure the heights of 100 random men, you'll end up with a bell curve centered around the mean. In that case, the standard deviation can be helpful. For a normal distribution around the mean, the standard deviation gives you the **width** of the bell curve. That is to say, ~68% of the results will end up within 1 SD of the mean, and ~95.5% within 2 SD's of the mean.\n\nThe *variance* is nothing but the square of standard deviation.\n\nThe standard *error* is the standard deviation you get when you measure the same thing multiple times. It tells you what the error margins should be for the tool you're using.",
"This is going to be a long answer, so please bear with me.\n\nLet's imagine you want to know the average height of a population. To do so, you take 10 people and measure each of them. Your values, in inches, are:\n\n > 60, 62, 62, 64, 65, 66, 66, 67, 70, 72\n\nYour mean is obviously 65.4\n\nCool. Now let's say you want to know how *different* each of your sample persons is. You would use Measures of Dispersion, which are standard deviation, standard error, and variance.\n\nStandard deviation describes the average difference of the data compared to the mean. It is simply the average amount each of the data points differs from the mean. So 60 is 5.4 inches from the mean. 62 is 3.4 inches from the mean. So on and so forth. You just add all these numbers up and take their average. You know now the average *difference* of each of the data points compared to the mean. \n\nNow you know the average difference, but let's pretend you just want to know how different all the data is from each other. This is the variance. Whatever text you're reading probably tells you how to calculate it, so I won't bore you with those details. Essentially, the variance tells you the \"spread\" of the data. A dart board in which the darts are very far apart has more variance than a board in which everything hit the bull's eye.\n\nFinally, imagine you weren't satisfied with this one sample. You decide to take a second sample. Obviously, you're going to get different people, so your mean might be a little different. This time it might be 67. If you took a bunch of different samples you would get a bunch of different means and you could plot them all on a graph. If you took the standard deviations of THESE values, you would have the standard error of the mean. It's a measure of the average error of your sample means.",
"Step 1 - find a ball and hold it in one hand.\n\nStep 2 - stand up and spread your arms as wide as you can.\n\nStep 3 - Without lowering or raising your arms, bring them together in front of you, now spread them wide. Do this a few times, passing the ball from hand to hand. Go as slow or as fast as you want.\n\nStep 4 - Now we know the full range of where the ball could be at any given time.\n\nStep 5 - repeat step 3, but have a friend point to the ball with his eyes open.\n\nStep 6 - repeat step 5, but have the same friend close his eyes.\n\nNow, in step 6, your friend had to guess where the ball was since he couldn't see it. Standard error is how much your guess can be wrong by and still be roughly correct.\n\nStep 7 - allow your friend to open his eyes three times then guess where the ball ends up. Standard error would take the number of positions the ball can be in and modify it by the 3 'observations' your friend made.\n\nThis helps your friends' single guess by making it a range of possible points. (let's say instead of a 1 ball wide guess your friend now gets a 7 ball wide guess due to standard error).\n\nVariance - let's make this a simple example and measure the distance between your two fists, that's the entire variance of where the ball can be placed.\n\nStandard Deviation - this is a bit trickier as it indicates the most likely area to spot the ball. In our simple example, standard deviation is the area between your chest and ONE of your elbows (right or left, not both). if we concentrate on looking at only the area between your chest and your elbow, we have a higher likelihood of spotting the ball as you pass it back and forth than we do focusing on the space your hand occupies when your arm is outstretched.\n\n"
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21satt | how rockets like the saturn 5, the soyuz, and the space x rocket stay pointed up and straight. eli5. | Ok, so in my mind, something as tall and heavy as a rocket would need a very stable base- wide and broad. Instead, they are straight up and down- like a baseball bat set on it's end.
When they take flight, especially- I don't see any thrusters or control surfaces being manipulated to steer them. I know that orbital path is pretty exacting- how do they end up aimed correctly? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21satt/how_rockets_like_the_saturn_5_the_soyuz_and_the/ | {
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"Before they launch, they're held in place with scaffolding.\n\nAfter launch, the force is controlled and directed such that up is the direction they mostly go in, with very minor adjustments in the nozzles to change direction."
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1loxza | how can houses in detroit be on sale for a dollar? | I know that there are other costs involved in buying a home etc, but if it is only a dollar why not take the risk and rent it out? Wouldn't it be instant profit? Even if the tenants left after a few months?
Edit: Also aren't the materials of the house itself worth way more than a dollar?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1loxza/eli5_how_can_houses_in_detroit_be_on_sale_for_a/ | {
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"Rent it to who? Those houses sometimes don't have basics like running water. Which means you need to invest money into it. So it's really not a dollar. And investing money in those neighborhoods just may not be worth the possible but likely no sale.",
"my parents owned a house in detroit that they owed back taxes on to the amount of $7k or so. they let wayne county foreclose with no objection. the first time it is put up for auction the price is set at that $7. if it doesnt sell it goes back up for auction 6 months later starting at $50. i thought long and hard about buying it since i grew there but its just a bad investment. there's upkeep ,sure, but there's also property taxes, about $3500 a year. and you're living in detroit.\nthere are thousands of houses like this in detroit. its a city built for 2 million with only about 650,000 residents. no demand means no value. \nand as for renting, that house i grew up in? my uncle is living in it, after foreclosure. he pays the utilities and cuts the grass and NO ONE is coming to kick him out. you dont have to rent in detroit. you can just squat. noone cares.\n"
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1xxeb0 | math constants. | I understand constants (let's take the Planck constant for an example because I'm taking an astronomy class) so poorly that I don't even know how to ask proper questions about them. That is how little I comprehend what a constant is, how we came to understand or write them down and why. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xxeb0/eli5_math_constants/ | {
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"We just found them as we investigated things. \nTake Pi; when people were investigating circles & their proportions, someone noticed that every circle's circumference was always about 3 times it's diameter. 'That's interesting' (the words preceding 99% of all major discoveries ever!) and so more investigations led to the discovery that π is actually always exactly 3.14159265.... etc. for every possible circle. \nConstants are discovered when you experiment and increasing one thing ways leads to a predictable increase in something else. A spring, for example: if you Han weights off a spring, the spring stretches more the more weight you add. In fact, when you double the weight, you double the stretch. This means you can say that extension is proportional to load, and so extension = a constant x the load. In this case every spring has a different constant - but sometimes we discover that some constants are the same under all circumstances, and so we have Planck's constant, gravitational field constant etc.",
"Any number that is not variable is a constant. Most of the familiar numbers like -1, 0, 1, 2, 1000, a million, 1/2 or googol are constants.\n\nOccasionally, there are useful numbers that can't be written as quickly or easily as those numbers. For example, the square root of 2 is 1.414... or the ratio of a circle's diameter to its circumference is 3.14159... neither can be written out exactly. So, we use placeholder symbols for them.\n\nIn the case of a physical constant (like Plank's Constant) there's usually a theoretical formula where the constant is a scaling factor. For example, Plank's constant shows up in the theory that the frequency and energy of a photon are linearly related.",
"The nature of constants is that they are immune to changing circumstances."
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15nn84 | why wont my graphics card run certain games? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15nn84/eli5_why_wont_my_graphics_card_run_certain_games/ | {
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"Newer graphics cards come with new features, which the old ones don't support. If a game requests a feature from the card which it doesn't have, it'll likely give up.\n"
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1d8jnp | How strongly does the IQ bell curve correlate with achievement? | The IQ debate is so political that it makes me question everyone's little pet theory, so I find myself utterly incapable of making up my mind about it and I think an answer to this question will help me.
| askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1d8jnp/how_strongly_does_the_iq_bell_curve_correlate/ | {
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"[Here's](_URL_0_) a paper that attempts to relate Piaget IQ tests to standardized test scores for school achievement, and finds little overlap.\n\n[This](_URL_2_) study states > When success measures were regressed against intelligence and personality scales or factors, intelligence did not account for variance beyond that explained by personality.\n\n\n\nHowever, [this one](_URL_1_) seems to indicate that it can be predictive of success, but only in very specific circumstances and that life outcomes (getting a job, getting a career, rate of pay), when controlled for other promotional factors that influence/are influenced by IQ, aren't largely dependent on IQ."
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"http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1127841?uid=3739256&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102109721531",
"http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/merrill-palmer_quarterly/v047/47.1sternberg.html",
"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10846622"
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2sz1e7 | how bad does the situation have to be for a person to seek asylum from another country? and how demonstrable does the threat have to be? (proof) | I just wanted to know that if a person (say an atheist in a muslim country with strict blasphemy and apostasy laws) needs to seek asylum in another country how would they demonstrate that their life is under threat? Would they be relocated temporarily or permanently? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2sz1e7/eli5how_bad_does_the_situation_have_to_be_for_a/ | {
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"Hop the border, turn yourself in, and apply for asylum. You'll be granted temporary stay during the trial. If you can demonstrate the need of jumping the border to save your life, you will be granted permenant residency.",
"It depends on the country you are trying to seek asylum in. I'll use Canada as an example because it's where I am.\n\nHere, when you seek asylum, you are filing for \"refugee status\", what that means is that you are in danger in your own country because of the current situation and you need a safe haven.\n\nRefugee Status requires a few things\n\n* Legitimate fear of persecution. You have to have some sort of evidence that you are in danger because of your religion/race/ethnicity/etc. This doesn't include stuff like not allowing you to wear a hijab and is reserved for stuff like \"They are trying to exterminate my *ethnic group*\"\n* You aren't a convention refugee of another country\n* You didn't try to enter Canada from the USA\n* You haven't been denied entry to Canada before on the basis of security hazards and/or denied refugee status\n\nPersecution is rather straightforward. You have to be part of a race/religion/ethnicity/political group/etc that faces torture/execution/cruel and unusual punishment because of the group you are in.\n\nA Convention Refugee is someone who already has a place to return to. For instance, let's say that you are gay, and were born in South Africa and have citizenship and can return there. But you live in Uganda, which has laws against homosexuality that might result in cruel/unusual punishment and a social stigma so bad that you might face death because of your sexuality. You wouldn't be able to go to Canada as a refugee, because you already can return home to South Africa.\n\nRefugee Status is reserved for people who have no where else to go.",
"I did some asylum work for a couple summers in law school. What /u/ACrusaderA said covers most of it, but I can give a little more detail from the a US perspective (except that I think the poster uses asylee and refugee interchangably. An asylee is basically a refugee that is already in the country where they want to stay. A refugee, on the other hand, gets status as a refugee *before* they come to the country where they are seeking protection. Maybe the distinction doesn't matter in Canada, but if you're in the US you can't apply for refugee status since you're already in the country).\n\nTo get asylum in the US you have to show that you have a well-founded fear of persecution if you are returned to your home country. If you can show that you have been persecuted in the past, then it is assumed your fear of persecution is well-founded and the government has to show that it's no longer well-founded to keep you from getting asylum. If you haven't been persecuted in the past the burden is on the applicant to prove their fear of persecution is well-founded.\n\nThere are some other caveats as well. If the persecuting group is not the government, you have to show that the government is unable or unwilling to control that group. So if you're a Jew and get beat up by skinheads in France, you were technically persecuted by a nongovernmental group, but couldn't get asylum because the French government can control skinheads. However, if the NGO is localized, the government can still deny you asylum if you can move within your country to a safer place. For example, there are places in Mexico where it is dangerous to be transgender. The government doesn't persecute you, but it can't control gangs who do. However, you may be able to move to Mexico City and be just fine. In that case, you wouldn't get asylum since you can relocate to safety within your own country. Of course if the government is doing the persecuting, there's no relocating.\n\nAs for proof, usually it's testimonial. We don't expect asylum seekers to be able to bring much with them. A government officer hears their story and decides if the person is credible or not. The credibility determination is huge and probably the biggest hurdle. It's also the most subjective, which is problematic, especially when dealing with other cultures (for example, avoiding eye contact is seen as shift in the US, but it might be a sign of respect in other countries). There is some objectivity to it, though. If the asylum seeker has documents, they can show those to the court. The court also considers human rights reports on the country in question, especially US State Department reports, and compares those to the story of the asylum seeker to see if they're consistent. Nonetheless, the rates at which asylum is granted vary greatly by judge, even when those judges are in the same building hearing the same cases (there are stats on this I can dig up if you're interested).\n\nAlso an interesting side note, Mexico, the US, and Canada have a treaty whereby if you seek asylum in one of those three countries, you can't seek it the other two (sometimes if you are rejected from one country, you can seek asylum from another country).\n\nThere's also something called the Convention Against Torture, which prevents the US from returning any person to a country where they will likely be tortured. Torture is a higher bar to show than persecution, but you don't have to deal with a lot of other stuff (like showing the persecution was based on race, religion, sex, etc.). "
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eeum9m | why does the solar system get drawn like a glat plain? are all the planets on the same vertical level? if they are, what happens if we go up? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eeum9m/eli5_why_does_the_solar_system_get_drawn_like_a/ | {
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" > Are all the planets on the same vertical level?\n\nYes\n\n > what happens if we go up?\n\nNothing, you just go up. What do you expect? Hit a ceiling?",
"_URL_0_\n\nThe orbits aren't all perfectly aligned. Ceres has the most noticeable tilt, the others are less dramatic.",
"The solar system started as a big cloud, with all the little bits spinning around the center in different directions. Over may millions of years a big cloud of randomly spinning junk will tend to flatten out into a disk as all the pieces smack into each other until they're all going in pretty much the same direction.\n\nSo now our solar system is largely \"flat\". Going \"up\" or \"down\" is moving out of the plane of the ecliptic. It's certainly doable, but it requires a whole lot of thrust, and there just isn't very much of interest (that we know of) outside the plane so we don't send many probes out there.",
"The solar system does rotate on a relatively flat plane. It isn’t uniform, but close enough. Our planets formed from an accretion disk that collected around our Sun, the material in this disk was remnants of a larger star that went nova.. you would need to look at Astrophysics to understand why matter settled into a disk. If you were to go up relative to the disk, you’d find stuff but just not as common, whilst in our system.",
"The planets are on the same flat plane, a few degrees difference. This is because the dust hat formed the planets was a disc.\n\nIf by up you mean in the z axis, then we would see the solar system like all the diagrams show, except good luck trying to see the planets, they're so tiny it's almost impossible to find them without knowing where to look.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nVoyager 1 did exactly this, went \"up\" and took a snapshot, known famously as the family portrait."
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3y2uh1 | biologically we have evolved to have carbohydrates as our main source of energy. why are they such a taboo in the health and dieting scene? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3y2uh1/eli5_biologically_we_have_evolved_to_have/ | {
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"Carbohydrates are a very good source of energy which means that you don't have to eat much of them to get your daily calorie needs. Since your stomach is basically a flexible bag which you can stuff with food whilst it spends a few hours digesting, if you fill the bag with carbohydrates you will consume far more calories than you will generally be able to burn.",
"We actually work on sugar and we can break down carbohydrates to obtain that sugar. We store the excess in fat that we can use later. \n\nFor the vast majority of the history of life, obtaining food was a major activity that we had to do in order to get enough energy to live and it took energy to do that. For hundreds of millions of years, life walked that fine edge between getting enough energy to live while using less energy to get that food. One of the big survival factors was being able to take advantage of abundances of food by storing it so we could get through times where we couldn't get any (i.e. fat).\n\nWith civilization and cooperation, we've made is far less energy intensive to obtain food but it's still too new of a concept for evolution to have possibly caught up. So we have to consciously fight the instinct to consume the abundance of food that lots of people have access to because the mechanisms that used to help us survive (storing excess food as fat) eventually reaches a point where our bodies never evolved to handle the constant higher levels of fat for extended periods.\n\nFocusing on avoiding obvious carbohydrates is a fairly straightforward way for us to self-regulate.\n",
"Another major issue with carbs in \"modern\" diets (diets as in general nutrition habits, not some controlled diet like Atkins or paleo) is that it's much easier to get simple carbs, processed, high-glycemic index, etc than low-GI whole grain sources. When most people eat to the general nutrition macronutrient recommendations of ~60% of calories from carbs they end up eating tons of those simple carbs each day, which sends their insulin and blood sugar on a roller coaster. They just keep bouncing between high-insulin states, which inhibits fat burning, promotes fat storage, and over time can lead to insulin resistance (if levels stay high for months and months), and blood-sugar valleys which trigger hunger and more eating. \n\nInsulin on its own isn't bad, but the constant rise and fall of insulin and blood sugar caused by high-GI carbs can lead to a number of negative health outcomes. If we all got our 60% carbs from whole grains, fruits, and veggies then it wouldn't be that big of deal. Unfortunately, for the vast majority of people that's not the case, so lower carb levels (and proper calorie intake) tends to produce better health results in most people. IMO, most people would be better off with 30-40% of all three macros, and obviously choosing better sources. \n\nTL/DR: too many people eat too many simple carbs, causing an insulin roller coaster, leading to negative health outcomes. Either eat fewer carbs or pick better sources and you'll be okay. Oh and exercise. ",
"Your premise is wrong. We have evolved to utilize whatever calories we can, no matter the source. Carbs are definitely not required. Fat and protein are required. (Please note: the following explanation may be oversimplified.)\n\nIf I lock you in a room and feed you carbs and fat with no protein, you'll get sick and eventually die of malnutrition. Your body starts breaking down proteins to get at amino acids it needs somewhere else. Eventually it runs out of non-essential things to break down.\n\nIf I feed you only protein and carbs, you'll get sick and die of malnutrition. This is called \"[rabbit starvation](_URL_0_)\".\n\nIf I take away your carbs and give you only protein and fat, you'll probably get skinny, but you will maintain normal health. Your body (in the liver mostly) will begin producing ketones in order to substitute for the carbs, as well as creating sugars from fat.\n\nPart of the reason that carbs are processed before fats and proteins is that blood sugar levels need to remain constant. If it gets too high, your body produces insulin to store it. If your body has no insulin, or is not responding to insulin, your blood sugar levels will continue to rise. A chronic state of high blood sugar causes all kinds of problems. Any \"excess\" carbs tend to get stored as fat.\n\nLow blood sugar is bad too, but your liver can compensate for that, at least to a certain extent, and a small amount of juice can bring it back up very quickly to normal levels.\n\nTo actually answer your question: Carbs are not required for health*, and offer an easy way to restrict calories without restricting nutrients significantly while maintaining overall health. A lack of carbs typically leads to easily burning fat, a major goal of dieters these days.\n\n*Edit: There are some exceptions to this, as people are different.",
"Carbs are very simple, most of the time, which is the way they are found in a lot of foods we eat today. Like sugar, it is a simple carbohydrate, our body doesn't need to do much work at all to convert that to energy. Usually into the form of glycogen that's stored for a short time in our liver. Our liver holds about 1400 calories of glycogen, any extras are converted to fat and stored away. \n\nProtein has the same calories per gram as carbs, but it is much harder for our body to use as energy. Fat has over twice the calories per gram of protein and carbs, but is also harder for our body to use as energy. Carbs are the easiest and if we are getting them regularly, that's what our body is going to use for energy. \n\nSo historically we were hunter gatherers, we didn't have refrigerators and freezers so we had an ala carte menu of whatever we could find/kill that day. Now some meat would have lasted a few days, and some foraged items maybe a few days longer. So we ate with the seasons. During the spring and summer we ate fruits and berries and supple plants, wild vegetables, etc... We also would have hunted some, but the dense summer vegetation would have made that more difficult. And there was an abundance of food that we could just pick up from the ground and eat. Though these fruits and vegetables would not have resembled what we know today and would have been smaller and less sweet generally, still they would have provided carbs. We would have gorged on this stuff all summer long. Our bodies would have used the carbs as energy and then stored the rest as fat. Just like wildlife does today. \n\nAs summer drew to a close and fall comes the fruits and veggies and plant life dies off. This makes it easier to hunt and harder to forage. But there would be nuts in abundance. Nuts are high in fat. Even game in the fall has a much higher fat content as they too have been fattening up on summer crops. So our bodies have to use this fat as energy, to do that the fat needs to be converted into ketones. Our body has made a dietary shift to run on fat for energy instead of carbs. At this time of year we should have an excess of fat as well and all of the available foods would be high fat. As winter comes it's cold, animals are hard to hunt, the days are so short it doesn't allow as much time to hunt, etc... Without food storage you would have had to rely on what you could get that day, and during many days of the winter, that meant nothing. \n\nBut you didn't die, well as long as you had enough fat reserves. While you are not getting any food, your body is powering itself off of your body fat by turning it into ketones. If it's a really tough winter, you'd burn up all of your fat reserves and have a nice loin cloth body come spring. \n\nModern civilization has taken us from this transitional diet and allowed us to eat fresh fruit every day. It allows us to have carbs a plenty year round. And because the carbs are easy for our body to use for energy, that's what it wants. But carbs are also less filling than protein and fat. They have a low satiety. Especially carb heavy foods that are low fat. Fat, specifically a few amino acids, make us feel full and satiated. We can easily overeat low fat high carb foods, especially processed foods or ones that are specifically high in sugar or other simple carbs. These excesses are stored as fat. \n\nHumans ate a fairly high fat diet until just a few decades ago. Then someone decided that foods high in cholesterol and saturated fat would give you a heart attack. So the food industry changed and followed suit and foods became low fat, high carb. And humans got fat, fat, fat. Sodas by the gallon, sweets as far as the eye can see, desserts galore, etc... Year round. Our bodies see this as a surplus year, every year. \n\nDiets like keto, or Paleo, essentially put our bodies back onto a hunter gatherer diet. Limiting carb intakes to vegetables and no simple sugars at all. As a result the diet tends to be higher fat, KETO especially. 80% of the calories eaten on a keto diet come from fat. So that gets out body running on ketones instead of carbohydrates. And let me tell you, our body runs much better on ketones. It is something you can definitely tell when it kicks in. Your brain works better, you have limitless energy and stamina, you feel better. You completely understand how people back in the day worked 16 hour shifts every day in a factory. You don't get hungry as often, because your body is already running on fat so instead of it telling you to eat again, it says \"nah, I'm good, I'll just use some fat from your ass\". As the diet goes, you eat your calories in a deficit and make your body burn its own fat for energy. \n\nPeople are now starting to realize that a high fat diet does no harm to your body and all along the diabetes, heart disease, and obesity epidemic is cause by carbs, the same carbs they told us to eat 60% of our diet every day. ",
"They are cheap and easy to produce therefore hard to make big profets on so no one pays to marked them as healthy"
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6xr9o2 | how to differentiate nuclear blasts from earthquakes | DPRK just had another suspected nuclear test, which leaves me wondering: how do earthquake detection agencies decide it's 'probably a bomb going off'? What is the difference in terms of detection? Thanks.
Sorry for format issues, it is sent from my mobile. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6xr9o2/eli5_how_to_differentiate_nuclear_blasts_from/ | {
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"Earthquakes are sinusoidal and logarythmic.. bombs make 1 wave and then small echoes are seen.",
"With different listening points they can place the epicenter in 3D. Earthquakes happen very deep in the earths crust. Bombs are detonated near the surface "
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eyx3o1 | how were prescription glasses made accurately before the invention of modern technology? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eyx3o1/eli5_how_were_prescription_glasses_made/ | {
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"What modern technology do you envision? Spherical lenses were entirely within the abilities of technology 500 years ago. Prior to that we didn't really bother with glasses.\n\nAlso prescriptions sure didn't exist. Such glasses were fairly limited to the wealthy.",
"We've been able to make relatively clear optical grade glass for a few hundred years (1400s I think). And the big/shrink factor of various curvatures has been well known and proven mathmatically for hundreds of years if not longer - the ancient greeks were describing the math around refraction of liquid in spheres. \nSo if you know the math of refraction and calculate some some sample rays of light you can easily make a test pattern that appears distorted without a correctly ground lens but appears undistorted with a correct lens. From there its a simple matter of grinding and polishing until the test pattern looks correct. \n\nAnd they didn't make lenses to order. Spectacle makers would make a bunch of lenses of perscription 10, 10.5, 11, 11.5 and so on. If your actual perscription fell in between one of these standard focal powers the optician would round up or down to the nearest. Thats essentially what your Optometrist is doing with that funky facemask thing called a photoroptor when he asks you \"Which is better, A...? or B? Here's B... and here's A\" - its a systemmatic way of rough and then fine stepping through differnt powered lenses until close enough you can't distinguish between them. In the olden days theyd' literally have a box of little lenses and they'd hold them up in front of your eyes and ask you to watch the test chart."
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23eg35 | What makes Great Man theory rock/suck? (i.e. What are the major current historical interpretive practices?) | Okay, that Great Man title is more of a hook to get people in the door. ;) My actual question is something along these lines:
Most everyone who at least dabbles in history has heard of the Great Man theory, almost in the same breath as "...but very few people take that seriously anymore."
So what *are* people taking seriously? And I don't just mean in the sense of "What makes history go?" that the Great Man theory set out to answer. More specifically, I'm wondering what contemporary theoretical frameworks are practicing historians using to contextualize and frame their own research and thinking.
As a related side question that probably will get tackled along the way: what sort of epistemic theories underpin different "camps" in current historical practice? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/23eg35/what_makes_great_man_theory_rocksuck_ie_what_are/ | {
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"So basically, history in the last 50 years has moved from the \"Great Man History\", or more specifically the standard politico-military histories that were oh so popular during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, towards cultural/social history. \n\nThe difference between cultural and social history is pretty goddamn slim, but basically they both study the history of people. An intermediate step was called Marxist history, or the study of the \"proletariat\", and that got cleaned up to (it got a haircut, put on a suit, and threw out its Che Guevara t-shirt. Fuckin' sellout.) \"bottom up\" history. Basically, all four really tried to figure out what everybody else was doing when the \"Great Men\" went out a'conquer-in. \n\nIn the case of Cultural/Social history, they really try to understand trends, experiences, and groups. Social historians look mainly for those trends and macro-level conclusions, which can be extrapolated down to fit smaller groups (usually). OTOH, cultural history focuses on \"microhistories\", or really small tales, vignettes, and stories of people, places, traditions, rituals, or other really unique things. These stories are then wrapped up into a larger connection to society in that place, at that time.\n\nActually, I would kinda say that Cultural history has really \"taken over\" history, and its really now the dominant, hegemonic, methodology for most historians. Or it is at my school, its hard to tell what the outside world is like sometimes. Schools are like echo-chambers in some ways. \n\nA great person to read, to try and see this method in practice is Natalie Zemon Davis. She has a collection of Essays (*Society and Culture in Early Modern France*), which is 8 essays that detail specific groups, rituals, etc. of early modern French life, and then connect them to great French Culture, and also modern society. An example: She has one essay about Journeyman printers in Lyons. These printers formed a group, the Griffarions (I *think* I spelled that right), which was sort of a trade union. This \"union\" then went around the town pissing off all the Protestants, killing scabs, and raising hell. The protestants kicked them out following their rise to power in Lyons. That essay really shows what Cultural History is: I take a small topic, explore it in detail, then connect it to something larger and more meaningful. \n\nThe major problem I have with cultural history, and especially its stats in the discipline now (again, where Im at in it) is its *too* powerful. Before, there was no balance between the \"great men\" and the little guys. Now theres no balance the other way, and nobody wants to talk \"traditional\" European history. Thats great if you really love, say, sexual history, and writing about the sexual mores of Victorian women really gets your motor running. In this methodology, youll do well. Me, I like War. And Tanks. And Strategy. Im a \"lines on the map\" kind of guy. I really want to talk about Bismarck, and the Molktes, and Marshall. But thats not the history thats popular right now, so sometimes I feel left out of the whole \"micro-cultural-history\" party. So thats my big criticism with the current direction of things. That and the fucking post-modernist school. Seriously. Fuck those guys. \n\nAlso, I notice your flair is Japanese history. Im not up on my Asian historiography, but Im pretty sure that native Asian historians are likely practicing their own specific kinds of historiography. There is enough trouble trying to apply what Ive just said to other Anglophone countries like England, let alone the rest of Europe, or *Asia*. \n\n > what sort of epistemic theories underpin different \"camps\" in current historical practice?\n\nI would answer this, if I knew what it meant. ",
"In some ways the Great Man theory was a metanarrative, and I think metanarratives are in general less emphasized these days. The Great Man theory suggests that well... Great (or more perhaps \"important\") Men are the driving force in history. You acknowledge this in your question, but I think the question of \"what makes history go\" as you say has fallen a bit out of fashion. Certainly there are still people who are trying to answer that question, but many historians have eschewed it in favor of using different frameworks to explain different things.\n\nAs an example the Marxists metanarrative, which is quite far from the Great Man theory in that it posits that class conflict is the driving force behind history, has also pretty much gone out of fashion. But that does not mean that Marxist analysis has gone entirely out of fashion. Instead, it means that historians tend to use his insights about class and historical materialism in a more focused way. To poke and prod some bit of history to see what insights come, rather than try to place them into a grand narrative. \n\nI can not really speak for everyone, so I will just speak for myself. To me historical methods and theories are part of a sort of \"toolbox\" from which I can take out a particular thing when it is the right tool for the job. I will say that this - as a rule - is a bit of a post-modern position. I don't really think of myself as primarily a post-modernist. However, I do think that is probably has some post-structuralist leanings as you'll notice when you read the rest. So be it.\n\nFor example, I think discourse analysis can be incredibly powerful and useful as an analytical tool. But at the same time I don't need to buy into the idea that \"all the world's a text.\" Just as seeing the usefulness of post-modern theory in general to understand the way people understood (or understand) the world, how their world view and beliefs or \"knowledge\" influences their life and decision making does not mean I need to reject the notion of objective reality.\n\nGender theory has become very important for analysis as well. Joan Scott's article from 1986 sort of launched that. Even though a lot of work has been done since then, it still serves as a great introduction to the concept. It's available here: _URL_0_\n\nWilliam Sewell has made a somewhat similar point in his 2005 book *Logics of History* in which he discussions social and cultural history both at length. He thinks that both social and cultural history have offered important breakthroughs but that dedicating yourself to only one or the other can be a bit too limiting. \n\nI just remembered I answered a similar question to this a while back and dug up my answer. It is similar, but I included a list of relevant works by category in that one. If you want to see that, you can read it here: _URL_1_"
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7ys5qf | is there any way jerking off can result in infertility at some point? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ys5qf/eli5_is_there_any_way_jerking_off_can_result_in/ | {
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"Infertility, no, not at all.\n\nBut it can result in a mild case of impotence, if you get used to a different kind of stimulation than actual sex provides."
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27puxs | why are there chechens fighting in the pro-russian side in eastern ukraine, when they originally were fighting against the russians in the chechen wars? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27puxs/eli5_why_are_there_chechens_fighting_in_the/ | {
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"They do what they are paid for by Russian (and Chechen) government.\n\nFor now Chechnya is governed by Russian puppet who gets loads of money and will do anything Putin asks him to do.\n\nWhy Chechens and not Russian from other regions? I guess they are cheaper and have better skills for purpose."
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2gu28k | why do i see rusty looking spots on the sidewalk and road? | I remember always seeing them its like someone set a penny on the ground and it started to melt so they kicked it or something. Why are there these spots? Is it just rust? If there is that much metal in cement to cause rust why wouldn't they find some sort of way to get the metal out and use for scrap? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gu28k/eli5why_do_i_see_rusty_looking_spots_on_the/ | {
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"The reinforcing rebar or steel mesh encapsulated in the concrete is rusting.",
"It can be from some fertilizers or weed killers."
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15zlwt | What are the negative effects of a low carb/high fat diet? | I'm from Sweden and the LCHF-diet is raging here. I have studied cell metabolism and I understand that erytrocytes and brain cells need glucose specifically for their metabolism. Does a low carb/high fat diet mean that gluconeogenesis must be performed to feed these cells or is their generally *enough* glucose in a LCHF-diet to suffice for these cell's needs? If gluconeogenesis is demanded, does this put extra stress on cells? Also, is there a risk of ketoacidosis? Is it a good diet for diabetics seeing as they can't properly metabolize glucose even if they eat a sufficient amount?
There is a raging debate in Sweden on the LCHF-diet, especially when parents put their kids on it. A professor at my university is strongly against the diet but she has never really fully explained her reasons in a satisfactory way. It does sound awfully stupid to starve yourself of carbohydrates but what are the actual negative effects? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/15zlwt/what_are_the_negative_effects_of_a_low_carbhigh/ | {
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"Well.\n\nWhat happens during a LCHF-diet is that you force your body to burn fat, and only fat. What happens when you metabolize fat is that [ketone bodies](_URL_0_) as produced, leading to a state of ketosis. Ketone bodies *can* be used as an energy source by the brain and other cells, as in the case during starvation as well as LCHF-diets.\n\nThere is evidence on both sides of the spectrum. My own personal opinion is: Eat balanced, eat right. Cutting out one part of your diet is unnecessary unless you have a pathological condition.",
"You are absolutely right that your brain and muscles will get glucose from glycogen stores for as long as they are available. Eventually they will run out though.\n\nGlycolosis is a VERY important process that your muscles undergo when there is a high demand for strength for short periods of time (lifting heavy weights, sprinting, etc). Fat oxidation is great and very good for stamina and your heart (hearts use between 70-90% purely fat for fuel) but glucose nets more ATP per gram of oxygen when compared to fats because of the two free anaerobic ATP you get from glycolosis.\n\n**Your body has a natural balance between fat and glucose oxidation. Don't fuck with it.**"
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70px4n | from a business standpoint, what are the benefits and disadvantages of paying employees weekly, biweekly, twice a month, and monthly? | I am curious as to why certain business adopt different policies as to when people get paid and whether or not that benefits them at all doing it in a certain way. I've only ever gotten paid biweekly which is every 14 days but when i started getting paid twice a month on the 15th and last day of each month, it was a shock to me as I expected it every other Friday. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/70px4n/eli5_from_a_business_standpoint_what_are_the/ | {
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"A weekly or every-other week basis can simplify operations: everyone knows that pay periods close one day, and checks are written on another day of the week, regardless of the calendar date. \n\nA monthly or bi-monthly basis can screw with that, as pay periods and payroll processing may not concurrent with the same day of the week every time, but helps employees budget revolving expenses, which are typically also monthly.",
" From a business standpoint, every pay period carries a certain set work-load and the fewer they are, the less the total yearly cost to the business.\n\n Employees want to be paid yesterday.\n\n The situations you mention represent the best balance for the firms/employees involved.",
"From strictly a financial standpoint, business wants to pay you as infrequently as possible. It cuts down on processing overhead and lets them hold on to their money a little longer. The drawback is people are pretty unhappy to be paid less than bi-monthly, so it can hurt morale and the ability to hire and retain personnel.\n\nWeekly can have advantages when you have a lot of short-term, low pay people with highly variable hours, like a restaurant or a temp agency. Paying them as they work reduces the chance for errors and disagreements, and also can be a plus for people who live paycheck to paycheck.\n\nThe primary choice is between biweekly and twice monthly. Biweekly is nice, becasue you usually have the same number of hours on each paycheck. Twice monthly is nice, becasue you don't have to worry about paychecks spanning months or even years.\n\n\n\n",
"I've noticed that places that have a lot of hourly workers tend to pay biweekly, vs. places that only have salaried workers tend to pay semimonthly. This is just how I think of it, but it seems as if the salary places can simply schedule the same fixed payments twice a month, but you wouldn't want people filling out timesheets of variable days, so the 2 week-long cycles makes more sense in that context."
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1urayr | if the universe is expanding so rapidly, why do we see no visible change locally? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1urayr/eli5if_the_universe_is_expanding_so_rapidly_why/ | {
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"Because the universe is so huge and we're so small.",
"Because on the local scale gravity effectively prevents the effect of the metric expansion of space on objects. Think of it like having having two treadmills facing back to back so that when they are turned on they move in opposite directions. If you place one book on one of the treadmills and one on the other, then both books will move away from each other, even though they aren't moving independent of the treadmill (that is, the expansion of space causes distant objects to have more space between them even if they aren't \"moving\"). Now what happens if you place a chair such that two legs are on one of the treadmill and the other two are on the other treadmill. The treadmill will still run (metric expansion of space is still occurring) but the forces that hold the chair together (the force of gravity that holds our galaxy together) causes it not to break apart. Everything within the local supercluster of galaxies of bound gravitationally so that we don't see the effects of the expansion of space, even though that expansion is still occurring."
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2u0osd | Why are gases more soluble in cold liquid, but solids are more soluble in warm liquid? | Ex: Carbonated drinks stay fizzy when refrigerated, salt dissolves in water better when the water is hot. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2u0osd/why_are_gases_more_soluble_in_cold_liquid_but/ | {
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"There are 2 different things going on here. First gasses dissolved in a liquid. The ability of a normally gaseous substance to remain in a liquid is dependent on the kinetic energy. Remember that the equilibrium STRONGLY favors gasses staying gasses. At high temperatures, there is so much kinetic energy that gasses get the boot fairly quickly. \n\nIn solids dissolved in a liquid, it is about equilibrium... and it can go either way. Breaking solute-solute bonds releases energy. Forming solute-solvent bonds requires energy. Solute-Solute + solvent + heat1 < --- > solute-solvent + solute + heat 2. If heat2 > heat1, a high temperature will push the equilibrium back toward solute-solute (less soluble in solvent). That's rarely the case. \n\nNow make sure you don't get total solubility confused with dissolution RATE. The rate at which something dissolves is dependent on surface area of the solute and kinetic energy of the system. Think about cleaning a stain off of your counter. Which removes the stain faster: gentle scrubbing (low kinetic energy) or vigorous scrubbing (high kinetic energy). \n\nEdit: I just saw the link buried below. One of the plots shows the solubility of O2 and CO2 in water. CO2 is much higher than O2 (much higher than can be described by simple mass difference). One of the driving forces here is that CO2 has a permanent dipole (it is slightly charge - on the Os and + on the central C). Water and CO2 both being polar means that CO2 is being held in solution by the partial charges on the H2O. O2, on the other hand is a homonuclear diatom... which means any slight charge difference between the 2 Os of a molecule of O2 is very weak and transient... and this is that dreaded London dispersion force that my gen chem students always struggled to understand. That is caused by a slight imbalance between electrons and it quickly rights itself via electrostatic action.",
"Great question. Gas molecules tend to fly around and bump into each other. If you add heat to a gas, which is in a ballon, the volume of the balloon increases because gases expand when you heat them. As you add the heat, the gas molecules move faster and collide with more force. Solids, on the other hand, are in relatively fixed position.\n\nSay you have a pot of boiling water with the lid on, water molecules are constantly being shot out of the liquid and being shot back into it. The amount the leaves and enters depends on pressure, temperature, and volume of the container. The more heat inside the water, the faster the water molecules will shoot out.\n\nA hot gas in a liquid will have a lot of energy and be able to escape the liquid, but a colder gas will have less energy to escape and be more likely to remain in the liquid making it more soluble. \n\n\nThe atoms in solids are in fixed positions and bound together by either ionic or covalent bonding. Let's assume the liquid in this case is water and the dissolvable substance is salt, which has ionic bonds. When you had heat to water the molecules will move faster and with more energy. Water molecules with more kinetic energy will slam into salt particles with more energy which allows it to break apart the salt particles with more ease. Simply imagine throwing a baseball really fast, then really slow, at a LEGO structure. The faster you throw the baseball, the farther the LEGOs will fly. ",
"The key here is that temperature is directly related to the average kinetic energy of the molecules in a system. \nConsider a nitrogen molecule in water. The nitrogen molecule is constantly moving around in the water, and as it passes water molecules, a dipole is induced and the two molecules attract. Now, at a low temperature, the molecule is overcome by the attractive forces and does not have the kinetic energy to escape the liquid. As the water is heated, the gas molecule gains energy. At some point this kinetic energy is greater than the attractive potential energy, and the molecule can escape the surface. If you continued to heat the solution, the water would eventually boil because the kinetic energy has overcome the potential energy of the hydrogen bonds in a similar fashion. \nThe solid situation is almost the exact opposite. Consider a sugar molecule in water. At cool temperatures, the sugar remains in its crystalline state. Each sugar molecule bonds uniformly with its neighbors to minimize energy, making it stable. Now as you heat the water, the sugar heats too(increasing in energy). This energy will eventually become equal to the energy of the bonds between sugar molecules and individual molecules will break away, disolving. Solvation and equilibria also play an important role here but I hope this is a decent \"short answer.\"",
"It's most easily explained as an equilibrium question. You are attempting to equalize the energy state of both solute and solvent when you dissolve something. A gas must be cooled (energy state lowered) to find equilibrium with a liquid, and a solid must be heated (energy state increased). \nGas > Liquid > Solid, in terms of energy state.",
"Solids are generally more soluble in warmer liquids as explained by the other posters, but sometimes the opposite is true too. Calcium carbonate, which is the mineral calcite, is more soluble in cold water than warm water.",
"The way I see it: a solution can come best out of two liquids,\n\nFor a solid to come close to becoming liquid you need to warm it\n\nFor a gas to come closer to liquid you need to cool it\n\nSo to me it makes perfect sense",
"I'm not seeing anything like correct answers but the solution to this eludes me at the moment. \n\nGas dissolves in cold liquids primarily because that provides more state spaces. Gibb's free energy is minimized and entropy delta are maximized by the gas dissolving. It doesn't dissolve in hot liquids primarily because other state spaces are available and are taken first. ",
"When I first learned this, I remember finding it confusing too. But it makes sense when you learn that the math behind a solute isn't too different from the math behind the liquid phase. For a single molecule going from solid to liquid, you lose some enthalpy but gain some entropy. At higher temperatures this means you favor the liquid. For a single molecule going from solid to a solute, it also loses enthalpy but gains entropy. So again higher temperatures means you go into solution more easily. \n\nNow lets look at moving from gas to liquid. Here you gain enthalpy but lose entropy, so cold temperatures favor the liquid. And a molecule going from gas to solute works in roughly the same way. This means colder temperatures make it easier for gases to enter a liquid.\n\ntldr: CO2 has to do something like evaporation to leave the drink, which happens faster as it gets hotter. Salt hast to do something like melting to dissolve, which happens faster at higher temperatures.\n ",
"To really understand this you need to understand the general differences between physical states, what makes substances assume those states, and what it really means to dissolve something:\n\nSo the first thing we need is to get a picture of the typical state of a molecule in different states of matter. On a molecular scale you can think of a gas as a bunch of molecules flying all over the place, bumping into everything. This is why gasses fill their volume, and why they flow - because the molecules are shooting in every direction ridiculously fast, going *everywhere*. Liquids are like gasses in that the molecules are still moving around a lot, but they're not quite as crazy - they're not so much shooting past each other as sliding past each other, because they stick together. This is why a liquid flows, but doesn't necessarily fill the volume of its container. In solids the molecules don't appreciably move at all - they're more or less locked in place. This is why solids don't flow, and don't fill the volume of their container.\n\nSo why do substances occur in a given state? It has to do with how well the molecules of that substance interact with each other. These interactions are attractive, and serve to bind the molecules together. If they're extremely weak you get molecules that are barely held together at all and fly willy-nilly all over the place - a gas. If they're strong they make the molecules stick together, but still allow them to slide around - you have a liquid. If they're *really* strong they make the molecules stick together so strongly that they can't move around - that's a solid. These attractive forces compete against the natural thermal motion of molecules, which is why things tend to melt and eventually boil as you heat them - the forces are only so strong and can only constrain movement so much before the increased thermal motion 'wins'.\n\nSo now let's look at what it means to be dissolved:\n\nIf you have a solid sitting in a liquid, that means you have something that has relatively strong intramolecular forces sitting in something that has relatively weak intramolecular forces. It will often turn out that the liquid's interaction with the solid is more favorable than the liquid's interaction with itself, but it also often turns out that the liquid's interaction with the solid is *less* favorable than the solid's interaction with the solid. How soluble the solid is then, depends on the relative strengths of the interactions. You can think of it as the solids 'wanting' to be a part of the solid, but occasionally getting pulled away by the solvating liquid. Increasing the temperature makes the liquid molecules move faster, and all the extra moving and jostling around gives them more opportunities to occasionally peel a bit of solid off of the bulk mass. This shifts the equilibrium more towards a dissolved mixture.\n\nFor a gas dissolved in a liquid, the situation isn't quite the same. Although solvated gasses are typically slightly energetically stabilized by their interactions with the liquid solvent, there is a preference towards more chaotic arrangements. If a dissolved gas molecule can escape from its solution - it will. Just like always, there are two competing factors here. The interactions with the liquid keep the dissolved gas molecules held relatively tightly, and keep them in solution. The natural thermal motion of the dissolved gas works against those forces. If you heat the mixture the gas molecules have a more energetic movement which is more likely to 'break free' from the liquid - and then since chaotic arrangements are preferred and a gaseous state is *much* more chaotic than a dissolved liquid state, if a gas molecule manages to 'break free' it tends not to come back. So heating a dissolved gas helps that gas escape the mixture, and lowers its solubility.\n\nWhy don't dissolved solids 'escape' when the temperature rises? Because there's nowhere to 'escape' to. A substance that would otherwise be solid isn't going to escape as individual gas molecules - when the occasional dissolved molecule changes state it's going to go back to its highly-ordered solid state, where it will sit around waiting for more liquid molecules to bump into it in the right way to whisk it away again.\n\n** < TL;DR > ** Dissolved gasses are held in place by weak interactions with liquid solutes, which can be overcome by thermal motion. Adding heat makes it easier for the gasses to escape these interactions, and once they overcome these interactions they tend to stay in a gaseous state because nature tends towards chaotic states. Non-dissolved solids are held in place by strong interactions, and they will only dissolve into a liquid if the relatively weakly-interacting liquids can overcome the strong solid-solid interactions. Increasing the temperature increases the amount of interaction between the liquid and solid, allowing more solid to be dissolved.",
"Simple\n\nSolids need heat in order to break molecular bonds, which allows them to turn into ions and dissolve.\n\nGases dissolve in cold liquids better because warm liquid will have its molecules more excited, therefore moving faster and not being able to hold onto the dissolved gasses. "
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aiayrb | . why does room temperature coffee taste ‘cold’ but room temperature milk tastes ‘warm’? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aiayrb/eli5_why_does_room_temperature_coffee_taste_cold/ | {
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"Because most coffee you drink is hotter than room temperature, so in comparison to what you expect the coffee to feel like, a coffee at room temperature would feel cold.\n\nBut we usually drink milk from the refrigerator so when it's a room temperature it's hotter than what you expect.\n\nAnd the reason why coffee is usually hot is because you need hot water to properly get the favour out of the grains and the reason why milk is usually cold is because you can keep it longer that way.",
"Similarly, if you get a 60 degree day in March, it’s god damn summer time. If you get a 60 degree day in September, it’s sweatshirts and hot chocolate(north east US)."
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6wp7v7 | How did China come to have so many massively populated cities? | China is the third-largest country in the world by area, ahead of even the United States. And everybody knows that it has the largest population and quite an extensive history behind it. I get all that so far.
What I don't get is how this idea that all of China's population is concentrated only in a few large cities... doesn't appear to be true. There are massive megalopolises everywhere throughout the country:
_URL_0_
According to that article, there are fifteen cities in China that have an urban population over eight million. That's the population of New York City. I have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of eight million people living in a city in my country, let alone fifteen such cities.
In the United States, the largest cities' populations drop off pretty quickly. Not long after NYC, you start seeing cities like Philadelphia and San Antonio, which are not particularly significant. But in China, you can go a bit down the list and run into cities like Wuhan, Suzhou, and Shenyang.
These are all NYC-sized cities, but unheard of on a global scale. China is the only country in the world with so many of them. Especially if you take the one-child policy into consideration, how did China end up with 102 cities with over 1 million people while the United States only has ten? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6wp7v7/how_did_china_come_to_have_so_many_massively/ | {
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"One thing to keep in mind is that administrative boundaries work differently in China than in the United States. Municipal administrative units usually include most of the suburbs of a city, and some of the outlying rural areas as well. The most extreme example of this is Chongqing which is the size of South Carolina in order to put the Three Gorges Dam into the Chongqing urban area. However, even other Chinese municipal areas are much larger than their American counterparts.\n\nIn fact, the Chinese government is actively trying to keep it's cities small. Engels had strong views about vast urban agglomeration, and much of Chinese policies, from it's investments in intercity high speed rail, and the operation of the household registration system is designed to keep cities from getting too big. The success in this is mixed at best. "
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9nfqv8 | how does viewing violence affect people's mental health? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9nfqv8/eli5_how_does_viewing_violence_affect_peoples/ | {
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"I’m not sure there is really a correlation there. More likely people already predisposed to some kind of mental health problem can be affected by viewing violence.",
"It doesn't, slightly surprisingly. There is no correlation between the media you consume and mental health conditions.\n\nSome mental health conditions can change your interests so you watch more violent media (or sexual media, or indeed musical theatre - mental health is not exactly explicable). Media can't change your mental health. ",
"It doesn't. This is merely an adjunct myth to a bigger myth: \"Violent video games cause people to be violent.\"\n\nIt's total BS."
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1kr8rk | What caused the United States to have the highest infant mortality rate among western countries? | I've been told by some people that this is caused by different methods of determining what counts as a live birth vs a still birth, but I've never been shown any evidence for this. Could this be a reason, or is it caused by something else? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1kr8rk/what_caused_the_united_states_to_have_the_highest/ | {
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"The [Congressional Research Service](_URL_3_) investigated whether inconsistent recording of births could be the cause of our bad infant mortality rates (IMR) and found that it does not ~~really affect~~ fully explain the results. (There is some effect from the inconsistent recording, but it isn't significant to explain the large gap).\n\nWe also have one of the lowest life expectancies of any developed nations and there isn't really any controversy about that statistic. The most likely reason is because we have a poor health care system. High infant mortality is most likely caused by the same thing.\n\nOne interesting thing to look at is the IMR of people with different health care plans. \"Researchers have found that IMRs are the lowest for infants born to women enrolled in private insurance, that IMRs are higher for women enrolled in Medicaid, and that IMRs are highest for infants born to women who were uninsured.\"\n\nSo basically it is probably safe to say that the primary reason that our IMR is worse than most other countries is that we don't provide very good health care to our citizens.\n\nLinks:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_3_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_2_\n\nTL;DR Poor health care causes the US to have some of the worst performance in almost every health metric. It is not because we are recording live births differently.\n\nEDIT: Changed a misleading paraphrase. Thanks to /u/ruotwocone for pointing that out.\n\nEDIT 2: I'd also like to point out that the issue of racial diversity was examined by the same CRS study and also found it to not be a particularly significant factor. Included a CDC link with essentially the same findings.",
"There are a number of intersecting reasons:\n\n1. Reporting differences *are* a factor. Some countries do not count every infant born alive in the calculations. In particular, [many European countries do not count extremely premature infants \\( < 22 weeks\\) in their infant mortality calculations](_URL_1_), while the US counts all infants born with any sign of life. These reporting differences are becoming less of a factor as countries adopt uniform standards.\n2. An[ increasing number of pre-term deliveries in the United States](_URL_2_); from 2000-2006, premature births in the US increased 10%. For a variety of reasons, more babies are born prematurely in the US; premature babies are more likely on average to die before 1 year of age.\n3. A larger percentage of the US population are disadvantaged minorities than in other Western Nations; in particular the US has a very large African-American population. [The mortality rate for African-American infants is much higher than for European-Americans.](_URL_0_) I won't go into all the causes here, which are sadly obvious to most of us by now. ",
"If you enjoy examining the correlations between socioeconomic differences and health, I recommend \n[\"How We Do Harm\"](_URL_0_) by Otis Webb Brawley, and Paul Goldberg.\n",
"I'm a resident in obstetrics and gynecology. This is where I'm coming from and I recognize that I'm probably biased. In my opinion, it is a complicated issue and people can make statistics say nearly anything. I feel like there are several reasons for this.\n\nFirst off, anyone including illegal immigrants are covered by insurance, at least in my State, Oklahoma. This is because their babies will be US citizens. They are covered by Medicaid. In Oklahoma our State Medicaid program is called Soonercare, and pregnant women who are not citizens are covered by Soon to be Sooners, or their unborn babies are. (this actually saves money because otherwise they'd get no prenatal care and this prevents complications and saves money. Otherwise their US citizen babies would be born overall in worse health and incur a lot more cost than providing prenatal care) So at the least everyone who is pregnant has some insurance. The main difference is Soon to be Sooners drops off after the birth and I believe covers less things (like dental care) while the woman is pregnant, but if you are a US citizen you have full Medicaid and have coverage for an additional 6 weeks afterwards. Thus, I don't feel like having or not having insurance is the biggest issue. Not saying this is true all of the time, but people with private insurance tend to care more about their health and about their children's health. They seem to have more planned pregnancies and thus fewer complications. They seem to care more and are more concerned with their health. That being said, the immigrants (with the bottom of the line medicaid) that I take care of are some of my favorite/most compliant patients. They are actually the most normal and seem to care the most. Here are what I feel like might be major contributing reasons.\n\n1. Obesity: no doubt this is a huge issue. I feel like it is the number one reason our medical system gets such a bad rap. It is so horrible for your health. Practically a third of American's are obese. It is an enormous risk factor for major complications in pregnancy. Preeclampsia (a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy), gestational diabetes/fetal macrosomia (large birthweight)/shoulder dystocia, and difficult labor/arrest of labor/need for c-section (which is so hard to do in someone who is obese). To illustrate this, we can get a baby out from cut time to cord clamp time in 1 minute in a normal primary c-section in case of emergency. On the flip side, the largest pt I've done a c-section on had a BMI of 88. We pushed for an hour trying to have a vaginal delivery with 5-6 nurses retracting her panniculus before we called the c-section. It took anesthesia an hour to do an awake sitting up intubation because the pt. couldn't breath laying flat without her cpap, and thus couldn't tolerate regional anesthesia (spinal) and was too large for a needle to reach to her epidural or intrathecal space of her spine. It took us another hour to cut down to the uterus and try and deliver the infant. It was so difficult a surgery we couldn't even start to be concerned for trying to go fast because of the risk to the patient herself. I'm not sure how the infant did long term, but the NICU team was there for resuscitation/initial care. Obesity is so common, we don't even notice or make a big deal out of it until a patient's BMI is > 40 or 45. BMI's greater than 30 are so common place they are normal. It takes so long, and is so frustrating trying to counsel people to lose weight that most physicians can't/don't do it. I say that as I have tried spending 15 mins just talking about diet with patient's and it's so frustrating seeing them week after week in their pregnancy and they just keep gaining weight/don't care. I know you can kick obesity back and say it is an issue with our health care system, but I think it has become more an issue with our culture. \n\n2. Opposition to abortions (especially of fetuses with birth defects): in Europe, I know something like in the 90%tile of fetuses with Trimsomy 21 (Down Syndrome) are terminated. This is much lower in the US, at least in conservative states. Not an advocate for abortions, but we keep a lot of people pregnant for this moral reason who most likely are aborted around 18-20 weeks in other countries during the first anatomy scan. It's actually crazy the extent some people will go to try and save their babies who have terminal conditions. I can't imagine it is like to have to go through something like that, losing a baby, but a lot of patients will ask for heroic measures and do everything they can to try and keep them alive as possible or be born as late as possible.\n\n3. Not 100% sure on this one, but I have heard that in the United States, viability or our cutoff for what is considered infant mortality is 20 weeks, compared to 22-24 weeks gestational age in other countries. A fetus has little chance of surviving if being born < 24-25 weeks. So there is this month period where there is no hope of saving them. \n\n4. Poor utilization of contraception: not sure on the statistics for other countries, but we have an attending who give a lecture to every group of rotating medical students. He quotes 50% of pregnancies in the US are unintended. These non planned pregnancies can have worse outcomes based on mothers drinking alcohol before they know they are pregnant or not taking appropriate prenatal vitamins.\n\n5. Maternal Drug Use: Not saying this isn't an issue in other countries, but this is a huge contributor to infant and maternal deaths. Two thirds of the maternal deaths that occurred at our large teaching hospital last year that I am aware of were the result of maternal drug use. Methamphetamine. I have seen multiple instances of maternal drug use leading to fetal death. I specifically recall a 26 week gestational age fetus whose heart rate I watch tank on our monitors, went back for a crash c-section, and die due to placental abruption (separating from uterus early) due to maternal cocaine use. It is crazy what people will do to themselves and their unborn children due to addiction. \n\nI do nothing but take care of patients who are \"disadvantaged.\" Some people make it so frustrating. They literally are receiving free medical care and we try so hard, but they are so noncompliant or apathetic that it can be very disheartening. They will come in with all these crazy complications and comorbidities a few weeks before they are due, (hard to say when you only have their word for dating because ultrasounds have a margin of error for dating of 3 weeks after 24 weeks gestational age. It's just crazy. \n\nSorry if this seems like rambling or anecdotal, but it is something that I feel strongly about. I truly take pride in caring for my patients and try my best. I know anti-American sentiment is popular on this website and that it is popular to be down on our healthcare in general. In the United States, you can get the best medical attention in the world. I know there are lots of issues with access and expense and waste, but if you truly care about your health and have private health insurance you can get better care here than anywhere else. Not saying that it always happens or that this is fair, but what I am saying is that someone with private insurance who goes to a good doctor and takes care of herself/is compliant most likely has a lower infant mortality rate than the rest of the Western countries. Maybe there is a study on this, but I am unaware of it and am too tired to research it right now. And, I know this is different than having the best health care system. There are a lot of things that contribute to this problem of infant mortality, but access to our healthcare system or \"not having insurance\" is not one of them for any pregnant lady in the US. All pregnant women can get access here. I think that if anything, this illustrates that universal access isn't going to fix everything. I have my own model to fix or let everyone have access to healthcare, but I have rambled along long enough. ",
"there is a significant contribution from the way that infant mortality is defined. these are some excerpts from the wikipedia article on the topic:\n\n\"The World Health Organization (WHO) defines a live birth as any born human being who demonstrates independent signs of life, including breathing, voluntary muscle movement, or heartbeat. Many countries, however, including certain European states and Japan, only count as live births cases where an infant breathes at birth, which makes their reported IMR numbers somewhat lower and raises their rates of perinatal mortality.[24] In Germany and Australia, requirements for live birth are even higher.[25][26]\"\n\n\"The exclusion of any high-risk infants from the denominator or numerator in reported IMRs can be problematic for comparisons. Many countries, including the United States, Sweden and Germany, count an infant exhibiting any sign of life as alive, no matter the month of gestation or the size, but according to United States some other countries differ in these practices. All of the countries named adopted the WHO definitions in the late 1980s or early 1990s,[32] which are used throughout the European Union.[33] However, in 2009, the US CDC issued a report that stated that the American rates of infant mortality were affected by the United States' high rates of premature babies compared to European countries. It also outlined the differences in reporting requirements between the United States and Europe, noting that France, the Czech Republic, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Poland do not report all live births of babies under 500 g and/or 22 weeks of gestation.[34][35][dead link][36] The report concluded, however, that the differences in reporting are unlikely to be the primary explanation for the United States’ relatively low international ranking.[36]\"\n\nin other words, if you're born in some countries at 22-24 weeks (which have the highest rates of mortality) and show no respiratory efforts, you don't count toward their infant mortality rate. in the USA, these are counted and may falsely make it seem that other countries have much lower infant mortality rates, though this is likely not the only reason. access to care or lack thereof is likely another contributor",
"Actually, a large part of this that there are no global standards for how to report infant mortality. For example, France and the Netherlands only report on births > 22 weeks of gestation, and the Czech Republic and Poland base their data on certain weight restrictions ( > 500g). The US on the other hand, reports data based on all live births, regardless of gestational age or birth weight. This of course is in addition to our high rate of preterm births.\n\nSource: I'm a pediatrician\n",
"Illinois found that it, specifically Cook County/Chicago, had one of the worst infant mortality rates in the nation. Especially with as many hospitals are available in Chicago, that's a bit of a shock. \n\nA study done by the state found several things led to that high figure but mostly women were not taking care themselves both leading up to and during the pregnancy, saying cost of services was a major factor. They also found that a large majority of these dying babies were the result of unintended pregnancies. \n\nTo combat the problem, they created the Illinois Healthy Women program. The \"Pink Card\" allowed low income women to get family planning and sexual health services at no cost to them. Not only was Planned Parenthood of Illinois a provider, but several private practices also opened their doors to women on this plan. The Pink Card didn't just get you free birth control pills, it also took care of your yearly exams and any treatment for problems found during the exams including breast issues. \n\n If you didn't want to have a baby, they did everything to not only keep you from having one but they also did everything to make sure your body was healthy when you decided to have one. If you were planning on having a baby, they not only would take care of your body but they also would put you in touch with any of the social service providers that would be able to help with WIC and things like that. \n\nI don't know that they've completed the numbers on what that program was able to do in dropping the mortality rate, but its interesting to find what they discovered to be the problem. ",
"At the most basic level, it comes down to birth weight and gestational period. [Lower birth weight and shorter gestational period means higher likelihood of infant death](_URL_0_) (US CDC).\n\nFactors affecting gestational period and birth weight are many, including everything from age (teenagers and very old women--those over 45--are more likely to pre-term birth) to socioeconomic status to nutrition to environment. Poor people are less likely to get proper nutrition during pregnancy (even the fat ones), which means smaller babies born earlier. And you have to consider smoking and use of other substances.\n\nUnhealthy babies are less likely to survive. Whether or not these are reported as \"live births\" is another factor. International comparisons in health areas are actually hard to do as the standards for reporting data are usually not the same. Nor are behaviors across cultures. A higher teen pregnancy rate in other countries or increase in planned pre-term births, for example, would likely have an adverse effect on infant mortality.\n\nNot only factor, but it is a big one.",
"A factor that hasn't been fully considered is we also have one of the highest rates of medical interventions in hospital births. While medical interventions are necessary in many cases, it saves lives in only 2% of cases. A good documentary that highlights some of this is the Business of Being Born. ",
"I remember listening to an [Econ Talk](_URL_0_) where this was addressed. I wish I remember which one so I could link to it.\n\n1. Different nations measure infant mortality differently. US' measures create a higher rate in equal situations.\n2. In vitro fertilization is much higher in US and carries more risk.\n3. Women in US are more likely to carry trouble pregnancies instead of aborting.\n4. Pregnant women residing in US illegally are less likely to seek healthcare out of fear of deportation.\n\nWhen these factors were neutralized, the US had the lowest infant mortality rate on the globe. If I can dig up the podcast, I'll add the link.",
"How consistent is the definition of a live birth across the world?"
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"http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/why-does-the-us-have-such-a-high-infant-mortality-rate?news=844298",
"http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su6001a9.htm",
"http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/09/graph-of-the-day-the-united-states-has-a-really-high-infant-mortality-rate/",
"http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41378.pdf"
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality#Measuring_IMR",
"http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/health/07stat.html?_r=0"
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zlek9 | What was the general sentiment felt by WWII veterans towards Vietnam, the Korean War, and the veterans returning home from those wars? | Were they supportive of the wars, indifferent, opposed? Did they relate to the veterans coming home from those conflicts, or did they condemn them? Sorry to pose such a broad question, I'm just very curious. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zlek9/what_was_the_general_sentiment_felt_by_wwii/ | {
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"Purely anecdotal\n\nSpeaking to Australian Vietnam vets, many were denied admission to their local RSL's, many were told Vietnam 'wasn't a real war' by WW2 vets, and that the strongest condemnation they received was from veterans. I wish I had a source other than anecdote; these were guys from RSL's who came to talk to my class, so I'm inclined to believe them. ",
"I think your question might be a little too broad, veterans made up a pretty diverse cross section of society so its likely their views would reflect and change with society as a whole.\n\nIf anything, I'd imagine that American WWII veterans would follow the same trend as the American public during the Vietnam war. Namely, initial support followed by a growing recognition that the war was unwinnable. From the American perspective as well, domestic politics became intertwined with foreign affairs and being anti-Vietnam, at least initially, was associated with hippies, communism, and cowardice. \n\nThis is the extent of my knowledge on the topic but if you'd like to learn more about American attitudes towards Vietnam I'd recommend checking out *Nixonland* by Rick Perlstein.",
"My Grandfather fought in the Pacific and thought that the Vietnam war was incredibly important. Meanwhile, his sons dodged the draft by staying in college, and argued to him that the Soviet Union would collapse without US intervention.",
"This is purely anecdotal, but my grandfather came out of WWII with strong pacifist views. When my uncle was graduating high school and eligible for the draft, there was some talk of sending him to college in Canada. That didn't become necessary, because US troops pulled out of South Vietnam around that time. \nSo, according to my mom and my uncle, he didn't believe in the Vietnam war or think it had a good purpose.",
"I don't have a good answer, but my grandfather was in the Army (he was a paratrooper) during WWII. He enlisted in the air force during the Korean War, though he never went overseas during that time. He did meet my grandma during that time. I would imagine he wouldn't have re-enlisted if he didn't support it to some degree, but what do I know?\n\nI'd ask him about this question, but I never got to meet him since he died when my dad was about twenty. It's really unfortunate because he never really told anyone much about his experiences, like a lot of veterans of that period. We found out bits and pieces from guys he was in the army with, which was interesting, but most have passed away at this point."
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4wi7qe | When world war 2 ended, why did German soldiers want to surrender to the western allies rather than the Soviet union? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4wi7qe/when_world_war_2_ended_why_did_german_soldiers/ | {
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"Couple of reasons, since the invasion of the USSR in 1941 German treatment of Soviet prisoners had been horrendous, kept in wire enclosures until they starved, succumbed to disease, or were simply summarily executed (among the first victims gassed at Auschwitz were Russian PoWs). With no quarter given on the Eastern Front it could hardly be asked. Wehrmacht soldiers rightly feared Russian vengeance, after what had been done in the occupied territories of the USSR, and knew that capture would mean heading for forced labor in Siberian gulags, if they were not shot out of hand. Many, if they survived, weren't released until the '50s.\n\nTreatment of PoWs from the western allies was - comparatively speaking - much better, as was their treatment of German PoWs, although there were incidents of brutality on both sides they nominally adhered to the Geneva Conventions on treatment of PoWs (to which the USSR was not a signatory). A commander of the [352nd Volksgrenadier](_URL_0_) wrote to the families of six men MIA, *\"The Americans opposite us have been fighting fairly, they have treated German prisoners well and fed them. If your husband is a PoW, you will probably receive news of him through the Red Cross.\"* It got him in trouble with the party for suggesting that captivity was a tolerable state.\nCompare this to the Eastern Front, where the wretched prisoners taken by the Red Army were known as *Stalinpferd*, a Stalin horse.",
"The western Allies treated the surrendering forces MUCH better than the Soviets did. Surrendering to the Soviet forces meant years spent in Siberian prison camps and many German soldiers died before they got back to Germany 5-10 years later. They knew the Americans and British would put them in a decent camp, treat them well (remember many German prisoners had more privileges than African American soldiers) and the vast majority were released within weeks or months of the war being completed. Americans especially had a tendency to view Germans as the most \"American like\" of the enemies they faced during the war. So basically, better treatment, shorter time in \"prison\", and a less likely chance of dying."
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52zhep | why haven't we come up with an easier way to get to the top of mount everest? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/52zhep/eli5_why_havent_we_come_up_with_an_easier_way_to/ | {
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"The reason they want to go there is *because* it is dangerous and difficult and life threatening. They aren't going up there for the view and to get a tan. \n\nRegardless, standing at that altitude has seriously life threatening effects. Climbers need to acclimate for weeks to be able to survive it. Making it easier would mean people would be less prepared to go, and probably make it even more dangerous.\n\nAlso, the area is a nature preserve and of great cultural and religious importance to the people who live nearby. There are monasteries and shrines around it and many areas on Everest are considered some of the most important sites of Tibetan and Indian Buddhism. \n\nOn top of that there is the issue of just how *remote* Everest is. It is many, many miles away from running water, electricity, etc."
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2l2etx | Why were the Islam?Christian preachers unsuccessful in penetrating the religion deep into India? | I am a Hindu by birth and I can tell you that, it is a very liberal religion, and monotheism seems to have wiped out every other major religion on Earth except Hinduism. This is what surprises me, because Hinduism is not a missionary religion and from my deductions should have been easy converts for the missionaries.
But as seen today, this did not happen. What was the reason? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2l2etx/why_were_the_islamchristian_preachers/ | {
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"You seem to be asking 2 different questions. 1.) \"Why were Islam and Christianity unsuccessful in getting converts in India\" and 2.) \"Why wasn't Hinduism completely eradicated by a monotheistic religion.\" These are two different things, and let me first say that Historians can't exactly explain why something *didn't* happen. That's not within our capacity, but I'll gladly share some relevant insight with you. \n\nFor one thing, your first question is based on a bad premise. Islam and Christianity were both successful in penetrating India. As of today, roughy 1/3 of the global Muslim population either lives in the Indian Subcontinent or is of that heritage. Indian subcontinent because, as Im sure you are probably aware, prior to the British Raj there was no cohesive Indian nation. Just a sub-continent of various independent polities. While they most likely had a cultural understanding of being a part of the Hindustani fabric, they were all in practice nations independent of each other. Even when united under one of several Empires such as the Maurya of Mughal, these nations would not have seen each other as the same people. Prior to the advent of Islam or Christianity, these would all have also fallen under a Dharmic tradition- either Hinduism or Buddhism. Anyways, fast forward a couple thousand years, and the modern States of Pakistan and Bangladesh (which emerged from 2 of India's most prominent states) exist at all because of how deeply Islam penetrated India. And even with that being the case, the Indian Republic is still most likely home to the 2nd largest Muslim population in the world. I can't see how Islam failed to penetrate India with these things being the case. As far as Christianity, while it is less prevalent in India, so too is the amount of time that India was under rule by Christians significantly less than the time India was under the rule of Muslims. Even then, [there are states in East India today that are more Christian per capita than the American South](_URL_0_), with Christianity being the 3rd largest religion in the Indian Republic. So, again, i would stop short of calling that 'unsuccessful'. \n\nBut this is a good point to pivot to your next question. Why didn't Hinduism get eradicated completely? Truthfully, I cant answer this question. Dont know that anyone can. But for one thing, look at how despite being home to so many Muslims (almost half the Arab World even), the Muslim population of the Indian Republic is only 14% of the overall population. INDIA IS HUGEEEEEEE. Both geographically and demographically, and naturally this has had an effect on how thoroughly these lands have been proselytized. In fact, there is only one macro-region with a comparable population, China, and that region mind you hasn't totally adopted monotheism either. \n\nAnother point of consideration though, is that Hinduism was in a sense created by the British. What I mean by this is, prior to the Raj, there was no centralized or universal 'Hindu' religion/identity. There still isn't. Rather, there were hundreds of Dhramic traditions that were indigenous to the sub-continent, traditions that would vary wildly from region to region. The British took all of these and compartmentalized them under a catch-all term: Hinduism. Prior to this, there really was not a universal Hindu identity or sense of nationhood, going back to the earlier commentary on how the Indian states saw each-other as different nations and peoples. If there was, a tiny Muslim minority would not have been able to rule the 'Hindu' super-majority for so long, no way. Rather, the Islamic rule of India as well as the spread of Islam in India happened at a state by state basis. No one went in looking at the whole of India as one nation or land to conquer/convert but rather a region of a bunch of disjointed nations (and rightfully so). Contrast this for example with the Ottoman incursions into Europe, which was rebuffed with a united Christian front. It was understood that that was a Muslim vs Christian ideological alongside the physical conflict. This was not always the case in India. \n\nFor this reason, there wasn't a campaign or push to conquer/convert India all at once. That would have been akin to the notion of trying to conquer/convert \"Asia\" or \"Africa\" in one breath, simply unheard of. So as a result of this, we can see that Islam spread more or less in an unorganized manner from state to state, 'nation to nation'. SO my point is, if you look at it in terms of \"the spread of Islam in Bengal/Punjab/Sindh/Hyderabad/Tamil/Kerala\" as opposed to \"the spread of Islam in India at large\", you have a better framework of understanding how the Muslim conquerers themselves saw it. And in this regard, some nations/regions/states were fully engulfed by Islam. Its all about perspective. \n\nIm sorry if that doesn't fully answer your question, but I don't think there is any single answer to why Hindusim wasn't completely eradicated in India. But in summary, Im sure the incredible size and scale of Hindustani civilization was a factor. But alongside the point about perspective, keep in mind that both Islam and Christianity in fact did successfully penetrate India, at least to some extent. \n\nSources:\n\nInscribing the Other, Inscribing the Self: Hindu-Muslim Identities in Pre-Colonial India\nCynthia Talbot\nComparative Studies in Society and History\nVol. 37, No. 4 (Oct., 1995), pp. 692-722\nCambridge University Press\n\n[Read Here](_URL_2_)\n\n\n\nWho Invented Hinduism?\nDavid N. Lorenzen\nComparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Oct., 1999), pp. 630-659\nCambridge University Press \n\n[Read here](_URL_1_)\n\nPennington, Brian. The Invention of Hinduism: Britons, Indians, and Construction of Religion in Colonial Bengal. New York: Oxford UP, 2005. Print.\n\nKing, Richard. Orientalism and Religion: Post-Colonial Theory, India and \"The Mystic East\" New York: Routledge, 1999. Print."
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"http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/179424?uid=3739616&amp;uid=2&amp;uid=4&amp;uid=3739256&amp;sid=21104941828177",
"http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/179206?uid=3739616&amp;uid=2&amp;uid=4&amp;uid=3739256&amp;sid=21104941828177"
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35jeiw | why does david cameron want to scrap the human rights act and replace it with "the british bill of rights"? | For anyone who has vast knowledge on UK politics... obviously as you know the Conservative Party are in power, and I've read in news articles that they are planning to bring in the British Bill of Rights in place of the current legislation. However, I'm not sure of what changes this will entail, will it make any improvements, why the Conservatives want to do this? If anyone can give me a brief overview of the who agenda that would be rly kewl | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35jeiw/eli5_why_does_david_cameron_want_to_scrap_the/ | {
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"_URL_1_\n\n > In a speech to the Strasbourg assembly, Mr Cameron said the whole concept of human rights laws was in danger of becoming \"distorted\" and \"discredited\" because of the court's decisions.\n\n > \"We do have a real problem when it comes to foreign national who threaten our security,\" he said.\n\n > **\"The problem today is that you can end up with someone who has no right to live in your country, who you are convinced – and have good reason to be convinced – means to do your country harm. And yet there are circumstances in which you cannot try them, you cannot detain them and you cannot deport them.\"**\n\n > \"So having put in place every possible safeguard to ensure that (human rights) rights are not violated, we still cannot fulfil our duty to our law-abiding citizens to protect them.\"\n\n > **Mr Cameron's comments come just a week after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that radical Islamic cleric Abu Qatada cannot be deported for fear he will not get a fair trial in Jordan.**\n\nHe believes the HRA goes too far and threatens the national security of the UK. So he wants to put in place human rights, but still keep the country safe.. in his eyes. You can have known terrorists in your country, but who have not violated any UK laws. And with that you cannot deport them because they cannot receive a \"fair\" trial in their wanted countries for their crimes. So you just keep terrorists on your soil, protected from the courts and deportation. This is just one example of the inconsistencies he sees with the HRA and protecting the UK. He wants to take control back from the EU and allow the UK to determine how to handle such situations.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n > “This is the country that wrote Magna Carta, the country that time and again has stood up for human rights, whether liberating Europe from fascism or leading the charge today against sexual violence in war.\n\n > “Let me put it very clearly: We do not require instruction from judges in Strasbourg on this issue.\n\n > “So at long last, with a Conservative government after the next election, this country will have a new British Bill of Rights to be passed in our Parliament, rooted in our values.”",
"because the human rights act can stop the UK government from deporting foreign criminals/terrorists, or at least, will make it considerably more difficult than necessary. for example, \"the right to a family life\" has sometimes caused criminals from abroad to be allowed to stay in this country because they happened to have a wife in this country, or even a wife that they travelled to the UK with. basically, the human rights act (which is basically the codification of the ECHR rights) is very restrictive to what most people who call common sense justice. it has its ups and downs, but it can be resolved simply for having a british bill of rights which removes these kinds of flaws."
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a0zh3g | In a period of twelve years, Germany went from an emerging democracy to a dictatorship that eventually committed genocide. How? | I know that the democracy was relatively new, after the kaiser stepped down, and Hitler was able to rise to power afterwards, but high school never really covered the details. My friend is taking history right now and had something like this for a writing prompt, and I realized I have no idea what the answer is. She told me to google it but I couldn't find a good answer.
& #x200B;
(I asked this yesterday with different phrasing but the rules said since I didn't get any response this is okay. If I did something wrong or I'm in the wrong place please let me know!) | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a0zh3g/in_a_period_of_twelve_years_germany_went_from_an/ | {
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"When Germany was defeated in the First World War (in 1918) it caused a period of chaos which would eventually lead to Hitler. The defeat created a revolutionary situation and forced the Kaiser out of power. A new and very unstable democracy was created- the Weimar Republic. Germany's economy and society had been devastated by the war and this was greatly exacerbated by the peace treaty which it was forced to sign by the victorious allied powers (called the Versailles Treaty). Versailles forced Germany to pay huge reparations to the allied powers and also to give up quite a bit of territory and to limit its army. The treaty was economically damaging and politically humiliating and created huge resentment within Germany. At one point, when Germany could not afford to pay reparations, France even occupied part of the country. The currency totally collapsed and people literally had to take wheelbarrows of money to the shop to buy bread. So the new Weimar republic was always very unstable. There were 3 attempted communist revolutions from 1918-1923 and 2 attempted coups by the far right (one of them led by Hitler). \n\nIn the mid 20s the Weimar republic was able to stablize itself, and this created what is called the \"golden age\" of Weimar Germany (which only lasted a few years). It achieved stability by taking huge loans from the US which it could then use to pay the reparations. But in 1929 the Wall Street Crash happened, and this economic strategy was shattered forcing Germany into an even more terrible economic collapse than after WW1. Germany was the country most affected by the Great Depression. Unemployment was around 25% and the entire economy was collapsing. This situation caused a rise in popularity for both the far left (represented mainly by the Communist Party) and the far right (represented mainly by the Nazi party) which both proposed revolutionary solutions to the situation. \n\nThe Nazis were an extreme nationalist, facist party which had grown from being a really tiny party (of about 40 members when Hitler first joined) to a huge political force. In Hitler they had a very charismatic leader and adopted new methods of campaigning and propaganda. They argued for massive government intervention in the economy and promised that they would end unemployment by actively creating work (as Roosevelt would later do in the US). They also appealed to national sentiment. They condemned the Versailles treaty and argued that it was illegitimate and that they would entirely reject it. They openly argued that they wanted to expand Germany, win back the territory taken from it by the treaty and win more space (Lebensraum) in the east which would help build the German economy further. The Germans had only lost the first war, they claimed, because they had been betrayed by Jews and Communists who had undermined the country from within and were still doing so now. These arguments gained mass appeal and the Nazis did very well in elections. In the 1930 election the Nazis rose from about 3% to around 19% of the vote becoming the second party. The Communist Party also did well and got about 13%, they were the third party. \n\nSo as a result the traditional ruling parties of Germany lost their majority and were forced into increasingly unstable coalition governments which kept collapsing due to internal differences. None of these governments could find any solution to the economic crisis. Now the way the Weimar political system worked, there was a parliamentary system and the government was headed by a Chancellor (like a prime minister). But there was also a president who was meant to be mostly ceremonial but had powers which could be used in an emergency. The president at this time was a man called Hindenburg, a very old man, a conservative who was popular because he had been the head of the German army in WW1 and was seen as a war hero. Hindenburg now used his authority and appointed chancellors from the traditional parties to head minority governments and gave them emergency powers so they could rule by decree even though they did not have a majority in parliament. \n\nThis still did not stop the crisis however and the Nazi party was becoming more and more popular. In May 1932 Hindenburg appointed a conservative Franz Von Pappen to be chancellor who had almost no support in parliament (he did not even have a party) and resigned after only three days prompting new elections. Then in the July 1932 election The Nazis became the largest party almost doubling their support and winning around 38% of the vote. There was another election because parliament was so split in November 32 and the Nazis again became the largest party (although they lost around 4% mainly to the Communists). At this point the Left Wing were still stronger than the Nazis but they were split into two parties who could not collaborate- The Social Democratic Party and The Communist Party. The Nazis were openly committed to building a fascist dictatorship but it now became difficult to imagine any conservative government without their participation. Now Franz Von Pappen developed a plan and tried to convince Hindenburg. He believed that they could appoint Hitler as chancellor, use him to crush the left wing, but control him. He thought that if they gave Hitler some power, the conservatives could make him moderate his demands and bring him under their control. He seriously underestimated Hitler in part because he was an educated, upper class natural leader whereas he saw Hitler as an uneducated impostor. At first, he could not persuade Hindenburg who personally hated Hitler and did not trust him to bring him into the government. But by January 1933 Von Pappen persuaded Hindenburg to appoint Hitler chancellor. This was partly motivated by personal motives and Von Pappen's desire for revenge against his former friends who he thought had destroyed his government. \n\nSo Hitler was appointed Chancellor in 1933. At first it was part of a coalition government and the majority were conservatives like Von Pappen (who became Vice Chancellor). But Hitler and the Nazis quickly marginalized them, gaining control of the key institutions (like the police) and pushing through repressive legislation allowing people to arrested without charge. Then in February 1933, only a month after Hitler had been named chancellor, an event happened which helped him greatly in building his dictatorship. A communist militant set fire to the German Parliament. Hitler argued that this was intended as the signal for a Communist revolution and used the public outcry to blame the Communist Party in general (in reality the Communist Party had nothing to do with the fire). He persuaded Hindenburg to pass an emergency decree criminalizing the Communist Party. This allowed the Nazis to destroy their one major competitor (the communists were the third party) and to become, overnight a majority in the German parliament. In March Hitler passed the Enabling Act which granted him emergency powers allowing him to rule by decree, essentially as a dictator. By this point Hitler's power was complete. He used the conservatives to destroy the Left Wing- criminalising the socialists, communists and trade unions. But once the left wing was destroyed there was no opposition and the conservatives themselves could do nothing to stop him. \n\nThe last independent source of power in Germany was Hindenburg but in 1934 he died. Hitler then abolished the role of president and appointed himself Reichsfuhrer, which combined the role of Chancellor and President. He now ruled basically unopposed and was free to build the Nazi dictatorship. "
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49zbxr | Why has there never been (widely known?) geopolitical conflict between Canada and the United States? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/49zbxr/why_has_there_never_been_widely_known/ | {
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"Anytime there has been something of that description, Britain was always the motivator. \n\nIn Canada's position there are a few things discouraging it from picking a fight with its neighbor. \n\n1.) Canada has always had a population dearth relative to the United States. Less people means less resources for industry, research, and, most importantly, the military. It has been perennially outnumbered. \n\n2.) It does not control trade routes that are critical to US trade. With the exception of the Great Lakes, Canada has never had the geographic advantage to just sever a trade line. \n\n2b.) Canada is a modern military, but like many other nations, does not have the Navy to match the US Navy. If they are going to project power over a coastline, you have to be able to go toe-to-toe with the people you are trying to restrict. \n\n3.) The Canadian border, de-militarized as it is, is near impossible to hold without giving you plans. Either side of the border would have to deploy an unreasonable number of units along that border. \n\n4.) The US and Canada share a very similar heritage. A product of British colonialism, a \"frontier legacy\", and a people who know each others culture well enough on friendly terms. For instance, the NHL has teams from both sides of the border. Our cultures are inter-twined enough that making the other seem like a true enemy would take a lot of propaganda work. \n\nThose are all I can think of off the top of my head. ",
"King Walnut has covered most of it in his post, but I'd like to add a little:\n\nThere was a war, the war of 1812(-16). The Americans were angry with several British policies, such as arming Native Americans and press-ganging suspected British-born Americans into the Navy to fight Napoleon. The reason Britain was arming Native Americans was that they were worried that western expansion of the USA would lead it to become powerful enough to be a threat to Britain, perhaps conquering Canada. \n\nSo, President Madison and his advisors decided to invade Canada, while Britain was engaged in the Napoleonic War and so unable to muster its full forces to defend Canada.\n\nHowever, the war didn't go as well as expected. While the Americans did occupy a fair bit of territory, the war wasn't very popular at home, particularly in the north-east industrial areas, the areas most needed to support the nearby war. \nIn addition, the British allied with a federation of allied native American tribes, led by the famous Tecumseh.\n\nIn 1815, the Napoleonic War ended. This meant Britain was, in theory, able to turn its full attention to America, and some Americans feared they could be reconquered. On the other hand, after a long, brutal and expensive war, the British frankly didn't have the appetite for another war in America (especially as their previous war in America hadn't gone that well).\n\nSo, the two countries signed an armistice. They promised to respect each other's borders, and not to sponsor forces opposed to each other (such as Native Americans). \nSo, both sides got what they wanted: America no longer had Britain trying to stymy it's westward expansion, Britain felt security that its Canadian territories wouldn't be invaded by America.\n\nAfter this, it was in neither Britain nor America's interests to fight a war. Trade was much more profitable. Now, resources could be seized by force... but why should either side want to attack a powerful, industrial country, one with legal standing in the world community, and a similar culture and religion? Why do that, when there was also this land to the west full of untapped resources, guarded by non-industrialised, low-population forces with essentially no international legal standing? For America, their military was too busy taking the West to want to invade icy Canada. For Britain, there was western Canada, but more importantly India and Africa to conquer (and the local Canadian forces lacked the population to attack America by themselves).\nBy the time Canada became fully independent, we get to the era of the World Wars, where America and Britain ended up as allies. This was then followed by membership of NATO. In the modern era, cultural, trade and political ties are just too extensive for armed conflict, nor, as KingWalnut covered, is there any particular motivations to wage such a conflict."
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5elczb | Is it true that a lot of old-timey sailors couldn't swim? | In his book "Sailing Around the World," Joshua Slocum mentions that he couldn't swim despite having spent most of his life as a sailor. This is the only sourced instance I can think of, but it seems like the sailor-who-can't-swim thing pops up frequently in movies and such. Was this actually common? If so, why didn't they just learn to swim? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5elczb/is_it_true_that_a_lot_of_oldtimey_sailors_couldnt/ | {
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"This is a broad questions, and as a result there's a lack of definitive statistics, but there seems to be a fair degree of consensus that for the most part European (and by extension early American) sailors were comparatively poor swimmers. For much of the period at least into the 19th century, moreover, a clear distinction was drawn between \"bathing\" (which essentially meant going into water where it was possible to stand, if need be, and which was relatively popular) and \"swimming\" (meaning in open water where it was not possible to stand, which was not.)\n\nSeveral authorities have attempted estimates of the proportion of sailors who could swim. Overall, it seems to be agreed that as late as 1900 a high proportion of sailors – significantly more than half – were not able to swim.\n\n* Nicholas Orme, in his *Early British Swimming, 55 BC to AD 1719*, comments that early swimming in Britain was confined largely to ponds and rivers, and almost never done in the sea; the practice also \"virtually excluded the whole female sex\" (p.107). He also usefully discusses the relatively late development of \"scientific\" swimming and efforts to maximise efficiency in the water, noting that up to the 17th century at least side-stroke was considered the fastest stroke available, modern strokes had not been invented, and swimmers in general were \"weak in the efficiency and speed of their basic propulsive strokes.\"\n \n* It's estimated that only about one in seven Dutch sailors in the first half of the 17th century could swim (Mike Dash, *Batavia's Graveyard* p.110)\n\n* Little, in *The Buccaneer's Realm*, notes that, in the Caribbean, swimming was a common ability among the indigenous peoples of the West Indies and adds that \"many whites ... swam and dived, and the notion that European sailors could not swim was false. Nonetheless, one captain observed 'how deficient our common seamen in general are.' Europeans who fell overboard generally drowned, even if they landed uninjured in the water.... Perhaps only one in four to one in six common sailors could swim.\"\n\n* Compton, in *Why Sailors Can't Swim* p.18, notes that a contemporary newspaper estimated in 1910 that 40% of US Navy sailors could not swim.\n\nAs to the reasons why this was so, they probably combine culture and geography. It seems it was at least in part because the skill was not regarded as a natural one for \"civilised\" white men to possess, and that status (and fear of ridicule) was a factor here. In *Haunts of the Black Masseur: The Swimmer as Hero,* Charles Sprawson comments on the disinclination of British colonists in India to swim, despite the hot weather - \"It was as though the English had taken to heart George Borrow's precept that a 'gentleman' should avoid swimming, 'for to swim you must be naked, and how would many a genteel person look without his clothes.'\" Similarly Blackmore, in his *Manifest Perdition: Shipwreck Narrative and the Disruption of Empire*, pp.91-2, argues that \"the human form in water... foregrounds the civilized/barbaric binarism... because natatorial ability is, in expansionist thinking, a 'barbaric' skill\" - one that was beneath European sailors and which they expected other people to perform for them. Blackmore cites the Dutch navigator Jan van Linschoten's *Itinerary* (late C16th), which stresses how useful Arab men \"infected\" with Islam could be in this context. Where European gentlemen swam, it was generally in private and where they were not likely to be seen by either women or by their social inferiors.\n\nWhile Sprawson also explores lots of other odd cultural tangents, noting that Rupert Brooke swam as a celebration of youth, Goethe as a declaration of freedom and beauty, and Baron Corvo as an expression of his homosexuality, it's also rather noticeable that there's almost no evidence in western sources for people learning to swim as a precaution or because it was seen as a useful skill until some way into the nineteenth century.\n\nThat said, I would guess that opportunity and conditions played at least as much a part in determining who could and who could not swim. One obvious factor is that facilities and conditions for teaching swimming safely were lacking. No swimming pools, and cold and uninviting local waters, probably help to explain why Europeans were less likely to be able to swim than the locals on Caribbean islands (and Darcy, in his *The People of the Sea*, p.31, a book about Oceania, similarly notes that the ability to swim was commonplace among Fijians, even those who lived well inland). Bruseth and Turner, in *From a Watery Grave*, p.116, attribute the deficiency to the fact that \"swimming was not the recreational sport that it is today.\""
]
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rhdxu | So what's the upper limit on man-made global warming? | So far everything I've read on the matter cautiously suggests changes of 2-5 degrees celsius with some hand-waving about possible chain reactions leading to massively larger increases. Problem is, nobody seems to want to give a ballpark estimate of what "massively larger" might mean. Can we make educated guesses as to the absolute worst case scenario? I figure complex calculations aside, surely there's a point beyond which it's not feasible for the temperature to go, but does science have any idea where this is? 10 degrees? 20? 40? Are we turning into Venus? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/rhdxu/so_whats_the_upper_limit_on_manmade_global_warming/ | {
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"The thing scientists are most worried about is a positive feedback loop in the climate, where if you pass some tipping point, you have runaway warming. I'm not a climate expert, but a positive feedback loop would put the upper limit quite high. \n\nHere's a fake example made up off the top of my head - say at some temperature, the CO2 in limestone (CaCO3) decides it prefers not to be in limestone anymore and prefers to be in a gaseous state. Then, lets say our CO2 takes the temperature right up to this point - then CO2 starts pouring out of the global sources of limestone and then we have more heating and its a runaway positivefeedback loop. It's hard to predict these kinds of things but we want to be safe :D. \n\nEdit: Fixed being stupid.",
"Considering how vastly hotter the world was in various other time periods, I don't think we are in any danger at all of a runaway to Venus-level temperatures. \n\nIn the late Cretaceous, deciduous forests extended all the way to the poles, and this has happened at other times as well. In fact, having ice at the poles at all isn't the default for Earth. We are very fortunate to be starting in an ice age. Now, living through a change from current climate to a Cretaceous hothouse world might get a bit hairy. And anything which destabilizes civilization will probably put an end to large amounts of fossil fuel burning. There's a negative feedback. Anything else which gets people off of fossil fuels (running out, finding a better technology, wising up to the ecological implications, or most likely a combination of those) would do the trick as well.\n",
"This study was done in the context of comparing oil sands to coal, but the result was that burning all of the world's coal would raise global average temperatures by 15 degrees Celsius. That's not taking into account possible runaway feedback, so it should give you an idea of a lower limit on the worst-case temperature.\n\n[Nature article (behind pay wall)](_URL_0_), and [CBC news coverage](_URL_1_)."
]
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by3gs6 | How were the anarchist/syndicalist (or pro-Republican in general) areas of Spain governed before and during the civil war? Did the militias enforce or enact any laws? Did they police their respective communities? | [deleted] | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/by3gs6/how_were_the_anarchistsyndicalist_or/ | {
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"Governance before the civil war is tricky. The easy answer, of course, is that the Spanish government (whether the left or right was in power) was still in place prior to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, so areas with significant anarchist (or other leftist) presence were being governed by the government. It's not like a village could get away with declaring itself to be an anarchist commune, expropriate the local landlords and stop paying taxes - the Civil Guards existed basically to stop this happening, and were fairly brutal and efficient at stamping this kind of thing out. This does however gloss over the extent to which the Spanish state could often be rather absent in rural areas in the early twentieth century. Indeed, one convincing argument I've seen made about why Spanish anarchism became so strong was that they were the only ones actually making an effort in rural Spain aside from the Catholic Church - they set up local organisations, libraries and education facilities long before the government made any serious effort to provide these kind of services. So, in this sense, 'governance' is a bit of a mixed bag - the government could exert control, but weren't performing many of the 'normal' functions of governance in many of the areas that the anarchists were particularly strong. Particularly in pre-Republican Spain, this was a key driver of anti-clerical feeling - for all intents and purposes, the Church was the only institution of the Spanish state that was actually present across much of rural Spain. This meant that Church institutions and representatives were inevitably politicised, and seen as legitimate targets for political violence in a way that was just about unknown across much of the rest of Europe.\n\nThis picture obviously changes after the outbreak of the civil war, and the launch of what is often called the 'Spanish Revolution' in response. This revolution is quite distinctive, as participants were not that concerned with the big institutions of government like parliament, which generally continued to exist as before (albeit without much influence over events in the early weeks and months), but concentrated on seizing local land and means of production, as well as more functional aspects of government like barracks, armouries and telephone exchanges, particularly in Barcelona. This reflected, of course, the ideological preferences of the revolutionaries. But an inevitable result is that it's very hard to speak of a singular experience of the Spanish Revolution, as the methods and aims of different groups varied so widely.\n\nSo, even looking at somewhere like Catalonia where this revolutionary process went the furthest in collectivising land and factories, it wasn't like parts of Spain became homogenously anarchist. Some locales, for instance, might have both a socialist and an anarchist collective farm. Even among these collectives, there was a great deal of variance in scale (one collective might have 5,000 inhabitants, another 50) and context (different crops, locations, climate, rules etc). Broadly speaking, collectives were established by local trade unionists (UGT, CNT or both), and delegates were appointed to manage various aspects of the new enterprise, from different types of production (crops, cattle etc) to administration, and the delegates together formed a general council, often responsible in turn to a general assembly of the collective's workers (not, I suspect, including the women), which were sometimes regularly consituted and played a guiding role, and sometimes were irregular gatherings with less of a day to day role. Joining collectives was nominally voluntary for smallholding farmers (and many did indeed choose to do so), but there may have been some coercion involved, and restrictions placed upon those who remained independent, such as not allowing them to employ anyone. How far these collectives remained true to their basic democratic principles, or became small fiefdoms of local dictators, is a more difficult question that is inevitably tainted by wider ideological debates. Individual collectives were also, naturally, variably successful, with some seeing defections, others the participation of self-interested individuals who sought to profit from accumulating goods and produce. Similarly, whether or not production increased as a result of collectivisation tended to rest on local contexts and factors, as well as the wider pressures of the war on the agricultural sector. While I have less direct information about law enforcement as per your question, I suspect it reflects this picture as well - rules and laws would likely have been established and enforced differently, depending on how collectivisation proceeded locally.\n\nThe militias themselves were also a bit of a mixed bag. While they did well against often disorganised and confused opponents in the mainly urban battles of the early civil war, the transition to more traditional warfare exposed their lack of training, equipment and organisation, leading to heavy losses and eventually the regularisation of the militias into more traditional military units. In theory at least, the anarchist militias were supposed to be democratic entities. The Durruti Column, one of the earliest anarchist militias formed in Catalonia, was described by one historian as being:\n\n > organised on an anarchist basis, with ten men forming a group, ten groups a *centuria*, all electing their leaders, and five groups an *agrupación*. The leaders of these bodies formed the war committee of the column, which had to approve the decisions of the Technical Military Council, consisting of the few officers who accompanied the militia.\n\nThough the basic formula varied, the election of delegates in this manner appears to have been common. Democracy went beyond the election of leaders. Some anarchist militias refused to participate in what was seen as pointless militarism, such as drilling or being confined to barracks at night. Military orders, particularly in the early months, were often written more as persuasive arguments and justifications than as direct commands, in the knowledge that the latter might be refused on principle. Yet as with collectivisation, there was little conformity or regularity at play here, and some anarchist columns were doubtless little better than bandits. This meant that depending on who the local militia were, the standards of justice you might expect would vary considerably - and if your crime was a political one, even the most principled would not hesitate to use violence.\n\nYour last question about the conflict with communism is a whole other can of worms, which I'll continue below!"
]
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[]
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u9rhs | Questions for Hitler?
| I'm doing a project for grade 12 Social Studies which requires a fake, 10 question interview with a historical figure from the curriculum. I chose Adolph Hilter in his up and coming years when he was just getting into politics, like 1933 on. I'm having trouble thinking of some well thought questions and answers I could use for this. I know people here know A LOT more than I do and was wondering if anyone could lend a hand. Thank you! Connor
EDIT: Thank you everyone! I got a pretty good basis of where to start and what to research for this now! | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/u9rhs/questions_for_hitler/ | {
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"Well, to start, Hitler was chancellor of Germany in 1933: he was running the show in 1933. You want to talk to him in the 1920s, it seems, so:\n\nDo some research on the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 - that's his first grab for power, but it was ultimately unsuccessful. And while serving his ridiculously lenient jail sentence, he wrote Mein Kampf. I might ask him about the up-and-coming Nazi Party - what he plans to do with it. Ask him about the end of World War I and how he feels about Weimar - he had very strong feelings about these. Ask him about race and struggle - those were the cornerstones of Nazi ideology. ",
"There seems to be a bit of a spread on this (anywhere from 1920 onward), so I'll provide two possibilities:\n\n**If in the 1920s:** What is Hitler's opinion of [Houston Chamberlain](_URL_0_), a famous English scholar who defected to the Kaiser's Germany during the First World War and subsequently penned numerous works of anti-British propaganda (as married Wagner's daughter, for what it's worth). He's also famous for having devised certain theories about the basically Germanic origin of all that was good in European art and culture over the last several centuries -- given Hitler's interests, I'd imagine he'd have much to say about this, one way or another.\n\n**If in the 1930s:** Ask him what he thinks of [Oswald Mosley](_URL_1_) and his attempts to bring Fascism into the mainstream in England. Hitler will know exactly whom you're talking about, have no fear - the British Union of Fascists exploded onto the scene in 1932, and by 1936 the two men would be on such familiar terms that Hitler was happy to attend Mosley's wedding. "
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3hbjit | I'm no expert of either, but there seem to be some key similarities between Ancient Latin and Greek, like the -us/-os and -um/-on endings. They even have the same word for "I." Did either peoples notice the same thing and suspect that their languages could have come from a common source? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3hbjit/im_no_expert_of_either_but_there_seem_to_be_some/ | {
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"~~I'm not sure which \"other people\" you are referring to.~~ The Romans thought that Latin was a dialect of Greek. Modern linguists believe that they are both part of the Indo-European language family and therefore have a common linguistic ancestor. [This article](_URL_0_) will probably interest you"
]
} | []
| []
| [
[
"http://www.jstor.org/stable/30038039?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents"
]
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|
||
7ubyqa | Blown up army sizes in Xerxes march on Greece | I’m listening to Herodotus Histories and I’ve reached the part where Xerxes march on Greece is covered and the size of the army, navy and the logistical part of the Persian forces is according to what Herodotus has heard over 5 million men (not counting women and eunuchs).
It is usually said that ancient troop figures are exaggerated but what do we actually base statements like these on? The figures sounds a bit ridiculous definitely but Herodotus lived pretty close in time to the events in question. I understand the bias that he has and that he clearly wants to honor the greeks and thus would add a bit to the Persian forces.
So the question is what evidence we have that the troop figures are exaggerated? Are there archeological evidence or other historical sources to back this up? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7ubyqa/blown_up_army_sizes_in_xerxes_march_on_greece/ | {
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"text": [
"Hi! You might enjoy the answer I gave to this question [here](_URL_0_). My view is that we need to be thinking about these numbers less in terms of \"true or false\" and more in terms of \"plausible or implausible in a world without written records\". In the context of his own work, Herodotos made a lot of effort to justify his numbers, which he probably couldn't have lowered without losing credibility in the eyes of his audience."
]
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| []
| [
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7lkmwo/did_ancient_people_knew_their_quoted_numbers_of/drn48gt/"
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|
4tkmne | does mutually assured destruction (ie. nuclear weapons) deter nations into waging war against each other? | Does mutually assured destruction (ie. Nuclear weapons) deter great nations into waging war against each other and would it continue to do so? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4tkmne/eli5does_mutually_assured_destruction_ie_nuclear/ | {
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"Lets see. Why would you start a fight?\n\nYou want something that other guy has.\n\nYou really hate that guy for whatever reason.\n\nA couple of other reasons exist, but the concept is the same.\n\nNow, if that guy has something that will instantly kill or severely hurt you if you attack him, even if you disable him quickly, you wouldn't start that fight.\n\nYou won't be able to use that thing you wanted to have and having acted on your hate is probably less valuable then your life.\n\nNo rational decisionmaker would decide to attack an opponent who can with near certainty annihilate him if he tried (unless he has a way to circumvent or disable whatever allows his opponent to do this).\n\nNuclear weapons make pretty sure that you can't win anything by launching an attack.\n\n#EDIT:\n\nAbout the second part of your question: It would continue to do so until someone develops a way to prevent his own destruction like a reliable defense system or a way to disable the opposing nation so quickly that it can't launch."
]
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1jg6fe | can someone explain the chandraskhar limit in simplistic terminology? | I believe I understand the workings of stars an the mass to gravity requirements to keep them in the form of a "ball." However, my inquiry is more along the lines how is that limiting mass defined and how were these conclusions drawn.
Thanks in advance | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jg6fe/eli5can_someone_explain_the_chandraskhar_limit_in/ | {
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" During a star's lifetime, the outward pressure exerted from all of the thermal energy being created by fusion in the core holds the volume of the star up against the force of gravity created by all of that mass. When a star uses up its nuclear fusion fuel supply, there's a number of end scenarios that can play out, and which one happens generally depends on the mass of the star.\n\nOne of the possible end results is something called a white dwarf. The fusion has shut down, and so that thermal pressure stops, and the star begins to contract due to gravity. This continues and the star gets increasingly dense until something called [electron degeneracy pressure](_URL_0_) stops it. Long story short, at a quantum level, mass resists getting smashed together even denser, and the force of this resistance is called Electron degeneracy pressure.\n\nSo in a white dwarf, electron degeneracy pressure holds the star at a particular volume, and assuming no other significant celestial bodies influence it, the white dwarf just sort of hangs out in the universe, slowly radiating away all its residual heat.\n\nBut that only happens to most stars. Some stars have so much mass, and create so much gravity, that that inward collapsing is stronger than electron degeneracy pressure. That amount of mass is called the Chandraskhar Limit. If a dying star has more mass than that limit, then it'll contract past the white dwarf stage, and proceed on to a neutron star, or maybe a quark star (we're not sure if those exist), or even a black hole if it's massive enough. "
]
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_degeneracy_pressure"
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17ovps | how is it possible that we can have orgasms in our sleep, without any physical stimuli? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17ovps/eli5_how_is_it_possible_that_we_can_have_orgasms/ | {
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"You can orgasm without physical stimuli while awake as well. ",
"All physical sensation is just impulses interpreted by the brain. No need for the actual stimuli, just need the part of the brain that responds to the stimuli to activate.\n\nSame idea as starting a car. The conventional way is to use a key to start the engine. You can bypass the key by hot wiring it (or so movies have led me to believe). Your brain is hot wiring your sexy time centers, bypassing the physical stimulation. ",
"Arousal, Erection (or lubrication), orgasm, and ejaculation are all distinct operations and EACH of them can happen independently of any others. Usually, experiencing orgasm in isolation or ejaculation in isolation is strange, but they CAN happen. ",
"I don't really feel comfortable explaining orgasms to a 5-year-old.",
"Reminds me of the Jackie Treehorn scene in The Big Lebowski:\n\n TREEHORN\n People forget that the brain is the \n biggest erogenous zone--\n\n DUDE\n On you, maybe."
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7a0e3t | The Great War: African Theatre Literature? | Is there any good literature or historical narrative that takes place in the various African theatres of the First World War. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7a0e3t/the_great_war_african_theatre_literature/ | {
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"text": [
"Hew Strachan tackles Africa in his \"The First World War,\" volume 1. I believe you can buy those sections as one unit on Amazon. He'd be a good place to start. I suggest mining the references and going from there. "
]
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| []
| [
[]
]
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|
3p1b04 | how dubstep/rap artists can manipulate the computer/synthesizer to get the beat/sound the way they want it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3p1b04/eli5_how_dubsteprap_artists_can_manipulate_the/ | {
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"text": [
"Well they use specific programs designed to augment sound waves. It started out with having the change the actual circuitry of the physical device to produce such sounds, now you can literally just layer loops and press play, if your a lazy fuck. "
]
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| [
[]
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||
1v050e | when i shower and someone runs water, i freeze. hotels? 100's of showers, no such problem. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1v050e/eli5_when_i_shower_and_someone_runs_water_i/ | {
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"Hotels have ridiculous tankless water heaters that flash heat water in-line, so they don't retain a huge tank of water like most household water heaters. If your house is older, it probably isn't plumbed very well and/or you have a small/inefficient water heater.",
"Your home probably has older shower controls without a pressure balancing valve."
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[],
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2s2krf | Question about North American arrow heads. | 1. Was there any broad use of copper arrow-heads pre-Columbian?
2. Was there any broad use of iron arrow-heads post-Columbian?
How long did it take to transition to blackpowder weapons for non military use on the East Coast. If we need a specific *place*, then let's go with the Leatherstocking tales: up-state New York. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2s2krf/question_about_north_american_arrow_heads/ | {
"a_id": [
"cnlpeh7"
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"text": [
"In areas where natural copper could be found the nuggets were cold worked by natives into a variety of tools including arrowheads. One of these areas was located around the Great Lakes and is called the Old Copper Complex. Copper arrowheads and other tools were also used in Alaska and the Yukon. \n\nThe use of copper was completely dependent on the availability of naturally occurring copper that did not need to be smelted. "
]
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|
7tqo02 | Why can extreme hot weather cause mass power outages/blackouts? | Just recently in Australia we had an extremely hot day which caused a mass blackout of more then 50,000 houses. Why does this happen? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7tqo02/why_can_extreme_hot_weather_cause_mass_power/ | {
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"text": [
"The main reason is that electricity usage is highest during heat waves, because everyone's air conditioning is running at full blast.\n\nThere's a second less important reason, which is that fossil fuel and nuclear power plants are less efficient in hot weather. They use outside air and/or water to cool their steam back to water to recycle back into the plant, and that doesn't work as well on a hot day.\n\nIn fact, it turns out there's a theorem of thermodynamics that says that the maximum possible efficiency of both heat engines (power plant) and refrigerators (air conditioners) is worse when the outside air is warmer.\n\n_URL_0_"
]
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| []
| [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot%27s_theorem_(thermodynamics)"
]
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1ohck4 | modern sociology claims that race is a social construct devoid of any biological foundation. if so, how does forensic science work, or anthropological dna-based migrational studies? | Is race a completely societal construct or is this just a sort of liberal well-wishing? If race is entirely socially constructed then how does the government get away with race-based financial aid? (affirmative action)
If race boils down to purely what one identifies as, then how is it deemed OK for the government to ask for your race in official forms? One would think that the ACLU or NAACP would challenge the government and abolish the notion of governmental distinctions based on race. Why doesn't this happen? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ohck4/eli5_modern_sociology_claims_that_race_is_a/ | {
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" > how does the government get away with race-based financial aid? (affirmative action)\n\nIt's a social construct, but the harm done to those communities was social, and still real. Let's say we make up a category \"ABCers\", and said you were a part of it, so you should be abused. Even if that category doesn't have any rational basis, you are still recognized as having faced the harm that came with being placed in that group.\n\nThe group might not have a completely scientific basis, but people treated it like it did, and affirmative action is an effort to help balance out some of those harms that still linger today. As long as racism exists, it's worth analyzing the impact race has.\n\nIn short, even though race is a social construct, it's still a social construct, which means it impacts society, and it's historical impact is still relevant.",
"There are no sociological characteristics that correspond 1:1 with skin color, which is how \"race\" is determined in the United States. That is not to say that skin color is not a biological trait that is passed from generation to generation. Rather, it simply means that behavioral traits we associate with certain races are not genetically linked to the phenotypical traits we use to define those races.\n\nIt may be true that the genes that facilitate becoming a violin virtuoso are disproportionately found among people whose ancestors come from Asia. But these genes are not linked in any way to something like epicanthic folds. Also, genes for dark skin are dominant over genes for fair skin, but other, invisible genes from a white parent may be dominant over those from a black parent. Thus, we see Barack Obama as the first black President because we key in on what we can see, but he's just as white as he is black. We call Tiger Woods a great black golfer, but investigate his racial heritage. I think he is actually 1/4 black. These are the kinds of things that sociologists mean when they say race is a social construction. \n\nMany sociology professors articulate this poorly, partly because it is a very abstract concept, and partly because they aren't in the business of explaining abstract concepts, but rather in political indoctrination. But I'm a sociologist and I don't want to indoctrinate anyone and I assure you that skin color is not a primary characteristic that geneticists use to identify haplogroups.\n\nNEVERTHELESS, lumping people together into a social group will cause them to behave in reaction to society as if they are a \"real\" group. Affirmative action is not an attempt to ameliorate problems caused by skin color. These policies are designed to ameliorate problems caused by people who think that skin color means something more than how far from the equator your ancestors were when they evolved.",
"The reason there is pro-minority legislation is because of segregation and minorities being excluded from admittance to college or hiring at many companies. Pro-minority legislation was a way to force companies to diversify their staff and college to accept minority students. Slavery had been abolished by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, but Racial Segregation in legislation in many states continued until 1965 under the Jim Crow laws.",
"Race is a well defined construct that can be scientifically measured.\n\nThe idea that race is a societal construct comes from a paper by Lewontin, where he showed no *single* genetic marker can determine a person's race. I.e., in any individual trait, the variation *within* a race is much larger than the variation *between* races, where \"race\" in this case is just a set of arbitrary tags. (I.e., samples were labelled \"black\", \"white\", etc, and then he ran statistical tests to see if any genetic marker was correlated with those labels.)\n\nIn mathematical terms, he showed that for a set of factors x1, x2, ..., xn, you cannot differentiate between races based on any individual factor. He concluded that race must not exist as a meaningful scientific quantity. This is a great story and fits popular narratives. \n\nUnfortunately, it is also a mathematical fallacy, now labelled \"Lewontin's Fallacy\". To illustrate the fallacy, lets do some (over)simple(ified) geometry. \n\nImagine people have 3 traits, and can be represented as vectors (x1,x2,x3). Suppose one group of people (say whites) are clustered around the point (0,0,0) in a sphere of radius 0.86. Suppose a second group of people (say blacks) are clustered around the point (1,1,1) in a sphere of radius 0.86. In any individual trait (say x1), whites are located in the region [-0.86, 0.86] while blacks are located in the region [.13, 1.86]. There is substantial overlap in these regions, i.e. variation within races is larger than variation between races.\n\nHowever, in 3 dimensions, these two spheres don't overlap at all. They are located a distance sqrt(3) apart from each other, and have radius slightly smaller than sqrt(3)/2. They are distinct subpopulations. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nIt's also worth emphasizing that races defined this way are merely an empirical description of populations. If the populations change, races can split or vanish. I.e., if a third population existed near the point (0.5, 0.5, 0.5), then there would be no separation between (0,0,0) and (1,1,1). We would have 3 overlapping balls forming a single solid, not 2 solids with an air gap between them. \n\nAlso, it's worth noting that actual genetic racial subpopulations don't necessarily correlate with US census categories. If I remember right, there are something like 9 separate races in Africa, 3 in Europe (Caucasians, Gypsies, Ashkenazi Jews) and 2 in the Americas (Andean, non-Andean). Caucasians are one gigantic racial category which includes everyone from Britain to India. \n\n",
"This is one of those areas of human knowledge that clashes too much with our politics. Considering the progress that's been made over the last 50 odd years in regards to civil rights and racial politics re minorities, its very touchy and sensitive to talk about race scientifically. Because a lot of the attitudes towards race that are now outdated and taboo, were closely connected to the scientific study of race, or scientific racism. \n\nNevertheless, race is a biological reality, facts are facts no matter how we feel about them or how much trouble it causes humans to encounter them. ",
" > Is race a completely societal construct or is this just a sort of liberal well-wishing?\n\nA little bit of both.\n\nSociology and anthropology has a dark and uncomfortably recent history of trying to put various races and ethnic groups into to neat little boxes of varying characteristics and abilities. These social biases let to a lot of bad science.\n\nThese days, they have swung the other way with the who social construct thing. For some definitions of \"race\" and \"social construct\", this holds true, but it mask the reality that there are biological differences, and it is useful to understand them. Pretending that Asians aren't lactose intolerant and blacks don't have high incidences of heart disease doesn't help anyone.\n\nIt is also interesting to know the increasing tendancy to consider gender a social construct."
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fhhp61 | why do things we do on the internet begin with "e-" instead of "i" for internet? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fhhp61/eli5_why_do_things_we_do_on_the_internet_begin/ | {
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"\"e-\" stands for \"electronic\". \n\nRegular mail is sent on physical paper, but \"e-mail\" is sent *electronically*. It's \"e(lectronic) mail\"."
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3j0was | How did cups become a symbol for victory? | Nearly all sporting events at the highest levels are competing for a literal "cup" of some sort. Where did this come from? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3j0was/how_did_cups_become_a_symbol_for_victory/ | {
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"hi! always room for more info on this, but you can get started on this earlier post\n\n* [Why are trophies often cups?](_URL_0_) - featuring responses from /u/TheJucheisLoose and /u/ConventionalAlias\n\nif you have follow-up questions on this locked post, ask them here & page the relevant user by including their username"
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"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1nrnji/why_are_trophies_often_cups/"
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357wnj | if i leave the milky way, am i immediately in another galaxy or in a big empty part of space with different galaxies to choose from? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/357wnj/eli5_if_i_leave_the_milky_way_am_i_immediately_in/ | {
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"There are large empty spaces between galaxies that have almost no matter in them at all. Except maybe dark matter, but we still don't understand that well",
"If you left the Milky Way, you'd be floating out in deep space. The galaxies are not all touching each other. There's staggeringly huge distances of empty space between them, usually. \n\nGranted, if you wait about 4 billion years and *then* leave, you could find yourself moving out of the Milky Way and into the Andromeda galaxy, since Andromeda and the Milky Way are currently on a collision course.",
"You're in a big lot of nothing.\n\nConsider how much it took to get to the Moon from Earth. If you scale up the Earth to the Milky Way (100 light years), there's about the same amount of relative space between the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. It's mostly nothing out there.\n\nPut another way, you are more likely to be in sight of a boat from a random point in the ocean as you are to be in a galaxy in a random part of the universe. ",
"Space is called space for a reason. Even inside galaxies, there's more empty vacuum than you can shake a telescope at.\n\nFor an example- here's a graphic of the solar system to scale including empty space. The planets aren't as perfectly packed as one might assume looking at a textbook.\n\n_URL_0_"
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d1io73 | why can't doctors diagnose cte in a living person? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d1io73/eli5_why_cant_doctors_diagnose_cte_in_a_living/ | {
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"Because the physical degeneration thought to be involved in CTE can only be observed in autopsies. It doesn't really show readily or conclusively is regular brain scans which look for neuron activity or chemical processes. Cracking open a living person's skull soley for research or diagnosis purposes in a very risky surgery is a rather tough sell for an ethical comittee.",
"It's not that it's impossible, it's just that doctors currently have no way to do it. There are apparently some promising leads towards testing for it non-invasively through blood tests or brain scans, but those are still in the trial phase.\n\nUntil then, the only way to definitively diagnose it is to dissect the person's brain. Obviously that can't be done to a living person."
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tkkr5 | if clouds are water in a gaseous state (aren't they?), why aren't they at a greater than boiling temperature, and is evaporating water boiling? | There is nothing better than explaining something you know well to an IRL 5 year old to realise you, in fact, know very little.
I was explaining the water cycle to my 5 year old, and he answered quite sensibly (I have recently been explaining to him the states of matter) 'so clouds are boiling hot?'
Whilst I am guessing that clouds are more water vapour than gaseous, what is the distinction? Also, is water evaporating to form clouds actually reaching boiling temperature to transform from a liquid state? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/tkkr5/eli5_if_clouds_are_water_in_a_gaseous_state_arent/ | {
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"Let me try to put this in a 5YO level of understanding. \n\nRemember when it was December and you went outside and you could see your breath? That was water vapor. The water inside you was not boiling. If it was, you would have been boiling, and we don't want that to happen. \n\nRemember in the summer when you felt that cold water pipe and there was water droplets on it? The pipe was cold, but there was cold water drops on it. \n\nThen in the fall when I took you camping and you saw the mist over the lake when I woke you up to go fishing. You saw the mist even though it was too cold for you to get out of your sleeping bag. \n\nClouds work the same way. The cold air can hold water vapor. For reasons that will have to wait until you get into a good college, warm air can hold more water vapor. The thing is that the water vapor wants to hang out together in colder areas. If the air gets full enough of this water vapor, you see clouds. The warmer the air is, the higher the clouds will have to be, usually. \n\nThere is still a lot of stuff about atmospheric pressure and transference of heat that you will have to ask your mother about, but why not, it's Mother's Day. Go wake her up while I make breakfast. ",
"water is always evaporating (except when its really cold, like close to freezing) evaporating just means that a water molecule had enough energy to escape from a glass of water. The reason why clouds exist has to do with air pressure and dirt. water evaporates into the sky, due to the fact that water is always evaporating (increasingly so when the air pressure is low and it's a hot day or the sun is shinning down), then as the water molecules rise (in a state known as water vapor, or water in a gas state) and condense (go from gas to liquid) into clouds. The clouds themselves are a mixture of liquid and gaseous water, sometimes even solid if it is hailing, and dirt. Dirt is very important in holding together water molecules in clouds.\n\nI took a lot of liberties in this to try to make it LI5 material, but this is the basic gist. \n\nThis has a nice visual and further 5 year old reading on the matter:\n\n_URL_0_"
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yzhh1 | is x86 software made for 32-bit os or 64-bit? | I know there is x86 and 64, but I don't know which to use. In the case of, say, a Java download, do I want to download the x86 version for my 64-bit Windows 7?
Solved: I thought x86 was 64-bit, thus the confusion. Thanks guys. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yzhh1/eli5_is_x86_software_made_for_32bit_os_or_64bit/ | {
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"If it just says x86 then it is probably 32-bit. It will still work just fine, but unless you have a reason otherwise, you should typically get the 64-bit version, which should be labeled x86_64.",
"BiPolah is right, x86 means 32 bit, a 64 bit OS can run 32 or 64 bit code, however a 32 bit can't run 64 bit code.\n\nIf you have a 64 bit OS then get the 64 version of what you download, it will be slightly faster than 32, although rarely it can be more buggy.",
"Microsoft's terms for 32-bit and 64-bit software are x86 and x64, respectively."
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ep4rxl | what is the simplest way to explain gauss' law and how its used? (algebra based physics) thank you in advance | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ep4rxl/eli5_what_is_the_simplest_way_to_explain_gauss/ | {
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"You can tell how much charge is in an enclosed space by looking at the electric field along the boundary."
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27pz6g | Was the Sherman tank a name resented by US soldiers from the south during WWII? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/27pz6g/was_the_sherman_tank_a_name_resented_by_us/ | {
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"If this question isn't relevant, feel free to remove mods.\n\nGiven the nicknames M3 Lee, M3 Stuart, M3 Grant, and M4 Sherman, why were Union and Confederate general names given to tanks, or any modern weapons for that matter?",
"Follow-up question: Was it common knowledge among Americans that the M4 medium tank was nicknamed the Sherman by the British?",
"It was never commonly called the Sherman by American forces during the war, it wasn't until after the war that the name was adopted by the Americans. To the Americans the Sherman was the M4 or M4 Medium for much of the war.\n\nIt was the British who gave the Sherman that name^1 and used it in official documents, so for the British an M4A1 was a Sherman II while an M4A4 was a Sherman V. \n\nThe Americans in general did not name their tanks until late in the war. Names like ~~Wolverine for the M10~~ and Priest for the M7 were all inventions of the British and in the case of the ~~M10 it was not a popular name~~. If I recall correctly the M24 Chaffee was the first American tank to officially have a name attached to it by the Americans.\n\n^1 Steven Zaloga - Armored Thunderbolt, pg. 34\n\nEdit: According to [this](_URL_0_) post by solipsistnation the name Wolverine for the M10 was a post war invention, I was always under the impression that it was a name invented by the British but it was one that never stuck. I have edited my post to reflect that.",
"/u/TheHIV123's answer is correct from my research but many Southerners still hold a lot of resentment towards Union Generals and Military Governors. Some southerners still dislike Sherman, for his march to the sea and destroying Atlanta, and Benjamin Butler, Political Governor of New Orleans and Union General, calling him Beast Butler because of declaration of slaves as contrabands of war during the Civil War. "
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31n4fd | Do we really know anything about Mayan warfare? | Of course many Mayan books and records were destroyed by the Spanish, and there are countless archaeological sites that haven't been excavated or even found yet, but right now our knowledge of the Maya is quite limited, only deciphering most of the glyphs relatively recently. So I ask the question, do we know anything about their practices in warfare beyond basic weapon knowledge? How big were their battles? Did they practice total war or more ceremonial? Were the average Maya citizens called upon to form an army? What notable Mayan military leaders are there? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/31n4fd/do_we_really_know_anything_about_mayan_warfare/ | {
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"Maya records do give us a good look at the nature of (and possible motivations for) a variety of military endeavors. Let's take a look at a few.\n\n* Palenque and Calakmul were two of the many pairs of constantly competing city states, located just south of the Tabasco region in southern Mexico. Sometime around 608 AD, Palenque, led by Ajen Yol Mat, began expanding it's control to the northeast, towards the direction of Calakmul. Calakmul's rulers, who styled themselves \"snake lords,\" did not take very kindly to this. The Lord Scroll Serpent retaliated in 610 AD and for months sacked (the Mayan verb is literally \"axed\") cities on his route to Palenque itself. In these battles, Ajen Yol Mat and and brother/second in command Janab' Pakal the Elder were killed, and Palenque would be in its darkest days.\n\n* During this troublesome period, in 603, a fellow named K'inich Janaab' Pakal 1 (\"Sacred Flower Shield the First\") was born. The aforementioned deaths of so many royals left him as the next best candidate for succession, even if it was a matrilineal claim. His mother, Ix Sak K'uk', effectively ruled from 615 until the young king was capable. K'nicich Janaab' Pakal 1 would become Palenque's greatest ruler, reigning 68 years, constructing its most impressive monuments, and, of course, executing successful military campaigns. Around 650, Janaab' Pakal began reasserting Palenque's northern and eastern frontiers. Yet again, Calakmul got cranky and marched towards Palenque, \"axing\" it once more in 654. But it was not the same degree of blow as before, and Palenque quickly retaliated, capturing Calakmul's allied city Pomona, sacrificing its leaders, and installing member\ns of Palenque's own dynasty on the throne.\n\n* Yaxchilan, to the southwest of Palenque, was one of the first sites to have a mostly complete timeline of rulers established. One anomaly, though, sticks out. One ruler, Shield Jaguar 1, died on December 1, 741. The next ruler would not be seated on the throne until May 3, 752. This man called himself Bird-Jaguar IV, was the sun of a \"Lady Eveningstar,\" and, curiously, appears nowhere in the records until his accession. Even curioser: we know that Lady Eveiningstar was from Calakmul and a secondary wife of Shield Jaguar 1, most likely a political marriage. But Shield Jaguar's Queen consort, Lady Xoc, was an incredibly popular and powerful woman; why should her son not rule? Well, if we look at Bird Jaguar IV's activities, it's clear that he was purveying an enormous amount of propaganda: inserting himself into historical scenes, showing him and his mother alongside important individuals doing rituals, and comminsioning images of him capturing all varieties of enemies. Bird Jaguar IV's name is also frequently followed by numerous titles: \"Captor of Lord Jeweled Skull,\" \"He of 20 Captives,\" and \"Captor of Aj Uk.\" (A rather common tradition) He uses these titles from the very beginning of his reign, before he could have led many military campaigns. And over at Piedras Negras, a rival of Yaxchilan, we find an inscription showing a captured noble from between 741 and 752, a noble many consider to be the missing son of Lady Xoc. Put this together, and we have a picture of a Classic Maya *Game of Thrones*: queens, brothers, and some opportunist neighbors vying for succession after the death of a highly successful king.\n\nAs you can see, military efforts in the Classic Maya lowlands were often quite political. Kingdoms were competing over land and influence over surrounding, smaller towns. Nobles were competing for thrones when succession was unsure. And in each situation, the victors were taking important figures captive and sacrificing them, and then gracing themselves with titles of \"Captor.\""
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1v6dhe | Why was North Vietnam able to field such a massive army that easily over-ran the south when the Americans left? Why did the south not have a more capable or large enough army to hold them off? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1v6dhe/why_was_north_vietnam_able_to_field_such_a/ | {
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"In pure numbers the Army of South Vietnam was of a similar size to that of the North. However the tactical position they were faced with in 73 could not have been more dissimilar. The North had good control of it's territory, an experienced army with a stable command structure, and a large groundswell of support in the regions it was moving into. The South lacked all of those. The distinction between North Vietnam and South Vietnam hides the fact that it was not two states at war, but a civil war, with civilians having mixed loyalties on both sides of the border*.\n\nWhile by 1973 it is true that a large number of the communist aligned troops operating in South Vietnam were North Vietnamese the first decade of the conflict was characterised by South Vietnamese fighters on both sides engaging in irregular conflict in the areas south of the Cambodia-Laos border, and a somewhat more conventional war in the North-South border regions. \n\nThe result of this continuous engagement in South Vietnam resulted in a far greater number of casualties of in South Vietnam (both sides of the conflict) than in the North, leading to an Army that was accepting a far wider range of recruits (including actively courting non-Viet Cong aligned militia/warlords). This ongoing guerilla conflict also meant that by the time the Americans withdrew there were significant portions of South Vietnam that were not under direct control of the Government in Saigon.\n\n*The 63 coup saw the end of any significant support for the Saigon Government in North Vietnam, but even before that the social strata each group drew their support from as well as the rhetoric by which they constructed their legitimacy meant that loyalists in the North were more likely to migrate/flee than leftists in the South. ",
"[I've answered this previously in this thread.](_URL_0_)\n\nThe period we're going to speak about is completely focused on conventional warfare, as opposed to the asymmetrical warfare in which the Vietnam War (the American portion of it) had largely been fought. With the exception of two major occasions, the Tét offensive in 1968 and the Nguyen Hue (Easter) Offensive in 1972, the People's Army of (North) Vietnam and the Army of the Republic of (South) Vietnam (henceforth abridged as PAVN and ARVN) had never truly faced of against each other in a conventional battle. In fact, one of the main reasons for the ARVN's failure in conducting proper counterinsurgency is that it had been trained since 1955 to repel an expected invasion from the North. When the time came for the PAVN to face off against ARVN in the Easter Offensive of 1972, the PAVN suffered several losses and was ultimately beaten back by the ARVN with help from American fire support. The PAVN had yet to perfect combined arms tactics and suffered greatly because of it. The ordinary ARVN soldier, who is usually the scorn of popular history on the Vietnam War, labelled as nothing but incompetent and coward soldiers, showed remarkable courage and fighting ability in fighting the Tét offensive (alongside American troops) and the Easter Offensive (practically on their own with American advisors or special forces). \n\nSo if the ARVN had managed to fight off the PAVN in 1972, what went so disastrously wrong in 1975? \n\nThere are several reasons for this. \n\nThe Americans had left Vietnam two years previously and while all equipment and machinery had been left behind for the South Vietnamese to use, they were practically useless without ammunition or spare parts - items which the US were not prepared to supply. While President Gerald Ford tried to gain support in Congress to increase the money given to South Vietnam, the ARVN found itself in an ammunition shortage. Since the US were not prepared to help South Vietnam with fire support like in the previous two conventional encounters, it would be an increasingly difficult task to stem the tide of North Vietnamese crossing the DMZ. The PAVN was also superior in numbers, having increased in size and improved itself during late 1973, but which had been constantly developing since 1968. PAVN had several veteran units, and plenty of soldiers in the PAVN had combat experience and were of rather high quality. Unlike the 1972 offensive, combined tactics training had been carried out and improvement on collaboration had been achieved. Combine this with competent generals and commanders in the field as well as sound and proper preparation for the offensive (in particular when it came to logistics and transportation) as well as the successful use of deception tactics to disguise that Ban Me Thuot was the target of the initial 1975 offensive.\n\nThe ARVN by this time was unfortunately still plagued with the corruption of senior officers and with widespread lack of proper training. However, when put to the test, the average ARVN soldier could stand his ground. To say that the North crushed the South instantly is perhaps too much of an exaggeration. ARVN stood its ground on plenty of battlefields, right up to the end at Xuan Loc. However, we have to consider the human factor in this and many soldiers feared for possible reprisals. Considering the importance of family in Vietnamese culture, it was only natural for men to desert to seek up their family amongst the refugees, but there are also plenty of ARVN soldiers who used the thought of protecting their families as their prime motivations in fighting. \n\nIn the end, it was simply too much for an already weakened ARVN. Without fire support, without the necessary equipment, spare parts or ammunition and with the enemy close to their families, it became too much for them to bear. After the fall of Ban Me Thuot President Thieu decided to evacuate the Central Highlands and effectively cut South Vietnam in two. The final collapse came soon thereafter.\n\nTo read more on this and the 1975 offensive, I'd recommend Gorge J. Veith's *Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam 1974-75*."
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4ghjrd | i often hear how states around the country are hemorrhaging due to the lack of teachers, why isn't there a greater demand for teachers? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ghjrd/eli5_i_often_hear_how_states_around_the_country/ | {
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"There is a demand in terms of students who need teachers. But the lack is due to the budgets of the states, who tend to undervalue teachers, as is traditional.",
"There is a great demand for teachers, there is not a enough budget for them. Teachers in most places are extremely underpaid. ",
"In economics, \"demand\" does not just mean \"desire\". It means \"desire with ability and willingness to pay\".\n\nIf I sure like almonds, but am not willing and able to pay for them, then that is not a \"demand\".",
"Hard to get people to take a job where they are under paid, under respected, and over worked.",
"It seems to be a compounding problem, from a financial standpoint. \nEducation is funded from a fairly-localized tax base. \n\nIf unemployment goes up, people may try to move their families to where the jobs are, which leaves the schools with fewer students and therefore a need for fewer teachers. However, the funding available to the schools decreases significantly with fewer people paying taxes, but there are the same costs for facilities and maintenance, materials, busing, administration, and even perhaps increased costs for school programs to help the less-fortunate or struggling families (like before/after school programs, food programs, etc). Classes may be combined to save teacher salary costs, which both lowers achievement of the students and puts more teachers out of work. Teacher positions might sit vacant for years, in spite of a clear need, until the jobs come back in the community. That's one scenario.\n\nIf employment is high, and schools are filled with students from tax-paying families, they can be limited by the facilities themselves (not enough classroom space which makes overcrowding) and the expectation from parents and the public that the schools have the latest technology can overshadow the need for more teachers. It could be 10 years before another school is built and staffed, by which time the need for those teachers/schools may have graduated already. Current students often get lost in the shuffle and don't achieve to their potential, which basically results in the same scenario as the first one: overly-full classrooms, and the need for more teachers so students can get the attention and guidance they need to succeed.\n\nIn both cases, there is an educational need for more teachers, and a desire on the part of the students and parents for more teachers. However, school boards/tax-collecting bodies either may not want to put teacher positions high in their financial priorities even though they can afford it, or they want to pay for them but they can't.\n\n...plus what MOS95B said.",
"Because the governments of Mississippi or Idaho or whatever don't have the funds or the will to pay teachers and other professionals sufficiently to compensate them for the drain on their quality of life that comes with living in Mississippi or Idaho or whatever.\n\nUp here in Ontario the Province often gives huge incentives to doctors willing to practice in small towns. I'm not even talking remote communities 1000km inland from Hudson Bay. I'm talking places like Lindsay or Chatham, which have all the creature comforts of modernity. They'll give you a free house, a free car, all sorts of goodies for your kids, and a big bump in salary. Still no-one takes the offer up. A big house and some pretty scenery is not a worthwhile tradeoff to an educated professional for living amidst career stagnation surrounded by backwater hicks. Oh you're the best doctor in Penatanguishene? I hope the other guy doesn't mind you saying that, he'd get quite upset. Too bad about the neighbour kids calling you a towelhead and throwing rocks at your car. I'm sure they'll accept you as a human being one day. You're still stealing their jobs somehow though. Anyways, can't stick around to talk about the weather the head of the WHO is coming to meet the head of my department at Mt. Sinai.\n\nNow imagine instead of just some run-of-the-mill ignorants who don't know better you find a hundred million or so inbred methheads, all swarming across a vast swath of a continent, turning huge parts of it into a monotonous array of strip malls and parking lots and churches the size of stadiums, running you over with their roll-coal ballsack-adorned pickup trucks, shooting out the window at passing kids, voting and funding governments in 20 or 30 jurisdictions who cannot afford and are unwilling to pony up the huge incentives needed to make this sort of existence tolerable. Having to wear body armour to work because some religious fanatics are trying to kill you for prescribing birth control. Getting bricks through your window because Norma Jean and Billy Ray find your recommendation that their 17 kids eat food and drink water instead of a sack a' p'ttaytuh chups and 6 gallons of cacola \"uppity\".\n\nNow imagine that you work in education, which these people consider an existential threat, and on any given day some 4chan castoff can walk in and gun down your entire class and the whole town will turn on you and scream death threats at you for being a shill for the federal government, making up stories about kids being killed so Obama can take away their guns.\n\nNo thank you.",
"In Finland, teachers are well paid and highly respected. In contrast, in the US, teachers are frequently attacked politically, and are often low paid (some states or districts do pay decently, but those often have a higher cost of living in general, which does offset it). \n\nIn several states, there was a decision to underfund public schooling in general after segregation was declared illegal. Which adds to the crisis. "
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