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8271g5
|
atomic superposition.
|
I know it has something to do with electrons being weird, but beyond that I am clueless.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8271g5/eli5_atomic_superposition/
|
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"I'm presuming this is to do with the Pauli Exclusion principle but I might be misunderstanding your question.\n\nBasically the Pauli Exclusion principle states that electrons (and all other matter) can't have the same state in a system (like an atom). Electrons also have specific wavelengths where they can exist at, which is what we call shells.\n\nSo electrons have to have specific states in an atom. For example an electron cannot be in shell 1.5, it can either be in shell one or shell two, and it exists as a wavefunction in either shell, this wavefunction is an orbital.\n\nHowever we can't just put one hundred electrons in the same shell (which is what would happen without the Pauli Exclusion principle) each orbital can fit two different states. So thus two electrons can fit in an orbital.\n\nAs the lower orbitals fill up , the electrons go into higher and higher shells which require more energy.",
"In response to OP's clarification:\n\nI'm going to assume you're familiar with the classical model where the atom is modeled as a nucleus with protons and neutrons at the center, and electrons as small particles orbiting the nucleus. \n\nWell, later on, we came up with quantum mechanics, and importantly, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. This principle stated that it is impossible to know both the position and momentum of an object. I'm not going into the maths because frankly, it is above my head as well. This may not seem intuitive, because the uncertainty levels associated with our macroscopic lives is negligible. However, for extremely tiny objects such as electrons, this uncertainty becomes pronounced.\n\nThis forced scientists to come up with a new model to integrate the Uncertainty Principle, as the electron is no longer a defined particle, for we could not know both its position and momentum with accuracy. To combat this, scientists came up with the Electron Density Function, which meant that electrons are no longer a defined particle. Rather, they are merely a probability cloud around the nucleus, and you have a certain probability of finding the electron at any given point around the nucleus using the density function."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
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|
v8gtv
|
Where does adaptation end, and evolution begin?
|
Hey science dudes. So I was reading an article on how astronauts develop calluses on the tops of their feet, and sometimes their toes will begin to curl upward. This occurs because of the hand/foot rails that are spread out through the craft or space station. The astronauts use these to stop themselves and/or hold themselves in place. It usually only happens in long-term cases. I understand that this and many other adaptations (not only human, but animal too) are pretty common. Also, I know that this is just nature and the human body reacting to the environment around it. But where do simple adaptations end and complex evolution begin? Do adaptations ever turn into genetic changes. If a species passes along a particular adaptation to its offspring, is it then evolving into something slightly different. I understand adaptation and evolution as two different processes, but are they connected? and if so how?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/v8gtv/where_does_adaptation_end_and_evolution_begin/
|
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"Adaptations are driven by evolutionary pressures. Without the genetic possibility of developing calluses, it's not going to happen. No matter how much time I spend in water, I'm not going to develop gills. [Lamarkian inheritance](_URL_1_) is generally disproven. \n\nThere are traits that are passed from generation to generation based on the environment of the parent organism. These typically involve DNA methylation. There seems to be some [evidence](_URL_0_) it happens in humans as well.\n\nRemember, though, even though these changes are passed through generations, the ability to do so is driven by genetics.",
"This actually is not an adaptation, but something called phenotypic plasticity. Adaptation is a process, not a trait. Adaptation is the gradual increase in frequency of a useful trait over many generations in response to environmental changes. In other words over many generations a trait becomes very common in the population because it is advantageous and thus is called an adaptation. In your case, the development of these physical changes in the astronauts happens at the individual level, without any genetic changes occurring. So it is a physical response to a new environment, called phenotypic plasticity. \n\nIndividuals do not pass on traits that they develop over their lifetime. For example, if you lost a limb due to an accident, your offspring would not have the same limb loss at birth. However, in this case, the astronauts already had this genetic ability to change physically to the environment. That would be passed to their offspring, but it wouldn't be an adaptation, because, presumably, everyone has this ability. \n\nAdaptation is absolutely connected with evolution. As an environment changes, those individuals with the most useful characteristics will be selected via the process of natural selection. With new environments, previously neutral traits may become very advantageous, and will quickly increase in frequency in the population. Any change in the genetics in a population over time is evolution. So if certain traits increase in the population, and these traits are genetically encoded, then you have evolution. So adaptation and evolution really occur simultaneously. I hope that helps. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.technologyreview.com/news/411880/a-comeback-for-lamarckian-evolution/",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism"
],
[]
] |
|
1192mq
|
If you become Paraplegic, would it make sense to amputate the limbs you have no feeling?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1192mq/if_you_become_paraplegic_would_it_make_sense_to/
|
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"Why would you do that? Besides the risk of surgery, what if a repair treatment or assistive device is developed why would enable use of those limbs?"
]
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|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
n3h01
|
What would happen if the Earth's rotation was slowed by 1% due an unknown phenomenon?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/n3h01/what_would_happen_if_the_earths_rotation_was/
|
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"The day would be 14.4 minutes longer. ",
"So, lets talk about ways that this can happen. In order to change earths rotation speed, you have to do something to the system. \n\nOne possibility is changing the geometry of earth such that the [moment of inertia](_URL_0_) of earth changes in a way that it slows the rotation, but keeping rotational energy constant. In this case, you would have to make the equater stick out a lot more, which would be weird. And its not so stable, because gravity wants to pull it down and closer. There would be earthquakes and such forcing earth back into its near sphere shape. \n\nAn example of this is earthquakes that have happened so far (such as the one that hit Japan) changed earth's rotation by ~ 1.8 microseconds, which is 2*10^-9 %, to give you a sense of the scale of events that would have to happen to make this happen (though this sped up earths rotation, not decreased it)... \n\nThe next option, would be to increase the energy of rotation, but keep the same shape. To do this you would have to hit earth with something... If some meteor or something hit earth that had enough power to cause this, likely it would be catastrophic for life... And in terms of what would happen... more earth quakes, more restructuring, etc. Gravity will want to pull you back to close to a sphere, but it would now have to fight against more rotation, so it'll be a little (just a tad bit) more oblated of an oblate spheroid... \n\nAs a whole, even 1% of a change would likely end all life because all events I can imagine would be catastrophic. I guess if it happened over the course of a couple hundred thousand years, its possible that you could accumulate changes slowly and not really be that catastrophic, but not sure.... \n\n",
"The day would be 14.4 minutes longer. ",
"So, lets talk about ways that this can happen. In order to change earths rotation speed, you have to do something to the system. \n\nOne possibility is changing the geometry of earth such that the [moment of inertia](_URL_0_) of earth changes in a way that it slows the rotation, but keeping rotational energy constant. In this case, you would have to make the equater stick out a lot more, which would be weird. And its not so stable, because gravity wants to pull it down and closer. There would be earthquakes and such forcing earth back into its near sphere shape. \n\nAn example of this is earthquakes that have happened so far (such as the one that hit Japan) changed earth's rotation by ~ 1.8 microseconds, which is 2*10^-9 %, to give you a sense of the scale of events that would have to happen to make this happen (though this sped up earths rotation, not decreased it)... \n\nThe next option, would be to increase the energy of rotation, but keep the same shape. To do this you would have to hit earth with something... If some meteor or something hit earth that had enough power to cause this, likely it would be catastrophic for life... And in terms of what would happen... more earth quakes, more restructuring, etc. Gravity will want to pull you back to close to a sphere, but it would now have to fight against more rotation, so it'll be a little (just a tad bit) more oblated of an oblate spheroid... \n\nAs a whole, even 1% of a change would likely end all life because all events I can imagine would be catastrophic. I guess if it happened over the course of a couple hundred thousand years, its possible that you could accumulate changes slowly and not really be that catastrophic, but not sure.... \n\n"
]
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[] |
[] |
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||
x4wkk
|
Books on Jewish American history
|
Hey Reddit, can you guys point out some great books in Jewish American history? I'm looking to learn a bit more about my heritage.
Thanks!!
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/x4wkk/books_on_jewish_american_history/
|
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"One book that helped my immensely during my undergrad and beyond was [The Jew in the Modern World](_URL_0_) by Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz. I'm not too sure what type of book you are looking for but this is a fantastic documentary history. It's a collection of primary sources organized by topic. It doesn't focus specifically on American Jews but I'm confident there would be enough material in there to satiate you for a while. ",
"[How The Jews Invented Hollywood](_URL_0_)",
"It should be relatively easy to find information about Jews in New York and the Northeast. For history specifically about Jews in the West/South:\n\n*Jewish Life in the American West*; *Jews of the Pacific Coast*; *Jewish Women Pioneering the Frontier Trail*; *The American Jewish Experience*\n\n\nFor race and the Jewish community, check out *The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity*; *How Jews Became White Folks*"
]
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[] |
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],
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] |
|
2mioky
|
would two consenting minors having sex be considered rape?
|
NSFW, just in case.
I did a little bit of background Googling, but i got conflicting answers. (Sorry for any spelling errors, I'm currently on mobile)
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mioky/eli5_would_two_consenting_minors_having_sex_be/
|
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"Rules vary by state and country. For example: In 2006, the Canadian government passed a bill to raise the age of consent from 14 to 16, while creating a close-in-age exemption for sex between 14-15 year olds and partners up to 5 years older, and keeping an existing close-in-age clause for sex between 12-13 year olds and partners up to 2 years older. So yes, two minors can have consensual sex without it being statutory rape.",
"Depends on the state/country and their ages. Of importance to note, age of consent (when one is considered old enough to legally decide to voluntarily have sex) and age of majority (age when one is no longer considered to be a minor, but instead is an adult, legally responsible for all of their behavior) are often quite different.",
"Usually no, if they're of similar ages. What you're looking for are called \"Romeo and Juliet laws\", which are exceptions to statutory rape laws."
]
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[] |
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|
10vowt
|
Does such a thing as a 3-D or Cubic matrix exist?
|
So Say I'm supposing that Matrices are 2-d stores of information (x*y) and are for all purposes 'square', does such a thing as a 'cubic' matrix (x*y*z) exist? Also, as a side question, would vectors be considered as 1-d?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/10vowt/does_such_a_thing_as_a_3d_or_cubic_matrix_exist/
|
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"Yes, they're called Rank-3 tensors. An example is the [Levi-Civita tensor](_URL_0_). The highest-rank tensor I've seen is 6 dimensions, in a lecture about complex fluid dynamics."
]
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|
[] |
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[
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"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Epsilontensor.svg"
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|
625aca
|
How did San Francisco get the reputation as America's "gayest" city?
|
San Francisco has a reputation in America as being among its most socially liberal and accepting of LGBT people. Given that most major metropolitan areas tend towards social liberalism as a general rule, and that LGBT people had communities in most if not all major American cities, why did San Francisco get singled out as being "gayer" than the others? What made it stand out in this regard?
Why not, for example, New York, home of the Stonewall Riots? (New York, of course, is also seen as "pretty gay," but not to the same extent as it seems for San Francisco.)
And for bonus points: if any other cities had the reputation as the town where there was an unusual number of LGBT persons, what were they, and when did they hold this title?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/625aca/how_did_san_francisco_get_the_reputation_as/
|
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"Some helpful geographical context for your question.\n\nWhile the SF Bay Area is a massive metropolis, San Francisco never absorbed the surrounding areas in the way that New York City and Los Angeles did. (Metropolitan consolidation failed in 1912 after Oakland's voters, across the Bay, axed an annexation referendum.) This means that SF proper is a small portion of the urban core, and has no large, traditional suburban neighborhoods within its 7x7 which would tend to dilute the percentage of gays and lesbians living within the \"city,\" who tend to congregate in urban cores. \n\nAs of 2015 (I don't have the old Census data in front of me), the City and County of San Francisco had about 850,000 people out of a metropolitan population of 8.7 million. That's under 10% of the metropolis. And this is quite different from other major cities. (LA is 4 million out of a metropolis of 18 million; NYC is 8.5 million out of 23m.) But LA has the postwar suburbia of the San Fernando Valley; same for NYC, which has eastern Queens, the streetcar suburbs of outer Brooklyn, and most of Staten Island. This means that the LGBT percentages in other major cities are relatively diluted compared to San Francisco, which has kept its boundaries since the county lines were last changed in 1856. ",
"SF has a history of being very progressive on many fronts. As for the LGBT part I believe the most important factor that solidified SF as a community of LGBT acceptance was the election of Harvey Milk. Milk came to SF from NY during a time when many gay people were moving to the Castro district to set up a sanctuary community for gay people. (This is also why The Castro is seen as the epicenter of gay culture in SF). He wasn't the first gay man to be elected, but he was the first non-incumbent openly gay man to be elected in the US. This basically means he was the first person that Americans elected for office with the prior knowledge of him being gay. During his tenure as a board member of SF city supervisors, Milk passed some progressive gay rights legislation, leading to SF being a city known for their acceptance of gay people. Milk only served for 11 months before being assassinated along with Mayor Moscone of San Francisco. This tragedy solidified Milk as a martyr of gay rights not only for San Francisco, but for America as a whole.",
"In [How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood](\n_URL_0_), Moskowitz talks about how SF got their LGBT community because the military would discharge gay servicemen at pacific coast bases. He doesn't get into specifics about the base or whatnot, but cites that as the beginning of the gay culture in SF that allowed for a concentration and shift in culture that eventually allowed for the election of politicians like Harvey Milk and the rise to national prominence as a gay friendly city. "
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9ujalh
|
why do musicians make those awkward facial expressions when they really get into the music?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ujalh/eli5_why_do_musicians_make_those_awkward_facial/
|
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"I can't give much of a technical answer, but as an amateur musician I can say that certain passages/verses have a feel to it. Kind of like how scary movies elicit a frightened expression out of a person, or how those oddly satisfying videos draw out a blissful expression, the same goes for music. There are certain notes in a song that just makes you feel something, and your face reacts accordingly. Take [Steve Vai](_URL_0_) for example. There are times where he's wording out with his mouth the sounds that his guitar makes. It starts off all serene and calming, and when it suddenly dives into the distorted part of the song his actions and facial expressions suddenly become more aggressive.\n\ntl;dr - Music evokes emotion, and one way that emotion is displayed is through facial expressions."
]
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|
[] |
[] |
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw74sDWPH7U"
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32zmww
|
how does a major motion picture (such as batman vs. superman) have enough footage for an "epic" trailer, but have nearly a year left before release?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32zmww/eli5_how_does_a_major_motion_picture_such_as/
|
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"Depends on how the were shot and what the editing process is\nIn modern films it takes almost as long to edit and add the CGI as it does to shoot the film so somebody would storyboard the trailer and they would finish the footage needed for this first\n",
"Not all of that year is spent shooting footage, there is a lot that goes into making movies and shooting the footage is only part of it. Some of the time is working on the special effects and CGI, other parts are stock footage, and editing the footage together. The scenes they use typically in trailers consists of stock footage, scenes they have already shot for the purpose of the trailer, and CGI that was done first in order to be put into trailer."
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d32svb
|
how do companies like apple and qualcomm continue to produce faster and more powerful chips year after year? are engineers still making new discoveries in the industry or have we had this technology all along and are controlling the rate at which our technology improves?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d32svb/eli5_how_do_companies_like_apple_and_qualcomm/
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"The engineers aren't making breakthroughs, we do have the technology. However, they aren't exactly controlling the rate which our technology improves.\n\nUltimately it comes down to costs. Apple could build a beast of a phone right now but it would cost 10,000 so no one would want to buy it. So, they build a mediocre performance phone and make it cost $1000. Then next year, slightly improve the performance and make it cost $1000.",
"We're making new advancements. Stuff might slow down a bit (there's some theoretical caps that we're trying to working around) but engineers are still developing new technologies and getting better at doing the ones we have.",
"Does apple make its own chips? I think they design some of them for their phones but outsource production to real semiconductor manufacturers. I know for certain Apple uses Intel semiconductors in their Mac products.\n\nThere are always improvements in semiconductor design and engineering. There are plenty of companies that, that is their whole purpose. A notable one would be something like Intel.\n\nMost companies do incrementally release tech to keep it replaceable and not \"future proof\" on purpose so you keep buying more, but since the discovery of parallel processing CPUs kind of took a huge leap in processing power. There is not much need currently to build faster chips, because CPUs are not the bottleneck right now in terms of getting better performance.",
"I work at a company that produces components that go into the machines that produce chips. Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) is one of the processes for chip manufacturing and LAM Research has a nifty video on YouTube about it. It's crazy how much goes into it the technology. Surface finish, cleanliness, and cycle time are among the most important that come to mind. There's a lot that can ruin the process so these factors are continuously monitored by our quality control group.",
"Apple and Qualcomm depend on the chip foundries like Intel and TSMC. They have engineers and physicists trying their best to fit more and faster transistors on to chips ASAP, while keeping power usage manageable. Then you have CPU designers like Intel and AMD trying to make the best use of those transistors to achieve the best CPU performance per watt.\n\nIt takes time for advancements in etching transistors on silicon to make their way through to consumer products. At times, if one manufacturer has had a lead over its rivals, there have been suspicions that they were sitting on advances until the others caught up but this doesn't seem to have caused drastic slowing of progress. One problem is that it's now so expensive to be in the market that there are fewer and fewer competitors.",
"The short answer is that engineers are still making new discoveries in the industry! Roughly speaking, you can sort of think of the processing power of a computer chip being proportional to how many individual elements (transistors) you are able to fit on one chip. The smaller you make each individual element, the more you can fit on a chip and the more powerful that chip will be. This transistor density has been roughly scaling with Moore's Law for the past \\~50 years and while Intel has at some points purposely slowed down their development to better align with Moore's Law, in general Intel, Samsung, and TSMC (the 3 large chip makers) are all releasing the most powerful chips as soon as they can reliably manufacture them.\n\nOne of the main improvements that drives the increase in processing power is again related to how many transistors we can fit on the chip. The ELI5 is that we need to draw these transistors into the chip with light. The longer the wavelength of the light we use, the larger the features will end up. Originally, they used mercury lamps (wavelength \\~400 nm ) which limited the feature size to a couple hundred nanometers (still really small!) but they are now using what we call extreme ultraviolet (wavelength \\~10 nm) which enables us to shrink everything down to about 10 nm.\n\nEDIT: A lot of people have been mentioning limits to scaling (ie: the death of Moore's Law) and while there definitely are fundamental laws in physics that limit scaling, there are a lot of neat tricks engineers have come up with that will probably continue to drive improvements for years to come (both in terms of materials and architectures). One of the top examples that come to mind off the top of my head is introducing what we call \"high-k atomic layer deposition\" in the mid 2000's. \n\nELI10 of high-k ALD: A lot of people in the thread have mentioned \"quantum tunneling\" which basically occurs when something becomes so thin, an electron can just appear on the other side (wave-particle duality sucks). If you break a transistor down to its most simple parts, it is just a capacitor and engineers want to make the dielectric as thin as possible (think of your basic parallel plate capacitor formula). At some point, all of your electrons just \"tunnel\" across which leads to a bunch of leakage/power loss. Instead of scaling the thickness, engineers switched the dielectric material to one with higher dielectric constant (\"k\") which allows you to get the same device performance with less leakage.",
"Advancements is a big part of it but it's a bit more complicated as you'd expect. Let's say you own a bakery shop. You come up with a cute design for cupcakes using frosting. A customer sees what you made and really likes the idea so you decide to make more. The problem is doing this design takes your employees 3x as long to frost this special design so you end charging more because you produce fewer cupcakes. You spend a few weeks figuring just how many you should make so you dont have any left over and it's worth the extra time. You experiment and find you can make the design using fondant instead of frosting. It now takes only slightly longer than a normal cupcake and they still sell really well. So you up the amount that you're making and drop the price a little. Etc.\nComputer chips do the same thing. We are actually studying different ways to make chips all the time. People are making chips using proteins, graphene, and crystals. We're finding different ways to 'structure' the different components on chips to work better with our software. And all these wonderful ideas have the potential to be 'better' than the chips we have but they're also EXPENSIVE. So research shifts to how to produce these cheaper (often these really fast, new chips are initially produced for military or government projects with huge budgets and the tech trickles down). When it becomes cheap enough for consumer goods, they end up in your phone.",
"From the perspective of a software engineer, one of the things that makes chips better and \"faster\" is new features, like better support for matrix operations (important for ai) or new security features (for example, to better prevent one program from seeing what another is doing). However, the software needs to be written to use these features after it's released in a chip. \n\nSo we'll often see (for example) Intel release a simple version of a feature, see how it gets used, and then improve it in the next processor version, etc. \n\nThis is necessarily slow, because programmers can't use a feature until it's available in a chip they can buy, and Intel can't improve a feature until they see how it's used.",
"there's a lot of speculation here, but the boring real answer is that the semiconductor industry requires a lot of moving parts so to speak, from many companies doing different things, from fab equipment manufacturers, the foundries themselves, EDA tool companies, and many others. you can't just go from one generation of chip to the next without everybody moving in lockstep. so there are global semiconductor industry groups that will dictate this, and one of the most important documents is the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS), now called the Intl Roadmap for Devices and Systems (IRDS). this document lays out what each generation should strive for and what each gen can likely support. this means that all these moving parts know what they'll want to support for the next few years. chip makers will have an idea of what every generation can likely support, what their costs will be, and target a certain tech for a certain chip years in advance. \n\nbasically, all these companies have to advance together to make better chips. it's not that they are still making new discoveries per se (they are but it's not like every day ooh new discovery!), nor that they have all this tech already, but more that they know what they have to hit every generation, will work on that, and then refine it for the next generation. a lot of things that apple and qualcomm do is simply refine their chip designs for the next gen, and move down to a tighter process when foundaries figure out how to improve their yields. \n\nso thats how it works for the industry as a whole. for a chip designer though, a lot of improvements just come from being able to refine their existing stuff and make gradual improvements. remember, a company like apple or qualcomm has a major time deadline for their stuff, so they will decide for this year, they will make a chip that hits these features. then for next year, since we will have more time and a working chip, we can add these new features. and so on. so it's not like they didn't know at the time, just that they don't have the time to implement everything. most chip companies will have roadmaps several years in the future on what they plan to produce and what features those chips will have.\n\nnew discoveries are still being made, but these aren't what is driving most year to year improvements. when new discoveries are made (usually at the research level), they get invariably placed on the roadmap so that all the companies can start working on hitting it years in the future.",
"Before you make a 1mm drill bit, you probably have to make a 2mm drill bit, to build the tools you need to make a 1mm drill bit. You don't start with rocks and sticks and make a 1mm drill bit. It's an iterative process, where precision at one scale leads to precision at the next smaller scale.\n\nChip technology has progressed in that fashion. It's very similar to how t-shirts are printed, via lithography. You make images of the circuits, and project them onto a silicon crystal. There are a few dozen other steps. At each generation, the scale gets smaller, making them faster, and more powerful (larger circuits). This is Moore's law.\n\nEventually, there are hard physical limitations to how small you can scale this process. We're more or less hitting these limitations, now. So, we're turning to other strategies, like putting more chips in one package. It's unclear at the moment what direction the technology will go.\n\ntldr; for many years, the path forward has been obvious, and iterative: make it smaller. Now, the path forward is less obvious, and may require fundamentally new technologies.",
"This is mostly based on cpu processors but the same concepts should apply to phone processors. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nThere is something called a node, that's the current miniaturisation size of the transistors. Ie 24nm, 14nm, 10nm, 7nm, 5nm. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nWhen moving to a smaller node you can cram more transistors on there or make it more energy efficient. Usually they balance these for overall improvements. But You also come up with new designs. So you dedicate portions of the chip to specific tasks for improved efficiency. So that's something that can change.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nAnother thing is that as the manufacturing process matures the yield of the silicon increases. There will invariably be defects in the silicon. Some renders parts of the disk useless, others may be worked around in certain ways. But one way they bring these constant iterative changes is that while they could have crammed out that shiny new processor earlier the amount of defective chips from the silicon wafer would be too high so that they would be too expensive or they wouldn't be able to meet demand.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nSo that's one way in how all of this works.",
"I was told by my Computer Science professors who worked in this type of field that all these big tech companies are a couple years ahead of the current new product so if apple just released the A13 chip, they most likely have the A14/15 chip already made.",
"A little of both, but not quite like you might be thinking.\n\nThe discoveries are happening all the time. Someone, somewhere has a bright idea, tries it out, and it works. This is just the start of the journey (and we are ignoring all the times it does not even work at this early point).\n\nNow that the general idea is proven, you need to find a way to produce it in an affordable way. This can be pretty tricky. You might end up needing to develop a string of yet more technologies just to produce that first one that was your goal. You might need to adapt production techniques. You might need more basic science. \n\nOnce your lab rats have figured out how to produce the original idea in an affordable way, the whole thing goes into a pilot phase where everything is scaled up. Many times, the ideas that worked well in small-scale production don't work well when you try to do it in any big numbers. This can be very dangerous. My father did this pilot-phase stuff for a living and has many near-miss stories where things turned exciting for a few moments.\n\nSo now you've got the pilot-scale production down and it's time to go to full-scale production. This is where the final big investment is made. This is the point when not only the manufacturing costs skyrocket, but you start needing sales and marketing investment that can easily rival those manufacturing costs.\n\nNow, during all this time, your guys at all levels have been coming up with even better ideas and optimizations. If we move this bit here, we can save 5% on material. If we move that bit there, we can be 3% faster. And so on. \n\nThis is where the \"control the rate\" comes into play. You have to make a decision: go with the design you have and commit, or wait a few months until the improvements can worm their way through all the development phases. When do you pull the trigger and go to market? Go too early, and someone else might bring out a product a month later that the market prefers. Go too late, and someone else might eat up all the market before you can even deliver the first product. This can be a billion dollar decision. If you time it right, congrats: you are in the next issue of Forbes. If you time it wrong: oops, you are also in the next issue of Forbes. \n\nSo this is why things keep improving; the entire process has a momentum that is continually bringing out new things. This particular industry has a direct self-referential loop as well. Every time something new does make it to market, all those guys at the beginning of the process have even better tools to come up with even better ideas. By the time those new ideas work their way through the whole process, yet another generation of better tools has found their way into the researchers' hands, keeping the whole thing in motion.\n\nThe main bottleneck is simply the length of time that it takes to move an idea all the way up to a mass-production concept. So far, only humans could really guide and control the process. The on-going AI revolution threatens/promises to change everything and compress time. If this does, in fact, happen, then we will see a new phase of automation kick in where the whole \"new idea-- > pilot-- > production-- > new tools-- > new idea\" circle starts looking more and more like a point. What happens after that is anyone's guess.",
"Engineers are still making discoveries every year. Designing chips gets more and more complex every year, and everytime you add something, making the overall chip more complex, odds are you can then make that \"something\" better, faster, use less power or etc.\n\nMost chip companies, the big ones are ARM, Apple, Nvidia, AMD, and Intel, (shout out to HiSilicon though), most chip companies publish some of what their advancements are each year. In tech there's a big culture of sharing advancement and explaining how you did things to one degree or another. And beyond that the nerds in Computer Engineering, the specific field, will sit there and parse things out more for themselves either for their job or just a hobby. Taking die shots (a die is the main, logic part of any chip) with magnifying equipment, combing through git logs (a task/bug etc. tracking service many use) and in any other way just figuring out how chips work.\n\nBeyond that the other big way chips have gotten faster was called Moore's Law. It stated that the number of transistors, the little building blocks of a chip, would double in a given area every 18-24 months. So the same chip gets smaller every year, or rather you can make bigger more complex chips every year. This held out for decades, and came along with other benefits of the physics and economics of making transistors smaller. Specifically they became cheaper for each one, and used less power. To get a sense of where this advancement has gotten us you can look at the old [5mb hard drive](_URL_1_) in comparison to a modern [512gb SD card](_URL_0_), the latter hold more than five hundred thousand times the former. Unfortunately Moore's Law is dead, has been for years now (don't believe the Cringe PR otherwise). Ultimately squeezing more transistors into a given area is slowly become nigh impossible, you can easily count the atoms across in today's smallest transistors.\n\nWhich is to say chip advancement has been slowing down for the past several years, and will continue until Moore's Law is abandoned for chasing different advancement. With the utterly cringeworthy PR most \"foundries\" put out insisting Moore's Law is still alive if you lawyer speak it right and look at it on a full moon but only if it's on Saturday, well it doesn't appear that they're the companies that are going to be up to such a task.",
"its moores law and has been going on in pc chips long before smart phones were een a thing. it postulates that transistor density (i.e. processing power) will double every 2 years and the price will half. the mechanism for producing chips is light and chemical etching of silicon and layers of insulating and conducting materials. the ability to reduce the size of the transistors and pack more of them closer together imprioves performance and increases efficiency",
"the reasons why microchips keep getting stronger is because of this thing called Moore's law. it says that the amount of transistors on a microchip doubles every two years though the cost of computers is halved. **Moore's Law** states that we can expect the speed and capability of our computers to increase every couple of years, and we will pay less for them. that is why a few years ago 14 nano-meters was normal in pc computers but now brands like AMD are down to 7 which is exactly what Moore's law predicted. it is technically just the science of making stuff smaller and faster. there is also the demand-supply thing that u/beyonddisbelief mentioned. in 2005 we had 90 NM processor chips but now 14 years later we have 14 nano-meter processors . also these 2005 cpus only had one core. while the entry level ones can have 6 cores and built in graphics. the cores is the part that executes programs so we can multitask better now. Apple mostly uses Intel cpus but does make home-brew for WiFi and phones.",
"its a mix of things... ill list them off and give a short explanation, if you want more detail ask and you shall receive!\n\n* better fabrication process - when you design a chip, its going to not be stable at high clock speeds. even with the same cpu die design, over time you improve the fabrication which allows higher clock speeds and more performance\n\n* die shrinkage - you often here about a processor being a certain nm (ie, intel uses a 14nm chip. amd just released a 7nm chip). this denotes the smallest size of a feature on the actual silicon. smaller chips means they are more power efficient and you can fit more stuff in the same footprint on the chip. to go to a smaller fabrication process you generally need a redesign since the design you used to have will probably not be as stable on the newer fabrication. this then leads to a few cycles of fabrication improvement. \n\n* increased on chip memory. - phones and computers have ram, but the cpu also needs a bit of memory to store things its working on. the more on chip memory the less you have to move in and out of ram. this makes the chip faster\n\n* beter scheduling predictors - often times your workflow will have some condition where if x is equal to something you do one thing, but if its not then you do something else. cpu's are advanced to the point where there are algorithms on the chip that keep track of how often certain things happen, and can start loading parts of the code before the program gets to it. this makes it faster. if you get to the if / else part of the code and you loaded the wrong stuff, you just throw it away and fetch the right stuff. \n\n* IPC uplift - cpu's do one thing per tick of its internal clock (a chips speed, like 2ghz, is the rate that clock clicks). a cpu might not be able to add 2+2 and 3+5 on the same clock cycle, but through good design you might have a cpu that can add 2+2, and start loading the next numbers on the same tick. in reality its a lot more complicated, but making your cpu do more per tick will have the same effect as making the cpu run faster (say 2.2 ghz vs 2.0 ghz) in most applications.\n\n* more cores - smaller fabrication help with this since you can pack more stuff into a chip, and it will generate less heat. phones are octacore and shit now. its crazy. a lot of phones have fast cores and slow cores, so that when you open an app that is heavy, it can use those fast cores, and background things can be on the slow ones.\n\n* dedicated hardware - phones have had gpu's on board for a while which really speeds them up, but now phones are starting to include dedicated chips to handle things like camera post processing and stabilization. this means the cpu has to do less work and the phone seems faster since the dedicated hardware can be optimized for that one specific task where as the cpu is a general purpose chip, which means speed trade offs compared to a application specific chip.\n\n--------\n\nalmost all phones run on ARM based processors, and since there are multiple manufacturers making ARM cpu's, if you try to artificially slow down your releases another company will start gaining market share when they come out with something better, so really its a mix of improvements over time. you can look at AMD / Intel with this... Intel kind of stagnated since they were the market leader for so long. AMD came out with a new chip design that used a smaller fabrication process and had higher IPC than their previous ones, and now they are outperforming and gaining a lot of market share.",
"I think there is not enough differentiation between die shrinks and architectural difference. Imagine you need to clean your room.\n\nHow do you clean your room faster? Simple, have a smaller room! This is essentially what die shrink is. Make the physical chip smaller so it consumes less power and emits less heat. This is what the 14nm, 12nm, 7nm you often see in CPU marketing material is.\n\nWhat? You still want a big room, but still wanna clean less? You greedy OP. Gotta take the hard route then. Probably you need to rearrange some stuff... perhaps keep thr books lower in the shelf and toys above. Maybe shift the bed further back and move the dresser up. This is essentially what architectural change is. It shifts the components around, connects them differently, to make improvements in performance.\n\nThe reason there’s continual improvent is, well, human creativity knows no bounds. Just like you can arrange your room in an unlimited number of ways, so can a CPU. So, it’s really a matter of time. \n\nHowever, with die shrinks, there’s a limit. As chips becomes smaller, it will hit a physical limit where it cannot be made smaller, just like you cannot shrink your room such that you won’t fit in it. To explain this, I’ll need to go into quantum physics and how it affects the transistor which is kind of a looong explanation.",
"While advancements are added gradually, companies also have the next better thing ready before the launch the one. Product life management is a huge subject learnt in engineering. \nJust because you have the next best thing, the company won't launch it immediately co they need to make money on the thing they invested in for variants before that. \nSo they may be having something 10X and 5X better at the same time. They will sell 5X first make some money and then release 10X instead of releasing the best option directly"
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s246p
|
My parents have always put batteries in the fridge, is there any scientific data that says they'll stay longer while in the fridge?
|
It's just so weird to me, but I never asked why until now when I went to get batteries for my remote. Thanks in advance guys!
Edit: Wow guys, I went to sleep after posting this and now its on the front page? Thanks a lot guys :) Thanks for the help!
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/s246p/my_parents_have_always_put_batteries_in_the/
|
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"The reaction rate that causes the loss of charge will be slowed at lower temperature, but not by very much.\n\n\\(_URL_0_]",
"Zn-C batts keep better at lower temps, but: \"Alkaline cells have long shelf storage life. After one year of storage at room temperature, cells will provide 93 to 96 percent of initial capacity. When stored for four years at 70°F (21°C), service of about 85 percent is still attainable. Storage at high temperatures and high humidity will accelerate degradation of chemical cells. At low temperature storage, the chemical activity is retarded and capacity is not greatly affected. Recommended storage conditions are 50°F (10°C) to 77°F (25°C) with no more than 65 percent relative humidity.\" Typical household refrigerator temps are 1.5°C - 3.5°C, significantly below recommended storage temp.\n\nQuote is from a [Duracell Technical Bulletin](_URL_0_).\n",
"Why is there an opposite effect on my car battery? If I park it overnight and it's really cold, occasionally it will not start because the battery has died.",
"Would putting batteries in liquid nitrogen make any difference?",
"I feel it is important to note (assuming someone didn't already say it and I just missed it) that putting batteries in a fridge can be quite dangerous. Most refrigerators will cause condensation to form on the contents and thus will coat your batteries in water. If the layout of the cell allows for a short to form, especially bypassing any protection circuits (in the case of a battery pack), you could start a lithium/other fire in your fridge. Not worth it IMO. If you absolutely MUST do this, make damn sure you put them in a vacuum sealed bag or equivalent that will keep moisture away.",
"The question is, *what kind* of batteries are you referring to? The super cool and modern Li-Ion batteries are actually benefitted long term by being stored in cooler temperatures.\n\n\n[How To Prolong Lithium-based Batteries](_URL_0_)",
"Batteries are always draining power, always. The cold just slows the reaction.",
" < - Science teacher\n\nI believe the governing equation you want to think about is the Nernst Equation. _URL_0_\n\nThe two main variables of interest are the reaction quotient and the temperature. The reaction quotient compares the concentrations of the reactants and products. In the equation you take the natural log of the quotient and subtract that from the standard voltage level. If the battery is \"young\" and the reaction quotient is small, the natural log will yield a negative value increasing the total cell voltage. \n\nBut as the battery gets \"older\" the quotient increases and the log will be positive meaning the cell voltage will decrease to zero as the concentrations get closer to 'completion'. By lowering the temperature you reduce the amount of voltage loss, so you can get a little more life out of old batteries by cooling them down, but the effect is temporary. \n\nA secondary concern is the energy storage capacity. A lower temperature should slow down any chemical reactions, increasing shelf life. A similar effect holds for photographic film. "
]
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[
"http://www.wisegeek.com/do-batteries-really-last-longer-if-they-are-stored-in-the-refrigerator.htm"
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"http://www.duracell.com/media/en-US/pdf/gtcl/Technical_Bulletins/Alkaline%20Technical%20Bulletin.pdf"
],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries"
],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nernst_equation"
]
] |
|
9gff9b
|
why aren’t languages becoming more like each other?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9gff9b/eli5_why_arent_languages_becoming_more_like_each/
|
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"Yes. In fact TV is doing away with various local dialects, especially in England. \n\nAlso England used to say “zed” for z but the prevalence of American kid tv shows has them simply saying “z” more often. \n\n_URL_0_",
"That is not how languages work on a global scale. When many nations need to interact they do not have their languages drift toward each other, they choose the language of the most dominant culture of the region and use that as the trade language or \"Lingua Franca\" in Latin. This happened with the Roman Empire, Ottoman Empire, Mongol Empire, Chinese Empire, and British Empire. When the US took over as dominant Superpower from Britain English Remained the Lingua Franca as it is our dominant language too. Eventually a non-English speaking country is likely to become dominant and then their language will be the next Lingua Franca. "
]
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|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://people.howstuffworks.com/culture-traditions/tv-and-culture/10-ways-television-has-changed-the-way-we-talk.htm"
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[]
] |
||
3mr15n
|
how is nasa 100% sure microbes aren't attached to the rovers and similar probes? when 99.99% sure means we're possibly spreading our alien microbes to other worlds.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mr15n/eli5_how_is_nasa_100_sure_microbes_arent_attached/
|
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"They aren't, and in fact, they're quite sure there _are_ microbes. They just get all of them they can.",
"They aren't 100% sure, and in fact we've found microbes that have survived into space. Simply put, it's hard to be 100% sure of anything. Sometimes you've got to risk it. ",
"One feature of biology atleast here on earth, is evolutionary lineage, so part of the assumption made with sending scrubbed machines to other planets, is that if any of our bacteria are along for the ride, we will be able to ID them later. Deinococcus is one type of bacteria we're pretty sure is on the rover, but we know it's DNA sequence, and if we find life in the future that mirrors that genome, we can be pretty sure it wasn't there originally.\n\nBy the sheer astronomical odds, and probabilities of the universe, if we find life somewhere else, it WILL NOT, have the same genome as us, the same protein composition as us, and the same biological processes. \n\nIt might be similar, but physics pretty much make it impossible that life *exactly* like us is anywhere else in the universe. So long as it's not exactly the same, we're good. \n\nOne other thing, is that natural selection is still going on for the bacteria, and archea on the rovers. It is highly unlikely that they are better adapted to living on Mars, than the organisms already living there, so they won't take over the planet anytime soon."
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[],
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7ee999
|
if i boil a kettle does everything inside become sterile? if so how long does it stay sterile?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ee999/eli5if_i_boil_a_kettle_does_everything_inside/
|
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"Actually sterilized? No. Boiling water and steam are damned effective at killing germs, but you generally need much higher temperatures than you'll achieve in a kettle to reach an effectiveness where you can call it sterile (99.9999999% of microbes killed). In particular, bacterial and fungal spores are generally tenacious little bastards and will survive. For medical sterilization, when steam is used, it's heated under pressure to a much higher temperature than is normally attainable, and objects are kept in for as long as 30 minutes.\n\nAs for how long it stays sterile? Until it isn't. Once your sterile tool touches something nonsterile, it's contaminated.",
"If you boil water in a pot, or canned food inside that boiling water, and you keep the temperature at boiling for several minutes, then yes it is sterilized. However in order for something to stay sterile it must be sealed to prevent re-innoculation by fungi, bacteria, or virus. It's actually more common to use steam to do this than boiling water, as boiling water stays at 212F and no hotter (at sea level in pure water) where as steam can get as hot as you can make it. \n\nHow long it will stay sterile is a matter of how long it can be hermetically sealed without exposure. If it's kept sealed, it's indefinite, since in order to be non sterile, it has to have living organisms in it, and if they have no way to get in, and the ones that were already there are all dead, then it stays sterile .\n\nThe act of boiling a food product to prevent spoilage is called pasteurization named after the famous French microbiologist Louis Pasteur whos groundbreaking research on the subject is one of the greatest achievements for human kind right along side the development of vaccines, and the discovery of antibiotics. \n\nThere are other ways to sterilize something than just boiling. Anything which kills living cells can do so. You've probably heard of irradiating objects to sterilize them. This replaces boiling water with hard ionizing radiation which serves a similar purpose, but without altering the texture or flavor of the food. It's also used for sterilizing medical supplies like scalpels, bandages, dressings, etc. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
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[],
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||
uno95
|
If happiness and sadness are reactionary and fleeting emotions, since we generally return back to neutral baselines- depression is the pathological deviation towards staying sadness. Is there a pathological condition where a person will consistently stay happy?
|
just interested whilst studying for evolutionary psychology class. thanks!
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/uno95/if_happiness_and_sadness_are_reactionary_and/
|
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"There is some speculation that such a condition exists.\n\nBi-polar - I disorder is characterized by alternating between episodes of major depression (extreme sadness) and episodes of mania (extreme elation). Bi-polar - II is characterized the same way, but they experience smaller \"hypomanic\" rather than full blown manic episodes. The problem is that if you come into the hospital with mania, even without history of prior depression, people will get diagnosed with bi-polar disorder (I or II) and the assumption is made that a major depressive episode either has previously occurred but was undocumented, or that it will occur in future.\n\nThere is also chronic unhappiness (dysthymia). In this condition, people are sad enough to have their day feel more lethargic and a little lifeless, but they are still able to function day to day. This condition can lasts for years and years (2 years is the criteria for diagnosis).\n\nOn the contrary side, there is a condition called \"hypomania\". This is a less severe form of mania, and it doesn't require hospitalization. It is simply a mild \"elation\". However, it is very possible that a form of this condition exists in a chronic form. The speculation on whether this condition exists stems from this question:\n\nIf someone was chronically elated, but not enough so that they did brash things (e.g., spend all their money, have tonnes of sex with strangers, and have delusions of grandeur), but rather so that they were always pretty happy and pretty productive, how would this ever be picked up by medical health professionals? Their lives would not be impaired, but rather, enhanced.\n\n**TL;DR** It is probable that there is a chronic condition characterized by persistent \"hypomania\", which is smaller in magnitude than full blown manic episodes. However, they would never come in for treatment, and they would not be picked up by mental health professionals.\n\n",
"Someone else already talked about bipolarism so I'll talk about some genetic problems:\n\n[Williams syndrome](_URL_0_) is a genetic condition caused by microdeletion of the long arm of chromosome 7. It creates a classic pathology where the patient is unusually friendly/good natured, particularly with strangers.\n\n[Angelman's syndrome](_URL_1_) is a genetic disorder caused by improper imprinting. It results in a classically happy demeanor, as well as inappropriate laughter."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_syndrome",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelman%27s_syndrome"
]
] |
|
2kfags
|
why do hunters tend to kill game by aiming for the lungs or heart? wouldn't a head shot be quicker and more humane?
|
Edit: Specifically those who hunt game for food. It seems like a head shot would also prevent damaging parts used for consumption.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kfags/eli5_why_do_hunters_tend_to_kill_game_by_aiming/
|
{
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12,
3,
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2
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"text": [
"They aim for center mass because it's less likely to miss.",
"An animal's head is really hard to hit, both because it's smaller and it tends to move around a lot. Aiming for a headshot means you're more likely to miss.\n\nA gunshot to the heart or lung isn't actually as painful as you might think. Most of the time, that kind of shot will result in instant death anyway, so it really isn't any less humane than a headshot.",
"Their brains are smaller than their heart, and their head also moves more and is harder to hit. Their chest also has more vital organs and has a higher chance of an instant kill shot than just a grazing shot to the head, which would be less humane. Sometimes the meat does gets shot but it's such a small amount compared to the rest of the animal that there's really not a loss.",
"The worst thing you can possibly do is wound the animal because then you have to go after it and deal with all that crap. You aim for the biggest target. Bullets are small and won't ruin much of the animal.",
"Head shots are harder because not only is the head (specifically the brain) smaller, but they are often moving their head to see and hear.\n\nBecause of this, the likelihood of hitting is far less, the likelihood of an immediate death is slim to none, you could easily hit their jaw, or their neck. If you hit their jaw, you have an animal fully capable of running that, if it gets away, has a slow death of bleeding and starving. If you hit their neck, they might be paralyzed, which is just mean.\n\nIf you hit the heart or lungs, then the animal is dead fast, it's unconscious almost instantly, leading to a more humane death.\n\nNot to mention you might want to mount the head."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
auvd8o
|
is it possible to have a minor stroke and not know it and not have any lasting health effects?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/auvd8o/eli5_is_it_possible_to_have_a_minor_stroke_and/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ehavk1k"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Yep. It's called a transient ischemic attack (TIA) and they often wont cause residual deficits, though the initial (transient) symptoms can mirror those of an actual stroke and can be quite concerning at first, or may be subclinical (i.e. undetectable). Having experienced a TIA does indicate increased risk of suffering a more significant stroke in the future, and appropriate precautions should be taken to make this less likely."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
1fv7gw
|
How exactly do appetite-suppressants work?
|
I know that most OTC appetite suppressing pills are caffeine based and caffeine supposedly suppresses your appetite on its own, but why is that? I decided to try some out of curiosity if they actually worked or not and to my surprise they help a lot. I have a really bad habit of eating out of boredom and eating way too much way too fast, but when I've taken a couple of those my reaction to food is "Meh" unless I'm really very hungry.
So, is there any actual research backing up what I've been feeling or is it more likely a placebo effect? A combination of both?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1fv7gw/how_exactly_do_appetitesuppressants_work/
|
{
"a_id": [
"caeaty7"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"There is little evidence that caffeine is an effective appetite suppressant on its own. At least two recent studies have found no effect in a human sample. It is, nevertheless, possible some of the effects of caffeine (e.g. stimulation, anxiety) could indirectly lead to a decrease or increase in appetite.\n\nCaffeine is theoretically useful for weight loss because it promotes [thermogenesis](_URL_3_). However, long term studies have found the use of caffeine alone to be an ineffective weight loss aid, possibly because of the development of tolerance. \n\nSources:\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_2_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23204152",
"http://jn.nutrition.org/content/141/4/703.short",
"http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/292/1/R77.long",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermogenesis"
]
] |
|
61tpf6
|
Victor Davis Hanson and the question of the middle-class infantrymen
|
Specifically a question to /u/iphikrates from his [earlier critique](_URL_0_) of VDH's work.
I just recently got into VDH's work and have been reading "Carnage & Culture". Upon first read it seems that VDH has quite a strong argument to the power of the army being superior when its filled with free-men (mainly middle class) vs. men living under subjugation (Persian / Xerxes men)
I noticed last year you gave a harsh critique of VDH's work and basically dispelled his notion that the Greek's idea of open battles was a byproduct of the middle-class rising up together to defend their land etc. I have one question for you. I noticed that you said "The middling farmer on which he based his entire theory is neither archaeologically nor textually attested until the late 6th century BC. " I noticed that VDH says that this shift in warfare happened during or after Salamis (480BC) which would put it a few centuries after when you said the middle class was even a thing.
I'm curious what historical evidence you have to back up the claim that the middle class wasn't a thing until the late 6th century BC. Or if you have any reading recommendations to dispute this claim I'm all ears as well.
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/61tpf6/victor_davis_hanson_and_the_question_of_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dfhncqg"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"Thanks for the follow-up! I'm glad to see people are still reading my older posts :)\n\nBefore I get down to answering your question, there's one thing I'd like to clear up:\n\n > I noticed that VDH says that this shift in warfare happened during or after Salamis (480BC) which would put it a few centuries after when you said the middle class was even a thing.\n\nI just had a look at *Carnage and Culture* to make sure I got this right. What VDH actually argues in the book is that, after Salamis, the poor who manned the ships began agitating for greater influence in politics, starting Athens on the road to radical democracy. This entailed a shift *away from* the kind of warfare that VDH idealises. He repeatedly praises the notion of a state ruled by landowners, who had a personal stake in the defence of the territory. In his view, the inclusion of the landless poor in the democratic franchise meant that the interests of the \"middling farmer\" were no longer the exclusive focus of Athenian policy. They became more imperialist, more expansionist, and more naval. The \"hoplite\" outlook that had previously defined them was lost.\n\nGenerally, this analysis fits with his usual argument (expressed in numerous earlier publications) that the Greeks adopted \"hoplite warfare\" around 700 BC, when their city-states came to be dominated by a new class of small farmers who fought as hoplites. The methods of these \"middling\" hoplites remained unchanged until the Persian Wars introduced the Greeks to warfare on a larger scale. VDH usually holds that warfare nevertheless remained dominated by the \"middling hoplite farmer\" through most of the Classical period, at least outside the major imperialist city-states.\n\nFor this theory to work, there must be evidence of the rise of a new socio-economic \"middle class\" in the late 8th century BC. There must also be evidence of a dramatic shift in civic ideology around the same time, from the strict hierarchy and individual glory-seeking found in Homer to the egalitarianism and shared interests of citizen farmer-hoplites. When he is not busy describing the grim realities of hoplite combat, VDH mostly seeks to establish that such evidence indeed exists.^1 This brings me to your question.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nThe main argument against the notion of an Archaic \"middle class\" was given by Hans van Wees.^2 He specifically attacked a lot of the evidence cited in support of the notion of an idealised \"middle\". Archaic poets' comments about wanting to belong to a \"middle\" are often about avoiding the violence between two sides in a civil war, if not simply versions of a general philosophical ideal that favoured moderation over extremes of any kind. The notion of a \"middle\" doesn't overlap in any way with a defined socio-economic group; at one point, Aristotle describes a leading Spartan general as a member of the \"middle\" on the grounds that he wasn't a king. For reasons like these, mentions of \"the middle\" in Greek sources can't simply be taken at face value. They don't mean what we might instinctively assume they mean.\n\nSo what evidence remains? The argument in favour of an Archaic middle class often hinges on the Solonic property classes. In the early 6th century, Solon introduced a system of property classes at Athens, which counted 4 tiers: those who owned land sufficient to produce 500 measures of barley a year, those who owned 300, those who owned 200, and those with even less (called *thetes*, labourers). The top 2 tiers were clearly the rich, but it's often argued that the 3rd level, the *zeugitai* or yoke-men, formed a middle class, and that this level should be identified with the hoplite class. However, both Hans van Wees and Lin Foxhall^3 have separately argued that a yield of 200 bushels of barley required so much land that every single man who fit into the 3rd level of Solon's property classes was, in effect, rich. Indeed, using an estimate of the crop yield per acre, Hans van Wees has also pointed out that it is impossible for the territory of Athens to accomodate anywhere near as many hoplites as it had in the 5th century if all of them are supposed to have met the property requirements for the *zeugitai*. In other words, Solon's reforms only subdivided the leisure class; many hoplites will not have owned enough land to count among the *zeugitai*; and the Solonic system actually *breaks up* rather than unites the broad \"middle\", by assigning some of them to the *zeugitai* (with significant political rights) while dismissing others as *thetes*.\n\nRecently, Lin Foxhall has added another significant point to the discussion by looking at the archaeological evidence.^4 VDH claims that there was a notable shift in the early Archaic period from land being dominated by large landowners to an intensification of agriculture led by small independent farmers. This ought to be visible on the ground, either through major traces of occupation (farmsteads) or through the sort of traces found in surface survey archaeology (land use revealed by pot shards etc). However, it turns out that nowhere in Greece is this supposed shift to small farms and \"middling\" farmers visible before the end of the 6th century BC (that is, a few decades before the Persian invasion). Throughout the Archaic period, the land of most Greek states is largely unused, and activity is focused on small settlements and major farmsteads, suggesting a society dominated by a wealthy elite. Only from the 6th century onwards is there a growth of smaller farms and an expansion into marginal ground.\n\nThere are other arguments to be made, but I think the overall point should be clear: it cannot be shown that a Greek middle class existed in any form before the late 500s BC. Ideologically, this group, when it finally did emerge, was not united; it had no shared political motives and never acted as a political body or pressure group. Greek society remained fundamentally divided between the rich (who could afford a life of leisure) and the poor (who had to work to survive). Militarily, the \"middling\" group did not dominate a particular form of fighting, either; it shared its hoplite equipment with the very wealthy and with many of the less well-off too. Even in the shifting ideological context of egalitarian democracies of the Classical period, Greek societies remained dominated by the wealthy few, who tended to control access to political and military office, and whose means allowed them to stand out as horsemen in war and as benefactors to their city in peacetime.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nVDH's point about free men being superior to unfree men in war is extremely weak for other reasons, and it may be unwise to treat it casually. Suffice to say that we may question both the \"freedom\" of the Greeks and the \"subjugation\" of the Persians; that a society as utterly dependent on slave labour as Ancient Greece could scarcely claim to be a bastion of freedom; that the unusual freedom of Athenian adult male citizens seems to have come at the price of a particularly oppressive unfreedom for the city's slaves and women; that the very notion of \"freedom\" may not have developed as strongly as it did in Classical Greece if it hadn't become part of how the Greeks began to distinguish themselves from the Persians *after* the invasion of Xerxes; and so on and so forth. Generally, I believe *Carnage and Culture* was the point where VDH lost what standing he had in serious academic circles outside of Classics; his standing within Classics had by that point already suffered significantly from his consistent output of ideologically motivated distortions of the past.\n\n\n---\n\n1) See his 'Hoplite ideology in phalanx warfare, ancient and modern', in VDH (ed.) *Hoplites* (1991); *The Other Greeks* (1995); 'Hoplite battle as ancient Greek warfare: when, where, and why?', in H. van Wees (ed.) *War and Violence in Ancient Greece* (2000); 'The hoplite narrative', in D. Kagan/G.F. Viggiano, *Men of Bronze* (2013).\n\n2) in 'The myth of the middle-class army', in T. Bekker-Nielsen/L. Hannestad (eds.), *War as a Cultural and Social Force: Essays on Warfare in Antiquity* (2001), and more recently in 'Farmers and hoplites: models of historical development', in Kagan/Viggiano, *Men of Bronze*\n\n3) in 'A view from the top: evaluating the Solonian property classes', in L.G. Mitchell/P.J. Rhodes (eds.), *The Development of the Polis in Archaic Greece* (1997)\n\n4) in 'Can we see the “hoplite revolution” on the ground? Archaeological landscapes, material culture, and social status in Early Greece', in Kagan/Viggiano (eds.), *Men of Bronze*"
]
}
|
[] |
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/42isht/how_is_victor_davis_hansons_work_on_greek_warfare/"
] |
[
[]
] |
|
3o717l
|
time variations in different parts of the universe
|
From what I understand. Theoretically it is possible that there are parts in the universe where one minute spent would equal to a day spent on earth. I still don't understand how it's possible. I know this is a tricky topic.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3o717l/eli5_time_variations_in_different_parts_of_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cvum8m7"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Mainly parts of the universe that are close to really strong gravity sources -- near neutron stars, pulsars, or black holes.\n\nAs Einstein demonstrated, gravity bends space but also slows time. The closer you are to a source of gravity, the slower time passes -- in your frame of reference.\n\nThe reality of this theory was demonstrated when we put GPS satellites into space, then found out that, for them, time passed slower by milliseconds because they were a bit farther from a gravity source: Earth.\n\nNormally, the effect is trivial -- you'll age billionths of a second more slowly per year in Death Valley than you will on the top of Mt. Everest. But sometimes it's not... get close to a neutron star and, if the gravity doesn't kill you (hint: it will) you'll find yourself aging much more slowly than you would on Earth."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
4xkw6s
|
Is it a coincidence that the first four planets nearest to the sun are all much smaller then the four other planets?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4xkw6s/is_it_a_coincidence_that_the_first_four_planets/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d6ghjtr",
"d6gvf5h"
],
"score": [
14,
2
],
"text": [
"No, it definitely isn't. The conventional explanation is as follows:\n\nThere are three main types of neutral materials in the universe, which (listed in decreasing order of abundance) are:\n\n1. Gases (Hydrogen and Helium)\n2. Ices (Water, Ammonia, Methane, Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Monoxide)\n3. Rocks and metals\n\n\n\nMaterials in category 1 are always gases, while materials in category 3 are always solids. But materials in category 2 are gases close to the Sun and solids farther away (note that we're referring to conditions of low pressure like those in space, where no materials are liquid).\n\nFar from the Sun, solid cores of planets can get much larger because they can contain abundant ices rather than rare rocks and metals. They can even get large enough to capture Category 1 materials (gases) and get really big, like in the case of Jupiter and Saturn. So outer planets should be much larger than inner planets.\n\nThat's the conventional story, but things are more complicated due to the possibility of orbital migration. That's why we've seen hot Jupiters close to their stars. But if violent migration of this type doesn't happen, we expect that things will be like our Solar System, with big planets far out and small planets close in.",
"No, it's not a coincidence, and you can see the reasons for it whenever there's a comet.\n\nClose to the Sun the heat will vaporize volatile molecules such as ices, almost all of which are Hydrogen bearing compounds (Helium goes without saying) such as water and ammonia. When a comet enters the inner solar system those ices are vaporized, they drift off from their parent body (which is too light to hold onto an atmosphere) and then are pushed by solar pressure into the outer solar system. This is where the \"tail\" of a comet comes from. The same process would have driven off much of the volatiles present in the inner solar system while the planets were forming. This creates a \"frost line\" (or \"ice line\") in the solar system, beyond which ices can exist, within which ices will be baked off. This line falls in between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter in our system. It's why the inner planets and their moons are rocky, along with the inner main belt asteroids, while most bodies farther out are gaseous or icy.\n\nBecause the proto-solar nebula that formed our system was, like most interstellar gas, predominantly Hydrogen and Helium (99%), that means that the amount of rocky materials was only a tiny fraction of the total. This is why the inner rocky planets are also smaller than the gas giants."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
2lgskp
|
How popular was Uncle Tom's Cabin in the south?
|
Particularly among slave owners?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2lgskp/how_popular_was_uncle_toms_cabin_in_the_south/
|
{
"a_id": [
"clumgj5"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"Another question: Were there any contemporary reviews of the book published in Southern Newspapers that criticized it as a lie/slander?\n\nI'm imagining something along the lines of how Pravda's review of Solzhenitsyn's \"The Gulag Archipelago\" had the title \"A vile slanderer seeking to earn filthy capitalist lucre by besmirching the homeland that nurtured him\"."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
3f598l
|
why is there such a demand in asia for rhino and elephant tusks? how did it start?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3f598l/eli5_why_is_there_such_a_demand_in_asia_for_rhino/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ctle219",
"ctle2d4"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Traditional Chinese Medicine uses herbs and powders and other natural ingredients to cure various ailments. They believe it will cure things such as impotence or even cancer. So, there's high demand for these items.",
"It is a \"traditional medicine\" for things like impotence (because the horn is big and strong, you get it?). And as thats always the number-one selling argument for miracle cures you see where this is heading."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
4objz8
|
When designing Second World War era tanks how much consideration went into crew survival once the tank was hit?
|
Looking at pictures of tanks from that era a lot of them must have been an absolute nightmare to escape from. Hatches that could be blocked by the gun, for instance.
Obviously there were many different designers and manufacturers of tanks in that era but how much thought did they put into crew survival?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4objz8/when_designing_second_world_war_era_tanks_how/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d4b803n"
],
"score": [
10
],
"text": [
"Several pivotal design changes on the M4 Sherman tank were sparked by complaints about crew survivability, as well as general comfort for the crew. \n\n[Wet ammunition stowage](_URL_4_) reduced the risk of flash ammunition fires after a Sherman was hit from around 80 percent to 5-10 percent and in theory gave crews a couple more seconds to abandon the tank.\n\nEarly 75 mm turrets lacked an escape hatch for the loader. This crew member had to exit through the commander's hatch after he and the gunner had disembarked. If the commander's hatch was blocked for some reason, he had to worm his way out of the turret and make his way out of the tank through the driver or assistant driver's hatches. In the case of a flash ammunition fire where the crew had only seconds to escape, this could be fatal. In October 1943, a new turret entered production that incorporated a loader's hatch. The [76 mm turret](_URL_2_) incorporated a loader's hatch from the beginning, however.\n\nInitially, the driver's and assistant driver's hatches of the Sherman were particularly small, and men had to turn almost sideways and move awkwardly in order to get in or out of the tank. This also made the evacuation of wounded or unconscious men more complicated. The small hatches also did not initially have a lock, and many crew members suffered injuries from falling hatches. A combination hatch lock and equilibrator spring were devised and installed at the various factories throughout the spring of 1943, with an Ordnance Department document stating that \"no tank without this item to be accepted after 4/15/43\".\n\nMeanwhile, a more fundamental redesign of the Sherman was taking place that incorporated larger hatches. In February 1943, dimensions for the new hatches were submitted, but they could not be incorporated into the current [56-degree angled \"small hatch\" glacis](_URL_3_) of the Sherman. \n\nChrysler had developed a [cast front upper hull section](_URL_1_) for the Sherman that sped up production, and this design was tested as a possible solution. Another design, submitted by Fisher, consisting of a [47-degree angled flat plate](_URL_3_), was found to be ballistically superior, and was selected for production starting in November 1943. After November 1943, all Sherman types incorporated this new large-hatch hull design. The new large hatches incorporated internal springs and locking mechanisms.\n\nInitially, the turret basket of the 75 mm turret was surrounded by a perforated steel mesh that made escape and retrieval of ammunition from the sponsons difficult as it only had a single exit hole. If the turret was turned just right and the commander's hatch blocked, the loader and gunner could be trapped in the turret. In order to retrieve ammunition from the sponson racks, the turret often needed to be turned to allow the loader access to the ammunition, wasting vital seconds in combat. One good example is the story of tank commander Lieutenant Raymond E. Fleig. Faced with a Panther tank rumbling toward him in the Hürtgen Forest, he ordered his gunner to fire the round already in the chamber, not realizing it was high explosive. The round did no damage, but the frightened Panther crew abandoned their tank. The enemy crew soon re-entered their tank, and fired a round at Fleig's tank, which missed. Fleig ordered his gunner to traverse the turret so his loader could reach the armor-piercing ammunition stored in the sponsons. The first round miraculously sliced off part of the Panther's gun tube; three more rounds destroyed the enemy tank.\n\nThe mesh was mostly removed from tanks that had it as part of the preparation for the D-Day invasion, and new \"large hatch\" 75 mm and 76 mm Shermans \"skeletonized\" the turret basket and did not have the mesh to begin with.\n\nSources:\n\n[Sherman Minutia Website](_URL_0_)\n\n*A Dark and Bloody Ground: The Hürtgen Forest and the Roer River Dams 1944-45*, by Edward G. Miller\n "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://the.shadock.free.fr/sherman_minutia/index.html",
"http://the.shadock.free.fr/sherman_minutia/manufacturer/m4composite/m4_composite.html",
"http://the.shadock.free.fr/sherman_minutia/turret_types/76mm_turrets.html",
"http://the.shadock.free.fr/sherman_minutia/vocabulary/vocabulary.html",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4kdbx6/tanks_what_exactly_is_a_wet_ammo_rack_are_the/"
]
] |
|
3j33s8
|
Has a US President ever not been to one of the States at the time of his Presidency?
|
I spent some time trying to word this in the clearest way I could, but to expand on it a bit, has any of the US Presidents never been to one of the states that existed at the time of his presidency either before or during his time in office? So of course George Washington had never been to Alaska, but had he visited each of the first 16 states? Had Kennedy been to all 50 states? Per subreddit rules, we're only talking up to H.W. Bush, or Clinton if you like to play with fire.
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3j33s8/has_a_us_president_ever_not_been_to_one_of_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cumkta6",
"cum4hcu"
],
"score": [
5,
10
],
"text": [
"You can add Eisenhower to /u/boneisspirit 's list of 5 non-visitors. (Don't even have to rely upon the dodge that he may just have missed AK or HI because they weren't states during most of his presidency. Eisenhower visited both in the Summer of 1960--while they were states and he president. So he missed some of the other 48). Also G.W. Bush.\n\n[President Hayes visited Oregon in 1880](_URL_0_) during the trip when he was the 1st sitting President to visit the West Coast. California being a state for 30 years by then, there are *a minimum* 6 Presidents--Fillmore thru Grant--who never went to CA. A few of them also not doing extensive Southern tours--for obvious reasons.\n\n[This unfortunately murky NatGeo map](_URL_2_) indicates Geo. Washington never in his life entered KY or TN (which both became states while he was in office).\n\n[Jefferson never traveled South or West of Virginia.](_URL_1_)\n\nIt would have been physically impossible for *any person* to travel to all 26 states during W.H. Harrison's month in office. And practically so to get to 38 during Garfield's 6 months.\n\nThat's 17 \"no\" from a (admittedly selective) sample of 21. Quite adequate to conclude that most did not.\n\nIndeed the more germane question would be if anyone achieved this prior to Nixon. I'd bet not.",
"When Barack Obama recently visited South Dakota, it was widely reported that he is only fourth President to visit all 50 states. The other three [were](_URL_0_) Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. That means that Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, Carter and Reagan have not been to some states. But I don't remember if any of the articles said something about Presidents before there were 50 states."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/hayes_rutherford_b_visit_to_oregon_1880/#.VeUJgvZVhBc",
"https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/extent-jeffersons-travels",
"http://www.allposters.com/-sp/1932-Travels-of-George-Washington-Map-Posters_i5157049_.htm"
],
[
"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/11594285/Barack-Obama-joins-50-Club-as-he-ticks-off-all-states-with-South-Dakota-visit.html"
]
] |
|
4ohkdv
|
Why is the king James version of the Bible considered by a lot of churches to be the best version?
|
I notice a lot of churches state that they use the KJV of the Bible because they think it's the best version.
I don't see churches claiming other versions of the Bible (are there other versions?) so I was wondering why they seem to be so zealous about tje KJV.
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4ohkdv/why_is_the_king_james_version_of_the_bible/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d4cp8o6",
"d4crwrz"
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"score": [
8,
4
],
"text": [
"We tend to call this \"King James Version Only\"-ism. The [wikipedia](_URL_0_) page is reasonably well-written, if you want an overview.\n\nAt its heart it's a view of both the textual tradition of Greek and Hebrew texts that undergird the KJV, usually coupled with a view of the process of translation that led to the KJV's translation in the first place.\n\nOn the textual side, KJVO advocates usually view the 'Received Text' (Textus Receptus) which underlines the KJV as superior, faithful, and sometimes divinely protected from corruption. They view with disdain and rejection the discipline of modern textual criticism, and tend to favour simple majority of manuscripts, vs. genealogising and 'weighing' manuscripts.\n\nOn the process side, some believe that the KJV is an divinely authoritative translation for English and remains so for all time. \n\nThe best introduction to this issue is, in my view, the extensive work of Christian Apologist, James White. I suppose you might go around trying to find a secular take on this issue, but quite frankly secular scholars have rarely found the issue interesting enough to do some of the work White has. \n\nThere certainly are other translations, a great deal of them. As far as I know, while some argue that particular translations are 'best' on the market, there are not churches functioning in English that have similar views to KJVO in regards to another version.",
"The KJV of the Bible was the first authorized English translation of the Bible; earlier translators, such as William Tyndale, were hunted down and executed. The translation also has something to do with the idea of allowing more people to more easily read the Bible and come to their own interpretation, rather than relying on the clergy to interpret it for them (though there was backlash against this-primarily from the clergy and others higher up on the social ladder).\n\nFor comparison, Gutenberg printed a Latin version of the Bible and the first German version of the Bible came out in 1466. King James, by comparison, didn't ascend to the throne until 1603, so you're talking nearly ~150 years in between. By 1483, for further comparison, there were 9 different German translations of the Bible.\n\nIn 1407, Thomas Arundel, the Archbishop of Canterbury, banned English translations of the Bible; six years later in 1413, under the reign of Henry V, English (which had previously been the language used to address social inferiors; French was the language of nobility) became more respectable, particularly after the Battle at Agincourt. \n\nFast forwarding, the 16th Century's Reformation helped with the push for an English Bible. In Germany, the Reformation under Martin Luther was propelled by religious belief from within (see the 95 theses); in England, by contrast, the Reformation is caused by Henry VIII (notorious for his wives) and is as a result of political and pragmatic reasons, rather than theological ones.\n\nTo provide some back information about the English Reformation: around this time period, a strategic alliance between England and Spain is considered very important. In 1525, however, Charles V, the King of Spain, refuses to marry Mary Tudor (Bloody Mary), the daughter of Henry VIII; he has also surrounded Rome, where the Pope, Clementine VII, resides. So, when Henry VIII tries to get divorced from his wife, Catherine of Spain, who is the aunt of Charles V, the Pope refuses.\n\nMakes sense: no reason to let Charles' uncle-by-marriage divorce his aunt and alienate Charles V, who is sieging the city he lives in. So, in retaliation, Henry VIII breaks off and forms the Church of England, but even he is not a fan of an English translation. Thomas More (author of *Utopia*), for example, is executed for refusing to acknowledge Henry VIII's religious supremacy to the Pope. \n\nFollowing this, there are a series of translations: Tyndale's, and 1526 edition from Worms that is smuggled into England. Tyndale goes into hiding, then is strangled and burned in 1535. Anne Boleyn, one of Henry VIII's wives who favors an English translation, is executed in 1536, which is a setback. In 1537, Richard Grafton publishes his Matthew Bible: this combines Tyndale's translations with those of Myles Coverdale to complete what Tyndale couldn't. Interestingly, this also includes the Apocryphal books, which are typically *not* included in most modern day Bibles, so far as I'm aware. (*Bel and the Dragon* isn't in most editions, for example).\n\nTo avoid wading too deep into too much detail, it was proliferation of these frowned-upon Bibles that led to the decision by King James to create an authorized translation to counter these smuggled-in English Bibles, particularly the Geneva Bible, which James was not a fan of.\n\nThere are several other versions, however: the Geneva Bible and the Douay-Rheims version are just two translations. Among Protestants, the King James Bible is more popular. The Latin Vulgate Bible is more favored by Catholics, as I understand it.\n\nBacktracking to the beginning for an attempt at a summary that more directly addresses your question: the popularity of the KJV among Protestants has to do with the fact that they made the first publicly, easily available Bible for English-speakers (meant to supplant previous ones, particularly the Geneva Bible, which had begun to get more popular in England prior to the KJV translation), whereas among the more traditional Catholics, the Latin Vulgate Bible is the preferable edition, as I understand it. In addition, the reason it's considered the 'best' version has to do with the attempt at a beautiful, poetic writing style for the writing by the translators.\n\nSource:\n\nAlister McGrath, *In The Beginning*"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_Only_movement"
],
[]
] |
|
v1aof
|
Does a brain have a gender?
|
If a brain were removed from its body, and the systems and chemicals of that body, does it have any characteristic that would define it as male or female?
EDIT: 'Gendered' was entirely the wrong word. ::Cringe:: Thanks for all the responses!
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/v1aof/does_a_brain_have_a_gender/
|
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"Yes, brain cells have chromosomes in them, including gender chromosomes (X, Y). Meaning difference in genes and expression of those genes. Not to mention gender affects the development of the brain.",
"There is a sexually dimorphic area in the brain known as the medial preoptic area (MPOA). Studies show that this region is significantly different between masculine and feminine subjects. I say masculine and feminine instead of male and female because many brains of homosexual men have been studied and display a more feminine preoptic area (some people say this isn't proof of anything since many of those individuals were AIDS victims and their brains could have been affected, however it has been repeated multiple times on patients who died of other causes). In masculine subjects, there is a greater sized nucleus in this region, meaning there is a more dense and large grouping of cell somas in comparison to the female brain. This leads us to the wonderful controversy of whether or not people can be born gay. The problem with researching types of MPOAs is that the patient has to be dead, which makes it hard to tell if that individual's preoptic area was masculine or feminine to begin with, or it had differentiated over time. Long story short to answer your question, small slices of the brain in the medial preoptic area, when viewed under a microscope, would look significantly different. [Here is picture.] (_URL_0_) Male is on left, female on right.",
"There certainly are differences between males and female brain on a number of levels. You could roughly list them under:\n\n* Chemical (e.g. different concentrations of neurotransmitters) \n* Physiological (e.g. differences in activity in circuit X under identical conditions)\n* Morphological (differences in brain shape and organisation)\n* Developmental (e.g. male and female brains grow and wire themselves slightly differently through childhood)\n\nPerhaps someone will like to add specific examples?",
"\"Sex\" refers to the biological categories of male or female - this category relates to chromosomes and genitalia.\n\n\"Gender\" refers to the social construct - the behaviors, traits, and characteristics assigned to the biological sexes.\n\nWhat it means to be a man or a woman varies from culture to culture and from time period to time period. What it meant to be a man in 16th century Russia is dramatically different from what it means to be a 21st century U.S. American man.\n\nI think the root of your question is whether or not men and women are \"hardwired\" differently.\n\nNo, not really.\n\nHormones may bias a person slightly toward one direction, but that bias is very small. A baby boy, experiencing a surge of testosterone (that tampers off during childhood, where boys and girls have nearly identical amounts of testosterone) might move around in his crib more and be somewhat more fussier, but those differences are not great, and a fussy baby boy does not mean a varsity football player in the future. To give you an idea of the degree of difference between men and women - there is far more variation between people of one gender than there is difference between the two groups. The differences between women are greater than the differences between men and women (and the differences between men are greater than the differences between men and women).\n\nThe differences between men and women are not as great as people think they are. Even staples of our cultural beliefs - that men are more aggressive and women are more emotional, can disappear, vary by culture, or ultimately don't exist. \n\nFrodi, Macaulay, and Thome (1977) and Bettencourt and Miller (1996) did studies and found that, under laboratory conditions, gender differences in aggression shrank or disappeared completely under certain conditions. If women felt their aggression was justified, they became as aggressive as men. If they were provoked in various ways, they became as aggressive as men.\n\nDepending on how aggression is defined, women are sometimes more aggressive than men (Archer, 2004; Richardson, 2005). People tend to think of aggression as physical violence, but psychologists have various definition. Relational aggression (social aggression) is applied to instances such as group exclusion, sulking, or giving someone the \"silent treatment.\" Indirect aggression, is as it sounds - indirect attacks, such as mockery or putting the blame for something on someone else. One only needs to think about the \"popular girls\" back in grade school to see how young girls can be just as aggressive as boys when aggression is defined in these ways. \n\nThe second concept I want to touch on its emotionality. People think that women are more emotional - or even \"overemotional\" compared to boys. Research doesn't really support that, though. It is certainly true that women display their emotions more than men do, but those are social behaviors that follow cultural display rules, which dictate what emotions can and cannot be shown.\n\nOne study (McFarlane et al, 1977) measured the moods of men, women who were ovulating, and women who were not ovulating (taking oral contraceptives). They measured the moods of the participants by giving them electronic gadgets that would ping them throughout the day to rate their mood for 70 days.\n\nA quote directly from a textbook of mine on this study:\n\n > All participants experienced similar mood changes within a day as well as from day to day. Also, the men and women reported similar variability in mood during the 70 days of the study.\n\nThe above studies are just a few examples of ways in which gender differences we think are really, definitely real, no fooling, can shrink, disappear, or don't really exist.\n\nIt's also important to consider the culture that one is discussing. I think people have a tendency to think that what is true in their culture in this particular time is a universal truth. In reality, traits and values that we assign to and expect of men and women vary between culture and time period.\n\nIn the U.S., traits like pride and independence are associated with masculinity. We value \"picking yourself up by your bootstraps. In collectivistic cultures (China and Taiwan), neither of these traits are valued in men or women. Utku Eskimos do not value or accept anger - it's an emotion that's considered shameful. Some research on tribes in New Guinea reveals that women in some tribes, such as the Vanatinai and the Tchambuli, are more aggressive than men (Lepowsky, 1994).\n\nNow, there are *two* cognitive abilities that differ between men and women - mental rotation and verbal abilities. But even these differences aren't great. Gender accounts for less than 10% of the variance between men and women on mental rotation abilities, meaning that more than 90% of the difference between men and women is due to other factors- and this difference can shrink or disappear under various conditions, such as allowing participants to practice/experiment with the instruments of measure before the actual study. One study found that . . . \"women's performance on a mental rotation task increased when they were reminded of their status at the selective, private school they attended (McGlone & Aronson, 2006). Women with a feminine role orientation do better on a spatial task when it's described as an empathy task instead of a spatial task (Massa et . al, 2005).\n\nWhen it comes to verbal abilities, gender accounts for about 1% of the variance between men and women - meaning that 99% of the variance between a man's scores and a woman's scores is the result of other things. This difference also shrinks depending on certain factors, such as if the verbal task uses words or vocabulary that are male stereotypical (such as a list of hardware supplies).\n\nIt's also important to note the difference between statistical significance and clinical/practical significance. Men and women might differ statistically on, say, a verbal abilities test, but that doesn't mean that that difference has any practical, real-world implications. Nor does it mean that one can make any judgements about a person's abilities just by knowing their gender. There are many women who are far better at men on spatial performance - and there are many men who are far better than women on verbal tasks. \n\nSo what causes men and women to be different? If nature isn't the main player, than what is?\n\nFrom the time a baby is born, people treat it differently depending on its gender. People apply pink to girls, blue to boys. People smile more at girls, make more eye contact with girls. A study by Condry and Condry (1976) had participants watch a video of a baby playing with a Jack in the Box, and the baby reacted. When participants were told the baby was a boy, they deduced that it was crying out of anger. When told it was a girl, they judged that it was crying out of sadness. Same video, same baby - the only thing different was whether parents thought the baby was a boy or a girl.\n\nAnother study, mentioned in the book \"Pink Brain, Blue Brain\" by Lise Eliot, talked about mothers' expectations about their children's abilities. The study had mothers try to calculate how steep of a ramp their baby was willing to crawl down, and then the baby attempted to crawl down it. Mothers were within one degree of accuracy when guessing how steep a boy would crawl down, but they underestimated daughters' abilities by a whopping 9 degrees.\n\nEverything in our society is gendered, from the images on bathroom signs (stick figure in skirt = woman, stick figure without skirt = man), to our language (he/she/him/her). Even god, a sexless figure, is engendered as male. Even boys and girls in *coloring books* are engendered. \n\nSomeone, somewhere, did an analysis of coloring books and found that male characters were more common than female characters - and they were more likely to be in active or central roles. The female characters were in the background and relegated to \"helping\" roles. Television shows operate in the same way and characters are relegated to stereotypical tasks.\n\nThese are just the unconscious and environmental ways in which our society is gendered. This doesn't speak to the ways in which boys and girls are directly conditioned by family and community. When a boy is rough-housing and playing in the mud, people shrug and smile and go \"Well, boys will be boys!\" Girls that are quiet and shy are praised for being so. A little girl that plays with trucks may be affectionately called a \"tomboy,\" but a boy who plays with dolls is scolded.\n\nAnd when young male children need to be told that \"boys don't cry,\" enough that it's a common phrase in our language . . . that's a clue that suppression of emotion in boys is not a product of nature.\n\nParts of the above post is a conglomeration of two older posts I wrote. They start [here](_URL_0_). ",
"Yes, the brain has a gender, as others have already explained. When the gender of the brain differs from the gender of the body (ie, the physical appearance of a man our woman), the individual is transsexual."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/bne/107/1/images/bne_107_1_194_fig3a.gif"
],
[],
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/rtkte/iama_former_transgender_individual_who/c48y8aj"
],
[]
] |
|
2l2i91
|
Did Joseph Kennedy lobotomize his daughter, Rosemary Kennedy, to preserve the reputation of his family?
|
Is the allegation as detailed in this [post](_URL_0_) true?
> This may be old news to some but the story is just so bizarre. Rosemary was the prettiest of the kennedy sisters, but was also mentally slow. Some argue her handicap was the consequence of her parents being second cousins. After being hidden from the public her whole life, she became jealous of her siblings accomplishments and began to "act out". Fearing "pregnancy, disease, and disgrace," her father Joe Kennedy decided to give her a labotomy which turned her into a vegetable.
>
>
> The transcript from the surgeons was especially chilling. "We went through the top of the head, I think she was awake. She had a mild tranquilizer. I made a surgical incision in the brain through the skull. It was near the front. It was on both sides. We just made a small incision, no more than an inch." The instrument Dr. Watts used looked like a butter knife. He swung it up and down to cut brain tissue. "We put an instrument inside," he said. As Dr. Watts cut, Dr. Freeman put questions to Rosemary. For example, he asked her to recite the Lord's Prayer or sing "God Bless America" or count backwards. ... "We made an estimate on how far to cut based on how she responded." ... When she began to become incoherent, they stopped.
________
**Edit:**
I found a [previous thread](_URL_2_) from this subreddit on the topic. Keeping this in mind, is there any evidence to prove that Joseph Kennedy's decision was either malevolent or benign? Lastly, [it was also asserted](_URL_1_) that lobotomies were used to suppress potentially promiscuous female behavior by families. Are there any sources to prove this phenomenon? If so, how widespread was it?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2l2i91/did_joseph_kennedy_lobotomize_his_daughter/
|
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"Found a [source](_URL_0_) describing the lobotomy on p. 179 of Personality Theories: Critical Perspectives.",
"I guess I'm just ignorant on the subject, but is lobotomizing someone else (like getting your daughter lobotomized because you fearcher acting out) even legal?",
"Short answer is yes. In his book, *An unfinished life*, Robert Dallek gives this explanation for the lobotomy.\n\n''After years of effort that had produced small gains in her ability to deal with adult matters, Rosemary turned violent at the age of twenty-one, throwing tantrums and raging at caretakers who tried to control her. In response, Joe, without Rose's knowledge, arranged for Rosemary to have a prefrontal lobotomy, which contemporary medical understanding recommended as the best means for alleviating her agitation and promising a more placid life. The surgery, however proved to be a disaster, and Joe felt compelled to institutionalize Rosemary in a Wisconsin nunnery, where she would spend the rest of her life.\n\nPart of the family's impulse in dealing with Rosemary as they did was to hide the truth about her condition. In the twenties and thirties, mental disabilities were seen as a mark of inferiority and an embarrassment best left undisclosed. Rosemary's difficulties were especially hard to bear for a family as preoccupied with its glowing image as the Kennedys. It was one thing for them to acknowledge limitations among themselves, but to give outsiders access to such information or put personal weaknesses on display was to open the family to possible ridicule or attack from people all too eager to knock down Kennedy claims of superiority. Hiding family problems, particularly medical concerns, later became a defense against jeopardizing election to public office.'' \n\n**SOURCE** : Robert Dallek, *An unfinished life : John F. Kennedy*, Back bay book, New York, 2003. p.72-73\n\nI'd like to add that Dallek's book is a thoroughly written one and I trust his explanation.",
"The Lobotomist by Jack El-hai tells the story of the Walter Freeman, the guy who invented prefrontal lobotomies and performed thousands of them (usually with ice picks). The operation on Rose doesn't sound that far from the usual range of lobotomies performed during the operation's popular period either in terms of the patient or the actual procedure (according to the extensive sources, including Freeman's journals and notes, cited in the book). I highly recommend it the book.",
" > I think she was awake. She had a mild tranquilizer. \n > \n > Dr. Freeman put questions to Rosemary. For example, he asked her to recite the Lord's Prayer \n \nHow does this fit together?\n\n\n\n",
"I am by no means an expert on history, but I can provide a little bit of context on the psychological side of things here. Rosemary had her lobotomy performed in 1941. The procedure was still relatively new then, but was quickly becoming a mainstream treatment for mental disorders. In fact, in 1949 the pioneer behind lobotomies was given a Nobel prize in medicine for the procedure. I can't speak as to Joseph's motives one way or the other, but I can say that getting a lobotomy performed in Rosemary's situation made sense in the context of mental health knowledge and procedures of the early 1940's. It was not, at the time, considered a radical or dangerous procedure.",
"I have never commented in this sub before, but I feel compelled as a medical historian to point out the fact that during this pre-psychopharmacology era, lobotomy (and other somatic therapies like insulin coma and electroshock) was a widely accepted clinical practice and was considered state of the art care for severe cases. It only declined in favor quite a while after Kennedy had the procedure done, after significant changes in the field of psychiatry itself. And, of course, after a number of negative portrayals in the media in the 60s and 70s. \n\nThe standard book on this topic, if you're interested, is Jack Pressman, *Last Resort: Psychosurgery and the Limits of Medicine*.\n\nAs for the idea of lobotomies being performed for things like female promiscuity, some historians would agree -- but being historians, they would also point out that it was very complicated and was not just about that one thing, but a whole constellation of issues relating to the cultural/temporal context in which those practices were occurring. See Elizabeth Lunbeck, *The Psychiatric Persuasion: Knowledge, Gender, and Power in Modern America*.\n\nIn my personal opinion, I don't think the Kennedy family did anything intentionally malevolent. As I said, Rosemary was receiving pretty top-notch care for the time. And if they were so concerned with legacy, then the family's later involvement with things like the Special Olympics and championing public and mental health policy issues doesn't make a lot of sense. Just my two cents."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1qu46d/til_that_rosemary_kennedy_jfks_sister_was_given_a/cdgiedd",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1qu46d/til_that_rosemary_kennedy_jfks_sister_was_given_a/cdgyeke",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/26b6tj/putting_rosemary_kennedys_lobotomy_what_followed/"
] |
[
[
"http://books.google.com/books?id=W1d4ZhzC1VUC&q=p.+179#v=snippet&q=p.%20179&f=false"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
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|
1lykrr
|
How does the Brain know which nerve receptor is sending a message ?
|
There are billions of nerve endings in our body. How does the brain recognize that a particular nerve receptor is activated and sending the message. An analogy, in the modern internet when a computer sends a message to the server, the server knows knows who sent the message by virtue of the computer's IP Address, similarly does our brain also have such an addressing scheme for each of the neve receptors ?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1lykrr/how_does_the_brain_know_which_nerve_receptor_is/
|
{
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"The brain knows because the signal is conducted from the spot of sensation through a chain of neurons up to the brain, like dominoes. The more interesting part is something called \"lateral inhibition\", which causes a decrease in firing frequency for the neurons flanking a stimulated neuron. This helps us to localize the spot of stimulation, and assign magnitude to the level of stimulation. Ultimately, it's not a one-neuron-code that gets sent, then, the brain is also detecting changes in firing in other, local neurons. \n\nAdditionally, it's a little cruder of a sensing tool than I may have just made it sound. If you take two pencils, and press the tips equally onto your skin with decreasing distances between the tips, there will be a point where you can no longer say that you feel two tips touching you, your brain will tell you it's only one. This is a type of resolution called \"two-point discrimination\". \n\nLastly, there's a bizarre phenomenon called \"referred pain\", where you experience injury in one spot, but feel it in a totally different location on your body. A common example is left arm pain without heart pain during a heart attack, less common is shoulder pain during miscarriage/rupturing ovarian cysts. Although this hasn't been entirely explained, the probable explanation involves what spinal level the input synapses on, and what else normally signals there. The brain doesn't seem to distinguish well between very rare inputs, like strong heart pain, and a much more common input, like pain in your left arm, and assigns the pain sensation to the more common area of pain. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
4nl418
|
why are transgender issues suddenly all over the place?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4nl418/eli5why_are_transgender_issues_suddenly_all_over/
|
{
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"text": [
"Causes are fashion for many people. And transgender issues are currently the most fashionable. I say this as someone who fully believes that trans people deserve equality and freedom from persecution, but also as someone who recognises that people clearly bandwagon."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
2sbkm2
|
Why is it that we can recognize sarcasm in speech, but not through text?
|
Essentially, what triggers our mind to recognize when someone is being sarcastic/joking in speech? And why can we not replicate this when reading it in words?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2sbkm2/why_is_it_that_we_can_recognize_sarcasm_in_speech/
|
{
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"text": [
"According to older communication theory ([Ruesch & Bateson 1951](_URL_0_)), we recognize sarcasm through \"metacommunicative\" messages in other \"channels\". These include tone of voice, facial expressions, hand gestures, body postures, or an amalgamation of these. They function as \"instructions\" on how the message is to be interpreted. For example, if someone says \"You're *sooo* smart.\" while rolling their eyes, we immediately understand that \"so\" shouldn't be drawled out and the speaker should be looking at you if it were an earnest expression. \n\nWhile this kind of sarcasm involves the addition of some nonverbal component that cues sarcasm, there is also the opposite: [Deadpan](_URL_1_) is a type of delivery that works it's humor by not displaying the appropriate signals. This is what Aubrey Plaza does in Parks and Recreation - she uses expressions that *should* come with a distinct tone of voice or facial expression, but instead she's as inexpressive as possible, creating a kind of dissonance between how something is normally said and how she delivers it. \n\nThere are also textual attempts at metacommunication, such as the reversed question mark \"⸮\" and the sarcasm switch \"/s\" added at the end of a sarcastic statement to indicate that the statement is to be taken sarcastically. But since these aren't as pronounced as the tone of voice or facial expression, they can be ignored by inattentive readers and lead to confusion. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://archive.org/details/communicationsoc00inrues",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadpan"
]
] |
|
4hwo1f
|
what is the painful tingly feeling in your feet when you jump down from something?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4hwo1f/eli5what_is_the_painful_tingly_feeling_in_your/
|
{
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"text": [
"Typically when you jump, you adjust your feet unconsciously so that the force of landing is not applied only to your foot/ankle, but also parts of your legs. Sometimes when you take a wrong step or jump/fall in an unexpected way, you can land such that the force cannot be redistributed from your foot. This causes a larger force to be applied to your ankle and the resultant pain."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
1usyi4
|
What's making these ice pieces slowly move onto land like this? So bizarre I can't explain it...VIDEO inside.
|
I found this video being shared on Facebook and it blows my mind. It shows pieces of ice moving onto the land, encroaching on someone's home. What's causing this? Will it stop? How much force is here? Can this cause serious damage to the house?
_URL_0_
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1usyi4/whats_making_these_ice_pieces_slowly_move_onto/
|
{
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"text": [
"This is a lake shore property. The ice is coming off the lake, moved by the wind. Imagine a *huge* sheet of ice, several square kilometers, and blow a strong, steady wind across it. The force from all the wind adds up and can be enough to push the entire ice sheet slowly, but steadily onto land. This results in what you see in the video here."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10203136384594199&set=vb.1344562217&type=2&theater"
] |
[
[]
] |
|
ij9w8
|
If alien beings have a sense of sight, is it unlikely that they can see the same wavelengths as us?
|
For organisms that evolved completely seperately from our own world, is it unlikely that they'd be able to see the same wavelengths as us in the spectrum? Could they possibly see something like xrays or infrared instead?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ij9w8/if_alien_beings_have_a_sense_of_sight_is_it/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c2472o0",
"c2472w7",
"c247apg"
],
"score": [
25,
6,
7
],
"text": [
"There are a couple of reasons why the spectrum we see in is convenient. One, is that the atmosphere is [fairly transparent at those frequencies](_URL_0_) meaning that much of the light of the sun makes it to the surface. This is called the [optical window](_URL_2_). Second, visible light frequencies are high enough that you can get great resolution with a reasonably small aperture. Third, they are [non-ionizing](_URL_1_) so we don't have to hide from them too much.\n\nInfrared shares many of these properties, but would incur significant loss by a water-filled eye or lens.\n\nThis all doesn't mean that some other part of the spectrum could be used, only that our part represents a significant local optimum.",
"Well, we mostly evolved to see 'visible' light because that's the peak wavelength emission of the sun. If their star had a different peak emission, they would probably view different wavelengths. However, there are complications for seeing smaller wavelengths, but assuming those can be surmounted, it certainly would be possible.",
"We have rare examples like the [mantis shrimp](_URL_0_) that have evolved crazy vision outside of the normal range. That little guy can see 11 or 12 primary colors from UV through infrared, plus he can sense the six components of polarization so that he can completely detect the linear and circular components. But that didn't just happen for no reason -- it apparently helps him find food which has nearly transparent bodies.\n\nSo anyway, if this alien species lives at the surface of a water planet then yeah, it's probably going to be most sensitive to visible light because that's just a consequence of having an atmosphere filled with water vapor. But it's always possible that if they evolved to survive far below the surface such as on an ice-covered planet they might have much less available light in the visible range and would have benefited from sensitivity to infrared or some other spectrum. It really depends on the details.\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atmospheric_electromagnetic_opacity.svg",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionizing_radiation",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_window"
],
[],
[
"http://www.uq.edu.au/news/index.html?article=14658"
]
] |
|
6dufjm
|
What is the insignia on this cannon??
|
[Cannon](_URL_0_)
I was in Vieques, Puerto Rico. I was at the : Conde De Mirasol Museum and they had a lot of cannons on display but this one cannon was different to all the other because it had that insignia.
Edit: The cannon had the date : 28-2-21
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6dufjm/what_is_the_insignia_on_this_cannon/
|
{
"a_id": [
"di5fsgm"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"a Cannon bearing a Crown symbol and the initials GR for Georgios Rex reference to the reigning monarch King George.\n\nIt's a British cannon, i think the actual fabric was in scotland."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"https://imgur.com/a/i3JzH"
] |
[
[]
] |
|
wekoa
|
"pot odds," "pot equity," and the "independent chip model" in texas hold'em
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/wekoa/eli5_pot_odds_pot_equity_and_the_independent_chip/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c5cprhz",
"c5cqt7p"
],
"score": [
2,
3
],
"text": [
"Pot odds - the amount of a call divided by the amount of a pot before the call. \n\nIf there's $100 in the pot and you have to put in $20 to call a bet, you're getting 5:1 pot odds. Meaning if it's the final action and you win one time for every five you lose, it's worth the call.\n\nClosely associated is the concept of *implied odds*. This is the ratio of the cost of a call to the amount of money you would win if you got what you wanted. \n\nLet's say it costs you $10 to make a call, and you have a 1/10 chance of making a winning hand. There's $50 in the pot, but you calculate that if you make your hand, you can get at least another $100. The implied odds are 15:1, making the call worthwhile. However, this involves a lot of guessing, so it's best to be conservative with your estimates until you get better.\n\nThe other two I don't know.",
"* **Pot Odds** - How much you can win compared to how much it will cost you to win it.\n\n* **Pot Equity** - The percentage of the pot you \"own.\" You own an amount of the pot equal to your chance of winning it. (Disregarding Fold Equity).\n\n* **ICM** - A far more advanced concept in tournament play. It's SUPPOSED to be the equivilent of Pot Equity except for a full tournament. Usually, however, people use the term to describe the idea that what might be best for acquiring CHIPS may not be the best for acquiring MONEY.\n\nPot Odds - Say I have AsTs and my opponent has JJ (assume you're psychic for the moment). Flop comes 9s 5h 2s. Your opponent shoves his last 900 into a pot of 2400 chips. You only have only a 46% chance to win this hand. Should you call? Even though your opponent has you beat, the answer is '**Yes!**' Even though you are going to lose more chips over half the time (54%), you're going to win 3300 chips when you do win. Lose 900 54% of the time versus winning 3300 46% of the time. That's profitable!\n\nPot Equity - In the above example my opponent's hand was the best hand. It was better than mine. I was beat. However it's ridiculous to say my hand was a loser. I had a very strong hand actually. I had a hand with high \"Pot Equity.\" AsKs has the ability to win that hand a strong portion of the time. You could say that 1518 of that pot was \"yours.\" This was the size of the pot times your odds of winning it.\n\nICM - The above are pretty beginner concepts. ICM is relatively advanced. Say the above happened at a poker tournament and the chip counts for remaining players are as follows:\n\n* You: 3100\n* Opponent: 2100\n* Guy #1: 200\n* Guy #2: 75\n* Guy #3: 400\n* Guy #4: 125\n\nNOW, should you call? Well we've already established that Pot Odds say you should. You would win more chips in the long run. But poker isn't about winning chips, it's about winning MONEY! ICM might say **'No!'**\n\nPayouts of a tournament are graduated with 1st paying the most on down to some arbitrary number. However you are currently in GREAT shape with over half the chips in play! Guys 1, 2, and 4 are likely going to go out *very* soon and take the lower payouts. Why risk 29% of your chips here? If you just wait around Guys 1-4 are likely going to go out and you will finish 1st or 2nd. Why take the risk of losing such a large amount of chips? Just fold.\n\n**Edit:** Someone will probably inevitably come in and complain about my scenerio. Bite me, it's a lot harder to think up than it seems. :D"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
2s86nu
|
what are the actual statistics on what muslims believe?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2s86nu/eli5_what_are_the_actual_statistics_on_what/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cnn1ntn",
"cnn20ms"
],
"score": [
12,
5
],
"text": [
"_URL_0_ This should do.",
"Globally, 28% of muslims do not have an issue with suicide bombings, while in the USA, 19% of muslims do not have an issue with suicide bombings. \n\nSo if you take the population of muslims (1.7 billion), and multiply that by .28 (the percent of muslims who do not see suicide bombings as bad), you get 476,000,000 (476 million). That is the number of muslims on earth who do not see an issue with suicide bombings. \n\n\n_URL_0_\n\n*Edit: Spacing issues."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-overview/"
],
[
"http://www.pewforum.org/files/2013/04/gsi2-appa-5.png"
]
] |
||
mpxcz
|
what was europe trying to do by instigating the euro?
|
It seems like such a bad idea (hindsight = 20/20). Why did everyone buy into it? Was it just so they could be brotherly or did they think it would make them stronger?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mpxcz/eli5_what_was_europe_trying_to_do_by_instigating/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c32w2pm",
"c32w343",
"c33dlir",
"c32w2pm",
"c32w343",
"c33dlir"
],
"score": [
2,
3,
2,
2,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"it was to facilitate the development of the european union into a fully economically integrated block. \n\nby having the same money, people could travel easily from nation to nation in the euro zone without exchanging currency. \n\nthe most important reason was to remove currency risk from inter-european trade. one nation would not have to worry about accepting foreign currency as payment, then having it lose value later. \n\n(maybe i explained it like youre 7)",
"The answer is that Germany, which didn't really exist as a country until the 19th Century, is too big to fit within the confines of the European power structure. So in the 20th Century, there were two world wars about containing Germany and lots of folks died. \n\nIn order to bring Europe closer together and solve \"the German problem\" France and Germany began a long process of integration in the 1950's starting with Coal and Steel agreements and working from there.\n\nHere are some links for further reading.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_2_",
"I assume you live in the US. Imagine having to change money when you go from New York to Philadelphia or from Washington to Boston. I live in Vienna and before the Euro, we couldn't drive 200mi (maybe south-west, but you would have to try) without having to change money. This restricts trade and travel. It also restricts intermixing of cultures.\n\nThe Euro was meant to make trading and traveling within Europe easier. By making it easyier to travel/trade, also promoting cultural exchange. Since Europe was at War with it self almost constantly since the dark ages, it was a try to get rid of this.\n\nAnd yeah, it promote Europe as consistent economical bloc with more bargaining power.",
"it was to facilitate the development of the european union into a fully economically integrated block. \n\nby having the same money, people could travel easily from nation to nation in the euro zone without exchanging currency. \n\nthe most important reason was to remove currency risk from inter-european trade. one nation would not have to worry about accepting foreign currency as payment, then having it lose value later. \n\n(maybe i explained it like youre 7)",
"The answer is that Germany, which didn't really exist as a country until the 19th Century, is too big to fit within the confines of the European power structure. So in the 20th Century, there were two world wars about containing Germany and lots of folks died. \n\nIn order to bring Europe closer together and solve \"the German problem\" France and Germany began a long process of integration in the 1950's starting with Coal and Steel agreements and working from there.\n\nHere are some links for further reading.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_2_",
"I assume you live in the US. Imagine having to change money when you go from New York to Philadelphia or from Washington to Boston. I live in Vienna and before the Euro, we couldn't drive 200mi (maybe south-west, but you would have to try) without having to change money. This restricts trade and travel. It also restricts intermixing of cultures.\n\nThe Euro was meant to make trading and traveling within Europe easier. By making it easyier to travel/trade, also promoting cultural exchange. Since Europe was at War with it self almost constantly since the dark ages, it was a try to get rid of this.\n\nAnd yeah, it promote Europe as consistent economical bloc with more bargaining power."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://www.npr.org/2011/11/25/142780603/germanys-identity-cemented-in-the-euro",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Coal_and_Steel_Community",
"http://europa.eu/about-eu/eu-history/index_en.htm"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.npr.org/2011/11/25/142780603/germanys-identity-cemented-in-the-euro",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Coal_and_Steel_Community",
"http://europa.eu/about-eu/eu-history/index_en.htm"
],
[]
] |
|
3dpg74
|
what's the difference between emergency care and urgent care, and why is ec so much more expensive?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dpg74/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_emergency_care/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ct7ejyd",
"ct7f7g5",
"ct7gbjl"
],
"score": [
9,
4,
2
],
"text": [
"Emergency Care is part of a hospital and has the full resources of the hospital available to it. Urgent care is basically a doctor's office that is open around the clock. An emergency room will likely have surgeons that wait around just in case someone needs to go to surgery. They will have other specialists too. These specialists are really expensive and having them work odd hours requires you to pay them more.\n\nUrgent care facilities are usually staffed by general practice doctors. Since they aren't specialists they don't generally command extraordinarily high wages.",
"Emergency care is for when you are seriously injured (concussion, broken bones, serious car accident, dismemberment, ect.) or dying (can't breath, heart attack, stroke, ect.).\n\nUrgent care is for everything else (colds, splinters, sniffles) when you can't or don't want to make a regular Dr. Apt. \n\nSome UC's are connected to ER's, others are stand alone. Some are 24/7/365, while others close at night and/or for the week end.\n\nER's should always be open and are normally connected to a full hospital.",
"Emergency rooms have lots of equipment and can do way more stuff. Urgent care centers have more standard stuff like in a regular doctor's office. \n\nAll that extra equipment in the ER is expensive."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
36m9ml
|
how are the transistors in a cpu/micro-controller controlled?
|
Are they configured at a hardware level to do certain logical sequences? Or are they re-routed using other transistors? Please explain this crazy magic.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36m9ml/eli5_how_are_the_transistors_in_a/
|
{
"a_id": [
"crf5rvt",
"crf5sjx"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Transistors just work because physics. A waterwheel does the same thing; it's not configured, it's simply made such that physics will force it to do what we want. \n\nAs /u/LondonPilot said you make the logic gates or other useful circuits by combining it all together into interesting setups. You can then in turn chain those together and make more and more complex circuits.",
"They are literally set in stone and not controlled at all. They all receive input and produce output whether they are actually a part of the current computing, or not.\n\nSo I'd say it is closer to the first hypothesis: they are \"configured\" (more like carved) as hardware to do certain logical sequences."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
6qketo
|
If you move a wild bug far from its home but the same environment will it go back home or make a new life there?
|
Like if you took a grasshopper from one side of a lake to the other, one mile away, could it make the trek home? Would it stay there and find a new cluster of grasshoppers like it? Would it starve and die?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6qketo/if_you_move_a_wild_bug_far_from_its_home_but_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dky6pr7"
],
"score": [
54
],
"text": [
"It really depends on the insect.\n\nMany insects, I believe including grasshoppers, typically do not have one nest or other type of \"home\" they can return to. Most insects also do not rely on being part of one society or group. They live where they happen to be at the moment, and if they can't find what they need in an area, they keep moving until they find it.\n\nOther insects, notably the ants, wasps, and bees, are \"central place foragers.\" They have a nest or hive or other \"home\" where they hang out, and if you displaced them they would fly up to [miles away](_URL_0_) to get home as long as they have memorized enough landmarks and directional cues (and they are very good at that.) Some of these insects are social, and have a strong drive to return to their own social group, which they are typically related to."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0ahUKEwjk346kvLLVAhUBaD4KHTjKChcQFgg2MAE&url=https%3A%2F%2Fnature.berkeley.edu%2Fkremenlab%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F03%2FBee-Foraging-Ranges-and-their-relationship-Greenleaf-WIlliams-Winfree-Kremen.pdf&usg=AFQjCNEPYjebfNZe4CqEFfg1-3PRY9TbZg"
]
] |
|
6ycb8b
|
There have been a dozen or so species in genus Homo; why did all but one sub-species disappear?
|
There may still have been _H. erectus_ in Java when _H. sapiens sapiens_ were building pyramids in Egypt. Where is everybody?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6ycb8b/there_have_been_a_dozen_or_so_species_in_genus/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dmo3acv"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"You've asked a good question, and the only real answer is that archaeologists and paleoanthropologists simply do not have enough data to fully support any hypotheses on the extinctions of pre-modern *Homo* species. Among the hypotheses that have been promoted are, of course, intraspecies violence, miscegenation, being out-competed by modern humans, and simply dying off due to failure to adapt to changing environmental conditions.\n\nTo my knowledge, no evidence exists of any intraspecies *Homo* violence, though this does not mean it did not occur.\n\nMiscegenation, or interbreeding between different species and groups, certainly did happen between modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans. We don't know exactly to what extent, but likely not on the level of integrated cultures on a large scale. Enough, though, that most modern humans contain detectable quantities of Neanderthal and Denisovan genetic material. I believe Papua New Guineans have the most \"non-modern\" DNA at something like 7% Denisovan.\n\nCompetition between prehistoric humans and modern humans would need evidence of coexistence, which is rare. The times at which various ancient populations existed can be hard to define, and being out-competed would require coexistence for some length of time. As dates of late Neanderthal remains are refined, and new sites are discovered, more evidence should come to light.\n\nIt is, in my opinion, most likely that changing environmental conditions put pressure on prehistoric human species, and gradually reduced their genetic integrity and geographic diversity. It seems likely to me, though this is conjecture, that the arrival of modern humans did play a role in preventing a recovery of Neanderthal populations in Europe, though this assumes a lot in terms of time and relative population size.\n\nAll in all, we can't answer that question. We can come closest by looking at potential interactions between modern humans and prehistoric humans like Neanderthals, which included interbreeding, tool technology sharing, and possible cultural behavior transmission. As for more ancient interactions, say between *H. ergaster* and *H. habilis*, there's practically no data available.\n\nAs a last note, I don't know of any evidence suggesting *H. erectus* was alive in historic times. The remnant species *H. floresiensis*, the Indonesian \"hobbit\", was at one point thought to have survived to the end of the Pleistocene, or even later, but last I heard that date had been pushed back to something like 50 kya."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
9z1uqd
|
alcohol and painkillers
|
I've heard mixing alcohol and medicine will knock you out or even be lethal (my friend accidentally did that, he's fine tho). What makes that combination so dangerous?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9z1uqd/eli5_alcohol_and_painkillers/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ea5p1to"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"The metabolism of acetaminophen produces a toxic intermediate (NAPQI) that is usually rapidly eliminated.\n\nHowever, if the breakdown pathway is overwhelmed, such as in an acetaminophen overdose or by ethanol, that intermediate may not be rapidly eliminated, possibly causing liver damage."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
f2heiw
|
how do they make intricate objects with glass (and other things)?
|
Like the really intricately shaped glass things and really small glass objects, surely they can’t use glass blowing. And for other things, how do they make microscopic things like the syringes used to remove nuclei from cells etc
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f2heiw/eli5_how_do_they_make_intricate_objects_with/
|
{
"a_id": [
"fhcwhfx"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"They take glass components that are melted to something called working and softening temperatures. These allow the melt to be soft enough to mold with a rod and yet viscous enough to resist flowing much like honey just a lot slower moving. Things like a rose can be made by using pliars to physically pull pedals from a glass blob on the end of a rod. It is then dipped back into the melted batch to gain an extra layer to pull more petals. Once the rose pedals are made a stem is pulled from the melt extended and then the cooling pedals are attached to the stem. It then sits in something called a lehr to cool slowly.\n\nBasically, most shapes are uniquely crafted layer by layer and is usually reheated multiple times over several hours to shape it appropriately. Glass blowing only adds to the complexity of it and doesnt allow for much time to reheat."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
3jagen
|
what happened that resulted in canada going into a recession.
|
Also, what would Canada have to do to pull out of the recession. I've tried searching on Google, but I honestly don't know what's propaganda and what's been written by someone with no credentials. I only trust reddit, which is kinda fucked.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jagen/eli5_what_happened_that_resulted_in_canada_going/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cunm7nw"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"The main reason for the recession is the current crash in oil prices. For Canada to get out of the recession oil prices need to hit $70 a barrel, that is the sweet spot for companies to start spending money on drilling again. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
5twjek
|
how is wifi not damaging me but other kinds of radiation are?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5twjek/eli5_how_is_wifi_not_damaging_me_but_other_kinds/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ddpk69x"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Plenty of kinds of radiation isn't damaging. For example, there's the megahertz-range radiation being blasted at high levels by giant towers all over the place- they send out a signal referred to as an \"FM radio station\". \n\nThere's also tons of smaller devices peppering you with high levels of terahertz-range radiation every day. In fact, you're so used to them that you might have trouble if we got rid of them all. We call them \"lights\". \n\nWi-Fi is right in between these two harmless types of radiation (with frequencies in the gigahertz range). It's just that for some reason people refer to Wi-Fi as \"radiation\" while referring to the other forms of radiated electromagnetic waves as \"radio waves\" or \"light\". Radiation is only a problem when the frequency is very high (higher than visible light), or when it's really intense (in which case it makes things hot)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
6kgbn6
|
How did apple pie become an icon of American culture, even inspiring the phrase 'as American as apple pie', when it's a popular pastry in several European countries. Especially when it's also an icon of Dutch culture, even appearing in a Dutch cookbook in 1514.
|
EDIT: I'm sorry for forgetting the question mark..
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6kgbn6/how_did_apple_pie_become_an_icon_of_american/
|
{
"a_id": [
"djm33o7",
"djmehfr",
"djpg6gy"
],
"score": [
271,
83,
5
],
"text": [
"/r/AskFoodHistorians might be a good place to cross-post this",
"Can you give a source on the dutch cookbook?",
"Sorry to see no answer incoming, but there is [this old thread](_URL_0_) I found. Unfortunately a bit earlier in the sub's history so not quite as tight a standard as we now have."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ikogm/why_is_apple_pie_so_synonymous_with_america/"
]
] |
|
b65xd4
|
What was life like in areas of France occupied by Germany in the First World War?
|
We all have *some* idea of what life was like in occupied France during the Second World War, no doubt due to the many depictions of this period in film and other media. When it comes to World War One, most people have heard of atrocities committed by the German Army in occupied Belgium. But it seems like occupiedbFrance in this period is somewhat of a blindspot, at least to some of us in the English-speaking world.
What was life like in those areas of France occupied by Germany in WWI? Were similar atrocities carried out against the civilian population? Was there an equivalent of the famous French Resistance of the later war? Did this have a lasting effect on the culture and the economy of these regions after the war?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/b65xd4/what_was_life_like_in_areas_of_france_occupied_by/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ejixrer"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"There wasn't actually that much of France under German occupation during the war. After the breakdown of the Schlieffen plan and the race to the sea, the front line more or less stabilised, although there would be shifts as various offensives took place. You can see on [this map](_URL_0_) that most of the occupied territory is on the Belgian border. This territory was mainly two thirds of the Department (a French administrative area) of Nord, which was home to roughly 1.176 million French citizens. Altogether, parts of ten Departments were occupied, with a total population of about 2 million. As many men had fled before the German advance or been mobilised into the army, a majority of the population was female.\n\nUnfortunately for the French, this strip of land was one of the most heavily industrialised in the country, producing 60% of its iron, a quarter of its steel and up to 40% of its coal. This was very useful to the Germans, who had found themselves deprived of seaborne imports by the British blockade. Increasingly, raw materials and industrial machinery were taken to Germany to assist with the war effort. The entire area of occupied France was also close enough to the front lines that they fell under military, rather than civil, administration. There was widespread requistion of food, and civilians were increasingly forced to work for the occupiers, building fortifications and carrying out duties usually reserved for pioneer units. Those who refused to work voluntarily were forced to work in Civil-Worker Battalions, which were generally brutal, with poor rations. There were high mortality rates and the workers were interned in special camps. In summer 1916, 20,000 workers were deported to the Ardennes to work on the harvest, although this practice was stopped after widespread international protest.\n\nIn terms of administration, French authorities were mostly sidelined. Instead, the occupied zone was divided into various divisions called *Etappen*, under the control of an Inspector, with subdivisions under the control of the area Commandant. The army in the area at the time was responsible for providing administrators to oversee each Etappe, and when the armies were redeployed, so were their administrators. The subdivisions could vary in size, with the largest, such as the city of Lille, being administered by a high ranking officer and dozens of soldiers, whereas small villages could only have an NCO assigned to them. Each citizen was issued an identity card, and if they were found outside their Etappe then they could be faced with a fine or imprisonment. It was possible to obtain a pass from the area Commandant, but this was a difficult and complicated process, and the passes generally only lasted a few days. While a military necessity from the perspective of the Germans, this system led to increased frustration among the French population. The French police were left to deal with crimes against other French people, but the Germans had their own military and police force.\n\nCorrespondence with anyone outside the occupied zone was initially punishable by death, but the punishment soon decreased and there was in any case a thriving underground post network, often via neutral countries or the Red Cross. The German Army also produced a newspaper, called the Gazette des Ardennes, which provided reports on news from the front and extracts from British and French newspapers. As the French also had access to German language newspapers, it was important that the Gazette didn't appear as overt propaganda. As such, it was more or less factually trustworthy, but had a heavy pro-German perspective. It's difficult to tell exactly how popular it was. Whilst circulation reached 180,000 by January 1918, accounts by French citizens mention that much of the time it wasn't actually read. In an effort to counter this, the British and French airdropped newspapers and pamphlets over the occupied territories. There were also a few underground newspapers, and while owning a radio was illegal, those who had one hidden were able to listen to radio stations on the other side of the front line. The French also conversed openly with soldiers billeted in the area, allowing them to gain information in that way.\n\nIn terms of resistance, there was very little that the French could do to actively resist the occupiers. Those who refused to carry out work or were found guilty of carrying out resistance were conscripted into labour battalions. Underground newspapers and networks to help escaped prisoners were made very difficult by the tight grip of the German army, although they did exist. For example, in June 1915 a German sentry was shot by a Frenchman near Roubiax. However, several spies and saboteurs were shot by the German army in response. Many ordinary French people limited themselves to symbolic acts of resistance, such as refusing to shake hands with Germans, wearing the national colours and writing letters of protest. There is some evidence to show that letters of protest actually had a negative effect on the war effort, as area Commandants had to spend a lot of their time responding to the letters, and became increasingly irritated as a result of them. The French also refused to give the Germans lists of military age men and the civil authorities were generally obstructive towards the Germans, relying on legalistic interpretations of international law on what occupying armies were allowed to requisition. In response, the Germans would threaten the authorities with various fines or harsh punishments. \n\nHowever, the close proximity in which the Germans and French lived and worked meant that contact and co-operation, if not collaboration, was commonplace. A number of French women had relationships and even children with German soldiers, and accounts of the occupation accuse a large number of both working and middle-class women of having sexual relationships with the occupiers. A report for British intelligence in 1918 listed 362 women who had relationships with Germans, ranging from prostitution to having children with them, and the number of women treated for sexually transmitted diseases rose sharply with the arrival of the Germans. Women who did not have relationships with Germans, but interacted with them socially, were often the subject of disapproval, and gossip could easily overstate the nature of their relationships. This disapproval was also extended to some men who were socially friendly with the Germans. A number of high ranking civil servants were accused of being too friendly with the Germans, although evidence that this was true is lacking. Angry mobs would occasionally form, such as in Lille where a woman was pelted with stones and called a whore by a crowd of almost 500 people. It took the German police firing above the crowd to disperse them. After the war there was little done to 'punish' those who had been seen to collaborate with the Germans, although some trials took place. \n\nSources:\n\nBernard Wilkin, 'Isolation, communication and propaganda inthe occupied territories of France, 1914–1918', *First World War Studies*, 7:3 (2016).\n\nJames E. Connolly, 'Mauvaise-conduite: complicity and respectability in the occupied Nord, 1914–1918', *First World War Studies*, 4:1 (2013)\n\nJames E. Connolly, 'Notable protests: respectable resistance in occupied northern France, 1914–18', *Historical Research* 88 (Nov 2015)\n\nJens Thiel, 'Between recruitment and forced labour: the radicalization of German labour policy in occupied Belgium and northern France', *First World War Studies*, 4:1 (2013)\n\nIf you're looking for a book about the occupation, then take a look at:\n\nHelen McPhail, *The Long Silence: The Tragedy of Occupied France in World War I* (2014)\n\nLet me know if you have any more questions!"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Western_front_1915-16.jpg"
]
] |
|
3eru4u
|
what is another solution to shootings, outside of gun control?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3eru4u/eli5_what_is_another_solution_to_shootings/
|
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"it does appear that higher levels of education decrease violent behaviour. gun awareness decreases violent gun crimes. and also a huge one with kids is co-curriculars. when kids are on sports teams or in clubs they have no time to shoot up schools.\n\nall in all i realize the states are never giving up guns, but i believe if schools push co-curriculrs a little more (some kind of incentive) that violent crime will go down. (there currently exists an inverse correlation between the two)",
"1) Obviously, we need to take a closer look at mental health issues (this also pertains to suicides, which make up 2/3rds of all gun deaths in the US). A big part of this would be lowering the stigmas associated with depression and related problems, and encouraging people to get help, in addition to getting actual funding.\n\n2) Since no one else is saying it, I will; African American males between the ages of 16 and 35, representing about 3% of the overall population of the United States, are responsible for about *half* of its gun violence. We need to take a look in the mirror and realize that an enormous amount of crime is coming out of the \"black community\" in the United States. The fix to that ultimately is better jobs and education for inner-city communities. To fix the school issue, in particular, we have to start taking a closer look at how we actually fund schools, and take steps to equalize funding (currently the Feds actually try to do this, but those programs don't have nearly enough money to cover the difference). In addition, allegations of \"systemic racism\" by the police are likely true more often than not, but honestly I feel that this is a *symptom* that will clear itself up if a meaningful way to reduce violence is achieved. Less crime directly translates into a lower police presence.\n\nThis also applies (although to a lesser extent) to Hispanics within the US, who are murdered at twice the rate that Whites are (and is three times *lower* than the rate African Americans are).\n\n3) In addition, I'd promote gun literacy; make it such that everyone knows how to handle and use a gun responsibly. Honestly, I'd include it as an extension of civics classes in high school."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
5deyeu
|
how can games companies sell unfinished games and in some cases games that are unplayable (activision)?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5deyeu/eli5_how_can_games_companies_sell_unfinished/
|
{
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"text": [
"Simply answer, because consumers keep buying them.\n\nLonger answer, due to the new and easier channels of distribution, mainly pre-order, digital downloads, etc. games can be bought way before any serious reviews by game critics or consumers alike have been established.\n\nSo by the time the problems of a game are known, the majority of sales have already been made. Coupled with promises of updates and fixes, many consumers stick around or even buy the game later when it's fixed.\n\nThis way game companies get both, the money from early buyers who purchase the game without knowing it's quality as well as patient gamers who wait until the game is fixed.\n\nSince this behavior doesn't seem to damage the long-term reputation of the company it remains a viable business model."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
6apjl9
|
why do so many websites (mainly news sites) now have a "continue reading" button a few lines down the page? why not just show the whole article to begin with?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6apjl9/eli5_why_do_so_many_websites_mainly_news_sites/
|
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"Ad revenue. They can deliver you twice as much advertising by having you click to the next page. It also helps because their analytics will get a boost because you're viewing multiple pages on the website.",
"I've wondered this - have to assume there's a useful metric to be collected and an extra dollar to be made. Maybe to measure engagement, based on headlines/opening paragraphs/etc..?",
"I always assumed it was so they could cram more ads in without taking forever to load up initially ",
"Most people don't read the whole article, they can show a lot of ads on the landing screen then you open the hidden article if you really wanted to read. \n\nMoney",
"I doubt this has all that much to do with ad-revenue but with server load and quicker loadtimes - if the content is interesting for the readers, let them load the rest. Others who misclicked or dont enjoy it can just return and not request that many infos from the server. If a server experiences heavy load and more requests than it can handle you change your website in a way that decreases it. \n\n\nPS: This is just a guess. But ads don't usually pay more per page interaction, the advertiser still pays for the same amount of appearance. Unless the page completely refreshes or renews after pressing the button the pageowners don't get a benefit so in this case it would be smarter for them to show all the ads in the beginning to not risk potential readers to not click the \"continue reading\" button in order for the ad to show - they would straight up show the ad to make more net-profit. ",
"There is usually an advertisement right under the continue reading button, this helps website to show up ads higher on the main content instead of dividing the content with and ad. \nSource: user-experience designer",
"It's just so more ads can be shown or seen first, users haven't adapted fully to look for the continue reading button so this trend will persist for some time. \n\nAs a web dev, I find this practice of intentionally making websites harder for users infuriating. Continue reading or short articles across many pages are part of this scam and I wish it to die unceremoniously. ",
"One large benefit to this is to measure if someone is actually engaging with your content on a page. When a person lands on your page, then leaves without interacting with anything, many analytics libraries will consider that a bounce, even if the user reads some or all of the content. However, if they click something, that's considered an action, and that graduates you to a non bounce visitor - you didn't just land on the page and navigate away, you expressed interest in the content. This lets you do content optimization - if you are getting a lot of non bounce visitors on certain pieces of content, you can promote that content more heavily, which in turn leads to more visitors to your site, as opposed to content that causes people to bounce which should be promoted less.\n\nOther answers mention bandwidth conservation which may be a factor as well.\n\nEDIT: Since a lot of comments are talking about ads I will amend my answer to address that as well. My answer alludes to the fact that with content optimization, if you can drive more people to your site, more ads are served which can increase ad revenue. There are a lot of payment models for ads, but generally, you might get paid a very small amount for an impression (which is just loading and showing an ad on your site), but you will get paid a lot more if someone actually clicks the ad and follows through to the content behind it (as such, the companies that are paying for the ads also pay per impression and per click, and clicks are much more expensive - there's a common metric called \"cost per click\" which measures how much you are paying for each click, so you can assess your return on investment). \n\nWith the 'continue reading' button, you could slap more ads below, but (and I'm speculating here) I'd expect if that 'continue reading' button was not there the ad would be there regardless. As such, I'm not certain it'd be a factor in generating more ad revenue, if you didn't have the 'continue reading', you'd get the impression and possible click as soon as the user viewed the ad (which would require one less click). The only counter argument to this I can think of is if ad serving companies require user interaction before you display more ads - but I don't know if that's true. \n\nI also found this asked on stackexchange that had a few other good reasons as well: _URL_0_\n\nEDIT 2: A number of people are citing a lot of extra reasons below that can all be valid as well. This is not the end-all-be-all answer, which is why I said \"one large benefit\" to talk about how this is one of many. There are a ton of different reasons to design your content to have this - my example is just the most common one I've seen, but world of web advertising is very complex, with ad providers imposing rules and rapid policy changes as sites try to optimize their ad revenue within those rules! This is a simple question with a myriad of complex possible answers - I just gave one :).\n",
"A way to track popularity of the article.\n\nIf they just count the number of people that access an article then they would count people who clicked wrong and didn't read the article.\n\nAlso, they want to filter out people who don't read past the first paragraph or two.\n\nThis metric is much more accurate about how popular the article is.\n\nAnd can give information, when compared to total accesses, about how poorly their site is designed by identifying number of miss-clicks.",
"It forces you to interact with the page itself, which shows that the content pulled you in. Helps them differentiate between you and users who might just keep going without using the site. That interaction can also harvest more data on you, such as the browser and platform you are using, etc.",
" Because you get ads on the fist part, then more ads on the second part. In fact, the more pages there are the more space for unique ads there are. It's all about money. And, it also helps test retention so they know we're to put the more profitable ads.",
"News articles are typically written with the most critical info in the first paragraph, then info of decreasing importance with each following paragraph.\n\nThis way, when a story is sent out, the editors can cut the story off at any paragraph, depending on how much space they need to fill, and it won't feel like an abrupt ending to the readers.\n\nSo you only really have to read the first few paragraphs of a story to get all the important details. \n\nReading more than that is just filler for people who are *really* interested in the story.",
"What I really want to know is why the fuck a website would create a new page every time you scroll past an article. I don't want to have to hit the back button 18 times because I scrolled too long on a shitty site. ",
"With less text they can cram the rest of the space with more advertisements... More advertisements equals more advertisement revenue. Generally speaking, it is all about money.",
"In hope that you'll click on the wrong arrow (notice how many ads have them) and be taken to an advertiser's page instead of the article.",
"They can fit more ads in and spread the traffic Over multiple pages, fit more variety of content, too",
"Advertising. More page loads = more advertisements displayed = more money. And as others have said, breaking up one article into multiple pieces lets you know if people are reading the whole thing or not. And apparently AutoModerator does not want me giving simple replies in a subreddit called \"explain like I'm five\".",
"There's actually a very specific reason for the \"read more\" being added to content sites - it happened around 3 years ago.\n\nIn 2014, one of the single largest global buyers of digital advertising, GroupM, made the decision to stop buying non-viewable ad inventory, because they felt it was a waste. [Here's an interview discussing what drove that change](_URL_0_).\n\nBy adding \"read more\", inventory that was previously below the fold (so non viewable) became viewable, and therefore could be sold to major brand advertisers that were purchasing it on the exchanges, via companies like GroupM.",
"Realistically, I believe this is more of a cash grab than some tracking functionality. There are a handful of easier ways to track user data that provide a better experience than making the users click 10 times. One goal of ux design is to make it as easy as possible for users to see your content\n\n The key term here is advertising impressions, a site owner earns revenue through ads primarily with advert clicks. Sometimes getting users to click on an ad can yield on the upward of 15 bucks, but most get a few bucks. Advertisement impressions is the second earner, just having a user load the ad can earn you a fraction of a cent each.\n\nYou frequently will see low quality bullshit type news sites, or fake content \"top ten lists\" setup in such a manor to make users load more pages and get more add impressions. \n\nEg a top ten celebrity weight loss before and after list, that makes you click 20 times and loads a new set of four ads each time.",
"To increase page views? Maybe it increases a click counter "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/82914/whats-the-point-of-a-read-full-story-button"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/229401/real-time-with-groupms-ari-bluman.html"
],
[],
[]
] |
||
22u6ae
|
what is happening in bunkerville between the rancher cliven bundy and the feds?
|
News seems to be escalating now. I did a bit of googling, I don't understand the legal terms and the history of the situation.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22u6ae/eli5_what_is_happening_in_bunkerville_between_the/
|
{
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"text": [
"Mexico lost territory in Western North America to the US during the Mexican American War, and so the land was transferred to the Federal Government. In effect, 80(ish)% of Nevada land is owned by the Feds. Ranchers can use this land to graze their cattle, but must pay a grazing fee in order to make use of it.\n\nBundy stopped paying his fees about 20 years ago, and has been in a long legal battle with the BLM (the Federal agency that manages all federally owned land in the US), all centered on his family's claim to the land. However, he has no claim that the courts will recognize. He continued grazing on BLM land, and so the BLM got fed up and are confiscating his cattle.\n\nIt is also important that the Feds recognize his ownership of his own ranch, but *not* the surrounding land that the BLM oversees. They're not forcing him off of his own land, but off of Federally owned land that he's been grazing his cattle on."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
5oj2i6
|
During the late Medieval and Renaisance period, when Kings derived their right to rule from divine mandates, how did people view republics & elective monarchies? Were they seen as less legitimate than herditary monarchies?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5oj2i6/during_the_late_medieval_and_renaisance_period/
|
{
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"dcnnwtt"
],
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],
"text": [
"For most of the medieval period, in Italy at least, republican governments could only guarantee an uneasy peace between dynasties, and at best institutionalized warfare. I have a very specific example of fighting consequential to Republican government [here](_URL_0_). However, other republics were seen as just as legitimate than monarchies; and at times even more so, as I described [here](_URL_1_). "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4zq1vk/askhistorians_podcast_069_milan_in_the_era_of/d6xu59y/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5lpf2s/the_fourth_crusade_was_famously_known_for_the/dc49qam/"
]
] |
||
36ff5j
|
Is there dark antimatter?
|
There's matter and anti-matter, which supposedly interact explosively. Is there an opposite to dark matter, a anti-dark matter or dark antimatter?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/36ff5j/is_there_dark_antimatter/
|
{
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"crdsdef",
"crduvu1"
],
"score": [
7,
2
],
"text": [
"One of the things we learn from the merger of special relativity and quantum mechanics is that each particle has a corresponding antiparticle.\n\nHowever, for some particles (e.g., the Z^(0) and the photon), the antiparticle and the particle are the same, while for others (e.g., the electron or a quark), the particle and antiparticle are distinct from each other.\n\nAs of now, we don't know which of these two categories dark matter falls into.\n\n",
"Possibly yes. In fact they are looking for signs (and may have seen some) of dark matter annihilation events.\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/fermi-data-tantalize-with-new-clues-to-dark-matter/",
"http://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/relativity-space-astronomy-and-cosmology/dark-matter/dark-matter-annihilation/",
"http://iopscience.iop.org/1475-7516/2008/07/013/fulltext/"
]
] |
|
arz0mw
|
why is e120 carmine (red dye made out of bugs) still being used instead of an artificial dye?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/arz0mw/eli5_why_is_e120_carmine_red_dye_made_out_of_bugs/
|
{
"a_id": [
"egqko02",
"egqzler"
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text": [
"A dye is just a chemical that happens to be a certain color. In this case it is bright red. The chemical can often be produced in different ways but with different costs. It might be possible to make Carmine with organic chemistry but it would require a lot of expensive processes. Both in terms of time, resources and pollution. You might also be able to genetically engineer some bacteria or algae to make Carmine but that would cost a lot to develop and still not be as cheap as the bugs. And the bugs are not used directly either, they are chemically processed to clean them up before they are used. So in a sense it is already artificially produced.",
"people like hearing ‘no artificial colours and flavours’ (fun fact: froot loops in australia dont contain blue ones so they can claim no artificial colours .. the red ones contain carmine too) "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
1d8hio
|
why is chocolate milk cheaper than regular milk?
|
I don't know if this is universal or not, but I know in all of my surrounding grocery stores (Houston, TX), chocolate milk is always cheaper than whole/2%/skim of the same brand. I can't figure out why - is chocolate milk watered down?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1d8hio/eli5_why_is_chocolate_milk_cheaper_than_regular/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c9nzu50",
"c9o1778"
],
"score": [
48,
7
],
"text": [
"Milk is graded by quality at the dairy, similar to, for example, steaks' prime or triple A. High grade is used for direct consumption, other grades go through various processing according to the grade. A lower quality grade is less expensive as there is less market for it. Milk just below top grade is flavored with chocolate as it is very effective at masking other flavors. This is not to suggest that chocolate milk is unfit for consumption, just that there is something in it that either might induce an off flavor or would greatly reduce it's shelf life. Even lower grade milk is often used in production baked goods. About the lowest grade milk often goes to chemical processors for casein extraction used in plastics.\n\nTL,DR: chocolate milk is cheaper because a cheaper lower grade of milk is used that is still OK to drink but the chocolate hides any off flavor.",
"In northeast Ohio, chocolate milk is always more expensive than regular milk... odd."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
2j05pi
|
why have basements come to be considered "scary" places, such as in horror movies?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2j05pi/eli5_why_have_basements_come_to_be_considered/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cl744b2"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Basements are underground, poorly lit (in general), cold (in general), damp places that you do not generally go into all the time. Each of those things adds to it being uncomfortable and disconcerting, which in turn makes it \"scary\". "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
ks8uq
|
how to read this chart on google finance
|
I've read up on the basic concepts of options on ELI5, but don't really get this chart.
_URL_0_
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ks8uq/eli5_how_to_read_this_chart_on_google_finance/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c2msh9r",
"c2msh9r"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"[Here](_URL_0_) I provided a decently long explanation including how to read a similar chart. Read through my second comment and see if it makes sense. \n\nNote: given that the market has been active for a week, the numbers and prices may be slightly off for the IBM options. \n\nLet me know if that answers your questions. ",
"[Here](_URL_0_) I provided a decently long explanation including how to read a similar chart. Read through my second comment and see if it makes sense. \n\nNote: given that the market has been active for a week, the numbers and prices may be slightly off for the IBM options. \n\nLet me know if that answers your questions. "
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://www.google.com/finance/option_chain?q=NYSE:PGN"
] |
[
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/kinwb/eli5_call_and_put_options/"
],
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/kinwb/eli5_call_and_put_options/"
]
] |
|
atnlu0
|
how does a breathalyzer detect blood alcohol content by blowing into them?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/atnlu0/eli5_how_does_a_breathalyzer_detect_blood_alcohol/
|
{
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"Every time you breathe, you'll have a small amount of alcohol molecules being turned to gas and transferred to your lungs, and it's those molecules that a breathalyser checks.\n\nThe more alcohol in your blood, the more alcohol molecules get turned to gas and breathed out.",
"When you have alcohol in your blood there will be some in your exhaled breath as well. The breathalyzer converts the ethanol in your breath into acetic acid and water. The byproduct of this reaction is a small amount of electricity. The breathalyzer measures how much electricity is produced and uses that to calculate how much alcohol was present in your breath.",
"Your blood leaks alcohol into your lungs, which evaporates as you breathe. The rate at which it does this depends on how drunk you are. The breathalyzer can measure the alcohol vapor concentration in air and determine a rough estimate for your BAC.\n\nInterestingly, you can also get drunk by inhaling ethanol vapors while sober. It's exactly the reverse process. That said, don't ever do this; you can get so drunk so fast that it can seriously hurt or kill you."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
4j2wyb
|
Was it ever a common military tactic to aim for the horses instead of the riders in medieval combat?
|
First time posting, so forgive me if I did this wrong or it's a bad question. I watch a lot of shows that are based in a medieval or fantasy settings with knights and warriors riding on horseback. I don't think I've ever seen foot soldiers ever targeting the horses instead of the riders. I don't know if it's because of filiming it, so you don't hurt the animals, or if nobody actually did that. I'm thinking that they would aim for the rider so they could steal the horses or something. Is there a definite answer though?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4j2wyb/was_it_ever_a_common_military_tactic_to_aim_for/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d34h988"
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"text": [
"Yes. Many people aimed for the horses instead of the riders. \n\nRoman writer Vegetius wrote this in his text on Roman warfare:\n\n > The armed chariots used in war by Antiochus and Mithridates at first terrified the Romans, but they afterwards made a jest of them. As a chariot of this sort does not always meet with plain and level ground, the least obstruction stops it. And if one of the horses be either killed or wounded, it falls into the enemy's hands. The Roman soldiers rendered them useless chiefly by the following contrivance: at the instant the engagement began, they strewed the field of battle with caltrops, and the horses that drew the chariots, running full speed on them, were infallibly destroyed. A caltrop is a device composed of four spikes or points arranged so that in whatever manner it is thrown on the ground, it rests on three and presents the fourth upright\n\nBasically, the Romans would little the field with small spikes that would break the hooves of the horses. The horses would fall down when they stepped on them, the charioteers would fall out, and the Romans would kill them and take their chariots.\n\n[Here](_URL_0_) we see a spike horse bit (the thing that goes in their mouth). These bits were fairly common, and they existed primarily to keep the enemy from grabbing the horse by the bit and pulling it down or out, thereby removing the rider's ability to control the horse. Here is a picture of just the [bit](_URL_1_).\n\nSpear equipped infantry would almost always aim for the horse- it just makes more sense to do so. This is why horse armor existed- if it wasn't common or likely, people would not have spent marge sums of money to armor a horse.\n\nEven in Xenophon's text, *On Horsemanship* (the first book on riding that we have, from about 400BC), talks about way to protect the horse from enemy attacks.\n\nAnyway. Your question was more directly focused on the Middle Ages... yes. Medieval armies still used and carried caltrops. They also used spears, and would use spears against horses at pretty much any given opportunity.\n\nSometimes, like in the battle of Chaumont in 1098, apparently William II lost some 700 horses to archers who were told specifically to shoot for the horses.\n\nSo, yes, in Medieval combat, losing your horse to warfare was very common.\n\nNow, sometimes it did make sense to only kill the rider to seize the horse, but taking horses as prizes usually was only a concern after the battle. During a battle, where your life was at risk, your priority would be to kill your attack and not to take a prize."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_C6_DXX4pkmQ/S_tM2lJT-9I/AAAAAAAAAYE/E5P0HSjYCH0/s1600/P1010063.JPG",
"https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9d/3a/64/9d3a6450d2946cb5073543344dbbf139.jpg"
]
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|
2uwr8b
|
Along with rationing what strategies were used to address shortages of materials during wwI and wwII?
|
Things like oil products and metals were rationed during the wars to free them up for military use. What other strategies were used to increase the supply of these materials? Were existing vehicles stripped and recycled for their metal or re-purposed for military use? Were mining and refining facilities targets for capture by advancing forces? Were previously protected forests allowed to be cut down? I'm interested in the topic in general so book or article recommendations would be very welcome! :)
Apologies if this has been asked previously, my searches gave little other than food rationing questions.
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2uwr8b/along_with_rationing_what_strategies_were_used_to/
|
{
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"cofh0v9"
],
"score": [
2
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"text": [
"Germany heavily tried to synthesize rare materials with varying success. Stuff like rubber for example."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
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2aut5f
|
why are intelligence agencies allowed to break the law in foreign countries by spying on their citizens?
|
I've always wondered this. I can sue everyone over even trying to read my mails or intercept my phone calls. Why not foreign intelligence agencies if documents provide clear evidence of such behaviour?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2aut5f/eli5_why_are_intelligence_agencies_allowed_to/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ciyyvp8"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Black ops are, by definition, illegal. If they weren't, there'd be no need for them to be a secret.\n\nBeing a spook is basically being a criminal for the government."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
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209pgl
|
Was there much tension between Dixiecrats and the rest of the Democratic party before the Southern Strategy, LBJ, Nixon, etc.?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/209pgl/was_there_much_tension_between_dixiecrats_and_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cg176vf"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"There was a lot of tension between the Dixiecrats and the mainstream of the Democrat Party in the late 1940s. They walked out of the 1948 Democratic Party's National Convention and organized a third party. It is best known as the Dixiecrats today, but its official title was the States' Rights Democratic Party. Strom Thurmond was their presidential nominee and he won 39 electoral votes in the 1948 election, almost costing Harry Truman the election. \n \nAfter 1948, the New Dealers and establishment members of the Democrat party scaled back their civil rights agenda in an attempt to mollify the Dixiecrats and prevent them from forming a more serious and long lasting third party. That changed after JFK and RFK began to show renewed interest in Civil Rights, after 1960. \nSource:\"1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year that Changed America\" by David Pietrusza"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
39xkla
|
why old phones had a rotating disk with holes in it, and you need to turn the disk to dial the numbers?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39xkla/eli5_why_old_phones_had_a_rotating_disk_with/
|
{
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4
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"text": [
"Old phones used pulse dialing and each digit was represented by a number of pulses. You would move the disc in one direction with your finger, and then when letting it go, a spring would move it back at the correct speed to create pulses. Each number position created 1 pulse. So if you moved the disc to 8 and let it go, it would pass 8 numbers creating 8 pulses. 0 was 10 pulses. \n\nIf you wanted, you could also create the pulses manually by pressing the hang up button quickly.",
"It was the days before sophisticated electronics, and there wasn't a simple way to use electronics to create the impulses representing a telephone number.\n\nThe dial (as it was called -- a dial is a flat disk with numbers on it, as in a clock dial or a sundial) provided a mechanical solution. For each number you needed to \"dial\", you would put your finger in the hole corresponding to that number, turn the dial clockwise as far as it would go, and then remove your finger. A spring causes the dial to return to its original position at a certain speed: as it does so, a cam causes a brief electrical contact to be made at regular intervals, so that, for example, dialling a 2 makes contact twice, sending two pulses like clicks down the line to the exchange.\n\nLater, tone dialling was introduced: instead of a literal dial, push buttons were used (although we continued to call the process \"dialling\", and we still do today). Instead of a series of clicks, each button sends a tone of a specific pitch.\n\nSome landline phones, though, can still be switched to impulse dialling (so they can be used on exchanges that aren't equipped for tone dialling). This creates clicks electronically, simulating the impulses from a rotary dial: you can hear them if you hold the receiver to your ear as you dial."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
3eldf7
|
upon reading about sandra bland, i have to ask: what civil rights do i have as a citizen when a cop pulls me over? (ex. cigarette)
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3eldf7/eli5_upon_reading_about_sandra_bland_i_have_to/
|
{
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"text": [
"I would really like to know what rights I have in California. The only one I know of is the right to remain silent. :/",
"You have the right to free speech. You have the right to be secure in your person and papers. You have the right to remain silent. These are given by the first, fourth, and fifth amendments to the constitution. In actuality you have a lot of rights beyond that, but it is going to depend on the jurisdiction you get pulled over in and how the courts apply the cop's responsibility to abridge your rights because of the probable cause. And how the courts apply those legal abridgments are dictated (ideally) by legislation drafted by your representatives. So be careful how you vote, it may ultimately determine if a cop is acquitted for shooting at you because of a lit cigarette. \n\n2 notes:\n1)A traffic stop is not a classroom. Nobody is going to learn anything. The cop won't learn to do things differently or not be a dick because you are able to rattle off case law and refuse to cooperate. That just makes him more upset because you are refusing to respect his authority (which he DOES have). Things go a lot smoother if you cooperate and sue the crap out of him later. Also, nobody gets shot.\n2) Some cops are dicks to civilians as a defense. I would be too if my job REQUIRED me to go put my life on the line for strangers every day. However, MOST civilians are dicks to cops. So for every on person a cop is a dick to, he deals with a crapload more people being dicks to him. And he can't tell who is crazy enough to kill him over a traffic ticket. \n\nTL;DR\nDon't be a dick to people, exercise your rights in court instead of in traffic, and vote wisely (elections have consequences). \n\nEdit: spelling",
"/r/AmIFreeToGo can help you and everyone else here with knowing your rights when talking to the police.\n\nA quick few things about driving in particular.\n\nWhen you are stopped driving you have to show I'd/insurance. \n\nOther than that you do not have to answer any questions or consent to any searchs, you don't even have to talk to the cop best thing to do is always remain silent and record. Both of those are your right.\n\nAn officer can order you out of the car at any time for any reason, it is a lawful command and you have to obey.\n\nYou do not have to put out your cigarette. The cop can ask you to all they want but you are under no legal obligation to comply. As far as I know that is.\n\nIf you somehow consent to a search of your car you can withdraw that consent at anytime. Ideally the officer is supposed to stop but they can easly get around this by saying that you are now being suspicious and they are going to tow/search anyway.\n\nMy advice for every American is to know your rights and know state laws. Laws vary from state to state and it is best to be informed. ",
"For any question of the form \"What are my rights when dealing with law enforcement?\", you will need to ask _**your attorney**_. \n\nAnyone who attempts to explain your rights to you without knowing your own legal history and your particular jurisdiction is doing you a disservice: at best they're giving you free and bad advice, at worst they're going to tell you something wrong which you rely on which gets you killed or imprisoned.\n\nYou generally have the right to remain silent (but there are exceptions to this), the right to an attorney (but there are exceptions to this) and the right to a phone call (but there are exceptions to this), the right to a trial by jury of your peers (but there are exceptions to this), etcetera.\n\nYou might beat the charges and you *miiiight* win a civil suit in the future, but you cannot stop the police officer from arresting you. \n\nWhen you are engaged by a police, your job is to do as nothing as possible that provides them with a reason to arrest or press charges against you. ",
"Sometimes things that are within our rights are not a good idea. If pulled over its best not to piss off a cop and follow a few basic common sense things. \n\nIf you are pulled over put the car in park, put on flashers, roll down window, keep seatbelt on. If its night then turn on your interior lights too. Don't reach for anything unless you are asked and don't volunteer any information or admit any fault. If asked why you think you got pulled over simply say I don't know officer. If you are wrong don't admit but take your ticket and go. If you are right then you can go to court and prove it. Arguing with a cop will get you nowhere.\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
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[],
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||
32wauc
|
whats going on in south africa? why are foreigners being targetted and what economic issues is it experiencing?
|
I thought everything was ok after Apartheid
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32wauc/eli5_whats_going_on_in_south_africa_why_are/
|
{
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"cqf8uma"
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"text": [
"First I must say. I am not a South African and not a expert at all but I think I can show some insight. If I am wrong, please correct me. \n\nSouth Africa is a ''broken'' nation. There still are big differences between White, Coloured and Black. Not only in terms of wealth, but also education, language and culture. \n\nBecause of these differences they are still living mostly segegrated from eachother. Whites have there own middle class and upper clas neighbourhoods. There own schools, churches etc. etc. \n\nAnd ofcourse Blacks are still pissed at Apartheid, a lot are mad because theire situation did not really became better after Apartheid. About 25% unemployement, black ghettos's etc. And if what I hear is true, in a lot of cases it is getting worse (I've heard stories about some black people missing the days of Apartheid, where they where second class citizens but atleast had more in terms of food and security. I don't know if these are true so take it with a grain of salt.). \n \nOn the other hand: some (or maybe a lot) of whites dislike seeing their culture/heritage being ripped from them (removing statues etc.) They feel discriminated by Afermative Action. They fear the loss of farmland (Farming culture is very big in white South African culture, they call themselves Boers, meaning Farmers in Dutch/Afrikaans). \n\nSo take all this history, and put it in the current situation. There is a lot of employment and poverty. Discrimination is still very common (from both sides). People are doing worse, power shutdown, crime is very high, South Africa is the rape capital of the world. Some parts are very unsafe, and a lot of parts that used to be safe are getting unsafer. \n\nCombine this with (illegal) immigration from black people from other countries in South Africa who are willing to work for less and are considered (by some) businessowners as ''better/harder'' workers then the South African people. You have a recipe for extreme violance against these immigrants [They took our jobs](_URL_0_). Basicly South Africa is barrel of powder with a fuse already inside the barrel. I can combust in violance very quick. \n\nThinking averything was okey after Apertheid is saying everything went swimming for black people after the abolishing of slavery, or Eastern Europe was fine when communist Russia fell. There are a lot of open wounds that need a lot of time and work to heal. \n\nI can't stress this enough. South Africa is a complicated country. I hope people with more knowledge then me can comment. If I am wrong please correct me. \n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=768h3Tz4Qik"
]
] |
|
5hzbua
|
how both big mmo games & small online games are hosted
|
[deleted]
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hzbua/eli5_how_both_big_mmo_games_small_online_games/
|
{
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"text": [
"OK, there's a few levels:\n\n1) Peer to peer: no central servers at all, except maybe one matching people up into games (not even that on some old games: having to connect via typing in the IP address of whoever was hosting was common on a lot of older games). Games are hosted on one of the players' computers. See lots of old games - if you ever had to mess around with port forwarding, this was why. \n\n2) Community servers: Release both a server and a client version of the game. Let other people host your servers for you, however they damned well like. \n\n3) Dedicated servers: You get a server (or if you're a big game, a whole bunch of servers) and host the games directly on that. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
1x5dx6
|
Who lived in Britain before the Celts?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1x5dx6/who_lived_in_britain_before_the_celts/
|
{
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"cf8hbjr"
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"text": [
"Although I'm not sure how far back you're looking, I'll start with the Bronze Age immigrants to Britain known as the Beaker People. Originally from Spain, these travelers ventured over in approximately 2500 BC, and flourished on the British Isles. They constructed elaborate gold and bronze jewelry, as well as detailed stone circles, the best known of which is Stonehenge. There were two waves of Celtic immigration to England. The first is popularly known as the Goidelic Migration, which occurred between 2000 and 1200. The next is known as the Brythonic migration, which most likely took place between 500 and 300\n\n\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/research/directory/beaker-people-parkerpearson"
]
] |
||
1ge4gl
|
How does human muscle fiber compare to that of other animals?
|
Let's say that we are comparing 180 lb. specimens and that all have the same amount of muscle fiber, say roughly 75 lbs. or so. In terms of strength, endurance, explosiveness, etc. how would the muscle in the human compare to other mammals (jungle cat, bear, gorilla, etc.)? Is it pretty much the same stuff or is there a significant difference? Also, how would human muscle compare to things not as closely related i.e. insects, reptiles, birds, fish, etc.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1ge4gl/how_does_human_muscle_fiber_compare_to_that_of/
|
{
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"text": [
"I don't know of any specific studies to point you to, but I do remember that one group of scientists had done this study among primates. Turns out a female orangutan (in heat)is pound for pound the strongest primate. They tested using a one-arm pull test. Humans max out at around 200 lbs.-maybe 400 pounds if your a mutant. Female orangutan in heat 1800lbs pulled/dragged with one arm!! \n\nI also remember reading once that dolphin and whale's muscle strength is about the same as a human's - they just have so much more muscle mass that it gives them the power to jump above the water line. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
hxgus
|
Why do sound waves not affect each other?
|
I remember in my high school physics class the teacher explaining that sound waves, unlike all other waves, somehow do not affect one another when they cross paths. Why is this? Or was my teacher just wrong?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/hxgus/why_do_sound_waves_not_affect_each_other/
|
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"text": [
"They do, in fact, interact with each other. In very much the same way that water does, actually.\n\nA frequency (or pitch) of audio has a certain wavelength, or size. This is the distance it takes for the sound pressure in the air to complete a full cycle of compression and rarefaction. Square rooms often have what are known as 'room nodes'. When there are parallel surfaces for sound to bounce off, the audio wavelength that is equivalent to the distance between the two walls will be naturally amplified when the two waves come across each other. \n\nThis same method can be used for noise cancellation. A good set of noise cancellation headphones have a built in microphone that monitors the ambient sound of a room, and then plays back that same frequency in opposite polarity, and when the two waveforms combine, they cancel each other out.",
"[relevant](_URL_0_)\n\nI think you are confusing two concepts, the waves don't actually affect one and other, but the resultant disturbance is a superposition of the waves at all different points.\n\nSo say I have two waves traveling in perpendicular directions, where they intersect, there is a combination of the waves and you get a resultant wave, but after they intersect, they move just as if the other wave has never existed.",
"Adding to B-80's answer: Sound waves don't affect other sound waves because superposition holds. It holds (approximately) because the equations that describe sound are (approximately) \"linear\". If you had a really powerful disturbance (really loud sound, or object making sound moving near the speed of sound), then the equations would be non-linear, and sound would no longer interfere only by superposition.",
"Your teacher was wrong about waves affecting one another: all waves pass through each other. The basic idea of \"combinable non-interacting parts\" is called \"linearity\" and it is one of the most useful ideas in mathematics. Here is a wiki link: _URL_0_\n\nSound, heat and light are all described by solutions of mathematical systems called linear differential equations. The reason the equations are linear is precisely because you can take any two solutions to such an equation and then add/subtract/rescale them and still get a valid solution. So, the mathematical reason that waves pass through each other is linearity.\n\nThis property is what makes linear systems especially nice and is also what allows you to decompose their solutions into simple parts. In the special case of translation invariant differential equations, just like sound, these simple parts are called \"waves\" and they look just like what you normally think of a wave to be. Intuitively, the reason this works is that you can build up any solution by summing these simple parts back together.\n\nNow in non-linear systems, like a turbulent fluid for example, this is not true. You can't just add two solutions together and get another. As a result, it is very difficult to decompose these systems, and so it is also much harder to construct solutions. This physically manifests as more chaotic behavior in the system. It is possible to define a wave-like object (called a soliton) for some types nonlinear systems, but it is much more sophisticated and some of the usual intuition for waves breaks down. Studying these types of non-linear systems is currently an active area of mathematical research, and we don't yet have a single good picture yet of what a \"non-linear wave\" should be."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://skullsinthestars.com/2010/04/07/wave-interference-where-does-the-energy-go/"
],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_algebra"
]
] |
|
4rhy5l
|
why are feral children often incapable of adapting to civilization? are they permanently learning impaired?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4rhy5l/eli5why_are_feral_children_often_incapable_of/
|
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"text": [
"Areas of the brain that typically used for various social behaviours are pruned if inactive. This is why for instance if you don't learn to speak by age ~12 or so you will never really learn to speak. \n\nWe've evolved to have these traits in our brains but they only work if exercised in a community. ",
"remember that kid who was homeschooled and just ended up slightly more shy than the other kids.\n\nimagine that but with NO human contact\n\nsocial skills are only gained through practice, and for some reason your brain only tries to learn them for a few years.\n\nso after you pass that age its pretty much it for you ever hoping to fit in.",
"This documentation should answer most of your questions:\n\nWild Child: The Story of Feral Children:\n_URL_0_",
"A language theorist named Lenneberg studied this, and came to the conclusion that children have a 'critical period' from age two through to puberty where, if they don't learn skills such as language in this time, they'll never be able to fully grasp it later in life. \n\nIt's debated as to why this is, but one commonly accepted theory is to due with 'brain plasticity'; which is exactly how it sounds: it's the ability for your brain to change its structure and neural connections to retain this information. After the 'critical period' brain plasticity is reduced and learning becomes harder. \n\nThere's been a few studies on this critical period and so-called 'feral children' but the most famous is a girl named 'Genie' who was neglected as a child (and thus was never stimulated to learn language) and was rescued during her early teens. Although she was cared for and attempts were made to teach her language, she never became fluent and only retained a basic understanding of English.",
"As your brain develops, they are critical learning periods where it is particularly receptive to picking new abilities, like language. If you don't learn within those time frames, that part of the brain gets \"locked down\", and it becomes much more difficult to learn later."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cymZq1VblU0"
],
[],
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||
1hbaaw
|
the origin of species
|
I tried to read the book but found it very challenging. I am hoping that if somebody could give me a concise and easy to understand run through of the book then I can enjoy it a lot more.
Thank you.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hbaaw/eli5_the_origin_of_species/
|
{
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"text": [
"I'm currently reading it also.\n\nAs I understand it, it's just a collection of his observations about the evolution of different species over time. Being that it was written so long ago, there are things that he observes and speculates over where he was surprisingly correct, and then other cases of course where he wasn't.\n\nYou should read it as a means of peering into the past and think about how extraordinary it is that they (Darwin and the other scientists that he references) were able to hypothesize such things about how, where, and why evolution takes place without having the means to prove it.\n\nAs I said before though, I just started reading it myself. So if anyone else feels that I need to be corrected, definitely do so.",
"Darwin published the Origin of Species in 1859. It was based on a series of simple observations that he made, as he was a naturalist (which, at the time, meant mostly that he went about studying nature and cataloging what he learned about it).\n\nHe noticed the following:\n\n**OBSERVATIONS**\n\n* Given enough time and no constraints, species will produce a potentially unlimited number of offspring. (This is intuitive; creatures make more creatures. 1,000 elephants, left to their own devices, will eventually become 10,000 elephants, and so on.)\n\n- Resources are limited. (Food, water, shelter; these are finite).\n\n**INFERENCE**:\n\n- Competition for resources exists.\n\n**OBSERVATIONS**:\n\n- Individuals vary.\n\n- Some proportion of this variation may be inherited.\n\n**INFERENCES**:\n\n- Individuals whose natural variation makes them more suited to the environment are more likely to survive.\n\n- Individuals who survive are more likely to pass on their genes, including those genes that increased their likelihood of survival.\n\nIn this way, the environment creates pressure that favors certain traits, some of which are heritable.\n\n**This set of observations and inferences helps to explain a great deal of what we observe in terms of the structure, function, and diversity of living systems**.\n\nThe *Origin of Species* is so long, in part, because Darwin recognized that his findings would be controversial; they provided for a model by which species could have originated without any divine involvement whatsoever. He held off on publishing for a while out of concern, and when he *did* publish, he wanted to make sure his ideas were *very* clearly laid out and *extremely* well supported.\n\n---\n\nLater, [Gregor Mendel's work](_URL_2_) would help us understand *precisely* how this heritable variation is passed on.\n\nWe now understand evolution to be **a change in allele frequences over time**, and one very important mechanism of evolution, as elucidated primarily by Darwin, is the process known as [natural selection.](_URL_0_)\n\nHonorable mention: [Alfred Russell Wallace](_URL_1_), for coming up with pretty much the same idea as Darwin did at pretty much the same time.\n\n---\n\nIf you have any more questions on evolution, feel free to ask away.",
"It is a terrible book to read if your desire it to learn about evolution, read modern books on the subject. ",
"OKAY, so. The term evolution means something changing from one thing to another over time. Obvious, right? But the form that evolution takes in our world is usually of the same pattern.\n\nBasically it's a three step process:\n\n1. Some sort of \"random\" force makes many different kinds of things.\n\n2. This large pool of things is pushed through rigorious tests until only the best adapted remain.\n\nIn capital evolution, entrepreneurs represent the random force that creates lots of different businesses. The consumers represent the rigorous tests that only leave the best products and the best businesses left.\n\nIn memetic evolution, creativity creates new ideas, and people sharing and testing these ideas is what makes our cultural ideas improve over time.\n\nIn the scientific method, the creation of a hypothesis is the random force, and the follow up tests are what determines which hypothesis becomes the leading theory.\n\nIn biological evolution, radiation/genetic defects/etc. create many different kinds of genetic traits, the trials of everyday life leave only those best adapted left to survive.\n\nThat's Darwinism in a nutshell."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wallace",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
17zztg
|
How common was casual sex throughout history?
|
The conversation started [here](_URL_0_), and I decided that it probably deserves it's own thread.
In particular, during WWII, was there more casual sex, due to the large number of transient men in some locations, and the dearth of them in others?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17zztg/how_common_was_casual_sex_throughout_history/
|
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"Just ignore pretty much everything said in that thread. The idea that sex is a purely biological urge, and thus it occurs in the same frequency throughout time and space, is absurd. I can be sure of this because it [varies a great deal based on country today](_URL_0_). Sex is highly culturally specific, and I think the people in that thread don't realize just how much their reaction to it is influenced by their specific cultural surroundings.\n\nThroughout history it is rather difficult to answer your question because it varies so much based on region, class, and time period. Looking at Ovid and Catullus, for example, we can see that sex certainly wasn't nonexistent in their lives, but looked at another way, the sexual relations they describe tend to be fairly personal. That is, they do not describe going to the local club, picking up a random girl, sleeping with her, and parting the next morning. Instead, there are fairly elaborate courtship rituals, with go betweens, wax tablets, secret messages, and the like. The big difference here, I would argue, is female freedom. For a pre-modern society Roman women were quite liberated, but that doesn't mean they could stay out all night and come home the next morning with nothing but an eye roll from their household. Of course, this applies to the upper class of the late Republican/early Imperial city of Rome. It would probably be very different for an innkeepers daughter in second century Autun, but in *what way* is impossible to know.\n\nHowever, there is one other major factor: prostitution. The Romans didn't seem to think there was anything at all unseemly about going to a brothel, and prostitutes were a part of everyday life.\n\nOne other thing, because someone had to bring it up: **Roman orgies were NOT orgies**. They were lavish quasi-religious banquets involving elaborate food preparation, music, and dancing. Sex might be involved, but when might it not?",
"Thank you so much for asking this, OP, I've wanted to know this for years. And I'd like to expand (or maybe define) casual sex for the purposes of this thread. There is sex between people who aren't close and met that night. There is also fooling around between young unattached people. In the liberal arts world, a lot of the academics are in my circles have been of the opinion that all pretenses of monogamy and chastity have always been false, and are so everywhere, and that the only difference between modern western culture and former or distant cultures is that the other ones are lying. As someone who really did have a super-chaste conservative religious upbringing, I know first-hand that something like the traditional conservative ideal of sexuality is possible, but I don't know if my single self-sample is adequate grounds to build a theory. I'd love to know about hooking up, and I'd love to know about the spectrum of sexual behaviors between that and no-sex-till-marriage. ",
"It is hard to give specifics in things like this because sex has often been a taboo subject and so even if casual sex were common, nobody may write that down. \n\nFrom my own area of expertise, one of the deciding factors was class and wealth. The more wealthy were concerned with being a gentleman or a lady and the scores of books written on the subject seem to imply that casual sex was heavily frowned upon (however it was generally accepted that men had sexual urges while women didn't). These ideas wouldn't apply to lower income people, but for many their religions would hinder this. \n\nThen again- humans are always human so the urges would still be there. Prostitution in the U.S. was seen as something of a necessary evil in many places- as long as it was confined to a certain district in a city it was basically legal. Add in the fact that alcohol consumption was probably pretty high and I'd say casual sex in 19th century America was almost as common as it is today. However this wouldn't apply to homosexuals, unfortunately, since sodomy and the female equivalent (given various names) were often illegal and very much against societal norms of the time. That isn't to say homosexuals weren't having sex, they were, it just would have been riskier.",
"Sex has been seen as something history abhorred, but this idea really only came about due to the prudishness of the Puritanical period, if we go back to Ancient Greece we see sex talked about a huge amount, Eros the God of Love was a major god, [Here's](_URL_3_) a Guardian article about a museum exhibition. This idea persisted into Roman culture, as Ancient Rome as usual copied the Greeks in this regard.\n\nWe really see casual sex as banned since the rise of the Catholic Church, to some even maritable sex was sinful if it was for pleasure, but even so this was incredibly hard to enforce, I mean there's usually only 2 witnesses both of which are guilty to these crimes, so it's difficult to prove one's guilt, not to mention many clerics and other clergymen engaged in these practices. It was only in the [Third Lateran Council](_URL_2_) in 1179, that there were specific Canon law on how to deal with sex within the clergy\n\n > Canon 11 forbade clerics to have women in their houses or to visit the monasteries of nuns without a good reason; declared that married clergy should lose their benefices; and decreed that priests who engaged in sodomy should be deposed from clerical office and required to do penance - while laymen should be excommunicated.\n\nThis is the first documentation by the Catholic Church that really decreed that adultery and sex outside of marriage was punishable, previously it was a sin, but not one that many outside of the zealous cared about.\n\nThe next period I'll look at is Protestantism. One of the major reforms of the German Reformation and the spread of the teachings of Luther, Calvin and so on was that clergymen were allowed to be married. Whilst this obviously isn't general culture, it's religious in nature, it does suggest that sex in the Protestant culture is becoming more mainstream. \n\n > Clerical marriage necessitated a reconsideration of one of the oldest Christian conundrums, the relationship between the holy and the body\n\nFrom *Oedipus and the Devil witchcraft, sexuality, and religion in early modern Europe* Lyndal Roper, 1994. Page 80.\n\nHowever, sex outside of marriage was still strictly denied and policed too, the Puritan Reformation of Britain increased this, going so far to make actions like buggery a capital offence, and adultery sometimes carrying a lifetime sentence. The [Economist](_URL_5_) has a good article on it.\n\nThe exception to the rule was a group in England during the 17th Century called the [Ranters](_URL_0_) whilst not long-lived nor that popular were associated strongly with a casual sex and nude society, to the Government they were seen as a genuine threat to the societal order, again showing how the society cracked down on this sort of activity.\n\nThe Puritanical faith loses a lot of steam in the second half of the 18th century though, especially among the upper classes we see a rejection of the Calvin leaning faith within England. Whilst a bastard was looked down upon within the poorer classes as he was seen as a drain on resources, in the upper classes visiting brothels, whorehouses and the like, this is exemplified by Samuel Johnson, a high Anglican Tory:\n\n > \"every man should regulate his actions by his own conscience\"\n\nBacking this up, in the 18th Century we see one of the oldest sex guides surviving today and popular all the way to the 1930s, it's earliest date is 1766 and was banned in Britain up till 1961, [Here's](_URL_1_) a tad more information on it.\n\nThis suggests a sort of revolution, which however only applied to men, mainly refined to the upper or middle classes too. Women were still expected to be virtuous.\n\nVictorian Britain, and the 19th Century as a whole for Britain was a time of industrialisation, which is important as it meant a rise in population within cities. This leads me onto my point about this period and it's the rise of prostitution, and casual harlotry. Whilst it was seen as socially depraving, we do see a rise in it, even so far as the British government to issue a [Contagious Diseases Act](_URL_4_) in 1864. This Act was put in place to prevent the spread of sexual diseases, especially syphilis that was prevalent in this period. It basically gave the police the right to arrest prostitutes and give them compulsory examinations, which ironically instead of subjecting prostitutes to abuse it actually helped women. Josephine Butler, leader of the CD movement argued that public vices were the product of male lusts rather than a lack of feminine purity, this was later encouraged in the 70's and 80s by a lot of writings suggesting male lust was a biological imperative, and as a man they should be able to overcome animalistic tendancies. [Source](_URL_6_)\n\nBasically my argument is that sex has been fairly prevalent all the way through history, however the Catholic and later Protestant churches did demonize sex, especially outside of marriage it didn't have a lasting effect, with brothels and the like persisting throughout these periods and flourishing within the Industrial Revolution. \n\nSorry for using Wikipedia for a few sources, as I'd read them in university textbooks that I didn't have in front of me I couldn't easily source them. \n",
"There was a UK documentary on specifically this subject a few years back. Not an academic source, but plenty of personal testimony suggesting that the turmoil of the war did lead to a sexual revolution.\n\nThe series in question: _URL_0_",
"There's some great commentary about casual sex incidences between opposite-sexed partners throughout history, with nice explanations taking into account class differences, older/younger (and/or prostitution/temple rituals), pre- and post-Christian dominance, and other great differences raised. I especially like how historians here point out the difficulty of there not being a lot in the written record for what might be viewed as illicit activities, with all the cautions we in our age should recognize.\n\nThat said. And I know it's hard. But... \n\nAnyone care to do the same for casual sex incidences between **same-sex** partners? Both male/male and female/female (the latter seems to be the most undocumented). I'd be more interested in peer/peer, versus prostitution/temple rituals (wait: did for instance the Roman temples even have male acolytes?), since the OP's question concerned casual, social sex versus formalized, ritual-based encounters.\n\nI'm also assuming (uh oh) that, in regards the OP's curiosity about the 1940s, that it was more or less like pre-Stonewall activities. Is this a reasonable assumption?\n\nAnd, I also know that the vast majority of surviving documents concerned the wealthy, but what of the non-elites?\n\nAnd, if more ancient eyes viewed same-sex activities as an act versus an orientation, were there different rules/expectations among youth, young adults and \"settled\" older adults. It seems even recently (WWII era Britain and below), the wink-and-nod attitude towards same-sex activities during one's youth in say, boarding schools for the elites – contrasted with the draconian rules against same-sex activities done by adults – suggests a shifting set of rules. Well, and rank hypocrisy. \n\nWere Lesbian women's preferences/activities largely ignored since, so long as they performed a biological role, men were indifferent (i.e., what women did absent men were \"too insignificant\" to rate a mention), or would these incidences be too scandalous to be part of the surviving record?\n\nAnd related to this last point: is it credible that male/male same-sex incidences were roughly similar but due to the post-Christian (in the West) prohibitions, it was simply hidden better, and thus absent from the *documented* record?\n\nThanks!\n\n(Mods, let me know if this is off-topic and I'll gladly delete)",
"Well, I can't quite say much about heterosexual casual sex during World War II, but I can remark on homosexual casual sex in the era, referencing two very fascinating books. The first is [*Coming Out Under Fire*](_URL_1_) by Allan Berube, and the second is [*The Straight State*](_URL_0_) by Margot Canaday.\n\n*Coming Out Under Fire* remarks with incredible detail the opportunities that World War II provided young Americans to discover their sexuality and encounter other likewise-oriented people. Most of the book follows homosexual men, but a few significant chapters focus on women in the Women's Army Corps. Berube moves through basic training all the way to the combat zone, and shows that homosexual acts happened at every step along the way. He states that in basic: \"They usually didn't experiment sexually with other men until they learned how to bend the rules or until they found themselves paired up in secluded situations.\" Both straight and gay men avoided intimate friendship and close physical contact in basic because of the fear of being accused of homosexuality. But increasingly, as training went by, men found themselves more often in secluded situations with each other. My favorite part of the book - besides Berube's wonderful work on gay men in combat - is the sleeping accommodations on Pullman train cars during troop movements and the hotel / private home accommodations in towns during overnight passes. Pairs of men slept together in one bed in these situations, and physical affection appears to be common, from what we can tell from personal/private sources. The best line is this one, from a Navy man going from San Diego to Madison, Wisconsin: \"At the end of some of the cars, there were little compartments that would sleep maybe four. I think four of us had the same idea when we got on the train. We just rushed for those compartments and all of us were gay. So it was something that night when we closed that door.\"\n\n*The Straight State* is definitely less positive about World War II for gay men, and it covers three distinct themes (immigration, the military, and welfare) in two eras of American history. Canaday makes it clear that lesbian women, their relationships, and their acts were not a priority to the state, who regulated them very little but kept a very watchful eye on them at points. The state's main concern was young homosexual men, who they started trying to weed out at the turn-of-the-century with immigrants (screening for \"perverse\" or \"sexually inverted\" bodies at Ellis Island) and continued desperately to find by not allowing transient single men during the Great Depression / New Deal to have certain rights and freedoms. In terms of the military, the state implemented an increasingly intense series of policies aimed to keep homosexual men out of the military service and World War I and World War II. However, Canaday shows very clearly that scandals emerged in both wars, as young men did experiment with each other sexually both in training and overseas, and that the state responded harshly to these events by removing them from service and stripping them of their rights by giving them a \"blue discharge\" (which disallowed them any benefits from the G.I. Bill). The excessive amount of transient men who wandered the country post-WW1 led to the development of the G.I. Bill, which, as one reviewer has put it, was and is \"the most massive federal welfare program in U.S. history\" and is primarily \"designed to create settled, married, and yes, heterosexual men.\" The rewards went to heterosexual men and homosexual men who kept their identities secret and their acts few to none. That isn't to say that casual homosexual sex didn't occur during World War II - Allan Berube's book proves that it did - but it does suggest that homosexual sex during this time period was quite risky. \n\nI don't mean to leave out lesbians and their casual sex, but both Berube and Canaday admit rather despondently there is a decided lack of sources regarding lesbian subculture during World War II. There were scandals, of course, especially in W.A.C. where women were caught together in sexual situations, but they were treated very differently than homosexual men. Only so many were given blue discharges, and few left the military service with the stigma of homosexuality. Possibly a great deal of lesbian casual sex occurred during World War II due to the opportunities of sex segregation, but this has been less apparent in the archives than the homosexual male counterpart.",
"My mother was a love child in post WW II \"holy catholic Ireland\" - my grandfather was in the army, the 2nd youngest of 10, granny was in service (a maid) and the eldest of 13. They were no longer in touch and Grandad was seeing someone new when granny found out she was pregnant. She only had his name. Her employer contacted the army and they gave him two (well three) options: abscond the army/country, pay her an allowance (deducted from his wages) or get married. He chose the latter. My mother only found this out after my grandmother died. She didn't believe it - granny was a decades-of-the-rosary, mass every day, four priests at her funeral sort of catholic. Grandad softened the blow by telling mum about how many other instances of premarital sex occurred - basically other uncles, aunts, cousins etc. who had been in roughly the same boat. It didn't sound endemic, but it sounded common.\n\nSo here's my askhistorians question: the choice grandad was given by the army, to pay for the upkeep of an out of wedlock child, I don't know if that was a formal arrangement through the army. Does anyone know? If so, could records of such payments from old salary records be used as a proxy for guesstimating a rate of premarital sex? Could digitized birth and marriage certificates be used to identify (say) six month or less gaps between wedding-with-a-bump and first baby? I realize this is just relating to premarital sex, but at least with granny and grandad there is a hint of casualness - she only knew his name and job, not where he lived.",
"When Paul Revere married his first wife Sarah Orne she was pregnant (the baby came 8 months after the marriage). David Hackett Fischer says that this was a common occurrence at the time (1750s or so) and place (New England). According to him up to 1/3rd of New England brides were pregnant on their wedding day. \n\n\n(From *Paul Revere's Ride*)\n\nApparently this wasn't exactly casual sex, but a philosophy that it was not immoral to have sex as long as you were engaged. Cohabitation was also apparently quite common in both North and South during the early to mid 18th centuries with preachers being upset at the state of affairs and also upset that nobody seemed to care. A man named John Miller traveled through New England at the beginning of the 18th century and was appalled at how many people cohabitated. He reported that people would live together for a period of time and then break up without any sense of moral wrong. He also saw that pre-marital sex among engaged couples was quite common. \n\nThere's a letter from a man named John Updike who wrote to the Anglican Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and he claimed that the people of North Carolina were among the most notorious prolifigates on earth. Pre-marital sex was common, cohabitation was common, and often he found that newly arrived immigrants had abandoned spouses and were committing adultery. Another Anglican minister wrote that \"polygamy was common, concubinage general, and bastardy of no disrepute\". (*Sexual Revolution in Early America* Richard Godbeer). ",
"My view of sexuality comes through art and music. What about all of those lovely English ballads about \"going a-maying\"? Or strolling through the *bonnie broom*, or down by the *rushing stream*? \n\nThere are hundreds of songs about young lads entreating young lasses to disappear somewhere private, and the lasses responding no (for the sake of their father dear, or dead mother, or honor) until they finally say \"yes\". Were they just hiding in the haymow for some heavy petting? I've always rather assumed they were going for the whole deal, otherwise why the concern about honor?"
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17yut3/what_was_nightlife_like_for_young_men_who_stayed/c8aa8f2"
] |
[
[
"http://www.rooshvforum.com/thread-3051.html"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranter",
"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/9778640/18th-century-Aristotle-sex-manual-to-be-auctioned-next-week.html",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Council_of_the_Lateran",
"http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/dec/09/museums-greece",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagious_Diseases_Acts",
"http://www.economist.com/node/21547230",
"http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/s/sex-and-sexuality-19th-century/"
],
[
"http://uktv.co.uk/yesterday/item/aid/576565"
],
[],
[
"http://www.amazon.com/Straight-State-Sexuality-Citizenship-Twentieth-Century/dp/0691149933",
"http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Under-Fire-Allan-Berube/dp/0743210719"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
1fv2or
|
[META] AskScience open house!
|
Hello AskScience fans, new and old! Welcome to the one of the most unique places on the internet to ask and answer science questions! You're now almost 750,000 strong, you've seen over 100,000 questions, and you make over 1000 posts each day. In recognition of the crucial role you have in AskScience, here is a standing ovation with enthusiastic applause from all of us mods to all of you!!
AskScience is still growing -- with an eye on 1,000,000 subscribers, we need your help to keep this place [awesome](/prnbv). You can do many things to encourage the continued growth and enjoyment of science content in this forum, some of which are listed below:
* **Welcome and introduce newcomers** to AskScience and the posting guidelines on the side panel. Expanded guidelines can be found [here](/r/askscience/wiki/index#wiki_askscience_user_help_page). Upvote factually correct answers with explanations, insightful follow-up questions, and relevant scientific posts. Downvote and report jokes, puns, and memes to make room for science. Downvote and report [medical advice](/s4chc) and other posts that do not adhere to [reddit's user agreement](/wiki/useragreement). Remember, reporting threads is anonymous, though we can act much quicker if you send us a [message](/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FAskScience).
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With these points in mind, here's another round of heartfelt thanks to the AskScience community. We'd now like to open the floor for general discussion and feedback about AskScience. Please let us know your thoughts!
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1fv2or/meta_askscience_open_house/
|
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"Thanks to all the mods as well, they help keep the discussions on topic and informative. With that said, I'm very satisfied with the subreddit. Here's to a goal of 1 million.",
"I'd really love it if you gave a shot at making the journal club a weekly feature. I think a weekly open thread for theoretical/methodological questions/discussions could be valuable too.",
"Am I allowed to just say thanks at how awesome and fascinating I find this subreddit everyday? \n\nMy first comment here, since I typically appreciate and abide by the \"keep yur mouth shut kid if it ain't real science\" rule. :)",
"Huge shout-out to the mods--I consider this one of the top subreddits!",
"I keep thinking there's an improvement you could make here. I know the rules are strictly enforced, and that's great.. but here's an idea I had for an improvement that follows the ideals of science at the same time.\n\nOn several occasions I've seen a question on a subject in which I'm not an expert. However, I'm an analytical thinker and I feel like I could speculate with a reasonable degree of accuracy, but this wouldn't be allowed under the current rules.\n\nBut isn't this how science is done? Question - > Hypothesis - > Testing - > Changes to Hypothesis to meet observed results - > Repeated testing - > Peer review - > Good science.\n\nWe're stuck on Question - > [Expert knowledge required here] - > Good science\n\nIn the absence of a well cited response to a question, would it be so wrong for a structured speculation thread instead? You could define a basic template for it and require some minimum level of input. Propose your theory to answer the question, explain how you would go about testing it, what results you would look for, etc. If, at some point, an expert does show up who can answer the question, or a proof is found elsewhere, the speculation could then be scored as to how accurate it was, if your methodology was sound, or why you were wrong.\n\nIt seems like you could involve the lay person (ie, me) in the conversation in a meaningful and potentially educational way, if it were done right.",
"I am 14 years old right now and I would say that I'm pretty curious.\n\n Most times I just can't get enough of learning anything. I come up with questions, google them, and then I see these convoluted long mathematical explanations that I couldn't possible understand at this stage in my education.\n\nThat's when I come to askscience and I use the search box and BAM I suddenly find some easy to understand explanations that satiate my curiosity while bringing up even more questions.\n\nWithout this community I think it would be safe to say that I would not be near as interested in science as I am now.\n\nThank you mods for keeping this subreddit great with your moderating. \n\nThank you everyone that continues to answer questions and help everyone with that feeling of curiosity on their brain. \n\nThanks everyone for making this the greatest subreddit and my personal favorite sub to read.",
"I didn't realize we were getting this big! Yay!",
"There is something that bothers me regarding something that is not really in the rules but is done nonetheless:\n\nSomeone reacts with something that is in between a follow up question but is thereby analyzing and putting things together, and mentions something like 'correct me if I'm wrong', like [here](_URL_0_).\n\nThis question is totally downvoted but there are corrections below, there is a lively discussion and also on top of that the fallacy in the remark of the pp is tackled. \n\nWhy oh why do we downvote this?\n ",
"Askscience is an awesome subreddit! It really fosters scientific knowledge.\n\nHowever, in some cases I have seen good questions get downvoted, probably because they appear simplistic.\n\nThough they may seem so to the experts on askscience, the asker wouldn't be posting it here if they weren't curious enough to want an answer, which should be encouraged rather than discouraged. I personally feel that this kind of action discourages people from asking questions by fear of \"looking stupid\".\n\nIt is by no means a common occurrence, but it happens."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1fxfpk/how_big_can_black_hole_get_is_there_a_limit/caetert"
],
[]
] |
|
1hxslu
|
Have there been any conclusive studies done on sugar/calorie-free energy drinks?
|
For example, [Monster Zero Ultra](_URL_0_). I know it contains no calories and no sugar as well as half the caffeine content of your typical drip coffee, but how much research has been done on the effects of the other ingredients in this stuff? I'm specifically referring to the ingredients that make up their "energy blend" but any other ingredients may be worth noting. How do the health effects of these types of drinks compare to coffee?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1hxslu/have_there_been_any_conclusive_studies_done_on/
|
{
"a_id": [
"caz97to"
],
"score": [
8
],
"text": [
"I'm sure someone can go more in-depth on some of the ingredients but here's some information on two of them. Artificial sweeteners are always a topic for discussion. The linked drink uses acesulfame potassium and sucralose which according to [_URL_2_](_URL_4_) is not linked to increased cancer risks. \n > Before approving these sweeteners, the FDA reviewed more than 100 safety studies that were conducted on each sweetener, including studies to assess cancer risk. The results of these studies showed no evidence that these sweeteners cause cancer or pose any other threat to human health.\n\nOther [sources](_URL_0_) indicate that acesulfame potassium may have carcinogenic properties and needs to be studied more. \n\nIt was a little difficult to find but a [few](_URL_6_) [websites](_URL_7_) show that it contains about 135mg of caffeine per can which is about the same amount of caffeine contained in a normal 8oz cup of brewed coffee. While caffeine is a well understood compound, additional research is bringing more details to light. A good read is [Caffeine Jitters](_URL_3_) on _URL_5_.\n\nMore and more products are adding caffeine. Some energy drink brands don't list the caffeine content because it's a part of their 'energy blend formula'. Couple this with some people drinking multiple energy drinks each day in addition to sodas and other caffeine-infused drinks and you're easily spiking your daily caffeine levels. This has led to an increase in ER visits (from the Caffeine Jitters link above):\n > According to a report released last month by the U.S. Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration, the annual number of emergency room visits associated with energy drinks increased to 20,000 in 2011, a 36% boost from the previous year.\n\nI can't quite go into detail about every ingredient in the blends. Information on Guarana is available [here](_URL_1_). \n\nAll in all the biggest risk in energy drinks is most likely going to come from consuming them too frequently. Especially when you take into consideration that each can is two servings on top of whatever other drinks you consume that day. The Caffeine Jitters article points out some situations in which caffeine consumption can amplify existing medical conditions. Sorry I couldn't give further information on the rest of the ingredients. Hopefully others can fill in on them. "
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://www.fooducate.com/app#page=product&id=64C7012A-2BF8-11E2-A40C-1231381A0463"
] |
[
[
"http://www.cspinet.org/reports/chemcuisine.htm#acesulfamek",
"http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-supplements/ingredientmono-935-GUARANA.aspx?activeIngredientId=935&activeIngredientName=GUARANA",
"Cancer.gov",
"http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i5/Caffeine-Jitters.html",
"http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/artificial-sweeteners",
"acs.org",
"http://caffeineking101.blogspot.com/2012/12/monster-zero-ultra-energy-drink-review.html",
"http://www.energyfiend.com/monster-zero-ultra-energy-drink"
]
] |
|
2z1622
|
dogs and cats cry; why don't they perform a similar function to a human's laugh?
|
Also why aren't dogs and cats ticklish?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2z1622/eli5_dogs_and_cats_cry_why_dont_they_perform_a/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cpes6t0",
"cpfd5k3"
],
"score": [
20,
2
],
"text": [
"Actually, research suggests that they do laugh but it is on frequencies that we can't hear or discern. I know I've had a few dogs that have been ticklish between their paws, or at least seem like they \n\n_URL_0_",
"Laughter is a function of being surprised by the unexpected. We laugh because we are able to expect a certain thing to happen and when that thing does not happen we are intelligent enough to be surprised and we laugh. Deep laughter is really quite like a scream that has been broken up by the closure of the throat kind of like a spasm. \nMost Animals don't really have such deeply engrained expectations to be able to laugh. The higher intelligence animals seem to have this ability, try googling Dolphins laughing for some examples. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughter_in_animals"
],
[]
] |
|
c16v99
|
how is a blood clot not a death sentence?
|
[deleted]
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c16v99/eli5_how_is_a_blood_clot_not_a_death_sentence/
|
{
"a_id": [
"erb7qde",
"erb7s89",
"erb88vb"
],
"score": [
2,
4,
3
],
"text": [
"The clot stays in one place. The big danger is if it’s dislodged and then travels to the heart or lungs or brain. Some pharmaceuticals can dissolve a clot, some don’t necessarily impact the existing clot but prevent new ones from forming. In some cases, a physician will actually go in and try to extract the clot.",
"It's a question of where the blood is going. A blood clot is typically not big enough to block the central passage through the atrium and ventricle. It's when the blood clot passes through these central passages and is pumped into the artery that supplies oxygen to the heart muscle and gets lodged there that a heart attack occurs, as the heart muscle itself is starved of oxygen and stares to die further down stream.\n\nThis is the case with embolic clots (clots that are moving in the blood). Static blood clots (atherosclorosis) that are casued by cholesterol and other junk building up on the wall of an artery are also a thing, but they have to reach about 80% - 90% occlusion before you really start to notice it and they typically fragment. \n\nBlood 'thinners' inhibit coagulalation and stop the stuff that forms clots from sticking.",
"When most people think of a blood clot, they think of an embolus, which is a clot that moves through the vein or artery. Most blood clots are thrombi, which are stationary blood clots. If a thtomus is mobilized it becomes an embolus, and either moves through the vein towards the heart; or if it's located in an artery it will move towards the extremities or an organ.\n\nIf an embolus reaches your brain, it will usually cause a stroke. The blood vessels of the brain are small, and depending on the size of the clot it can block the flow of oxygen to a significant portion of the brain.\n\nA clot that makes its way to the lungs will cause a pulmonary embolism. PE's can cause shortness of breath and even affect the heart, causing palpitations.\n\nIf a clot makes its way into the coronary arteries it can cause a heart attack. Which means the heart isn't receiving enough oxygen. \n\nYour body is a machine, and it works well while it's working, a little tiny clot can really cause any number of issues depending on where it is and how big it is.\n\nIf this didn't answer your question, please let me know. I'm not a doctor, I'm a student of massage therapy, so my knowledge is limited but I'm still hoping it might have answered at least part of your question."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
14jtd6
|
Why do mammals give birth from their vaginas?
|
Do we understand why this is evolutionarily preferable? Or did this mutation occur too early? From my point of view, it would seem that giving birth from such a small aperture would be terrible and nobody with this mutation would survive, buuuut we did. Could someone explain why? Thank you.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/14jtd6/why_do_mammals_give_birth_from_their_vaginas/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c7dpp8f",
"c7dufk1"
],
"score": [
11,
3
],
"text": [
"Mammals give birth through their vaginas because a vagina is, by definition, the tube leading from the uterus to the outside of the body, and that's the tube that has to be used.\n\nOther vertebrates aren't any different, save that their vaginas open into a cloaca before going outside the body. In either case, whatever is coming out of the uterus (be it an egg or a life-born offspring) has to pass through the vagina because that's the only tube that leads out of the uterus.",
"As opposed to what? "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
lcbgq
|
free trade and fair trade.
|
Thanks, y'all.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/lcbgq/eli5_free_trade_and_fair_trade/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c2rr0i4",
"c2rr0i4"
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text": [
"They're two completely different things (I can see where it's confusing, though).\n\nFree trade: trade between nations with very few or no restrictions at all.\n\nFair trade: a label given to certain products certifying that the people who made them (usually third-world farmers, etc.) were paid a fair price for the product and were not taken advantage of by predatory practices.",
"They're two completely different things (I can see where it's confusing, though).\n\nFree trade: trade between nations with very few or no restrictions at all.\n\nFair trade: a label given to certain products certifying that the people who made them (usually third-world farmers, etc.) were paid a fair price for the product and were not taken advantage of by predatory practices."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
1pycmi
|
Who were the local law enforcers in Medieval Germany?
|
Were there ranks? were they simply militia? I'm talking around the 1000 AD period.
What was their name?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1pycmi/who_were_the_local_law_enforcers_in_medieval/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cd7i3kk"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Law enforcement was mostly organized on a local level, in towns or small villages. In the villages mostly by the \"owners\" of that villages, the lower nobility or the owners of the farms.\n\nThe Lower Law (niedere Gerichtsbarkeit, don't know if the translation is correct), also called *Thing* or patrimonial Law, was enforced by the local officers. They were called *Schultheiß* or similar in the local dialects, like *Schulze*, *Schulte* or *Schultes*. Schulze is still one of the most common names in Germany. The polish Sołectwo is derived from the German term, the English equivalent is bailiff or mayor. \nThe were not allowed to torture, maim or kill someone. The could only sentence lighter punishments, like monetary punisment, pranger, scold's bridle and such. \n\nThe Schultheiß office later evolved and turned into what is a mayor in modern days. The term was used in Württemberg until 1930. \n\nHerebord von Bismarck died in 1280 in Stendal and was a Schultheiß there. He is also the oldest known ancestor of Otto von Bismarck. \n\nHere is a pic of a Schultheiß from the 16th century: _URL_0_\n\nThe *Blutgerichtsbarkeit* (ius gladiim, law of the blade) was a criminal court that could inflict bodily punishment. These officers were usually noble and called *Vogt*, *Voigt* or *Voight*, which is also still a common name in Germany. The term itself is derived from advocatus and the English equivalent is the reeve. \n\nThe Vogt was also responsible to organize the defense of the county and he had to lead the feudal levy/array. \n\nCarolus Magnus installed a lot of *Vögte* in 802, who later (11th/12th century) evolved into heritable fief offices. The *Vögte* became *Grafen* (counts) and were now high nobility. \n\n\n\n \n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Schultheiss.png"
]
] |
|
2f0q2a
|
Can an adhesive stick to oxygen or other air molecules?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2f0q2a/can_an_adhesive_stick_to_oxygen_or_other_air/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ck4w50e"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"The problem I see with this is that gases don't have a \"surface\". I could certainly see gases dissolving and equilibrating in an adhesive, and possibly being physically absorbed to the surface of the adhesive (also at equilibrium). However, if you apply your adhesive to a gas, and then move the other surface away, you won't suddenly pull all the gases in your space along with it."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
j3xwt
|
Why and how do drugs get you "high"?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/j3xwt/why_and_how_do_drugs_get_you_high/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c28xo0y",
"c28yg6n"
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text": [
"As far as we can tell, mostly by acting like existing neurotransmitters, or by releasing those neurotransmitters, or by causing a buildup of those neurotransmitters.",
"[This should answer your question](_URL_0_)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/addiction/drugs/mouse.html"
]
] |
||
qfvjb
|
minecraft
|
Please explain minecraft, as in what makes it more than computerized legos. I am not bashing minecraft, just curious about it
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qfvjb/eli5_minecraft/
|
{
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"c3xa78h",
"c3xajn0",
"c3xbzzz",
"c3xeasa"
],
"score": [
19,
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"You can kind of think of it as computerized legos. \n\nMinecraft has two main forms of play: Survival and creative. Creative is the easiest to explain-- you have unlimited block materials of all sorts of colors and textures, as well as electrical components (Wire, levers, push blocks), interactive pieces (Doors, railroads), and transportation sets (Boats, railcars). You also have the ability to fly (As in, you can go wherever you want, place whatever you want). It's in this mode you see creations such as [a full 1-1 scale representation of Azeroth](_URL_2_), and all sorts of remakings of our favorite video games characters such as [Sonic](_URL_1_). \n\nSurvival is the exact same game, except you start out with nothing and everything you use, you have to mine or craft. I could delve into the mass, mass amount of things you can craft using the eleven or so simple, mineable materials, but I'll let [this](_URL_0_) do the talking for me. In survival, you also have life and hunger you have to worry about, as well as a slew of monsters. It's really hard to explain what Minecraft is *about* because there are SO many things you can do in it. My friends and I have a multiplayer server set to Survival, and we have this big great area where we build things and share materials, as well as go out on adventures to find monsters and Spawners (Think of them like... monster instances) and kill the spawners (Where the monsters come out of) to reap the loot from the cave. We have wheat farms and roller coasters, castles and underwater tunnels. It's just... fun. I guess the addictiveness comes into play with the fact that gathering materials in Survival takes a really long time. Not so long that you become annoyed and aggravated, but long enough that whenever you finish a build you can look at it and be really proud of yourself. \n\nYahtzee said it best-- \"Minecraft is a good parent who knows that if it just gives you your golden cock and balls you will get bored of it. So it pays you five dollars a week to wash its car until you save up enough money to buy yourself the golden cock and balls and at the end of the trek you'll love it all the more.\"",
"negative_epsilon already kind of mentioned it in his creative section. Most of my fellow students who play Mine Craft are amazed by the part with electrical components. With levers, repeaters, red stones and all that stuff you can build electrical devices in Mine Craft which is... well you could do that IRL of course, but there is the fascination of the fact that you can build calculators, clocks and even paddles inside of a game and you don't need to buy components, learn how to solder or combine them in other ways and think about boundary effects or things like that. You turn on your computer, start a game and build a computer within the game.\n\nIf you never heard of it before, search youtube for some examples of interesting Mine Craft constructions. [This](_URL_0_) is an example for a 24h-digital clock built in Mine Craft (not ELI5-suitable explanation). I was told someone built an ingame computer you could play Mine Craft 2D on, but I can't remember where it was, so this is what I know as the amazement-factor of Mine Craft.",
"Oh, and the best tip of all:\n\nEnjoy being a noob.\n\nSeriously, it's the best part of the game.",
"Survival mode on Minecraft is much more than computerised LEGO bricks.\n\nIn single player, you are essentially alone in a world theoretically infinite, but actually about 8 times the size of the actual planet earth. Like, the world is literally almost as large as Saturn.\n\nIn multiplayer, it's the same thing, but either you and your friends or a community of strangers.\n\nYou have a health bar, and hunger level. Being well fed stops you from dying, allows you to gradually restore health and also gives you the energy to run.\n\nIn the day time, you are free to explore the world and build things. You'll start by gathering materials with just your hands, but quickly construct tools like shovels, pick-axes hatchets to gather a wider variety of resources with greater efficiency. Materials usually are either in the form of blocks, or can be crafted into blocks. These blocks can then be joined in any way, just like the world of Minecraft itself.\n\nHowever, at night... monsters appear. Zombies, spiders, skeletons and other fearsome creature roam the planet, and you're unlikely to be able to fight them all off. You'll have to take shelter in your buildings.\n\nOnce you and your friends have built a safe camp, you can begin to be more creative. Perhaps you'll start a farm, growing crops and livestock for food. Maybe you'll dig a deep underground mine with a complex railway system to transport your minerals to the surface. The game features a simple binary circuit system - blocks can be on or off which, in its simplest form can be used to open or close your front door, or in its more advanced use be used to create entire computer systems, musical sequencers and interactive games.\n\nIt's cheesy, but you're limited by your imagination in this game. The world itself is randomly generated, but somehow turns out absolutely beautiful. There are expansive underground caves to explore, with treasure hidden in the very depths, but teeming with monsters, and at the same time lofty bluffs perfecting for constructing your ideal castle, complete with lava pouring out.\n\n[Map of the currently explored world on the largest Minecraft server, which features cities, towns, countries, government, economy and all sorts. Zoom in. It's awesome.](_URL_0_)\n\n[A random Minecraft world](_URL_1_)\n\n[A music sequencer](_URL_4_)\n\n[A piano](_URL_3_)\n\n[Some underwater creations](_URL_2_)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Crafting",
"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_TvdJvLvMOvg/TJ6bXEbfbiI/AAAAAAAAABc/C1Sbll3npn4/s1600/sonic+minecraft.jpg",
"http://imgur.com/a/4HrHB#0"
],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv0jFtyDyko"
],
[],
[
"http://map.super-earth.net/",
"http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2011/049/5/f/my_minecraft_world_by_oldiblogg-d39u4s1.jpg",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGWrLB-DyZ0&feature=relmfu",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt1fOED0vC8&feature=relmfu",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWkgiTvMZKQ"
]
] |
|
2ws3ty
|
During WW2, was there an Allied equivalent of doctors Josef Mengele or Shiro Ishii (of Japanese medical experimentation Unit 731?)
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ws3ty/during_ww2_was_there_an_allied_equivalent_of/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cou3rv3"
],
"score": [
19
],
"text": [
"There was lots of human experimentation by the Americans during World War II, but most of it was much more consensual, less horrific. [Volunteer conscientious objectors were used for research on a starvation study at the University of Minnesota](_URL_0_), for example, as part of research funded by the Office for Scientific Research and Development.\n\nThe most problematic work though was in the area of nuclear technology. It was new, there were key safety questions to be asked, the whole thing was being massively expedited, and yet it was all kept secret to an unprecedented level. This meant that informed consent was not seen as an option.\n\nSo at several sites, coordinated by of the Manhattan Engineer District (the Manhattan Project) there were human radiation experiments that involved injecting terminally-ill patients with substances like plutonium, to see how it was excreted by their systems. It also involved passive monitoring of people working with plutonium, uranium, and polonium to see how their bodies were processing the toxic and radioactive metals. There were concerns, shared amongst people working on the project, that this work was in many ways unethical, because they did not have any intention of telling people if they had gotten too-large doses, especially in places where the workers in question did not have knowledge of what they were handling. \n\nSeparately, there is also the issue of testing a surface-burst nuclear weapon, knowing it will produce downwind fallout, in an area that had low population density but not zero population density. The scientists and security agents of course had no intention of telling the surrounding populace that they were being silently irradiated at low levels. The scientists were acutely aware of the possible dangers, and stationed MPs and scientists in nearby towns with Geiger counters, hoping for the best. \n\nThere were other issues of this nature, this bad mixture of secrecy with safety. The small \"water boiler\" reactor at Los Alamos, for example, vented radioactive gases into a canyon nearby, but its vent carried no warning labeling on it or restrictions — something that made the safety officers very uncomfortable.\n\nEileen Welsom's _The Plutonium Files_ talks about the plutonium injections, and the reports by the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, from the early 1990s, contain discussion of other WWII-era unreported exposures. Most of the exposures were pretty low, but it is still pretty unethical. The people who took over the atomic work in the mid-1940s explicitly talked about this as having violated the Nuremberg conventions, and kept it secret explicitly in order to avoid causing scandal.\n\nAll that being said, in my view this is pretty piddling compared to Mengele and Unit 731 — unethical, but it lacks the horror. And there is a \"great good\" being sought-after here; knowing how plutonium was excreted helped set safety standards, for example, for the thousands of workers who had to deal with it. It wasn't arbitrary, in the way many of Mengele's sadistic experiments were, trying to sew together twins and the like. But it was still unethical, still a dirty deal made under the cover of war, and this is not just the judgment of hindsight, but how many people who knew about it thought about it at the time."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experiment"
]
] |
||
5pzfbv
|
Bounties and sniper combat during the Vietnam War
|
[deleted]
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5pzfbv/bounties_and_sniper_combat_during_the_vietnam_war/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dcv2apm"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"I think the fundamental question you need to ask yourself when considering the concept of bounties is the following: Was it actually a reality during the Vietnam War? \n\nThe truth of the matter is that there simply isn't much evidence supporting the existence of bounties beyond field reports and the testimonies of American soldiers. /u/Lich-Su [answered this question the best way possible a few months ago](_URL_0_) and the conclusion that Lich-Su reaches is one that I fully agree with."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/51auq1/my_father_told_me_he_had_a_500_bounty_on_his_head/d7arobh/"
]
] |
|
1xsy6v
|
why do some people black out from high levels of g-forces while other don't?
|
Why can fighter pilots withstand several G's and some people black out on roller coasters? What is happening physiologically?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xsy6v/eli5_why_do_some_people_black_out_from_high/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cfebri9",
"cfebu8s"
],
"score": [
2,
5
],
"text": [
"There are 2 types of G-forces: Positive and Negative\n\nPositive G's force your blood into your feet, you black out due to lack of blood in the brain.\n\nNegative G's force the blood into your head, you red out as the pressure in your brain increases.\n\nFighter Pilots wear specialized equipment to keep their blood flowing even when faced with high G forces.",
"Everyone will black out if exposed to sufficient G-forces. But pilots are (1) in peak physical condition, (2) trained in techniques for resisting the effects of G-forces, and (3) usually wearing flight suits with equipment designed to counteract the effects of G-forces. They work by putting pressure on the limbs, particularly the legs, in an attempt to keep blood from pooling down there. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
66a2pv
|
At r/TIL, there is a post trending with people in the comments section saying the FBI sent a letter telling Martin Luther King Jr. to kill himself and the FBI/CIA later killed him. Is this true?
|
The post in question is [here.](_URL_0_)
So, is the evidence the comments gave that the FBI/CIA killed MLK credible? Here are comments that showcase the main points.
[1](_URL_1_)
[2](_URL_2_)
Thanks!
PS - As a followup question, is the quote that the TIL was originally about legit? [Though it appeared in a newspaper, it could still be apocryphal.](_URL_3_)
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/66a2pv/at_rtil_there_is_a_post_trending_with_people_in/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dghpaif"
],
"score": [
15
],
"text": [
"While the letter is anonymous (in the sense that it's not signed and it's not on any letterhead), [a complete copy was found in J. Edgar Hoover's files](_URL_0_) and a congressional investigation verified that it was sourced from the FBI. Whether Hoover himself wrote it is apparently unclear, but he almost certainly knew about it, given where the unredacted letter was found. The phrasing of the letter does not directly call for King to commit suicide, but it ends saying in part, \"King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is.\" King believed that it called for his suicide, and many others have agreed.\n\nHis death is a different story. Blaming an assassination or even an attempt on the US government has a long and storied history. Some of these are accurate (Castro was long a target of the CIA), some are not (evidence strongly ties JFK's death to Oswald), and some are in between (Salvador Allende almost certainly committed suicide in the midst of a coup that was probably backed by the CIA).\n\nBut the evidence that it was carried out by the US government is basically nonexistent, and those comments don't provide any evidence besides the equivalent of a knowing nod. King had a lot of enemies, including a large portion of the white population but also some in the black population who disagreed with his nonviolent ways. James Earl Ray was convicted for King's death based on reasonably strong evidence, but over the years, various claims have been made that King was killed by others for various reasons, mostly having to do with racism or anti-communism, carried out by the Mafia, the KKK, or some other loner at least as often as the government is claimed to be involved. To my knowledge, the claims are backed by little or no physical evidence and mostly involve people long dead who cannot confirm or deny the claims.\n\nThere's probably more doubt about James Earl Ray than there is about Oswald, but not a lot more."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"https://redd.it/6677ch",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/6677ch/til_that_after_the_assassination_of_john_f/dggjdk0/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/6677ch/til_that_after_the_assassination_of_john_f/dggiqt8/",
"https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ZrYlAAAAIBAJ&sjid=8_QFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3439%2C4781621"
] |
[
[
"https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncensored-letter-to-mlk-reveals.html?mtrref=undefined&gwh=179501884D97D94A10B01B2901176AF7&gwt=pay&assetType=nyt_now&_r=0"
]
] |
|
3d3kz2
|
How did the Mongols achieve crazy speed from their multiple horses?
|
I read that they typically had three or four horses following them whenever they march so they can easily change--but wouldn't the horses, which are also riding with them albeit without a passenger--also be tired once the riders change their mounts?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3d3kz2/how_did_the_mongols_achieve_crazy_speed_from/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ct1jem8",
"ct1jhjy"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"There's a big difference between carrying a rider and following along unmounted; the steppe mares favored by the Mongols weigh in at about 600 lbs, so a 180 lb man with some basic provisions is going to be a third of their body weight. It's much more efficient to shift the weight between your string of horses; imagine going on a hike with four friends, but you need to carry a single 60 lb pack. Everyone's going to tire out over the day, but it'll be much faster for the person carrying the load, so it makes sense to share it among the group.",
"Not necessarily. For example, imagine you are in a field running. Your body is designed to carry your flesh over your bone, and not much else. The same goes for a horse, and they can run for hours on end, but when you stick 150 pound lump of anger in human form on top, plus 50 pounds of laminar in addition to whatever marching kit and such an ostensibly nomadic fighting force will be carrying on their person, it naturally cuts down on how long they can endure a full out sprint, while the harem of horses they may be leading behind them will be a few degree's more rested."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
2es5f5
|
why do people criticize findings from data in saying "it's just correlative/correlation does not mean causation"? isn't everything we know about everything just from correlation?
|
Like. Every medicine proven to work. Every physical phenomenon. Every data statistic trend. Aren't they all correlative? So why disregard certain data or not attribute some kind of causation to a trend because it's 'just correlative' when in fact everything we know is correlative?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2es5f5/eli5_why_do_people_criticize_findings_from_data/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ck2f8a0"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"So what you're saying is that, as we increase funding for NASA, we're dooming more and more people to die at their own hand by hanging? \n_URL_0_\n\nSimply put, variables are eliminated in a well-done study until causation is clear. It's not just that the people that got the drug got well; it's also that the people who did not get the drug were still sick; and that the study can be repeated with the same results."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.tylervigen.com/view_correlation?id=1597"
]
] |
|
1w4oio
|
Why do temperatures fluctuate more when it is cold but stay more consistent when it is warm?
|
It seems common for temperatures to rise and fall 20 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit day to day in the winter, but in the summer the temperature seems to stay relatively the same.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1w4oio/why_do_temperatures_fluctuate_more_when_it_is/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ceyu7kx"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"There's two main factors to this:\nA) Humidity. In the winter, there's very low humidity (because it's cold and air holds less moisture the colder it gets)... so temperatures can rise and fall by a lot more than in the summer.\n\nB) The temperature difference between the subarctic and subtropical air masses is much greater during the winter than the summer. Therefore, if the jet stream dips a bit south or north, you can have big temperature swings."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
37kmid
|
why house of cards politics won't work in real life.
|
~~More specifically~~ For example AmericaWorks.
EDIT:Broader scope.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37kmid/eli5_why_house_of_cards_politics_wont_work_in/
|
{
"a_id": [
"crnknng",
"crnnv75"
],
"score": [
5,
5
],
"text": [
"Because in the show, Frank Underwood is some sort of super-persuasive Machiavellian. In real life, I doubt the president would even be able to convince his own party to go through with America Works.",
"In more general terms, \n\nHouse of Cards made some sense when it was a british series, since in a pariamentary system, it makes sense than any MP can plot to crush the PM and get elected by the parliament as the next PM instead.\n\nIn the american persidential system, to make it plausible that a House majority whip could become president, they had to make lots of allowances for Underwood being magically capable to manipulate both POTUS and VPOTUS into picking him as the new VPOTUS. \n\nIn Season 2, the \"scandal\" that breaks the Walker administration is vaguely defined, and realistically more similar to Benghazi than to Watergate, it's the kind of thing that the opposition would have a field day with, but it's hard to see why it would drop the presiden't spopularity into the single digits. \n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
1tbgwf
|
why would people get coal in their stocking for being naughty?
|
Wheter or not it literally happened, why coal? Why not something else? Where did this saying even come from?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tbgwf/eli5_why_would_people_get_coal_in_their_stocking/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ce69e82"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"In the days when most people heated their homes using open coal fires, a lump of coal was considered a completely commonplace and worthless item. It's the sort of thing that a very naughty person might receive from Santa, so that they can see he's been and decided they're not worthy of any decent gifts."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
3brtx8
|
When did the Arabs become known as "Arabs?"
|
I've been curious about this recently. I think there's a second question here, too, because I'm betting the Arabs got that name because the place they lived was called Arabia (I presume by the Romans). If so, why did the Romans call that area Arabia?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3brtx8/when_did_the_arabs_become_known_as_arabs/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cspa5nk"
],
"score": [
13
],
"text": [
"Arabs were first mentioned in both Biblical and Assyrian texts of the ninth to the fifth centuries BC where they appear as nomadic pastoralists inhabiting the Syrian desert. The fact that the name begins to be used by both cultures during the same period suggests that \"Arab\" was how these pastoralists designated themselves. What its original significance was we do not know, but it came to be synonymous with desert-dweller and a nomadic way of life in the texts of settled peoples.\n\nSource: *Arabia and the Arabs. From the Bronze Age to the coming of Islam*, by Robert G. Hoyland."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
6vgbjh
|
When a nuclear bomb goes off underwater. Does it create a giant air bubble?
|
If so how large is it? And how long does it last?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6vgbjh/when_a_nuclear_bomb_goes_off_underwater_does_it/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dm07526"
],
"score": [
122
],
"text": [
"It creates a massive steam bubble, it doesn't last too long (not sure on actual time it is there for) but something interesting happens when the \"bubble\" is there. The gas makes the bubble expand until it reaches the maximum size it can as the pressure forcing the bubble to expand becomes weaker the water pressure causes the bubble to collapse on itself before expanding again (this can also result in a flash of light as the bubble collapses). This actually happens a few times, each time the \"bubble\" gets smaller in size until the energy is depleted. I will try to find a video explaining it as I may not have done a terribly good job of explaining it.\n\nEdit: What I am talking about happens at the three min mark of this video: _URL_1_\n\nEdit 2: a more in depth video of the bubble side of things, _URL_0_ starts explaining it at the 6 min mark.\n\nI couldn't think of the word but the video reminded me, the bubble oscillates in the water. The size of the bubble would depend on the energy released by the explosion."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://youtu.be/cp5gdUHFGIQ",
"https://youtu.be/OubvTOHWTms"
]
] |
|
6i1vkx
|
Would a supercomputer (from a government, University, organisation like NASA, ...) be able to mine all the bitcoins at once?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6i1vkx/would_a_supercomputer_from_a_government/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dj3ja29"
],
"score": [
21
],
"text": [
"No. For two main reasons.\n\nFirst of all, Bitcoin mining started out using CPUs. They're in every computer and they can do pretty much any computational task reasonably effective, but they don't really excel in anything. Then people figured out that graphics cards (or specifically, GPUs) are very well suited to doing the same computation on different data. A GPU contains a large number of simple processors and can perform certain tasks extremely quickly, but is essentially useless for others. Originally, GPUs were made to be good at generating 3D graphics for games, but people figured out that other types of computations also work very well with the specific architecture of a GPU. One example is Bitcoin mining. The performance of a modest GPU is much higher than that of a high-end CPU, so miners switched over to using GPUs in large numbers (so much so that the preferred models were often sold out).\n\nBut, people reasoned that while GPUs are much more efficient, they're still somewhat general purpose chips. What if you'd design a chip purely for Bitcon mining. And this is what was done. Such a single-purpose chip is called an ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) and ASIC-miners were again a big step up in efficiency. I have a small USB device that cost me about $20 and uses 5W in power that is as effective at mining as a midrange GPU at the time I bought it.\n\nBy now, the entire Bitcoin network uses these ASICs for mining. They're so efficient that if you would pile up the top 500 supercomputers in the world and put them all to work on Bitcoin mining, they wouldn't outperform the current stack of mining hardware. Because of this, some Bitcoin-supporters like to claim that the Bitcoin network is more powerful than all the supercomputers in the world combined. But this is a bit disingenuous, since supercomputers are rather versatile and suitable for a wide range of workloads, where a Bitcoin-miner does only 1 thing.\n\nSo, if someone with a single supercomputer would start mining Bitcoin, they wouldn't make dent in the network.\n\nAnd now for the second reason, which is much more fundamental. Because you could imagine (even though it's not particularly realistic) that some organization would secretly create or buy a large stack of ASIC-miners and switch them all on all of the sudden. But even then they wouldn't be able to mine all the bitcoins at once.\n\nBitcoin-mining (and mining for pretty much every other cryptocurrency) revolves around an important parameters: The difficulty. This parameter determines how much computational power is needed, on average, to find a new block and therefore new bitcoins. In Bitcoin, this parameter is updated every 2016 blocks and this update is done by looking at the time it took to mine the previous batch of 2016 blocks and then set the difficulty parameter in such a way that if mining power remains the same, the next set of 2016 blocks will take 2 weeks (average of 10 minutes per block).\n\nIf the mining power on the network would suddenly jump by a large amount, the rate at which blocks are mined and bitcoins are created would temporarily spike up, but the next time a cycle of 2016 blocks has been completed, the difficulty would go up accordingly and the rate at which new blocks are mined would go down again. Depending on when in the 2016 block cycle the increase in mining power begins, it may take 2 cycles to properly adjust for it, but this takes a few weeks at most (and the greater the sudden increase is, the faster the cycle is completed, so the sooner the difficulty adjustment is).\n\nSo those are the two main reasons. First, the hardware being used is specifically designed and built for Bitcoin mining. Unless you have the same type of equipment, you won't be able to compete. Secondly, the protocol was designed to adjust to changes in the network mining power. A large increase will see a sudden speed up, but this'll get corrected relatively quickly."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
trqcr
|
What will happen to the planets that aren't destroyed when the sun supernovas?
|
Do they just float randomly out of our current solar system and find another home? Are they destroyed some other way? We were discussing this and figured I would get some outside perspective.
edit: Not supernova, as it has been pointed out that our sun is not massive enough to supernova, but simply die out.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/trqcr/what_will_happen_to_the_planets_that_arent/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c4p5dzd",
"c4p6ksf"
],
"score": [
17,
9
],
"text": [
"[Here you go :3](_URL_0_)",
"The biggest thing to consider it that our sun will not supernova but will expand to encompass the Earth and then contract to about the size Earth. [Here is a short video](_URL_0_)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/tl986/when_our_sun_explodes_into_a_supernova_how_would/"
],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9L7SMoT3RM"
]
] |
|
5j4rfp
|
After Stalin died, were there any measures taken by the Soviet government to avoid someone amassing power on scale like his?
|
After Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Congress passed the 22nd ammendment, limiting presidents to two consecutive terms. This was to prevent a leader from dominating the executive office like he had, and to prevent any potential abuse or misuse of power.
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5j4rfp/after_stalin_died_were_there_any_measures_taken/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dbdzxgv",
"dbe78z4"
],
"score": [
30,
74
],
"text": [
"follow up question. What, if any, affect did these measures have on Nikita Khrushchev coming to power 3 years after Stalin's death?",
"Although it is difficult to say whether there were distinct policies in place to prevent the future build-up of power in such a tyrannical fashion, the tone of the government definitely changed. Instead of the government of personality that had prevailed previously, the Soviet government was replaced by a troika of Georgy Malenkov, Lavrentiy Beria, and Vyacheslav Molotov. Between the three of them, they came to more consensus decisions with the Presidium and Supreme Soviet. This post-Stalin government would initiate a campaign of \"peaceful coexistence\" with the West, and cut back on repressive measures. One exeption was the East German Uprising of 1953 after which Beria was charged with treason for his brutal treatment of East German protestors. Eventually, Nikita Khruschev would become Soviet Premier. He initiated a series of \"de-Stalinization\" measures. These measures as he explained in his \"secret speech.\" Khruschev \"condemned Stalin for irrationally deporting entire nationality groups (e.g., the Karachay, Kalmyk, Chechen, Ingush, and Balkar peoples) from their homelands during the war and, after the war, for purging major political leaders in Leningrad (1948–50; see Leningrad Affair) and in Georgia (1952). He also censured Stalin for attempting to launch a new purge (Doctors’ Plot, 1953) shortly before his death and for his policy toward Yugoslavia, which had resulted in a severance of relations between that nation and the Soviet Union (1948).\" None of this sat well with Molotov, a close friend of Stalin and his foreign minister, but Khruschev's words seemed to ring true for the rest of the Presidium. Subsequently, when Khruschev's domestic popularity waned, he would be removed from office peacefully and Leonid Brezhnev would become First Secretary of the Central Committee.\n\nSources:\n\nStalin's Wars by Geoffrey Roberts\n\nMolotov Remembers by Felix Chuev and Vyacheslav Molotov\n\nEncyclopedia Britannica for the exact quote above _URL_0_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"https://www.britannica.com/event/Khrushchevs-secret-speech"
]
] |
|
vuj4x
|
If childbirth is one of the most painful experiences one can go through, how come it does not render the person unconscious as when having other forms of pain inflicted?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/vuj4x/if_childbirth_is_one_of_the_most_painful/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c57spcs",
"c57spl1",
"c57svek",
"c57sysc",
"c57sytw",
"c57talf",
"c57tfip"
],
"score": [
407,
829,
126,
38,
29,
707,
20
],
"text": [
"This is r/askscience. Anecdotes, speculation, and off-topic posts are removed. Please mind the guidelines, and remember to include citations/sources when possible. Thanks!",
"Apart from folklore and cultural bias, what evidence is there to suggest that childbirth is actually 'one of the most painful experiences one can go through'?",
"_URL_0_\n\nApparently there are changes in a pregnant woman's biochemestry-blah-blub shortly before the actual childbirth, making the pain more bearable. I'm sure someone with real qualification can tell you more about this, but you really only need to google something like \"pregnancy pain threshold\" or similar stuff and you'll find basic information relatively quickly.",
"I would point out that if you pass out you aren't \"going through\" the pain. \n\nAlso, \"The most painful experience you can go through,\" isn't really quantifiable enough to give a solid scientific answer. Comparing different levels of pain requires knowing the pain threshold of each individual. \n\nI can tell you some women DO occasionally pass out from giving birth. This used to happen a lot before the advent of modern medicine, when labor would drag on for days, but with the introduction of labor hastening drugs, usually the cause stems from Preeclampsia or some other unforeseeable complication. \n\nMore information on Preeclampsia can be found here: _URL_0_",
"The pain from labor is mostly the visceral pain of a hollow viscus (the utureus) contracting against it's contents that are not moving out (the fetus). This pain is carried by different nerve fibers to different parts of your brain, than the somatic pain of, say, your finger being hit by a hammer. It's more akin to a small bowel obstruction or an impacted gallstone.\n\nAt least until the delivery when the perineum and vagina can tear.\n\nAlso I'm no expert but I'm not sure how real \"passing out from pain\" really is, or what might cause it.",
"Most doctors and physiologists consider pain to be an activating stimulus rather than something that causes you to lose consciousness. For example, when patients are undergoing an operation it is often necessary to increase the amount of anesthetic they are receiving once the surgeon begins to cut the patient. Even though the patient was fully anesthetized before the cutting began, the pain of being cut activates their sympathetic and central nervous system and causes vital sign changes and occasionally limb movement. This OR observation is consistent with the fact that the intense pain of childbirth does not cause depressed consciousness, but actually the opposite. Thinking from an evolutionary point of view, increased sympathetic tone (i.e. increased awareness, heart rate, blood pressure, and pupillary dilatation) would be a very advantageous response to pain in many situations (such as when an animal is attempting to eat you). You can also verify this at home by providing painful stimulus to someone who is asleep and noting how their level of alertness changes afterwards.\n\nThe perception that pain causes people to go unconscious is probably based on two separate physiologic processes. The more severe of the two is called shock. Shock is a pathologic state where the cardiovascular system can no longer provide adequate perfusion to vital organs, particularly the brain. Shock has multiple causes but the one most pertinent to this question is hypovolemic shock secondary to trauma and blood loss. This occurs when there is simply not enough blood in the body. Once enough blood is lost, the brain becomes hypoxic, conciousness becomes depressed, and the patient will shortly thereafter die. Someone witnessing this process might incorrectly assume that the pain associated with this person's injuries is causing them to go unconscious. Another more benign explanation for the perception that pain causes unconsciousness is something called vasovagal syncope. This is stimulation of the vagus nerve, which activates the parasympathetic nervous system resulting in hypotension, bradycardia (slow heart rate), and possibly temporary hypoperfusion of the brain. The vagal nerve can be stimulated in many ways. Common causes are the sight of blood or other disturbing sights, extreme emotional duress, and straining during a bowel movement. It is common for someone who is hurt to look at their injury and have a resulting episode of vasovagal syncope, which to an observer might be attributed to pain.\n\n_URL_0_\n_URL_2_\n_URL_1_",
"Being rendered unconscious seems to not be directly related to the level of pain. Two of the most physically painful things humans can endure, as [described in this thread](_URL_0_) did not render people unconscious.\n\nOne person who experienced Irukandji syndrome said \"It's like when you're in labor, having a baby, and you've reached the peak of a contraction—that absolute peak—and you feel like you just can't do it anymore. That's the minimum that [Irukandji] pain is at, and it just builds from there.\""
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[
"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7414330"
],
[
"http://www.webmd.com/baby/tc/preeclampsia-and-high-blood-pressure-during-pregnancy-topic-overview?page=2"
],
[],
[
"http://www.dana.org/news/brainhealth/detail.aspx?id=10072",
"http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/vasovagal-syncope/DS00806",
"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001220/"
],
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/o7ksq/what_is_the_most_physically_painful_thing_that_a/c3f1e7v"
]
] |
||
5nh6o9
|
what does it mean for a language to be recursive?
|
For example, Noam Chomsky claims that all human languages share this trait, no matter how dissimilar. I wasn't able to grasp fully the meaning from Wikipedia.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5nh6o9/eli5_what_does_it_mean_for_a_language_to_be/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dcbm6uw"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"An example in English:\n\nI rode the bus which almost ran out of gas with my friend who has never been to Europe which is a continent.\n\nWith brackets inserted to show recursive structure:\n\nI rode the bus [ which almost ran out of gas ] with my friend [ who has never been to Europe [ which is a continent. ] ]\n\nThe recursive parts can be removed and it's still a valid sentence. Each recursive part too is a complete thought. The sentence is just a compilation of the following:\n\nI rode the bus with my friend.\nThe bus almost ran out of gas.\nMy friend has never been to Europe.\nEurope is a continent.\n\nWe could go into further detail about continents etc. ad infinitum. A sentence can be composed of other sentences. This is what is meant by recursion in natural languages. Formal languages are similar."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
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