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rh5zl | Why does my voice tend to go higher around new company or in formal situations? | I notice that when I'm at work or talking with a new acquaintance I usually speak in a higher pitch but when I become more comfortable I'll speak in my normal voice. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/rh5zl/why_does_my_voice_tend_to_go_higher_around_new/ | {
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"Higher pitched voices are often perceived as less threatening. So it is a way of reassuring new people you are not a threat. It could also be the excitement of meeting a new person being expressed as a higher pitch."
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1rkgwb | Is it possible to cryogenically freeze an entire ovary to save the eggs for later? | With modern medicine, is it possible to save an entire ovary through cryopreservation for future children? Or do the eggs have to go through some additional menstrual development in order to become viable? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1rkgwb/is_it_possible_to_cryogenically_freeze_an_entire/ | {
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"I don't believe we've reached a point where we can 'revive' tissue after cryopreservation. In the case of gametes and embryos, special freezing media is required to protect them from cold shock and freezing damage. Cryoprotectants such as low density lipoproteins and glycerol stabilise the plasma membrane during chilling and replace intracellular fluid to prevent ice crystals forming within the cell. As the follicular fluid does not have these properties, I doubt the oocytes would survive being frozen within the ovary itself."
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9am27c | how do we know that pet euthanasia is truly painless? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9am27c/eli5_how_do_we_know_that_pet_euthanasia_is_truly/ | {
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"First, I'm sorry to hear you're going through this. It's the absolute worst part of owning a pet.\n\nTo answer your question, though, pet euthanasia is essentially done with a large dose of anesthesia. Have you ever had surgery? It's the same process, but with an alternative end. The feeling you felt while being put under is the same feeling your pet will feel. No pain at all. They'll slowly drift away peacefully."
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5v34pk | Why not send a drone to Mars that can recharge with solar panels? | Since the Martian atmosphere is 0.6% of Earth's air density, the propellers will have to generate 166.6 times more thrust. However, since gravity is only 38% of Earth, 166.6 x 0.38 = 63.3 times more thrust. Why not increase the size of the propellers 8 fold? This will create 64 times the surface area and 64 times the thrust. Spinning huge propellers shouldn't be a problem because they won't face much air resistance. | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5v34pk/why_not_send_a_drone_to_mars_that_can_recharge/ | {
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"NASA is considering the possibility of a helicopter drone for a future Mars mission. You can read about this [from NASA](_URL_3_), as well as some articles on others sites, such as [this](http://www._URL_0_/28360-nasa-mars-helicopter-drone.html) (from _URL_0_) and [this](https://www._URL_1_/extreme/229937-nasa-testing-helicopter-drone-to-accompany-next-mars-rover) (from _URL_1_).\n\nThough it's a different kind of thing, there is also consideration of a [glider](_URL_5_).",
"I feel of you were to send a flying drone to Mars a major issue would be latency, a very high latency from Earth is already dangerous for rovers and unless we can make a device that can fly predictably I feel if something goes wrong we wouldn't be able to know or fix it in time due to latency.",
"Martian dust is an important mention here. Due to the small size of dust grains and the low gravity, they are lifted very easily and stay suspended in the atmosphere. The lack of humidity also allows them to stay afloat for a long time.\n\nThanks to wind erosion, dust grains are rounded, which makes them far less abrasive than lunar dust. However it is still very harmful as it can clog bearings (or any moving parts for that matter), damage camera lenses or cover solar panels. In fact, one of the goals of Curiosity's \"skycrane\" was to keep the retrorockets as far as possible from the ground to minimize the amount of lifted dust. The Spirit rover had already lost function of one of its wheels due to dust in the bearings before it got stuck in a sand pit.\n\nAlso flying with an upwards propeller requires a lot of energy. The drone would take few short flights of few minutes in length and stay on charge mode for a long time. These frequent landings and takeoffs would lift dust every time making things worse.\n\nOf course it's not impossible, just a huge engineering challenge that makes rovers preferable in many cases.\n\nThe other comment gave some links about a flying drone. Hopping robots and walking robots have also been already thought of, see \"Introduction to Space Robotics\" by Giancarlo Genta. The greatest advantage of wheels is their low energy requirement, though of course, they have trouble on harsh terrains.\n",
"In short, there will never be a self-powered drone or helicopter on Mars. The reason has everything to do with lift.\n\nOn Mars, as you stated, the atmosphere is incredibly thin at only 0.02kg/m^3. Now lets look at wings; fundamentally, a wing generates lift by creating an area of higher static pressure on the underside. This is done by accelerating the flow over the top and taking advantage of Bernoulli's Equation which states that:\n\n\nTotal Pressure = Static Pressure + Dynamic Pressure\n\nwhere: Dynamic Pressure = 0.5*(density)*(velocity)^2\n\n\nNow we know that the total pressure remains the same at a constant altitude so lets look at the surface which has a total pressure of 600 pascals (Pascal=N/m^2). Now lets say that we need a drone that has a mass of 250kg because it will be carrying scientific instruments (The curiosity rover's dry mass was 899kg). And, due to volume constraints set by the launch provider, our maximum wingspan is 10m and the chord length is 1m giving us a wing area of 10m^2.\n\n\nNow, we need to generate enough lift to keep this 250kg drone in the air so lets take a look at the numbers. The weight of the drone will be 250kg*G where G=9.81m/s*0.38. Thus, the weight on mars is 932 N. We need 932N of lift to stay flying. \n\n\nLift Equation = (Coefficient of Lift)*(Dynamic Pressure)*(Wing Area)\n\nSo if we divide by the total wing area and we set Cl = 1, which is typical for many airfoils, we get a dynamic pressure of 93.2N/m^2. Now lets break the formula down further.\n\n93.2N/m^(2) =(0.5)*(density)*(velocity)^2\n\n9320 = (velocity)^2\n\nVelocity = 96.5m/s = 216mph\n\n\nNow, we have done some back of the envelope calculations and have found that our 250kg drone needs to get up to 216mph just to stay flying but here comes the real kicker... We need to make enough thrust. So what? Well, we decide to make the propellers bigger, but now the mass has increased and once again we need to increase the velocity again and now we have become stuck in a cycle where we need to continue throwing more mass at the problem and it's still not going away. (Also fundamentally you may have a misunderstanding of how a propeller works, the act of the propeller generating thrust actually induces drag into the propeller so when you say \"Spinning huge propellers shouldn't be a problem because they won't face much air resistance.\" it is actually a misconception. However much thrust you generate is directly related to the drag you generate, it does not depend on air resistance.)\n\n\nBottom line is by trying to build a drone you end up with a much more heavy design (and with space travel more mass=more money). So now the question becomes why do we want a drone? Instead of putting lots of mass and money into making large wings and big propellers why can't we put all of that mass into building a nice satellite that can orbit Mars and take pictures? Why can't we build another rover to do ground work? And the real question is: What does a drone add in terms of science that we cannot get any other way? And the answer is that it doesn't. By building rovers and orbiters we can get much more science because we can spend our money on instruments instead of material and mass to make a cow fly on mars.\n\n\nOverall, Engineering is all about trying to come up with the best solutions and sadly self-powered drones will never belong on Mars. That is not to say though that we won't send drones to other areas in our solar system! As an undergrad I worked with a professor who was testing inflatable wings for a UAV design for Titan, the atmosphere is extremely dense, and in that case a drone can get more science than an orbiter because it could get below the cloud cover. Plus, planes love denser air always!\n\n\n\nedit: fixed equation format"
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5p2gx1 | Conspiracy people claim the Apollo Astronauts would have been killed by radiation outside of the protection of the Van Allen Belt. How much of this is pseudo science? | EDIT: Thanks everyone, I didn't believe the conspiracies, just wanted some clear arguements that shot it down. I don't know much about the Subject of radiation in space, so your answers have been very educational! | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5p2gx1/conspiracy_people_claim_the_apollo_astronauts/ | {
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"Well all of it. Apollo 11 that carried Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin was deliberately launched from the descending node of the geomagnetic plane specifically so that it would be almost completely out of reach of the Van Allen Belts by the time it was far enough away from the Earth to no longer be protected. The trajectory was carefully planned, is very well known, and you can verify this fact for yourself.\n\nThe Van Allen Belts aren't like a sphere of death that surrounds the planet.\n\nedit: Also, the title of the post seems to insinuate that space everywhere is deadly radiant and the \"Van Allen Belt\" is something that protects from it. This is almost the opposite of the truth, the background radiation in space is not terribly harmful, it's the Van Allen Belts themselves that are a deadly concentration of radiation.",
"Well, they're not entirely wrong... but it takes a while for radiation to kill you. A recent study found that the Apollo astronauts died from cardiovascular disease at a rate 4-5 times higher than that of astronauts who only traveled to low earth orbit (where the ISS is) or had never flown. \n\nThe entire paper can be found here for free: [Apollo Lunar Astronauts Show Higher Cardiovascular Disease Mortality: Possible Deep Space Radiation Effects on the Vascular Endothelium](_URL_0_)",
"They did **risk** severe exposure once they left the Earth's magnetosphere, but fortunately no ill-timed solar eruptions took place.\n\nThere *was* a large solar storm in August 1972, 4 months after Apollo 16, 4 months before Apollo 17. Had astronauts been on the lunar surface when that event occurred, the radiation dose may have been deadly/life-threatening.",
"The pseudo science is in saying that this means the Apollo missions couldn't have happened. The sun does now and then, kick out bursts of radiation that would have killed the Apollo crew. NASA was well aware of that, and also knew that there is a degree of predictability to these events, so that the mission could take place when the probability of such an event was low.\n\nThe normal levels of radiation that the sun kicks out, and the Van Allen belts protect us from, the Apollo crew got in full measure, but it wasn't lethal, though it probably took some time off their clocks."
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80i8b7 | how does the body store water? | After we drink water, where does it go?
Does it just sit in your stomach or does it get stored somewhere until we need to use it for something? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/80i8b7/eli5how_does_the_body_store_water/ | {
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"It gets absorbed and distributed throughout all your cells within your body. It's not really stored anywhere, but when your cells are at a nice hydrated state, any access water that enters your body will go to your bladder, which is why the more water you drink, the clearer, or more like water, your urine gets. "
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eh7fbl | Why did Japan and South Korea turn into a democratic state with little corruption but other East Asian countries did not? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/eh7fbl/why_did_japan_and_south_korea_turn_into_a/ | {
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"I don't think that the premise of this question (that Japan and South Korea have avoided corruption, unlike the rest of East Asia) really holds up. If you look at the Economist's [Democracy Index](_URL_0_), and Transparency International's [Corruption Perceptions Index](_URL_1_), you'll find that things are a little more complicated in that region.\n\nYou're right that South Korea and Japan are at the top of the DI in Asia. But Taiwan is up there with them, and other East and Southeast Asian countries, such as Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, and Hong Kong are in the \"flawed democracy\" category as well (albeit at the lower end).\n\nOn the CPI, Singapore leads in East and Southeast Asia by a large margin, and is tied for the 3rd least-corrupt country in the world. Japan sits at number three in East/Southeast Asia, just behind Hong Kong. Taiwan is next, then South Korea, whose score of 57 puts it in the \"middling\" range, close to countries such as Rwanda and Costa Rica.\n\nTo address the question itself: When talking about the economies of these countries in the 20th century, economists like to refer to the \"Japanese Economic Miracle\" and the \"Miracle of the Four Asian Tigers\" (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong), essentially asking \"How did these five impoverished countries, ravaged by World War II, create their highly-developed economies within a generation?\" \\*\n\nLikely factors include: a high degree of state intervention in the economy, an emphasis on export-oriented policies, low taxes for foreign corporations, and early investment in infrastructure, technological innovation, and universal primary education. At the time, there were few limits to state power in any of these countries, so economic directives from the top could be implemented quickly and effectively. Some writers and politicians include a \"cultural\" factor into the mix, claiming that there is a certain set of \"Asian values\" such as hard work, stability, collective success, and respect toward authority. This same set of values was used to explain why these countries retained their authoritarian governments—until, of course, they didn't.\n\nSouth Korea and Taiwan both experienced peaceful democratic revolutions in the 1980s, a development that many political scientists attribute to their newly-educated, aspirational, and globally-aware young populations who wanted a greater say in their futures (both revolutions were initiated by student groups). And in 1993, Japan's Liberal Democratic Party, which had ruled the country since the end of the American occupation, lost their parliamentary majority for the first time and peacefully ceded power to the opposition, a huge milestone in solidifying democratic institutions in any country. Hong Kong and Singapore made democratic and transparency reforms during this period but never transitioned into fully democratic states.\n\nAnswering why a country did become a democratic state is a lot easier than speculating on why one didn't, so I'm not going to touch on the remainder of East and Southeast Asia. Suffice to say there's a whole lot of variation across the continent, and each country has its unique set of advantages and challenges.\n\n\\* Scholars are finally beginning to reconsider using the term \"miracle\" when discussing these developments. Using the term \"miracle\" implies that the success of these countries could have only come from sheer luck or an act of God, which feels pretty condescending."
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1p03gl | dual citizenship | What are the benefits and negatives to it? Why would someone want two citizenships? Are you responsible for both nation's laws? Do you pay two taxes? Can you come and go as you please? Do you have to have two houses? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1p03gl/eli5_dual_citizenship/ | {
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"Some countries allow dual citizenships but there are some countries which do not allow it. And then there are some countries which are very vague if they allow it or not. \n\n > Are you responsible for both nation's laws?\n\nAs a citizen or non-citizen, you are always responsible for any country's laws. And ignorance is never accepted as an excuse. \n\n > Do you pay two taxes?\n\nFor the most part, no. However, the one big exception to this rule is the USA. The USA demands that all USA citizens residing in the USA or abroad earning income, must file for their taxes. \n\nIt can get very complicated and expensive and for this reason many USA citizens living abroad have renounced their USA citizenship. \n\n > Can you come and go as you please?\n\nIf you have the money, yes. \n\n > Do you have to have two houses?\n\nThere is no requirement to own property. \n\n\n\n\n\n"
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aikt5j | what is standard error and confidence interval? | I was reading up on biostatistics and these words came up. I have a basic understanding of statistical terms like standard deviation etc. So feel free to use them. I have also understood this by myself at some point but I keep forgetting, meaning I have never really understood it in the true sense. Any help is appreciated. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aikt5j/eli5_what_is_standard_error_and_confidence/ | {
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"Both answers so far have been laymen's guesses at what are specific terms.\n\nStandard Error is an estimate, normally of the standard deviation from the mean of a population based on a sample. It's estimated by dividing the standard deviation of the sample by the square root of the sample size.\n\nIf you have a population of 100, and you sample 5 from the population, and you find the sample mean to be 3, you can simplisticly estimate that the mean of the population is 3. However, without considering the deviation from the sample mean, you can't begin to guess at how accurate your estimate is.\n\nIt is logical that if the five numbers in your sample are -102,100,3,-950,964, and the mean happens to be 3, then there's a good chance that the whole population also exhibits significant variation, and as a result, it is relatively unlikely that your mean is accurate.\n\nHowever, if the five numbers are, 2, 4, 3, 3, 3 then it suggests that your estimate of 3 is probably fairly accurate.\n\nIn the first case, the Standard Deviation of our sample is very high (as an example 676.24). We can then calculate our Standard Error as 676.24/sqrt(5), which is about 302.42.\n\nIn the second case, our standard deviation is just 0.71, so we can calculate our standard error as 0.71/sqrt(5), which is about 0.32.\n\nNote that this **isn't** an estimate of the population mean, it's an estimate of the accuracy of our sampling, and in particular, the standard deviation of the numbers produced by repeated sampling (ie: if we continued to sample repeatedly, then 302.42 is a good estimate of the standard deviation of the sample means).\n\nIn order to estimate the population mean, this is where we turn to confidence intervals. If we take our sample with the highest variation, then our estimates for the mean should range wildly, because the sample is not highly consistent. So let's say, we need to know estimate with 95% confidence what the mean will be. In this case, we'll need to provide a range.\n\nNow, we know what the Standard Error of our sample is (676.24), and we know that our sample mean was 3. Now what we need to do is refer to a magic table of numbers to find a multiplier that gives 95% confidence. These numbers will vary based on the type of distribution, etc., but for a normal distribution, we can use a multiplier of 1.96. So now, we can work out the upper bound of our confidence, which will be our mean plus the standard error multiplied by our magic number 3 + 676.24 \\* 1.96 = 1 328.43. We can use the same idea except with subtractions to estimate a lower bound: 3 - 676.24 \\* 1.96 = -1 322.43. So we can say that we are 95% confident that the population mean is between -1 322.43 and 1 328.43. This is called a **confidence interval**.\n\nWith our less varied sample, we can be 95% confident that the mean falls between 2.46 and 3.54 (see below maths).\n\n3 - 0.19 \\* 1.96 = 2.46\n\n3 + 0.19 \\* 1.96 = 3.54\n\nIn short:\n\n* **Standard Error** is an estimate of the accuracy of a specific statistical measure (most commonly the mean) based on the variation within a sample compared to the overall size of the population.\n* A **Confidence Interval** is a range within which a mean can be expected to fall with a specific level of confidence, based on the estimated accuracy of a sample\n\nThe two things work very closely together to help statisticians estimate the mean of a population based on the mean and the variation within a sample."
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23uklv | physiologically speaking, how do falls from heights kill people? | I mean, what actually kills the person? I understand if the sudden deceleration is big enough they might bleed out, or suffer internal bleeding, but how are people killed instantly from falls from heights? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23uklv/eli5_physiologically_speaking_how_do_falls_from/ | {
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"They can die from heart attacks, but mostly its the major organ failure caused by the sudden deceleration.",
"Its not the fall that kills you, its the sudden deceleration at the end.\n\nSo your body is tough, but its not unbreakable. Hitting concrete at 120 miles per hour (roughly terminal velocity for a human I believe) is a lot of force. \n\nSo your bones are breaking into pieces which is going to wreck, rip and tear all sorts of things in your body.\n\nMeanwhile your vital organs (which are being shredded by your now fragmented bones) are smashed into the ground or into the bones around them. This is not good for the organs and most of your insides would be pulp. This includes your brain which is not going to be in great shape having just smashed itself into your unyielding skull.\n\nThen the impact (and bones again) will probably break a lot of blood vessels so internal/external bleeding is a nasty option as well.\n\nEnd of the day, a whole lot of different stuff combines to just kill you. People have survived falls like this, but those are rare cases. ",
"Generally falls are mostly blunt force trauma.\n\nExtreme, full body blunt force trauma causes bones to break/shatter, organs to tear/rupture, broken bones can pierce and rip through soft tissue.\n\nDepending on how the person lands will determine what could kill them first. If the heart, brain, or lungs are preserved blood loss could do it (internal and external). \n\nSevere head trauma is a factor in near instant death otherwise the person is waiting to bleed out, have the heart stop from trauma or blood loss, or asphyxiation leading to cardiac arrest; really it's a bunch of stuff that are situation dependent. ",
"I hate to break it to you OP, but there's a good chance you won't be killed instantly. Luckily for you though, there is a good chance you'll be knocked unconscious... and, then die.",
"Hmm so what's the fastest a human can decelerate without dying??"
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to32i | how do microchips know time? | I know wrist watches use a piezo quartz vibrating to maintain time. But how do other chips, from the processors in our computers to more simple chips that might just make an LED in a circuit flash, work out delays and time? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/to32i/how_do_microchips_know_time/ | {
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"CPUs use a clock signal as sort of a metronome to control the signal flow. The clock signal is produced using a crystal oscillator circuit.",
"[Real Time Clocks](_URL_0_)",
"Crystal oscillators\n[Wikipedia](_URL_1_)\n > A crystal oscillator is an electronic oscillator circuit that uses the mechanical resonance of a vibrating crystal of piezoelectric material to create an electrical signal with a very precise frequency. This frequency is commonly used to keep track of time (as in quartz wristwatches), to provide a stable clock signal for digital integrated circuits, and to stabilize frequencies for radio transmitters and receivers. The most common type of piezoelectric resonator used is the quartz crystal, so oscillator circuits designed around them became known as \"crystal oscillators.\"\n\nHope that helps.\n\nYou were also asking about the flashing LED\nThe LED is wired up to another little chip, which again gets its clock from some kind of an crystal oscillator. But you dont need a new crystal for every chip. \nIt´s possible to divide the clock rate in half by using [JK latches](_URL_0_). (Linking fixed, thanks to droneprime)",
"It literally uses the exact same thing. The Real Time Clock on your motherboard utilizes a quartz crystal oscillator just like your wrist watch. It uses an oversized watch battery to run it while your PC is powered off.",
"There are a lot of answers here for how the time pulse works, but none on how time is stored. In a digital system, typically time is stored in a 32 bit or 64 bit integer. Depending on the system, this integer is the number of seconds since jan 1 1970 (unix), or the number of 100 nanosecond intervals since jan 1 1601(windows). The software or microchip then has a routine that converts this integer number into a real world representable date/time. I recommend reading the Wikipedia article on \"system time\"",
"I am an electrical engineer, so i'll provide an answer. Your question depends on what sort of time signal you think about. Do you want the time, in hours, minutes and seconds(and date, month, year, etc)? Or just a signal that flash eg. once per second?\n\nIn the first case, you will need a real-time clock(RTC). It is basically an oscillator with some counters and perhaps some memory. The oscillator is usually a crystal, as they provide the most precise signals, but it can be something like an RC circuit, as other people mention. The crystal will actually oscillate and vibrate at a very precise and known frequency. The built-in counter counts the oscillations, and when a certain value is counted, it knows that now one second has passed. A typical RTC oscillator frequency is 32.768kHz. This means that the counter must count to 2^15 in order to know that one second is passed. Then, when the value is reached, it resets, but sends a signal to another counter. This counter then count to 60, and this indicates seconds. this again sends a signal to the next counter, which counts to 60. The next counter counts to 24 to indicate hour, and so on. There is typically some other logic to take into account leap-years and date of certain months and so on. Some memory might be present to store the counter values in case you need to change the battery or depending on the implementation of the counters.\n\nAs you can see, each year is dependent on each date, which is dependent on each hour, which is dependent on each minute, which again is dependent on each second, which is finally dependent on 32768 oscillations of the crystal. Thus, you can imagine how a small imprecision in the oscillations of the crystal will ripple through the system and potentially provide a wrong answer. Fortunately, crystals are very precise.\n\nIf you only need a light to blink eg. once every second, but don't care about the date or time, there is no need to build such a complicated system. It will be much easier to just use an RC oscillator. It will be less precise and prone to age of the components as well as the temperature, but since you only want a blinking light and not a precise time reference, you usually don't care if the light blinks 1.000 per second or 1.001 per second. It will also be cheaper to build in terms of components(crystals are expensive). The funny part is, that the light source will use much more power than the RTC clock.\n\n[Here is a little writeup on the power consumption of an RTC](_URL_0_). For reference, i can tell you that an LED uses around 10-20mA, which would be enough to run off the CR2032 cell for around 100-200 hours, not counting the power consumption of the RC timer itself :)\n\n\n",
"It seems like nobody has really given you a complete explanation, so let me take a knock at it.\n\nThere's a guy that referenced charge and decay rates from RC circuits. While it is true that you can measure time by taking voltage measurements, this is NOT how modern day microchips know time. RC analog circuits are simply not accurate enough to perform the precision you need for digital clocks.\n\nThe short answer has already been given to you with [crystal oscillators](_URL_2_) and [phase locked loops](_URL_1_), but there's a little more to the answer than this. Getting a stable clock source is only one part of the equation.\n\nLet's say you have a steady 1 kHz clock (using a crystal clock and phase locked loop, of course), meaning that every 1 second the signal goes on and off 1000 times. This means that for all intents and purposes, your circuit or \"clock\" could never measure more accurately than .001 fraction of a second. This is called your 'resolution.' While this resolution isn't bad, it's still far from great when you're talking digital circuits. You can see why having a much faster clock (GHz range instead of kHz) can be so important when you're talking about precise measurements.\n\nNow, even chips that run in the GHz range will work out long time delays such as 10 seconds or even hours. How does this work? \n\nThe simplest way is to use a counter. As an example, let's go back to our kHz clock that turns on and off 1000 times a second. If you wanted to measure **five seconds**, and flash an LED, you could start a counter that increments from 0 to 5000, toggles the LED, and repeats. Given any clock frequency, you can figure out how high your counter should go to calculate any time. (Counter = ClockFrequency * TimeDelay)\n\nWhile this is the simplest solution, it's FAR from the BEST solution. The most common solution is done in software using [interrupts...](_URL_0_) specifically 'timed' or 'periodic' interrupts. Interrupts are features that are already built into a microchip that allow you to basically tell a computer, in X amount of time, wake up and do something. Without getting too involved, that's the essence of a periodic interrupt.\n\nThe answer gets even more complicated when you're talking about different 'threads' or 'cores' running at the same time, but hopefully this quick answer helps a little bit.",
"I'm not sure there's a full, accurate answer here yet, so I'll add my two cents.\n\nAs a preface, I'll mention that tiny quartz crystals in the shape of a tuning rod can be precisely calibrated to resonate at a specific frequency. Due to the piezoelectric effect this allows the crystal's vibration to be driven by electric current and also to generate a precisely timed series of electrical pulses. Those pulses are then used in digital circuitry which does little more than add numbers together in order to keep track of seconds, minutes, days, months, years, etc.\n\nIn a typical computer there is an entire subsystem that is effectively just a little quartz watch. This is called the [Real Time Clock](_URL_0_). Computer systems can use this clock to keep track of time, and they can use it in conjunction with it's own sub-systems to keep track of extremely short timescales as well (since the CPU is also powered by a precisely controlled high frequency \"clock\" signal). This sub-system contains a battery so that even when the power is off your computer will still keep track of time.\n\nAdditionally, modern computers call out to trusted time servers on the local network or the internet to keep their clocks calibrated over longer periods of time."
]
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_oscillator"
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-locked_loop",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_oscillator"
],
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]
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qdarr | Does light and sound truly travel in a wave-like manner as we draw it (sine wave), or is the pattern of travel misrepresented by our pictures of the sine wave and the actual travel motion something different? | And one more follow-up: if it does travel in a sinusoidal pattern, why? Why wouldn't energy be conserved via a straight line rather? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/qdarr/does_light_and_sound_truly_travel_in_a_wavelike/ | {
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"No, they don't 'travel' in a sine wave. Rather, if you take a sound wave, and you measure the air pressure along its path, you'll notice that you will measure a sine wave in pressure.\n\nSimilarly, for light, if you measure the electric field along the path of light, you will measure a sine wave."
]
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3qexv5 | what processes or treatments are performed upon meat to classify it as a carcinogen according to the who study? what can i look for on the nutrition facts label to determine whether it's relatively safe? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qexv5/eli5_what_processes_or_treatments_are_performed/ | {
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"The most recent one (about processed or red meat like bacon, sausage, and steak) is actually a report based on over 800 independent studies they've aggregated the information on.\n\nThe methods vary, but the results show that consumption of those products leads to an increased cancer risk, thus they are \"carcinogens\". They do not cause cancer, they've merely shown a link between consumption and raised risk.\n\nIt's important to note, almost everything is a carcinogen. So many things, in fact, it's not worth worrying about. There is no labeling to indicate carcinogen status.\n\nFor instance: anything that is browned or burned, from toast to roasted garlic to a marshmallow, is carcinogenic. Sunlight is carcinogenic. Birth control pills, alcohol, vinyl chloride (used to make the white PVC pipes in your house), diesel exhaust, ginger, salted fish, wood dust, mineral oil, various dyes, nickle, breathing non-filtered air, and many other things are all in the same \"Group 1\" of carcinogens, along with many other things."
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||
26fvvl | How did walled cities deal with urban sprawl when walls were critical for city defense? | Would a point come were sections of the walls would be knocked down and rebuilt further out or would new suburbs and such be left defenseless? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/26fvvl/how_did_walled_cities_deal_with_urban_sprawl_when/ | {
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"In the case of Rome, they would just build a new, larger wall around the city. It is important to note that city walls were huge undertakings that were extremely costly, so usually walls were only built when it was believed that the cost of not building a wall would exceed the cost of building one. By the time gunpowder was popular, city walls had generally ceased to be effective enough to merit the investment in their construction.",
"Many times they'd just be built around and/or knocked down.\n\nSiena still has its walls up and fully intact due to post bubonic plague demographics, where the city didn't regain its pre-plague population level until the 1800s\n\nHere's a picture of a fully modern city still surrounded by walls, and they still close the gates every night \n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_0_",
"As a piggyback question: in the novel A Clash of Kings, by George R. R. Martin, a character orders sprawl around the wall to be burned down, so enemy soldiers can't climb it and get over the wall.\n\nWas this ever a concern during a siege? Were walls ever climbed by enemy armies?",
"For one thing, sprawl didn't exist in the way it does today. True sprawl, like we see today in America, wasn't possible without motorized transport. \n\nHowever, when the city started to expand beyond historic walls, in some cases it just became a matter of money. In medieval Dublin, living within the wall came with certain taxes. In return, those people obviously got the protection of the city defenses. Those who didn't want or couldn't afford the tax had to risk living outside the wall, and the city didn't have to responsibility to give them much protection. The fixation line of the wall still exists in Dublin between the area around St. Patrick's cathedral and the Liberties neighborhood across the street. ",
"In the Netherlands, the growth of cities was severely restricted by their walls. (For a typical example of how those walls looked, see the [city of Brielle](_URL_4_). The suburb to the south is twentiest-century.)\n\nThe problem with suburbs and urban sprawl is not so much that they are undefended, but rather that they stand in the way of your cannons, making any construction directly outside the city walls impossible. Thus, you have to build the walls first, as in the case of [Amsterdam](_URL_3_) mentioned above.\n\nMost cities in the Netherlands kept their walls into the second half of the nineteenth century[1]; by that time, most Dutch cities were very, *very* crowded.\n\nLook at the city of Utrecht, which took down its walls very early, in 1830: compare [this map of 1865](_URL_2_) with [this one of 1649](_URL_5_). In 1865, the city is still not much larger than in 1649, while having almost twice the inhabitants[2].\n\nA very nice book on overpopulation in Dutch cities in the nineteenth century is [Koninkrijk vol sloppen](_URL_0_), but it is in Dutch.\n\n[1] The [fortress law of 1874](_URL_6_) listed a large number of cities that were finally allowed to demolish their walls and was the end of the paradigm of defensible cities (with [one exception](_URL_1_)). Most walls were turned into much-needed public parks, so that the form of the old fortifications can often still be recognised today.\n\n[2] According to [this table on wikipedia](_URL_7_)."
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"http://youtu.be/IvsHvfs3G1M",
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"http://www.forten.info/wetten/vestingwet.htm",
"http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utrecht_(stad\\)#Bevolkingsontwikkeling"
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2e7xwh | Do people transitioning through HRT experience changes in muscle tone and physical ability? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2e7xwh/do_people_transitioning_through_hrt_experience/ | {
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"I am unaware of any studies specifically about muscle tone in transgender people, if anyone knows about them I'd love to read up on them.\n\nIn terms of policy, the International Olympics Committee recognizes that hormone replacement therapy significantly alters an athlete's abilities. Transgender people who have been on HRT for at least two years and have had sex reassignment surgery are eligible to compete in sports as their recognized gender. "
]
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||
595hir | is there really a difference between large tv screens and computer screens anymore? | So when it comes to large LCD screens, what the heck is the difference between say a 55" tv screen and a 55" lcd monitor. Assuming the tv screen has both hdmi and dvi input. Has it become a marketing ploy now because the technology should be there for both to coexist in the same package. If i'm looking for a 55" LCD monitor for a computer to display advertisement who's to say I can't use a TV screen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/595hir/eli5_is_there_really_a_difference_between_large/ | {
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"Many TVs actually have post-processing in order to make their picture look better than similar competitors. This software causes slight input lag that may not be noticeable for some, but with PC gamers it can be noticeable. \n\n",
"I'm using a 40\" Vizio as a monitor for my computer right now. It's working great. \n\nThe most visually intensive thing I do is play is Kerbal Space Program, and it works great.\n\nUse a TV, it will be fine.",
"There is a usually huge difference that I'm surprised no one mentioned: [Input lag](_URL_0_). TVs tent to have much greater input lag, that is, it takes more time from receiving the frame to displaying it. That's not a big deal for watching TV, but it means that it takes more time from doing something with a controller, and an effect occurring in the game you're playing. [this gamer](_URL_1_) noticed a big difference when trying a low latency monitor for a first-person shooter."
]
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_lag",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFd3LW8Nxzk"
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nx0vm | Why does drinking whiskey help my throat when it is sore? | Also, is a higher alcohol content whiskey more effective? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/nx0vm/why_does_drinking_whiskey_help_my_throat_when_it/ | {
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"When you drink whiskey (and don't have a sore throat) it feels kind of hot and tingly, right? That happens because compounds in the whiskey (primarily alcohol and some tannins) are able to partially turn on the same neurons that normally sense heat and pain. It's a relatively weak effect, and short lived, but it happens.\n\nSo, neurons that transmit pain and heat information to the brain run in networks with other neurons that sense benign stimuli like touch and pressure, and these adjacent neurons influence the signalling of one-another. The overall neuron network has a limited information carrying capacity (since neurons can only conduct information at a limited rate, and have a period of time after firing during which they cannot fire again). \n\nThink about a time when you've poked a finger, stubbed a toe, or banged you knee on a table. What did you do next? Probably started shaking your finger, walking around quickly (saying \"ouch, ouch, ouch\") on the toe, or rubbed your knee. Right? This is behavior that exploits the limited information carrying capacity of the pain network. You flood the neuron \"pipe\" with benign, non-pain, information and thus effectively block some of the pain signal from getting to the brain.\n\nThe whiskey on your sore throat has a similar effect. The neurons that sense warmth and one type of pain get stimulated by the whiskey, and temporarily block the other pain neurons from delivering their \"my throat is sore\" information to the brain. It also increases the latency period of the pain neurons for a while, meaning they are able to fire less often, and thus deliver less total pain signal to your brain. ",
"When you drink whiskey (and don't have a sore throat) it feels kind of hot and tingly, right? That happens because compounds in the whiskey (primarily alcohol and some tannins) are able to partially turn on the same neurons that normally sense heat and pain. It's a relatively weak effect, and short lived, but it happens.\n\nSo, neurons that transmit pain and heat information to the brain run in networks with other neurons that sense benign stimuli like touch and pressure, and these adjacent neurons influence the signalling of one-another. The overall neuron network has a limited information carrying capacity (since neurons can only conduct information at a limited rate, and have a period of time after firing during which they cannot fire again). \n\nThink about a time when you've poked a finger, stubbed a toe, or banged you knee on a table. What did you do next? Probably started shaking your finger, walking around quickly (saying \"ouch, ouch, ouch\") on the toe, or rubbed your knee. Right? This is behavior that exploits the limited information carrying capacity of the pain network. You flood the neuron \"pipe\" with benign, non-pain, information and thus effectively block some of the pain signal from getting to the brain.\n\nThe whiskey on your sore throat has a similar effect. The neurons that sense warmth and one type of pain get stimulated by the whiskey, and temporarily block the other pain neurons from delivering their \"my throat is sore\" information to the brain. It also increases the latency period of the pain neurons for a while, meaning they are able to fire less often, and thus deliver less total pain signal to your brain. "
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425bqr | why is it hard to get a good picture of something that "glows in the dark?" | I have glassware that glows in the dark. Its really amazing and glows really bright. However, its difficult to capture a good picture of it. Why does that happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/425bqr/eli5_why_is_it_hard_to_get_a_good_picture_of/ | {
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"Your eyes are magnificent sensors, and cameras are not as good. Your eye has adaptive gain control, which allows you to see better in the dark by trading \"frame rate\" for sensitivity. To get the same effect in a camera, you need a longer exposure. If you have a nice camera and a tripod, you should be able to get great images. The camera on your cell phone just has too small a lens. You eye also slightly blooms glowing objects in a dark space, which the camera would not.",
"The reason is that a camera is basically a array of small sensors elements that detects how many photons (light particles) that collides at each element during. Since the number of photons sent out per time unit is so low you would need to record for a long time to be able to distinguish the actual signal from the noise. However if you ''record'' too long the elements will ''overflow'' and ''leak into neighbouring elements'' (causing so called blloming artefacts which is what you see if you take a photo of the sun). Therefore it is easy to construct a camera that would capture great images of glow-in-the-dark products but it would require you to hold it stable for a long time and be useless in normal lighting since everything would become white due to blooming.",
"Are you using a cell phone camera? You need a DSLR, and the trick is to shoot the photo in manual mode with a super slow shutter speed. It greatly helps to have a tripod and a remote control, since slow shutter speeds can make the photo blurry if the camera moves slightly.\n\nIf using a normal point-and-shoot digital camera, you have little control over the functionality, and thus the camera automatically compensates for lack of light by making the shots grainy. And as a rule of thumb, never use flash.\n\n[Here's a photo I took of my glow-in-the-dark LEGO ghost minifigures under a blacklight against a black background in the dark, using a slow shutter speed.](_URL_0_) This was taken with my Nikon DSLR, and with a tripod, a camera remote control, and manual focus."
]
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2ket9d | What should I know about Arendt before reading her? The good and bad. | Specific topics or books, and your points for and against would be most appreciated.
| AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ket9d/what_should_i_know_about_arendt_before_reading/ | {
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"Here is a [haAretz article on what's controversial with her writings on Eichmann](_URL_1_). [That controversy was made into a film](_URL_0_).\n\nFor her writings on Totalitarianism she had no access to Russian language sources. She relies on the sayings out of date with what she is using them for not sourced and taken, as google reveals, from news papers, from Trotskist pamphlets etc.\n\nIn her «Reflections on Little Rock» she voiced opposition towards Black Suffrage in US America.\n\nHer support for Heidegger was controversial because Heidegger would refuse to show remorse for what he had done in the Nazi regime."
]
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"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1674773/",
"http://www.haaretz.com/where-hannah-arendt-went-wrong-1.264075"
]
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|
4wrfwu | the relationship between the legislative, judicial and executive branches of the us government. | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4wrfwu/eli5_the_relationship_between_the_legislative/ | {
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"They're mutually independent branches of government that have (many) various, different responsibilities and, generally, have the capacity to limit the actions of one another.",
"The legislative branch create laws\n\nThe executive branch approves laws (and are allowed to offer ideas for new ones)\n\nJudicial branch \"maintains neutrality\" by keeping laws within the vision of our Constitution and ruling over all legal issues",
"Power is divided among the three branches of the federal government as a check against corruption. Each branch has ways of balancing out the other two, the idea being that if they fight each other somewhat, we can avoid someone gaining absolute power.\n\nThe Legislature writes the laws but has no power to enforce them.\n\nThe Executive enforces the laws but has no power to modify them. (Note that the Executive does put out regulations interpreting the laws, but largely because the Legislature delegates that authority).\n\nThe Judiciary passes judgment on the legality of the laws but has no power to enforce them. \n\nAdditionally, they each have checks, such as impeachment, appointment, or veto powers that help balance them out. This division of power means that the branches are often at odds, but also that multiple people have to work together between the branches to get things done. ",
"The Legislative branch makes laws. They also have the power to impeach the president and confirm judicial appointments. It was also expected that few Presidential candidates would reach 50% of the electoral vote, in which case the legislative branch would also get to pick the winner. However, the rise of political parties and campaigning meant that rarely happened.\n\nThe Executive branch enforces laws. They can write and propose legislation, but it has to go through congress to be enacted. They nominate judges who are then confirmed by the legislative branch. They can veto a bill before it becomes law, but that can be overruled by a legislative supermajority. They have a degree of leeway in how they interpret the law and act within it, which has lead to greater executive power in recent decades. The Vice President also serves as head of the Senate and can break tied votes.\n\nThe Judicial branch passes judgement on legality, and in the case of the Supreme Court on the legality of laws themselves with respect to the constitution. They have the final say and can overrule the other two branches, but are appointed by those same other two branches.\n\nThere are various other little bits (like the congress having the power to declare war, but the president being in charge of commanding, but congress basically relinquishing that power because they don't want it for political reasons, etc.), but that's the basic gist."
]
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8l4heg | what is a power over ethernet interface module | I saw one of these at work connected to a conference phone and was curious about what it’s for and how it works. Saw a patent on the tech but I didn’t really understand it. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8l4heg/eli5_what_is_a_power_over_ethernet_interface/ | {
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"Some modern networking equipment can get power via the Ethernet cord along with network access. You see it in devices that may be hardwired with ethernet, but that would otherwise be difficult to get power to - like security cameras, access points and conference phones.\n\nHowever, in order for Power over Ethernet (PoE) to work, you need a router that can do PoE. If you don't have a router that supports it, you can get a PoE Interface module that connects after the router and supplies the power."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
2ac9c0 | what happens to money lost due to depreciation? | Say i buy a car for 10,000 dollars and then sell it for 5,000 dollars. What happens to the 5,000 dollars that is lost? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ac9c0/eli5what_happens_to_money_lost_due_to_depreciation/ | {
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"The $5000 wasn't lost. The guy you bought the car from has it.",
"It evaporated. The money didn't *vanish* it just left your hands and went back into the system. Like a bucket of water left in the sun. We all just collectively agree it's not as useful or interesting as it used to be and the extra $5,000 you paid for it is off being useful and interesting elsewhere.\n\nThe key to understanding economic systems is that it's a big circle that doesn't really exist. My car has value because everyone believes it does and it's worth less than your car.. because everyone believes that's the case.\n\nThere is no beginning or end, no big pot of money, no definable physical trait of '*value*'. It's not anchored in an observable physical universe, if you dig something out the ground without civilisation around you can't *measure* its value like you can measure it's weight. All you can say is it was *y* number of times harder to find than milk is but less useful (or whatever) and work from there. It's all relative.\n\nYour car is worth $5,000 because everyone says it is. Doesn't really matter what it used to be worth because it was a made up number then and it's a made up number now. However as long as you can sell it for those made up numbers and use them to buy other stuff for made up numbers.. it's useful.",
"You didn't lose money, you lost value. The car you originally purchased for $10k is only worth half of that now; the rest was lost over time, gradually, due to various factors (entropic effects on the body of the vehicle [rust, corrosion, breakdowns], the fact that newer vehicles have become available since that have better features). "
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|
aqoath | How was it like on Earth immediately after the impact that formed the moon? | Pretty much the title. I was reading about the origin of life and started wondering about pre-life Earth. Considering the moon was formed by an impact that flung it off our planet, I got curious about what was happening immediately after such an event. Related questions: how long did it take for the moon to reach its current distance from Earth? What the impact did to sea levels? Was it felt throughout the whole planet's surface? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/aqoath/how_was_it_like_on_earth_immediately_after_the/ | {
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"I think the prevailing theory is that the impact was so energetic that within hours the entire surface of the planet was raised to somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 degrees Celsius, meaning that it was entirely molten rock and a great deal of vaporized rock as well. If there was liquid water on the Earth before the impact, it was certainly vaporized, so I guess that means sea levels would have risen, in so far as they were all up in the air somewhere.\n\nI imagine that for a short while the Earth looked like a little, tiny star. Not even remotely as bright since the light would have been black body radiation from the molten rock, rather than light emitted from fusion reactions, but still, a cute, tiny little star. \n\nCheck this out: _URL_0_\n\nEdit: FYI, the real jam starts right around 5:50"
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"https://youtu.be/o2lRpiediP8"
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52kwis | why were old movies like "gone with the wind" and "wizard of oz" in color when movies were still in black in white until the late 50s/early 60s | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/52kwis/eli5_why_were_old_movies_like_gone_with_the_wind/ | {
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"Color was expensive back then, but not impossible.\n\nMany studios would make black and white movies to keep the budget down until the technology would finally be cheap enough to be economical.",
"These are both Technicolor movies, a painstakingly expensive process Hollywood adopted for a long period. Once the great depression hit the number of full-color films dropped significantly. Hollywood had largely moved away from it due to the expense, but Disney played a role in bringing it back, utilizing it for Snow White in 1938 which became the top-grossing film. This attracted lots of big studios back to it to use it for live-action.",
"Technicolor was cumbersome and required expensive specialty cameras and lighting. It was at first only suitable for big-budget pictures, sort of like 3D today.\n\nAlso, many directors preferred black and white for stylistic reasons. This is even true today; look at Schindler's List.\n\nEdit: Jesus, I get it. Schindler's List is over twenty years old. You're all very clever for pointing that out.\n\nMy point was that it was made in black and white for stylistic purposes even though color film was cheap and had long become the norm.",
"Same reason there are electric cars today, but most drive gas still. The tech is there, but the cost and comfort level is not.",
"Night of the Living Dead was also in black and white to save money even though movies in color were becoming a lot more common simply because it was cheaper. He could use chocolate syrup for blood and nobody would've known the difference. ",
"Color was basically like what 3D is now. That is to say, it was something special and expensive which was only used for big-budget movies.\n\nIncidentally, you'll notice that old color films tend to have a lot of bright and primary colors. This was done to \"justify\" the film being in color, similar to how a 3D movie will include a lot of things coming at the camera to \"justify\" it being in 3D.",
"ELI5 version of why it was expensive:\n\nAll film was black and white. A Prism split the light to make: \n\na black-and-white film of the red things, \n\na black-and-white film of the blue things, and \n\na black-and-white film of the green things. \n\nEach film was dipped in a big vat to dye it the right color. \n\nWhen you stacked the dyed films on top of each other and glued them together, you could see all the colors at once!\n\nThat was a lot of work. ",
"Color was the 3D of that time period. Doable but expensive. Most films aren't in color for the same reason most films now aren't in 3D.",
"It was possible back then but expensive, as time goes on technology becomes cheaper and more advanced.\n\n\nThink of it like 3D or an AAA game, some companies wanna make it more fancy and spend more budget on it but in return you most consider that it makes an income for the company. \n",
"When Television started to gobble up a portion of the Film audience, Film repeatedly fired back with a new innovation to draw back audience members from Television. Each time, they used an innovation that Television couldn't do, color, then 3D, then cinemascope (2.85 aspect ratio). But, film studios quickly realized that color was too expensive and after a few years stopped doing it. ",
"I wonder if many people back then got sick of color movies as many are now of 3d movies and glasses and though it's not worth it",
"If colour is the equivalent of 3D today then what movies stopped using it as a gimmick? I ask because I can't be arsed with today's 3D (yesterday's on the other hand like in The Creature From the Black Lagoon...) unless it serves the story I guess.\n\nI'm also thinking there's probably something interesting to ask about the contrasts of black and white in film such as noir and how colour changes that approach (like what is neo-noir in colour? Is it acid-washed or something?).",
"Price was one thing. Quality was another - while contemporary black and white film had low sensitivity and required a lot if light, color was even worse. ",
"Back then shooting in color was very expensive. In the days of Wizard of Oz it was the \"the three strip technicolor process\". So for each shot it was three negatives, not just one. That right there triples you cost. Add to this the specialists needed to make it look right, triple the negative processing, and a more expensive and time intensive printing process. \n\nIt was expensive that none but the biggest productions could afford it\n\nOn the plus side nothing compares to it the old technicolor films were beautiful. ",
"Off topic just a bit. I just re-watched Gone with the Wind, the other weekend for the first time as an adult. I hadn't seen the movie since I was a kid. For the time it was made, it was a spectacular film and the music was amazing. Hard to believe it was filmed in 1939. Way better than some movies today.\n\nEdited to add in the movie title.",
"Related follow-up question: would it be fair to say that 'The Wizard of Oz' was the first color film many people would have seen? In other words, would the transition from black-and-white into the colorful Oz during the film have really blown people away at the time, moreso than it does when watching today?",
"Very similar to why only some cartoons were computer animated while majority were old style. Like Reboot, transformers, and Donkey Kong Country. Why only one movie every couple of years were CA (toy story), and almost all kid movies are. Why HD was a rare thing, later to be 3D, and now it's 4K.\n\nIt costs a ton of money, and very few companies can manage it. As time goes on, technology becomes more efficient and common, so the prices go down because more people can do it and the machines, programs, and equipment become more affordable as well.\n",
"Lot's of interesting answers. Most mundane answer is everyone had Black & White TV's not color. Well into the 1970's B & W was still common in peoples homes. When color TV's became common the B & W became the second TV for the kids or spare room.",
"Colored film was very expensive and toxic to developed, at the time color film came out in 1935 by Kodak. Wasn't totally worth the Hassel to develope it most the time ",
"Several reasons:\n\n* Early color processes (Technicolor) used three separate films to record red, green, and blue light components of the image. So, film costs were 3x higher for color films.\n* Technicolor used a mechanical (not optical) printing process to make the final distribution prints. This was much slower and more expensive than making distribution positives from a B & W negative.\n* Single-strip color film processes didn't become readily available until around 1950, and even then both film stock and processing were still more expensive than B & W. B & W film uses two chemicals - a developer and a \"fixer\". Color negative film processes require a more expensive color developer, a bleaching agent, and a fixer.\n\nThe result - the more expensive process got used on A-list titles and roadshow movies. As color got cheaper, more movies were shot in it. \"B\" movies and the rest were shot on cheaper B & W.",
"The camera equipment was also very large and very heavy (about 400 lbs after you include the sound dampening box the camera lived inside), which made them difficult to use and impractical for anything but the largest film shoots. This video gives you a good idea of the size of these things: \n\n_URL_0_",
"I read somewhere that it had to do with money and resources being used for WWII. GWTW and Wizard of OZ were pre-war. _URL_0_\n",
"For a while, color films were left for films that had \"fantasy.\" Black and white films were more \"realistic\" for filmmakers and filmgoers at the time. This is why Dorothy starts out in Kansas in black and white, and when she gets to the magical world of\nOz, everything turns to color. Ironic, but clearly that has changed by now!\n\nAlso, color film is more expensive.\n\nedit: magical world of Oz not Is lol",
"Those two movies were shot with expensive and complicated three strip technicolor process.\n\nB & W was cheaper, and considered for more mature for films by the 1960s.",
"Technicolor was a royal pain in the ass in the early days and only really expensive movies could do it. It's kind of like how Jurassic Park was able to do really good CGI Dinosaurs 1993, but it was quite a while after that until it became more common place.",
"In addition to the expense and complications of creating it like other have already said, the fact is also just that... people didn't have color TVs. They didn't exist, and once they did they were stupidly expensive. Even until the 1960s black and white TVs were pretty popular. I know my dad once said how dismayed he was to realize Mr. Spock wore blue.",
"To go off of this, when a black and white movie has color added to it, is this purely an additive process or is there any part of this that can be derived from the original version? ",
"As a regular movie goer, I would say that it was used to help enhance the magnitude, emotions, etc. of those movies. Big things happened in them.\n",
"Color was like what Imax or 3D was to us around the time that Avatar came out. Possible to film in, but expensive and highly technical. ",
"It was all an expensive process. When shooting a color film in their day, that would be capture the movie on three different rolls film instead of one. One film strip for red, green, and blue. One the film was finished, during post production they run the film reels through their proper color to stain them red, green, or blue. Once stained, they'd overlay all three reels of film on top of each other and bam! They had their colored film. Obviously this process was intricate and took a lot of time and man power to accomplish, which meant budget for a movie immediately skyrocketed if was okayed to be in color. \n\nIt should also be noted that while color film, well, was in color. Black and white film looked better. This sharper image was mainly due to the fact of how long people were perfecting the black and white image long before a commercially viable color film was produced and black and white film continued to be the dominant look until the late 50s for this reason, when color filmstocks became cheaper and widescreens became industry standard looks. ",
"Most of hitchcock's movies were in black and white even though he liked color, the problem was the difficulty in getting accurate color in the 50s and 60s made it much cheaper and safer to use black and white.",
"In the future people will ask the same thing regarding why some producers were still delivering in 2K in 2016",
"Why was Avatar in 3D but other movies are not that are made even more recent. Same answer applies to black and white.",
"Adding on to past answers, technicolor wasn't just expensive to produce in terms of cameras, but it was also extremely expensive because in order to absorb the red, green, and blue color you have to use three times the lighting normally used.",
"For the same reason movies today are in 3D: it's a new technology that gives the viewer a big new experience that can't reasonably be approximated anywhere else--and that sells tickets. The studios were willing to spend big money on the gamble that it would pay off for these \"epic\" new projects.\n\nExcept that with Wizard of Oz, it sadly didn't. (At the time of release.)",
"Because color was the equivalent of 3D technology today. Except for the fact that color was an improvement on the technology that customers actually wanted, whereas 3D is just bullshit designed to make them money.",
"My Theatre and Film appreciation class covered the Wizard of Oz bit in class last year. Back then color movies were still relatively new and seemed fake and were used for fantasy. The black and white Kansas is the real world while the color world of Oz is fantasy.",
"Why are movies still in 2D when 3D was invented years ago?",
"It was much more expensive and also regarded as kind of a gimmick. It was the 3D of its time.",
"For the same reason movies nowadays aren't all shot in 8K or 3D. Equipment availability/intrest/director preferences.",
"Also:\n\nCorrect me if I'm wrong, but, wasn't the image-quality for black & white film superior to that of color film, back then?\n\nLike, especially with still-photos, didn't a lot of photographers continue using black & white film pretty far into the color-era (of still photos) like deep into the 1970's, for this reason?\n\n(I know some of said people were doing it for artistic reasons (as in, just simply wanted to photos to be in black & white, and not color, because artistically they wanted to capture the thing in a monochromatic way, not for image-quality reasons, but just artistically-speaking or whatever. But, I was under the impression that in *addition* to this, there were also a lot of people who were doing it not for artistic-style reasons (or not purely for that reason alone) but rather, because it yielded blatantly, noticeably superior image-quality (in terms of resolution/clarity/etc type of aspects, I mean).\n\nI assume this factor would also be the case in regards to movie-film, in addition to still-photography film?\n\nAs for me personally, I've always felt that as far as my own eyeballs can tell, this does seem to be the case. Color movies in the black & white era seem to have noticeably lower image-quality than high-end black & white movies that were made in the same year, by comparison. (I think it's already noticeable at the 1080p/4k level on a tv screen, but I remember my father talking about it, since he had seen the actual optical-projection versions of the movies, in theaters, back at that time, and he said the difference in image quality in equivalency seemed to be pretty enormous).",
"The same reason we have 3D production technology, but hardly ever use it. It's crazy complicated and expensive, so it's reserved for the blockbusters which will guarantee a return on investment.",
"\"Why were old movies like Avatar and Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs in 3D when movies were still in 2D until the late 2020s\"",
"One reason I don't see being mentioned very much was for aesthetic purposes. Film Noir, suspense, and mystery films were very popular in the 40's - 50's, and many of those films had high budgets which could have allowed for color (particularly in the 50's) but chose to forgo color to set a different mood.\n\n\nLook at films like Touch of Evil or Sunset Boulevard. They would be completely different in color.\n\nSome directors made those type of films but did decide to use color. Symbolism of the color Green in Hitchcock's Vertigo for example. \n\n\nFinally sometimes color wasn't used so the film could get a lighter rating or not be banned. Think if in 1960 Psycho had been color...\n\n\nFor the industry as a whole YES budget was the main constraint but for the best directors black and white was just another artistic device for their films.",
"Also, they redid some of the classics in color when the originals were still in black and white. I don't know if this applies to these. ",
"Many people thought colored moving pictures was a gimmick and detracted from the perpose of film making. To many the perpose was to convey meaning and emotion. This is why art films in history particularly, stayed with the traditional black and white. ",
"Color was added afterwards. Dorothy's shoes in The Wizard of Oz were originally blue, not red. ",
"No one seems to have mentioned Warner Bros, who decided to stick with black and white until the process became cheaper. \n\nAt the time they were known for darker, grittier films, so they pushed on with film noir and made some classics! I'd recommend Kubrick's 'The Killing'.",
"GWTW and Wizard of Oz were filmed at around the same time, when there were only 7 technicolor cameras ever made. The big fire scene in GWTW even required all 7 to be used at once. \nAnd I'm not sure where I saw this and I can't seem to find it anywhere... But I remember reading that during some overlap of the two films, The Wizard of Oz had a majority of the color cameras, and some parts of GWTW had to manually be colored in. ",
"Because songs like \"follow the yellow brick road\"' would have been completely baffling to the viewer in black and white",
"Same reason why some movies are 3D now and some are not. It's expensive to be at the cutting edge.",
"Because those films felt it was worth it to spend the extra money to film in color where other films chose black and white because they didn't believe much would be gained by shooting in color versus a much cheaper black and white option.\n\nWe've had the option to shoot in color for a good while before it became popular, it just wasn't cheap enough. We have similar technologies and options now that are dreams of technogeeks and the such, but it's just extremely expensive. ",
"Not sure if this has been mentioned yet, if so, I apologise.\n\n'The wizard of Oz' started filming with B & W when Technicolor became both affordable and widely available.\n\nSince it was one of THE big spend items for the year (think a Star Wars or Avatar 2) it would have been fucked if it didn't use colour.\n\nStroke of genius - Oz is in colour, Kansas isn't.\n\nSimple, but extraordinarily effective. And everyone lauded the Wachowski sisters for their green tinge in the matrix.",
"Color was expensive. One example from TV is Bewitched, which started out in black and white before becoming popular and profitable, which prompted the change to color. ",
"money and time. same reason movies can still be awesome or only worthy of a rental. sometimes good writing and acting can overcome the black and white factor, just like bad writing could be balanced by a little added color. ",
"Aside from it being expensive, many directors turned their nose up to colour for being too low brow and cheap entertainment. It was seen very much like Transformers 3...D in iMax is today.",
"B & W is easier and cheaper than color. In 1994, Kevin Smith shot *Clerks* in B & W, not because he wanted to, but because didn't have much money to make the movie.\n\nHere are some reasons why B & W is easier:\n\n**Color casts:** Every light source has a different color. Sunlight is \"white\", a regular lightbulb makes \"white\" light, and fluorescent lights make \"white\" light, but they're not actually the same white. Each light is a different color. If you take the same film everywhere, the pictures taken outside will look blue and the pictures taken inside will look yellow. The worst one is fluorescent lighting, which can show up as a hideous green color. With B & W film you don't really need to worry about it.\n\nOne of the hardest parts is that the color of sunlight changes during the day. If it takes all day to shoot a scene, then different parts of the scene will have different colors, and they won't look right together. So you have to be careful to monitor the weather and the time of day when you're shooting. Even a few clouds can change the color of a picture dramatically. This is even a problem in the studio, because when you turn on the lights in a movie studio, they change color as they warm up.\n\nYour eyes naturally adapt to color changes so you don't notice them very much, but color film doesn't adapt like your eyes do. For color film, you have to pay close attention, and use color filters to adjust the color of the light to be just right.\n\nWith B & W film, you can even get away with shooting \"nighttime\" scenes in broad daylight, and many studios did this. This is not really possible with color film.\n\n**Technicolor:** Technicolor is actually made using three different strips of B & W film. Instead of loading one piece of film into the camera, you load three. The camera is a monster, and it has prisms and filters inside so it can split the color light into three different B & W images. To make the final movie for projection, you have to combine the three film strips back into one, which is tedious and expensive.\n\nThe prisms and filters in a technicolor camera were also inefficient. It took a lot of light in order to make a technicolor film. It took so much light that you had to shoot outside or with bright studio lights. Bright lights are expensive, they make the studio hot, and they make the actors uncomfortable. You can forget about shooting technicolor at night, it just won't work.\n\n**Monopack film:** Later, in the 1950s, color \"monopack\" film became available, using processes like ECN-1. This made it possible to film color using ordinary cameras, the same cameras you use for B & W. However, this film was still more difficult and expensive to process. Color film is also more sensitive to temperature. With B & W film, if you process it at the wrong temperature, you can compensate by processing for a different amount of time, and the picture will mostly be the same. With color film, if you process it at the wrong temperature, you might get different colors.\n\nB & W film is still more sensitive to light than color film, even today. This is because each color film is made out of three B & W films stacked on top of each other, and each film only receives a part of the light.\n\n**Skills:** Even when color was available, not everyone knew how to use it. People had to learn how to use filters, how to measure color during the day, how to pay attention to the weather. New artistic decisions had to be made: \"nighttime\" in a color film might mean adding blue filters to the light, \"daytime\" indoors might mean putting dark orange filters over the windows. It took many years before people making movies learned these skills.\n\nThe same thing happened with digital cameras. Digital cameras respond differently to light than film does, and so you have to be very careful when you shoot digital, and you have to change the lighting a little bit. Some filmmakers have a lot of experience working with film, and for them it's easier to keep using film rather than learning how to use digital, even though digital may be easier once you know how to use it.",
"A few years ago they showed a new old dads army episode that was found in a barn and never aired. It was on black and white film. They discovered that it had all color markings still intact so it could be converted from the black and white to colour.because it was a barn find it was not in the best condition so they decided to restore it using modern day technology. Very interested to Learn a lot of old programs where actually recorded using a color camara but used black and white film. The camara saves the color code on the black and white film.\n\nImagen if we could convert all the non HD photos and film ever recorded to full HD.\n",
"Black and white looks better and ages better than old color films. In addition to the more technical and logistical reasons being listed here, a lot of film directors preferred to continue shooting their films in black and white because it was a hallmark of the artform. Its still true that most B & W films from the 50s and early 60s look better than their color counterparts. ",
"Why are movies like \"Avatar\" and \"The Hobbit\" in 3D when movies are still in 2D to this day?",
"Technicolor was a process that's been available since 1935. It was just incredibly expensive, so even the big budget movies opted not to use it - only huge ticket movies like the 2 you mentioned had the budget for it.\n\nEdit: guy below me had more research haha, thank you sir",
"My mom was young when The Wizard of Oz came out, and they went to see it in the theater. The movie starts in black and white, it only becomes color when Dorothy steps out of her house into Oz. That's the first time mom had ever seen any color in a movie, she still looks a little awed when she tells about it.",
"It was a HUGE deal when Gone with the Wind & Wizard of Oz came out, too, that they were in color. That's part of why those were so successful at the box office-they were novelties, basically. Black & white films were still going strong through the 60s, too, because it was significantly cheaper to film. I love a b-movie, but they're b-movies for a reason: they're cheap, in terms of casting, production, costumes, etc. ",
"For the same reason that many films today aren't shot in **IMAX 3D** even though the technology has been available since the 80s.\n\nThere are costs and complexities that come with shooting with advanced, proprietary film types that often wind up prohibitive given the budget/time constraints and the overall goals for a movie. \n\nAs an example think of how much the forced 3D popout scenes added into a lot of IMAX films actually adds to the movie experience other than to justify spending an extra $4 on the ticket.",
"Color film was largely associated with fantasy/musical setting or storylines (one of the first examples is Journey to the Moon even though it was hand colored) most films remained in black in white until later on. Color film was also not taken very seriously by many people similar to how we tend to view animated movies as childish. (Source: I'm a film student)",
"To better relate this to today - why aren't all movies shot in Imax quality 3D? Cost, difficulty, availability of equipment.",
"Colour was very expensive and used for spectacle/blockbuster films, historical epics, fantasy, musicals, and so on. Black-and-white remained popular with audiences for more serious subjects, contemporary dramas, and smaller-budget films.",
"Funny that you mention those two movies actually. The only reason that the scenes from Kansas are shot in Black and White is because the producers of Wizard of Oz had to relinquish their technicolor cameras for the production of Gone with the Wind. It wasn't originally supposed to be that way, they just happened to have been filming the Kansas scenes last and realized that black and white fit the setting better, which obviously worked out to their advantage. Unfortunately, Gone with the Wind beat them for best picture in the Oscars that year.",
"The world was in black & white until 1966. The Wizard of Oz heralded the invention of colour itself. The real world switched to colour many years later, and the early years of colour were celebrated with Psychedelia and 70s gaudiness.\nEarly reluctance to adopt colour was down to fears that too much colour would blind us all and we'd all become triffid food.",
"Not sure how old you are but, the answer would be the same as: why weren't all shows in High Definition when it first came out?\n\nCost",
"I can't find a definite source, but I have anecdotal information form my father that a very few commercially screened color films even existed in the Silent Era.",
"Occasionally there are directors who choose to do B & amp;W for stylistic reasons look at Psycho by Hitchcock, both the movie before and the movie after were in colour. \n\nBilly Wilder chose to do all of his films in B & amp;W, more recently I've seen a few movies, \"The Artist\" and \"Goodnight and Goodluck\" those where both B & amp;W to fit with the time period the movies take place in. ",
"_URL_0_ watched that video earlier this morning. Strange that this is on the front page now. (We live in the matrix)\n\nAnyways, check out that video. It's very interesting. And if you're interested in film concepts in general, check out the YouTube channel \"Every Frame A Painting\".",
"One reason is that the Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind were actually sharing a color camera. Which was part of the artistic decision of having Kansas in black and white and Oz in color in the Wizard of Oz.",
"Actual ELI5: It was very hard and expensive to do with the stuff they had back then. So only big companies could afford it!",
"I think Hollywood went to more color movies, especially in the 1950's, because that is when television became popular. Hollywood wanted to provide an experience in the theater that you couldn't get at home watching TV, so the widescreen format was introduced and color was used more.\n\nHere's an interesting bit a trivia regarding \"The Adventures of Robin Hood\" which was made in 1938 and starred Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland:\n\n\"The production used all 11 of the Technicolor cameras in existence in 1938 and they were all returned to Technicolor at the end of each day's filming.\"\n\n--IMDB",
"We had colour film capabilities in those times, but it was expensive. And with the rise of TV, which had a complete lack of colour capabilities, it was pointless to make tv programs in colour.\n\nTheres still plenty of movies from the 50s and early 60s in colour.",
"In 1905, people said movies were a fad, people prefer live theater\n\nIn 1929, people said talkies were a fad, people prefered silent film\n\nIn 1939, people said color was a fad, people prefer serious B & W\n\nIn 2009, people said 3D was a fad, people prefer flat images",
"The same is true of sound in films. The first sound synced film was in 1900, but it wasn't until the early 1930s that the \"talkies\" became mainstream.",
"The excellent \"Filmmaker IQ\" series explains the [whole history of color film](_URL_0_) and it is fascinating.\n\nThe TL;DR of your question is those movies were shot in technicolor, which used a [huge and expensive camera rig] (_URL_1_) to simultaneously shoot 3 rolls of film, separating the three primary light colors. Those were blockbuster films, and most smaller films wouldn't have had the budget for it. It is kind of like digital effects and 3-d is today; you don't spend that kind of money on a simple romantic comedy.",
"You're actually asking two questions: why did they make few color films in the thirties and why did they make b & w films in the 50s and 60s.\nMost of the answers given are good regarding expense. That is the primary reason. There are secondary stylistic reasons that are also interesting. Color was often reserved for fantasies and spectacle. You'll even find black and white films of the thirties with color sequences. A good example is The Women, released the same year as your two examples. There is a color fashion show in the middle of the film, signaling the fantastic allure for the characters. Even into the 1950s when color was becoming more frequent and studios were trying things like widescreen as well to keep viewers from staying home with TV, color became the choice for \"travel\" films. This was the age of travelogue romances set in faraway locales, and European vistas. Rich color cinematography of Venice or Rome in films like Three Coins in the Fountain were ways to give audiences a vicarious view of the outside world. \n\nEven into the early '60s as color became ubiquitous, black and white was employed as a stylistic choice. Hitchcock had been shooting in color since the late forties, but shot Psycho in black and white intentionally. Part of the reason was to lesson the gory impact of blood running down the shower.\n\nDisney made all of his features in color (except the docudrama The Reluctant Dragon, which \"becomes color\" after a visit to the paint factory). However, he made The Shaggy Dog and the two flubber movies in black and white because he hoped it would help disguise the special effects used. ",
"Same reason only some movies are made in 3D. First it's cost way more to make. Also at the time, most people didn't have color TV's just like many people today don't have 3D home setups.",
"There used to be two processes, Technicolor and Kineticolor. This process consisted of the very tedious task of going through each and every slide/frame that needed color and basically taking a crayon (well, dye) and then coloring the slides manually, tinting each section with the necessary color, or using a prism-camera hybrid to make the slides/frames the right color. it's why there is so little diversity between colors, and most colors are extremes. For instance, in the Wizard of Oz, how much of the movie is a color like, say, brown or grey, as opposed to bright vibrant blues, yellows, and reds? Primary colors were easier to use. It's also why the colors tend to be extremes or mesh together poorly compared to today's filming. ",
"Using color in movies was very expensive at that time. Some companies realized that they'll draw more people in to see thee movie if they use color. It was new and it made the movie, back then, pop. \n\nAlso, fun fact: Dorothy's slippers were actually silver in the book. Red was used in the movie to make them really pop. ",
"The technology was rare and kind of expensive. Audiences had been accepting Black and White and it was unclear how much (if any) of an advantage color would be. \n\nThe actual cameras were initially expensive to build and there were only a few of them. For instance, some scenes in Gone with the Wind used ALL 7 Technicolor cameras then in existence.",
"Today we convert black and white movies using a digital process. Once the b & w movies are digitized, the movie is gone over and a series of frames are programmed into the system. The computer then colors in the movie. Each frame is manually fine tuned until the desired effect is achieved. Before digital, each frame had to be colored manually. It was an expensive, highly tedious, time consuming process.",
"Part of the styling of Black and White had to do with clarity. Black and White film was much cleaner and sharper than color film of the time.",
"1. Color was very cumbersome and expensive at the time. It was reserved for \"A\" features with huge budgets, or for cartoons, which were easier to implement than live action. \n\n2. There were actually two separate cinematography Oscars awarded for color and black and white.\n\n3. Unlike 3D, audiences loved color. \"In glorious Technicolor\" was quite an effective marketing phrase. The only objections heard were from inside the industry. Actresses who didn't like the way they looked--there was no silvery glow to their complexion like there was in b/w. Directors and technicians didn't like the refrigerator-size camera, huge lighting requirements, and the finiky presence of Natalie Calmus, the mandatory \"color consultant\" on the set. \n\n4. Color prints were 100 percent compatible with black and white, so even the dump-iest neighborhood theater could show them with no modifications or special training.\n\nThere's tons more great (and technically correct) information here:\n\n_URL_0_",
"The technology was there to have color film. You can see color pics and films from the 20's. But the issue is it cost alot to film in color. The main issue is that theaters don't have color projectors because cost alot. So to make a film in color you need someone to pay for innovation to do it. Sony did it, they picked up the tab because of television was there. They had to innovate or die.",
"It was expensive to do color. That's like asking why doesn't everyone own a 4k TV, the tech exists, why don't people buy it?",
"Back then, movies were more commerce than art. You had a budget, and a system that delivered the talent on both ends cheaply with no thought to being able to watch it over again hundreds of times. Black and white was good enough for 80 % of everything.",
"One way to look at it is that it's sort of like 3D now, where it's a big spectacle for major Motion Pictures but generally isn't worth doing for all movies",
"A lot of people are saying that shooting in color was expensive (and it definitely was) but you can't fail to mention the business side of it. Like others have mentioned, there were a limited number of technicolor cameras and no other options to shoot and process color film. In other words, technicolor had a bit of a monopoly until single-strand color film was developed. They could raise the price all they pleased. \n\nThe trade off is that these first color films were phenomenally successful. So dealing the difficulties of color film was financially worth it.\n\nSo there's also this aspect of it: use technicolor, an expensive monopoly, or use black and white, which was cheaper and easier. ",
"Ask yourself this: Why aren't all movies in 3D?",
"Technicolor was invented in the 30's. Then WWII happened and it wasn't reasonable to spend the money and materiel on color. So they went back to black and white. After the war, when industry turned back to domestic production, and money was freed from waging war, they returned to color.\n\nThis is from a book about Fred & Ginger. They shot a color scene in 1938 for Carefree (\"I Used to Be Color Blind\"). The whole movie was supposed to be color but the cost was too high. They nixed the color scene and released the whole picture in B & W. I have seen the color dream sequence on TV, so at SOME point it was restored, but I don't know when.",
"If anyone is interested in why Hollywood quit making B & W movies ( except for rare occasions) is television. Selling broadcast rights to the major networks and a few indie station syndication packages. (this was before cable television) was a major revenue stream. By 1967 television decided to go 100% color broadcasts and Hollywood and indies switched to color only. By this time, there were several cheaper alternatives to technicolor...",
"Black and white was cheaper but also the norm, the color portion of the Wizard of Oz is the dream sequence for example, when Dorothy woke up the film was back to normal and in black and white again.",
"This is the way I like to think of it, at least in photography. Black and white at that time was along the same quality of some of the color images today (seriously, B & W stuff from that era is gorgeous) and color was just born, so we were yet to iron out the kinks. Of course it was also cheaper. But I know when I'm doing any type of photo work from that era (I did a basketball card series from around that time) I prefer black & white ten-to-one over color of the time. Why? The images are crisper, color gets real fuzzy at that time and it just seems better focused overall. So not only were there cost benefits, there were aesthetic benefits as well.",
"To help understand why these movies were in color and others were in black and white, think about Avatar. \n\nTo rephrase your question, \"Why do movies like Avatar have advanced visual effects and 3D presentation when other movies don't?\" \n\nThe answer, as others have pointed out, is money. The movies with advanced visual effects (color back in the day, crazy CGI today) are big ticket movies that the studio is gambling will make a lot of money. ",
"I would highly recommend looking up the cameras and detail about what cameras were used for those movies. They are way more complicated then what they had back then And today. Of course we have colored cameras that are higher quality and everything like that but the stuff they had to use back then was crazy. I remember reading about a Disney movie (i can't remember which one, but it had real people in a drawn world with like drawn animals and the people were walking on a path and animated animals would walk or skip by them using blue screen to put them in that world and it was like a 60s or 70s movie) but the camera they used was so fascinating to me. I can't explain it and I read it a few years ago. Sorry I'm not much help. But it was very cool and very hard to do what they did for that time.",
"This has already been answered but I need to put my two cents in. The first colored film my grandmother saw was The Wizard of Oz. It starts out black and white, and she had no idea that when Dorothy lands in Oz, it changes to technicolor. This was simply an awesome thing to behold if all you were used to was b & w. Her mouth dropped and she said it was one of the most beautiful things she saw. This is why they went with technicolor for that film. To give Oz this truly magical feeling to the viewers.",
"Pretty much the same reason not all films are shot in stereo today.\n\nIt cost more, required special techniques to get right, and a lot of moviegoers didn't care anyway.",
"Same reason that movies are still shot in 2D when they could be in 3D these days.\n\nTechnology and price isn't at a standard that warrants it.",
"Cuz the camera that captured color was almost the size of a small car. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nIn it, it used three different films to capture red, blue and green colors of the scene. \n\nThe price for the film itself was monumentally high, so any screw ups while filming cost them a lot of money. \n\nSo, it required a lot of work to film, a lot of time and a crap ton of money. A lot of companies avoided it instead and just filmed in b & w.",
"In *Wizard of Oz* the use of black and white for part of the film was obviously an artistic decision and I assume it was the same for other movies too. \n\nThink about it this way, some people even in this modern age choose to still take photos in black and white instead of color. It is an artist's choice and typically I think they'd come up with some sort of justification along those lines, for the effect they think it might provide their art. "
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18jv0z | Geologists: What forces caused these adjacent mountain formations to end up looking so different? | _URL_0_
I took this photo as I drove through the Mojave Desert near Barstow, CA. The coordinates from which I took it MIGHT be 34.766999,-115.472832 according to Google Maps (street view seems to match my photo), and I was shooting to the northwest. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/18jv0z/geologists_what_forces_caused_these_adjacent/ | {
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"Different rock types. not got time to look up a geological map right now, but basically they are just weathering differently.\n\nAlso note, we wouldn't describe those as two separate ranges as they are so closely related.",
"Looks like the darker mountains are cinder cones of volcanic origin. ",
"The darker ones look distinctly mafic to me, so I agree that they're probably igneous, maybe volcanic in origin.\n\nGeneral geomorphology though makes me think these things you're looking at aren't mountains, more like rotated fault blocks.",
"It is likely you are looking at some kind of tilted volcanic pile. It is very difficult to say the composition of the volcanics because many intermediate to felsic volcanic rocks appear dark despite their high silica content. \n\nAs to what caused the rocks to look different, it is most likely that they are different. The rocks on the left appear were most likely erupted and tilted during Basin and Range extension. The rocks that are lighter in color were probably erupted at some other time and have some different composition, but probably not significantly different from the darker ones. They do look to be tilted as well, and look to be more steeply tilted, implying that they are older. \n\nMost volcanic rocks in the Basin and Range province tend to be tuffs, not cinder cones. \n\nThe rocks may be weathering differently, but it is slightly illogical because they are both facing the same direction. \n\nBest to consult the geologic map, check out the USGS. \n"
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dvdzab | why does the weather say 39 but "feels like 30" wouldnt it just be 30 outside? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dvdzab/eli5_why_does_the_weather_say_39_but_feels_like/ | {
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"text": [
"Ambient temperature in a general area VS perceived temperature due to humidity and wind chill making it colder."
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24r59o | Does rinsing or just running water over my hands without soap after using the bathroom do anything? | Does it add any germs or rinse any off without the soap to encapsulate the germs? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/24r59o/does_rinsing_or_just_running_water_over_my_hands/ | {
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"I dont think that rubbing your hands together will kill bacteria. They are too small to unfluence that way. \nAbout the hot and cold water. You would need to put your hand in boiling water for an extended amount of time (hours) before it even remotely kills enough bacteria to be considered clean. And switching between hot and cold probably isnt gonna cut it either.\n\nAs already said the water makes it easier for bacteria to get loose from your hands. So that woulf only spread more. \n\nBest case scenario: wash with water and soap and dry using a (papr) towel and not those blowers"
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6bk8yj | why does beer make you crave salty/fatty food? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6bk8yj/eli5why_does_beer_make_you_crave_saltyfatty_food/ | {
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"text": [
"Alcohol releases dopamine in your brain, when it starts to wear off you start looking for something else that will release dopamine. \nFat and salt are particular good for this (to do with evolution of humans.)"
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||
eag5bs | how do usb plugs built in to outlets work with phones and other devices that use usb? don’t you need to convert ac to dc? | Isn’t the reason we use those cube power plugs to plug phone chargers in because they change from the ac of the wall to dc that our devices use. So how do USB ports built in to the outlet and powered by ac work?
[Example](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eag5bs/eli5_how_do_usb_plugs_built_in_to_outlets_work/ | {
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"Yes you need a rectifier. They are so small these days, they are build in a small board the size of a dime.",
"There is either a converter built into the wall before the usb. So it goes wires > converter > USB. Or the cube is used because the normal outlet uses the two prongs and not USB."
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"https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07K89J7Q4/ref=cm_sw_r_oth_api_i_ZTh9DbQT1ADA4"
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1atho2 | how humid would air need to be for a human to breath their liquid requirements in a 24 hour period? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1atho2/how_humid_would_air_need_to_be_for_a_human_to/ | {
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"It couldn't happen. At 100 degrees F (38C) the partial pressure of water vapor at 100% relative humidity is 49mmHg and change. Humans exhale 47mmHg of water vapor. So at 100% humidity in a 100 degree environment that would effectively \"stop\" the water loss that comes from exhaling, but not add a huge amount of water back to the system. To increase the partial pressure further, you have to increase the temperature, but as you do so we'll start to lose volume from sweat which competes against the cause. To get to a point where we were in effect breathing in 2x as much water as we were exhaling, you'd have to have 100% humidty at around 122-123 degrees F (50-51C). At that temperature you have to worry not just about sweat loss but heat radiation, and at 100% RH you're looking at heat stroke and death becoming likely.\n\nFrom a theoretical standpoint (assuming we don't die of heat stroke, and assuming that we don't start losing volume as sweat as temperature increases), there probably is a point where it can happen. Assuming that a normal alveolar ventilation is on the order of 6000L per day (12 breaths per minute, 350ml of alveolar ventilation per breath), you could then figure out how many grams of water you'd need in the air to offset the 2.5L of water an average person on an average day loses. But that math is getting beyond me, I just posted these values as a starting point for anyone who actually wants to work out the ideal gas law of it for a further answer."
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27gmaz | laser thermometers. | what is that trickery? how far can you read accurately? does it pick up temperatures between unit and surface, or just the surface it lands on? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27gmaz/eli5_laser_thermometers/ | {
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"The laser part is just to visually indicate where you are measuring, the actual temperature is read by a calibrated infra red sensor. Similar to on a remote control.",
"The laser is just for aiming. It has an infra red sensor and displays the average of the temperature it sees. The further back you hold it the bigger the spot the sensor sees gets, so max range depends on the size of the object your trying to get a read from. Since it works like an ir camera, it sees the surface, not the air."
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2xujoh | Do waves move faster then light because of the sinusoidal path they take? | So if waves move foward at C but oscillate depending on its frequency does that allow for FTL communication between the high and low points of the wave? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2xujoh/do_waves_move_faster_then_light_because_of_the/ | {
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"Light \"waves\" do not move sinusoidally. This is a convenient way of representing light's wave-like properties, but they don't actually slew ftom side to side like an old truck with a sloppy steering box.",
"Like other posters have said, lights doesn't move sinusoidally. That representation is actually a simplification showing the electric field amplitude at each point in space along the path of the light"
]
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20rtqo | how does apple make more money than google / android? | After seeing the graphs published in [this post](_URL_0_). I have to admit I was shocked. How is it that Android / Google has a huge market share and not be able to make as much money as Apple?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20rtqo/eli5_how_does_apple_make_more_money_than_google/ | {
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"Android isn't a company. Google doesn't completely own the phones that have their operating system in it, so they only get a portion of the profit from them. Apple owns the entire process. I also wouldn't be surprised if the profit on an individual phone was more for an iPhone than an android phone for a lot of reasons.\n\nAndroid phones might be a bigger part of the phone market, but they share that profit with tons of people, apple doesn't have to really share their profit.",
"Because a large percentage of Android phones are low-end devices. There are no low-end Apple devices.\n\nThat makes a difference when it comes to their app stores.[ iOS customers outspend Android customers 5 to 1](_URL_0_). People who buy low-end devices are far less likely to purchase apps.\n\nApple, quite simply, has a superior business model. Yes, there are more Android devices out there, but the iOS devices are far, far more profitable."
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14zr4q | What was Richard III's role in the end of The War of the Roses? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/14zr4q/what_was_richard_iiis_role_in_the_end_of_the_war/ | {
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"text": [
"Is this related to your [High School English Assignment](_URL_0_) or a separate homework?"
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9fru76 | why is there such a significant price gap between canadian crude oil prices and us crude oil prices? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9fru76/eli5_why_is_there_such_a_significant_price_gap/ | {
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"There isn't a price gap between the price of west texas crude this is what the stock market is looking at when saying the price of oil is xx per barrel.\n\n\nThe price gap is caused by a misnomer what you are calling canadian crude oil is not actual crude. It is bitumen. Now for Canada to ship it it needs to be diluted so that it flows better.\n\nBitumen is more costly to refine into petroleum products than crude oil. The current infrastructure in place for Canada to get this to market has minimal going to tide water (oceans) within Canada. This means that the only market that is purchasing the raw product from Canada is the u.s. and typically it's about 50 to 60 percent of the oil price. \n\nCanada would get a better price per barrel if more markets are available to sell to. This is why there is an importance to pipelines to tide water. Environmental concerns are the push back to this. But what is not looked at or ignored is oil is going to tide water by rail already. Just not in any capacity to affect market prices.",
"It's a function of both quality, cost to extract, and transportation cost. Not all crude oil is the same so you are not paying more for the same product.\n\nCheaper crudes tend to have more undesirable byproducts like sulfur or nitrogen compounds. Also when the crude oil is refined, different crudes have different conversion rates to final products like diesel and gasoline. So crudes that make more and higher quality final products are more expensive"
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9c4ago | who are you genetically closer to? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9c4ago/eli5_who_are_you_genetically_closer_to/ | {
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"text": [
"Your kids. As you said, kids are 50% \"you\". But your siblings are only 25% \"you\" in average. \n\nIt is true that they are made 50% your mum and 50% your dad as well. But consider that your dad's DNA is made of copy A and B of each chromosome, and your mum copy C and D. Then you could have got copy A from your dad and C from your mum, making you A-C for example. While your siblings could have got A-C (same as you), A-D, B-C, or B-D. Repeat this idea for all 23 pairs of chromosomes. So by probablity only in 25% of the cases you will have the same combination.",
"You share 50% of your DNA with both your children and your parents. So you are the exact same closeness to them.\n\nTechnically you can be genetically closer to your sibling. But also at the same time you might not be. It all depends on which genes you picked up.\n\nHumans have 23 pairs of chromosomes and pass down 1 of each pair to their children.\n\nTheoretically then there is a chance if your parents pass down one set of chromosomes to you (let's call it set a.) And pass down the other set to your sibling (set b.) Then technically you share 0% of your DNA with your siblings. \n\n(Well this is actually incorrect as other things happen when the gametes are being created but this is ELI5)\n\n The reverse is also true and you can share 100% of your DNA with you siblings. (Which also is very unlikely unless you are identical twins and thus split off the same fetilised egg)\n\nSo tldr to your question. Both. It depends on what genes were passed down to your siblings.",
"Theoretically you can be 0% similar with a sibling. Would be very statistically unlikely. \n\nYou can be no less than 50% similar with a child or parent."
]
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[],
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||
1jdwsl | why does white meat chicken always taste dryer than dark meat chicken? | Whenever I eat both types of meat from the same exact chicken, the white is always dryer to me. Why is that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jdwsl/eli5_why_does_white_meat_chicken_always_taste/ | {
"a_id": [
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"There's more fat in the dark meat. Fats and oils will keep the dark meat moist even when the water in the white meat has cooked off.\n\n > [Dark meat contains 2.64 times more saturated fat than white meat, per gram of protein.](_URL_0_)",
"The white meat is always dryer than dark because the dark meat has more fat in it. Fat is not as easily evaporated as water, so when you cook a whole chicken the dark meat holds more liquid and ends up being more moist. A way to remedy this is to stuff butter under the skin of the chicken. It creates a barrier that prevents water from evaporating as easily, making it moist and way more delicious. "
]
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[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_meat#Poultry"
],
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|
r26xg | somalia and what's happening there | I know it's a failed state, but how did reach this point? Who is running it? Who is suppose to be running it? What's happening with UN peace keepers there? Is there hope for the future? Is it anarchy? Is there any 'safe zones'?
So many question, when I try to read about it I become more curious.
Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/r26xg/eli5_somalia_and_whats_happening_there/ | {
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"Today 'Somalia' is basically a geographic expression, the country has had no central government since the 80s. The previous government did a lot of bad things in the north so when that government (Siad Barre) fell they were able to step away and run their own business. So the north is a pretty decent place. They have their own (unrecognized) government and their own (unrecognized) currency. You can even go there as a tourist and you'll be relatively safe.\n\nThe southern part of the country is a different story. When the Barre government collapsed there was no more governmental authority. Warlords and clan chiefs stepped into the void and spent about 15 years fighting one another in an anarchic free for all.\n\nEventually a group of Islamists called the Union of Islamic Courts was created to attempt to end the civil war and restore stability. While they were fighting to take over the south the U.S. gave millions of dollars worth of weapons to the warlords. The UIC won anyways, and for a little while they were doing some good. They were more moderate than the Taliban and while some of their punishments were barbaric they made progressing in restoring a semblance of order. They also got the airports and port running for the first time since things went \nto shit.\n\nOnce the warlords were beaten there was a lot of concern about terrorists going to Somalia. So Ethiopia, whose military is largely a product of American money, went in (presumably with U.S. backing) and attempted to overthrow the UIC and install the U.N. backed provisional government. The provisional government has a lot of problems though, it's mostly made up of warlords and has no presence inside Somalia-- they have to hold their meetings in Kenya.\n\nEthiopia tried occupying Somalia for a little while but since they'd gotten rid of the UIC and didn't have the resources to stay that long they got out. The UIC of 2006 didn't really exist by this time, it had been splintered. The previous leadership tended to be older and more moderate, but after the Ethiopian intervention the Islamists who were left fighting were the youngest, fiercest, and most extreme. They call themselves al-Shabaab (meaning 'youth movement'.) While the UIC cared more about restoring law in Somalia than international terrorism, al-Shabaab is much more sympathetic to terrorists who want to carry out attacks abroad. They've provided a safe haven to some al-Qaeda guys and have carried out a few attacks of their own elsewhere in Africa. Kenya and Uganda have both been bombed by al-Shabaab, in retaliation for support they've given to the provisional government.\n\nSo Somalia is a complex place, with regions that look radically different from one another. The north will probably continue to do well and likely will be recognized as an independent state some day. There's no reason to be positive about the south though; that's only getting worse and worse. Especially since we've now got all kinds of drones flying around the place.\n",
" > How did Somalia reach the point of state failure?\n\nSomalia's eventual collapse has its roots in the Cold War. During the 1970s, the US and China were essentially fighting a low-level proxy war against the USSR in Ethiopia following Haile Selassie's ouster from power by the Derg, a nominally socialist military junta.\n\nHowever, both the US and the USSR provided the Derg with limited support. Initially, the USSR at the time was more interested in retaining its influence over Somalia and Eritrea (which at that time was still part of Ethiopia although in open rebellion against the state) and any weapons that it sent to Ethiopia were sent via Somalia and Eritrea.\n\nThe turning point in Soviet relations with Ethiopia came in 1977 following another coup by [Mengistu Haile Mariam](_URL_0_) who had most of his political opponents in the Derg assassinated and assumed power. Mengistu decided to strengthen Ethiopia's relationships with other socialist countries, particularly the USSR and East Germany.\n\nFollowing Mengistu's coup and his subsequent overtures to the USSR, the Soviets began sending huge amounts of weapons to Ethiopia including helicopters, tanks, and fighter jets.\n\nMeanwhile, the leader of Somalia, [Mohammed Siad Barre](_URL_2_), straddled the line between Soviet support and his ties with conservative Arab governments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, who were considered allies of the US. Siad Barre recognized that he could not implement large-scale socialist reforms in Somalia and still retain the support of the numerous Somali clans on whose patronage he relied to keep power.\n\nThese factors led Siad Barre to the [Ogaden War](_URL_4_), in a region that straddled the border of Western Somalia and Eastern Ethiopia, which pitted Ethiopian troops against Somalian troops and ethnic Somalis living in Ehtiopia\n\nThis war eventually came to be known as the Horn of Africa crisis. The right wing of the US political elite viewed Carter's reaction to the events in the Horn of Africa as too weak towards the Soviets.\n\nRonald Reagan, who would soon be launching his bid for president, spoke of the Crisis in almost apocalyptic terms saying that \"More immediately, control of the Horn of Africa would give Moscow the ability to destabilize those governments on the Arabian peninsula which have proven themselves to be strongly anti-Communist... in a few years we may be faced with the prospect of a Soviet empire of proteges and dependencies stretching from Addis Ababa to Capetown.\"\n\nTaking a cue from these statements from the West, Siad Barre eventually abandoned Soviet support under the assumption that his government would receive support from the US and Arab states, which never fully materialized. Faced with the prospect of declining revenues, Siad Barre attempted to new levies and taxes in the provinces which reignited clan loyalties over state loyalties in the Somali hinterland. \n\nIn 1988, in a final desperate gambit, Siad Barre attempted to ally himself with the Mengistu regime in Addis, a move which turned the clans on which he relied for popular support against him. The Somalian state began to crumble as inter-clan warfare broke out and by 1990 Somalia had no real government to speak of.\n\n > Who is running Somalia?\n\nToday, Somalia can essentially be divided into three parts: Somalia, Puntland, and Somaliland - see [this map](_URL_1_). Somaliland and Puntland each have their own autonomous governments that are somewhat democratic, as well as their own military forces.\n\nSomalia is a different story. While the central government of Somalia is theoretically governed by a \"transitional federal goverment\", the government has almost no power and is largely administered from Nairobi.\n\n > What's happening with the UN peacekeepers there?\n\nThe peacekeeping force in Somalia ais known as the African Union Mission in Somalia or [ANISOM](_URL_6_) operate with a joint mandate from the UN and African Union. The force about 10,000 strong (soon to increase to 17,000) and is primarily made up of Ugandan soldiers with some Burundian soldiers and is really only present in Mogadishu to fight back forces of [Al-Shabaab](_URL_5_).\n\nAdditionally, recent attacks by Al-Shabaab in Kenya and Ethiopia have prompted those governments to launch attacks into Somalia to try to capture key Shabaab strongholds - again see [map](_URL_1_).\n\n > Is there any hope for the future?\n\nA [recent conference](_URL_3_) on the situation in Somalia outlined a plan for a sort of federated style of government that, while far from promising, is one of the better suggested solutions in recent memory (imo).\n\nOne development that may also help is the declining support for Al-Shabaab following its refusal to allow Western food aid to reach tens of thousands of people who suffered through one of the worst droughts, and subsequent famines, in recent history.\n\n > Safe zones?\n\nSomaliland and Puntland are far safer than Southern Somalia. While Mogadishu is occupied by ANISOM forces, attacks in the city are still frequent.\n\n"
]
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[],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mengistu_Haile_Mariam",
"http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/290-width/images/print-edition/20120225_MAM969.gif",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Siad_Barre",
"http://www.economist.com/node/21548291",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogaden_War",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shabaab",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMISOM"
]
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7u6ttl | why almost no smartphone protective case has a cover for the camera glass? | I mean it as a flap ([like dust covers](_URL_0_)), not a transparent layer. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7u6ttl/eli5_why_almost_no_smartphone_protective_case_has/ | {
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"A decent quality smartphone will have a hard protective layer (e.g. gorilla glass) over the lens so it doesn't get scratched. It will resist scratches pretty well. \n\nOn the other hand, smartphone cases are made of cheaper materials, usually some kind of plastic, and are much easier to scratch. So if you had a case over the lens, over time, there would be a bunch of scratches in front of the lens, all your pictures would come out blurry and terrible. \n\nAlso, even if the case is nice and clear with no scratches, it will tend to add distortion, extra glare, and so forth to your photos. \n\nSo bottom line is, they make a cut-out for the camera so your photos aren't potato quality. "
]
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"https://www.portplugs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/iphon6-protective-port-plug-case.jpg"
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[]
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45lrm8 | How would Viking warbands choose their leader? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/45lrm8/how_would_viking_warbands_choose_their_leader/ | {
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"The leader was the person who most obviously had the qualities of leadership (I'll explain more at the end). Those qualities included:\n\n\n*Good lineage. Was your father or father's father a great leader and an honorable person who paid their debts and was honest with their business? Did they come from a hospitable family that takes in travelers? Were they distinguished? Also there is a reason there is so much politics around the idea of marriage. Marriage during this period was a way of unifying families to create a stronger grouping, bring peace between the two, or a way for families to become a part of a dynasty. Since heterosexual unions came with the assumption of children, those children became the heirs to family lines that also tie to land rights. As such rulers were the ones that typically owned land or had legal precedence to land ownership (i.e. their land was taken from them and they have a \"birth right\" to fight for it back like King Harald Hadrada).\n\n\n*Personal strength, bravery, honesty and masculinity which are all tied to personal honor. If you were not the strongest or bravest then why would I follow you into battle? Leaders including Kings were at the front lines leading the attack and showing an example to their men. Also since warband leaders were responsible for distributing the booty, if you are dishonest, how do I know I won't get my fair share? And of course masculinity which ties to strength and bravery but also ties to living in your role as a man. For instance, magic was believed to be the realm of women and while there were some men that practiced it they did so at the risk of being labeled ergi which means lacking in respectable masculine values. This could lead to your wife being allowed to divorce you as well as adversly effecting your reputation for future business opportunities. As such any remarks about ones manliness was taken seriously as it to the point of challenging them to a holmgang (a one-on-one duel) or straight up killing the person (you would be legally protected because if you didn't kill or challenge the person you were weak and thus embody the label of ergi) As such a person who was unquestionably manly and honest (which also tied to Norse masculine values) were usually candidates for leadership.\n\n\n*Good hamingja (luck). Is there a sense of luck around the person or things have happened to them that shows that they have a bright future and their fate is aligned for greatness? There was a belief that luck was an entity that followed and favored certain people and it only made sense that you followed a lucky person so that they could reap from the trickle-down of luck and other wealth from that person. This is something that is hard to objectively describe but the Norse were all about talking about people's hamingja. For instance Leif Eriksson is also known as Leif the Lucky since he saved a handful of men from a ship wreck that led to news of lands further West (Vinland). Luck can also leave you and with that your support for leadership can leave you too.\n\n\nNow saying the choice is obvious is very subjective to the social dynamics that went on during the time. To say a leader was always chosen a certain way is not the case because during this era in Norway, kings were killing each other left and right to claim the right to rule. What we can take out of this is that the connection between the leader and pertinent landed freemen (not all freemen had the same rights) was decided based on more personal ties (reciprocity of material and service) to that potential leader and if their peers believed the same thing too. You could become a local leader without the \"royal/jarl\" background and still aspire for greatness and those men were called Hersirs. Hersirs would lead a hundred (a unit of land area that is a county division) show their ability for leadership through their actions in battle which could lead to a Jarl or King bringing them into their Hird(I believe this term is primarily tied to the King of Norway) or personal retinue which can lead to more favors (jarls were replaced and replaced with loyal men), the ability to marry into the family and as such the ability to expand their powers further into the future themselves or through their kin.\n\n\nThe best example I have that you may be able to relate to is Aragorn in Lord of the Rings. He shows the virtues of bravery, strength and honesty that is tested in times of peril and which is known by many others around him which leads to stories that build up his reputation. He also comes from a distinguished line and royal ties that add to his credibility of being a ruler. By the end of the movie he is one of the big heroes that is instrumental in stopping Sauron from taking over mankind in Middle-Earth (no one can see or know about Frodo's ring mission as it's nature requires secrecy and thus none of the glory) that it was \"rightfully\" acknowledged and even pressured upon him that he was the best candidate for king Arnor and Gondor. What I mean: there wasn't an election but an organic \"vote\" and understanding based on the qualities of the person, that is pretty much how warband leaders were typically chosen."
]
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||
67h2j0 | does tire tread help when driving on wet surfaces? if so; how? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67h2j0/eli5_does_tire_tread_help_when_driving_on_wet/ | {
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"Because low tread leaves nowhere for the water to go so the tire kinda skims on top of the water. If there is tread, the water has grooves to go through leaving the tread direct contact with the road. ",
"Tread refers specifically to the channels cut into the surface of a tire. The tread is designed to shed water displaced from under the road contacting surfaces of the tire, though the actual pattern isn't actually terribly important so long as certain key criteria are met, and is highly stylized.\n\nAn over-inflated tire has a significant impact on improving said displacement, as the bulging center can more easily press the water from the center out. I'm not advocating you over-inflate your tires - while it also reduces rolling resistance, increasing fuel economy, it also reduces traction, so you're more likely to lose control of your vehicle, especially at higher speeds, and it wears the center of your tire excessively, greatly reducing durability.\n\nIf you can't displace water fast enough, typically due to speed, lack of tread, or an under inflated tire having too much displacement, you'll hydroplane - the car will literally be floating. That's not driving, that's sailing.\n\nSnow and ice tires are hard rubber with bold edges to dig into the snow and ice, and use *that* as the road surface. They make pretty bad rain tires because if it's warm enough to rain and not snow, you're still driving on hard rubber that doesn't really care all that much about gripping the road surface.\n\nTread is the gaps between the road contacting surfaces of the tire, and the less tire you have in contact with the road, the less friction. Tread actually reduces traction in ideal conditions by virtue of being \"not tire\", which is why performance tires for ideal conditions have little to no tread. Racing tires, aka \"slicks\" (which are anything but, depending on the compound, they can be as sticky as duct tape when *cold*) are illegal for road use because they are dangerous to drive on in the presence of any amount of moisture on the road. They have no means of displacing water but by casting a wake in front of the point of contact. I was in a Dodge Viper that nearly wiped out at 25 mph driving through a neighborhood because it rained, *two days prior*, because of the tires on it at the time.\n\nSo treads are a compromise in the design, and all season tires are the ultimate compromise."
]
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||
2lcr4s | why is that when i say "a university student" it sounds right but when i say "an university student" like it should be in english, it sounds completely wrong. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lcr4s/eli5_why_is_that_when_i_say_a_university_student/ | {
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"Someone posted something similar the other day on here, and it more has to do with pronunciation not lettering.\n\nYou use the singular designator \"a,\" for words that follow don't have a vowel sound. You use \"an\" if it is a vowel sound.",
"You don't say \"An University Student\" in English.\n\n\"An\" is used when the following word starts with a vowel sound. \"University\" does not, it starts with a consonant \"y\" sound, \"You-Ni-Verse-It-Ee\".\n\nYou would use \"an\" when saying a word such as \"umpire\" which starts with a vowel \"u\" sound, \"Uhm-Pyre\"",
"You use \"an\" before vowels that is true, \nbut sometimes you should use an \"a\" too. \nThe sound makes it confusing, \nFor the vowel, you are using, \n\"Youniversity\" starts with \"Y\" and not \"U\""
]
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||
3xaz63 | why did adam sandler seemingly stop being funny some years ago? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xaz63/eli5_why_did_adam_sandler_seemingly_stop_being/ | {
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"I was in high school when Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore were out. That humor made me laugh 20 years ago. He hasn't changed we have. His brand of humor just doesn't stand up to the improv style of so many great comedies of the last 5+ years.",
"I'd say that your sense of humor has changed, Adam Sandler's humor has always been childish/frat guy's humor",
"His earlier movies still make me laugh. Waterboy, Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, Big Daddy, The Wedding Singer. Maybe he's losing his edge as he gets further away from his stand up and sketch comedy days. ",
"For any comedian, Scuba Steve would be the pinnacle of a career. \nIt's all down hill (or perhaps under water) from there.",
"He's getting too old to play those adrift Man-Child characters. He has to move on to other material."
]
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5xqrrq | what is with the weird "bubble in your throat" phenomenon? | What causes this to happen?
Why does it change your voice?
Is there any way to control when it happens or any way to control making it go away? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xqrrq/eli5_what_is_with_the_weird_bubble_in_your_throat/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"I am pretty sure it's just some mucus messing with your vocal cords, as ,usually, coughing to clear your voice will get rid of it.The voice changes, usually gets a deeper pitch, because the air you are exiling is not just making the vocal cord vibrate, but also all the mucus covering them and all the temporary mucus membranes between them."
]
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[]
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|
2mty1l | a fever. | * What is a fever?
* How does it change body temperature?
* What are the different severity temperature points? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mty1l/eli5_a_fever/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Hi i am a doctor.\n\nIn response to an invading pathogen (bug) the body starts an inflammatory cascade (attacks the bug). Lots of chemicals are released (cytokines etc) these chemicals cause the brain to reset the normal body temperature to a higher value, say 40 degrees Celsius. This is believed to help the immune system fight the infection but has not been scientifically confirmed. Although the brain raises the set point the body has to actually heat up to this new set point so you may have a temperature of 39 but the brain says that it should be 40 so you feel cold (even though you are not) and start shivering in order to generate more heat. This is a fever and when you shiver its called \"rigoring\"\nWhen you get a fever from heat stroke/exhaustion the brain doesn't raise the set point and as you heat up you actually feel hot this time, this is called hyperthermia (not a fever)"
]
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|
345s7x | the sudden outrage towards dr. oz | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/345s7x/eli5_the_sudden_outrage_towards_dr_oz/ | {
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"From my point of view, it largely seems to stem from the fact he is hiding behind the first amendment to promote fringe or even quack medical and health products. Sure the first amendment gives you the right to say any crazy thing you want, but the fact that he is (supposedly) a doctor and is using his authority in that role to peddle bad products is a major issue that will likely get him kicked out of the medical profession at least. ",
"This doesn't explain why it's suddenly become such a big issue, but as for the outrage itself...\n\nHe uses (abuses) his status as a medical doctor (specifically, he seems to be an excellent heart surgeon) in order to make large piles of money by promoting bullshit alternative medicine to people who don't know any better.\n\nThere was a pretty funny montage on Youtube recently of all the times he has said on his show \"I have this magic weight loss pill that will burn the fat right off you without you doing anything...\" or some close variation, and then cuts to his recent congressional hearing, being asked \"is there a magic weight loss pill?\" and him trying to evade the question but finally answering \"no.\"",
"Dr. Oz spreads lies about supposed cures for diseases that seriously have no cure. I have Gastroparesis. One of the members of his team posted a blog about how all that we need to do to cure a paralyzed stomach is take a walk. Is that why I have a gastric pacemaker, a port for IV meds, and three compression fractures due to seizures brought on by malnutrition? A few weeks later, after the GP community went after them, the author posted a mediocre clarification. _URL_0_\nThe guy is a tool. ",
"The outrage is not sudden. Doctors and scientists and others have been. Complaining for years. Hell, he was summoned before congress last year and there was a whole series of criticisms leveled at him at that time. Criticism just keeps building and building. But most recently, a large number of medical faculty at Columbia urged revocation of his tenure, and that action was a huge deal as it's done extremely rarely. Why now? No reason--it's just part of the overall criticisms against him that have been building .",
"If you check out the doctors behind it and the timing then you'll understand: _URL_0_ "
]
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[],
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"http://www.doctoroz.com/blog/kulreet-chaudhary-md/lazy-stomach-clarification"
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"http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dr-oz-plasters-critics-faces-791028"
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||
373km4 | Who is generally credited with being the first musician/band/musical act etc. to have branched beyond performance to merchandise their name as a brand? | I was wondering if any classical musicians or any act earlier than the 20th century had ever merchandised their brand name for product/memorabilia sales. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/373km4/who_is_generally_credited_with_being_the_first/ | {
"a_id": [
"crjetmd"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Some professional signers of the baroque period and later had sweet merch, although I don't believe any of them profited from it directly through royalties or such, only indirectly through spreading their celebrity. It was a bit of a \"thing\" to have little enamel miniatures of your favorite singer and you could put them on your dress as a pin, on a chain as a necklace, or on the tops of your shoes (like decorative buckles). Luigi Marchesi and Farinelli are the only ones I know off the top of my head who got fangirls enough to merit shoe-toppers. [Here is an example of one of those enamel miniatures for Farinelli.](_URL_0_) There were also plaster busts of signers that were popular to collect, [here is one of an unknown man](_URL_1_), they were very fragile and very few survived, I don't know of any for opera singers that survived to today, but we have mentions of women collecting them for their favorite signers in satires and newspapers. There were also some direct musical appeals to celebrity from music publishers, like publishing \"Favorite Songs of Sig. Farinelli\" using singer's names and their famous arias, not sure if that would count. \n\nBut for who first deliberately cultivated such non-musical branding opportunities for their own direct commercial gain like \"Pickles Nickels,\" not sure, but there's not really an equivalent in the 17th-19th centuries. The idea of \"personality rights\" wasn't really there yet. Some vague movement towards moral rights of artistry (like the right not to have your music ripped off and published at someone else's gain) but even that was very sketchy, and depended on where you were working in Europe. "
]
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"http://www.fitzwilliamprints.com/image/803818/",
"http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/sculptures-statues-figures/an-english-plaster-bust-of-a-gentleman-5896195-details.aspx"
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|
60lh6z | how come household incomes haven't gone up significantly in decades if more and more women have joined the labor force? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/60lh6z/eli5_how_come_household_incomes_havent_gone_up/ | {
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"In part precisely because more and more women have entered the labor force. Labor supply went up faster than demand, so labor became cheaper. The other issue is that technically compensation has continued to increase. People tend to only look at wage and say that people get paid the same as three decades ago. That's not true though, because healthcare benefits are compensation too, but they've eaten up a larger share of compensation (hence the push to reduce healthcare costs with the ACA)."
]
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11a2k3 | Will the GPS coordinates of a fixed point on land change due to Continental Drift? Also, why is 0 lattitude 0 longitude in the ocean instead of on land? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/11a2k3/will_the_gps_coordinates_of_a_fixed_point_on_land/ | {
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" > Will the GPS coordinates of a fixed point on land change due to Continental Drift?\n\nYes, Very Very VERY slowly.. at most [2-6 inches a year](_URL_2_). \n\n > Also, why is 0 latitude 0 Longitude in the ocean instead of on land?\n\nWell the Earth is a sphere so 0 latitude is the equator. Runs right round the middle of the world in a North/South orientation\n\n0 longitude is a bit different. The world power at the time of the definition of the prime meridian (0 longitude), Was England. They set 0 longitude as the line running right down the middle of the [Royal Observatory front door](_URL_1_). \n\nWhy 0,0 is out at sea.. well that's the way the World lines up when [divided into Graticules](_URL_0_) based on those standards.\n\n"
]
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prime_meridian.jpg",
"http://hypertextbook.com/facts/ZhenHuang.shtml"
]
] |
||
2hdew2 | How do people in space (ex: living on the ISS) keep track of time? Do they adjust their sleep-wake schedules according to one master clock? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2hdew2/how_do_people_in_space_ex_living_on_the_iss_keep/ | {
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"Pretty much. There is so much to do for astronauts whether it's science, maintenance, spacewalks etc. that their days are fairly choreographed and planned. Then they just block off time for sleeping each 24 hour period. One of the physiological issues with life on the ISS is there is a sunset/sunrise every 90 minutes and it can mess with your circadian rhythm and sleep cycles. "
]
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hhxyp | Is it technically possible that somewhere in the Universe some of the fundamental constants are actually variable? | e.g. pi, Planck's constant, the speed of light in vacuum, etc. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/hhxyp/is_it_technically_possible_that_somewhere_in_the/ | {
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"Is it possible in the sense that we can't conclusively rule it out? I guess I have to reluctantly say yes; that's the price of having empirical science.\n\nIs it possible in the sense that there is *any* reason to believe it happens, or in the sense that it's consistent with our present observations? Absolutely not.",
"Go to a bank and have them change a pocket full of your money into another currency. They'll tell you that, today, a pound is worth 1.15 euros, or whatever it happens to be at that moment. Then turn around and ask them whether it's technically possible that, somewhere in the universe, the exchange rate could be something else?\n\nThe answer, of course, is no. Because the exchange rate from pounds to euros is not a *field* defined over *space.* It's just a scalar value used to convert numerical values from one basis to another. A given amount of money is the same regardless of how you choose to denominate it; nothing actually *happens* to your money when you change it from one currency to another. You just end up breaking it up into differently sized units, is all.\n\nIn the same way, neither the speed of light nor Planck's constant are *fields* defined over space. They're just unit-conversion factors. The speed of light is the conversion factor for going from units of distance to units of duration and back. Planck's constant is the conversion factor for going from units of distance *or* duration to units of energy. They're no more \"fundamental physical constants\" than the number of inches in a meter is, and in fact it's customary for physicists to work in units of measurement in which *c* and *h* are both numerically equal to one. (Throw *G* into that mix and you can also get rid of the kilogram, which is nice.)\n\nAs for *π,* that's not a constant at all, but instead a property of geometry. In flat space, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its radius is 2*π,* but this is not true in curved space. And the space we live in, as we all know, can be curved. So the value of *π* varies from place to place. In fact, one of the most important scientific experiments of last decade involved measuring the ratio of the circumference to the radius of the largest possible circle — a circle projected onto the surface of last scattering — to determine the overall geometry of the observable universe. If *π* were the same everywhere, there would've been no reason to do that experiment."
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coipvd | who was jeffrey epstein? why is him committing suicide suspicious? what does him committing suicide mean? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/coipvd/eli5_who_was_jeffrey_epstein_why_is_him/ | {
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"Had a child sex slave trafficking ring with multiple elite billionaires involved but hasn’t given much info and was supposed to go to trial soon also was on suicide watch but somehow still committed “suicide” it’s suspicious because there’s a high chance it’s a coverup",
"Epstein was (is?) a very wealthy and connected financier (investment banking, financial consulting, etc...) who has been under intense investigation for his ties to child sex trafficking.\n\nHis apparent suicide is suspicious because he was recently arrested (for a second time) around child trafficking. He had supposedly been under suicide watch after previously attempting it. The fact that he is connected with many high profile names (famous US presidents and politicians, British and Saudi royalty and generally wealthy and well known VIPs, etc...) leads many to believe that there’s more than meets the eye. Without him alive he can’t name drop or implicate the names being accused. Sure it’s possible he committed suicide, but there are many very wealthy, very connected people with an interest in silencing him.\n\nThere are also theories that he’s tied to a deep state spy organization in Israel and that the Israeli government body swapped him and transported him out of prison and the US. \n\nHis suicide “means” that he can’t speak or testify against any of the potential people involved."
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5zqjaj | if your body, very slowly, began to not get the oxygen it needs, which systems would shut down first? (and last) and why? | What bodily functions are top priority for oxygen use and what functions are the lowest tier and so on? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5zqjaj/eli5_if_your_body_very_slowly_began_to_not_get/ | {
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"Im not aware of any published evidence on this so I will give my professional opinion.\n\nFirstly it depends on why are not getting the oxygen it needs. The two main reasons are because of a lack of oxygen in the air (rare) or your lungs not oxygenating blood properly (common). \n\nNot having enough oxygen in your blood (as measured by a blood test from your artery) is termed respiratory failure. There are two types, one is just not enough oxygen with low carbon dioxide caused by hyperventilating to try to get enough oxygen in. The second type is not enough oxygen AND too much carbon dioxide because the lungs are not moving air in and out efficiently enough. \n\nIf you're talking about lack of oxygen then that would typically show the first type of respiratory failure on the arterial blood test. We would still term it respiratory failure even though the lungs were working fine. Without any shadow of a doubt your brain would be the first thing to go. Most of your organs can survive a certain amount of hypoxia but you would go unconscious fairly rapidly. Your liver and kidneys would probably go next - the liver because it is the organ that carries out the most chemical reactions and needs oxygen for this and the kidneys because they require a lot of oxygenated blood flow to keep working. \n\nIf you removed the oxygen very very slowly (over days and weeks) then other mechanisms would kick in such as the blood production mechanisms to ensure there is more haemoglobin to mop up as much as possible of the scarce oxygen that you breathe in. This is why mountaineers have to spend time acclimatising and why people who live at high altitude in for example Chile have very high haemoglobin levels. If you kept removing the oxygen though, you'd eventually pass out. \n\nAfter you'd passed out the liver and kidneys would begin to shut down next and then probably your heart. You wouldn't live long after you'd passed out. The brain is obviously the top priority. After this the body will just keep trying to get as much oxygen as it can until the heart stops.\nTl;dr: The brain. \n\nSource: I am a doctor.\n\nEdit: Grammar"
]
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1j173e | how are synthetic materials (such as plastic) unnatural / toxic, if they are made from ingredients found on earth? | To clarify: I don't understand how natural ingredients can be used to create non-natural, or synthetic (and thereby environmentally harmful) things. Why, for example is plastic considered "man made" - aren't the ingredients for the chemicals in it at some level just natural ingredients? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1j173e/eli5_how_are_synthetic_materials_such_as_plastic/ | {
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"Naturally occuring chemicals can be used to make chemicals which do not occur in nature. Think of it like baking a cake. The main ingredients in cake (sugar, flour, oil, eggs) are all naturally occuring but you would never a cake in nature. It's similar with plastics. While the chemicals used in plastic manufacturing (most petroleum based) are naturally occuring, you can combine them in specific ways to make something which is not.",
"I personally dont think there is a distinction between 'natural' and 'unnatural' in a universal sense. We are a product of nature, and nature endowed us with the ability to create things, just like bird's nests.\n\nWhere the environmentalists have a point is that when we DO create a new compounds (chemicals that other processes didnt put together until now, like a new atomic leggo set), it often decays slowly and can be harmful to living organisms that have not evolved around such materials. It disrupts their biological functions because we changed some base elements into a compound that works differently than other compounds they are used to.\n\nIf you create a lot of slowly decaying poisonous things and leave them laying around, it will kill a bunch of the living things that were there for millions of years without that stuff.\n\nPlastic, for example, is made (often) of petroleum, which is found deep underground and is (often) the result of many years of decaying organic matter. We pull up the petroleum, which is now some long stringy bits of carbon, and subject it to other chemicals and heat and pressure etc.\n\nNow we can create a plastic bag. Other organisms havent done this before, so we are the first to introduce the plastic bag into the ecosystem. Whenever you introduce a new thing into the ecosystem, it messes with what was already there.\n\nMy personal take on this is that the result can be bad for US, but not universally bad usually. George Carlin has a bit about how nature will just eventually use plastic in a new species, but we'll be fucking long dead cause we screwed up the environment so bad that even we cant live there. I think there is validity to this point.\n\nIf we create a new string of carbon and stuff that causes cancer and leave it in the drinking water, WE die, along with other creatures. WE dont really want to die, so we assume this is universally bad, when in reality, it's only bad for us. \n\nBut bad for us is bad enough, and we should take care to keep this place clean, if for no other reason than I want to not get horrible cancer and die painfully when it could be avoided.\n\nAnother point is that we are not the first species to introduce a powerful chemical agent globally and change all of life. The Earth didnt always have an oxygen rich environment. It took photosynthetic organisms to change the entire atmosphere so that creatures that breath air could evolve and exist. The trees and whatnot changed the planet long before we did. Also, 99% of all species have gone extinct. We are likely subject to the same laws.\n\nIf we change our environment too rapidly and dont pay attention to the cause and effect chains of our decision making, we may end up in that 99% sooner rather than later. This is counter to all our instincts as living creatures, so we should try to avoid doing this to ourselves, even if at some long range universal point of view it's not a new thing to have happen.\n\nI'll bet all that new O2 killed a lot of things off back when photosynthetic organisms were starting to do their thing."
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omj88 | what do you do with your invention idea? | I'm curious about the steps you need to take to create a product. When to seek investors, when to seek counsel, patents, whatever. Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/omj88/eli5_what_do_you_do_with_your_invention_idea/ | {
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"Write all plans, print it out and mail it to yourself, never opening it. \nIt's a poor man's copyright. \nOther than that, I don't know. Hopefully someone else has more in-depth knowledge. ",
"Really depends on what you've invented/what your idea is.\n\nIf it's a mass-market thing, or something that can be quickly duplicated by competitors and you haven't got the capacity to produce and distribute widely yourself, you might want to consider licensing. Find a company doing something similar or related and pitch it to them in exchange for a license fee.\n\nIf you're going it alone, then a business plan, marketing plan, etc are a must. How much money you need depends on what your startup and operating costs will be. Whether you'll need patents depends on the idea too. \n\nBefore you even start going through the process of developing a plan though, it's worth your time to discuss it with some people first. It might seem like a great idea, but we aren't always the first ones to see major flaws in our plans. Most importantly, try to avoid using family or close friends for this, as they're the least likely to be completely honest if an idea really sucks."
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5aq048 | how do television ratings work? how long do i have to be tuned in to a channel for the rating to count? and what's the correlation between the rating number (i.e. 13.4) and the number of viewers? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5aq048/eli5_how_do_television_ratings_work_how_long_do_i/ | {
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"Ratings are based off what are called Nielsen Ratings. The Nielsen Company employs a system where they select families of a certain demographic in every single area code and \"hires\" out these families to be what are known as The Nielsen Families.\n\nHow do they gather what shows they watch? Nielsen employs a box that connects to a family's DVR or cable box as well as connects to their TV so that they know exactly what shows the family is watching, when they watch it, how they watch it (recorded or live), and how often. All of this information gets transferred into the box and that's then transmitted to their data warehouse down in Texas.\n\nThere, millions upon millions of data is migrated, mined, and reported out to various companies who have bought media, and they receive a report around GRPs or Gross Rating Points. Gross Rating Points tell you the frequency (how often and length) and reach (# of Nielsen families). Each company has a set threshold that they wish to hit so that's how some shows get cancelled vs others. \n\nNot everyone can impact ratings as this would require tons of data plus not everyone wants to have their viewing habits shared with companies. You cannot choose to become a Nielsen Family, you have to live in a certain area and hit a type of demographic (income, race, make up of the family, etc) for you to be selected by The Nielsen Company.\n\nRatings count by seconds so you can be on a channel for a brief moment for it to be counted. For example, if you're channel surfing, the box will record exactly what channels you accessed and for how long even if it was for a second or less. They can also tell if you've accessed the channel guide. They can also tell when you switched the tv over to gaming and play a game.\n\nThere's a high correlation between the two as the ratings take into account number of viewers (reach) and frequency of viewing (how many times viewed and length of time).",
"I've been a Nielsen family participant on 2 different instances. Once about 20 years ago in OK City, and again, 1 year ago in Texas.\n\nThey do allow a small fee to the participants, but all tracking in both instances for me was a manually written log provided by the Nielsen company. I would fill out and mail them the log, and they would send a new blank log back for the next period. \n\nIn both cases, I eventually gave up on the arrangement so my TV watching was very sporadic and I didn't like filling out and keeping up with the log books. \n\nIf they would have provided a box of some kind that tracks viewing, I'd still be doing it. I'm not sure what dictates who gets a box and who has to do the logs by hand.\n\n\n\n\n"
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14r93x | why are smartphones $500-700+ while laptops with the same or better specs are considerably less? | EDIT: I'm seeing a lot of comments about space, but is it the actual cost of the small components or the research that goes into producing them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/14r93x/eli5_why_are_smartphones_500700_while_laptops/ | {
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"Designing electronics when you have no, or relaxed space constraints is **much** easier and therefore cheaper. Also, the specific parts, while maybe less powerful, are likely more efficient with regards to power (this is highly variable, of course). So even though your particular processor or whatnot is *slower,* it has a more complicated design to ensure better battery life and smaller physical size.\n\nEDIT: A lot of people are nitpicking about the fact that margins are very high in devices like Samsungs phones and the iPhone line. Just because their *raw materials cost* is low, and the profit margin is high on the device, does not mean miniaturization is irrelevant. The reason they can charge those prices, is because miniaturization is **hard** and they've made new, successful, miniature devices. They are recouping their R & D costs. The market will push these prices down (as evidenced by Google's new phones) because the bulk of the R & D is done, and that cost isn't repeated. Companies learn from one another, which is in part some of the issues with patent laws but that's another story.",
"Its all about size. You wouldn't be able to fit a laptop into your pocket. I would imagine making technology smaller requires a smarter way to do so.",
"Proximity sensor, gyroscope, wifi, bluetooth, 3g, 4g, GPS, multitouch super dense screen, multiple cameras, multiple microphones, light sensor, NFC stuff. Theres a ton of stuff in there. I'm surprised its so cheep. ",
"This is not an ELI5 answer, but if you are really interested in smartphone costs listen to the section about it (driving smartphone costs down) on this podcast: _URL_0_. These guys are probably the most thorough tech reviewers and its still fairly easy to understand if you follow the industry at all.",
"A lot of people are saying it's expensive to make things smaller, but nobody is really explaining why. It's not just that you have to do more R & D, you also have to manufacture everything to much tighter tolerances.\n\nEngineers know that when the plans for something say it should be 1mm thick, every single unit won't come out at exactly 1.0000000...mm when it's manufactured. Consequently, they design whatever it is that they're designing such that it will still work properly if all the parts are a bit larger or smaller--they incorporate a **tolerance**. If certain parts of something need to be almost exactly the specified size (perhaps the two halves of a hinge, so it can swing smoothly), they need to be manufactured to a tight tolerance.\n\nThe smaller a device is, the tighter all the tolerances have to be, because there's less room for error. And to manufacture parts with very tight tolerances, you need manufacturing equipment that is *itself* built to very tight tolerances, which in turn had to be manufactured with other tools with tight tolerances. This is, of course, expensive. If you think about it, it's amazing anything can be this accurate at all, considering the whole process started out with sticks and rocks.",
"While the answers about smaller = lower tolerances and such are right, some of it is also plain price gouging. Apple sells iPhones for 3x what it costs to produce them because people will pay that for them.",
"Why are laptops $500-700+ while desktops with the same or better specs are considerably less?",
"The actual reason. \"Because the cost of the phone to the customer is subsidized by the carrier.\" If the carrier is going to discount the phone from $500 to $0 on a 3 year term then there is no reason for the customer to care what the actual price is so no reason for manufacturers to reduce price. If everyone had to buy hardware outright the manufacturers would be forced to be competitive and just like in the pc industry prices would come crashing down. Ever wondered why an ipod touch costs 179.99$ but an iphones full price is $699.99 when it almost the exact same hardware with an antenna? It is because the ipod is sold at low margin and needs to be marketed at a reasonable price and the iphone needs to be marketed at a similar price (with contract). But since carriers are willing to subsidize the price why not charge more and use the full subsidy as full profit. The carrier nor the manufacturer are expecting people to buy phones straight out. They would prefer you on a term.",
"Everyone is saying space, which is certainly a huge factor. The other is simply supply and demand. Laptops have been declining in sales due to competition from tablets and smartphones (not to mention people are getting savvier and learning how to maintain their computer so they can keep it for more than a couple of years - computers are not as disposable now as they were 5 or 10 years ago).\n\nMore people are getting smartphones now. It's also worth pointing out that relatively few people end up paying $500-700 on a smartphone when they just buy them subsidized through their wireless providers. ",
"The computer hardware industry is one that is highly competitive (many players) with very low margins (profit). This is one of the reasons why many of the older manufacturers are moving out of the business (e.g. IBM selling to Lenovo). You will often see the prices come very close to the base component cost especially when they go on sale. \n\nSmart phones are relatively new (Iphone first released in 2007), and esp Apple has been making a killing off of them by having a huge profit margin. [The Iphone 5's bill of materials \\(parts\\) for the 16GB is $207, and for the 32GB is $209. The total manufacturing cost (labor to assemble) gets it to about $230.](_URL_1_) Apple not only makes money from the extra ~$400 and much more for larger GB versions, plus Itunes store/app fees, some subscription fees, and the rest of their business (laptops, software, etc). Yes, they have R & D, advertising and store costs but so do other 'traditional' companies like Dell, Intel, Nvidia, MS, Best Buy etc yet they combined can sell you computers near cost. \n\nThe reason why Apple and others can sell so much is because everyone wants one. They want one because there's little competition for it so far compared to PCs, it's a closed system (you can't just buy a phone and install your own OS easily and the whole closed app market system), and because people everywhere from China to USA think of it as a status symbol. \n\nHowever, people say that this will go down soon esp with the software help from Android. Yes, the Nexus 4 is cheaper at $300 and the Kindle Fire is only $200, but the real prices will come down with more competition. For example, did you know that the best selling smartphone in Kenya is a Huawei (Chinese) running Android that costs [only $80?](_URL_0_)",
"Because people are willing to pay $500-700 for them. ",
"This is a really toughie. Hmmm... I design embedded electronics so my best analogy is this. Building a smart phone is like building mansion in the city. Building a laptop is like building a mansion in the country. The city mansion has less space left/right so i need to build your mansion with many stories (pcb layers) b/c i built so many stories the plumbing and electricity is more complicated (emissions/signal integrity/blind and buried via technology). Also because your city mansion is taller than a country mansion its harder for me to add the jacuzzi, karma machine and tv systems b/c your mansion is in lets say manhattan and it is more expensive to get the special crane to get the jacuzzi to the 5th floor. Where the country mansion can just have a regular one installed outside in the backyard (analogy for package on package memory ics. ...... Um \"yo dawg i installed a chip on top of your chip?\")\n\nAnother thing is your city mansion is in an area where i cannot park big mack trucks to deliver thinks easily. I have to deliver things one at a time b/c the streets are narrow and that means some things like yhe swimming pool need special designers who can figure out how to make all the parts smaller and fit. Also somehow get installed in a more difficult way. That special designer is expensive (ultra fine pitch bga designs for circuits and the higher accuracy machines and finer pitches needed in order to route them)\n\nTl;dr\n\nBuilding a mansion in the city is harder than building one in the open country.\n\n~Sent from my android"
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"http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ihs-iphone-5-costs-207-to-manufacture-2012-09-25"
],
[],
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|
3f9i76 | how are these girls doing the math in their head so fast? | _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3f9i76/eli5_how_are_these_girls_doing_the_math_in_their/ | {
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"Do you notice how they're moving their hands around as the guy reads the numbers? That's because they're using a mental abacus. An abacus allows you to do fast calculations that would be very hard to do in your head. All they have to do is picture what the abacus would look like and they can read off the answer even without actually holding on to one."
]
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18lac1 | why it hurts to look at the sky on a cloudy day | The sun isn't out; why does looking up burn my eyes? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18lac1/eli5_why_it_hurts_to_look_at_the_sky_on_a_cloudy/ | {
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"* ELI5 version: the sky is still very bright even when you're not looking at the sun, so it can still hurt your eyes.\n\n* Super technical version: [Here is an AskScience question that has a very detailed answer](_URL_0_)."
]
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|
ja7yd | li5: poker | I'm going to be playing a game tonight, and I don't want to look like a total newbie... which I am. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ja7yd/li5_poker/ | {
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"In almost every form of poker, you make a five card hand. The hands ranked from best to worst (the notation should make sense if you're familiar with playing cards, Jc is the jack of clubs, Th is the ten of hearts, etc):\n\n* Straight flush (same suit, 5 in a row, like 5h 6h 7h 8h 9h)\n* Four of a kind (like 6c 6s 6d 6h 9c)\n* Full house (three of one rank, two of another, like 8c 8s 8d 5h 5c)\n* Flush (5 of one suit, like 3c 5c 9c Tc Qc)\n* Straight (5 in a row, like 8c 9c Tc Jc Qc)\n* Three of a kind (like 2c 2s 2d Jh Kh)\n* Two pair (like 6s 6c Ts Th Ad)\n* One pair (like 3d 3c 2h 5s 9c)\n* High card (this means none of the above, like 2c 4c 7s Tc Qd is called \"Queen high\")\n\nSome games give you more than 5 cards, some include a combination of cards just for you and what are called \"community cards\" which everyone can use in your hand. But in just about every game, you will be trying to make a 5 card hand.\n\nThe way betting works, is that it generally starts with the person left of the dealer. When the betting gets to you:\n\n* If no one has bet yet this round, you may **check** (do nothing) or **bet** (put money into the pot that others will at least have to match to continue).\n* If someone else has bet before you act, you may **fold** (give up the hand, you don't have to put any more money in), **call** (match the person's bet to stay in), or **raise** (in addition to matching the bet, you bet even more). \n\nSome games have what are called \"fixed limits.\" In every betting round, there is an amount you are allowed to bet. If the fixed limit for a round is $2, the first player may check or bet $2. If he bets $2, the next player may fold, call $2, or raise another $2 for a total of $4. In fixed limit, the bet in each round goes up in increments of the limit.\n\nOther games are called \"no limit.\" This means you may bet any or all of your chips at any time. Two exceptions: there is generally a minimum, and if someone has bet $x and you want to raise, you have to raise at least by another $x for a total of $2x.\n\nTwo important pieces of advice:\n\n* Tell the people you're playing with that you are a newbie. It's a heck of a lot easier to get the hang of things by having things explained to you as it goes. \n* Figure out how much money you are ok with losing before arriving. Under no circumstances should you let yourself lose more than that.",
"Yes. I specifically searched for this ELI5. This is quite helpful, thank you!",
"In almost every form of poker, you make a five card hand. The hands ranked from best to worst (the notation should make sense if you're familiar with playing cards, Jc is the jack of clubs, Th is the ten of hearts, etc):\n\n* Straight flush (same suit, 5 in a row, like 5h 6h 7h 8h 9h)\n* Four of a kind (like 6c 6s 6d 6h 9c)\n* Full house (three of one rank, two of another, like 8c 8s 8d 5h 5c)\n* Flush (5 of one suit, like 3c 5c 9c Tc Qc)\n* Straight (5 in a row, like 8c 9c Tc Jc Qc)\n* Three of a kind (like 2c 2s 2d Jh Kh)\n* Two pair (like 6s 6c Ts Th Ad)\n* One pair (like 3d 3c 2h 5s 9c)\n* High card (this means none of the above, like 2c 4c 7s Tc Qd is called \"Queen high\")\n\nSome games give you more than 5 cards, some include a combination of cards just for you and what are called \"community cards\" which everyone can use in your hand. But in just about every game, you will be trying to make a 5 card hand.\n\nThe way betting works, is that it generally starts with the person left of the dealer. When the betting gets to you:\n\n* If no one has bet yet this round, you may **check** (do nothing) or **bet** (put money into the pot that others will at least have to match to continue).\n* If someone else has bet before you act, you may **fold** (give up the hand, you don't have to put any more money in), **call** (match the person's bet to stay in), or **raise** (in addition to matching the bet, you bet even more). \n\nSome games have what are called \"fixed limits.\" In every betting round, there is an amount you are allowed to bet. If the fixed limit for a round is $2, the first player may check or bet $2. If he bets $2, the next player may fold, call $2, or raise another $2 for a total of $4. In fixed limit, the bet in each round goes up in increments of the limit.\n\nOther games are called \"no limit.\" This means you may bet any or all of your chips at any time. Two exceptions: there is generally a minimum, and if someone has bet $x and you want to raise, you have to raise at least by another $x for a total of $2x.\n\nTwo important pieces of advice:\n\n* Tell the people you're playing with that you are a newbie. It's a heck of a lot easier to get the hang of things by having things explained to you as it goes. \n* Figure out how much money you are ok with losing before arriving. Under no circumstances should you let yourself lose more than that.",
"Yes. I specifically searched for this ELI5. This is quite helpful, thank you!"
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9arf3q | how did humans discover music? or is there music among animals as well? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9arf3q/eli5_how_did_humans_discover_music_or_is_there/ | {
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"\"Or is there music among animals as well?\"\n\nYou - you've never heard of a bird? "
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2wok7x | Who was the first Ottoman Sultan to claim the title of Caliph, and how was he able to legitimize himself as such? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2wok7x/who_was_the_first_ottoman_sultan_to_claim_the/ | {
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"Selim I \"the Grim,\" over the course of his brief reign 1512-1520, secured Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem, the three Islamic holy cities, and utterly demolished the Mamelukes of Egypt, who had been seen as the holders/protectors of the Holy Cities. Selim's conquests totally changed the character of the Ottoman holdings, which had previously been majority Christian and heavily European, into a truly Eastern Mediterranean empire with large Muslim populations in Syria and Egypt added. With the collapse of the Mamelukes, the possession of the holy cities, and the rivalry with the Shi'ite Safavids, proclaiming the Ottoman sultan the successor to the caliph tradition and the commander of the faithful etc. was just the natural next step.\n\nIn short, Selim became the first Ottoman caliph in 1517 after his dramatic conquest of all the Mameluke holdings (Egypt, the Levant, and the Hedjaz)."
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9ryupa | Why did Moscow become the capitol of the USSR even though Petrograd was the center of the revolution? | [deleted] | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9ryupa/why_did_moscow_become_the_capitol_of_the_ussr/ | {
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"Firstly, one only has to look at a map of the positions of the soviet civil war/pre 1939. Petrograd was mere miles away from first the German occupied areas of Russia signed away by the bolsheviks, and then also threatened by the breakaway Baltic republics and Finland. Moscow, being in the centre of Bolshevik Russia was a much more defensible position \n\nSecondly, Moscow and st Petersburg have had a sort of duelling cultural meaning in Russian culture. St Petersburg was the city of the tsars and represented, essentially, westernism. Moscow was the cultural heartland of Russia. In picking Moscow, the Bolshevik in part rejected the capitalist west to build a new society out of true Russia "
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4d26uu | How much does an understanding of historical linguistics benefit study of the period? | How difficult is it to study a period of history in depth without understanding the language of the time? For example, I imagine studying Roman history would be extremely difficult without an understanding of Latin, but is this also true for studying Anglo-Saxon history without knowledge of Old English? Also how much can modern language understanding help in ancient study, say studying Celtic history and only being able to speak modern Gaelic. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4d26uu/how_much_does_an_understanding_of_historical/ | {
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"Do you mean historical linguistics or knowing the languages? Historical linguistics is the study of how languages change over time, it's what's used to reconstruct things like Proto-Indo-European. It's not the same as knowing the languages, a historical linguist doesn't necessarily actually know the language that he's working on, although for obvious reasons it helps. It's also generally not all that helpful for history, although it can be useful for learning the languages (I don't personally think you can learn Greek without some basic idea of how the Greek language changed from prehistory to Attic, because otherwise you have to memorize the paradigms of literally every verb you encounter like a psycho). Knowing the languages, though, is of great use. I would argue that it's nearly impossible to study ancient history and classics without knowing Greek and Latin (although there are a *very* few number of scholars who actually don't). In more contemporary fields maybe it's not as important, I don't know--as a classicist I deal more or less exclusively with the texts themselves, so I would be forced to work from translation, which is very unsatisfactory for any detail or nuance and is not always possible, as some texts have never been translated. What's important in any historical field is being able to read the sources, whether that's direct material or scholarly material"
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quhwo | the concept of "hanging on" or "fighting" when you're dying from a disease like cancer | I always here about people "hanging on" when they're dealing with a deadly illness, but don't understand it fully. How can someone's will to live help prolong their death? What exactly happens (from a medical standpoint, if there is one) and why does it happen? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/quhwo/eli5_the_concept_of_hanging_on_or_fighting_when/ | {
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"It's less from a medical standpoint and more a matter of will. Someone hanging on or fighting means they still want to live. Once someone decides they don't want to live anymore, or they give in to death, a survival part of the brain shuts down and the illness takes over. When someone \"hangs on\" or \"fights to survive\" they are still battling their illness mentally. While not everything can be overcome this way, if someone decides they just give up and want to die, it's hard to turn it around. You can't force someone to live who just gives up.",
"Being sick can be hard work. \n\nTaking meds that make you naseous, getting painful and invasive procedures, not smoking or drinking or eating junk food, eating when you don't have an appetite, staying on top of your doctor, actively seeking out new treatments. Doing these things can be the difference between life and death, and some who is \"fighting\" is doing all of these.\n\nAlso, getting depressed can have physical side effects that make fighting a disease harder."
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r38al | what's wrong with the word 'negro'? how is 'black' politically more correct than 'negro'? | From wikipedia: The word “Negro” is used in the English-speaking world to refer to a person of black ancestry or appearance, whether of African descent or not.
I am from India, where 'Negro' is still a well accepted term for blacks, so I am curious what happened elsewhere? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/r38al/eli5_whats_wrong_with_the_word_negro_how_is_black/ | {
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"Apparently words that have a neutral definition can become slurs if they are constantly used to describe someone we don't like. Negro, just as a word outside of any context, is completly neutral; it's the Spanish word for black. However, because it was previously used to name people that we oppresed, the word is now bad. Just like Chinaman or Jap. Chinaman is bad but Englishman is good, and Jap is bad but Brit is good. These words are bad because at some point in time, they were used negatively. If there was a big war, and the word \"person\" was used to describe the enemy in propaganda, you would not be allowed to call anyone a \"person\" afterwards.",
"In American society, while the word negro wasn't used in as racially charged slurs as the other, it was the word the oppressor/the Man/the Other traditionally used to name blacks in America through slavery and segregation and beyond. (That's a whole other ELI5.) \"Black\" (not necessarily capitalized) doesn't have those same connotations and is also the term people choose to call themselves. \n\nAlso, \"negro\" is almost a 'dated' word in America's use of the English lexicon; it has archaic tones in relation to current American society and terminology and has fallen out of general use and favor in our language. ",
"deep_sea2 is right, and it is generally frowned upon to refer to a \"person of color\" as a Negro, at least in the United States. I say generally because you might notice it is still a [racial category](_URL_0_) on the 2010 US Census. There are a significant number of people in the US who prefer to racially identify themselves as Negroes.",
"The only thing I can think of honestly is because whenever I was called \"negro\" by a white person it was used as a slur. When I was young and ashamed of the color of my skin being called \"black\" empowered me. See documentaries and looking at old photos of my mom with the huge afro when someone called me \"black\" I mentally related it to strong, and still do. ",
"So, I have a question here. Did the offensive word \"nigger\" come from the harmless word \"negro\"? ",
"It's all about context, intention, and knowledge overall. You can't expect someone who doesn't know a word's history to understand the historical reasons behind the word. I had a white friend who purposely would say negro instead of the \"n-word\" because he knew I didn't like it, but he would emphasize negro just the same (to get on my nerves). The issue is is it ever used positively? That's why the United Negro College fund, there's no problem with it. But racists saying they don't want negro's (I highly doubt they would say negro) is just negative all around. ",
"I think its a question of who used it, when, and what the emotional attachment was to the word.\n\nBasically any word used by non-African Americans while American society was still fairly racist to describe African Americans ended up adopting the connotation that went along with the social asymmetry of the time. Its not until we used clinical technical terms like \"African American\" that we achieved any level of neutrality.\n\nThe simple fact is that African Americans still have hurdles that they go through that others do not. It sounds like a stereotype, but they are far more likely to be stopped by a police officer for no reason. So long as that sort of inequity exists, the words negro, colored, etc, will always retain their negative connotation.\n\nThere are signs that things are getting better though: When New Orleans was flooded and mostly African Americans were forcibly displaced, some people started referring to them as \"refugees\". This is just a technical description of their status due to the events, and should have been a neutral description. Jesse Jackson then decided to make a stink and insist that they not be called that because it was demeaning and made it seem as though they were foreigners from the third world, and thus not from the first world America. However, most people rejected this, as there was no connotation of any kind intended one way or another.\n",
"Negro is widely used in Latin America, and French and Spanish speaking countries all over the world. \n\n\nIn the US, \"Negro\" had noble connotations in black and white America during the early 1900s. Activists and thinkers of the Civil Rights Movement during the 1940s-'60s distanced themselves from the word because it had connotations with Marcus Garvey's Pan-African Movement in the 1920s that had helped empower and unify blacks yet stirred up a lot of racial hatred. Promoting the \"____-American\" label helped with integration. According to their train of thought, an America made up of distinct, separate races like \"white,\" \"negro,\" \"yellow,\" or \"red,\" as it had been under segregation would not be inclined to live with each other. A nation of \"African-Americans,\" \"Native-Americans,\" \"European-Americans,\" etc, however, would probably see each other as different shades of the same tribe, and may vote for integration. They did.\n\n\nNot to mention what's already been said about using \"negro\" negatively. It's like if Harijan became a bad word because people still used it to describe people of that caste as untouchable and second-class, as opposed to \"child of God\" as Gandhi meant. ",
"\"Negro\" is similar to \"Oriental\" in that, while not primarily meant as a pejorative, was used as a means of creating a hierarchical separation -- these words were used in a context that tried to scientifically distinguish people of different ethnicities and was often used as a means of patriarchal domination. \n\nELI12: Dog-whistle words for ethnic discrimination.\n\nELI5: It doesn't seem like it would be a bad word at pure face value, but it is. ",
"\"Is there something I can call you that's less offensive than Mexican?\" - Michael Scott",
"Negro is the politically correct term in Salvador, Brazil, where about 80 percent of the population is black. It is considered insulting to use 'black' to describe an individual, with the rational that the term should be reserved for the description of inanimate objects. People are proud to be called Negros there. I spent 6 weeks there, just thought it would be an interesting aside to the conversation. ",
"You might also want to look at the concept of the \"Euphemism Treadmill\".\n\n_URL_0_\n\nTerms that are perfectly acceptable gradually become associated with negative qualities, and then eventually become looked at as insults.\n\nFor example, in the US, The original term used was \"Negro\" (As in the United Negro College Fund)\n\nThen, when that began taking on negative connotations, someone started using the word \"Colored\". (For example, the National Assocation for the Advancement of Colored People. (NAACP))\n\nEventually that hit the treadmill and was replaced by Black... Then African American.... Now I think the politically correct term is \"Person of Color\"\n\n",
"Meanwhile, the NAACP isn't budging :)",
"I think there's some confusion here. \"Negro\" is not so much politically incorrect now as it is antiquated. As far as I know, \"Negro\" was never an offensive term; it was, in fact, the preferred term for a long time until for whatever reason it just fell out of favor -- just like \"colored\" or, for that matter, \"square.\"\n\nThe cultural lingo just changed. That's all. People in this thread seem to assume that it's offensive now just because it's not used anymore.",
"Is this really an ELI5 topic?\n\nEDIT: I mean doesn't it belong in [/r/answers](/r/answers) ? ",
"What about Porch Monkey? We should take it back.",
"Because white people wouldn't like to be called Caucasoids. ",
"Connotations.\n\nThe same way the Hitler mustache isn't ever worn by anyone anymore.",
"When people call me 'negro' or 'black' I don't get offended, I just think they are crazy because I'm white.",
"In the 1960's, negro was a perfectly acceptable term for blacks. Martin Luther King used the word negro often to refer to black people, though 'nigger' certainly would have been very offensive back then.\n\nHowever, many black people felt a sense of unease with being black. When you're disrespected everyday for the color of your skin, there are almost no positive icons in popular American culture, you could see how many black people could develop a stigma with being black. It's not that black people wanted to be white (most didn't). But many black people in America just didn't want to be black and the heavy baggage that came with it. \n\nMalcolm X was the catalyst for embracing blackness and ridding black America of this self-hatred. [You can see Malcolm X here in 1962 speaking on this topic.](_URL_0_). Malcolm exhorted black people in America to be proud of who they were despite a stifling culture of disrespect an disenfranchisement. He emphasized the importance of self-esteem and self-reliance within the community. He worked to improve black America from within, while Martin Luther worked to improve black America from without.\n\nA part of Malcolm's work was the subconscious meaning of words. Although you hear Malcolm X using the word 'negro' in the previous video, he eventually distanced himself from it in favor of 'black'. He saw 'negro' as being associated with slavery and segregation so by making this explicit break with the word 'negro' and embracing 'black', this was a subtle but important path to self determination.\n\nMalcolm X's work (along with others) eventually evolved into what was the black power movement. The spirit behind this black power movement was really captured elegantly in James Brown 1968 hit ['I'm black and I'm proud'](_URL_1_). This song got black people on a mass level to proudly embrace 'blackness'. No longer was being black was no longer a derogatory term. Black became beautiful, black became strong. \n\nThe end result of all this, is that 'black' became a word of pride while 'negro' was seen as a classification imposed on black people by outsiders. So 'black' slowly but surely became widely accepted as 'negro' fell to the wayside.",
"Different cultures have different meanings. In South America, Negro is considered a polite term. Like saying \"Friend\". [Example here](_URL_0_)",
"phrases have to be changed very often, otherwise they become stigmatising.\n\nDisabled has become Special Needs which has become Additional Needs\n\nSpecial Education has become Individualized Education which has in turn become Adapted Edducation which has become Additional Support. (that was within three years)\n\n\n\n",
"[Kaffir](_URL_0_) is our version of nigger in South Africa. Be careful when and where you use this word.\n\nWhile I was high school it started getting used as a way to refer to a person as useless or if they did something so dumb that \"only a kaffir would do\" for some reason. Let's just say people started getting a bit to familiar with the word.\n\nI feel racist typing this.\n\nedit: This word can't be used as in, \"my nigger.\" It is purely a racist term.",
"A website thats 97% white people explaining why black people find something offensive. I always enjoy watching tht. \n\nCalling someone by their race is offensive for obvious reasons. Just because it is still an accepted term does not make it less offensive. \n\nUnless obviously its how you say \"black\" in your native tongue but then again why are you describing people by their race in the first place.",
"I think that it isn't accepted as a term because it sounds too much like the word \"nigger\". ",
"The word \"black\" to describe someone's race has only just become socially acceptable as the word negro is just in times with modern US vocabulary and African American is simply just not accurate most of the times. \n\nHowever the word Negro is still the official terminology for the race, and it is still widely used on most, if not all, government or record keeping forms. \n\nEven the 2010 census has the word Negro on it. ",
"I have always wondered the same thing, OP. In my country, \"Negro\" is the \"politically correct\" term to address a black person and \"Black\" is the pejorative term. Living and learning....."
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1ffr4d | Do the deaf need to wear hearing protection? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1ffr4d/do_the_deaf_need_to_wear_hearing_protection/ | {
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"Depends why they're deaf. If it's a neurological thing, the physical ear being in good shape, it would make sense to try and preserve your ears in case of a medical advance that could restore your hearing."
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3q3nk8 | what are 'short-links' such as _url_1_, _url_2_, and _url_0_ used for? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3q3nk8/eli5_what_are_shortlinks_such_as_googl_reddit_and/ | {
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"The goal is to make URL's smaller, which is beneficial if e.g. you have a comment section or tweet you want to send and there's a character limit. It may also just look better than a medium to long size url.\n\nAn exception is that some of those URL shorteners are also used maliciously by criminals to hide the original URL which may have looked less safe. \n\nSo, keep an eye out when clicking those url's."
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5459pn | Is there any historical inspiration or precedence behind the "Ludovico technique," or is it strictly a creation of Anthony Burgess and/or Stanley Kubrick for A Clockwork Orange? | [From the Wikipedia page](_URL_0_):
> [The Ludovico technique] involved forcing a patient to watch, through the use of specula to hold the eyes open, violent images for long periods, while under the effect of a nausea-, paralysis-, and fear-inducing drug. The aim of the therapy was to condition the patient to experience severe nausea when experiencing or even thinking about violence, thus creating an aversion to violent behaviour.
Was this strictly a creation by Burgess and/or Kubrick for the book/movie, or at the very least did either individual get inspiration from any therapeutic techniques from the time or earlier? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5459pn/is_there_any_historical_inspiration_or_precedence/ | {
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"What springs to mind when reading this is Ivan Pavlov and his theory of classical conditioning (for which he used dogs to illustrate this) among other learning theories.\n\n**Now who was Ivan Pavlov?**\n\nIvan Pavlov was a Russian Behaviourist who in 1927 conducted an experiment which would (alongside *operant conditioning* essentially learning by trial and error) form a theory (\"Classical/Pavlovian Conditionding\" essentially learning by association) and mold part of our understanding on how we learn.\n\n**What did this study entail?**\n\n* Aim/Hypothesis: To demonstrate what animals learn by association.\n\n* Method/Procedure: Pavlov placed food in front of dogs, when the food was being brought to the dogs they began salivating. Pavlov would ring a bell every time the dogs ate the food. \n\nEven when there was no food given after the bell was rang, the dogs still salivated. They had *learnt* to salivate. Ordinarily when the dogs were given food they would salivate, Pavlov called this an *unconditioned response* to an *unconditioned stimulus* (food) as this happened naturally without experimentation.\n\nAfter a few rings of the bell, the dog began to associate that sound with food, Pavlov called this a *conditioned response* as it had been learnt (and an association attached) over time. Thus the food now was a *conditioned stimulus*.\n\nThere is more to Pavlov's study (e.g. to do with how long the learning would last and the specific parameters needed or not needed to evoke the response) however that delves more into science than history (But I'm still willing to explain that if you wish).\n\nHowever the \"ludovico technique\" involves inducing fear to emit a negative response so they feel adverse to doing that again. When thinking of that it makes me think of two other things:\n\n* Watson & Rayner's \"Little Albert\" experiment.\n* Aversion therapy & Phobias \n\n**Watson, Rayner and Little Albert**\n\n* Aim/Hypothesis: In 1920, Psychologist John B. Watson and his graduate student Rosaline Rayner already knew from studies in classical conditioning that fear to certain noises (e.g. a loud bang) was an *unconditioned response* in humans. What they wanted to find out was whether you could *condition* someone to fear a specific thing (e.g. furry toys or animals)\n\n* Method/Procedure: Watson & Rayner tested their hypothesis by attempting to scare an 11 month old orphan known as \"Little Albert\". They presented Albert with a series of items (white rats, rabbits, dogs, furry & non-furry masks, a santa clause mask, cotton wool and burning paper), Albert showed no fear when he saw the items. \n\nAlbert was given the white rat which he happily played with. Upon playing with the rat, Watson & Rayner struck a metal bar frightening Albert. Watson & Rayner repeated this several times, upon the 7th time Albert was shown only the rat without the noise. Now Albert became increasingly distressed and began to cry. \n\nW & R had turned a *neutral stimulus* (the rat) into a *conditioned stimulus* whilst also changing an *unconditioned response* (original fear of the loud bar) into a *conditioned* one (emotional fear). In later experiments W & R would *generalise* (this is one of the features Pavlov discovered) Albert's responses by showing him similar but different stimuli. \n\n**What can we do to remove these *conditioned* responses (e.g. phobias)?** \n\nWell W & R did try to *desensitize* Albert's conditioned responses but there wasn't time to do this. If one wanted treatment for their phobias, there are two main options:\n\n* Flooding\n* Systematic Desensitization\n\nFlooding essentially does exactly what you'd think it floods the person (all at once) with stimuli that they fear in an attempt to shock them out of it. E.g. If you're scared of spiders they'd get you to be in a room full of spiders.\n\nSystematic Desensitization is a little more thought out and methodical. In SD the person is gradually exposed to their fear (e.g. entering a state of relaxation, touching a picture of a spider, watching a video of a spider, touching a real spider, holding a real spider).\n\n**Aversion Therapy**\n\nThis is similar to classical conditioning and works by getting the person to experience an extremely negative reaction when viewing unwanted stimuli. E.g. an alcoholic would be given an emetic (a drug to make them vomit), they would then be given alcohol and an emetic which would also cause vomiting but condition the person to associate alcohol with being sick. \n\nAversion therapy was the main form of therapy when people tried to convert people from homosexuality to heterosexuality. \n\nHopefully this helped :) You can view how Pavlov went about his experiment [here](_URL_1_) and view the footage from the Little Albert experiment [here](_URL_0_) \n\n**Sources & Further Reading**\n\n* Pavlov. I. P. (1927): \"Conditioned Reflexes: An Investigation of the Physiological Activity of the Cerebral Cortex\"\n\n* Asratyan. E. A (1953): \"I. P. Pavlov: His Life and Work\" \n\n* Watson. B. J & Rayner. R (1920): \"Conditioned emotional reactions\"\n\n* Boswell. K et al (2009): \"AQA GCSE Psychology\"\n\n* Billingham. M et al (2008): \"AQA Psychology B AS: Student's Book\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n"
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4gkexz | If a planet was orbiting a star, and that star were to go supernova, would the planet continue to orbit it? would there be a delay before it stops orbiting it? | For example if a planet was orbiting a star 5 light hours away, and that star were to explode, would it continue to orbit the star? Would it take 5 hours before the planet stopped orbiting the star? Lastly would the planet fly out of the solar system afterwards? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4gkexz/if_a_planet_was_orbiting_a_star_and_that_star/ | {
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"In our current understanding of gravity (general relativity), gravity travels at the speed of light. If you're sitting at the exploding star, any orbiting object 5 light hours away will appear to continue as normal for 10 hours (5 for the effect to reach it, 5 more for that news to make it back to you). If you're sitting on the planet, it will seem to happen immediately, as the gravitational change arrives with the light. (Simultaneity depends on your reference frame in relativity). \n\nThe orbit WILL change, though, yes. This happens with binary stars as well as planets. Since the supernova is removing mass from the primary star, there's less gravitational pull on the orbiting object after it happens. But the object is still moving at the old orbital speed. The resulting \"kick\" that the binary companion has (be it a planet or a star) is called the [\"Blaauw kick\"](_URL_0_). Looking at the [virial theorem](_URL_1_), it becomes clear that if half the mass of the binary or more is lost in the supernova ejecta, the system won't remain bound. Think of it like spinning a sling around your head and then letting go. In this case, the planet/binary companion will go flying off at high speeds. \n\nThere's a bit of extra complication, though, in that supernovae aren't necessarily symmetrical. There's an extra \"kick\" from a bit more mass being ejected in one direction than another. Depending on how these kicks line up with what the velocity of the orbiting object is at the time of the supernova, it's possible that supernova losing less than half the binary mass results in an unbound system, or that one losing more than half the binary mass remains bound. How big these asymmetric kicks are and how common they are, and whether they apply to black holes as well as neutron stars, is still an active subject of research. \n\nEven if the system remains bound, the orbit will end up being highly elliptical for a while even if it was circular to start with. The supernova gives it a strong push in one direction, mucking about with the symmetry. "
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4ll4gz | Why did the KPD, SPD and Members of the Many Socialist and Communist Militias and Originations Not Offer Any Significant Resistance to the Nazis in 1933? With Not Even a Real Attempt at a General Strike like During the Kappputsch? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ll4gz/why_did_the_kpd_spd_and_members_of_the_many/ | {
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"I have read many different takes on this question. A decent if incomplete explanation is that these forces were (a) demoralized and (b) split against each other.\n\n(B) is the less complex explanation, so I'll briefly address this. To the KPD, the SPD was a \"fascist\" political party that had ruined the promise of the 1918 revolution. In 1932, the KPD joined the Nazis in a transit strike in Berlin. In other words, the KPD had no interest in maintaining democratic institutions. We can assume, also, that the Reichswehr would have moved with alacrity against any uprising on the part of the KPD or associated militias.\n\n(a) Requires us to backtrack to the events of summer 1932. Franz von Papen is Chancellor. Eager to break the power of the SPD, he deposes the SPD government of Prussia by force. The Prussian state government was the last bastion of SPD power. Prussian Premier Otto Braun and Minister of the Interior Carl Severing, whose powers extended over Prussia's large and well-armed police force, would have been the ones in a position of sufficient authority to call a strike together. But contrast their position to that of Friedrich Ebert and Gustav Noske when these men called their strike in 1920. They were, respectively, President and Minister of Defense. They spoke with the authority of the nation in some sense, while those launching the coup were of the widely hated and discredited forces of monarchy and militarism. And while much of the military was on the fence in 1920, Reichswehr leader von Seect was, for instance, unwilling to take a positive move before an outcome was decided. In 1932, on the other hand, the Reichswehr stood with Minister of Defense Kurt von Schleicher. An outright strike could well have precipitated a violent reaction from the national government, and may indeed have reinforced their narrative of Communist/Socialist troublemaking requiring more authoritarian government. In sum - Unlike in 1920, Braun and Severing, and by extension the SPD, were in the position of illegitimacy. As Erich Eyck writes, \"large numbers of Germans, many of them quite influential, were jubilant at the prospect of getting rid of the Socialists and, if possible, of the unions as well.\" Finally, if the SPD had poor prospects of launching such a strike in 1932 their prospects were even more grim in 1933, after months of electoral drubbing and the loss of almost every position of power they had once held.\n\nYet, if they had truly believed in the Republic, wasn't it worth a last ditch effort? Probably not. It is doubtful that the mass of workers could have been called to an effective strike. Not only had many millions of them defected to the KPD and NSDAP, but the unemployment rate would have made such a tactic ineffective. Eych observes: \"For how could the trade unions call the workers from their posts when they knew that millions of unemployed were waiting the moment when these places might become vacant?\"\n\nA final point. I wrote [here] (_URL_0_) several weeks ago that Schleicher reached several labor union ministers and persuaded them that they would be granted positions of power in the new order, thus keeping them from launching a coup. I have to admit, I may have been seduced by good story-telling. While it's plausible, I haven't seen the evidence for it. \n\nCited:\n\nErich Eych, *History of the Weimar Republic, Vol. II*\nJohn Wheeler-Bennett, *Nemesis of Power*",
"The Comintern followed a policy of forcing splits inside socialist parties up until 1934. Parties would split into socialists (trying to work in the parlamentary system) and communists (following a revolutionary way to power). Nazi rule was expected to be short and cause an uproar that would allow communists to come to power. In this context, the KPD didn't put up any resistance as the NSDAP was climbing to power, even assisting them in certain situations. As the NSDAP managed to hold on to power and crack down on the opposition a lot more effective than was expected the Comintern changed its policy and in 1934 started propagating the idea of \"popular fronts\" in the countries not yet under fascist rule. For instance, the Blum Popular front government in France, a wide coalition of parties intended to oppose the spread of fascism. To achieve this, the Comintern and the communist parties eased up on the whole \"revolutionary\" rhetoric. "
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3oodaq | How were the letters written by Apostle Paul delivered? | I am listening to Philip Harland's podcast 'Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean' recommended [here](_URL_0_) in another AskHistorians thread. Paul writes a lot of letters to different groups of people. How were those letters delivered? Was there a postal system? To whom were the letters delivered? Did a person read them alone or were they read to large congregations? Were there multiple copies made? Was all of this normal for the time, or were these letters unusual? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3oodaq/how_were_the_letters_written_by_apostle_paul/ | {
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"First off, Saint Paul never knew Jesus. This is a very common misconception. He was not one of the original 12 apostles. He was a Jewish/Roman military man of the Roman Empire who at first persecuted Christians, then later converted, became a missionary and became arguably the key founder of Christianity. He was from Tarsus, Cilicia. He lived from 5-67 a.d.\n\nAnyway, I'll try to answer the question as best I can, I'm no expert. \n\nThe Roman's postal system was incredibly sophisticated and advanced for the time period. It was very simple for one to send a letter almost anywhere in the empire as long as it had an address. Paul's letters were often addressed to cities he or other missionaries had started Christian followings in. Often they were written to answer theological questions that arose in these congregations from a lack of a central or canon Christian law. The beginning of Christianity saw much debate and disagreement with different interpretations of the different gospels and the reality/divinity of Jesus. The letters would often be sent from Paul to the known Christian leaders of specific towns. These letters were to be read aloud to the following of Christians during their time of worship and congregation together. During the infancy of the Church it was common for letters to be sent out, there were always questions that needed to be clarified by one who they believed had an authority on the matter.",
"You already received a comment about the postal system so I wanted to point out that he actually states in a few of the letters who was delivering them. I just got to work and can't put a lot of time into this, but the two examples I was able to quickly find are Phoebe who was sent to Rome (Romans 16:1) and Timothy in Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 3:2). \n\nPaul states that these two were sent as leaders of the church to help that particular congregation. It is possible that they followed the letters or preceded them, but the general consensus in my studies was they brought the letters themselves (they were going anyways) and would read and instruct through them to make sure the message was understood. ",
"So I'm going to begin with one caveat. What I know about is the 4th century letter networks primarily amongst bishops, not the high imperial postal system of the 1st-2nd century of Paul's world. So bear that in mind.\n\nLetters outside of official government communication were not delivered by the imperial post (i.e. post office), they were delivered individually, by slaves, friends, or trusted individuals who would be chancing by the recipients location at personal cost to the sender or the messenger. \n\nI don't precisely know what the mediums were, but I presume a wax tabula or a scroll. Tabulas tended to more durable, but considering the length of some of these letters, I can't imagine papyrus scrolls not being used for communique.\n\nThere was a low expectation of privacy amongst late antique letters (doubly so outside of secret government communication) and many were written with the intent for them to be published. \n\nThis is \"non-presumption of privacy\" is an important thing to consider, as this is why late antique letters don't read like modern ones. Modern letters are considered intensely personal, not meant for dissemination, and usually a chronicle of autobiography or recent history. Ancient letters straddle what would be considered many modern genres. They could be philosophical treatises, essays, political commentary, panegyric-like praises, educational recommendations, in addition to autobiography and history. They were intended to be \"instructive\" as well as \"informative.\" This is why, regardless of whether an author cared for a letter to be saved, letters would be recirculated and sometimes published. At the very least, most letters (at least those that were saved) were not intended to be fully private.\n\nTo whom were the letters sent? To whomever they wanted. There are plenty of records of soldiers on the frontiers sending letters back to their family at home. However keep in mind, that outside the military, the only people who had the need to send a letter, were usually people who had the means or could afford to not be forced to live as part of the agrarian 80% of the roman world, tied to their lands by basic necessity or law, i.e. merchants, bishops, officials, senators, etc.\n\nWhen letters were received, they could be read alone or in a large group, but often the letter bearer was thought of as a stand-in for the person delivering the letter, so he would sometimes be invited in as a guest and quizzed about whatever details and circumstances regarding the letter and the letter sender. This would naturally result in the letter being re-read to the close ones of the recipient as well.\n\nOff the top of my head, I don't have a late antique example of multiple copies being made, but considering the known unreliability of letter transportation, for important communication this must've been so. I know as an example from way later, from the 16th century, Matteo Ricci would send multiple copies of his letters from China back to Rome via dual ships traveling in different directions. One east via the Americas, one west via the Indian ocean. In the Late Antique world, it was considered the responsibility of the letter sender to maintain regular contact, which was frequently revealed in the introductory rhetoric of most letters, lamenting delays or praising prompt replies, so if multiple letters weren't sent, I presume a summary would be attached in the next one if one was lost.\n\nSome sources I'm pulling from:\n\n* Ebbeler, Jennifer. “Tradition, Innovation, and Epistolary Mores.” In A Companion to Late Antiquity, edited by Philip Rousseau and Jutta Raithel, 270–84. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. Chichester, U.K. ; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.\n\n* Gibson, Roy K. “On the Nature of Ancient Letter Collections.” Journal of Roman Studies 102 (November 2012): 56–78. doi:10.1017/S0075435812000019.\n\n* Sotinel, Claire. “How Were Bishops Informed? Information Transmission across the Adriatic Sea in Late Antiquity.” In Travel, Communication and Geography in Late Antiquity: Sacred and Profane, edited by Linda Ellis and Frank L. Kidner. Aldershot, Hants, England ; Burlington, VT: Ashgate Pub Ltd, 2004.\n\n* Walsh, P. G. 35. Letters of St. Paulinus of Nola, Vol. 1. Westminster, Md.: Paulist Press, 1966.\n"
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2eb1xd | Why did 1960s Communist China engage in so many territorial conflicts over tiniest bits of land with such major powers as India and as the USSR? | In 1963 China signed an agreement with Pakistan formally receiving a part of Kashmir which Pakistan didn't even control (it was controlled by India). In 1967 China invaded India during the Chola incident. In 1969 China invaded the USSR in the Daman island war which caused (or crowned?) the Sino-Soviet split. And all the resultant territorial disputes would not get settled for decades (if at all).
What made Mao act like that? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2eb1xd/why_did_1960s_communist_china_engage_in_so_many/ | {
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"It wasn't necessarily \"Mao\" that was responsible for these actions. If anything, Zhou Enlai played a bigger part, having been China's foreign minister up until the 1960s.\n\nBefore we get to the Chola incident and the 1963 Sino-Pakistan agreement, you should understand that the Chola incident was a result of the Sino-Indian War of 1962. This was due to a border conflict between China and India. India was concerned about seeming weak due to territorial conflicts with Pakistan, while China was concerned that India was allying with the Soviets to surround China, as well as subverting Chinese rule in recently annexed Tibet. Indian Prime Minister Nehru instituted the Forward Policy, which authorized Indian troops to move into disputed regions held by Chinese troops. As they moved deeper into these regions, they came into conflict with PRC troops, eventually resulting in several firefights. The Chinese were incensed as they believed this was part of a plan to destabilize Tibet, so they elected to attack India to punish them. The resulting treaty resulted in a peace that more or less demarcates the current borders, although there were still border disputes for years after the war. As a result of this incident, China courted Pakistan as an ally against India, to help offset the Soviet Union's courting of India.\n\nOn a similar note, the Sino-Soviet split had already been in motion for a long time. China had significant territorial claims on Russia, who had signed one of the \"unequal treaties\" in the 1800s to claim Outer Manchuria, or Primorye, as well as the annexation of the area known as Tannu Tava in the West, as well as border incidents in Mongolia and Xinjiang. As a result, to satisfy Chinese revanchism, China attempted to negotiate with the Soviet Union to \"revise\" these treaties which the Soviet Union found to be unacceptable. As a result, Chinese troops attacked Russian forces in a series of border skirmishes over the island and various other territories.\n\nSources: \n\nMaxwell, India's China War\n\nLuthi, the Sino-Soviet Split"
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6geqsm | i have terrible vision, but sometimes if i blink hard enough, my vision goes crystal clear til i blink again. why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6geqsm/eli5_i_have_terrible_vision_but_sometimes_if_i/ | {
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"As someone who's spent 4 years studying, researching and working clinically with eyeballs, here's my guess: \n\nYou're likely forcing your focusing system to focus through as much blur as it possibly can, assuming that while you \"blink enough\" you're concentrating your gaze, at a single object or direction. Both your cornea and your crystalline lens will change shape in order for you to be able to focus; younger people, especially kids, have a much greater dynamic range for focusing then do older folks, so if you're young, that's probably most of it. If you know you have terrible vision, meaning a high prescription in one and or both eyes, you definitely should not do this. In that case, you'll probably get headaches if you do it enough. Just use glasses. ",
"Could be that blinking hard, your eyelids are pressing on your cornea enough to flatten them, essentially making your nearsightedness less. The effect lasts until you blink again, and your cornea resumes its usual shape and the clarity in your vision disappears.",
"It is because you spread layer of sticky tears on your cornea. It just happens to be concave at the right spot ( assuming you are myopic ). \n\nUsually this layer is convex and just worsen the vision. I sometimes have flush my eyes to restore precise vision. I do not understand why the liquid is sometimes stickier causing these problems.",
"These answers are all over the board and everyone sounds 100% sure of themselves. You may want to find your way over to r/askscience and hopefully an ophthalmologist can chime in."
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bkgu44 | to anybody who has used nesquik milkshake powder, why is it that the chocolate powder never mixes in with the milk fully, yet the banana powder does? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bkgu44/eli5_to_anybody_who_has_used_nesquik_milkshake/ | {
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"The primary ingredients in the banana powder are cane sugar and maltodextrin (which is a white powder made from flour starch and used as a food additive). Both are very soluble in water (or milk), so it dissolves easily.\n\n\nThe chocolate powder, the primary ingredients are cane sugar (dissolves easily) and cocoa powder. Cocoa powder is about 22% fat, which is insoluble (doesn't dissolve well in water or milk). So the bits that don't dissolve are the cocoa powder, due largely to the fat.\n\n\nIt will dissolve better using hot water, and vigorous stirring, but may not do it perfectly even then."
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atu5zz | why does a scientific calculator show "0" as a result if i add 1 to a really high number and then substract said high number although it should show "1"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/atu5zz/eli5_why_does_a_scientific_calculator_show_0_as_a/ | {
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"Your calculator doesn't store all of the digits for 2^50, so the 1 at the very end gets removed from the memory. How many digits a calculator actually holds depends from calculator to calculator. ",
"For 32 bit floating point numbers in IEEE754 format there's something called precision error and rounding error and a whole bunch if other problems.\n\nA 32 bit integer number can store all numbers up to roughly 4 billion.\n\nBut a 32 bit float can store up to roughly 3x10^38 which is much higher than 4 billion.\n\nHow is that possible?\n\nIt's because after roughly 16 million, reals don't store every integer anymore. There start to be gaps in what integer can be stored accurately and the gaps keep getting larger.\n\nSo let's say if you're adding 1 to 17000000 the result is still 17000000 but if you add 2 then the result is 17000002.\n\nHowever at 20000000 you need to add 3 to get something larger because now neither 20000001 nor 20000002 can be represented.\n\nIf the magnitude difference between the two numbers you add is larger than roughly 10^7 you will have problems.\n\nIf variable X is s real and you perform X=X+1 over and over, X will increment roughly until 10^7 and then it will stop adding because the result of 1+10^7=10^7.\n",
"The floating point and rounding situation other people mention is true, but I think there is also an order of operation that is important here.\n\nLet's say your input is a + b - c, the calculator processes a + b first (which equals 2^50 due to said storage depth, the 1 is dropped) then it subtracts c (which equals zero since 2^50 - 2^50).\n\nWhat happens if you input 2^50 - 2^50 + 1?\n"
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b99cju | how does regenerative brakes work ? | I need to work on a school project about wasted energy recovery and i came across regenerative brakes. could't get hold of the mechanism because i found a lot of different designs. I understand the basic concept of it being instead of wasting energy in brakes into friction and heat it'll be converted back to electricity,but how ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b99cju/eli5_how_does_regenerative_brakes_work/ | {
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"Electrical induction.\n\nYou have probably made an electromagnet out of a coil of wire around a nail and a battery in school. Electricity flowing through a conductor will form a magnetic field around the conductor, and the reverse is true as well. A magnetic field moving around a conductor will cause an electrical current within it.\n\nAn electrical motor and an electrical generator are basically the same device, the difference being the input and the output. A generator takes the physical turning of magnets past wires to make electricity and a motor takes electricity moving through wires to make a magnetic field to turn the magnets.\n\nRegenerative braking is using the momentum of a moving car to turn the magnets and create electricity. This slows the car down, and the most effective use of that captured electricity is to turn around and use it to accelerate the car again through the reverse process."
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2ojwue | why do some tv shows have a sign language interpreter on the screen? why can't they just use subtitles? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ojwue/eli5_why_do_some_tv_shows_have_a_sign_language/ | {
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"As far as the interpreter goes, though, some deaf people may prefer it because they're accessing information in their own language (one that is readily accessible)... English is usually the second language learned for deaf people, so that may be a secondary choice.",
"Might it be because it is live television?",
"When broadcasting live it's much faster to translate to sign language than to write subtitles "
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66k21l | "the core of the planet earth is made of iron and nickel": how scientists can determine that if no one has been in the core of the earth? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/66k21l/eli5the_core_of_the_planet_earth_is_made_of_iron/ | {
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"We have a pretty good idea about what's on the inside of the Earth, based on the geologist's equivalent of a CAT scan or an MRI -- earthquake data. When an earthquake happens, it sends waves bouncing around the inside of the planet. These waves change direction and speed based on the kinds of materials they pass through. Geologists can detect the movement of these waves by taking measurements at different locations all across the planet, and in so doing, build a picture of how the inside of the planet is constructed.\n\nThat's how we know that the interior of the Earth is separated into four layers, that the innermost is made of something solid, and that at least one of them is an actual liquid. From here, scientists can use other information to get an idea of what elements the interior is actually composed of.\n\nBased on the estimated density of the solid inner core, we can guess that it's probably made of iron. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that iron appears to be exceedingly plentiful in the solar system. Given how plentiful it is, and given that we know it's a very dense element, and given what we know about how a dense metal like iron would behave in a still-molten Earth when it was forming, it makes sense that Iron is probably what our core is made of. \n\nWe can guess a few more things about how the inner and outer cores behave, based on the fact that the Earth has a magnetic field. We know that the inner core must be rotating, and that the outer core must be convecting, because without those two things, the Earth would not have a magnetic field. So the existence of some external factors can tell us a lot about the internal factors of our planet.",
"The truth is no one really know as direct measurements can be made. That said, the theoretical composition of the core of the earth has been estimated based on a few things:\n\n1. The earths magnetic filed could only be formed with a large iron mass at its core\n2. Iron and nickel are relatively dense and would tend have migrated towards the center of the earth when it was still a giant ball of liquid. \n3. An interesting theory exists that at the center of the core is a large mass of uranium which acts as a natural fission reactor. "
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9xyujs | Iberian Peninsula in Medieval times | I have tried to research on it, but perhaps because i´m not an expert, i have failed to or come upon sparse information on the topic, but heres the question: in what ways did the iberian peninsula culture differ from the rest of europe? Im mainly interested in xiv and xv century christian countries, but i would also want to know about earlier periods and the muslim world on the peninsula.
We, or at least me, are shown mostly medieval england and france in pop culture as the "standard" medieval depictions, but from the small information i came upon, i realized that portugal, castille and aragon would be a lot different from that, i imagined because of climate, size of the realms and the mixing with muslim culture.
The first thing i noticed, at least in portugal, is the considerable small forces that are used. In an old book ive read (historical fiction) about king John II and the campaign that led to the battle of Toro ( 1476 ), it is mentioned that a small group os soldiers, around 20 or 30 were sent to take a minor castle. Is this reasonable at the time to take a small castle with such a small force?
Another thing is arms and armor. From what i gathered, the tradition of the heavy cavalry from france wasnt such a big thing here, and Ginetes light cavalry was the thing. Did "light cavalry" not wear armor? wanst there the image of the knight in shining armor a thing?
What about art? was italy and the netherlands the only place where that side of the renaissance took of? what happened here in iberia?
Did the feudal structure from iberia differ in any way from the rest of europe (at least that classical image we have from it)? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9xyujs/iberian_peninsula_in_medieval_times/ | {
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"I'm so happy you asked this. I've been reading a book called Spain: [The Root and the Flower by John A. Crow](_URL_0_) that has been extremely interesting to me. I've really learned a lot and I'd highly suggest his work. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nIn short, Iberia was fundamentally different from the rest of Europe because, during the time of the artistic and intellectual renaissance in Italy, Flanders, and the rest of Europe, the kingdom of Castille (the closest thing to \"Spain\" there was back then) was still busily reconquering the Iberian peninsula from the \"Moorish invaders.\" I put that in quotes because by the time Spain reconquered Moorish cities like Seville, Granada, and Cadiz, the moors had been there for 600+ years, and had seriously better art, science, and math than the Spanish, who had spent the majority of the years 700-1400 in a constant state of conflict against the Moors. (okay- under some rulers, Moors, Jews, and Christians lived harmoniously, but for the most part of Spanish history, rulers used religion to unify the country and if you weren't Christian, you were taxed, tortured, and kicked out of the country once the Spanish Inquisition started.) \n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe \"re-birth\" Spain experienced wasn't a rebirth of art and culture like that of Italy, but rather, a re-harnessing of the conquistador spirit that suddenly had no more Spanish land to conquer. In 1492, Isabelle of Castille banned the Jews and Moors thus unifying Spain under the Catholic cross. Simultaneously, Christopher Columbus \"discovered\" America, a land full of gold and natives to convert. The decision to invade for Spain was an obvious one. The Royals were most concerned with spreading their influence and increasing their wealth than creating art and re-discovering the human experience. They weren't exactly a country of romantics. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nHowever, I want to point out to you that during the golden age of Spain, (which will be defined by different times depending on who you ask, for these purposes, we'll say 1492-1650) there were several of the worlds first, and most significant dramatic written stories. I'm sure you've heard of Don Quijote by Miguel Cervantes, published in 1615 (often called the first novel), but that story was actually preceded by an even older written story called \"La Celestina\" was written in dramatic dialogue, however, never was intended to be performed or told, but rather, read. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nAlso, you should check out El Greco and Diego Velazquez for paintings, they were both amazing artists who worked in the Spanish Courts. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nSource: Spain: [The Root and the Flower: An Interpretation of Spain and the Spanish People Third Edition](_URL_0_) by John A. Crow"
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3uz0ho | Were the British involved in instigating the 19th century revolutions against Spain in Latin America? | What did British involvement consist of if they were? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3uz0ho/were_the_british_involved_in_instigating_the_19th/ | {
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"Sorry for the long delay in getting to this, unfortunately it has been a hectic week. The British were definitely involved in the Latin American revolutions to a greater or lesser extent. It is worth noting that the British were fighting Napoleon during the early 19th century and had a giant army all ready to go and get involved in the Western hemisphere. Not only that, but following the American Revolution, the British adopted a trade policy that allowed them to trade with countries that they would not formally recognize. Furthermore, many of the leaders of the Revolutions were anglophiles who actively sought British aid and support. Simon Bolivar, of obvious fame, wanted the British to get involved and even suggested placing the newly free countries under the British wing, though not their direct control. Though it wasn't a revolution, the British pressure on King Joao was the direct cause of his declaring Brazil a sovereign kingdom, equal to Portugal and any other country, for that matter.\n\nSo that's the prelude, on the ground, The British Legion, which consisted of 800 soldiers on five ships, were sent to aid Bolivar in his revolution, those these were not official troops. Meaning that the government was not willing to officially endorse the Revolution, but were willing to help out of they could. Not all of those troops made it to Venezuela, and they were not particularly helpful, but they were sent.\n\nAfter the Revolutions, the British were very big on nation building, sending tons of ships to trade with the new nations. especially British manufactured goods for the various export goods of Latin America. Whether or not this was a good thing has been a huge debate in Latin American history, since some, building on extraction theory, have said that is simply changed them from a de jure colony to a de facto colony, but nevertheless, they were welcomed at the time. For a while the British was the largest shipping country in the western hemisphere, outdoing even the United States. \n\nSources: John Chasteen, *Americanos*, Leon Fink, *Sweatshops at Sea*"
]
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3401xs | the event horizon of a black hole | People keep saying that the gravitational pull of a black hole is so strong that even light can not escape. This basically means that the escape velocity past the event horizon must be greater than c. fair enough. However, this does not mean, as far as i understand, that nothing can get out of the event horizon or from within it because if some object that were inside were to be able to use some sort of fuel to accelerate it with a force greater than that of gravity and for long enough, i see no reason that it can not escape.
If this is the case, why do people take that the event horizon acts as a threshol indicating that nothing from within it can escape at all? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3401xs/eli5the_event_horizon_of_a_black_hole/ | {
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"Because any direction past the event horizon points inward. Space itself is warped so massively beyond the horizon that nothing can get out not only because the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light, but there is literally no direction that is \"out\"."
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368adm | what does it mean when a wound gets "infected?" | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/368adm/eli5_what_does_it_mean_when_a_wound_gets_infected/ | {
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"It means that bacteria or fungus has set in the wound and has begun to grow off of the tissue in that area."
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||
4dtad2 | do painkillers (advil, tylenol, etc) reduce pain in the specific area that is hurting or do they affect the whole body but you only notice it woking on the area that is in pain? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dtad2/eli5do_painkillers_advil_tylenol_etc_reduce_pain/ | {
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"The pain killers you listed reduce inflammation in different ways so they would help calm down a throbbing injury where inflammatory response is strongest -- they act at the site of the pain. However, the effective anti-inflammation molecules are in your blood so its not like they can't affect more than one region. If you took Tylenol for a sore back and later stubbed your toe you wouldn't have to take more Tylenol for the new injury.\n\nPain killers like Vicodin act in the central nervous system and lower your emotional response to pain. These don't affect the inflamed area at all -- they just make your perception of pain less unpleasant."
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vephh | What benefits would the addition of a third eye bring? | Thought about this when a bunch of sweat got in one of my eyes while I was pouring a drink. A second eye allows for much better depth perception. Would a third eye just make depth perception even better, have other benefits, or none at all? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/vephh/what_benefits_would_the_addition_of_a_third_eye/ | {
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"Eyes (and cameras) are basically devices for taking in a bunch of light, and sorting it out by angle. If you see something in one eye, you know that it's somewhere along a ray starting at your eye and going out in a particular direction, but you don't know where along the ray it is.\n\nAdding a second eye gives you another ray, starting in a different place, and pointing in a different direction. The intersection of these rays is a *unique* point in space; there's no more ambiguity.\n\nThe best way to improve depth perception (I'll be a bit more specific and define \"improve depth perception\" as \"reduce the uncertainty in range\") is to move the eyes further apart.\n\nA third camera can improve estimated positions of points in 3D space just by providing an additional measurement, but I don't think this is much of a problem for animals. The main benefit of a third eye would be, as pointed out in *300*, having another spare.",
"Ask a [tuatara](_URL_0_). Juveniles have a third eye that scales over as they grow. Bummer.",
"Are we brushing aside the liabilities as well? More chances for infections*, needs to be protected under the brow and in a socket, caloric cost, potential epileptic trigger, the added brain circuitry to process more visual stimuli and make sense of it (and the cost of that as well), etc. Who knows, but all these speculation based questions often ignore the cost and just focus on potential benefits which seems unfair. \n\n*Up until fairly recently, a bad infection was a death sentence. The less holes a human has then the better.",
"It depends on where the eye is located. A third eye on the forehead, in the same orientation as the regular eyes, may not add much to vision, but an eye on the back of the head would provide increased awareness, and could even be adaptive in areas where large predators [still attack humans](_URL_0_)."
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1ke4z8 | In WWI, did executions of soldiers suffering from PTSD or "shell shock" for the crime of desertion actually occur, and if so how common were they? | I was recently talking to a friend about this, and related the general idea of this happening, but I realized I'm not sure if I ever learned about it in a reputable academic context or if I'm just parroting some sort of "popular wisdom" that's actually inaccurate.
So what is the story with executions of men suffering from PTSD? And to expand on my question, if these executions actually happened, was this a new, unique trend produced by the unusually horrific conditions of the First World War? I mean, I know desertion has existed basically as long as war has, but specifically is WWI the first point at which we can credibly say soldiers began to experience PTSD, or is that naive and it's better to argue that it has always been a product of warfare? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ke4z8/in_wwi_did_executions_of_soldiers_suffering_from/ | {
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"There was one brief period of time during WWI when an army executing its deserters was common. This was June 1917, when the French army was hit with widespread mutinies, in the wake of the failed Niville offensive of May, 1917. General Petan replaced Niville as the comander of the French army and instituted the following reforms. He curtailed the supply of wine to the french soldiers, improved their leave policy, promised no more futile frontal attacks, and prohibited pacifist and Bolsehvik literature from being distributed at the front. The French army admits to passing out 412 death sentances and claims 356 were commuted. The actual number of soldiers executed by the French army in June of 1917 is a matter of speculation, but the official French numbers are much to low. There were 170 major acts of mutiny and some of their ringleaders were shot without a trail. Petain was looking to weed out the soldiers that went to Paris on Leave and went back to the front with a bale of Bolshevik or Pacifist propaganda. The ringleaders the French shot were not just simple deserters. They were trying to get their entire regiment to join them in \"voting for peace with their legs\" to use the Bolshevik phrase that was popular in 1917. Source: D J Goodspeed \"The German Wars\" p 235",
"This is actually a very complex question for reasons that I’ll try to outline. Please note that I will be using “shell shock” and PTSD interchangeably and will approach the question largely from the British perspective.\n\nEarly in the war, physicians began to handle cases of psychological breakdown, paralysis, and disturbing, uncontrolled physical behavior among men who had been in combat. C.S. Myers was one of the first to coin the term “shell shock,” as doctors assumed that artillery fire and the like had had caused concussion-like damage and possibly physical legions somewhere in the brain. Other doctors saw the same thing, but Myers discovered that many men experiencing these symptoms hadn't been near artillery bombardments and so he tried to withdraw the term, but it stuck. The condition was called “soldier’s heart” in the American Civil War and “combat fatigue” in the Second World War, and now we call it PTSD. It’s not until 1980 that PTSD gets into the medical handbook as a legitimate syndrome, which means that doctors can treat it and that those who suffer from it can receive a pension.\n\n* **Why was it so difficult to pin down a definition for “shell shock?”** \n\nThe medical profession of the time was conservative and relatively endogenous. Many of them thought that shell shock was a license for cowardice or a renunciation of “manliness,” which made it partly a problem of gender. It’s important to understand that although we usually think of PTSD as a psychological disability, it often manifests itself in physical ways. At the time, the conversion of mental symptoms to physical ones was called hysteria – a term reserved for women. This meant that men suffering from “hysteria” were transgressing Victorian gender norms, and we can see the stigma of this diagnosis clash with social conventions – only enlisted men were diagnosed with hysteria, while officers were diagnosed with “nervous breakdown.” The difference in diagnosis was paralleled by differences in treatment – treatment for enlisted men was largely punitive and coercive, while treatment for officers was based more on persuasion, sometimes through psychotherapy. Lest you think officers were in a better position, remember that the casualty rate for them was almost double that of enlisted men.\n\nDiagnosis and treatment were further complicated by the difficulty in identifying who legitimately had a problem and who was just trying to get away from the front. For some physicians, the solution was to make treatments more painful than returning to the front. For example, electric shock therapy could be used on mutes to try and stimulate the tongue so that they would make noise. In Austria, future Nobel Prize winner Julius Wagner Jauregg was accused of torturing his patients because he used electroconvulsive shock treatment to discourage malingering. In general, the war tore up the Hippocratic Oath because doctors became servants of armies that needed men to return to the front as soon as possible. Thus, the principal aim of doctors was to heal the injured enough to send them back to the front. This meant that if a soldier had a physical wound in addition to psychological symptoms, doctors would often treat the wound and then send the soldier back. Treatments were thus largely coercive in nature – there’s a famous French story in which an army doctor told a soldier “Yes, you are going to get this.” The enlisted man responded, “No, I’m not.” “Yes you are, I’m your officer, I gave you an order.” The exchange continued back and forth until the doctor moved to put the electrodes on his forehead and the enlisted man knocked him out. The soldier was then court-martialed, found guilty, fined one franc, and dismissed from the army without a war pension. This is the sort of thing that contributed to desertion, especially from men who felt they had no way out.\n\nAs you can see, there were numerous problems with the medical profession’s approach to the symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment of shell shock. Consequently, we really don’t know how many suffered from it. The British Army recorded 80,000 cases, but this likely underestimates the actual number. Regardless, we can be sure that a significant number of those that went through artillery barrages and trench warfare experienced something like it at some point. While the number is significant, it’s important to remember that a minority of soldiers suffered shell shock, and consequently it does fit into the spectrum of individual refusal. \n\n* **What about executions?**\n\nIn the late 90s there was a movement in England to apologize to those that refused to continue fighting in the war. There were 306 men that had been shot for cowardice or desertion and although the British government refused to make a formal apology, one of Tony Blair’s last acts as prime minister was to posthumously pardon them. The problem here should be obvious – it’s unclear how many were shell shocked and convicted of cowardice or desertion when they really were insane. There’s serious doubt as to how many men actually thought it through and decided that they couldn't fight anymore and were going to leave. \n\nIn the French case there was a terrible period at the beginning of the war when there were many summary executions. It’s a perfect example of what happened when officials and the professional army feared the effects that desertion might have on the rest of the men that had been mobilized at the start of the war. The French CiC, Joffre, felt that if offensives didn't proceed because people were “allowed to act as cowards,” the rest of the mobilized army, made up of millions of reservists, would be contaminated. The upshot was the summary executions of numerous soldiers. The French parliament set up a special tribunal in 1932 to reexamine many of the cases, and a number of those who had been executed were subsequently pardoned, some on grounds that they had originally been denied the right of appeal despite being citizens. There is an important distinction to make here – French soldiers had the vote and could appeal to their representatives for better legal treatment, while millions of British soldiers could not since they were subjects of the crown. By the end of the war, every capital sentence required the approval of the French president.\n\n* **Why do we think PTSD began with “shell shock?\"**\n\nWorld War I was the first to really introduce mental illness to mass society. The notion of traumatic memory that was brought back home and reappeared in literature helped normalize mental illness in the absence of consensus by the medical profession as to what it was. Although PTSD existed long before the First World War, the circumstances of the war pushed hundreds of thousands of men beyond the limits of human endurance. They faced weapons that denied any chance for heroism or courage or even military skill because the artillery weapons that caused 60 percent of all casualties were miles away from the battlefield. The enthusiastic men that signed up in 1914 were loyal, patriotic, and genuinely believed that they were fighting to defend their homeland. While they consented to national defense, it’s not clear that they consented to fight an industrialized assembly-line murderous war that emerged after 1914. Unlike previous wars, there was no beginning, middle, and end. Trench warfare was seen as a prelude to a breakout, but those breakouts never really occurred. Many men withdrew from the reality of the war into their own minds, and in this sense shell shock can be seen as a mutiny against the war. PTSD has numerous symptoms, but among them is the sense that the war the soldier lived had escaped from human control. This is why many PTSD sufferers are constantly reliving the trauma – the horror of combat never goes away and time has no hold over it. There’s a wonderful autobiography by Robert Graves called Good-Bye to All That; it’s one of the most famous World War I memoirs. Of course, the great irony is that he can’t say good-bye to all that - his life is constantly affected by his war experience, even 10 years after the war ended. There are so many great World War I memoirs, but I’d highly recommend the following:\n\n***The Secret Battle* by A.P. Herbert**\n \n***The Case of Sergeant Grischa* by Arnold Zweig**\n\nBoth deal with executions and the perversion of military justice during the war. I believe the Secret Battle is available online for free. You can knock it out in an afternoon. There are some other books I’d recommend that deal with shell shock but I’m not at home at the moment and need to find them. I would recommend ***The Legacy of the Great War*** and ***Remembering War***. Both are by Jay Winter, who specializes in historical memory and World War I. This is definitely the longest post I’ve ever written, but I’ll leave you with one final note: I was lucky enough to study under Jay Winter back in 2011, and he told me that when he was teaching at Cambridge in the late 70s and early 80s, he travelled to Warwick hospital to study some of the records of patients that had been institutionalized there during the war for shell shock. When he went there, he discovered that there were still several men that had been kept in the asylum without treatment since the Great War. Once enthusiastic young men, psychologically crippled by the war, had spent the next 70 years constantly reliving their trauma, locked away from a society that didn't understand what was wrong with them. I can’t think of a more horrible fate."
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54hbne | difference of chinese dialects and written languages | From what I know there is 2 written (simplified and traditional) and 2 spoken (Cantonese and Mandarin) dialects of the Chinese language.
Are there any similarities between the written and spoken?
Does this mean you are fluent in essentially two different languages?
What is the main written and spoken dialect in Guangzhou?
Any info on the general concept of the Chinese language would be great. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/54hbne/eli5_difference_of_chinese_dialects_and_written/ | {
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"The written language obviously shares a considerable history with the spoken language. But unlike this language I'm typing in here, with these letters, the Chinese written language does not fundamentally express the way words sound when spoken. It has symbols for different words, over the history as they made symbols for new things by making compounds of existing symbols they would often create a compound using one symbol for the sound and one for the meaning, or some variation on that. But its not a rule, its just a a history of how those symbols came to be. They don't fundamentally say how they're spoken at all. \n\nThis means that there is a gap between the written language and the spoken language in a way that doesn't really exist if you have a language that's designed to express how words sound. There are other countries that aren't china that have taken the chinese alphabet and they can write out sentences that you can understand if you know the chinese written language even if you don't know the spoken language of the area. However the design of making sentences in the Chinese written language is naturally very interrelated with how things are structured, the grammar, of the chinese spoken language. \n\nThey're not strictly the same language, they're not wholly independent. Speaking chinese and reading/writing chinese is probably more akin to knowing how to program in two languages, than being fluent in two entirely separate languages. The underlying logic is there, even if everything has different names, you need a new vocabulary. ",
"**Spoken**\n\nThere are (I hate this word) actually many, many more dialects of Chinese than just Mandarin and Cantonese, although it's true that those are the two largest and most influential. Mandarin in particular enjoys a strong legal status as the official language of the People's Republic of China, including as the language of instruction in schools. \n\nIf you go anywhere in China, then it is likely that the local people where you live will have their own language, whether it is the language of the province, that area within the province, or even just a particular village. Some of these dialects are basically just Mandarin with an accent; others are completely mutually unintelligible with Mandarin.\n\nNevertheless, because of the strong legal status of Mandarin, with the notable exception of the elderly, the very poor, and those living in very far-flung regions (particularly areas of Tibet and Xinjiang, China's far northwestern province) virtually everyone can at a bare minimum understand Mandarin and (in my experience) definitely over 90% can speak it. If you're talking about young, educated people in an urban center then it's > 99%, although (not totally dissimilar to Britain) there's a certain preoccupation with accents and a rich and often self-deprecating humor that surrounds less-than-standard pronunciation. In general (including in Guangzhou) people will respond to you in whatever language you use to speak to them.\n\nComparing Mandarin and Cantonese specifically, the two are not really mutually intelligible. There is a limited amount of vocabulary that you might be able to guess at from one or the other and/or go \"oh!\" if it were explained to you, but overall the tones, vocab, and even to a certain extent grammar are different.\n\nPeople in Guangdong are nevertheless quite proud of Cantonese, which also enjoys a degree of cachet as a commonly-used language in relatively wealthy and culturally influential Hong Kong and among overseas Chinese, many of whom have family origins in southeast China. Because of this there's also definitely a corresponding degree of language politics that takes place in China and particularly Hong Kong about the official statuses of the two languages that can occasionally become heated.\n\n**Written**\n\nToday in Chinese there are \"simplified\" characters and \"traditional\" characters. Simplified characters are used throughout the PRC, \"traditional\" characters mostly in Taiwan. The idea of simplifying the writing system goes back a long way, and the work to create the current set of simplified characters was (somewhat ironically) begun by the Chinese Nationalist Party who (after going through a lot of changes) eventually moved to Taiwan and stuck with traditional characters.\n\nYou can think of the two writing systems as basically being different fonts (albeit sometimes *very* different) in the sense that there's a one-to-one correspondence between the two sets. It's easy with software to transcribe the one into the other.\n\nEither set of characters can be used to write almost all dialects of Chinese, although you will find the odd word in dialect for which there simply is no character, and this or that dialect might commonly use a character that is rare in other dialects.\n\nThere's a lot more to Chinese than that and the history of the language is pretty interesting, but that's a broad overview of the questions you were asking.\n"
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fj1jym | Rules Roundtable VI: No Historical "What-If?" Questions or Counterfactuals | "What If" can often be a fun historical game to play, and it is one which many users, and even mods, enjoy. Imagining how history might have played out in the face of even minor changes to events can easily create a whole different world, far removed from our reality. But it is precisely because of this that one of our submission rules prohibits questions that are Historical "What Ifs", and we limit questions to what did happen, not what might have gone differently.
#### What If You Just Allowed Them Though?
We prohibit these questions for two reasons. The first one is simply a matter or practicality. A 'What If' question is less going to result in an *answer*, than it is a response that presents a plausible scenario. And while someone well informed on the topic can craft a compelling one in many cases, it isn't something that can be judged in the same way an answer to a 'normal' question is. These scenarios by their nature require making assumptions and setting ground-rules, and even the most minor of differences can result in two wildly different conclusions coming from the same information if handled by two different people. Expand this to a popular thread, and you can easily have dozens of responses of varying knowledge and quality, but none of which can be judged in the same way that we do a sourced response.
So in plain terms, we can't moderate these kinds of questions to the standard that [/r/AskHistorians](_URL_1_) is based around. We know they can be fun to read and think about, but they aren't fun to moderate.
Additionally though, and on less practical terms, there is the deeper issue of how 'What If' questions engage with the historical method. To be sure, counterfactuals are one of many tools within the historians arsenal. Some enjoy making use of them, while others shun them, but while they can often help an historian think through the implications of a conclusion, they don't make up the sum of our work. You can often see them mentioned and worked through on the subreddit as part of a larger response which is grounded in sources and reaches a conclusion supported as such, but that doesn't mean we can unleash them onto the subreddit on their own, as they simply aren't answers themselves, but rather intellectual exercises.
#### What If I'm Not Sure What Qualifies?
As with *all* of our restrictions on asking questions, we attempt to keep them as narrow as possible. The two rules of thumb that we follow are A) *Does the question require a counterfactual scenario to get a response?* and B) *Does the question require a time machine to set up?*
For the first, what we mean by that is what would a conclusion look like? Would it be something that is citing historical fact, or at least supportable inference based on the evidence of what *did* happen? If so, we'll likely give it an OK, but if not, we'll likely remove it. Or put another way, are you asking about what a group *planned* to do, or asking to speculate what those plans would have looked like in reality? We can know the first, but not the second.
For the latter, questions such as "*Who would win in a fight, \[Period X Army\] versus \[Period Y Army\]?*" are the most obvious kinds of examples, but in sum, if you are having things compete across time periods, it almost certainly would be removed.
#### What If I Want to Ask It Anyways?
If it is a question you really want to ask anyways, the best thing to do is to consider the underlying question that you are asking. "*If I want to imagine what might have happened, what information would help me do so?*"
One of the most common questions we see here which I'll use as an example is "*Would the USSR have beat the Nazis on their own?*" It is interesting to think about, but to answer it requires *so* many assumptions! Why are they on their own, for starters? Did the UK make peace, did they get invaded, did they never even declare war? Does Lend-Lease happen? Does Japan act differently? I could go on and on, but the point is that you can't evaluate this in a vacuum, and you need to answer a *lot* of questions to even arrive at a scenario where you can work through the matter.
But there are obvious questions you might ask which gird such an inquiry and are well suited! Asking, for instance, about the impact of Lend-Lease on the Soviet war effort is a popular one, or asking about how Soviet and German industrial capacity compared in the lead up to war could be another. The *answer* to that first question is one we can only speculate on, but you can ask about the kind of information that helps you speculate about it better.
If you are unsure how you might modify a question to be less 'What If?', you are always invited to reach out to the modteam and we're happy to help as well.
And of course, if you quite explicitly want to ask an Historian 'What If?', there are two great communities for it which we recommend you check out, [/r/HistoricalWhatIf](_URL_0_) and [/r/HistoryWhatIf](_URL_2_). | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fj1jym/rules_roundtable_vi_no_historical_whatif/ | {
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"What Ifs are *really* popular questions sometimes, but the thing is, with a little work most 'what if' questions can actually be turned into really good, really interesting questions that match the rules. It's all about the angle and perspective you have when asking the question. If you never need a bit of help phrasing things, let us know!",
"What is the difference between /r/HistoricalWhatIf and /r/HistoryWhatIf?"
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18c4s3 | Are all sperm Clones? It doesn't matter Which sperm got to the egg, i was going to be me no matter what correct? (contemplating the miracle of my existence) | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/18c4s3/are_all_sperm_clones_it_doesnt_matter_which_sperm/ | {
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"First, I suggest reading about meiosis. \n\nHumans are diploid, meaning we have two sets of each chromosome in our cells, one from each parent. So, your parents have a set of 23 from each of their parents (your grandparents). Sperm (and eggs) form through meiosis, which really just picks a random chromosome from each of the 23 sets. Chromosome 1, 3, 9, 10, 20, etc. could be from your dad's dad, but the rest could be from your dad's mom. Each single sperm has this random assortment.\n\nCombine that with the same thing happening in the egg, and you get a lot of different combinations.\n\nEdit: This gets even more complicated with recombination...but this should answer your basic question. ",
"No, they are not clones at all.\n\nEach sperm represents a completely different shuffled assortment of your dad's genetic material.\n\nBecause of recombination, there are millions and millions of possible sperm and eggs that your parents can create.\n\nIT IS NOT TRUE that your parents are giving you a set of fully intact chromosomes, as suggested by hobo & abbe (\"Chromosome 1, 3, 9, 10, 20, etc. could be from your dad's dad, but the rest could be from your dad's mom\") These answers are ignoring the process of recombination.\n\nIt is possible to sometimes share a chromosome with only one grandparent or the other, but the most likely outcome is that the child will inherit a recombined chromosome containing DNA from both the child's paternal grandfather and paternal grandmother (or maternal grandfather and maternal grandmother if we're talking about the egg rather than the sperm).\n\n[Graph One](_URL_3_) All of this child's maternal chromosomes contain both grandparents' DNA -- she shares some of her DNA with her grandfather (segments shown in green) and some with her grandmother (not pictured but her DNA would fill in the grey gaps). For example, on chromosome 10, she shares roughly the first half of the chromosome with her grandfather, but then a recombination event took place and she shares the second half with her grandmother.\n\n[Graph Two](_URL_1_) This child is a bit different, she does have several chromosomes that she shares only with one grandparent. She shares no DNA with her maternal grandmother (pictured in blue) on chromosomes 5, 15, 16, 18, and 22, meaning she inherited those chromosomes entirely from the maternal grandfather.\n\nThe places in the genome where these recombination events occur are not fixed (although it's true that [recombination does occur more often](_URL_2_) in certain spots). This is why there are sooooo many possible combinations of sperm that your dad can make -- [there are roughly 27.6 recombinations per paternal meoisis](_URL_0_) and the location/size etc. of these recombination events is highly variable from one gamete to another.\n\nTL;DR Genetically, you really are a unique little snowflake."
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xqo79 | Why do people seem to make mistakes more often when in front of people? | For example, it seems I only trip and fall off my longboard when people are around or watching. Is this an actual thing, or am I imagining it? If it is a thing, what causes it? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/xqo79/why_do_people_seem_to_make_mistakes_more_often/ | {
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"If you're longboarding and showing people (or not, I guess), it's likely that you start (subconsciously or not) focusing on doing it \"properly\" by thinking through the steps you take one by one, instead of focusing on the whole--which would be the same reason most sports coaches become worse at their sport when they start teaching.\n\nThat, or self-consciousness."
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e7wqhb | why isn't the night sky just one big light? | Okay so I understand the title sounds like I'm on drugs but hear me out?
The universe is infinite, so theoretically in every possible direction we look at some point there should be a star somewhere out there, right? So by that same logic, why are there so *few* stars in the sky? I get that during the day the sun outshines them and that light pollution makes it harder to see the stars at night, but even in the middle of the desert there is still an awful lot of black in the sky. Shouldn't most if not all of it be filled with starry lights?
Does this make sense? Maybe I am high. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e7wqhb/eli5_why_isnt_the_night_sky_just_one_big_light/ | {
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"it's called olbers paradox and actually there is a lot of light. we just can't see it because it's out of out visible spectrum. this is because as galaxies move away the light changes and so we may not be able to see it anymore",
"Visible light is on a small portion of light we can observe but there are many types of light That we can’t observe",
"Two things:\n\n1) Regardless of how big the universe is, light still takes time to get places. The universe is 13.77 billion years old, so light has only had 13.77 billion years to get here. Because the universe is expanding, we can see stuff from much farther away than that, but there's still a limit on how far away stars can be and still have had time for the light to get to us.\n\n2) As the universe expands, it stretches light passing through it, causing the light to be redshifted, which means it lowers in wavelength. Visible light from the very edges of the visible universe can get redshifted out of the visible spectrum and into infrared or radio waves. That's why the Cosmic Microwave Background is, well, microwaves. It used to include a *lot* of visible light, but it's so old and it's been shifted so much that it's all microwaves, now.",
"But the observable universe isn't infinite. Because the universe is expanding everywhere at once, there is a distance where objects are moving away from us faster than the speed of light (important to note they aren't moving faster than light, but the expansion of the universe is causing the distance between is to grow faster than the speed of light) bc of this light from those objects will never reach us.\n\nSo when you stare out at the blackness between the stars, you're actually looking at the edge of the known universe and I think thats fucking cool",
"Another thing people haven’t said is your assumption is wrong \n\n > t he universe is infinite, so theoretically in every possible direction we look at some point there should be a star somewhere out there, right?\n\nThis isn’t true, just because it’s infinite doesn’t imply this. It could be infinite but there still be a space somewhere. Just because it goes on forever doesn’t mean the stars are evenly distributed.\n\nI think it’s simpler to think about it in terms of numbers. Pi is infinitely long, 3.1415... forever, but what if we took out every single 7? It would still be infinitely long, still be a unique number but just have no sevens.\n\nNow with that in mind what if we divided the sky into ten sections 0-9 and look at all the stars in the sky in order or how close they are to us. every time a star shows up we add it’s section to the end of a number. Say the first star in in 1 , then the next is in section 5 then 4 381289345etc. As in the example above a seven doesn’t have to show up which would mean 10% of the sky has no stars even though there are an infinite number is stars",
"1) Light diffuses rather significantly with distance. The sky is indeed awash with stars, but most of them are too far away to be even remotely visible.\n\n2) Because of universal expansion, light from far away sources gets redshifted to frequencies below that of human vision limits.\n\n3) Expanding on the above; the night sky, bluntly, **is** one big light. But most of that light is at relatively low frequencies below what the human eye can see, even before redshifting is taken into account.",
"If you draw a line on a balloon with a sharpie, then inflate the balloon, the line you drew will get stretched. What was one solid black stroke at the beginning is now a large faded line.\n\nNow imagine the balloon is the universe and the line is light from a far away object. Eventually it gets stretched so much that we can’t see it anymore.",
"Lots of nice comments, and several explain the physics in a way I've forgotten since I studied it, so kudos.\n\nBut I'd like to add that the night sky is really actually quite bright. If you can get somewhere without massive light pollution, there really isn't any direction which doesn't have light.\n\nIf you find a \"dark patch\" and look at it through a telescope you'll generally see stuff... And if there's a dark patch in that then you get a bigger telescope etc.\n\nEdit: cause apparently I can't English today",
"My favourite [minute physics video](_URL_0_) explains this exact thing really well!",
"Turn your radio on but not to a channel. Hear that static? That’s the one big light. \n\nSame for an analog tv that hasn’t been tuned.\n\nWe call it CMB. Cosmic microwave background.",
"1. We don't actually know the universe is infinite.\n2. The black patches might be the stars being too far away for enough light to make it to us to be visible to the naked eye\n3. There's a theory that this proves the universe is expanding because if it weren't the sky would be filled with stars.",
"It's called Olbers' Paradox--\"why is the sky dark at night?\" \n\n[_URL_1_](_URL_0_)\n\nThe idea's been around a long time."
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81b2f7 | Why does northern Canada look so strange on Google Maps? | [This is what I'm referring to](_URL_0_). A lot of northern Canada appears to have this same texture on Google Maps. Why does it look like that? What does that kind of geography look like up-close/in-person? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/81b2f7/why_does_northern_canada_look_so_strange_on/ | {
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"What you are seing here are features left by the passage of the last continental glaciation. Most of Canada was under 2-3 km of ice a mere 12 000 years ago. That ice sheet flowed, and then melted, leaving behind all kinds of features.\n\nIn this one, I note a prominent group of elongated hills trending NW-SE, probably [drumlins](_URL_2_) or perhaps some kind of [moraine](_URL_1_). There are a few N-S trending [eskers](_URL_0_) (essentially sand and gravel infilling of meltwater channels in the decaying glacier). "
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1zj7j2 | Why did the United States use images of Native Americans on its' coins during an era of Indian persecution? | It seems counter intuitive to me that they would use an image of someone that was looked down upon at the time on their coinage. I'm just curious of the mindset or significance of the move. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1zj7j2/why_did_the_united_states_use_images_of_native/ | {
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"You could try r/Anthropology, or r/CulturalAnthro with is question too; This is a topic that they might be able to shed a different light on than historians on this sub(not downplaying their knowledge or expertise, but just offering a different light on the subject). \n\nI'm not an expert on Native American history by any means as I am trained as an Anthropologist, but what you have described, and the co-opting of imagery and creation of a mythos in this situation is partly due to the idea of a \"free\", and \"natural\" society, one which was idolized, yet paradoxically, was also being controlled and oppressed. This is a condensed answer, but it gives a broad stroke answer to the question. Like I said I'm not an expert, but I would recommend reading either Vine Deloria or Philip Deloria(his book, \"Playing Indian\" refers to the kind of cultural romanticism and co-opting which has become associated with many Native American cultures and practices); they are both Native American scholars and very respected in their work. I know this doesn't really answer your question, but I hope that maybe it helps point you in a direction that might be helpful. \n\nTo the mods: this is my first time commenting on a post in this sub and I'm aware that the rules are enforced; if something I have posted is not in keeping with these rules I will revise the post so that it does.",
"I don't know if it's the same period you're thinking of, but I know that during World Wars 1 and 2 the US armed forces liked to use imagery of \"Red Indians\". I have always assumed - but am willing to be corrected by those who know better - that a \"fierce warrior\" image is being invoked. For example:\n\n*The Lafayette Squadron, an American Volunteer unit in the French Air Force during World War 1, used a \"Sioux Chief\" as its [squadron motif](_URL_1_).\n\n*US Paratroopers during World War 2 would habitually shave their heads into \"Mohawk\" cuts before a combat drop and would often also apply \"war paint\" - see [this picture](_URL_0_).\n\n",
"**Tl;dr** It does seem counter-intuitive to honor Native Americans on coins while denying their humanity and the right to their own language, religion, culture and customs, but this simply didn't slow America down. Phil Deloria does a great job of showing how the *idea* of Native Americans has pretty much always been divorced from the realities of Native American life or U.S.-Indian policy. Indeed, as he puts it when writing of the early 19th century organization [The Improved Order of Red Men](_URL_0_), \"They desired Indianness, not Indians.\" (The Wiki here notes that membership was restricted to whites until the 1970s.) It's the same type of appropriation of cultural motifs and generic imagery that /u/Brickie78 is referring to and still exists today in the form of many professional, collegiate, and high school athletic mascots.\n\nAs /u/ggarcimer15 suggests, read Vine Deloria (his most famous work being *Custer Died for Your Sins*) and his son Phil's *Playing Indian*. Phil especially goes into how Native Americans were a convenient \"other\" for Euro-Americans. They were variously portrayed as savage; noble; epitomes of freedom; enemies of the United States; threats to Christian civilization; or the last vestiges of a pre-modern society, tragically fading away under the superior technology and lifestyle of white Americans. \n\nSo how did Indian head coins come about? In the abstract, especially in the early days of the United States, Native Americans were symbols of freedom and liberty - think of early [personifications of Colombia](_URL_3_) or the U.S. Capitol's [Statue of Freedom](_URL_2_), with their vaguely Native American headdresses and attire, or more explicitly, the Boston Tea Party disguising themselves as Native Americans because of their popular association with freedom. As a perception that predates America, it was influential enough to survive the demonization of Native Americans during the 19th century \"Indian Wars,\" and afterwards the idea of Indians as paragons of virility and ruggedness (compared to the effete, urbanized late 19th century American) came back in full force - this time frame also saw the rise of organizations like the [Camp Fire Girls](_URL_1_) and the Boy Scouts, which co-founder Ernest Thompson Seton explicitly linked to Native Americans: \"Indian teachings in the fields of art, handicraft, woodcraft, agriculture, social life, health, and joy need no argument beyond presentation; they speak for themselves. The Red Man is the apostle of outdoor life, his example and precept are what young America needs today above any other teaching of which I have knowledge.\" Putting \"his\" face (the designer of the \"Buffalo nickel\" claimed not to have drawn a portrait, but a \"type\") on coinage was another way of using the image of Native Americans to reinforce the idea of American uniqueness and freedom, just like the \"Mohawks\" in Boston Harbor.\n\nAlso see Jared Farmer's *On Zion's Mount* for more on the late 19th/early 20th century obsession with the declining virility of the American male and how embracing certain aspects of Native American lifestyle (albeit a heavily idealized lifestyle) was seen as a remedy."
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19rwf9 | How would bread have been cut/served prior to the invention of the sandwich? | Might sound a strange question, but I was wondering last night why a round loaf of bread is cut into parallel slices whereas a cake is cut radially - obviously because of the difference in function, with bread usually being sliced to form a sandwich and a cake being divided to form equal pieces.
But before the whole sandwich thing came along, accompanied by bread tins for baking, what would've happened to all the amorphous/round loaves that were produced further back? I'm aware of trenchers and the like, but otherwise would it just be a case of tearing out hunks? Dividing it radially like a cake (which I doubt a lot)? Interested in regional variations and their causes, and as an afterthought the differences in breadmaking techniques and technologies and ingredients that came about with the popularisation of the sandwich.
EDIT: I'm aware of unleavened breads and their use in similar fashions of delivery, but am thinking more specifically about leavened bread and loaves. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/19rwf9/how_would_bread_have_been_cutserved_prior_to_the/ | {
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"This isn't perhaps the cutting techniques you're looking for, but stale bread often used to be cut into a square shape and used as a plate, in what was called a 'trencher'. A 'good trencherman' would be one who ate a lot of food. These bits of bread would be given out as alms after a nobleman's meal if those eating didn't want them. ",
"Quite often by \"breaking\" or simply tearing and sharing. In the Bible, the phrase \"break(ing) bread\" occurs dozens of times. It is of course an ancient phrase meaning \"to eat together.\" In many uses in the New Testament, it came to mean taking communion and/or fellowship.\n\nBread has always been a staple in human diet and has been found on every continent man has inhabited, all made from local ingredients. Modern table breads are distinctly soft, while older style or more \"rustic\" breads have a tough crusty exterior, and to seperate it you would literally have to \"break bread\" (if you have ever gotten your hands on a loaf of good French Bread or a Baguette, you know you break or tear the bread). "
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2f9ic2 | how has the economy managed to compensate for a majority of women entering the workforce in the past several decades, along with a rise in unmarried households - essentially doubling the demand for high paying jobs in a short period of time? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2f9ic2/eli5_how_has_the_economy_managed_to_compensate/ | {
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"The economy hasn't doubled high-paying jobs. An interesting book on the subject is called \"The Two-Income Trap\" by Elizabeth Warren. \n\nThe simple answer is that women entering the workforce made quality housing more expensive and made it so unmarried mothers have almost no chance to move up in social classes - most unmarried mothers have low-paying jobs. In general terms, the highest paying jobs are held by men and women who are married, have college degrees, and they combine incomes. To move up in life you really need both incomes.\n\nOur economy in the past fifty years has seen an explosion of low-paying service jobs like retail and customer service and an explosion in creative jobs like computer programming. There is very little in the middle."
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3kvj1s | what does the president of france do as co-prince of andorra? | It seems that (s)he would have much more important matters concerning France then the tiny nation to the south of them. Does the President of France actually do anything as Co-Prince? Does he sign laws? Does he dictate policy? What does he do? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kvj1s/eli5_what_does_the_president_of_france_do_as/ | {
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"The coprinses have, like most heads of state of modern monarchies, more of a ceremonial function than a political one. The don't even have the right to veto governmental decisions. They are also have representatives in place so the President of France will normally not directly concern Andorran affairs that often.\n\nThe real power lies with the parliament and their head of government, Antoni Martí. So not much difference there compared to other democracies. "
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18fkbp | What do most people not understand or realize about WWI? | I'm asking both about common misconceptions, and just things that were different back then that most people wouldn't think of because of how much the world has changed since then. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/18fkbp/what_do_most_people_not_understand_or_realize/ | {
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"Penicillin wasn't discovered until 1928 and arguably didn't save a life until 1942 and wasn't ready for mass production until 1945. I'll leave it to the readers to imagine a life in which minor injuries and small sniffles proved fatal without effective antibiotics. \n \nA large part of the driving force behind the sheer scale of WWI was the [Haber process](_URL_0_) of 1909. Prior to the industrialisation of this process nations were limited in how fast they could blow people up by the rate at which they could scrape bird shit off of small islands far far away. Making explosives from the very air around us helped speed up the killing no end. \n \nThe \"trench warfare\" of WWI wasn't confined to surface trenches but continued on down through the clay into tunnels and bunkers six or seven stories underground. Sappers from both sides were probing and counter probing to extend tunnels under the other's lines and lay massive amounts of explosives prior to surface movements. ",
"The toll that it took on the British aristocracy in terms of casualties and the impact that had on the loosening of the class system in subsequent decades. In terms of proportion of aristocratic males killed it was a greater rate than the English Civil war of the 17th c. This changed the social fabric in unexpected ways, it ended dynasties, caused many women to have to marry 'below' them, eradicated many of the serving jobs, brought much land out of private ownership. \n\nIt was WWI that gutted the landed gentry that had existed since time immemorial, they had been in decline for centuries but WWI was a blow from which they would never recover, there are a few remnants today but nothing the like the pre-war generation. ",
"The displacement of millions of refugees throughout Europe. In modern day memory, we have an image of static warfare, men living in trenches for years and making little movement, yet civilian displacement was unprecedented.\n\n10+ million Russian refugees flee into the interior.\nSerbian refugees, french refugees, Polish, Armenians- you name it.\n\nAlso, Britain sees an the biggest influx of refugees it has ever seen (apart from the Irish Potato Famine). Belgian refugees total 250,000-300,000 and become a familiar presence in the war-time economy. So much so, the British government creates miniature Belgian cities within the country and gives entire control of them to the Belgian government (See Birtley).\n\nEdit: If you have any questions, just reply. This stuff is interesting (to me, at least)!",
"I am going to list some of my unanswered questions about the First World War... Some of these may be answered in books I haven't read yet though.\n\nWhat happened to German POWs? Were they treated well? Did the Allies follow Geneva Conventions? If not, was it out of malicious intent or bureaucratic necessity?\n\nHow do we explain the weakness of peace movements in the belligerent nations in 1914? Is it just a matter of war nationalism overpowering the long intellectual history of opposition to war? How important was the Belgian cause in influencing support for the war among the Allied countries? Was it more important than nationalism? \n\nIs French Canada the only place that can demonstrate serious and vocal opposition to the war (at least, among the belligerent nations) in September 1914? Why is French Canada different from the rest of the belligerent nations? (my work is answering these questions)\n\nHow do we measure military success and failure in the First World War? Casualties inflicted/received? Land taken? Expended material vs land taken vs men lost? \n\nWhat are the exact cost of offensives hour by hour in terms of casualties? How many soldiers were lost for gaining a kilometre of land in 1914 vs 1916 vs 1918? What role did the terrain play in influencing the success or failure of operations? No role? Was there areas of the front which operations were more successful or less successful? Why? (though again, how do we measure success)\n\nDid armies gain effectiveness and perform better (if we could agree on how to measure performance) over the course of the war? Was there a learning curve? Or, was the war simply a matter of attrition/disease/material advantage? Does that negate the influence of leadership (good and bad) in the armed forces of the belligerent countries?\n\nHow did Catholics at war deal with the papal opposition to the conflict? What were the different reactions among different Catholics in different nations? (Belgium vs France vs German vs Australian vs English vs Irish vs Irish Canadian vs French Canadian - just to name a few off the top of my head) What consequence, if any, did this religious difference cause among individual Catholics? Within the Vatican?\n\nHow do we explain the different memories of the war? Britain has focused on the \"Lost Generation\" and the tragedy of the war whereas Canada remembers the war as the beginning of its national independence even as French Canadians see it as the beginning of their long path away from Confederation. How do you write about these national/societal narratives without diminishing the many many experiences of the war that do not align with them? Can the memory of the war ever align with the history of the war? \n\nI could probably keep posing these questions for hours... I find the scholarship is really weak/narrow. Don't even get me started on Canadian-specific literature and questions. \n\n",
"[NMW wrote a great post](_URL_0_) that basically gets at how the general perception of the soldier's view of WWI comes from a small group of highly educated, upper class poets.",
"WWI (or The Great War and other names used back then) had an interesting line of events leading up to it, and they played out so that virtually every country in Europe and a *massive* majority of the national populations welcomed the war from day 1. Millions of people volunteered and it was an extremely popular war in the beginning. We might find that rather odd in this day and age because we're used to the aggressor/victim role used almost exclusively in the media today, but back then the sentiments were very different: Old scores were to be settled, the national pride was at stake and everyone expect a short, victorious campaign. Needless to say, that wasn't going to happen.",
"I'd argue that one thing that people don't understand is why trench warfare developed and why it continued after it developed. There seems to be a popular viewpoint of WWI military leaders that paints them as being callous and cruel towards the lives of their men because they had them charging across the landscape at entrenched fortifications, without understanding the realities of the situation. \n\nAnother thing that's a common perception is that trench warfare was invented in WWI. At best this is partially true--the realities on the ground meant that WWI developed the concept of trench warfare beyond anything that had happened previously. However there were some precursors to trench warfare in the American Civil war, particularly the siege of Petersburg. [This](_URL_0_) is an example of trenchworks during the siege of Petersburg and they're quite complex.",
"How much of a global pacifist movement resulted from the war. Check out the [Kellog-Briand Pact](_URL_0_). People back then were really serious about achieving global peace and went so far as to \"outlaw\" war. Unfortunately, the pacifists just weren't the ones in power.",
"1) It was probably the first war to occur between a group of highly industrialized AND bureaucratized countries. The latter point was key in maintaining the war despite the hideous casualties and large forces required. The British, for example, developed a book before the war that detailed everyone's role (right down to how to deal with the influx of marriage licenses!) in a major war with a continental power. Lyn MacDonald covers this in \"1914.\"\n\n2) Defensive artillery, not machine guns or barbed wire, probably had the biggest impact on beginning and perpetuating the stalemate. There tends to be a correlation between effective counter battery measures (i.e. using artillery to destroy enemy artillery) and successful offensives."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process"
],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12zp30/what_work_has_done_the_most_damage_to_your_field/c6zjwba"
],
[],
[
"http://padresteve.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/civil-war-earthworks-petersburg.jpg"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellog-Briand_Pact"
],
[]
] |
|
f85lvv | Grover Cleveland met his wife when she was born and he was 27. He took care of her after her father died and married her when she turned 21. How was this relationship viewed by the public? | I’m sure many of us saw the TIL about Grover Cleveland. How did the public react to this? Was it seen as a Cinderella type situation or seen as immoral that a father figure would marry a girl. Was this age gap at the time still very common? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/f85lvv/grover_cleveland_met_his_wife_when_she_was_born/ | {
"a_id": [
"fijn0u4"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"More input is always welcome; in the meantime, this exact question came up last month, and you may be interested in what u/WovenCoverlet and u/sunagainstgold [had to say on the topic](_URL_0_)."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/elf22p/grover_cleveland_was_acting_president_and_49/"
]
] |
|
24oey1 | how do criminal defendants end up with charges like "four counts of murder" when only two people are killed? | [This man](_URL_0_) in Minnesota was recently convicted of four counts of murder for killing two teens. What's the justification for multiple murder charges per death? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24oey1/eli5_how_do_criminal_defendants_end_up_with/ | {
"a_id": [
"ch94eie"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Sometimes it is hard to prove that an accused murderer had all the requirements of a crime. With 1st degree murder, the prosecution needs to prove everything in 2nd degree murder, PLUS the act/s were premeditated. \n\nIf the jury agreed that he was reacting, and not making specific plans, that would eliminate 1 st degree. If the jury found at any point the defendant was in fear, using self-defense of life, or local versions of 'stand your ground, and 'castle doctrine', they could nullify any of the murder charges. \n\nEach States laws are a little different, some would call them 'included offenses'. In this case, if you prove murder 1, you have to also prove murder 2- even though the same act . Technically, that act could also be murder 3, manslaughter, and aggravated assault. \nBut our system only punishes the highest crime of the inclusive 'stack' - for each separate action. \n\nThe jury instructions are [here](_URL_0_). Thee jury was asked to determine if the facts met all 4possible crimes, jury says yes. \nUnless there is something I missed that makes these 2crimes x2victims, the sentencing will only show a conviction and penalty for the most heinous criminal act. \n\nIf these other charges were not given to the jury now, they could not choose to convict, and the defendant might be protected under double jeopardy. Many times a criminal will be charged with lesser versions of the same crime, just to avoid letting them walk on a paperwork issue . \n\n"
]
} | [] | [
"http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2014/04/29/closing-arguments-tuesday-in-little-falls-murder-trial"
] | [
[
"http://www.mncourts.gov/Documents/0/Public/Court_Information_Office/Smith_Jury_Trial_Instructions.pdf"
]
] |
|
5ti657 | How far did the KGB infiltrate the American government? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5ti657/how_far_did_the_kgb_infiltrate_the_american/ | {
"a_id": [
"ddnd35k"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"As a follow-up, would the handling of foreign spies for the USSR generally be the responsibility of GRU, KGB, or a different agency? Or all three? "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
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