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2ozyf0 | In what ways did culture of the time influence Buddhist beliefs and practices? | I'm not sure if this is an appropriate/well-worded question but it's something I've been thinking about for a while since I started studying Buddhism. I understand all religions need to be taken into the context of where and when they originated and how different cultures shaped them over time. I was hoping to find some discussions or explanations of how some of this occurred in Buddhism.
I know the Buddha was originally a follower of the ancient Vedic religion in India and as I learned a little bit about Hinduism, I started to see the parallels. I guess what I'm looking for is what were practices and beliefs that carried over into Buddhism and what practices and beliefs unique to Buddhism itself. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ozyf0/in_what_ways_did_culture_of_the_time_influence/ | {
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"Stephen Batchelor, a former monk in both the Tibetan and Zen traditions, wrote [Buddhism Without Beliefs](_URL_1_), an explicit attempt to separate the baby from the cultural bathwater in Buddhism. It's been ages since I read it, but if memory serves I believe Batchelor argues that Buddhism is a matter of practice and inquiry, not belief. \n\nThe history of Buddhist art tells you a lot about cultural accretion. Found [this](_URL_0_) from the Met. \"In the earliest Buddhist art of India, the Buddha was not represented in human form. His presence was indicated instead by a sign, such as a pair of footprints, an empty seat, or an empty space beneath a parasol.\" Compare that to florid Tibetan iconography.\n\nWhat's great about Buddhism is that it adapts so well to cultures it merges with, from spiritually athletic Zen to belief-based pure land to compassion-based Mahayana to insanely ritualistic Vajrayana. There are all these \"skillful means\" based on the varying needs of sentient beings. Why would you want to limit yourself to what the historical Buddha and his contemporaries did or believed?\n\nEdit: You might be interested in the way Tibetan Buddhists conceptualize the various vehicles or \"yanas\" of Buddhism, from renunciation - the original vehicle - to great compassion to radical acceptance. There are scholarly explanations, but Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche wrote an excellent one that compares them to ways of being in a cinema. [Here](_URL_2_)",
"Hi there! This is a little outside my area of expertise and I'm sure some people will come in and much of this information was unfortunately taught to me by some professors at college in Bhutan, but I'll try to provide some sources where I can. And if someone has more sources for information I can't fully verify or can elaborate or correct me, please do. \n\nFirst off, you're right to be overly specific in calling the Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) \"a follower of the ancient Vedic religion\" as opposed to saying, \"The Buddha was a Hindu.\" Hinduism is a modern construct associating the native Indian religious complex with a sort of national identity (a reaction against Islam being associated with Pakistani national identity). The religion, I was told by a Bengali sociologist, is properly called \"Brahmanism\" because as Christianity derives its authority from the Bible, and Islam from the Qur'an, the followers of native Indian religions used to derive their authority from Brahmins, or the priestly Varna (caste). \n\nAll Dharmic religions (Buddhism, Jainism, and Brahmanism) have the concept of enlightenment in the spiritual sense. So enlightenment isn't a new thing that Buddhism came up with, what IS different is that the Buddha taught that enlightenment was not contingent upon Varna. Before that, except for a few ascetics in the woods, it was commonly believed that only Brahmins could be enlightened, and that the other Varnas (Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra) and outcastes would never be enlightened. Slaves (Shudra) would have to be reborn as a Brahmin if they ever wanted to get enlightened. \n\nContrary to popular opinion, the Buddha did not do away with Varna. He was human and a product of his times. While caste isn't SUPPOSED to matter in the Sangha, the Sangha still tended to run in an aristocratic fashion with monks possessing distinguished ancestry being at the top, while monks without at the bottom (with exceptions, of course). \n\nA good place to start with the history of Buddhism is Andrew Skilton's \"A Concise History of Buddhism.\" It's mostly a history of the texts with their context in mind but it does go over India before the Buddha. \n\nYour question's a little vague though. It's kind of like asking how did the world of Jesus influence Christianity? Well, a lot of ways, of course. If you're a little more specific, I can start pointing you in more precise directions. "
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1ndkfj | During World War II did merchant ships have insurance against being sunk by the enemy? Did the national governments offer compensation? | Interested in both Allied and Axis shipping, especially British/American running the Atlantic. Did the American declaration of war change anything?
| AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ndkfj/during_world_war_ii_did_merchant_ships_have/ | {
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"They were insured against loss. The precise details likely varied from ship to ship. I'm not sure where you would find the precise details of the amount any given vessel was insured for off hand. Lloyds and the American Bureau of Shipping did issue annual registers of insured vessels though. You won't find most of that information online though. Mystic Seaport has digitized many records from the 19th century but that doesn't really help you much. \n\nIf you are willing to do some hard copy searching the Mariners Museum in Newport News has a full run of both registers. Here's a link to their catalog for the years in question.\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)",
"The norwegian merhant fleet was organized by the government in exile, and basically turned into one massive organization. I reccomend reading the wikipedia article on Nortraship. \n\nAfter the war, there was a reconstruction payment by the norwegian government of 4 billion NOK, of which 1.5 billion went to a Nortraship repayment for sunk ships according to [this](_URL_0_) source (in norwegian). They would however have to argue whether the sinking was the result of wartime activities, or a normal naval accident. If it was a wartime incident then it was eligible for reconstruction money, and if not it was up to the insurance agency.\n\n_URL_1_"
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8121vw | During WWII what was the average distance that tanks fought other tanks? | For example during the battle of Kursk I’ve always imagined it as the German with their Tiger and Panther on side far away and the Soviets wither their KV-1’s and T-34’s on the other far away. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8121vw/during_wwii_what_was_the_average_distance_that/ | {
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"Coox and Naisawald's 1954 study *Survey of Allied Tank Casualties in World War II* gives several statistics that attempt to determine this.\n\n > A study of 800 U.S., British, and Canadian tank casualties in Western Europe, the Mediterranean Theater, and North Africa disclosed that the average range at which tanks were immobilized by gunfire was under 800 yards. A sample of 100 tank casualties in North Africa showed an average range of 900 yards; 60 tank casualties in Sicily and Italy--350 yards; 650 tank casualties in Western Europe--over 800 yards. These figures are explicable by the fact that in the western desert of North Africa, where the terrain favored ranges to the limits of visibility, tank fighting often resembled naval battles which boiled down to \"slug fests\" where light vessels (=light tanks and armored cars) were involved. A figure of 900 yards represents the averaging out of engagements at 1500 to 2000 yards as well as those at hub-to-hub range, e.g., Knightsbridge; Rommel's brilliant tank traps allowed his antitank guns to effect kills at short range. Martel has explained the reasons for the Germans' electing to fight armor at longer ranges in the desert as follows:\n\n > > The German armored forces often attacked British unarmored troops if they found them insufficiently protected by artillery and antitank guns, but they always avoided closing with our tanks in a running fight. When meeting British tanks in strength they preferred to take up a position which was well protected by artillery fire and with antitank guns on the flanks, and used the superior gunfire from stationary tanks to shoot at the British tanks at long range.\n\n > It should be stressed that the data on range are almost always derived from \"subjective\" estimates given in after-action reports or \"third-hand\" summaries. The only exception is a portion of the British ETO sample, wherein operations research teams from the 21st Army Group actually examined tanks immobilized after the Rhine crossing. The over-all average of 800 yards range is also probably higher than the actual figure, if it were known, for a much larger sample, inasmuch as a further 75 tank casualties to gunfire were listed only as \"close,\" \"fairly close,\" \"point-blank,\" \"various,\" etc.\n\n**TABLE VIII**\n\n**AVERAGE RANGES AT WHICH TANKS WERE IMMOBILIZED**\n\n**(Sampling)** [gunfire only]\n\nCategory|Sample|Range (yds)\n:--|:--|:--\nUS: ETO-First Army|330|796.4\nETO-Third, Seventh, Ninth Armies|119|713.7\nITALY|3|758.9\nUS: Total|452|774.4\nUK: ETO|190|886.3\nITALY|51|348.1\nSICILY|6|300.0\nAFRICA|96|890.1\nUK: Total|343|797.1\nCANADA: ETO|5|432.0\nETO: US, UK, CANADA|644|804.8\nAll Theaters: US, UK, CANADA|800|782.0\n\nHardison's *Data on World War II Tank Engagements: Involving the U.S. Third and Fourth Armored Divisions* also gives a figure that is about 800 to 900 yards on average.\n\n**TABLE V**\n\n**SUMMARY OF RANGES AT WHICH ALLIED AND ENEMY TANKS WERE DESTROYED IN VARIOUS AREAS OF NORTHWEST EUROPE**\n\nArea|Number of Allied Casualties|Average Allied Casualty Range in Yards|Number of Enemy Casualties|Average Enemy Casualty Range in Yards\n:--|:--|:--|:--|:--\nVicinity Stolberg|26|476||\nRoer to Rhine|37|959|6|733\nBelgian Bulge|60|1000|9|833\nVicinity Arracourt|20|1260|74|936\nSarre|37|1116|35|831\nRelief of Bastogne|19|731|16|915\nTotals|199|946|140|893\n\n > It was shown in the referenced report that the distribution of combat ranges is approximately represented by a Pearson III distribution function of the form:\n\n > F(R) = e^-X (X + 1)\n\n > X = 2R sqrt R\n\n > R = range, Rbar = average range,\n\n > F(R) = fraction of ranges greater than R."
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3rhdfs | if the only way you can get an std, sti, and hiv is if you sleep with someone who's infected then how is it stds, sti's and hiv exist to begin with? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3rhdfs/eli5_if_the_only_way_you_can_get_an_std_sti_and/ | {
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"There are other ways to get most STIs. HIV, for example, can be transmitted through an infected person's blood, often by sharing or reusing needles for drug injections.",
"STIs are commonly transmitted sexually but can be trasmitted through other bodily fluids such as blood, saliva even milk. The origins of the infectious cause itself depends on which infection we're talking about. Generally, the infections are capable of spreading from animals to humans through contact (such as infected blood). HIV for example originally infected chimpanzees (the disease is known as simian immunodeficiency virus - SIV) which mutated into HIV once it found its way into people. Other diseases have similar origins. ",
"The question you really want an answer to isn't really explained in the post. \n\nFirst, you're making a pretty big assumption that the first humans were \"clean\" as it were. Life started simple and got more complex from there, so bacteria, viruses, etc were around long before humans were. Microscopic organisms were around before complicated creatures like animals, some of these microscopic organisms found their way inside of animals because they were eaten or an animal cut itself on a rock, or something similar. Some of these bacteria couldn't survive inside of animals, others could. \n\nSo once bacteria managed to live inside something else, it just became a matter of getting from one animal to the other. Bacteria that could live in bodily fluids had a huge benefit because that gave them an excellent way of passing on between other animals. Those bacteria that couldn't were less likely to survive and pass on.\n\nSo that's how you end up with STIs and such. Over millions of years, bacteria that were able to be transmitted sexually found great success because it's more or less inevitable that an animal will have sex at some point in their lifetime if it survives, so these bacteria were most likely to survive and spread themselves. A bacteria that might have been spread through other means slowly but surely evolved to become better and better and staying in a living creature and spreading through sex. Not because there's anything special about it, but because these infections live in the things most like to be transferred between sexual partners. A bacteria that lived only in your armpit hair is going to have a hard time transmitting itself to other hosts."
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239xkh | why do bottles of antibiotics and vitamins smell bad? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/239xkh/eli5_why_do_bottles_of_antibiotics_and_vitamins/ | {
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"Not all antibiotics have that rotten egg smell, but those that do typically contain a Sulfur compound in the form of hydrogen sulfide that gives it that rancid smell.",
"Not all vitamins smell bad. It's mostly just the B vitamins, which have a sort of eggy/sulphurous smell. They are however quite harmless. (Except B3, don't take too much of that...) \n ",
"sniff a bottle of valerian root. WHEW.",
"Vitamin B smell you're probably thinking of"
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9itdw9 | how do we know counting rings in a tree is a definitive "1 year"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9itdw9/eli5_how_do_we_know_counting_rings_in_a_tree_is_a/ | {
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"In places with seasons, trees go through a predictable growth-dormant cycle that produces the distinctive ring pattern.\n\nSince most of these seasonal trees go dormant regardless of what the actual winter temperature was that year (they're timing the day lengths, not responding to unpredictable temperature swings) a ring is produced even if the year's weather was very unusual.\n\nYou get big rings for years with optimal growing conditions and weak rings for drought years.\n\nRings are less pronounced and more difficult to count in trees that prefer more tropical climates, since they may grow all year instead of stopping entirely on a regular cycle.",
"A tree's growth rate changes in a predictable pattern throughout the year in response to seasonal climate changes, resulting in visible growth rings. Each ring marks a complete cycle of seasons, or one year, in the tree's life. So after seasons pass there will be a growth ring which would be close to or right at 1 year worth of growing.",
"It might be easier to understand if you think of it as a full cycle of seasons and not exactly a 365 day period. The rings show more what happens during the growing season that makes up the most of the actual ring. It grows quite a bit. The cells appear different (darker in most cases) during the 'off season' and lighter during the time of quicker growth. This is a cycle that is made up of a year growing quickly in the spring/summer and slowing toward Autumn to winter. Then repeating. The rings come as the the tree grows outward all around.",
"* rings are caused by alternating between growing during the warm season and dormancy during the winter...one winter per year = one ring per year\n* trees in the same area will show the same ring patterns, unlikely if there wasn't some external factor involved\n* ring thickness matches up with historical records...the Annals of Ulster tells us there was a drought in 748, and tree rings in Ireland match up\n* radiocarbon dating corresponds with tree-ring dating",
"If you have a look at a stump you'll see thick bands of a light shade where the tree got bigger fairly rapidly during the warmer months followed by thinner darker bands where it didnt really grow much in the winter. It makes the same pattern every year because the seasons are predictable.\n\nSome bands will be thicker where the tree has has a good long summer with plenty of nutrients where others may be thinner and harder to count but it always makes the same pattern.",
"Can't be hard.\n\n \n\n\nGrow it 5 years, cut it, 5 rings\n\n \n\n\nGrow it 10 years, oh look, 10 rings\n\n \n\n\nExtrapolate",
"Wood biologist here. The wood as we usually think about, is a tissue called xylem and is where the water travels to go from the roots to the leaves. In an incredibly simplified way, you can see it as a bunch vertical of pipes (called vessels) and fibers. The xylem is produced continuously during the growth season by another tissue (the cambium) located as a ring around it. \nSince one of the function of the xylem is to transport water, the cambium will produce bigger pipes when the season is rainy (typically during the spring) and smaller pipes when it is dryer (like in summer). If the winter is cold enough, the activity of the cambium will stop completely creating an abrupt change of vessels size as it pass directly from summer to spring. Those vessels size variations can be seen easily (or not for some species) because bigger pipes means more empty space in the wood and thus a lighter wood color.\n\nNow those growth ring usually follow the seasonal cycle as it is what determine the water availability. The trees have evolved to expect more or less water during the different seasons and can detect the day length and temperature changes to determine what season it is. That's why they can be called \"annual rings\" and used to know the age of a tree.\nBut this is true mostly for temperate region (where the seasonality is well defined). \nIn tropical region the growth rings are less visible (and even sometimes completely absent) as the season are less marked and the cambium activity never stops, and it can be hard (or impossible) to read them.\nAlso, abrupt changes in the water availability for the tree or in his environment can produce false annual rings. But it's not so common and usually not important as it is nothing compared to the tree lifespan.\n\nIt is important to note that this mechanism is basically the same for the gymnosperms trees (like conifers) except for one thing : there is only one type of cells, called tracheids that play both the role of vessels and of fibers.",
"The annual growth cycle in trees is easily observable because there are what is known as summer rings and winter rings. \n\n .\n\nThe summer rings are lighter in color and form when the tree experiences warmer temps that promote faster growth as well as longer days which expose them to more sunlight. They are also significantly thicker than the winter rings depending on how warm the summer was.\n\n.\n\nWinter rings are thinner and darker. These occur when the temperatures are much colder than summer temps and the sun is not visible for nearly as long as it is in the summer. Did you ever notice it getting darker much earlier in the winter and the sun doesn't seem to come up as early? This means the trees cant get as much sunlight and as a result, their growth slows down during these months.\n\n\n.\n\nThere are trees out there known as \"old growth\" from hundreds of years ago which have very thin summer and winter rings because temperatures we significantly cooler than they are now, so they grew very slowly. The summer and winter rings are very close together in old growth trees.",
"You could always plant a tree and cut it down in 30 years and count the rings, if you wanted to know --for sure-- that one tree ring is one year.",
"Let's say you live in Timbuktu and you have some knowledge of the weather patterns of the last 30 years. You know that 15 years ago, there was a really bad draught, and the growing season that year was particularly bad.\n\nIf you cut down a tree that you know is 30 years old, you will be able to see, clearly that the 15th ring from the outside, the ring that was created when the tree was 15 years old, looks different than the other rings. It may be a different color, and it will be thinner than the rings that grew in better years. If you find and older tree, you will be able to read the weather patterns from years so far back that you probably don't even have records for! This is why tree rings are so important; some trees can tell us about how the local weather was changing thousands of years ago, and there are even tree fossils that have been found that give us data about weather phenomenon millions of years ago! If you have enough trees you can compare them and build up a pretty accurate calendar, year by year, which you can then compare to the local geology. It's awesome!",
"When someone plants a tree and cuts it down say 30 years later, they can see the rings correspond with the age. What they can also see is that the rings correspond with the local weather. Now if they then cut down a 500 year old tree next to it, they can see that the outer 30 rings on the 500 years old tree correspond to the 30 year one. This is the basis for [dendrochronology](_URL_0_), or the science of dating stuff by tree rings. Depending on the location we have a complete tree ring based dating yard stick for centuries (if not millenia) back.",
"Plant tree. Wait some number of years. Cut down tree and count the rings. Do they match how many years passed since you planted it? Maybe. ",
"In the summer, a tree grows fast and in the winter, a tree grows slow. Growing fast leaves a light stripe and growing slow leaves a dark stripe, like how a balloon that is full of air seems to be lighter in color than one that is deflated. The pattern of winter and summer growth, or dark and light stripes, is what gives trees their rings.",
"Rings are caused by the seasons, rather than passage of time. So 40 winters would cause 40 rings. And since winter happens once every year, we know the tree is 40 years old.",
"All answers explained why the one tree rings represent 1 year in tree age. But I understand the question as \"how it was discovered\".\n\nAccording to most documents I have skim through, it seems it was credited to American Astronomre A E Douglass, who had a strong interest in studying the climate, developed the method around 1900.\n\nHowever according to wikipedia on [Dendrochronology](_URL_0_), Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519) was the first person to mention that trees form rings annually.\n\nAnyway, I think there was a lumberjack one day, looked at his work during a boring lunch and connected that: \"Wait a minute, this forest was planted 10 years ago and this tree have 10 rings!\", just like that. But his name was never recorded in history...",
"If you want a serious but readable source on this subject try Edmund Schulman book the Living Ruins. It discuses the biology of. tree rings and how they have been used in conjunction with Bristlecone Pines to refine radio carbon dating. The science is called dendrochronology.",
"Because you can use human records to pick the exact year a tree started growing. You can cut down a tree which someone a century ago recorded in their diary the exact date it was planted and count the rings. Match that with local weather records which we also have a few hundred years of and you see the result of hot summers and wet and dry periods. \n\nYou then build back a local chronology starting with the oldest tree you can find and then timbers from local buildings which overlap the periods you already have patterns from. \n\nExceptional events like the eruption of mount Tambora and the resultant _URL_0_ leave quite a distinctive mark in tree records. which help to calibrate things.",
"If some calamity caused a year to have two summer-winter cycles, that would create two rings. The rings reflect the seasonal growth cycles, not a 'calendar year'... but seasons do reflect years almost always."
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zz8hb | Whale sounds/songs can reach up to 190dB. Is this not dangerous for humans taking a swim nearby? | I read (Wikipedia) that whale sounds can travel across entire oceans. Also what stops the sounds being heard above water if they are so loud? Is the answer something to do with sound travelling better/faster underwater? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/zz8hb/whale_soundssongs_can_reach_up_to_190db_is_this/ | {
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"Simply put, the gap between water and air is too difficult to cross for a number of reasons.\n\n\nFirst, the speed of pressure waves in water is much, much greater than the speed of pressure waves in air. This means that to someone near the water surface, it may not even become a recognizable sound wave.\n\n\nSecond, sound waves below water will have a very large amplitude. That means they will be much more likely to 'bounce' off the surface of water and reflect back downwards than to traverse the gap and continue into the air.\n\n\nFinally, the surface of water is hardly uniform. Unlike a smooth membrane, water is perfectly capable of sloshing and absorbing energy in the form of motion. This will make any pressure waves more likely to become sloshing."
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8kk4y4 | what exactly is a galaxy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8kk4y4/eli5_what_exactly_is_a_galaxy/ | {
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"A massive collection of stars, all orbiting a central point, usually a supermassive black hole. \n\nBasically,from what we can tell, they form much the same way individual star systems form. A cloud of gas (mainly hydrogen) condensed due to gravity, the center becomes a Star, and the eddys of the cloud help condense other parts into planets. A galaxy forms like that, but on a scale trillions of times larger"
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6x23o6 | what happens when a country 'condemns' something? | What does 'condemning' actually do? Is it just a bunch of people coming to the conclusion that, 'yes, this was in fact, a bad thing. Shame on them.'
is there nothing more to it?
Like I read on the news all the time 'x organization/group/country condemns actions of other organization/group/country"
Obviously when ISIS kills 50 people, that's terrible. Why do countries have to officially acknowledge action? What is actually being accomplished? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6x23o6/eli5_what_happens_when_a_country_condemns/ | {
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"That's pretty much it - just expressing disapproval. A lot of times there's not a good/politically palatable solution to problems, so all a politician can do is talk about it.",
"It doesn't do much to solve the problem, but what's important is the act of stating in public your opposition to something.\n\nIf, as a senior politician, you're asked what you think about a particular event and you just shrug your shoulders and say, \"Well, these things happen,\" people are going to wonder whose side you're really on.\n\nThis is why Donald Trump recently got into trouble for not being strong enough in his condemnation of the Alt-Right's actions in Charlottesville. He did at one point condemn their actions outright, but later reverted to his previous line that people on both sides were to blame in roughly equal measure.\n\nThis was widely interpreted, even by some of his political allies, as a refusal to acknowledge that the Alt-Right are, in their eyes, very clearly and openly pursuing similar policies to the Nazis of 1930s Germany, and that such a movement is objectively bad. By not clearly condemning the Alt-Right, Trump is now seen by many as a Nazi sympathiser.\n\nCondemning such a movement doesn't, of course, do anything to tackle the problem. But it does make it unmistakably clear that you are strongly opposed to it, and *that's* the point."
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9dtty4 | as someone who doesnt follow sports and social trends or have a twitter or instagram, why are people burning their nike clothes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9dtty4/eli5_as_someone_who_doesnt_follow_sports_and/ | {
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"It's an extention of the kneeling during national anthem thing. The football player who started the kneeling protest did an ad with Nike. Now people who disliked the kneeling protest are burning thier Nike stuff to show they hate Nike now.",
"Nike made Colin Kaepernick the face of their brand which is controversial because he started the whole “kneeling during the pledge” thing in the NFL due to injustices he sees being done to black people in the country. Those who are burning their Nike stuff are upset because they find this new trend of kneeling offensive to the country/military ",
"Have you seen the Colin Kapernick add? Are you familiar with the kneeling controversy at all? It is a mix of these two factors. He was the start of something (kneeling during the national anthem to protest police violence) which conservative football fans really rallied against, some even taking to burning his Jerseys. Nike, who apparently had been paying him all along as am endorsement released an add eluding to celebrating his efforts in this protest which some say led to him losing his career as a quarterback. "
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aq2vix | asian flush syndrome | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aq2vix/eli5_asian_flush_syndrome/ | {
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"Are you asking what causes it? It's caused by the buildup of a chemical called acetaldehyde, which is a natural product of the metabolism of alcohol. It's genetic, and fairly common among people of Asian decent. There are a couple of genes responsible. One gene is responsible for producing a chemical called alcohol dehydrogenase, which is what breaks down alcohol. People with a certain variant of this gene make more acetaledehyde. Another gene is one which makes the chemical that breaks down acetaldehyde itself, and people with a variant of this gene don't produce enough of the enzyme to break down the acetaldehyde, so it accumulates."
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7ljhve | why does white noise calm people down? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ljhve/eli5why_does_white_noise_calm_people_down/ | {
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"It distracts us from our own internal dialogue, which can be a little overwhelming after a while",
"As a new father, we use white noise to help put the baby to sleep. I'm told that the womb is actually a fairly loud place, with constant breathing & pulsations. I imagine that this subconscious feeling of womb-like comfort continues into adulthood.",
"The \"shhhhhh\" sound is very close to white noise. It supposedly replicates the womb sounds which we associate with warm comfortable, safe, hence a good place to sleep.",
"When it's quiet, your body reacts to every noise with a \"what's that?\" response which makes you perk up and be alert. By drowning out the sounds with white noise, you don't have that effect as often and your body has a chance to relax.",
"I have a white noise app that I run through a speaker when I sleep. The main draw to this app was the fact you could build your own mix from sounds other people uploaded including odd, but still soothing, sounds.\n\nYou find out that people have different tastes in \"soothing\". The one that I can give an example of myself is a PC running with the fans on. This is mainly because I ran my computer 24/7 in the same room I slept in for two years (dorms) that even then if had the option to not sleep in the same room, I would move it into my room.\n\nFrom the type of sounds I am about to list, some I could not sleep to but they all have at least one of the qualities I think are critical to a good sleep noise: personal familiarity(forced to sleep in), constant, soft regular beat comparatively to main noise (no bongo drums by themselves), droning, and perfected looping (the ones you could detect where the clip's end was KEPT you up and from other people's feedback, it was very noticable and downvoted because of the defect).\n\n-Urban city : people talking, loud taxis beeps, etc\n\n-Windchimes : Random dings. Some made with built in rain\n\n-Rains of various quantities - From a sprinkle to a downpour on a car roof.\n\n-Appliances - Clothes dryers, washers, dishwashers, and air conditioners, windows fans. One major similarity between them all is they all try to muffle the sound they generate to some degree.\n\n-Vehicles - Trains, random motorcycles. I can see the train thing working because I used to live in a small town that had a train whistle far in the distance because it was approaching another town.\n\n",
"I like to think of it as a sonic curtain between you and the rest of the world. The nature of white noise* is that it fills up the whole range of sound, so every other sound is blocked out a little by...well, essentially nothing. It gives us a chance to retreat into our own little worlds a little bit. \n\n*in my experience, “pink” or “brown” noise is actually slightly better. White noise involves the whole spectrum equally but other “shades” can fill up certain parts of the spectrum more than others. It’s been my experience that these other shades are better suited to actual life, where white noise is more a laboratory thing. ",
"is this true for everyone? i use a white noise generator to sleep, but are there people who are bothered by it?",
"I grew up in the Midwest on the wrong side of the tracks--we were too poor for AC, so we used box fans and such throughout the house. The drone is soporific, it lulls you to sleep. Several of my siblings, as well as myself, use fans to this day to get to sleep. I know a lot of people in the same boat. You can buy a fancy white noise generator, or you can buy a cheap box fan.\n\nI will say that when I lived in the Colorado high country, I spent a summer and fall living in a log cabin next to a small stream cascading down from a mountain gully above the cabin. That sang me to sleep at night, it was the best."
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2n8mjd | If coats are just good insulators, why can't we wear them in the summer to keep cool? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2n8mjd/if_coats_are_just_good_insulators_why_cant_we/ | {
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"Human comfort temperature range is a little below the temperature of the human body. We are exo-thermic, and remain comfortable so long as our body temp does not drop or rise by much. \n\nWearing a coat in winter keeps our heat loss rate within that comfort range - limiting exposure to temperatures where we would lose heat too fast. \n\nIn very hot dry climates, such as some deserts in the Mideast for instance, people do wear more clothing to shield them from the heat. \n\nIncidentaly, when there is a heat wave, and the temeprature rises well above your body temperature, and you turn a fan on to cool off, you may actually end up raising your body temperature in same way that a convection oven heats food! ",
"Something not already mentioned yet: Your body produces heat. If you insulated your body during the summer, you would quickly overheat because your body would produce more heat than you could comfortably stand, with the coat keeping that heat locked in.\n\nIn the Winter, the cold and wind draw heat off of the coat at a rate roughly equal to how quickly your body produces it, so all is well. But if you layer up too much, you again experience the same effect, and you become hot and sweaty because you are wearing too much, even in Winter."
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184tgj | Why is there a maximum speed for light? What is "braking" it? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/184tgj/why_is_there_a_maximum_speed_for_light_what_is/ | {
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"The speed of light is set by two fundamental constants known as the permeability and permittivity of free space. A classical analogy for these constants would be \"stiffness\", ie empty space has a stiffness and this leads to the speed of wave travel.\n\nThere are plenty of near light speed particles that were accelerated by both extra terrestrial and terrestrial processes (cf CERN!).",
"There are trillions of near light-speed particles passing through YOU this very second. (assuming you are on earth).\n\nThese are neutrino's created by the sun.\n\nThere is no acceleration of light, it starts traveling at c and will always travel at c.\n\nThere is no \"brake\", this has to do with the way that space and time are related. A completely stationary object experiences \"maximum time\", and zero velocity. As you move up in velocity, you actually move down in time (You experiences less time). \n\nThis relationship of more velocity giving you less time continues until you have zero time, at which point you would be traveling exactly at c. (not that you can reach this, because it would require infinite energy and isn't possible for any matter to travel at c)\n\nSo light travels at C because it cannot travel at anything else.... and why talking about anything \"faster\" doesn't make sense in general relativity. \n\nAlso:\n\n_URL_0_"
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1w1a45 | how can the quietest room in the world be -9 decibels? | This is just very confusing for me. Would the sound be effected before it was created? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1w1a45/eli5_how_can_the_quietest_room_in_the_world_be_9/ | {
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"Decibels are a logarithmic scale. 0 isn't no sound, it's just the lower-limit of what a human can typically hear. So -9 isn't no sound at all, it's just quieter than the quietest sound a human can detect, by a factor about the same as the factor between 0 decibels and 10.",
"I hear there is a room thats dark and has no sound in it, that people cannot last more than 20 to 45 min in without wigging out... What does a room with no sound....sound like? and why does theis phenomea happen?",
"You should think of the decibel count as being an exponent value, because it basically is. Imagine that people always reported a magnitude as 10 to some power. Like, 10^2 or 10^5 or 10^2.8 or even 10^-1 (10^-1 = 1/10 = 0.1) . But then, for brevity, they cut off the \"10\" part and just say 2, 5, 2.8, or -1. The -1 doesn't mean a negative value; it just means closer to zero than e.g. 10^0 .\n\n(Late edit: I forgot to say: the mathematical operation that \"strips off\" the 10 in the above is the logarithm, specifically the logarithm of base 10.)\n\n(Except that decibel count is actually equal to 20 times the base-10 log, but same idea.)\n\nSo then they picked some reference sound-intensity value to be equal to 1 (or 0 on the decibel scale), which is arbitrary. But for convenience, they made it equal to the \"quietest sound we'll deal with in practice\". Not the quietest sound *possible*, as you can see from this room, but at just the right value that we get \"reasonable\" numbers in practice.\n\nIf you truly wanted to report \"zero\" it would have to be negative infinity on the decibel scale.\n\nBonus ELI5: why do they bother taking the logarithm in the first place? Because human perception of sound does the same thing! That is, if you double the sound intensity, then double it again, you will perceive it, not as twice as loud each time, but as the same gain in volume each time. When you go from say 2 to 3 or 3 to 4 on the volume setting, you've actually increased the actual sound wave intensity by the same factor each time.",
"dB does not measure the absolute level of something. It merely expresses the *ratio* between the value you're measuring, and some reference value.\n\nIn other words, 0 dB is just a reference sound level (a very low level, to be sure), and any other measurable sound would have either a positive dB value (louder than reference) or negative (quieter).\n\nAbsolute silence would be not 0 dB, but \"minus infinity\" dB."
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b06yxr | does “burning in” brand new audio gears such as headphones and speakers actually work? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b06yxr/eli5_does_burning_in_brand_new_audio_gears_such/ | {
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"First: The word 'gear' in this context is already plural. It's a group noun, like 'news' and 'furniture'. \n\nSecond: No. That idea comes from decades ago, when magnets were weaker and materials were worse. Even then, it had almost no impact on the sound. Only hard core audiophiles purported to hear a difference in sound quality. \n\nModern sound equipment uses materials that do not change physical characteristics over time. The diaphragm, if there is one, will not stretch. ",
"The important bit is the suspension of the cone, the [black rubber part](_URL_0_) in this drawing. This part of the speaker needs to be flexible in order to allow the membrane to move, but it also needs to be firm enough to keep it centered. Some speakers use materials which are a bit too stiff when they come from the factory, and soften up a little during use. \n\nBut this really only concerns people who test and review speakers. Before testing, they will play some music or just some noise for a few minutes before actually measuring the performance. For the average Joe who just has a pair of ears instead of a calibrated microphone, this doesn't really matter, our hearing sense is terrible at detecting stuff like that. If someone wants to sell you a special CD for burning in your stereo, they're a fraud trying to sell snake oil."
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87j5ly | Is there any credible evidence for any kind of Giant humans existing? | I️ grew up in a really fundamental/weird Christian faith and believed there was a whole subspecies of giants... won’t get into the weirdness of “origins” and whatnot, just trying to see if there is any reasonable place these stories came from, or if it was probably just propaganda?
Thanks! | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/87j5ly/is_there_any_credible_evidence_for_any_kind_of/ | {
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"I wouldn't say it is propaganda (that's a strong word!), but these entities, common in many people's folklore, have no basis in fact. You can ask /r/Askanthropology about things like the \"giganthropus\" fossil evidence, but whatever that represents, it is hardly evidence of giants, and it would be an incredulous stretch to conclude that there was some sort of primal memory of gigantic hominids many of hundreds of thousands of years ago - if they ever existed at all!\n\nGiants are one of that species of supernatural beings that existed in a remote past: people talked about encountering ghosts, fairies, the devil, or any number of others things, but they never told of having encountered a giant. Stories about giants were always about other people living in the past having dealing with them. It seems that it was easy for people to imagine there was once a race of titans to explain enormous, seemingly unnatural things in the landscape. The name of the Giant’s Causeway preserves the idea that one of these entities built a path to walk from Ireland to Scotland. Wade’s Causeway, is another reference to a giant, in this case to explain a Roman road in Yorkshire. The etiological role of giants was paramount, but the explanation of the landscape, megaliths, or extraordinary things in general could merge with stories about other supernatural beings. For example, the Devil’s Dyke in Cambridgeshire is an example of tradition holding that Satan affected the landscape in a way normally reserved for giants. I wouldn't want to go so far as to say it was a process of 1. fantastic landscape element; 2. fantastic and necessarily large entity needs to be responsible; therefore, giants must have existed. That said, this sort of process serves as an underpinning to reinforce belief."
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2vtr1t | how come no one has registered trademark using internet memes? are there any policies related to that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vtr1t/eli5_how_come_no_one_has_registered_trademark/ | {
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"To register a phrase as trademark, you have to prove that people recognize your company's products because you use the phrase. That's never going to be true for an internet meme."
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3lb0xa | "If there is no biological basis for race, how can forensic anthropologists distinguish the remains of a person of one race from those of another?" | A friend of mine posted pictures of her professors holding up signs in support of the BlackLivesMatter movement, and one of the signs said "Anthropologists know there is no biological basis for race, but that racism is real." Someone commented and asked, "If there is no biological basis for race, how can forensic anthropologists distinguish the remains of a person of one race from those of another?"
It has had me curious ever since, so I'd like to get some opinions on it. Is there actually a biological basis for race? If so, what is that basis? If not, how can those remains be identified? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3lb0xa/if_there_is_no_biological_basis_for_race_how_can/ | {
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"The concept of race exists in biology, but there is only one human race. There are genetic differences between human populations based on geography but they are gradual and increase slowly with distance, there is no abrupt change or non-overlapping of genetic make-up as would be required to define a distinct race. _URL_0_",
"When people say there is no biological basis for race, what they really mean is that science does not support the superiority of any one race and that we are all effectually the same. The fact that we can tell someone's ethnicity postmortem is due to several factors. For one, we aren't just looking at the person themselves, but what they ate, where, when and how they died. All humans, from everywhere can mate, which is a basic requirements for being the same species and evidence that the essentialist and typological views are wrong. In fact, even really using the term race is wrong, as it denotes a biological designation that doesn't exist.\n\n\nFrom the Wikipedia article on race - \"By the 1970s, it had become clear that (1) most human differences were cultural; (2) what was not cultural was principally polymorphic – that is to say, found in diverse groups of people at different frequencies; (3) what was not cultural or polymorphic was principally clinal – that is to say, gradually variable over geography; and (4) what was left – the component of human diversity that was not cultural, polymorphic, or clinal – was very small.\n\nA consensus consequently developed among anthropologists and geneticists that race as the previous generation had known it – as largely discrete, geographically distinct, gene pools – did not exist.\"\n\n\"This effectively means that populations of organisms must have reached a certain measurable level of difference to be recognised as subspecies. Dean Amadon proposed in 1949 that subspecies would be defined according to the seventy-five percent rule which means that 75% of a population must lie outside 99% of the range of other populations for a given defining morphological character or a set of characters. The seventy-five percent rule still has defenders but other scholars argue that it should be replaced with ninety or ninety-five percent rule.\"\n\nWith this information and these definitions, it is clear that humans all belong to the same race,so long as race is used in the biological sense of meaning a subspecies.\n\n\nTldr: Groups of humans do not different enough to really even be called races, but other anthropological clues, such as diet, location, cause of death , clothes , hair, and skin can be used to determine ethnicity postmortem.\n\n\nEdit: more interesting shit.\n",
"Certain differences in skeletal structure can indicate different lineages and races. The only thing a 'race' really means is that a certain population or group of populations is sufficiently different from all others in the species to be recognized separately. Some commonalities in skull and tooth structure can be very helpful in identifying race of a deceased person. However, with mixed breeding it can be very difficult to label an individual as one race.\n\n | Mongoloid | Caucasoid | Negroid\n---|---|----|----\nCranial form | broad | medium | Long\nSagittal outline | high, globular | high, rounded | highly variable, post-bregmatic depression\nNose form | medium | narrow | Broad\nNasal bone size | small | large | medium/small\nNasal profile | concave | straight | straight/concave\nNasal spine | medium | prominent, straight | Reduced\nNasal sill | medium | sharp | dull/absent\nIncisorform | shoveled | blade | Blade\nFacial prognathism | moderate | reduced | Extreme\nAlveolar prognathism | moderate | reduced | Extreme\nMalar form | projecting | reduced | Reduced\nPalatal form | parabolic/elliptic | parabolic | Hyperbolic\nOrbital form | round | rhomboid | Round\nMandible | robust | medium | gracile, oblique gonial angle\nChin projection | moderate | prominent | Reduced\nChin form | median | bilateral | Median\nTable 1. Craniofacial trait variations. (modified from [Gill 1986](_URL_0_), Table 1.)",
"What we call \"race\" is a grouping of people based on very superficial phenotypic differences. Of *course* these differences actually exist, and many of them are genetically based. Some of these differences are visible in the skeleton, and can therefore be used forensically.\n\nWhen biologists say there's no biological basis for race, what they mean is that racial groupings do NOT accurately reflect deeper genetic relationships. A true, valid biological grouping would mean that everyone within a specific group is more related to the other group members than they are to anyone outside the group. Like how any rodent is more closely related to any other rodent than any of them are to a trout. Again - this IS NOT TRUE of the human races.",
"There is a biological basis for race. Different races have slight changes in their skeletal and muscular structure that make up their features. IE the skull.\n\nFor example, African American people have a higher muscle mass and ability to gain muscle quicker.\n\nI think what they mean is that these differences are all basically just evolution's product of adapting to the specific region's environment. That's all. They aren't like, a different subspecies or anything. We're all the same species, just adapted through time to the different areas we live in.\n\n\nI really would do some research and double checking first before listening to anyone from #Blacklivesmatter."
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3dr2jg | the cable companies arguement to "data cap" my monthly internet usage is to prevent congestion of the system during peak hours. can it really be congested? | I'm not the smartest about this.
When watching netflix, isn't it Netflix's servers that bear the burden of me streaming content. The internet provider is just transfering the data the server produces.
Or, is my streaming of HD video burden the infrastructure required to provide it?
If it is true, what makes cable TV different in that the infrastructure doesn't collapse during the superbowl?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dr2jg/eli5_the_cable_companies_arguement_to_data_cap_my/ | {
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"Yes, it's true. Netflix's servers are sending you the video, but it still travels down your ISP's internet connection to get to you. There is a limited amount of bandwidth from your ISP out to the Internet for you and every other customer to share.\n\nWhat's different with cable TV is that the TV signals come in via satellite, and is then distributed to your home over the cables that the cable company has run. There's no bottleneck because when you and 100,000 other customers are watching the Superbowl, there is exactly one signal that comes into the cable company that they then send out to 100,000 customers. It's a one-to-many connection that is very efficient.\n\nBut the Internet isn't one-to-many. We think of it that way sometimes because of large sites like this one. But the Internet is really a shitton worth of private one-to-one connections.",
"It is a burden. However, it's not as much as ISP's may have you think. If everyone was watching > 25 Mbps (1080p Blu-ray is usually 25-36 Mbps) videos at once, that would cause a burden. 1080p Netflix is only 5.8 Mbps (Chrome and Firefox max out at 720p 3Mbps), and 1080p Yotuhe maxes out at around 3.8 Mbps.",
"The data got to get from Netflix's server to you. There is only so much data you can send though a wire or fiber. Your city got a limited bandwidth and your neighborhood got a limited bandwidth. So yes, it can be congested.\n\nBut if your ISP want to start to cap data, you have to call BS. Having caped data for a home connection is just stupid. Your ISP should build more cables if this is the case.\n\nThe difference between internet and cable TV is that when you are watching Netflix, they are sending the video to you and only you. So everyone watching has a separate stream of data. While cable TV is sending the same to everyone, so the signal is only sent to your neighborhood once and then split so that everyone gets the same signal.",
"Yes and no. Congestion during peak hours is indeed a real problem. But if congestion during peak hours gets too bad, people will stop trying to use so much bandwidth during those hours (because they're sick of waiting for stuff to buffer). If they only cared about peak-hour congestion, they'd institute pre-emptive throttling during certain hours, where they lower your maximum download speeds during certain times of day. I believe some ISPs do this, actually. \nMonthly data caps, on the other hand, are mostly a money-making tool. Even if you completely changed your schedule to only use the internet during off-peak hours, you'd be subject to the same data cap.",
"About the bit with cable TV during the Superbowl... \n\nNot too many years ago, the TV signals, ALL of them, came over the wires in a different way. In analog. The flow was always coming to your house and you TV faucet allowed certain channels in. \n\nSince the switched to digital, its similar to all other internet traffic. (At least the ones with content distribution networks, which cable TV does inherently). With the exception that the cable companies prioritize the TV signal. If it's available, they can use the bandwidth for internet, but if someone turns on their TV, that can bump out internet users. \n\nWhy? Tradition.\n"
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adnvnt | bandwidth vs ping vs latency | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/adnvnt/eli5_bandwidth_vs_ping_vs_latency/ | {
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"Latency is a measure in milliseconds of how long it takes for another device to respond to your request for a response. \n\nPing is the most common tool for measuring latency. It sends a small packet out and measures how long it takes to get the reply.\n\nBandwidth is how much data you can send/receive at the same time. Think of it as the difference between a two-lane road through a residential neighborhood and a 16-lane super-highway - the width and speed differences of the two roads allow for different amounts of traffic to pass in the same amount of time.",
"**Please read this entire message**\n\n---\n\nYour submission has been removed for the following reason(s):\n\n* ELI5 requires that you search before posting.\n\nThere are absolutely no exceptions to this rule. Please see this [wiki entry](_URL_2_) for more details (Rule 7).\n\n\n\n---\nIf you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](_URL_0_) first. If you still feel the removal should be reviewed, please [message the moderators.](_URL_1_?)"
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1vnzze | Why does nature sometimes prefer right or left? Example: Lorentz force | Hello everyone,
I'm a Electrical Engineer on a university and know how to use maxwell equations in calculating many things like inductance and capacitance between objects. I also know that somethimes nature prefers to choose for a certain direction like magnetic fields around a wire with flowing current or the lorentz force. I know you can derive that out of mathmatics, but i think that is not a sufficient reason to approach this question. :) please help :) | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1vnzze/why_does_nature_sometimes_prefer_right_or_left/ | {
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"I see where you are coming from here:\n\nIf you have a vertical wire, with a current going up, then the magnetic field wraps around the wire according to a right-hand rule - counterclockwise when viewed from above. If I look at this wire in a mirror, the magnetic field is going in the other direction - clockwise when viewed from above.\n\nSo it seems like there is a definite handedness and violation of parity.\n\nHowever, this really is truly just a matter of convention. Consider a positively charged particle going up. calculate the lorentz force on the particle, and you will see that it will be deflected towards the wire. The same thing happens in your mirror image. So the physics is the same in the mirror and in reality.\n\nEverything that produces a magnetic field does so with a cross-product (right-handed) and everything that reacts to one also does so with a cross-product (right-handed). The implicit handedness cancels out. We could redefine the cross-product in a left-handed manner, and so long as everything was consistent everything will cancel out.\n\n-------------------\n\nAlternatively, if something was pushed parallel to a magnetic field, then we could see different physics in the mirror. The weak interaction does in fact do this. \n\nIf I spin align Cobalt-60 atoms with a magnetic field, the beta-decay electrons will preferentially be emitted in the opposite direction to the magnetic field (right-handed convention). So here our convention does matter and one would see physics behave differently in the mirror.\n\nIf I cleverly set up a lab with spin-polarized cobalt-60 decay happening with backwards text everywhere, and then showed you a video of a mirror image of the lab, you would be able to tell it was a mirror image purely by the physics of what happened. You can't do that with electromagnetic phenomena.",
"zeug gave a nice answer, but since you're a student I'll post an even deeper answer too. The right-hand rule and similar things come from a cheap hack that you're taught throughout school. You've been learning about vectors and cross products and \"charge-motion x field = force\" and things like that. The Lorentz force mixes two vectors (the electric current and a resultant force) with an axial pseudovector (the magnetic field).\n\nIt turns out that cross products in general (both in electrodynamics and in studies of angular momentum) are a cheat.\n\nCross product vectors are called \"axial vectors\" or \"axial pseudovectors\". The cross product is the only antisymmetric linear operator that can mix two vectors to yield another vector. That makes cross products very useful for describing systems like rotation, where you rotate from one direction into another, perpendicular direction. The \"axis\" of the rotation is the cross product of those two unit vectors, and it points in the third direction perpendicular to the first two.\n\nBut the cross product is a total hack. You've probably already learned linear algebra, so you know about matrices. If you want to describe a linear operator that mixes two vectors, you know it can have at most 9 elements (a 3x3 matrix). If you want it to be antisymmetric (i.e. to change sign when you combine the inputs in opposite order, which is an important property of rotation!), then those numbers have to have some important symmetry properties. In particular, each number in the upper-right part of the matrix has to be -1 times the corresponding number in the lower-left part of the matrix. That means the three diagonal elements have to be zero, and the lower-left three numbers have to be -1 times the upper-right three numbers -- so out of the nine possible mixing coefficients in your matrix, there are only three numbers left over. How convenient, since vectors happen to have three numbers. So we take the X- > Y term (which is -1 times the Y- > X term) and identify it with the \"Z\" axis; and likewise for the permutations. You can describe that whole matrix with a single pseudovector (or \"axial vector\")!\n\nBut pseudovectors don't work like real vectors in all ways. For example, consider a car driving toward a mirror, with a pencil glued to its left front wheel's axle. In the reflection, the pencil (a vector) points in the same direction as in real life -- but the spin axis of the front wheel points in the opposite direction! The spin \"vector\" is a cheat!\n\nThe problem is more obvious in other dimensions. Rotations in the plane are described by an antisymmetric 2x2 matrix, which only has one independent value -- so we treat planar rotations as scalars. Rotations in four dimensions are described by an antisymmetric 4x4 matrix, which has six independent values -- so there's no such thing as a spin axis in four dimensions.\n\nAnyway, the sign (direction) of an axial vector is set by convention alone, as zeug pointed out. Hopefully this little diatribe helped you see why the convention is necessary for most things, including the Lorentz force -- which doesn't actually have an overall preferred direction. (Weak nuclear decay, as in Cobalt-60 decay, is its own thing which, frankly, still gives me the willies).\n"
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1a88gb | What was the Nazi opinion on the Chinese? What was the Japanese opinion on the Jews? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1a88gb/what_was_the_nazi_opinion_on_the_chinese_what_was/ | {
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"The Nazis didn't seem to have a problem with the Chinese, they had provided extensive military support to the KMT in the 20s and 30s. They even had their own man in China in [Wang Jingwei.](_URL_0_)",
"The Japanese actually have a unique history of opinion towards the Jews. While fighting the Russians in (iirc) the Russo-Japanese War at the turn of the century, they stumbled across a book called *The Protocols of the Elders of Zion*. This anti-semitic literature was filled with the usual: the Jews control everything, massive conspiracy, lesser-men, and the like. Well the Japanese high command thought, why would anyone want to go against a small semi-integrated religious group that had miraculously managed to survive for two millennia despite prosecution, and who somehow managed to control everything, and had a large portion of European wealth in their hands? \n\nFast forward to the Second World War. The Japanese harboured several thousand Jews in Japan from the Germans, and despite being allies, they refused time and time again to hand them over to Hitler. They actually started building a facility to house 600 000 Jews escaping the Nazis. They thought that hey, if these guys control everything, might as well get on their good side. \n\nDon't know anything about the Nazi opinion on the Chinese, though.",
"There was [extensive Sino-German cooperation before the Second World War](_URL_1_. [Chiang Kai-Shek's adopted son](_URL_0_) even served in the Wehrmacht before being withdrawn to China.\n\nHowever, once Japan began their invasion of China, the shift in German foreign policy favored Japan since they were more able to resist communism than China. Since the Germans were trading significantly in raw materials with China, this hindered the German economy considerably for lack of rubber. \n\nAs far as ethnic opinions go, the Germans were rather hypocritical in even calling the Japanese ['honorary Aryan'](_URL_2_). The political reality was that the Germans needed raw materials and the Chinese were able to trade them until the strategic situation shifted to a need for allies against the Soviet Union and United Kingdom.",
"Forgive me for being brief, but it was the German ambassador who first documented, and tried to stop, the rape of Nanking. "
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1gakan | why the winter war happened | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1gakan/eli5_why_the_winter_war_happened/ | {
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"Relations between Russia and Finland had been strained since WWI. \n\nRussia felt that Finland was weak, and that they would be able to easily seize a decent chunk of territory. Most of the rest of Europe was distracted by Germany gearing up to start WWII, and so the Russians felt that nobody else would really do much to help Finland if they invaded.",
"As Russia (technically, the USSR) under Stalin was getting off her knees, she wanted to restore her influence in the parts of the Russian Empire that were lost after the Russian Revolution and the Civil War. The Secret Protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and later amendments defined the borders of these parts. Eastern Poland, the Baltic countries and Bessarabia were annexed to the USSR against the will of their populace (technically, there were elections, where 98% of the adult population voted, and 98% of them supported the pro-annexation candidates, but they were obviously fake). Finland was also in the Soviet sphere of influence. The Soviets wanted her to give up an industrialized heavily populated region close to Leningrad in exchange for (admittedly, greater in area) unpopulated swamps. Their pretext was that Leningrad was the biggest industrial center in the Soviet Union, and should a big war come (and a big war soon came), it should be easier to defend. The Finns said, \"Njet, Molotoff!\" This started the war. The casus belli was the shelling of a village on the Soviet side; the Finns had no incentive to do so, so it was probably as fake as the false flag \"Polish\" takeover on the Gleiwitz radio station that triggered World War II.\n\nNow, when two countries go to war, usually they recognize each other's governments as legitimate. When the Americans fought with Japan, they issued the Potsdam declaration to the Japanese government in Tokyo, and when that government accepted it, the war stopped. The Americans didn't say, \"the government in Tokyo is a fake one; the real Japanese government is in Honolulu.\" However, this is what the Soviets were saying until the very end of the Winter War: the Helsinki government does not legitimately represent the Finnish people; the only legitimate Finnish government is in Terijoki (an occupied village), headed by Otto Kuusinen (a Finnish communist who lived in the USSR since 1918). This self-proclaimed \"Finnish Democratic Republic\" signed a \"treaty\" with the USSR; the [text of the \"treaty\"](_URL_0_) said that it would be ratified in Helsinki. By the \"treaty\" a large chunk of Soviet Eastern Karelia went to the \"Finnish Democratic Republic\". Local Soviet Communist Party cadres from Eastern Karelia were told not to leave so they could prepare the Finnish people for building socialism. No one knows whether, if Stalin had succeeded installing Kuusinen in Helsinki, he would have headed a satellite state like People's Poland or a Union Republic like the annexed Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian SSR.\n\nAs far as I know, this is why the Winter War happened. How it went, and what happened later, is another story."
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g105m3 | How does a vaccine with inactivated virus work? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/g105m3/how_does_a_vaccine_with_inactivated_virus_work/ | {
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"Imagine you're playing CTF and you're on the Red team, but you don't know what the enemy team looks like. Turns out they're Blue. You can learn this when they attack you, but that's bad because they have guns and will kill your dudes while you learn this piece of information and move to repel their attack.\n\nA vaccine is like an external force (who has an interest in seeing the Red team win) capturing some members of the Blue team, secretly giving them guns that don't work, then dropping them directly into your base.\n\nThe Blue team comes in, you learn about them and destroy them, but they can't hurt your team in the process.",
"inactivated virus cant make you sick. this is the diffrence, if normal virus enters your body, it makes you sick and your body starts to look for an antibody that works best but being sick at the same time makes your body's job so hard even sometimes impossible but if ypu inject an inactivated virus to your body. your body learns its protein code and looks for an antibody. when your body finds the best antibody you store it. if even an active virus enters your body your immune system remembers it and starts to create antibody and destroys it in a short time."
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322i0q | Western Intensification: Why are currents much stronger on the western than eastern side of ocean basins? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/322i0q/western_intensification_why_are_currents_much/ | {
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"Ok, this is both a fundamental tenant of oceanography but also very difficult to explain in a short space. The classic paper is Henry Stommel's 1948 [*The Westward Intensification of Wind-Driven Ocean Currents* (PDF)](_URL_0_). In this paper Stommel works through a simple mathematical model of wind-driven circulation and demonstrates that because of boundary conditions and the rotation of the earth, the interior wind-driven flow can only be returned on the western margin of the basin and not eastern. The abstract attributes this to the \"variation of the Coriolis parameter with latitude,\" - what we now call the beta-effect. The full argument requires an analysis of the vorticity conservation and demonstration that only a western-boundary current provides a consistent solution. I have also heard a hand-waving type of argument that the boundary currents have to exist in the west because Rossby waves preferentially propagate energy westward - that's true too. Sorry that this response is kinda jargony but it's a challenging thing to describe at the explain-like-im-5 level. \n\ntldr; because we live on a rotating sphere - sorry if that's a unsatisfying explanation."
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12vtt9 | Does anybody know if there were any drugs developed or important medical discoveries made within the Soviet Union? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12vtt9/does_anybody_know_if_there_were_any_drugs/ | {
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"[Phage Therapy](_URL_1_) is the what immediately springs to mind. While not technically \"invented\" in the USSR (British and French scientists independently discovered bacteriophagic viruses in early 20th century and), the Soviet Union was where the technique was refined, expanded, and put into broad use. Georgia, in particular, is and was the center for all this, and Georgia is currently the only country where phage therapy is a standard of care treatment. This can be attributed to the microbiologist George Eliava who brought the technique over from his work at the Pasteur Institute, and physicians like Alexander Tsulukidze and Charles Mikeladze in Tblisi who ran some important early clinical trials showing phage therapy to be safe and effective. \n\nThere were Western scientists, particularly in France, working on phage therapy in the early 20th century as well. With the advent of sulfa drugs in the late 1930s, and then with the antibiotic revolution kicked off by penicillin in the 1940s, phage therapy was mostly abandoned in the West. The Soviets, on the other hand, found their access to Western-made antibiotics cut off at the end of WWII, and then had delays in regaining access, spotty supply chains & distribution, and problems starting their own domestic production. Homegrown phages helped fill in this \"antibiotic gap\" (along with some very shady propaganda about herbal treatments).\n\nIt wasn't until the past couple of decades -- spurred by concerns over drug resistant pathogens -- that Western physicians and scientists starting giving phage therapy a second look. The appropriately named [George Eliava Institute](_URL_3_) and the [Phage Therapy Center](_URL_2_) in Tblisi are still key centers for research and treatment using phages.\n\nIf you want to know more here are a couple papers on the subject (both open-source, I think):\n\n- [Phage Treatment of Human Infections](_URL_4_)\n- [Bacteriophage Therapy](_URL_5_)\n\nThere is also a pretty good book on the subject written for a popular audience, Kuchment's [The Forgotten Cure: The Past and Future of Phage Therapy](_URL_0_)."
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10mg6g | When did Europe begin its shift away from religion? Why? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10mg6g/when_did_europe_begin_its_shift_away_from/ | {
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"During the Middle Ages, religion played a hugely important role in life, since the Church was one of the few institutions that spread across the variety of feudal boundaries in Europe. As Europe transitioned out of feudalism and towards states (lead by monarchs), the Church in Rome lost power, but religion remained a tool for leaders to use. Indeed, the transition out of feudalism and into the modern era saw the very bloody wars between Catholic and Protestant monarchs and lords. However, by the 18th and 19th centuries, states had moved on to other ways of motivating their people, such as nationalism and ethnic identity. Religion became less political - we don't analyze the Seven Years War, Napoleonic Wars, etc with the same religious focus as the 30 Year's War, for example, but it still played a huge rule in everyday life. In the late 19th 20th century, science began to present an alternative to religion, and as education spread, religious superstitions became less important. Several people also claim that the World Wars disillusioned people from God, but I think that Europe would have become less religious with or without them. It is worth noting that \"Europe\" is a very broad term, and certain parts of Europe had very different societies from others. Religion plaid a huge political role in Ireland through the 20th century, for example, or the former Yugoslavia, or various other (mostly Eastern) European states.",
"I can give you an interesting answer to why- Neil Ferguson's \"Civilization\" covers this topic in a little bit of detail. A book well worth a read. He concludes the reason Europe began to move away from religion is the state monopoly European countries have over religions compared to other nations such as America. Essentially, Americans have a \"free market\" of religions. If you don't like the branch of Christianity you were born into you just go out and find one that is more suited to your beliefs. While in Europe those sick and tired of their religions have little alternative but to atheist. Naturally, over time, this leads to a social acceptance of atheism and a more godless society.\n\nTL;DR- Europe's \"State Religions\" are unable to keep up with the growing and changing ideas of its nations' peoples. Americas \"Freedom of Religion\" ideology has the opposite effect",
"Look at the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake. The morning of one of the most important religious holidays of the year when good catholics have lit their candles and are all at mass, packed into the city's wonderful cathedrals.\n\nThen suddenly a 9.0 earthquake slams into the region and lasts for almost 6 minutes. Thousands are dead in seconds as stone cahtedrals crumble and crush their packed audiences. Huge 5m wide fissures open up all across the city. Buildings cave inwards as entire districts are devastated. The dazed survivors climb out of the rubble and head for the one open place in town where they think they can be safe - the docks at the waterfront. Yet all the water has mysteriously vanished. After 40 minutes a massive tsunami crashes into the area sweeping away thousands and even entire buildings. The water travels deep into the city center. Then the fires start. Everywhere with candles set for the holy day now has caught fire and the tsunami didnt even help put some out. The fires rage for 6 days.\n\nWhen it is over 30,000 - 40,000 are dead. A third of the city's population gone. Oh and the jewish/moorish quarter / red light district? Relatively untouched by comparison, with a different geologic base, hill to block the wave, and no overload of candles.\n\nSo why would God do this? Why would he punish his devout on such a holy day when all were praising him, and why were the heathens relatively unscathed? Why was almost every single church in the city destroyed while the wicked prospered? This questioning had immense influences on the thinkers of the time including Voltaire as such a overwhelming calamity argued against the notion that a just and kind God closely watched over the world.\n\nThe long term result is a slow shift towards secularism.",
"As an historian-of-philosophy (or, alternatively, a philosopher-of-history), I would venture to say that it occurred in the wake of Newton, Hume, Adam Smith, Bentham, Mill and Darwin in England; in the wake of Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx, and Nietzsche in Germany; after Rousseau in France; the era of Romanticism in the arts; the ever-accumulating discoveries in the sciences over the centuries; the rise of political economy (Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Marx, and after) and the industrial revolution which shifted people's focus more to worldly/material goods or wealth; the American experiment demonstrating the advantages of church/state separation; modern humanistic psychology which played a significant role from early- to mid-20th-century onward, for much the same reason that political economy and the industrial revolution did earlier on. In any case, when philosophers of the caliber of Hume and Kant (and later, with greater finality, Marx and Nietzsche - and Freud [see: [\"Hermeneutics of Suspicion\"](_URL_0_)]) gave up on the idea of proving God's existence, many of the other intellectuals more or less followed suit, and the people had fewer intellectuals to turn to who would justify belief in God. There are all sorts of factors that affect history, but philosophy is the most powerful long-term (IMHO ;-).\n\nEDIT: Another respondent mentioned the Reformation; there's also the Renaissance. What led to the Renaissance? I'd recommend a book titled *Aristotle's Children* for an overview of the intellectual shift that occurred in the wake of Maimonides, Averroes, and Aquinas reintroducing Aristotle's works to the West. I don't know how big a role the Reformation itself played seeing as in the wake of that you had staunch theists in Luther and Calvin, and in the philosophical world you still had the Continental Rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza [a complicated case], and - quite significantly - Leibniz, a genius polymath) advancing arguments for God's existence. It's Kant's dismantling of the traditional arguments for God (Leibnizian-ontological or Thomistic-cosmological) that was the biggest game-changer of any. Hume had his radically-empiricist skepticism but he didn't do the dismantling Kant did and offered only skepticism in theism's place. Kant is the most influential philosopher of the modern era because of this (and still retained the idea of God via his practical/moral philosophy [see \"Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone\"]); subsequent philosophy has been influenced by Kant more than anyone (Hegel was a prominent theist but his philosophy is, shall we say, rather difficult to digest), though Aristotle - who had fallen into disfavor for some time when the Church transformed his thought into official Church dogmas - has recently been making a comeback, with Plato rounding out the Big Three. In Platonism - but not Aristotelianism or Kantianism - you'll find the basic philosophical grounds for theism (primarily the ontological argument, seeing as the Thomistic cosmological arguments have lost a lot of currency whereas Plantinga and contemporary panentheists (probably the most philosophically-sophisticated theists around today) seem to put more stock in the ontological argument(s)). HTH. :-)\n",
"I would make the case that, regardless of what happened more recently, Europe *began* its shift away from religion on 31st October, 1517, the day Martin Luther nailed his '[Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences](_URL_0_)' to the door of the church in Wittenberg.\n\nAs well as triggering the Reformation, this also showed that reformation *could* be triggered. Not only did it question the church, it showed that churches *could* be questioned. I would say that this moment led, almost inevitably, to a secular future. There were a lot more steps along the way, and Europe by no means became less religious overnight, but I'm not sure that those later steps could have happened without Martin Luther's first declaration that the Church as it was then was corrupt.\n",
"Something I havnt seen mentioned yet is the influence of revolutionary ideas. The French and Russian revolutions both had anti-religious elements aswell as in the Spanish Civil war. ",
"I wouldn't necessarily say that Europe as a whole has moved much away from religion. There are many countries that religion plays a huge role in every day life, the difference is that religion today plays **no** role in politics, as it does in America.\n\nEuropean wars of religion have been some of the bloodiest conflicts in history, we see 7 Crusades to Jerusalem, as well as the 30 years war and countless other wars between Protestantism and Catholicism in the 17th Century. Religion was used as a tool by many European leaders, for the absolute monarchs in Spain and France their kingship was divine, it was sacred and came from God Himself. The Pope had a massive influence over 2 of the greatest nations at the time, Spain and France as it was almost solely Catholic. However we see a big decline in the power of the Pope as we move into the late 18th and 19th Century, and religion as a whole in politics. This is due to the ongoing revolutions across Europe at this time. Those who revolted saw the way religion was used by their leaders to control them, so whilst they were still theists they separated (truly) Church and State. This was also linked to the advancement of Science in the 19th Century where we finally start seeing explanations by Science, an alternative source to the Bible.\n\nThat being said we don't especially see Athiesm today in most of Europe, but instead we see religion as something that doesn't and shouldn't affect the views of the nation. Smaller nations like Romania, Lithuania and Latvia are all still highly religious, as are more major nations, the Republic of Ireland being a good example, as is Spain. \n\nI wouldn't especially say that Europe as a whole has moved away from religion, the only place this being especially true is in the UK, but the shift away from religion interfering with politics has been moving away for centuries, in England's civil war of 1645 one of the major reasons was how Charles' II was moving religion back into the political sphere after Henry VIII removed it, this was as far back as 1530s.",
"Europe as a whole is way to complex to get into. That's not even true in many cases (Poland, Austria)\n\nSo I'll just speak to Czech Republic, the most Atheist country in the world, as an example.\n\nThe people were protestant (since catholics represented the Holy Roman Empire) and Jan Hus was a major reformer who died in 1415, which was followed by the Hussite wars.\n\nThey were crushed by catholics. But the Czechs had tasted independence in that time. So they started another rebellion 200 years later in 1618. The crushing defeat by Austrian Catholics 2 years later meant the end of Czech independence for 300 years. Plus the brutal execution of the Protestant nobles lead to the 30 Years War, one of the all time most brutal European wars ever. Which was over Religion.\n\nWhen the Czechs finally did get their independence after WWI (those 300 years later) they dragged the Maria Pillar in Old-Town Square through the streets and across the bridge. Catholicism =Austrian oppression to them and they had had enough of all of them. Then 30 years later came Communists who were strongly anti-religion.\n\nWhile this anti-religion didn't take in other communist countries like Poland or the Russian country side, the idea was ripe in Bohemia (less in Moravia and Slovakia). That was pretty much the end of Religion in CZ. After the revolution not many went back.\n\nPeople who find religion now lean toward Hari Krishna (and the Mormons are coming) and other previously completely foreign religions. Moravia has had a sort of Protestant revival, but Bohemia remains Atheist. The most Atheist place on the planet.\n\nTo tie it into other European places, the Czechs can directly tie a lot of their misery to Religious tention. I think other countries that can say the same would be less religious. Countries with more religious freedom (like the US) or who were more in synch with the Church to start with (Poland, Italy, Spain) don't see the same problems with it."
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45pktn | How did Luxembourg survive? | As someone who reads a lot of medieval history, I am fully aware of the myriad of tiny states that Europe once was. I'm sure I don't have to explain the situation in this subreddit for sure.
But one thing I notice as I look closer and closer towards modern history, is the arrival of larger states in Europe, reflective of large cultural groups (i.e. Germany and Italy). Almost all the tiny states of Europe merged or were swallowed up, besides a few anomalies like Lichtenstein and Andorra. But my question is: how did Luxembourg keep its independence? Why wasn't it integrated into Germany because it was Germanic, or annexed by the Netherlands because of its political ties?
Thanks in advance! | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/45pktn/how_did_luxembourg_survive/ | {
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" > annexed by the Netherlands because of its political ties?\n\nActually, Luxembourg has been absorbed into other countries through history, and the current Luxembourg is nowhere near as large as the historical Duchy of Luxembourg. See [this map](_URL_0_). \n\nIt came into the possession of Philip the Good of Burgundy, along with other Low Countries states. They all came under Habsburg rule as the Burgundian line became extinct, and under Charles V was united in inheritance. When the northern provinces rebelled under Philip II, Luxembourg remained part of the Southern Netherlands. \n\nHowever, as France and Spain continued their war after 1648, France gained the southern parts of Luxembourg. \n\nThe entire Low Countries were annexed by the revolutionary French, until it was restored in 1815, minus eastern parts annexed by Prussia. Then it was forced to be part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands until the Belgian revolt of 1830, which settlement in 1839 once again split off parts of it into Belgium. \n\nSo, you need to better define what \"survive\" means. "
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2x5moq | why did we, as a species, develop a taste for art? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2x5moq/eli5_why_did_we_as_a_species_develop_a_taste_for/ | {
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"There will never be any one, completely satisfying answer to question like this. But, as far as we can tell, most of the higher-level mental attributes of humans are simply byproducts of having large, advanced brains. That is to say, we *didn't* evolve to appreciate art, we appreciate art because our brains evolved to do a whole suite of complex things, one of the most obvious and important of these things is communication, which humans can do in myriad complex ways."
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2f9dde | if our blood contains iron, why is it not orange or rust colored? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2f9dde/eli5_if_our_blood_contains_iron_why_is_it_not/ | {
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"Because we have a very small amount of it in our bodies. We have around 4 grams of iron in our bodies. This is about the weight of a penny.",
"Our intuitive sense is that adding elements to a compound should be like mixing paint. \"Rust is orange, and it contains iron, so compounds that contain iron should be orange-ish\" seems like it should be true.\n\nHowever, the color of a chemical is determined by its overall electron configuration, and not by the colors that the elements involved look like individually. For instance, iron isn't orange. Iron **oxide** is orange. So blood doesn't look red because it doesn't have free-floating iron-oxide. Rather, the iron is bound up in other compounds, which have a different color.",
"The iron in the hemoglobin molecules in our blood is what makes it red in the first place. There are other animals (horseshoe crabs are well known for this) that don't use iron to bind to oxygen, and instead use metals like copper in their blood. As a result, their blood is greenish blue. "
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27lvim | why can extreme stress cause a psychotic episode? | What is the brains point in doing this (like is it protecting itself)? Are some people more likely for this to happen? Or will everyone eventually have one if put through enough stress? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27lvim/eli5_why_can_extreme_stress_cause_a_psychotic/ | {
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"Everyone will break, it's a matter of time and level of perceived stress and bodily fatigue they are going through at the time.\n\nMy first 48 hour shift at the hospital did something similar to me.\n\nAfter finally going home I fell asleep only to wake up in a cold shower, and having my parents (whom I lived with) tell me I had been walking around the house crying about the waffle I had just eaten because it had disappeared and I was hungry. \n\nWas not my best moment and I only vaguely remember cooking the waffle too.\n",
"It can happen to anyone sadly, and sometimes permanently. I currently suffer from psychosis after recently losing my mother and being the one to perform CPR. Psychosis can actually lead to other serious mental issues including schizophrenia and PTSD. I think my doctor called it a pre cursor to other disorders. My psychosis is actually on and off at times though, like most recent was running after a lady in the store because she looked like my mom....I felt my heart so happy, then i touched her shoulder and she turned around and it wasnt my mother no more.....just some woman who happened to walk by at the right time. Man did it rip my heart out my chest to find out it wasnt my mother.",
"Stress causes the release of hormones that put you into a vigilant state. This state requires a lot of resources to maintain, specifically sugars for your brain to operate. One of the side effects of this vigilant state is digestion is de-prioritized which ends up limiting the amount of sugars available to the brain to process. Sooner or later, your brain runs out of gas and sounds the alarm for emergency stop. It will do anything in its power to get out of the situation which is what results in the psychotic break. Add to the fact that the brain is now functioning at a lower level and the decisions that are made aren't that great.\n\nWhat's worse is prolonged vigilant states lead to feedback cycles between behavior and biology where the body gets stuck, generally causing anxiety disorders. This constant fight or flight state has other health implications due to the other body systems that reduce activity. It's supposed to be a temporary state to get you to safety, not something you live with constantly. This is what makes disorders like PTSD so dangerous.",
"Neuropsychologist here! Generally speaking, extreme stress may result in a dissociative episode, which may have some psychotic features, but actual brief psychotic episodes caused by stress alone are pretty rare. You'd usually need some contributing factors, like drug use, or family history, or perhaps dehydration or malnutrition.",
"I had an episode once, though I'm not sure if psychotic is the technical term. I went into a drug rehab center and was still coming down from a myriad of different things. I checked myself out AMA and wanted to go home. When I was told I wasn't going home I was going to a different (worse) facility I snapped and grabbed the wheel of the car and drove us off of an overpass. We hit several cars, (no one hurt) when we came to a stop I ran three miles across town in flip flops almost fighting two gangster dudes for running through their back yard. I broke down and laid down in the middle of a street before continuing to run. When I finally turned myself in I went to the original facility, but the psychiatric ward. In the waiting area I rearranged all the furniture and kept trying to attack my stepdad. \n\nPoint being: prior to and after that I've never been violent. Never even been in a fight. I don't know if my brain couldn't handle coming off all the drugs at the same time and it caused a disconnect, because I don't feel like I'm capable of anything like that. When I think about it, it's like watching a movie of someone else. ",
"I have no idea what's happening physiologically, but according to my psychiatrist, it tends to exacerbate an exiting phobia or anxiety, though any particular person's breaking point is impossible to predict. When my dad got sick and we all thought he wasn't going to make, my hypochondria kicked into full gear, and I had a bit of a psychotic break where I was convinced that I was dying of vCJD (mad cow disease).\n\nThe brain's a wacky organ."
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1usu2p | What was so special about the Paris commune uprising that it seems to hold the imagination of communists greater than that of say the French revolution? | Because I literally had not known what the Paris commune was, despite its repeated reference in communist literature and thought later on, until this past year. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1usu2p/what_was_so_special_about_the_paris_commune/ | {
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"It feels silly to say that the reason the Commume is more idealized is because it's Communistic. While I cannoy speak much on the Paris Commune, something I aim to fix someday, I would argue that the reason is due to the types of governments that were set up.\n\nThe French Revolution and the First Republic were fueled by Rousseau and his Enlightenment philosophy. While Rousseau could be argued as a proto-Communism, all French Revolutions set up Republican governments. So, it is more if a governmental reason, at least how I see it.",
"The Paris Commune was one of the first explicitly communist political actions. The 1848 revolutions happened before Marx had written the bulk of his work (and indeed, they both informed his writing). The French Revolution, much like the American revolution, is usually termed by communist academics as a 'bourgeois revolution,' a necessary stage in the historical development of capitalism, but not the proletarian revolution that communists support.\n\nA bourgeois revolution means that it was essentially an anti-aristocratic revolution, but not an anti-class revolution. After the American and French revolutions, there were still rich and poor in America and France, but there were no longer nobles and arbitrary status determined by lineage. However, the Paris Commune, on the other hand, was an exercise in true egalitarianism. \n\nNot sure what that other guy is talking about with Marx saying that the Commune \"needed\" a revolutionary terror; the Communards did kill quite a few members of the French military when they came to recapture the city, but the whole reason that the Paris Commune came to exist in the first place was because all of the people who would've been the target of a revolutionary terror had left the city in fear. Most members of the government, and anyone who had the money or influence to get out did. So really the Commune was created in a power vacuum, and there wouldn't have been anyone to commit a revolutionary terror against. The Communards were interested in other French cities joining them, but with communications at the time, and the commune being surrounded on one side by the Prussian Army, and the other side by the French Army, there wasn't really a good way to get any messages out, and anyway the situation that existed in Paris was pretty unique. Imagine if the city government in your town just left tomorrow. The Commune was less an ideologically-motivated movement and more a natural reaction by the people of Paris, who suddenly needed to organize things on their own.\n\nSo in a nutshell, that's why communists are into the Paris commune. It was a better example of functioning communism, though obviously in a much smaller timeframe, than the Soviet Union or whatever. They practiced proper worker democracy, had free education, and other things that communists like. It really is a very interesting and unique period of time in history, I recommend anyone read more about it.",
"One important point is that the Paris Commune was not leaded by communist, it was a regional insurection which led to a form of government idealized by the communist (the elected counsil was politically extremelly divers, lacking only the monarchists: from followers of Proudhom (anarchists) to jacobins (hawkish right wing) and radicaux (radically opposed to monarchism)), and produces socially advanced rules. \nBut the main point of /u/rude_communist is what explain the communist fascination with the Commune : the French revolution was a bourgeois one, while the Commune was a proletarian one. Marx had France and Germany in mind (industrialized and educated countries) when he built his theory."
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t1f7s | Why do healthy young athletes die suddenly from cardiac arrest? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/t1f7s/why_do_healthy_young_athletes_die_suddenly_from/ | {
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"There is no way to answer this question precisely, as each case of sudden cardiac arrest is unique. However, in general, healthy athletes who die of cardiac issues often have a congenital (present since birth) structural heart defect.",
"When young athletes die of cardiac arrest it is almost always due due to a heart disease called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. In fact, it is the leading cause of death of young athletes in America. This is a thickening and stiffness of the heat muscle that causes numerous problems during vigorous exercise that lead to cardiac arrest. \n\nTesting is effective, but the disease is so rare (1 in 220,000) that it is not cost effective to screen all 15 Million youth athletes in the USA alone. "
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6e42wy | how do phones send texts? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6e42wy/eli5_how_do_phones_send_texts/ | {
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"In much the same way as they send voice to the tower when you talk on the phone. They have circuitry to create a signal, and send one that is the style the tower recognizes as text. They've decided certain bit patterns mean certain characters, and send a combination of address information and the text content as, essentially, a radio-wave pattern. "
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315t3e | how this battery train experiment works? | _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/315t3e/eli5_how_this_battery_train_experiment_works/ | {
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"[This](_URL_1_) should help you out...people on a physics forum explaining it pretty simply\n\nEDIT: Aww hell, I guess I'll copy/paste the answer here...\n\n > If you run a current through a coil; it generates an magnetic field inside the coil [like this](_URL_0_)\n\n > If the field lines are exactly parallel a bar magnet will feel no net force. However at the ends of the coil, where the field lines diverge, a bar magnet will be either pulled into the coil or pushed out of the coil depending on which way round you insert it.\n\n > The trick in the video is that the magnets are made of a conducting material and they connect the battery terminals to the copper wire, so the battery, magnets and copper wire make a circuit that generates a magnet field just in the vicinity of the battery. The geometry means the two magnets are automatically at the ends of the generated magnetic field, where the field is divergent, so a force is exerted on the magnets.\n\n > The magnets have been carefully aligned so the force on both magnets points in the same direction, and the result is that the magnets and battery move. But as they move, the magnetic field moves with them and you get a constant motion.\n\n > If you flipped round the two magnets at the ends of the battery the battery and magnets would move in the reverse direction. If you flipped only one magnet the two magnets would then be pulling/pushing in opposite directions and the battery wouldn't move.",
"When you pass a current through a coiled wire, it generates a magnetic field. If you wind *insulated* wire around a large nail, and connect the ends of the wire to a battery, you can create an electromagnet from the nail. This is the old, boring version of this 'train' experiment. Note that a magnetic field is created whether or not the nail is inside, but the iron nail increases the strength many times.\n\nOK. The magnets that are stuck to the end of the battery (by their own magnetic attraction) form the electrical connection between the battery and the bare wire.\n\nSo, the current that flows through the wire (from the battery) produces a magnetic field, and that field exerts a force on the magnets. As there is nothing to stop the battery from sliding, apart from a small amount of friction, this force pushes the battery along the inside the coil of wire.\n\nAs the magnets move, they keep touching different parts of the wire, and the circuit is maintained.\n\nI would have thought that the magnets would have to be aligned in the same direction (ie attracting each other, rather than repelling) for the train to work. Perhaps I am just not as smart as I think.\n\n\nThis is basically the same principle that describes how a speaker works. It uses a coil, to which variable current is supplied, to slide over a magnet. The moving coil is attached to the speaker cone, and the moving cone generates sound waves by acting directly on the air."
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tswhk | Can 'one' photon technically be divided into anything? | If light is able to be measured and has a very basic form, then what happens to light that has been traveling for nearly an indefinite amount of time and spread out into space? One photon will simply travel on its own at some point? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/tswhk/can_one_photon_technically_be_divided_into/ | {
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"Read up on [spontaneous parametric down-conversion](_URL_0_).\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_2_\n\n",
"Within the framework of Quantum Electrodynamics, the only thing one photon can do is pair produce - split into an electron and positron. An electron can lose some momentum and split into a photon and slower electron and likewise for a positron, and this process can continue ad infinitum, with appropriate probabilities applied at each step.\n\nThe SPDC process mentioned here isn't exactly the *splitting* of one single photon and it involves an external medium that said photon interacts with, but that might be a matter of semantics and me misinterpreting what you said :S\n\nIt involves a medium with a nonlinear response to an EM field absorbing a photon at a high frequency and emitting two photons at half that frequency. As far as nonlinear optical media are concerned, there are all sorts of up and down conversion processes involving multiple photons and photons 'splitting' in ratios other than 50:50, but AFAIK, SPDC is generally the dominant process and also the best studied and used in experiment."
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93nb2p | what is wikileaks? what is the current situation with them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/93nb2p/eli5_what_is_wikileaks_what_is_the_current/ | {
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"Wikileaks is a website that originated by civil libertarians who intended to promote transparency by publishing leaks of sensitive information about governments and large corporations, given to them in secret by whistleblowers. They rose to fame in 2010 with the publication of a huge number of military records and diplomatic cables, given to them illegally by the whistleblower, Chelsea Manning, who was a soldier and computer analyst in the US Army. Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years (threatened with a death sentence for “aiding the enemy”) and released after 6 after receiving a commutation of her sentence by President Obama in the last months of his president. Chelsea Manning is a transgender woman and was subject to humiliating treatment and solitary confinement inside of the military prison where she served time. She attempted suicide at least one time that we know of. The US government also put out a warrant for the arrest of one of the founders of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, an Australian citizen.\n\nJulian is also wanted in Sweden on accusations of sexual assault, and the Swedish government has been attempting to extradite him for questioning regarding the allegations against him. \n\nTo avoid these attempts at arrest and extradition, Assange applied for asylum in Ecuador and was granted it, and when blocked from boarding a plane in London, he took literal refuge inside the Ecuadorean embassy, where he has lived for the last 6 years. If he attempts to leave the building, British police intend to arrest him immediately, to extradite him to Sweden. He has said he would be willing to allow himself to be extradited to Sweden to face the sexual assault charges (which he denies) if given promises that he would not be extradited to the US. The Swedish government have said that they wouldn’t, and the British claim they would only extradite him to Sweden, not to America, but he claims to not trust their word on this.\n\nFurther complicating matters, in recent years, Assange and Wikileaks are seen to be biased by many observers. They’ve been accused of softballing or ignoring leaks that are damaging to Russia, and focusing exclusively on leaks that are damaging to the US. They are also seen as having favored Trump in the 2016 US presidential election, and opposed Hillary. Some have gone as far as to say that Wikileaks is basically an arm of FSB, the Russian intelligence agency that is the equivalent of the CIA in America.\n\nAnd then to add to it, Assange seems to have overstayed his welcome in the Ecuadorean embassy, where, as I said, he has lived for 6 years straight now and not once left the building (London police are parked outside the building 24/7 waiting to arrest him should he ever leave). They’ve built him a small residence inside the embassy building, with a bed, bathroom, and small kitchen. And they claim he is obnoxious, doesn’t shower often, and intentionally inflames the situation diplomatically, causing trouble for the Ecuadorean government. They’ve reportedly cut off his access to the Internet so he’ll stop talking. "
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24rteq | how are the us still allowed to use drone strikes when the civilian casualty rate is so high? | Just seems that if it was anyone else, people would make a bigger deal. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24rteq/eli5_how_are_the_us_still_allowed_to_use_drone/ | {
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"Who is going to stop us.",
"The United States government believes they are effective enough to justify the high civilian casualty rate. ",
"\"Allowed\" is an interesting term, isn't it? Any other weapon with such a high civilian casualty rate would have been prohibited by now. \n\nBasically, the ability of legal bodies to create international law prohibiting weapons(like the Geneva Conventions, Hague Law, etc.) is limited by the number of parties you have to get to agree to it, while the USA(the main user of drones as weapons) has developed the technology quite rapidly. To create meaningful prohibitions against drone warfare, you'd have to get all the major international players on the same side, including the USA. That would take a lot of time, work, and lawyering.\n\nTL;DR The ability to wage war grows faster than an international lawyers' ability to argue about it.",
"* with sovereign nations, there is really no authority to \"allow\" or not \"allow\" that countries actions\n* the possibility of civilian casualties are an unfortunate reality of any armed conflict, drones or no drones\n* it is unclear whether the civilian casualty rate is high, or what \"too high\" even means...for every highly publicized mission with civilian casualties, there could be a dozen we don't hear about that only hit the intended targets",
"Many officials believe that the high casualty rate is due to underdevelopment and unfamiliarity with a new technology. They see this as a step towards reducing unwanted casualties in the long run at the cost of current mistakes. It's the \"you need to crack a few eggs to make an omelette\" mentality, which may or may not prove to be worthwhile (i'm not saying it is).",
"No one has pointed out that some countries actually ask for the US to use drones because they don't have the sufficient means to apprehend targets. Even Pakistan has approved the US of drones but publically condemn them.\n\nI haven't seen a report more than 15% civilian casualties, still too high but not nearly as some would have you believe.\n\nPeople are more willing to accept the 15% than risking boots and resources along with potentially more bystanders.\n\nAlso like others have said, who is going to stop the US. By the time anyone complains the US has already moved on to other things. Most of the countries that can stop the attacks are allies or don't care. If the US were to halt all drone attacks then its just going to find other ways to get to its targets. The US isn't just going to stop going after targets because the drones have been grounded. ",
"The military alternative would be just dropping bombs from a plane which would have a higher civilian casualty rate.",
"Drones have a much lower civilian casualty rate than the weapons they used before.",
"Even if it were a big deal, it's like asking \"how is Russia *allowed* to take over parts of Ukraine?\" Even if other nations wanted to stop us or tried to stop us, they couldn't/wouldn't.",
"It comes down to International Humanitarian Law, or \"the laws of war\", which state that an attack must be \"proportional\". According to the United States and its lawyers, the US is still in an ongoing armed conflict against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, which means that International Humanitarian Law, and not International Human Rights Law, applies. Although some of the strikes may kill large numbers of civilians, if the strike is targeting a high-level operative, then the collateral damage for the attack, although high, would be considered proportional. \n\nELI5 - Under the laws of war it is legal to kill civilians as long as the target is of sufficient military value to justify the collateral damage. The US Gov't considers its actions to fall under the Laws of War. ",
"The OP (and many of the other posters) missunderstand the problem.\n\nSimply put, drones are extremely precise weapon systems. Compared to coventional artillery or GPS guided munitions (such as JDAMS), they offer significant advantages: they are direct fire (so you actually have eyes on target, rather than presumed location), and their CEP is tiny (I think hellfire IIs are something ridiculous like 50% of rounds within a meter of the aim point and 90% within 2?).\n\nSo it's not that drone strikes create more civillian casualties than other kinds of attacks. What they do create however is more opportunities.\n\nDrones are extremely effective. They can fly in circles for hours, using very little fuel and rotating the flight crew on the ground. Bombs and artillery, by contrast, usually require a spotter on the ground. This means that drones are cheap, and keep personel out of harms way, so they can be used with impugnity.\n\nThere is no \"safe\" way to kill someone with a high explosive round. Despite their precision, everyone nearby is still going to get killed or injured, and unfortunately the targets of drone strikes rarely elect to stand out in the open, away from their friends and family. \n\nTLDR: Drones are crazy precise, and you tried to kill the same target with bombs, infantry and artillery, you'd have even higher civillian casualties. But people don't compare casualties of drone strikes to casualties from conventional weapons, they compare it to \"doing nothing at all\", on the (possibly correct) assumption that the military wouldn't engage in so many attacks if they weren't so cheap.\n\nEdit: If you are REALLY wondering why we attack people at all? Good question. War is a terrible way of running foreign policy, but the sad truth is it's easy and appealing to a broad section of every population in every country. So long as there are warriors, there will be war. So long as there is war, the countries without warriors will be destroyed. Good luck trying to solve THAT problem.",
"So High??? ~55 million civilians died from world war II, doubt we're REMOTELY near that...\n\n",
"Why is the US government allowed? Simple answer really: Who's gonna stop them?",
"\"The strong do what they have to do, the weak accept what they have to accept\"\r\r- Thucydides",
"Because drone strike civilian casualty rates are lower than casualty rates when we put men on the ground. We just don't report when out soldiers accidentally blow up a truck full of civilians because we protect our soldiers identity. ",
"Drones have a 15% civilian casualty rate. Meaning for every 100 targets killed 15 civilians are killed. \n\nIn recent history, including these conflicts where we use drones, putting soldiers on the ground has a civilian casualty rate between 50-70%. Meaning for every 100 targets killed, 50 - 70 civilians are killed. In historical wars civilian casualty rates have normally been over 100%, meaning more civilians were killed than enemy combatants. This pattern of more civilians killed than combatants didn't change for the US until the Korean War. \n\nWWII for example, had a civilian casualty rate of 140%. At least for the US, for Russia, it was approaching 700%.\n\nVietnam was also horrible, with about 180% civilian casualty rate, **on the side that didn't just massacre civilians.**\n\n15% is lower than 50% or 70%. Do the math, drones cause the least civilian casualties. "
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b9maav | Why dose the Ussr anthem mention Russia | In the hymn of the USSR near the beginning this it says “Great Russia has welded forever to stand” in the lyrics, of why is Russia specifically mentioned if its a collection of states and not just Russian? Dose the Ukrainian version say Great Ukraine has welded forever to stand? This question has been bothering me a lot and I can’t find a answer | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/b9maav/why_dose_the_ussr_anthem_mention_russia/ | {
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"Here's the lyrics for the Anthem of the SSSR that were used from from 44-56 - the first stanza is the relevant one:\n\n > Союз нерушимый республик свободных\nСплотила навеки Великая Русь.\nДа здравствует созданный волей народов\nЕдиный, могучий Советский Союз!\n\nRoughly this translates as follows (correct me if I'm wrong):\n\n > The undestroyed union, republic of the free,\n > united forever, the great Rus.\n > May we all greet the creation of the will of the people, \n > the united, the powerful, the soviet union!\n\nThe trick here is that Rus does not necessarily refer to Russia alone, but can also refer to the whole empire, or to the descendants of the Kievan Rus.\n\nThere are a few *possible* reasons why this is worded this way, and the only two that I know of go back to two events: first, the events and thoughts surrounding the initial formation of the Soviet Union, and the events going on at the time the anthem was composed and adopted.\n\nRegarding the beginning of the union, there was debate at the time of the creation of the soviet union regarding whether it was to be a worldwide revolution, or if it was to begin in one spot and the spread. The outcome was that the Communist movement considered the success of the USSR and its beginnings in Russia/Ukraine to be significant, leading to the possible inclusion of Rus in the anthem. \n\nThe second reason is that the anthem was adopted in 1943, towards the high point of the great patriotic war. This was a time during which the Soviet state adopted a lot of openly nationalistic policies and trappings in order to motivate citizens to whatever useful common identity might work to get them to fight for the fatherland, the idea of communism, or anything. This was a time of serious rapprochement with the Orthodox church, and we see lots of famous posters of \"Mother Russia\" (and massive statues built after the war), and keep in mind that in the 20s, mother Russia posters had been generally propoganda for the White Russians (meaning anti-communists, not Belorus).\n\nThe end result of this is that there were some \"communist\" reasons to lift up Russia as the mother of communism worldwide (at least of successful communism) and around the time the anthem was written, the traditional communist suppression of nationalism was dying away in the face of a need to motivate citizens to fight and contribute to the war effort."
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28hlli | Was the American Western Frontier as deadly as media portrays it? With gun battles, shootings, tons of diseases, etc.? If not, how did we get this impression? | I was watching A Million Ways to Die in the West last night, and it was talking about all the ways to die out there. And that got me thinking about this question.
Was it really deadly with outlaws and gangs shooting places up? Gun duels between two (or more) people in the center of towns? Etc. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/28hlli/was_the_american_western_frontier_as_deadly_as/ | {
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"Disease was certainly a problem, especially for Native Americans who didn't have the same heritable immunities as people of European descent. But the violence of the American West has been dramatized quite a lot. \n\nYou're statistically more likely to be shot Chicago today than you were to get shot in a place like Abeline. \n\nNow, there were certainly incidents of violence. In the [Coffeyville raid](_URL_0_), for example, the Dalton Gang attempted to rob two Kansas banks but were cut down by armed citizens. Many people, especially ranchers and property owners, kept guns, although six-shooters were rarer than you might think. Shotguns ard rifles were more accurate and more practical for hunting and self-defense. Or the [Lincoln County War](_URL_1_), the basis for the (heavily dramatized) film *Young Guns* and one of several grazing disputes that turned violent during the period.\n\nBut all the same dime novelists and cowboy films have made the \"Wild\" West to be a good deal more violent than it really was. Shootouts make for good drama, but they were something of a rarity. ",
"Like others have said, disease was common, as was drought, and also failed homesteading.\n\nHowever, when you think about duels, cowboys, and saloon doors, that's all a fiction. Cowboys were more like what we now think of as ranchers.\n\nThe misconceptions come from western fiction of the time. Pulp novels that romanticized the west were sold to people in the more populated east, which was escapism from the urban population crisis' of the industrial revolution. They were pretty formulaic with very common themes, which evolved into our conceptions of the west. The genre really took off at the turn of the century, when the west was becoming less of a frontier, and people were nostalgic. That's when you see the popularity of \"Wild West Shows\" skyrocket, which also strengthened these misconceptions.\n\nSource: \"History of the West Through Film,\" taken at the UofO in 2005 (I think) taught by Professor Ostler."
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7z5xu1 | is it possible to move an object in circular motion using magnets? | hello I'm trying to make a device which uses magnetism. my device is like a windmill but instead, I'm planning to use magnets to move the blades. I created a miniature using a pc fan and a dynamo generator. So far it doesn't work. Is it possible to move an object in circular motion with the use of two opposite magnetic poles? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7z5xu1/is_it_possible_to_move_an_object_in_circular/ | {
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"Absolutely, this is how most electric motors work. They have a coil of wire around the magnet, and adding a current makes the magnet attract or repel other magnets on a part that spins freely. (unless i misunderstood your question!)",
"It's not really clear what you're asking. Like a perpetual motion machine with permanent magnets? Obviously that's a no. Or like building your own DC electric motor?",
"Need more info on what you're trying to do and what your current setup is.",
"For example....an electric motor?\n\nIn your device you probably need to find a way to create an Alternating Current of 1-10 cycle/second (AKA Hz.) Common household current is 60 Hz. This is probably too fast to make your device operate.",
"You cannot create continuous motion using permanent magnets. They do not *generate* any energy, merely store it, like springs. You can make something vibrate for a while, until that energy gets dissipated and it comes to equilibrium, exactly like the spring pendulum in a watch winding down.\n\nYou can generate motion with electromagnets, but that's because you have an outside source of energy (chemical reactions in a battery, mechanical motion of a generator, light from the sun, etc.) which is powering your motor.",
"To move something with a magnet you have to move the magnet, so you're not gaining anything, you're just converting one movement into another. A motor works because there are electromagnets in it that turn on and off or otherwise change their magnetism, not just a bunch of regular magnets with constant strength.\n\nYou could vibrate a magnet with just the right timing to get your PC fan with glued on magnets to spin, but again you're just getting a spinning movement from a vibrating movement. You'd have to force a continuous vibration with some external source of energy to keep it going.",
"Seems to me he's talking the classic Perpetuum mobile...sigh...\n\nBut OP, no. And to understand why, you would not even need magnets. Say, you only have weights attached on the blades, not magnets. You could think now that gravity \"pulls down\" the weights, so from a certain logic, the fan should be spinning from gravity alone.\n\nOf course we know, it doesn't work. And the perpetuum mobile with the magnets, it's basically the same thing.\n\nHere is why all these ideas of perpetuum mobiles do not work: If it would really function, that is, the fan would be spinning (with or without a generator attached to it), it means it would create energy.\n\nBut energy must always come from somewhere, it can only be converted, it cannot be created. This is a fundamental law of physics.",
"I have a little globe that floats suspended in midair on my desk and spins around. It uses magnets for this.\n\nBut here's the kicker- it needs to be plugged in, as the field is constantly being adjusted. Unplug it and it just falls down.\n\nYou would need something similar, a way to constantly adjust the magnetic field.",
"If the object is a charged particle, supercolliders use magnets and electromagnetic fields to move them at nearly the speed of light in a circle. Turning on and off a circular array of electromagnets in a circular pattern could move a magnetic object in a circle",
"Yes, this is called Electro-Motive Force (Emf), using a magnet passing through a coil in which runs an electric current induces an opposite force that produce motion. Now you just have to adapt for which you want to produce and which you have in the first place. \n(Tell me if something’s wrong, my electricity and magnetism course from Uni is going back a bit)",
"Not continuously without a changing input.\n\nAfter reading your comment about the PC fan, every time a blade travels around, it will be attracted to the magnet pulling it forward and then backward as it passes. You'll end up pushing it just as fast as you pull it. It's like trying to speed up a merry-go-round at the park by pushing it but not letting go and pulling as it goes by.\n\n\nLet me pose a different idea to you though:\n\n**What if your external magnet(s) moved as the fan blade magnets passed by?** That way you can get the push without the pull, vice versa, or even both a pull then a push?\n\nThis is like pulling the merry-go-round when the bar is behind you and *pushing* when it's ahead of you. Any kid at a playground knows that's one way to get a merry-go-round spinning.\n\n*Ah-ha!* Now we're getting somewhere right? That would surely cause the rotor to spin faster and maintain it's motion. But you'll notice that it requires a changing input. You need to flip that magnet over, and that requires you put some energy into the system, which makes sense right? We can't just break the laws of thermodynamics because of *magnets*.\n\nSo how are we going to flip that magnet back and forth? If you're using an actual magnet, you need to physically move it. That means an external moving part on your motor, and if you keep going down that path it gets really complicated really fast. Next thing you know it'll be magnets all the way down. So what else can we try?\n\nWell instead of an actual magnet on the outside, what if we just used a magnetic field? Magnetic fields can be generated and manipulated using electric currents. [Here's a cool diagram](_URL_0_) of what a magnetic field created by a wire coil will create. Very similar to the magnet right?\n\nWell it turns out we're now in the process of designing an electric motor. First, lets start with a DC motor. DC is Direct Current, which means the electricity always flows in the same direction. Well if we just swapped your external magnets for an electric coil and powered it up do you think we'd see a difference? Probably not at all. It's pretty much the same magnetic field except a coil instead of a magnet.\n\nOne thing that electricity is good at though is turning off and on very easily. Magnets dont turn off and on, but electric coils can. So what if you sat there and flipped a switch as the magnets spun by? Well that's not very practical and your timing would be all off. How can we time it better?\n\nWell what if we put the coin on the fan blade instead? Surely the best way to time a spinning part is to *use the spinning part*. This is exactly how *brushed DC motors* work. They have an electric coil on the spinning part inside that's not directly connected to the power source (e.g. a battery), and stationary magnets on the outside part (called a stator). Also on the stator are metal brushes that connect to the power source. When the inside coil spins around, the brushes contact a metal section on the rotating part and allow current to flow while they're in contact. This \"powers up\" the magnetic field in the coil. If these are in the right places, the field created will oppose the stationary magnets on the outside, and then as it spins around the brushes will lose contact and cut power to the coil before it starts pulling back.\n\nThis ends up being a merry-go-round where the kids all stand on the merry-go-round and push at the same time with one foot each.\n\nIt's a very simple type of motor that doesn't require many complicated parts. You can actually try making something that uses the same concepts yourself. Every toy you've had with a battery powered motor probably uses a brushed DC motor. They're cheap and simple to make and can run off simple DC batteries.\n\nSo how fast will it go? Brushed DC motors will pretty much go as fast as they're allowed. The higher the current going through the coil, or the higher the voltage pushing that current, the harder the motor pushes. The motor speeds up, the brushes make contact more frequently, and eventually it gets to the point where the resistance against rotating matches the force the power source can push in. In this case the resistance would be two things: 1) Friction, 2) The load on the motor i.e. the air the fan is pushing.\n\nThere are brushless DC motors as well, but those have other more complicated parts I don't want to talk about.\n\nBut lets talk about AC now, or Alternating Current. The power in your home uses AC. This is current that doesn't just flow in one direct, but switches back and forth very quickly. In North America, our AC is 120V and 60Hz, meaning it switches back and forth 60 times per second. This ended up being a really efficient way to send power because it can be transformed to different voltages and currents very easily. It's also the reason many of your electronic devices have a black box on the power cord. Those are doing up to two things: 1) Transforming it into a more appropriate voltage, and/or 2) converting it to DC current. But motors happen to really like AC current.\n\nRemember our coil diagram? Well what do you think happens when the direction of electricity reverses? Simple: it reverses the magnetic field. Remember how earlier we said that it might be handy to flip the magnet over so that it pulls *and* pushes the magnet on your fan blade? Well AC is already doing that for you. It's flipping it's power back and forth, and if you hook a coil up to AC power, it will have a magnetic field that flips back and forth.\n\nBefore I go on: **DO NOT** just start connecting things to your home power. In fact, don't do it at all. If you want to play around with AC, go to an electrical hobby forum or something and start learning there. You can pick up a hobbyist power source capable of spitting out multiple voltages, currents, frequencies, and phase numbers of DC and AC. Start there.\n\nIf you use your home power, you're putting yourself at a huge unnecessary risk. With out properly inspected wiring and approved parts, you can easily connect a low or zero-load circuit, and hopefully your home circuit breaker can trip before damage is done. At the very least, you'll still get a nasty shock and you can burn all your components or worse - the wiring in the wall causing a house fire.\n\nAnyways...\n\nUsing alternating current can work really well to get a handy pull+push in your motor. Since the AC current has a timing \"preset\" into it, it means you don't need to use the rotating part to time the motor speed. You can just use the timing of the AC. This lets us put the magnet back on the rotating part instead, and removes the need for electricity to get to the moving part. No more brushes, no more dirty electrical contacts that can fail. The power is always connected.\n\nSo how do we actually make it? Well you could put one magnet on the fan blade and a counter weight on the other side, and then put the AC coil on one side of the housing. Theoretically, it should spin at 60Hz (60 rotations per second) because the AC is able to push and pull it 60 times per second. If you go any faster or slower than that, it won't line up with the AC push and pull as the magnet swings by. If you try to go too slow, the coil will be moving back and forth very quickly when the magnet swings by. Imagine grabbing a merry go round and just pushing and pulling back and forth very quickly. It's not going to make a full circle if you keep pulling it back.\n\nIt would be almost impossible to get the fan spinning at 60Hz in the first place, but once it's there it will work as long as there's enough power to overcome the load.\n\nBut how can we make it more reliable? What if we had 4 magnets on the fan blade equally spaced out? Then the ac only needs to push *a* magnet 60 times/second, and you could have it spin at 15 RPS. That makes it much easier to get started and much more stable. Cool, now we're talking. There's still an issue with it though. The fan blade is only being pushed from one side all the time. Without a balanced force applied, over the long term you're going to have a problem with the motor being pushed to one side all the time. You'll have uneven wear on your bearing, and you might even cause your rotor to become imbalanced, which could make it shake and cause more damage.\n\nNext improvement: 4 coils evenly spaced around the motor. This way, you can balance the forces out. Now we're talking about a nice reliable motor. Still an issue though. All 4 of your pushes happen at the same time, 60 times a second. That means that between each set of pushes, you're going to slow down a bit. So it's kind of like tapping on the gas repeatedly instead of holding it at the position you want. This causes your speed to fluctuate up and down with the pushes, and could end up being another source of wear.\n\nWell we'll never get perfect, but we can get damn close. We could use 3 different AC powers at the same frequency, but offset by 1/3rd of a frequency or \"out of phase\" with each other, and triple down on our coils. This way, each magnets gets a push by 3 different coils in each quarter rotation of the fan. This is like having 12 kids around the merry go round who push 4 at a time. You get near-constant push.\n\nWhat we're talking about now is called 3-phase power. It's AC that comes in three separate phases, each separated by 1/3rd of a full phase period. It's incredibly useful in industrial applications, and it's used in a few standard voltages. This lets motor manufacturers use standard designs. \n\nYour home has dual or split-phase power, which is similar to 3 phase but is only 2 phases and a neutral.\n\nSo how can we control speed? There are tools we can use called Variable Frequency Drives. They're able to change the frequency that the AC operates at. By increasing the frequency, you increase the motor speed.",
"Yea, they're called motors. The PC fan you're talking about is a motor. As electricity flows through a wire it creates a magnetic field. Coil this wire up and you make the field stronger. Now put that coil into another magnetic field you have a motor."
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35a7ej | how do doctors perform 20+ hour surgeries? don't they get mentally and physically exhausted? | I wouldn't want a tired doctor performing surgery on me. Do they get rest cycles with other doctors? Do they have places where they can "pause" the surgery to take a nap? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35a7ej/eli5_how_do_doctors_perform_20_hour_surgeries/ | {
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"Yes, if it's going to take that long they work in shifts. Even during a more mundane procedure, the surgeon will often have a resident come in to do certain parts.",
"Most surgeries (when things go to plan) take around 30 min-2 hours. Some major surgeries e.g. a liver transplant might take ~6-8 hours. \n\n20+ hour surgeries would be exceptional e.g. conjoined twin separations where you actually need multiple different teams e.g. plastic surgeons, neurosurgeons etc.\n\nUsually surgery is a very controlled situation so it would be theoretically possible to take a break. It might be reasonable (e.g. 20-30 min in a 6+ hour surgery) but you don't want to leave the patient open/unconscious too long. \n\nIn most specialty surgeries you would have someone else who can take over for some of it. ",
"Yes, they do. Although, if you've ever met or dealt with surgeons, they are a separate breed. Due to training and the personality traits that most of them have, they tend to thrive on long hours. Growing up, my friends dad was a Cardiac surgeon, and had a few marathon sessions in his career. He always said that during the surgery, you don't notice it as much, but crash HARD after.",
"Ok so ex-surgery resident here. The vast majority of our cases don't go that long. Neurosurgery cases on the other hand can go that long, but surgeons take breaks and if they need to nap. However I've been in a few cases that have gone 8-10 hours, but these cases go this long because either something has really gone awry or the person has terrible anatomy. Also surgery residency trains you to power through anything despite you being dehydrated, hungry, and tired. Honestly though time flies when your having fun and you don't really notice it because of the immediate pressing issues at hand. ",
"People take turns or switch out for various steps. Sometimes they partner up, eg general surgery does the main part and plastics can close and do grafts etc. Honestly, sometimes it's just really interesting and the adrenaline can be enough to keep you comfortably engaged. I can easily stand holding and retracting for a patient more than double my size for eight hours, but have me do paperwork? I'd probably be drooling in forty five minutes. That stamina will probably change after years of grueling work, but for now it's awesome and exciting. Also you kinda know how to prepare, I probably get pretty dehydrated, sorry kidneys, and inhale tons of food in the bathroom beforehand lol. I used to hide a donut in my coat or scrubs and secretly eat in preop and hide a drink in my white coat and cookies for my friends. "
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1jb8ri | in special relativity, how is it determined which reference point will have time slowed down? | Please correct me where I'm wrong on this:
Since there is no known ether creating a universal material/fabric limiting the speed of light (or is there based on string theory?), and since time dilation manifests as slowed passage of time for those traveling fast as relative to those not traveling fast, what baffles me is since a person on Earth and a person traveling past Earth at 0.75 times the speed of light have no difference in relative speed, so how is it that only one will experience 'slowed time'? Why not the other?
To be more clear:
Person A is standing on Earth.
Person B gets in a super space ship that launches up and then accelerates to 0.75 times the speed of light and travels for 1 year, then turns around, comes back, and lands on Earth.
Is time slower for one than the other?
That answer being yes, then since the frame of reference of the person in the super space ship after acceleration is that she is stationary and the Earth is travelling away from her at 0.75 times the speed of light, why would time slow for her and not the man on Earth? After all, their frames of reference are relative, right?
(The only difference I can see is acceleration being greater for one of the two people.)
If anyone can point out any videos or web pages that explain this conceptually (without too much math,) and really get to the core of this, I'd love that, too.
Thank you in advance!
--------
**EDIT** I've had several informative responses so far. I'm currently reading about the Twin Paradox: [_URL_0_](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jb8ri/eli5_in_special_relativity_how_is_it_determined/ | {
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" > Person B gets in a super space ship that launches up and then accelerates to 0.75 times the speed of light and travels for 1 year, then turns around, comes back, and lands on Earth.\nIs time slower for one than the other?\n\nActually, once the traveler lands, he and the person that stayed on earth will experience time at exactly the same rate. However, the traveler will have aged less than the earthling.",
"I believe what your referring to is called the [\"twin paradox\"](_URL_0_). ",
"I think you are absolutly correct but I find it hard to follow.\n\nThis is refered to as the [twins paradox](_URL_0_).\n\nA lot of people think that the paradox is one twin leaves earth travels very fast (an apriciable fraction of the speed of light) then come back to earth to find that the other twin has aged more than the other.\n\nBut you are astute in realising that by symetry if A is traveling relative to B then B is equally travelling reative to A. So what breaks the symetry to decide who has aged more than the other: acceleration.\n\nThe one who accelerates is the one who ages less.\n\nWhat if there is no one accelerating? And both people are traveling relative to each other.\n\nthen there is no problem since they never meet together in the end both parties can be happy that they are \"right\" in thinking that the other person is ageing more slowly and than them.\n\nDoes this answer your question."
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cfgphn | what is asmr exactly and how is it supposedly pleasant to the ears? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cfgphn/eli5_what_is_asmr_exactly_and_how_is_it/ | {
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"This is the best answer I've ever found.\n_URL_0_\n\nPlus it comes from a great comic to read.",
"ASMR is an actual physical sensation, it’s not just a metaphor. It’s hard to explain if you’ve never felt it, kinda like trying to explain colour to a blind person, but it’s tingly and sorta runs down your back. If you’ve ever gotten shivers from music (which is called frisson by the way, and some people don’t get these either), it kinda feels like that but a bit warmer and originating from your head. It’s usually triggered by sound, but sight and touch can do it too, at least it can for me.\n\nThere is little scientific knowledge of what ASMR actually is and what it is caused by, but it is accepted to be a real phenomenon in the sense that “enough people have claimed to have experienced it, therefore it exists, whatever the hell it is.”\n\nASMR, the videos, arose to try to create ASMR, the feeling, manually. Obviously, if you don’t experience ASMR, the videos are gonna seem a little pointless, maybe even weird. That being said, some people find ASMR videos relaxing, even if they don’t get ASMR tingles, which is why you sometimes see ASMR being used as a blanket term for anything relaxing.\n\ntl;dr: For some people, certain sounds and maybe other senses create pleasant tingles called ASMR. ASMR videos try to create ASMR tingles and sometimes also try to be relaxing, your mileage may vary."
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6b0by2 | How quickly did prejudice towards Japanese-Americans by the general American population end after WW2? | Norman Mineta was put into an internment camp as a teenager, and became a mayor in 1971 and in the House of Representatives in 1975. Of course that is decades later, but still, only a generation later it seemed to have completely passed at least in this specific example.
When did the prejudice and discrimination generally end at a notable scale? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6b0by2/how_quickly_did_prejudice_towards/ | {
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"There's a great book about this topic called \"America's Geisha Ally: Reimagining the Japense Enemy\" by Naoko Shibusawa. It goes into great detail about the United States government entering into the \"reverse course\" following WWII. What this basically means is that during and directly after the war, the general consensus of the government and populace of the United States was that Japan was going to pay dearly for its aggressive war. However, because of the looming threat of communism in the far east, and the capitalist framework that Japan had in place (infrastructure, skilled and disciplined workforce, industry, etc.) these plans were scrapped in favor of a program that would promote Japanese economic strength and stability. The United States went through great lengths to basically 'retrain' its populace from seeing the Japanese as a hated natural enemy to seeing them as effeminate and weak and in need of pity. Great book if you get a chance to check it out!",
" > How quickly did prejudice towards Japanese-Americans by the general American population end after WW2?\n\nAny academic who studies race and racism in the US will tell you that prejudice and discrimination has not ended against Japanese people in the US. It may not be as widespread as it was decades earlier, but many US citizens hold stereotypes about the Japanese. Some of this discrimination is related to WW2. Prejudice and stereotypes are passed down in families and across generations. Some discrimination is related to portrayal of Asians and Japanese in the US media. \n\nJapanese in the US today often face discrimination, just as other non-white people do. The degree of this varies across US states, cities and rural locations. There is less discrimination in places that are more diverse, such as parts of California. Strong anti-Japanese feelings are also more common in older people in the US. It is also true that anti-Japanese discrimination has decreased in the last two decades. \n\nMost experts would not say discrimination against Japanese in the US has ended, but may agree that attitudes towards Japanese people have changed over time (and become less negative). Note that the perspectives on historical and contemporary racism in the US vary greatly between these three groups: academic experts on race relations; whites; and non-whites that experience discrimination (including Japanese Americans and immigrants). \n\nFrom [Racial Microaggressions and the Asian American, 2007, Columbia University](_URL_1_) \n\nThe next three quotes are from this source: \n\n > Despite the belief that Asian Americans have somehow “made\nit” in our society and are “immune” to racism, widespread prejudice\nand discrimination continue to take a toll on their standard of\nliving, self-esteem, and psychological well being (Wong & Halgin,\n2006). Indeed, the study of Asians in America is the study of\nwidespread prejudice and discrimination leveled at this group. \n\nEvidence of prejudice and discrimination today: \n\n > most of the racial microagressions that occurred came\nfrom peers, neighbors, friends or authority figures. It disturbed\nthem that personal or respected acquaintances could make such\ninsensitive or hurtful remarks. What bothered them most, however,\nwas their occasional tendency to “make excuses” for friends by\nrationalizing away their biases and by denying their own racial\nreality. \n \nMany whites and non-whites in the US are in denial and dismiss the idea that discrimination exists and is widespread in the US. Many non-whites have a different view based on their personal experiences of discrimination. \n\n\n > it is important for social scientists and the general public to possess a realistic picture of Asian Americans and to understand the many overt and covert manifestations of racism directed at them. \n\nGiven all of this, including the existence of frequent, subtle discrimination today against Japanese Americans, it is still true that the view of Japanese by the general public is very different today than in the decades after WW2. Discrimination and prejudice in the US changes and evolves over time. \n\nBased on your example of Norman Mineta, your question may really be: \nWhen did the strongest forms of overt racism and prejudice against Japanese and Japanese Americans end in the US? You note this Japanese American Congressman as evidence that this prejudice has ended. \n\nAdditional Source: \n \n[*Race, Rights, and the Asian American Experience*](_URL_0_), Angelo N Ancheta, Rutgers University Press, 2006. \n > racial discrimination, both subtle and overt, persists in many sectors of American life, and Asian Americans still suffer from treatment both as \"perpetual foreigners\" and as a \"model minority\" group. \n\nFor anyone who wants to learn more about race relations in the US (from an academic perspective) I highly recommend taking a college course on racism, or using a syllabus from such a course as a guide to reading materials that serve as an introduction to the subject. \n"
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"https://books.google.com/books/about/Race_Rights_and_the_Asian_American_Exper.html?id=Uc_q6upNmugC",
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31r47t | When and why did the US stop allowing (literal) boatloads of immigrants to just show up at a port and begin living in the US? | I've heard that some time in the past, it was routine for thousands of people to arrive at places like Ellis Island in New York, and then they were allowed to immigrate right then and there.
Nowadays, you usually need to apply for a Green Card, and it's done by lottery, and there is a very limited number compared to the number of people who want to move to the US. And now, to even visit, you need a passport (and probably a return ticket, and proof you're not going to illegally immigrate).
When and how did the shift happen to tightly-controlled immigration policies? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/31r47t/when_and_why_did_the_us_stop_allowing_literal/ | {
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"It wasn't just one single law but rather a series of laws. The first was the Page Act of 1875 that primarily targeted Asians, particularly Chinese people, that were immigrating to the western United States to work menial jobs like railroads. Just like we see in the debates today about Hispanic people coming to the United States to work mostly low-wage jobs, there were concerns about taking jobs away from white Americans, as well as diseases, immorality, and integration of the Chinese into American culture.\n\nAnother major law was the Immigration Act of 1924, which severely limited the number of people that could come from any one country to 2% of the number of people from that country that had already immigrated. This was similar to the Page Act in that it was designed to preserve a certain ethnic makeup of the country. But these laws continue to change over time and even now we see debates about how to \"fix\" them. The shift from almost entirely open borders to what we have now was very slow and incremental.",
"One of the early laws was the[ Page Act of 1875](_URL_0_) (PDF). It imposed restrictions on Asian immigration to the US,, and further stated that:\n\n > [I]t shall be unlawful for aliens of the following classes to immigrate into the United States, namely, persons who are undergoing a sentence for conviction in their own country of felonious crimes other than political or growing out of or the result of such political offenses, or whose sentence has been remitted on condition of their emigration, and women \"imported for the purposes of prostitution.\" **Every vessel arriving in the United States may be inspected under the direction of the collector at the port at which it arrives, if he shall have reason to believe that any such obnoxious persons are on board**"
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23bkik | Does quantum mechanics apply to energy? | Here is the gist of my question; quantum probability states that (as far as I know) subatomic particals can exist anyplace in the universe. IE some of the particals in your body may be on Mars right now. The reason large objects don't vanish and reform is because the probability is so low.
Now, once the universe winds down and dies, (all matter is sucked into backholes and then spread throughout the universe via Hawking radiation), isn't there a nearly infinitely small probabality of all that energy reforming back into a central gas cloud?
If the universe continues to exist forever, does the most improbable things have to happen eventually? And so after a near infinite amount of time (say, a googol years) the universe would reform into one similar to the one we have now?
Thanks, and if there is some major flaw in my logic or understanding, I apologize. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/23bkik/does_quantum_mechanics_apply_to_energy/ | {
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"That's not really what quantum mechanics is about. Energy is conserved in quantum systems unless there is an external reason for it not to be.",
" > If the universe continues to exist forever, does the most improbable things have to happen eventually?\n\nNo. Quantum mechanics is not a magic ticket that makes all things possible. Quantum mechanics still obeys all the usual conservation laws. "
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6nvu4e | What terms did people use to describe rotation before clocks were common? | I refer to terms used today such as "clockwise" and "counter-clockwise" | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6nvu4e/what_terms_did_people_use_to_describe_rotation/ | {
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"In Northern Europe, people would refer to the direction of the sun - indicating a direction was either \"sunwise\" or \"against the sun\": In the north, if one faces south to watch the path the sun takes, it moves in an arc that moves from the left to the right - \"sunwise\" or in today's term \"clockwise.\" Clocks moved in the direction of the sun because that was the preferred, \"safe\" direction. Moving against the sun - today's counterclockwise\" - was regarded as going again the natural order of things. It was potentially dangerous in magical terms to do things - stirring food or walking around a church - in a direction that was \"against the sun.\""
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4bb9z0 | how do we know cold is the absence of heat and not the other way around? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4bb9z0/eli5_how_do_we_know_cold_is_the_absence_of_heat/ | {
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"Temperature is a measurement of energy, specifically kinetic energy on a molecular scale with warmer things having more of this energy than colder things.\nBecause we warm something up by adding energy we define warm/hot as the presence of this energy. Since there is nothing that we can \"add\" to make an object colder, cold is inherently the absence of this energy or in other words, the absence of heat.",
"Cold is the absence of heat just like darkness is the absence of light. So, you can't \"add cold\" to something just like you can't make a room less bright by \"adding darkness.\" You can only add heat or take away heat, and add light or take away light."
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8ksc43 | what does being turing complete means? | I've seen it's a machine that can solve any computational problem, but can you ELI5 please? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ksc43/eli5_what_does_being_turing_complete_means/ | {
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"In colloquial usage, the terms \"Turing complete\" or \"Turing equivalent\" are used to mean that any real-world general-purpose computer or computer language can approximately simulate the computational aspects of any other real-world general-purpose computer or computer language.",
"Turing described a minimal, hypothetical computer which he used to mathematically prove results, known as a Turing Machine. It wasn't intended as a practical device, but rather to be as simple as possible to make proofs easier. A computing device that is capable of doing everything that a Turing Machine can is Turing Complete. One way to show that a computer or programming environment is Turing Complete is to implement a Turing Machine emulator.",
"Computer engineer here,\n\nA computational device is said to be Turing complete if it can simulate any other Turing machine.\n\nIn practical terms, Turing completeness specifies a minimum set of instructions that an instruction set architecture must implement, including conditional flow control, arithmetic (addition, multiplication, division), logic (predicate and boolean), and a reasonable (technically arbitrary, but this is not realistic) amount of memory.\n\nMany programmable processors, such as DMA processors used to transfer memory between peripheral devices and main memory, are not Turing complete because they do not need to be. They have a specific set of instructions tailored to the task for which they are designed; they can be simulated by any machine that is Turing complete but they cannot perform Turing complete simulation on their own.",
"A Turing machine consists of only a few things. A paper tape, a head that can either read, erase, or write a symbol on that tape, and advance/reverse the tape by one step. It's an impractical computer design, but very easy to reason about and prove properties. It turns out that this extremely limited machine can compute anything that is computable - the mathematician Turing proved this, and so it is a very important mathematical result. \n\nNow, your PC is not designed like a Turing machine. For example, its memory is random access - you can read any memory location you want, you don't have to advance a paper tape 10,000,000 positions. \n\nHowever, it is \"turing complete\" - we can prove that it can do everything that the Turing machine can do, which therefore means it can compute anything that is computable. \n\nThis makes the proof easy. If you show a device can do the few simple things the Turing machine does, it must be a general purpose computing machine. It can be very difficult to proof that it is general purpose otherwise, if you try to take all its capabilities into account. But you don't have to perform that difficult action since this much easier proof is available to you.\n\n In summary, it is a way of saying 'we know this machine can compute anything that is computable', and we know from Turing's work what is computable and what isn't. ~~~~"
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1n5ja2 | If the Great Depression didn't truly end until the start of WWII, how come the US economy didn't dip in the post war years? | I've always understood that until the rise in manufacturing immediately leading up to and at the start of World War II, the effects of the Depression and the Roosevelt Recession were not fully alleviated. If this is true, how come the post-war years did not see an economic downturn, but are instead widely recognized as the golden age of the American middle class?
Thanks! | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1n5ja2/if_the_great_depression_didnt_truly_end_until_the/ | {
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"There was a recession in 1945. GDP fell by 12.7% in that recession. By comparison, the recession of 2007 lowered GDP by 4.3%.\n\n"
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3kfpvq | What "generation" star is our Sun? | I understand that a certain number of elements are created when a star goes supernova. What is left over then becomes another star that goes supernova and creates the next level of elements, rinse and repeat. How many of these cycles have we been through to create the natural elements that exist on Earth?
On reflection, I assume that some of the ancestors on the stars family tree will be from more recent generations at the same level of ancestry.
Can we make any educated guesses as to how many ancestors our sun has? (Not just number of generations but actual number of stars.)
How old is the oldest ancestor star on our tree?
And when/if our sun goes supernova, which elements will it create that are not naturally occurring now? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3kfpvq/what_generation_star_is_our_sun/ | {
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"The Sun is a Population I star, meaning it contains metals from previous generations of stars. By measuring the spectral characteristics of stars, we can observe the ratios of metals to hydrogen or helium, and from this, we can determine how many generations of \"ancestors\" the star has had.\n\n > Stars may be classified by their heavy element abundance, which correlates with their age and the type of galaxy in which they are found.\n\n > Population I stars include the sun and tend to be luminous, hot and young, concentrated in the disks of spiral galaxies. They are particularly found in the spiral arms. With the model of heavy element formation in supernovae, this suggests that the gas from which they formed had been seeded with the heavy elements formed from previous giant stars. About 2% of the total belong to Population I.\n\n > Population II stars tend to be found in globular clusters and the nucleus of a galaxy. They tend to be older, less luminous and cooler than Population I stars. They have fewer heavy elements, either by being older or being in regions where no heavy-element producing predecessors would be found. Astronomers often describe this condition by saying that they are \"metal poor\", and the \"metallicity\" is used as an indication of age. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nAstronomers also theorize that there was a generation of very old stars with extremely low metallicity. These are Population III stars. Recently, some astronomers have found evidence there may be Population III stars in a very bright, distant galaxy.\n\nAs a side note, the sun will not go supernova. It will become a red giant, shedding its outer layers, and making it very easy to roast hot dogs on Earth.\n\nedit: red giant"
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3nepjr | why do we have sports commentators on television that talk non stop during the games? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nepjr/eli5_why_do_we_have_sports_commentators_on/ | {
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"Probably carry over from before people could watch games on their television. The commentators would give a play by play to those listening on the radio. And now it is tradition. Though they're supposed to be \"analyzing\" the game as well. Or telling people things they might have missed ",
"It is to keep people watching the game. You can find some YouTube videos of sporting events without the commentary. If you try watching them, you will see how hard it is to watch. Like between plays, there would be silence. Silence is hard for people to take. "
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2xvglf | How do we perceive things through light bouncing off of the objects we see and entering our eyes? | I know that we see objects because light bounces off of them and enters our eyes. But there are many objects out there, all bouncing light into our eyes. How do we make sense of it all? Why don't we just see a blur of color? I'm in my living room - I see a TV, computer, books, a table, etc. They are all bouncing light into my eyes. How do I tell them apart and see them clearly? Why don't I just see a mass of color? I assume the brain makes sense of it all, but how does it determine what where the light is coming from and how big the object is?
And related, when I look into the night sky and see stars, light emitted by those stars is hitting my eye, correct? (this absolutely blows me away) Why don't I see a huge white blob that takes up my whole field of vision? Why do I see the star as only taking up a very small portion of my field of vision?
Hope I'm making this clear. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2xvglf/how_do_we_perceive_things_through_light_bouncing/ | {
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"The secret to the eye being able to resolve things is the fact that the pupil is really small. [Look at this image](_URL_0_) of how a pinhole camera works. Your eye is much the same- replacing the pinhole with pupil. \n\nImagine a red light up above you, and a blue light down below. The red light shines light in every direction. But only the one direction that passes through the narrow opening of your pupil will actually hit the back of your eye (retina). So, the red light entering into your eye will come from the top, be heading down, and thus will hit the bottom of your retina. The blue light will be the opposite, the only one which will pass through your pupil will be the one beam headed up, and thus will hit the top of your retina. \n\nThis is why your pupil has to be small. Imagine the pinhole camera, but the pinhole being replaced by a window. Now, many light beams from the same object can pass through the window- headed in many directions and thus no coherent image is formed on the wall. \n\nThis is why squinting helps you see better. You reduce the effective size of your pupil, as your eye lids block more of the light from different directions, thus giving a sharper image. "
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1o87z3 | What is e in regards to natural logarithms? | I know that it is 2.71828, but what does it mean? Why is it important? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1o87z3/what_is_e_in_regards_to_natural_logarithms/ | {
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"Oh this is such a fun question!\n\nThe number's importance starts with one key observation. \n\nLet a > 0 be a real number, we can define a function f(x)=a^x \n\nWhat is the derivative of this function?\n\nIf we look at the limit definition of the derivative we get\n\nf'(x) = lim h- > 0 ( a^(x+h) - a^x )/h = lim h- > 0 a^x (a^h - 1 )/h = a^x lim h- > 0 (a^h - 1 )/h\n\nWe can see that if the limit exists then the form of the derivative is \n\nf'(x) = a^x g(a)\n\nwhere g(a) is a function that depends only on a, which is a fixed number. We also notice that if the function is once differentiable (it is, I just don't know how to simplify that limit off the top of my head, but it should give the result log(a)) it is twice differentiable with derivative\n\nf''(x) = a^x g(a)^2 \n\nand more generally \n\nf^(n) (x) = a^x g(a)^n\n\nWe can then write a Taylor approximation to this function as\n\nf(x) = 1 + g(a) x + x g(a)^2 /2 + ...\n\nNow we note that the function has a very special property if g(a)=1, it is its own derivative, and note that if we find f(1) we get f(1)=a^1 =a\n\nSo computing f(1), g(a)=1, this let's us compute the number a such that the function a^x is its own derivative (we've named this number e). The Taylor approximation here becomes\n\ne=1+1+1/2+... = sum_n=0^infinity 1/n! = lim n- > infinity (1+1/n)^n (this can be shown using the binomial theorem)\n\nTl;dr, e is the unique number that defines a function (e^x ) so that the function is its own derivative. (d/dx e^x = e^x )",
"e appears in lots of places one might not expect, but one of the simpler appearances can be seen in terms of a financial application. \n\nLet's suppose you invest some money ($100) in an account earning 10% interest (wow!), but the bank only compounds the interest once a year. How much do you have after a year?\n\n 100 + 100*10% = 110\n\nright? Or, I can write this in the following way:\n\n 100 (1 + 0.10) = 110\n\ni.e. at the end of the year, I still have my principal, and I have 10% of my principal.\n\nIf I switch to an account that compounds **twice** a year, how much money will I have?\n\nAt the end of the first six month period, they pay me 5% = 10% / 2 of my principal:\n\n balance after 6 months: 100(1 + 0.10/2)\n\nand at the end of the year, I earn another 5% of my *new* principal:\n\n balance after 1 year = (bal after 6 moz)*(1 + 0.10/2)\n\nI can write this relative to my original principal as\n\n 100*(1 + 0.10/2)(1 + 0.10/2) = 100*(1 + 0.10/2)^2 = 110.25\n\n(I've earned $0.25 more this way!) Now, suppose they offer to compound my interest quarterly. After the first three months, I have\n\n 100*(1 + 0.10/4)\n\nafter 6 months, it's\n\n 100*(1 + 0.10/4)^2\n\netc., and after the whole year, it's \n\n 100*(1 + 0.10/4)^4 = 110.38\n\nNow, hopefully you can see that, if your interest rate is *i*, and the interest is compounded *n* times per year, at the end of the year, you have\n\n 100*(1 + i/n)^n\n\nIf our bank offered to compound our interest daily (n = 365), at the end of a year, we would have\n\n 100*(1 + 0.10/365)^365 = $110.51\n\nNow, what's the natural 'limit' to this process? Compounding every hour? There are 8760 hours in a year, so\n\n 100*(1 + 0.10/8760)^8760 = $110.52\n\nbut we could go further, and compound every minute, every second, every millisecond... etc. We're not going to get as much gain at each of these additional increases, but what is the upper limit of this process? \n\nMathematically, the question is, what is the limit, as n goes to infinity of\n\n (1 + i/n)^n ?\n\nI claim that it is e^i . I won't give a proof of this, but I invite you to use your calculator and see what\n\n 100*e^(0.10)\n\nis.",
"'e' is one of the most beautiful numbers in all of existence. Sometimes called 'Euler's number', it is more appropriate to think of 'e' as standing for 'exponential' due to its unique property where d(e^x)/dx = e^x. This is the purest definition of 'e', and series solutions exist to calculate its value.\n\n'e' also has a starring role in the most elegant equation in all of mathematics: e^(i*pi) + 1 = 0.\n\nWith regard to logarithms, we typically use two types: natural and base-10, even though all logarithm bases have the same useful properties and one can easily convert from one to the other. The base-10 logarithm is useful because we use a base-10 number system and it can provide order of magnitude.\n\nThe natural logarithm is much more fundamental because it inverts the most fundamental exponential function, e^x. The natural logarithm also has another extremely useful property in that d(ln x)/dx = 1/x. While 1/x behavior exists with other bases, the constant of proportionality being unity occurs only with the natural logarithm. In this regard, the natural logarithm can even be thought of as part of the power series, i.e. A*(1/x) + B*(ln x) + C + D*x + E*x^2 + F*x^3.",
"The natural logarithm is the area under the curve y=1/x between 1 and some number. When that number is e, the value of the natural logarithm is 1. So the area under the curve y=1/x between 1 and e, is 1. Between 1 and e^2 it's 2. Between 1 and e^3, it's 3. So you can see that the natural logarithm gives you the power that e is being raised to.",
"Assuming that you're familiar with basic calculus, e is just the value a that satisfies d/dx a^x = a^x. The exact value can be calculated by the process described by /u/dogdiarrhea. \n\nIf you don't have a background in calc, let's take a look at the [graph of f(x)=e^x .](_URL_0_) If you draw a tangent line (a line just barely 'kissing' the curve at some point) anywhere along that curve, that line will have the same slope as the value of f(x) at that value x."
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23awmx | How did most Medieval kings die? | During the Middle Ages/Medieval Era, what was the most likely way a King would die in a place like Western Europe? Assassination, poison, battle, old age, etc? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/23awmx/how_did_most_medieval_kings_die/ | {
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"Edited to remove typos.\n\nYour question is far too broad for anyone to answer (at least to the standard expected). I'm sorry. To explain: 1) the death of major figures is not always clear cut. 2) this means a respondant requires exhaustive contextual knowledge of a thousand years of history across medieval Europe (to assume you are just considering that region). \n\nOur major sources at this level are chronicles - and these writers may be writing.some time after the events they describe. This might mean they have been influenced (or consciously decided to perpetuate) by rumours surrounding a monarch's death.",
"Most medieval kings died of old age, illness, or some other \"natural cause.\" If a king died from something more nefarious, it usually stands out in the historical record. Take the English monarchs, of which there have been about 50 if we count liberally between Alfred the Great and Charles I (by liberally I mean including people like Lady Jane Grey and Matilda). \n\nThree were killed in battle or by wounds sustained in battle (Harold Godwinson, Richard the Lion Heart, and Richard III)\n\nOne king (Edmund I) died in a brawl that he probably started.\n\nThree were definitely murdered (Edward the Martyr, Edward II, and Richard II).\n\nTwo were probably murdered (William Rufus and Henry VI [who was already deposed])\n\nAnd two were beheaded (Lady Jane Grey and Charles I).\n\nSo, that's 11 deaths total that weren't natural causes, out of 50 people, and two of those are only suspicious deaths, not confirmed assassinations."
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19t45f | Is the Mandate of Heaven directly responsible for the technological and philosophical advances in the early history of dynastic China? | The Mandate of Heaven prompted long periods of political unity. Is this political unity what made China such a powerhouse in technical innovations and philosophy in the last three thousand years? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/19t45f/is_the_mandate_of_heaven_directly_responsible_for/ | {
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"I think you have elevated the mandate to a height that it doesn't deserve. Innovations in China did not depend at all on unification. Some examples: \nThe great advances in military tactics, poetry, and paper all occurred in the six dynasties period, that which lies between the Han and sui/tang. The next great innovation was the printing press, which saw it's first major use in the five dynasties/ten kingdoms period between the tang and song. There is no great correlation between unification and innovation. "
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8dab6t | Is there an increased risk of lung cancer by just being in a room that smells like cigarette smoke with no one actually smoking in it? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8dab6t/is_there_an_increased_risk_of_lung_cancer_by_just/ | {
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"Yes it appears so;\n\n\" \n\nResearchers now know that residual tobacco smoke, dubbed thirdhand smoke, combines with indoor pollutants such as ozone and nitrous acid to create new compounds. Thirdhand smoke mixes and settles with dust, drifts down to carpeting and furniture surfaces, and makes its way deep into the porous material in paneling and drywall. It lingers in the hair, skin, clothing, and fingernails of smokers—so a mother who doesn't smoke in front of her kids, smokes outside, then comes inside and holds the baby is exposing that child to thirdhand smoke. The new compounds are difficult to clean up, have a long life of their own, and many may be carcinogenic.\n\n \"\n\n\\- [_URL_0_](_URL_1_)",
"Yes, this is the \"3rd hand smoke\" danger, which has recently been studied and has been linked to the same sort of dangers as second hand smoke. The dangerous smoke particles cling to carpets and drapes and wallpaper, car upholstery, etc.\n\nThe toxins include arsenic and cyanide. [link](_URL_0_)\n\n",
"I can't believe I'm going to defend Tabaco here -- but looking at the Scientific American article, there's a lot of speculation and not really hard data. \n\nWorse, the Scientific American article misstates the original source, which is a 2006 Surgeon General report. The Surgeon General report says that there's no safe level of secondhand smoke. The Scientific American article extends that (with no written justification) to third-hand smoke.\n\nWhich is not to say that the residue of tobacco smoke is safe. I can easily and trivially believe that modern chemical testing can detect the nasty chemicals. But my personal thinking is that I care most about relative risk. I don't see any evidence of any particular harm from third-hand smoke."
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"https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140320-thirdhand-smoke-cigarettes-cancer/"
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395eaq | how did children from completely different parts of the world come up with the exact-same schoolyard games? | We all played the same games with eerily identical names and rules, like "blind man's bluff", "bulldog", "the floor is lava" etc. How did we all come up with these games? Seems improbable that they'd all stem from one source and spread out from school-to-school in such a short timespan. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/395eaq/eli5_how_did_children_from_completely_different/ | {
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"Think you are underestimating both the time these games have been around for and the extent to which families move around.",
"Kids talk to other kids and go to summer camp. Stuff like that packed with games their parents tell them really."
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ql8ry | Why are there only 4 "letters" of DNA? | Inspired by this video [Poetry of Science](_URL_0_) with Dawkins and Neil Tyson. Roll it back a few minutes if you want to see what sparks them talking about life on mars, but my question stems from the comment "it would be a disappointment if we found life on mars to have evolved with the SAME dna code".
I have a less than ~high school level understanding of DNA -- I know the general idea of RNA and DNA replication, and that we have the four nucleotide bases (letters CGTA), and that they bond in a particular way, but... why are there only 4?
Is this a "necessary" limitation of DNA? Or is that just how **OUR** DNA happens to have evolved? Could we imagine a similar DNA structure to exist -- a double helical, self-replicating molecule that forms the basis of life -- with completely different nucleotide bases? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ql8ry/why_are_there_only_4_letters_of_dna/ | {
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"Only 4 different nitrogenous bases might seem like too few to encode the diverse complexity of life, but your computer is coded completely in binary (1s and 0s). ",
" The interesting thing is that the Adenosine, Thymine (Uracil for RNA), Cytosine and Guanine are NOT the only nucleotides that are present in nature. There is also xanthine, hypoxanthine, and inosine. \n Also, the traditional Watson-Crick bases that are said to be present in RNA are NOT the ONLY bases that can be present in RNA. For example, there is an enzyme called Adenosine deaminase (ADA for short) that deaminates adenosine to form inosine (which is a non-Watson-Crick nuceloside) and if the enzyme does not deaminate a specific nucleotide in a specific gene, this results in ALS (or Lou-Gerrig's disease). In short, the \"four nitrogenous bases rule\" is an over simplification of RNA since other nitrogenous bases can be present in mainly RNA structures. \n As to if it is possible that a similar DNA structure could exist that is double helical and self-replicating (DNA actually uses protien enzymes to replicate and is generally considered to have very little catalytic activity. RNA is the one that is self-replicating and has catalytic activity), it is entirely possible that very similar nitrogenous bases could be arranged with a phosphate backbone to form another organism's \"basis of life\" but the problem is that the structure of said molecule would be hard to determine unless we were exposed to it and were able to determine the structure. In the scenario in which we discover a new \"basis of life,\" the structure of the molecule does not necessarily matter if the organism finds a way to deal with the structure and replicate. The reason that we care that DNA is helical is that the enzymes that bind DNA as well as unzip it to make more DNA (the enzymes that make DNA are called polymerases whereas the enzymes that unzip the DNA are called helicases) are specifically tuned to work with that helical structure. \n\nedit: mindule pointed out my error in saying that DNA contains Inosine; RNA actually contains Inosine. For RNA, there is more variation with the types of nitrogneous bases that are present, but in general, DNA does only contain 4 nitrogenous bases. I do think that jurble and smashy_smashy made some excellent points as to how this necessarily a limitation since it leaves a lot of room for genetic variation. ",
"It's not a limitation, 4 is more than enough to code for all the amino acids we need. A codon is 3-base pairs long, and 4x4x4 = 64 possible combinations. There are only 20 standard and 2 non-standard amino-acids. We would have to add > 42 amino acids to our repertoire in order for more DNA bases to make sense. \n\n ((Well... maybe. If we were theoretically designing a hypothetical organism with more amino acids, it might make sense to throw in an extra-base at around maybe 35-ish, or something. This gives you the benefit of redundancy in code. Our 64 possible codon combinations vs the 20 amino acids they code for allow for redundancy, so we can absorb a bit of mutation without breaking down.))\n\n\nHere's a thread that explains codons and shit:\n_URL_0_",
"Useful reading on the subject: _URL_0_",
"You may wish to look into: 5-methyl cytosine, 5-hydroxymethyl cytosine, 5-formylcytosine, 5-carboxycytosine, N-6 methyladenine, 'Base J', putrescinyl thymine. These are a selection of bases found in DNA across various branches of the tree of life; there are more.\n\nRelevant paper/review authors: Gommers-Ampt, Borst, Warren, Ratel."
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1yo5jl | If you were placed in a room with 30% oxygen and 70% helium, would you be able to breathe normally? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1yo5jl/if_you_were_placed_in_a_room_with_30_oxygen_and/ | {
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"Yes; you can breathe this just fine. Deep sea divers utilize HeliOx to avoid nitrogen narcosis. You would take funny, but could breathe it just fine at least short term.\n\nThis assumes that you're breathing this at a normal pressure. If you were actually diving or in a compression chamber, you have to consider the partial pressure of the gases.\n\nI'm not sure the long term effect of the elevated O2 percentage. Someone else will need to address that.",
"Wouldn't this scenario be fatal? I assume the helium would occupy the upper 70 percent of the room (likely where you are breathing from) and the oxygen the remainder? Which makes me wonder how the \"normal air\" that we breath contains so many different gases? And what is the by-product of a human exhaling consumed helium?\n\nCool question - breathing (and the effects) is certainly something that I had taken for granted and not paid much thought to!\n\n\n",
"Helium can be combined with oxygen to treat diseases such as severe asthma. The combination is called Heliox and is used because when oxygen is combined with helium, the density of the gas mixture decreases which improves the flow of turbulent gas through constricted airways such as in acute asthma attacks. So breathing helium and oxygen is possible and is an actual medical treatment. \n\nAlso, for the others who have commented that inert gases do not have biological interactions, that statement is not true. Xenon is an inert gas but can be used as an anesthetic for general anesthesia. _URL_0_"
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6v8wpr | What parts of WW2 fighter aircraft were armored? | From what I understand some fighters had virtually no armor (say the A6M Zero) or self-sealing fuel tanks, but other fighters had a armor plates (say behind the pilot), more rugged construction (say thicker metal on the wings, fuselage, "armored" windscreens [I take that to mean thick glass?], etc).
Were there typical placements of armor plates protecting the pilot or did it vary considerably? What are some good resources for looking into this?
I know the question is pretty broad, so apologies for that. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6v8wpr/what_parts_of_ww2_fighter_aircraft_were_armored/ | {
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"For the most part there was very little armor included in fighter aircraft of WWII. The Japanese Ki-43-II only had a single 13mm steel plate behind the pilot. Even planes renowned for their ruggedness such as the P-47 had only minor armor. The P-47D had a 10mm plate behind the pilot and a small plate in front of the pilot under the canopy. For fighters, armor played only a small role in the durability of the plane. Fighters had to be light and manoeuvrable in order to effectively fit their role. The Bf-109 came with an additional armor plate behind the headrest, but this was often removed by pilots who considered increased visibility to be more valuable. \n\nThe only other protection resembling armor on fighters would be strengthened glass which could withstand a few hits from low calibre rounds. This would only be found right in front of the pilot, with few exceptions. The skin on the wings and fuselage were not thickened because the disadvantage of the extra mass far outweighed any small increase that may have been gained in this manner.\n\nIf you would like to know more about planes with heavier armor we would need to look at ground attackers such as the legendary IL-2 and the Hs.129. A modern example of such a plane would be the A-10 Warthog currently in service with the US military.\nI would suggest you watch [this](_URL_0_) video by youtuber Bismark for a good overview of this topic."
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1o2w1a | Why is a lump of coal black, but a diamond is clear? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1o2w1a/why_is_a_lump_of_coal_black_but_a_diamond_is_clear/ | {
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"Coal is a sedimentary rock composed of many minerals. Diamond is a mineral composed of a carbon-based crystal structure. If impurities are present in that structure, the clarity of diamond (or any mineral) can be altered. That is why we see varying colors of diamonds.\n\nA better question would ask why graphite (also a cabon-based structure) is gray/black and diamonds are clearer. Both are considered allotropes of carbon with different crystal structures that propagate light differently, which varies their appearance. \n\nFun fact: Diamond is not stable at our atmospheric temperature and pressure (think ground surface and areas we inhabit) and will eventually break down to graphite. Although, this could take a few billion years. ",
"You're probably thinking \". . .if they're both made of carbon?\" But they're still very different substances. Coal is a mixture of who-knows-how-many different compounds, most of them of very high molecular weight. There are a lot of aromatic rings in there, but it's not an easy mixture to analyze. The key thing is that it's a very heterogeneous material. Light gets absorbed by the huge delocalized aromatic compounds, and it gets scattered by the fine-grained non-crystalline nature of the bulk solid.\n\nDiamond, on the other hand, is as homogeneous as it gets. It's all single-bonded carbon atoms in a regular lattice, and it's only when you get defects and the inclusion of other elements that you see any colors at all. Visible light isn't absorbed at all by carbon-carbon single bonds, which is why gases like butane and liquids like hexane are colorless as well. ",
"To build on the other answers here, visible light is absorbed by electronic transitions in molecules, i.e. by exciting electrons to a higher energy state (vibrational and rotational transitions are too low in energy for visible light, absorbing in the infrared and microwave range respectively). However, the transitions of most bonds, including single bonds, are too high in energy and only absorb in the UV. Pure diamond has only carbon-carbon single bonds, so it doesn't absorb any visible light. It does, however, absorb UV light with wavelengths below 225 nm (short wave UV). \n\nThe lower the gap between electronic energy levels, the lower energy of radiation capable of being absorbed. Delocalized pi systems allow many electrons to share a system of closely spaced levels. Ozone has a three-atom pi system, which is what causes its absorption of mid-sized UV in the range of 200 nm - 315 nm which makes it famous. Larger pi systems generally have smaller spacing between their energy levels, allowing them to absorb down into the visible range. The indicator [Phenolphthalein](_URL_2_) is an example of this. In its basic form, it has a large pi system consisting of two coplanar benzene rings connected by a pi system, which causes it to absorb visible light and appear purple. However, in its acidic form, the system is disrupted into two unconnected benzene rings, meaning it only absorbs in the UV.\n\nOne class of compounds with large pi systems is [polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons](_URL_0_), which are systems of multiple benzene rings sharing edges. As shown is [this image](_URL_3_), from [this page](_URL_1_), larger PAHs absorb lower energy light, as we would expect. High grade coal is composed almost entirely carbon, much of it in the form of PAHs of varying sizes, because there is so much, in all different sizes, along with other compounds and impurities, coal absorbs basically all visible light, making it appear black. Graphite can be thought of as the highest grade of coal, consisting of stacked sheets of what are basically gigantic PAH systems."
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5ms8zb | Why was the SA and SS allowed/accepted in Germany before Hitler ultimately took power in 1933? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5ms8zb/why_was_the_sa_and_ss_allowedaccepted_in_germany/ | {
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"The Republic did have the legal power to ban both of these organizations as early as 1922. The *Republikschutzgesetz* (Law for the Protection of the Republic) gave both the *Land* and central governments broad authority to suppress organizations deemed a threat to the Republic. These laws allowed for the temporary bans of media that encourage violence. Under the rubric of \"endangering public safety,\" the *Republikschutzgesetz* outlawed the organizations from owning unauthorized weapons, the creation and brandishing of a weapons arsenal, and criminalized the failure to report on the existence of weapons arsenal. But gun control and regulation was not the primary focus of the *Republikschutzgesetz* but rather to restrict the operations of various anti-republican groups and provide grounds for their prosecution. The *Republikschutzgesetz*'s provisions on firearms were predicated upon a pre-existing January 1919 Reichstag legislation which banned the private ownership of firearms to meet provisions of the Versailles Treaty which called for a wide-ranging German disarmament, including non-state affiliated militias. \n\nThe Law had a five-year life, but was extended in both 1927 and 1929. Inn the latter year, the Republic used the *Republikschutzgesetz* to ban the KPD's paramilitary wing, the *Roter Frontkämpferbund* (RFB). The ban was relatively ineffective; Berlin police reported that the RFB still collected dues and many RFB members simply did not wear their uniforms and insignia, but still hewed to their paramilitary organization. The ban restricted membership and new recruitment, but did not kill the organization. \n\nNonetheless, the ban of the RFB did send a clear signal as to the authorities' thoughts on Communist paramilitaries. But neither the NSDAP's SA or SS were banned in 1929, despite evidence of considerable violence by the NSDAP groups. Nor did the ban the *Stahlhelm* paramilitary of the right-wing DNVP or the socialist *Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold* of the SDP. These paramilitaries continued to function in the chaos years of the Depression and their street brawls contributed to a larger sense of the Republic's terminal decline. \n\nThe nominal reason for not banning these organizations was that a group like the SA was only open to NSDAP members. Therefore, applying the *Republikschutzgesetz* to the SA or SS was not banning a paramilitary organization, but suppressing an internal part of a political party, which the Constitution forbid. But this type of rationale could have also applied to the RFB. The continued survival of both the *Stahlhelm* and the RSRG point to favortism on the part of the state towards those in power, but this still does not explain the reluctance to apply the law to the NSDAP, who were self-described political outsiders. There were repeated calls between 1930 and 1931 to ban the NSDAP's paramilitary wing, but the state and *Land* governments dragged their feet until April 1932 and the Brüning government banned the SA and SS. \n\nBut by this time, the SA, and to a lesser extent, the SS, had a large enough following to make the ban toothless. SA men simply wore insignia on the inside of their lapels or marched in plain white shirts. Various *Land* laws against uniforms were evaded through such measures. Moreover, both the SA and SS tended to frame their flaunting of the ban or *ersatz* uniforms as an issue of free speech protected by the constitution. The fall of the Brüning led to a reversal of the NSDAP ban by von Papen the following June.\n\nThis reluctance and von Papen's reversal showcases one of the fundamental problems of the *Republikschutzgesetz*: although the law itself was politically neutral, its application was not. Von Papen and his entourage certainly thought they could use the NSDAP for its own ends, but the reluctance to use the law against right-wing groups ran deeper than the immediate political milieu of 1932. The Weimar justice system, ranging from police to judges, was \"blind in the right eye,\" meaning that right-wing radicals received far less attention for their activities than those on the left. Hitler and his fellow defendants' slap on the wrist for the Beer Hall Putsch was only one example of a justice system that was quite lenient for right-wing radicalism. In all the debates over applying the law to the NSDAP, few in the central government considered reversing the RFB ban. The various Weimar police departments investigated the KPD's groups with far more alacrity than equivalent right-wing opponents of the Republic. \n\nThis selective legal astigmatism did not prevent Hitler from making political hay from the few times the NSDAP felt state repression. Both in his run-up to power and after Hitler's appointment as Chancellor, the NSDAP would use these few examples of the *Republikschutzgesetz* as evidence that the NSDAP had triumphed against a hostile establishment that had stacked the odds against them. The Republic's use of political suppression became an opportunity for the NSDAP to cast democratic opponents of the Nazi seizure of power as hypocrites. When the Centre Württemberg State President, Eugen Bolz critiqued the NSDAP's antidemocratic moves in February 1933, Hitler responded in a speech attacking both Bolz and presenting his Chancellorship as a true defense of freedom:\n\n > Those who made no mention of our freedom for fourteen years have no right to talk about it today. As Chancellor I need only use one law for the protection of the national state, just as they made a law for the protection of the Republic back then, and then they would realize that not everything they called freedom was worthy of the name. \n\nBolz ended up forced out of office, spent a few weeks inside a concentration camp, and then in the political wilderness of the 1930s under Gestapo surveillance. \n\nIt is possible that Hitler and other NSDAP leaders may have believed that the main ire *Republikschutzgesetz* was directed at them. The NSDAP soon enacted their own version of *Republikschutzgesetz* in February 1933 as part of the Reichstag Fire Decrees, and Goebbels's diary entries from this period show a certain glee at meeting out vengeance and bans against their political enemies of the 1929-33 period. But the NSDAP's public rhetoric about the *Republikschutzgesetz* was half-right. The application of the law did stack the deck, but in *favor* of the NSDAP and their fellow-travelers on the right. They saw not only their ideological rivals on the left suppressed by the law, but could benefit from knowing how the RFB evaded it when the *Republikschutzgesetz* belatedly came for them. \n\n*Sources*\n\nEvans, Richard J. *The Coming of the Third Reich*. New York: Penguin Press, 2004. \n\nFulda, Bernhard. *Press and Politics in the Weimar Republic*. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. \n\nSwett, Pamela E. *Neighbors and Enemies: The Culture of Radicalism in Berlin, 1929-1933*. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. "
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364r80 | credit score lookup. why does it impede your credit score? seems like a basic, no hassle thing to find like checking your bank account. | Why is this such a big deal considering it's all numbers based on an algorithm? Seems like such a benign thing to check up on being your average American consumer. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/364r80/eli5_credit_score_lookup_why_does_it_impede_your/ | {
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"There's two types of credit checks. \"Soft\" checks are done when you want to look at your score or somebody's doing a background check on you. \"Hard\" checks are done when somebody's checking your score for the sake of lending you money.\n\nThe logic is that if somebody has suddenly started applying for lots of credit, they might be on the edge of a serious financial problem.",
"To keep you toiling away in the dirt. It's all a massive scam. They ping you for looking at it, they ping you for paying on time but not all in one payment. Come on, lets be 100% honest. The financial system is set up so idiots fail. Banks made $30billion (with a B) off of overdraft fees. This nation is making BILLIONS off of the most broke citizens in society. Yes, we have cable and walmart, we're free!",
"It's like asking \"am I cool?\".\n\nAsking the question automatically makes you less cool. "
]
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| []
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[],
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816efp | How , and how often, did American GIs clean their rifles in WWII? | I've read a lot of different accounts of how they contended with corrosive ammo, but nothing consistent on the process they actually *used* in the field. Also, how often were they expected, or were able to clean them in a combat zone? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/816efp/how_and_how_often_did_american_gis_clean_their/ | {
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"text": [
"You might be best served by posting this in r/guns. ",
"As with today, the [field manuals](_URL_1_) outline the expected care for issued rifles and equipment. \n\nAs an example: \nFM 23-6 covers the M1917 .30 Enfield \nFM 23-7 covers the M1 \nFM 23-35 covers pistols \nFM 23-15 the BAR \n\nThe [technical manuals](_URL_0_) covered what what ordnance teams would look at to service guns that needed maintenance. \n\n[TM 9-1270](_URL_2_) covers rifles \nTM 9-1295 covers pistols\n\n\n"
]
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| []
| [
[],
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"https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/TM/index.html",
"http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/FM/",
"https://archive.org/details/1944TM9-1270"
]
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|
|
7aa9nz | how are car batteries able to be charged up with a jump start, if car batteries use chemicals for energy? | I am confused about Car Batteries and how they get external charged by other electrical sources if a car battery's electricity is chemical based. Can you eli5? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7aa9nz/eli5_how_are_car_batteries_able_to_be_charged_up/ | {
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"In a battery, you have electrons moving from one of these chemicals to the other (it's a one-way road), and that motion is the \"electricity\" we use.\n\nThink of the chemicals as workers : when they run out of energy (let's say they ran out of food), you do not need to get new workers, but could get them food instead. That's what the charging process is about : you are bringing electrons back to the part of the battery that has been losing electrons while you were using it.",
"The jump start doesn't charge the battery, it just starts the car.\n\nWhen the car is running, it charges the battery.",
"Not specific to car batteries but the chemical reaction in most batteries is a reversible process.\n\nBy putting an electrical charge back into the battery the chemicals slowly revert to their unreacted state by a process known as electrolysis.\n\nWhen you jump start a car it is too little time for the borrowed energy to have any effect on the depleted battery, you are simply allowing the starter motor to turn over and get the engine running. Once running it is self sustaining, and so long as the engine is not switched off it will slowly recharge the battery via the alternator.",
"Car batteries are always being constantly recharged by the alternator, which is in your engine. They are not one - time - use batteries. If you leave your headlights on overnight or something and drain your battery, you hook it up to another car's battery to charge up a bit. Once you have enough in there to start your car, the alternator will recharge it the rest of the way. \n\nWhat's really fun is when your alternator dies. Then you sit there with the jumper cables on for 10-20 minutes to get enough charge into the battery so you can drive home, or to the shop. Driving a car with a dying battery is interesting, the radio goes out, the headlights flicker, and the engine starts misfiring. Then when your engine dies at 45 mph, the power steering goes with it! "
]
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254vv3 | Are there any organisms that live their entire existence in the air? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/254vv3/are_there_any_organisms_that_live_their_entire/ | {
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"text": [
"There are living bacteria in clouds. I don't think any are native to clouds, but I wouldn't be surprised if a fair number spend an entire generation (the duration of a bacteria's \"life\" is a bit hard to define) suspended in the air."
]
} | []
| []
| [
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5ihjqb | lightspeed | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ihjqb/eli5_lightspeed/ | {
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"text": [
"The absolute speed limit of the universe, very close to 300,000,000 meters per secend. It is the most accurately known physical constant."
]
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| []
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|
||
fgetr | Where does (more) space come from? | I've read that the universe is expanding. Where does more space come from in such inflation? I am familiar with the concepts but not the mathematics of quantum physics, but can't really understand if more space is our perception of time passing, if it's dark energy at work, what the universe is expanding into, who knows what. enlighten me! | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fgetr/where_does_more_space_come_from/ | {
"a_id": [
"c1fr7hy"
],
"score": [
3
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"text": [
"Its more like the space we have is stretching than more space is being added. "
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
|
792y84 | I mostly know the "Magic Bullet" theory of the JFK assassination from the Seinfeld parody. What is the conspiracy theorists' claim, and why is it wrong? | I know that the general claim is "the path of the bullet that hit Kennedy is physically impossible, so there must have been a second gunman" and I know that the consensus is that this claim is wrong, but that's just about all I know. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/792y84/i_mostly_know_the_magic_bullet_theory_of_the_jfk/ | {
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"Follow-up: when did this theory rise to prominence? Is it just with the film JFK? Or had it been in the public consciousness for a while?",
"The magic bullet theory is, indeed, the claim that the trajectory of the bullet was impossible, requiring several turns in mid air, and thus that there was a second gunman. \n\nIn reality the magic bullet theory is based on some false premises, and itself ignores some of the critical evidence. As in, if the magic bullet was fired by a second gunman we are short one bullet hole in the car...\n\nNote, the 'magic bullet' was the 2nd (of 3) Oswald fired. The 1st missed cleanly. The 3rd was the head shot that killed Kennedy.\n\nAlso, given the range and circumstances, this did not require nor did Oswald demonstrate unusual marksmanship.\n\nSome issues-\n\nKennedy was shot from behind, why did his head jerk *backwards*. This is a subtle effect of physics. Penn and Teller (among others) recreated it exactly with a melon. Not an issue.\n\nBullet trajectory- The Magic Bullet Theory assumes several things there were not, in fact, correct. \n\nThe car they were in was not a normal model. It was specifically modified for parades, to show off the important passenger. \n\nAs a consequence-\n\nA) Kennedy and Connolly were not aligned front to back. Connolly was closer to the center.\n\nB) Kennedy and Connolly were not at the same height. Kennedy's seat was higher, so the crowds could get a better look.\n\nC) Kennedy was not sitting upright at the time. He had leaned forward to talk to Connolly ('was that a gunshot?')\n\nD) Connolly was not facing forward at the time, he had twisted around to listen to Kennedy.\n\nAs a consequence of all of this, there was, indeed a straight line through Kennedy and Connolly, and thus no need for turns in mid air and no actual 'magic bullet'.\n\nWhy was the bullet not deformed? Until it ended up in Connolly's wrist, it passed entirely through soft tissue. And the bullet was, in fact, deformed. \n\nKennedy's as the most investigated murder in world history. And the committee doing the investigation was *extremely* thorough. There was no conspiracy, no second gunman. There was just a lone man with an opportunity."
]
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4mw0jf | renouncing citizenship | I have a few questions about renouncing citizenship (I don't plan on it, just curious) in the United States:
- Why would someone do it?
- Is it necessary to become a citizen of another country?
- What are the consequences?
- What are the benefits?
- Can you still live in the US after renouncing citizenship?
- Can you still become president after renouncing citizenship?
Thanks :) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4mw0jf/eli5_renouncing_citizenship/ | {
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"1. It sometimes has benefits. Some countries don't allow for dual citizenship, so you must renounce your old one to get a new one. In some cases having a foreign citizenship can bar you from certain jobs, especially dealing with secret government information.\n\n2. Usually yes. Most countries won't allow you to become a stateless person.\n\n3. You lose all the privileges associated with being a citizen. The legal system treats you differently, you no longer have free access to your former country, etc.\n\n4. Benefits are things like avoiding a certain cost of citizenship (like mandatory military service in some countries) or being granted another citizenship that conflicts with your old one.\n\n5. You can, but you would have to file as a non-citizen resident. You would require a visa and other immigration documents to be able to work and live in the US.\n\n6. You know, maybe you could, but probably not. The Constitution requires the President be a \"natural born citizen\" which could apply to someone who renounced, but it would be a tough case for the courts. Congress would probably also seek to bar any non-citizen from being elected, by a Constitutional amendment if necessary."
]
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22p4yv | i was recently diagnosed with coeliac (gluten allergy) and of course need to change my diet. how does this come about when for the last 30 years or so i was fine? | Can you 'catch' an allergy? Has it always been there and something set it off?
EDIT - Thanks for all the replies (even the daft ones!) I have a lot of reading to do still! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22p4yv/eli5_i_was_recently_diagnosed_with_coeliac_gluten/ | {
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"ELur5? Honestly, we don't know. The genetic markers for Celiac are fairly common, but most people with those genes never develop an immune problem. \n\nThere seems to be a correlation between heavy antibiotic use and developing Celiac Disease, so one hypothesis is that the antibiotics kill off some kind of friendly gut bacteria that help prevent the immune response. \n\nLow Vitamin D levels also seems to correlate with adult-onset Celiac, moreso than it correlates with childhood and adolescent onset. ",
"Celiac is an autoimmune disorder. It is not an allergy.\n\nYou absorb gluten as well as nutrients through villi in your intestines. Because your immune system immune system thinks that gluten is a foreign invader, it will try to destroy it. In the process, it will actually destroy your villi, meaning eventually you not only stop digesting gluten but all other nutrients as well... and that can kill you, puts you at increased risk of prostate cancer, and other fun stuff.\n\nAs for what triggers Celiac, it can be any number of things. [Stressful life events may be a cause](_URL_0_). It could just be bad luck!\n\nIn some ways, you are very lucky to be diagnosed now. 10 years ago, there was basically nothing in the way of gluten free options. Today GF is everywhere and you should have not trouble adjusting to a GF lifestyle. \n\nIf you want advice, recipes, or support, I am happy to share with you. Just send me a PM :)",
"People with celiac disease is born with the genes necessary to \"release\" the disease. But you need something to trigger it, and we don't know exactly what that is yet (there are several different theories). So you can be one year or a hundred years old before the disease kicks in.",
"The damage to your intestines has to reach a certain level before it can be detected by that stupid blood test, if you aren't willing to go on a high gluten diet for two months, drink liquid barium, and let them stick a camera up your ass while spinning you really fast. So I guess in short, yes; you have always been a celiac and it just took this long for the damage to be bad enough for you and the doctors to notice.\n\nOne tip; once you quit gluten cold turkey and it all flushes out of your system, you can never go back. Your body will begin to react badly to smaller and smaller amounts of gluten so you really do have to be careful of what you put in your face. Even some generic brands of tylenol throw wheat down on the conveyor belts to keep the ingredients from sticking, shit's everywhere. Nutritional labels are about to become your best friends.",
"My girlfriend has celiac, and is a nutritionist graduating from Johnson & Wales in May (and about be begin her dietetic internship to become a registered dietician).\n\nShe has run a gluten-free blog for the past several years and is extremely knowledgeable. If you have any questions, I'm sure she would be glad to answer them for you (just contact her through her website). She's busy finishing up classes for the semester so please be patient if she doesn't respond right away.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThere are a lot of great recipes and numerous product reviews. Honestly, she's a fantastic cook, and the vast majority of the time I do not miss eating gluten (exceptions: pizza and bagels).",
"Get a second opinion, if you're able to. Misdiagnosis is very common. Best of luck to you. I know many allergies and autoimmune disorders develop later in life. I developed my two allergies at age 19, ironically just as I outgrew my autoimmune disorder.",
"My Mother and her sisters and brother were all diagnosed after age 30. "
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4vb95b | What would the world be like if the Planck Constant were large enough to experience "quantum weirdness" at a macroscopic scale? | Also, would it be possible to simulate such a world, in the same vein as [A Slower Speed of Light](_URL_0_), with modern physics and computing technology. | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4vb95b/what_would_the_world_be_like_if_the_planck/ | {
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"Two points:\n\nIt may sound pendantic, but you cannot imagine changing fundamental dimensionful constants, like hbar or c. Their value is meaningless, being just a property of your system of units. All speeds in the universe are proportional to c, and all quantities with units of angular momentum are proportional to hbar. So \"changing\" any of those two has no effect - not even their value in SI units changes, as the units get rescaled accordingly.\n\nWhat the title of the game really stands for is that they're imagining stretching your units so as to make c have a small numeric value. Essentially you're not making c small, you're just making the user much faster than a human would be, so increasing the ratio (player walking speed)/c which is an adimensional ratio and so meaningful. Identically, in your hypothetical simulation you'd stretch units as to make hbar's value in those units large - you'd be shrinking down the user, not making hbar big.\n\nSorry for this correction, but it's actually a subtle and very misunderstood point.\n\nNow, for the second part: quantum systems can always be simulated to arbitrary accuracy by a classical computer, but the computational costs grow unpractically large with the size of the system, to the point that systems with what we'd call a small number of components are absolutely outside the possibilities of any plausibly-sized classical computer. So... no, unless you want to omit essential parts of quantum mechanics from your simulation, or you're content with simulating a small system.\n\nQuantum computers wouldn't in principle have this problem."
]
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2v2hhh | Does the sun get uniformly dense as we get closer to the core? | We obviously can't get to the core or anything like that, I just don't know how else to phrase the question. Assuming we put some magical physics powder on a spaceship, would we go from floating in space to "flying in the air" of the sun to "swimming in the ocean" of the sun to "standing on the surface" of the sun? Or does it get exponentially thicker due to gravity? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2v2hhh/does_the_sun_get_uniformly_dense_as_we_get_closer/ | {
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"The main effect is that it has to achieve balance between outward pressure and inward pointing gravity. If you go through the math, you get that it will be most dense at the center. If you want an image, NASA has a nice one [here](_URL_0_). Note that this model involves more than what I just said above, but that's sort of the first step in the whole calculation."
]
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| []
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"http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/Dalsgaard1_density_vs_r.jpg"
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56g3ta | Does a massless particle traveling through a medium experience the passage of time? | For example, if a photon is slowed traveling through a medium it is moving slower than C. So would it experience time? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/56g3ta/does_a_massless_particle_traveling_through_a/ | {
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"Photons don't exist outside of time! They don't have a reference frame, which is more an artifact of the way we define reference frames against c. It's sort of a vacuous statement anyway-- one moment is like any other for a photon, a fluctuation of the electric and magnetic fields that continues from when emitted to when it strikes something and is absorbed. ",
"What is \"it\"? You can find a reference frame where the photon going through the medium is at rest. You can assign a passage of proper time to that frame. But is that really \"time for the photon\"? To have such a photon in a medium, you have to replace the elementary particle by a quasiparticle, which is (confusingly) still called photon."
]
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3zkze8 | Are there other historical instances of the "model minority" phenomenon? | The holding up of Asian Americans as "good minorities" by those who are bigoted against "bad minorities" has been a part of American racial relations for at least 3 decades. Have there been similar phenomena throughout history, in countries with multiple minorities? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3zkze8/are_there_other_historical_instances_of_the_model/ | {
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"Oddly enough, Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were considered the model Christian minority prior to the emergence of the Armenian Question in the late 19th century. They even earned the epithet of *millet-i sadıka*, \"the loyal millet\", millet here is an ottoman term used to denote an ethnic and religious community. The reason for this, as the title implies, was the perceived loyalty of Armenians compared to the other Christian minorities.\n\nIn the European part of the ottoman empire, rising wave of nationalism was felt relatively shortly after the French Revolution, with the first Serbian uprising happening in 1804, and Greeks were the first amongst Empire's Christian subjects to have their own independent state in 1832. Although the Greek kingdom was restricted to Peloponnese for most of the 19th century, it opened a Pandora's box which the ottomans never managed to shut down. \n\nFor Armenians however, things progressed far more slowly. \"The Eastern Question\" didn't become a widely spoken issue until it was mentioned in the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. Even this was the result of external powers' pressure upon the ottoman government to improve the situation of the Christian subjects in the eastern provinces, and not an Armenian rebellion. An Armenian bishop at the time even states that this is the first time in which the Armenians make a political, rather than merely religious, appearance. Reasons for relatively late development of this national identity is complex, but i think it is fair to state that Armenians, living at the eastern provinces, were somewhat isolated from the events happening at the Balkans at the turn of the 19th century.\n\nSource;\nMasayuki Ueno (2013). “FOR THE FATHERLAND AND THE STATE”: ARMENIANS NEGOTIATE THE TANZIMAT REFORMS. "
]
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3604id | During the fall of Germany, was there a population flight from places likely to be taken by the Red Army to places likely to be taken by the Anglo-Americans? | Also, were there attempts in the military to get transfers away from cities likely to fall to the Russians? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3604id/during_the_fall_of_germany_was_there_a_population/ | {
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"After the death of Hitler the new Reichspraesident Doentiz, actively moved soldiers from the Eastern Front to the Western Front so that they could surrender to the Western Allies. However, civilians were largely left to fend for themselves. Doentiz kept the war going with holding actions to allow as many soldiers to flee as possible and thus civilians kept dying as the Soviets bombarded cities, towns, etc.\n\nA book on this very topic is \"The End\" by Ian Kershaw which is about the final days of the Third Reich."
]
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| [
[]
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94sbao | how does self-disappearing ink work? | I got one of these pens for free with a calligraphy practice workbook. After about 5 minutes, the ink just vanishes as if nothing was written. I've tried it on multiple different papers and the same result occurs so it shouldn't have to do with a specific kind of paper. How does this happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/94sbao/eli5_how_does_selfdisappearing_ink_work/ | {
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"Disappearing ink is usually reacting to carbon dioxide in the air around us, creating carbonic acid through an interaction with an agent in the ink, which causes it to \"disappear\" as sodium carbonate. Sometimes, the ink is photosensitive instead, which will cause it to disappear due to exposure to light.",
"there are some inks that are sensitive to temperature. wave a lighter underneath the paper, ink disappears. toss paper in a freezer, ink comes back",
"Would you be able to see whats written after the ink has \"disappeared\"? I wonder if you could see the contour of what was written or drawn?"
]
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29uto4 | competitive eating. how can people eat so much in one sitting? what happens to their stomachs and bodies after eating so much? and why does it seem that so many competitive eaters are very skinny? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29uto4/eli5_competitive_eating_how_can_people_eat_so/ | {
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"a lot of competitive eaters stay active outside of the eating events",
"They are able to eat so much because they prepare. They stretch their stomachs, they practice techniques for speed, etc. \n\nAfter a competition, it's not unlike how you feel after Thanksgiving. Full, sluggish, tired, maybe even a little nauseous. Just to a greater degree. Most of these people don't vomit after competition. Other than that, you recover pretty easily within a day. \n\nIt isn't necessarily that most competitive eaters are skinny so much that the successful ones tend to be. This is for several reasons. First, your stomach is (supposedly) better able to expand when you don't have shit tons of fat around it. Second, people who are fit burn more calories, so if you do a lot of competitions it benefits you to stay in shape for your health. Third, competitions are exhausting. It may seem like just aggressive eating, but it's tiring and if you aren't in shape it is hard to keep up aggressive activity for 10-12 minutes non-stop. \n\nSource: Former low level competitive eater. ",
"It helps to be skinny too, so your stomach has more room to stretch. A bigger person doesnt have as much stretching room for their stomachs.",
"[This video shows the expansion of the stomach.](_URL_0_)",
"_URL_0_\n\nEat This Book was an interesting read about competetive eating. ",
"One Japanese competitive eater named Gal Sone was checked by doctors. They found out the entry of her large intestine is larger than usual and she produces more bile, which dilutes more fat in the food she eats. Once, she ate 100 or more sushis in a tv show, her waist bloated by 3 inches. She's really skinny too, and said she poops 6 times a day. ",
"I heard some can also relax their pyloric sphincter, the sphincter at the bottom of the stomach which keeps the food in until it's digested enough to go to the colon. Competitive eaters can allow their stomachs to stretch, and open that sphincter up, and let the food go into the colon before the stomach has extracted the calories. This also opens up more space in the stomach for more food. \n\nKobiyashi used to say being skinny was a benefit because there was no \"belt of fat\" which held the stomach in and stopped expansion."
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4cbelj | abortion as a costitutional right | Before anyone gets mad, I do believe, very firmly in fact, that access to abortion is a basic human right, but I don't have a firm enough grasp on the constitution to understand how it protects a womans right to an abortion, given that it was written in a time where abortion probably didn't exsist. I understand that an amendment was made (something something Roe v Wade), but what else is protected beyond abortions, or rather the access to an abortion?
Edit; on my phone. Can't spell, apparently, please excuse the title
Also, I googled a bit, but I couldn't really follow what was going on the last time this got asked. Sorry, but I really do require it be spelled out in simple terms, I am not a smart man. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4cbelj/eli5_abortion_as_a_costitutional_right/ | {
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"Supreme court opinions walk through the logic of how a principle outlined in the constitution applies to a specific case. Roe v. Wade's opinions are [here](_URL_0_).\n\nThe path they take is as follows:\n\nThe constitution contains no explicit right to privacy, but it does contain enough restrictions to protect citizens privacy that it can be inferred that citizens privacy was important to the authors of the constitution (specifically the first amendment, ninth amendment, and fourteenth amendment). Therefore:\n\n > This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. \n\nIn other words, it's either in the right is one of the not enumerated rights in the ninth amendment\n\n > The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.\n\nor that abortion bans were the state depriving a woman of her liberty without giving the woman proper due process of law. \n\n > nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.\n\nAs far as other things related to the decision, the legal logic was very similar in the court's opinion to strike State restrictions on firearms ownership in Heller v D.C. and MacDonald v Chicago. ",
"Roe v Wade ruled that the Due Process clause of the 5th and 14th amendments applied to abortions. They stated that a woman's right to privacy is one of the protected liberties and can't be deprived without due process of the law.\n\nThey also ruled that this only works up to the point where the state's interests in protecting health and human life begin, which they decided as being the point where the fetus is viable outside the womb.\n\nThere has been much controversy since on the second point and the court's ability to interpret the first point as such.",
"You can read the opinion of Roe v. Wade to get a better idea of the argument, but essentially they guaranteed the constitutional right to privacy by interpreting the 14th ammendment in a rather liberal way. \n\nThe 14th Ammendment guarantees the right to \"due process of law.\" It means that the government cannot deprive you of any liberty or freedom without some legal proceeding. For example, you have a right to travel. If you break the law and go to prison, the \"due process\" of law takes away your right to travel. \n\nIn Roe v. Wade the court decided that there was an implied right for a woman to make her own medical decisions and keep them private. The Texas law that banned abortion removed these rights without due process of law. Therefore the law was in violation of the 14th Ammendment. \n\nBut Roe v. Wade wasn't that simple. The court recognized that the State also had a right to regulate abortions, so part of the decision was to limit abortion to the first trimester of pregnancy. That was later struck down in 1993, and amended to viability of a fetus. Meaning that the right to life of a fetus isn't guaranteed until the fetus can be removed from the mother and live. "
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3f94wq | if i didn't know something was illegal, how could i get in trouble for it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3f94wq/eli5_if_i_didnt_know_something_was_illegal_how/ | {
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"Not knowing the law is not, in itself, a defense. This is a pretty important legal principle, important enough to [have its own Latin phrase](_URL_0_). I'm not quite sure what you're asking, since there's no particular reason you *wouldn't* get in trouble for it.",
"In most places, it is expected that the citizen of the jurisdiction is aware of any and all laws that pertain to the area. This applies to travelers too as they should familiarize themselves with the laws of the place they are visiting. Usually, law enforcement will be lenient for the more obscure laws however, something obvious (eg. speeding) is an act that is generally recognized as illegal. So to make things short, \nTLDR: not knowing the laws is just your own irresponsibility and you are held accountable for knowing them. ",
"Ignorance of a law is not an excuse. It is your personal responsibility to be aware of all laws in the areas that you live or travel in. ",
"Violation of a law has nothing to do with knowledge of said law. \n\nIt is your civil responsibility to know the laws of the locale in which you live, and to not do so is only going to hurt you. \n\nAlso, allowing people to get out of crimes by saying \"I didn't know it was illegal\" would make it so that no one would ever be prosecuted unless you were able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they not only knew what they were doing, but that they also knew it was illegal, which would be nearly impossible to do.\n\n",
"Imagine that you're at a party and you go to the restroom and when you return, the other party attendees say, \"while you were gone, we ordered a pizza and took $5 of yours. Hope you like pepperoni. You implicitly agreed to it by being here at the party.\" \n\nThat's how government works. It's not consensual. However, in a free society, one could actually sign a document upon reaching the age of consent that explicitly outlines the social norms within their community. ",
"Ignorance, in and of itself, is not a defense. It can't be, as a practical matter, or everyone would claim ignorance.\n\nThe legal system does have what is known as the *reasonable person* standard. If you act as a reasonable, law abiding person would, that can a defense for breaking laws your were ignorant of.\n\nFor example, it is 2 in the morning, and you come to a red light that doesn't seem to change. You wait a few minutes, carefully look for oncoming traffic in all directions, and run it.\n\nTurns out the law says you have to wait 5 minutes, and you only waited 2, and you get a ticket. You would have a decent defense if you argued that a reasonable person would have been unlikely to known the exact legal waiting period, and your actions were otherwise reasonable.\n\nIn that sense, you might be able to use ignorance as a defense."
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521a27 | how much of the currency in films and tv shows is real? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/521a27/eli5_how_much_of_the_currency_in_films_and_tv/ | {
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"Very little, probably. Maybe a few bucks changes hands in this scene or that, but when you see a briefcase full of money it's prop currency that's been specially created not to run afoul of counterfeiting laws."
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49t2vh | What was the extent of Persian influence on the Deccan Sultanates? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/49t2vh/what_was_the_extent_of_persian_influence_on_the/ | {
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"Persian as in the culture? If so it was huge, not only was it the court language and culture, it was also the language of the arts and sciences, thanks in part to a massive influx of Persian immigrants (brain drain?) that migrated there 1500s.\n\n\n\n\nIf you meant Persian, as in the Safavids, then that was also considerable, or even huge if you were to define some of the acts the Deccan Sultanates (the Shia ones, such as Golconda) as acts of subservience. Salma Ahmed Farooqui (Comprehensive History of Medieval India) writes that the Qutb Shahi dynasty of Golconda, themselves descendants of the Qara Qoyunlu, would read aloud the names of the Safavids Sahs in their call to prayer, which is an act of subservience, one you'd to for the Caliph.\n\n",
"Now others have covered the cultural impact; indeed the Bahmanid Sultanate derived its ancestry from the mythical Persian king Bahman. \n\nHowever, the political impact cannot be understated. When the Bahmani split into the four Shia states of Berar, Ahmednagar, Bijapur and Golconda, and after the Mughals rolled in, it was important to maintain ties with Iran simply because the Mughals laid claim to all India. When they diplomatically engaged with anyone (other than the Persians or Ottomans and to a lesser extent the Chinese) the Mughals treated them as feudatories, with tribute and duty in order. \n\nThe four sultanates would play ball, but also maintained the supremacy of Persia as a way to keep their practical independence, a policy that would eventually fail after Aurangzeb invades the South.\n\nSource: Writing the Mughal World, Sanjay Subrahmanyam and Muzaffar Alam"
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35tfl6 | How common would water-borne diseases such as Cholera have been in cities that used aqueducts such as Rome? Would the drinking water have been that much safer compared to other cities? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/35tfl6/how_common_would_waterborne_diseases_such_as/ | {
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"History enthusiast here.\n\nOther cities as in other Roman cities?\n\nTo answer your question, considering that the aqueducts were fed by springs quite far away from Rome itself, the possibility of a waterborne illness is quite unlikely. To entertain the possibility would call for some infected body (human, fish, vegetable) to take a dip in an aqueduct (or the spring itself). However, if the source was a stagnant body of water (unlikely as the master planners knew the relation between stagnant water and waterborne diseases), then bid farewell to a large chunk of Rome's population.\n\nTo your other question, yes, the aqueduct was vastly superior (in terms of safety) compared to drawing water from a well, spring, or river, as those sources could become easily contaminated over a short period of time.\n\nSources: _URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_"
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2qm8ml | Many facets of American social culture appear to have gotten less "formal" over the course of the last 100 years (male/female dress, reverence for elders etc). Are there any noticeable examples of American society becoming more formal over this time period? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2qm8ml/many_facets_of_american_social_culture_appear_to/ | {
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"I'm curious about whether this is a trend that occurs in other countries or past cultures as well. Could it be a result of the Internet and other increased forms of communication? Maybe accessibility breeds familiarity. \n\nPlease don't delete or ban if I'm breaking rules here. ",
"It's more like 150 years, but weddings have gotten much more formal and formalized in that timeframe. Of course, plenty of people have informal/courthouse/Vegas weddings, but the idea of a wedding has changed from a small gathering of family and close friends in the home of the bride's or groom's parents to a large, fancy, ceremonial affair. \n\nIn 1840, Queen Victoria of Great Britain married Prince Albert. The bride wore a white satin dress, which immediately set the standard for brides-to-be who could afford white material and had the means to keep it clean. Prior to that (and for many years following for most women), women were typically married in their \"best\" dress, which was often made of a dark material so it could double as a funeral dress for those occasions. The rise of a (White) middle class in the United States meant that more women could aspire to the trappings of wealth, such as a big fancy white dress, catered dinner, a confectioner-made (rather than homemade) cake, engraved invitations, and such. Professions arose or adapted to meet these needs - florists, caterers, etc. Much of the modern wedding industry is based on this desire to imitate the formality and wealth the rich and aristocratic displayed on a daily (or at least frequent) basis -- allowing the bride and groom to be \"rich for a day.\" (As someone who studies the history of media and technology, I have to point out here the influence of the invention of photography and the spread of newspapers, whose \"society pages\" helped circulate images of wealth widely.)\n\nIf you are interested in reading more, Carol Wallace's *All Dressed in White: The Irresistible Rise of the American Wedding* (Penguin, 2004) is a pop history of weddings in the U.S.",
"Also, if I could ask a related question, are there examples of American culture becoming more formal at times? For example, I am dimly aware of soldiers during the Civil War espousing an old-school chivalry in letters, and of the \"Victorian\" era in general being formal and dour; but I don't know enough to assess either if these are correct understandings or to compare them with prior time periods. ",
"Resumes have become an institution in the last 75 or so years. It used to be you carried a note from a Lord or trade guild and that was about it. These days people agonize over small details because these trivial things seem to mater. You will not find a lot of historical examples of resumes since they were almost unheard of.\n\n_URL_0_\n",
"There is an interesting set of arguments about this from a sociological standpoint, one of which I am familiar with is by Samus Khan in *Privilege* (/u/yodatsracist can chime in to clarify and correct me). Basically, going back to Bourdieu what we call using the shorthand term \"formal\" is really a set of behavioral norms, or to put it another way, embodied class knowledge. The way you behave is the way you communicate your social position in a largely unconscious process: using the right fork, properly tying a bow tie, using a pocket square all communicate one aspect of social position; being able to fix a car or crush a beer can on your forehead communicates a different one. If these seem stereotypical, well, that is because they are: stereotypes are how we \"read\" the information communicated by behavioral norms. The argument is a lot more complicated than that, but that should be a serviceable overview.\n\nThe stuffy formalism of the nineteenth and early twentieth century is essentially a result of the class position of the social elite. Unlike the earlier hereditary nobility, the capitalist elite was undergirt by a meritocratic ideology, so they justified their position by essentially saying they earned it or at least actively contributed to it, rather than the earlier elite who viewed it as an essential aspect of their very being. John Blackwell, factory owner, needed to constantly reinforce his status position in a way that Guy de la Mantoyet, Baronet of Lancashire did not. So the demands of a young, somewhat mobile elite required a far more regulated set of behavioral norms than a hereditary one. If you compare George Washington's etiquette book with later Victorian ones, for example, it is far more concerned with having correct class knowledge (who is who, how to act to who) than with the sort of obsessive physical purity of the latter. Now this arguments gets a *lot* more complicated, but again, this should be serviceable.\n\nNow the interesting thing that has happened in the last fifty odd years is that the earlier ideology has been replaced by a more radically egalitarian one (even as social mobility has actually decreased--ideology need not be reality!). For a whole variety of reasons, including the decline of wealth based on \"pure\" capitalism in favor of high status wage labor, the sort of obsessive behavior regulation has become untenable unstable. What replaced it is a sort of cultural omnivorousness: if an elite in 1900 was able to deeply appreciate opera and knew how to formally dine like second nature, the elite of 2000 could listen to classical, jazz, *and* hip hop, and could dine formally and use chopsticks at a hole in the wall noodle joint. Instead of communicating status by deep behavioral embodiment of a set of norms, they are able to freely \"code switch\" depending on the situation.\n\nSo in a way, American culture didn't actually become less formal if by formal we mean status embodiment, Just that the needs of high status and thus the norms of embodiment have changed.",
"Followup: Also, how formal was the past in reality, and how much of our perception is simply romanticization in modern media that may not reflect reality? ",
"Could this question be extended over Western culture as a whole? In fact, are there any cultures that have not become less formal over the last century?",
"I would say the process of getting a job has become dramatically more formalized. When I was very young it was already becoming rare but you would still once in a while be able to pick up a job on the spot by talking to someone in charge. It has been more than 10 years since anyone I know in person has been able to land any kind of work without having to submit resume's and formally interview for even the most bullshit of little jobs.",
"Adoption has become a more formal process. Orphaned children used to ride on trains, getting off at each station where farmers would look them over. If a child looked like they could be helpful in the home or on a farm, it was \"adopted\". Now, because of international adoptions, agencies are needed to guide adoptive parents through the adoption process. Also, a majority of US adoptions are now infants and toddlers. This has led to a more formal and more administrative process. "
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3hqute | why don't we put msg in everything? | In my mind MSG is always connected to Asian Food. But if it's supposed to make everything tastier/more savory, why don't we put that on everything that is savory (meats, broths, soups)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hqute/eli5why_dont_we_put_msg_in_everything/ | {
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"People are stupid and still think it is bad for you. A lot of store bought soups and stocks will still label their product as msg free, even though there is no need to be msg free.\n\nPersonally I do put it on everything. You can get a huge thing from amazon for like 15 bucks"
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88eqlm | The nearest star is a little over 4 light years away. Do we know of any solar systems with neighbors that are very close to each other (relative to our proximity with Proxima Centauri)? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/88eqlm/the_nearest_star_is_a_little_over_4_light_years/ | {
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"Okay, I whipped up a little program using [this data set](_URL_2_) that has the positions of stars in our solar neighbourhood.\n\nAssuming the data is correct, the closest stars in our neighbourhood (excluding any binaries, etc.) are [Procyon](_URL_0_) and [Luyten's Star](_URL_1_), which are a mere 1.019 light years apart.",
"Generally when you get closer to the galactic center, stars tend to be closer together. One estimate I read puts it at 10 million stars per cubic parsec (which means a mean distance between them comparable to the distance between the sun and the Kuiper belt objects), but that seems excessive so I'll have to look for a better source on that number.",
"The density of stars near the galactic center will be higher. [Wikipedia](_URL_0_) puts it at 2 stars per cubic light year compared to the 0.004 stars per cubic light year near the sun. This corresponds to an average separation of ~0.8 light years between stars near the galactic center vs the ~6.3 light years between stars near the sun. This is assuming a locally uniform distribution of stars; the commonality of binary star systems should probably be taken into account for a better estimate.",
"Since the nearest star is a distance of 4 ly away, we can approximate the local stellar density to be of order [0.14 stars per cubic parsec](_URL_0_)%5E-1+to+pc%5E-3). Globular clusters have an average stellar density of 0.4 stars per cubic parsec, and this can increase to 100 or 1000 per cubic parsec in their dense cores. So yes, we know of many systems with close neighbors. In the center of a globular cluster, you would have hundreds of stellar neighbors closer than Proxima Centauri is to our system.",
"Proxima Centauri is an example. It is 0.2 light years away from Alpha Centauri.\n\nDouble stars can be considered extreme cases of what you are looking for - and they can be so close that they \"touch\" each other.",
"Further to this discussion - and possibly more in line with what OP was asking? - in our galactic neighbourhood, is the proximity of our sun to Alpha Centauri unusual? Excluding binaries and such. I'd be curious to know this at least.",
"How long would a space probe need to get there with current technology?"
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bkrihp | why do athletes look so much faster on tv compared to live (in-person)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bkrihp/eli5_why_do_athletes_look_so_much_faster_on_tv/ | {
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"Most likely because of the camera movement.\n\n & #x200B;\n\non TV the camera focuses on the player and the rest moves around them. in person, you are already far and you point of view is the whole stadium."
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3vs02p | what is the largest known individual object in the universe and how you can understand it's true scale? | Some places cite APM 08279+5255 but when I read the wiki page I'm like wuuuuuut | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vs02p/eli5_what_is_the_largest_known_individual_object/ | {
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"YV Canis Majoris is the largest known star we have observed.\n\nIt's as wide as our solar system.",
"_URL_0_\n\nHere's a good gif to understand scale. Thank me later",
"The Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall, a galactic filament between 6 and 10 billion lightyears long.",
"Depends what you call object. The largest structure we know of is the ~~[large quasar group](_URL_1_) : a group of 70 quasars~~ [Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall](_URL_0_) that span several *billions* light years. It's so stupidly huge that it raises questions about the universe being as [homogeneous as we thought](_URL_2_). "
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2tzyf5 | why are motorcycle engines capable of running at such higher rpm than car engines? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tzyf5/eli5_why_are_motorcycle_engines_capable_of/ | {
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"They are smaller and don't have as much metal to sling around. Since they have less mass in order to create the forces required to move it has to have higher RPM's. When you get up to the larger high speed diesel engines 1300RPM - 1500RPM is usually a max rating. Then the even larger medium speeds will typically max around 600RPM -800RPM. Any higher RPM's from these large engines will literally tear the engine apart. \n\nEdit: A really ELI5 metaphor would be to think about throwing a punch. You can throw a lot of punches pretty fast. If you are holding a weight it would slow the punches down but have more force with each punch. If you attempt to punch too fast while holding a heavy weight you could dislocate your shoulder. ",
"There's more to it than that...\n\nThere are car engines that can rev as far as a bike engine, take F1 cars for instance. One part of the ability of engine to rev to a high rpm is what is called rod/stroke ratio. The rod/stroke ratio dictates the amount of torque the engine can create. Torque is what gets you moving, horse power is what keeps you moving. When you have a large rod/stroke ratio the is more side-loading of the piston in the cylinder, this leads to friction which leads to heat which leads to detonation if it becomes excessive. Because a car weighs roughly 10x more than a bike it needs more torque to get it moving so manufacturers have to create engines that will create enough torque to make the car usable in everyday life while also keeping it from blowing up. \n\nBecause a car engine has to be larger than a bike's and the manufacturers want to sell cars, the engines in cars are not made to such exacting standards (withholding ferrari, lambo, etc) and they are made in ways that reduce cost (casting not forging, steal not titanium, etc) but still deliver a product that can go ~150,000+ miles on average. A bike engine cannot do that, it pays the price for being a high revving beast by having a shorter life span. \n\nDiesel engines make a lot of torque for their size, that's why you see then in industrial applications instead of gas engines, and as deadpool said the rpm's are limited because in order to make all that torque they have very large rod/stroke ratios and very high compression which means a lot of shearing force is placed on the internal components. Limiting rpm in these situations makes the product last longer with fewer rebuilds along the way.\n\n\n\n",
"In short: Motorcycle engines,like Formula 1 engines have bigger bore than stroke,so there is less to travel. There is more to it but this is in short"
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5x2pha | how exactly was russia allegedly involved with the presidential election and what did they do? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5x2pha/eli5_how_exactly_was_russia_allegedly_involved/ | {
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"There is supposedly evidence that Russia was involved in hacking the DNC. They released as much damning information from the DNC as they could to try and push Trump into office, as he could potentially be financially compromised by the Russian government. They could then influence Trump through coercion to work with their hyper aggressive plan to expand into new European territory.\n\nEveryone should demand at least an investigation into this so we could move on from it, but there are people stonewalling. ",
"Russian intelligence hacked the email of the Democratic National Committee, a private political organization. They selectively released, via Wikileaks, a trove of embarrassing but almost completely substanceless chatter that made the DNC look bad. The identity of the hackers as Russian is well established, and their connection to the intelligence service is generally accepted by security professionals. [Here](_URL_0_) is an article from last July making the case. The Washington Post reported on it through the fall, but no one seemed to care much as everyone assumed the Trump campaign didn't have a chance. \n\nThis had a couple of effects. First, it likely depressed turnout in the general election for Clinton specifically from the young, mostly white, Left who supported Sanders in the Democratic primary because it showed that the DNC internally preferred Clinton, and this was spun as them \"rigging\" the primary for her (allegations which are false, although there were a couple improprieties which didn't change the outcome).\n\nIt also depressed Clinton turnout more generally because it was conflated in the popular imagination with the *other* Clinton email issue, that she legally but unwisely used a private email server during her time as Secretary of State. Critics charged that this made her communications insecure, although as far as I know there's no evidence of that (while official government servers have been hacked several times). But since most people don't pay much attention to the news, they thought reports of hacked emails were referring to Clinton's State Department emails, and that these were put in public because of Clinton's carelessness. Neither of these things were true.\n\nAs for why, well, Russia and the Trunp campaign had a cozy relationship. Charitably, this is because Trump felt Russo-American relations had deteriorated under Obama. More cynically, there was an (unverified) intelligence dossier circulated (including to President Obama and the Trunp campaign before the election) claiming that trump is personally compromised by Russian intelligence because of his extensive business ties to Russia and an illicitly recorded sextape of Trump having a golden showers party in a Moscow hotel with a bunch of Russian hookers. (Yes really.) The dossier only came out publicly after the election, and again it has not been verified (although my understanding is that some of the claims in it have since been confirmed. Maybe not the piss play.)\n\nThe Obama Administration imposed economic sanctions on Russia in December as a response to the hacking. Trump advisor Gen. Michael Flynn had a phone call the same day with the Russian Ambassador where they discussed sanctions and Flynn implied that Trump would remove them once he were in office. (This is arguably treason -- by passing on secret information to Russia that reassures them the sanctions will come down, he undermines the purpose of the United States in implementing them in the first place.) Flynn then lied to the press about the content of the call. More specifically, the Trump campaign trotted out VP-elect Pence to deny the allegations in public, which means either Pence lied about the call as well or, what might be more likely (and which seems to be the Trump party line) that Flynn lied to Pence about them. \n\nToday's breaking story is that Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who as head of the Department of Justice is charged with investigating Trump's connection to Russian intelligence and improper contacts between the campaign/administration and Russia, also spoke to the Russian ambassador of at least two occasions. This despite testifying under oath at his confirmation hearing that he wasn't aware of any such contacts between Russia and the campaign and that he personally had no such contact. But unlike the Flynn call, which was recorded by the CIA, it's not yet clear if Sessions also improperly discussed sanctions at those meetings. (He says he didn't, if you find that denial credible.) The front page of the Washington Post has the story today if you want to read more about it. ",
"The allegations claim that hackers working for two Russian intelligence agencies broke into email systems belonging to the Democratic National Committee as well as email accounts of other Democratic figures, such as Hilary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta. The emails they found were then released through Wikileaks, an organization that specializes in sharing secret information. The release of information was carefully managed, both in terms of timing and content, in order to create a series of news stories that presented Hilary Clinton and the Democrats as dishonest and untrustworthy. By calling attention to insecurities in Democratic email systems, they also supported one of the key talking points of the Trump campaign, which was that Hilary Clinton had compromised national security by running her own email server while she was Secretary of State.\n\nI think that's a neutral summary. It is a fact that some emails were stolen and then released to the media in such a way as to hurt the Clinton campaign. It has also been _claimed_ that this was done by agents of the Russian government. So that's what people mean when they say 'Russia was involved'.\n\nBut wait, there's more. There are also allegations that Donald Trump and key figures in his campaign are sympathetic to the Russians, or are being or could be manipulated by Russia (which is to say by Russian president Vladimir Putin). It's also claimed that Trump or members of his campaign were in contact with the alleged Russian agents responsible for stealing and leaking the information.\n\nGoing into all the details would take a long time. What is certain is that some key members of Donald Trump's campaign, such as campaign manager Paul Manafort and foreign policy adviser Carter Page, had strong links to Russia. Manafort worked for the former president of the Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, an ally of president Putin. Manafort also apparently arranged to change parts of the Republican party's official policy in a way that benefited Russia. Both Manafort and Page resigned from the campaign because of concern over their ties to Russia. More recently, other people close to Trump, such as his appointee for national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and attorney general Jeff Sessions, have been revealed to have had contact with key figures in Russian intelligence. In Flynn's case, he was obliged to step down as a result of this.\n\nThere are also allegations that Trump himself may be compromised by Russia in some way.",
"Can someone do a little ELI5 about whether Sessions not disclosing his meetings with Kislyak counts as perjury? \n\nI'm British but I'm quite interested in American politics and just want to get a handle of how serious it is that a USAG went under oath in front of Congress and kind of told a lie of omission.",
"Read through the major comments in this thread, you can see clear bias on both sides. Remember most of the information here is based on ALLEGATIONS and CLAIMS, not hard evidence. Look at everything and form your own opinion, be open to new information."
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2de1xn | Why can some people flex certain muscles and others can't? | for example, I can move my pecks but some guys can't. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2de1xn/why_can_some_people_flex_certain_muscles_and/ | {
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"text": [
"Training builds and strengthens neuromuscular connections. If you workout your chest consistently then you should be able to move your pecs."
]
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| []
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[]
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43ymuf | How much autonomy did each State in the Holy Roman Empire have with respect to the military? | * Did the individual Imperial States each maintain a standing army?
* Did the States regularly go to war and fight battles against each other? What about against foreign powers such as France? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/43ymuf/how_much_autonomy_did_each_state_in_the_holy/ | {
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"As for your first question, it depends on the era you're talking about. Prior to the Thirty Years War, most states did not have a standing army, but rather formed/hired an army as needed. However, this was not particularly unique within the HRE, given that standing armies were very expensive, and most states did not have a standing army. As standing professional armies became more common in the post-Westphalian period, many of the states did maintain standing forces. \n\nIn terms of more general autonomy, the various states of the HRE did have a degree of say in how/where troops were deployed. The *Reichstag*--the Imperial Diet--which consisted of the electors, princes, and free cities, could vote to raise troops or money for the defence of the Empire in general, and the Emperor could request such a vote for defence against a particular threat, such as the Ottomans advancing against the Empire's southern frontier, or the French in the west. Of course, there was a difference between the *Reichstag* voting for money/troops to be sent to the Emperor, and that money and troops actually materialising. \n\nThe Empire was subdivided into several 'Circles', which were regional gatherings of princes in certain regions of the Empire. The Circle was essentially an attempt to localise defence amongst the princes. Each Circle had its own Diet for deliberation amongst the princes that were apart of the Circle, and were meant to allow them to co-ordinate their responses to threats and collection of taxes voted for by the *Reichstag*. In times of *Reichskrieg*, the Circles were responsible for raising and supporting a set number of forces in order to form a combined Army of the Empire, independent and seperate from the army of the Emperor. \n\nAs for your second question, it's important to note that from ~1500 on, the Empire was under the rule of the Perpetual Public Peace, which obligated the princes of the Empire to settle their disputes through the Imperial legal system, rather than through force of arms. While the Thirty Years War serves as an obvious counter-example, the Public Peace was generally respected, and escalation to force of arms within the Empire relatively rare until the complete breakdown of the Thirty Years War. It does depend on how you define 'regularly', of course, as the post-Thirty Years War period through the whole of the 18th century had many wars, but whether or not this counts as 'regularly' fighting battles is up for debate. It is worth noting that in many of the major wars throughout the period, there was fighting in and amongst the princes of the Empire (See War of the Spanish Succession, War of the Austrian Succession), but in the Nine Years War and Great Turkish War, the Empire presented a relatively united front. The princes of the Empire did indeed fight against each other and foreign powers, but whether you can characterise that as 'regular' infighting or fighting against external powers is going to depend on what you want to focus on. \n\nHopefully this answers your question, and feel free to ask any followups! "
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a2k2zz | What exactly happened when you got the letter that you were drafted in WWII? | Take me through the whole process. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a2k2zz/what_exactly_happened_when_you_got_the_letter/ | {
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"I answered a question similar to this [here](_URL_0_), but I'll repost it below."
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9w3j5o/during_the_draft_in_america_how_did_they_choose/"
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1pmma4 | why do some communities trick-or-treat on the day before halloween? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pmma4/eli5_why_do_some_communities_trickortreat_on_the/ | {
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"For safety mostly. If you get a lot of people to Trick-or-Treat the day before you end splitting the number of people up over two days instead of everyone trying to do it all at once.\n\nAlso, it allows parent's to take really young kids out without having to worry about asshole teenagers because most of them will be out Halloween night.",
"I've only seen it happen when Halloween fell on a Sunday. Some Christian churches take 'keeping the Sabbath holy' more literally than others, so in areas where there is a high concentration of a particular religion, (Utah, Bible Belt, etc.) the local communities may choose to have Trick-or-treating on Saturday Oct 30th."
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95xgi1 | the mechanisms of voting in the us and the controversy about requiring government id in order to vote | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/95xgi1/eli5_the_mechanisms_of_voting_in_the_us_and_the/ | {
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"You have to register to vote a month or 2 before the actual election is to take place. You then get a voter ID card but your name goes on a list. Your local voting station gets a list that contains your name (and others who registered). You then tell the voting station your name, they cross you off a list and go to vote.\n\nSource: I worked at a voting station a few years back.\n\nThe issue is that for starters we don't automatically register people to vote, if you don't register before hand you usually can't vote or you have to go through a huge process to be able to vote. Additionally in terms of having a photo ID, most people use a drivers license but there are large swaths of people that don't have a license. Ok so use a state ID, well that requires a bunch of documentation that poor people are statistically expect to lose. Social Security cards and birth certificates are generally required and if poor people lose them it's super hard to get any sort of ID. Then tac on the fact that you have to go to the department of motor vehicles to get this ID (notorious for being slow) it's really hard for a poor person to take off work to find a bus to ride for an hour each direction and wait 3 hours at the DMV.\n\nEdit: also go search for the DMV in the state of Texas you'll see a handful, but you'll also notice that many people up North and West have to drive a huge distance to get to one.\n\nIt's more of an issue with how we don't register and don't automatically give people access to state issued IDs.",
"Because the US voter ID supporting contingent is composed of equal parts well meaning but not fully aware people and cynical bigots who would say anything to disenfranchise more people.\n\nOur public transit systems are atrocious and our local-level government is a mixed bag, so a policy that seems sensible and easy to support, like an ID for voting, can easily become a nightmare to comply with for many people in some areas. \n\nSome people, mostly elderly people living in rural areas, don't have a birth certificate, for instance. Not like they don't have a physical copy of one, there was never a BC created. Someone like that can be barred from voting by apparently benevolent voter ID laws despite their status as an American citizen.",
"Throughout the United State's history there's been discrimination in voting. Sometimes it was overt (women can't vote and black people can't vote). So we amended the constitution to change that (15th and 19th amendments). \n\nThe thing is, voting is controlled by the states so states that still didn't want black people (mostly) to vote instead brought up all sorts of rules that said \"okay, you can vote IF you do X\". Things like poll taxes, literacy tests, etc. So you'd show up to vote and it'd be $10 supposedly to pay for the expenses of the day and if you didn't have that money (because you're poor) then that's too bad. \n\nSo then we passed a law called the voting rights act that severely restricted the rights of states to do sneaky things like that. \n\nFast forward to today and you have voter ID laws. Some people allege this is just the latest tactic in the same pattern set up as before. It's just an extraneous requirement meant to keep people from voting rather than really having anything to do with election security. \n\nThat's because in the USA you usually have to register to vote beforehand. So you prove that you live where you live and then you can just go vote whenever there's an election. Sometimes you can use any sort of ID (doesn't even need a picture) but some proposed laws narrow the scope of what's allowed (so student IDs are no longer valid to prove you are who you say you are). ",
"Other people are saying it in more detail, but in essence the root of the problem is that actually getting appropriate ID (e.g. a driver's license) in America is *unspeakably* difficult compared to in most other first-world nations.",
" > How does this work in the states where ID is not required? You show up and just vote?\n\nI walk into the polling place, tell them my name and address, sign the register, and they hand me a ballot.\n\n > Why is it a problem to ~~register/~~obtain an ID?\n\nIt takes a significant amount of time (on the order of up to half a workday), and the documents - driver's licenses and passports, at least - aren't free.\n\n(Voter registration generally *is* required, so that you appear on the rolls.)\n\n---\n\nThe logical argument in favor of ID is that, considered wholly independently, it shouldn't be controversial to prove your identity before casting your vote.\n\nThe logical argument against ID is that the sort of voter fraud it would fight simply doesn't happen on any meaningful scale.\n\nRequiring ID, in practice, is a solution without a problem, which would create a *host* of negative side effects.",
"First, the US does not have any nationwide universal ID. Instead, each state issues its own ID (typically a Drivers License or similar) or there are photo IDs for members of the military.\n\n2nd, a LOT of people don't have a driver's license. If you don't have a car, you don't need one. This primarily impacts the elderly and the poor. Getting state ID means gathering the necessary documents, getting a ride to the driver's license office (which may be FAR away if you live in a rural area) waiting all day, paying a fee, etc. If you don't have a car this is a huge pain. If you're poor and work two jobs you just don't have this kind of time. If you're 90 years old it's unlikely you even have the correct documents any more.",
"Your country probably has a mandatory national ID system, well-funded by the national government. Due to long-standing worries about being tracked by the government, the US does not. Instead, it uses state driver's licenses as IDs. These licenses require a fee and often involve a bunch of other hidden costs and hassles, so many poor Americans don't have one.\n\nAs a result, there's no way to have a positive ID of all voters without locking some out of the voting process.\n\nThe obvious solution to that problem is to roll out a real national ID system, but some civil rights groups worry it will be used to track and monitor citizens, and some lawmakers are rather happy with the way the current system disenfranchises poor urban voters.",
"The province of Alabama created a voter ID law. Then they closed DMV offices (where you could get an ID) in predominantly Black areas. For some people, getting proper ID would take three hours of driving. In other areas, they reduced the hours that the DMV offices were open -- sometimes only a few hours a day, two days a week.\n\nEvery requirement in the way of voting is a chance for people to peddle racism via bureaucracy.",
"So everything that's not for president is a simple majority. Theres only 2 parties that matter. Republicans and Democrats. Depending on what you're running for and where, each party might only send 1 person to run, so they have inner party voting to establish who they want to run for them. For example, a city mayor might have one of each party, but a township trustee in a hyper conservative township might have 5 people running but they are all the same party.\n\nBut president is different. Again each party puts forth 1 person each and has a whole thing about who they want to represent them. It's not always a normal race for this. But then they go against the other party in the electoral college. Each state gets 2 electoral votes in the electoral college, and then they get additional electoral votes based on population size. Not all electoral votes in each state are worth the same. Most states then have their people vote for who they want the electoral votes to go to and in most cases its winner take all for that state. Theres a few states that split them in different ways. The interesting part of this is that the votes the people cast here dont mean anything. They are just suggestions for people called delegates to use their votes for because each one gets an electoral vote they get to vote for. But almost always they vote for who they people want. Who ever gets the most electoral votes wins. Not technically the half but if you get half you cant lose and since theres really only 2 parties that's all that matters.\n\nThe controversy of voting dates back to post civil war. People were still racist and this goes all the way to like the 60s or 70s. People used ridiculous and arbitrary tests to try and block black people to vote. We made that mostly illegal and are afraid of allowing that to be more loose because of what happened. But because of voter fraud we want to establish better ID systems. We dont have the best ID system now. Using drivers licenses is the main way. But poor people a lot of times dont have really any form of ID a lot of the time. And a lot of black people are poor (dont hate me this is just how it is. Say it's the man keeping them down. Idc, idk.) So people think voter ID is again a way to stop black people from voting.\n\nEdit: I almost forgot to mention in the US we dont have a national ID. It's your passport, your driver's license, or your Social security. The first 2 cost money and are usually unnecessary if you're poor. The 3rd technically IDs you but only has your name on it. They reuse SSC numbers and they aren't all that unique. While your Walmart card, if you change 1 number it won't be someone else's, change 1 number on your SSC card and it is someone else. Probably someone who got theirs in line behind you."
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6vd07i | why do we have a more intense "falling feeling" in amusement park rides than we do when we are actually free falling like in skydiving or high dives? | ELI5: That feeling around your navel region when you are on a rollercoaster drop. Why is it more intense than when you are just falling through the air as in skydiving? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6vd07i/eli5_why_do_we_have_a_more_intense_falling/ | {
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"When you are freefalling you are not falling freely for long until you pick up enough speed for air resistance to matter and stop the feeling of freefall. In fact you have more freefall time by jumping on a trampoline then if you are skydiving since on the trampoline you are experiencing freefalling both going up and going down. Roller coasters on the other hand is designed to give you as much freefall as possible. In addition to letting you experience freefall on the way up over a crest or a loop as well as down from the top the carts are very heavy compared to their air resistance so the acceleration due to air resistance is much smaller then when you are falling by yourself and you are therefore freefalling for longer.",
"That feeling is the experience of G-force. Simply put, once out of the plane, you will eventually achieve terminal velocity. That's the speed at which you stop accelerating. When you're not accelerating, you're G-force is zero. \n\nRoller coasters are designed, essentially, to basically never achieve terminal velocity. Or, a better way of saying that is, roller coasters will likely never achieve terminal velocity simply because their weight, or mass, is too high and the drops too short to achieve them. Couple that with several twists and turns, and the rider is basically \"always\" experiencing some form of G-force. ",
"The feeling comes from acceleration. When going over the hill on a rollercoaster you are accelerating the whole time (it's designed like that). When sky diving, you reach terminal velocity pretty quickly and are no longer accelerating. For all of your senses except for sight, you are no longer moving, or at least moving quickly.",
"Many coasters pull negative Gs, so you are accelerating toward the ground faster than gravity would pull you - such that you would fly out if not restrained. \n\nEven if the train does follow a ballistic trajectory, the forces experienced in different parts of the train will differ, and those near the back may still experience negative Gs. It depends on the design of the ride."
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1g1qho | Is the smell of cooking food appetizing to babies too young to eat solids? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1g1qho/is_the_smell_of_cooking_food_appetizing_to_babies/ | {
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"Babies can determine the difference between breast milk and baby formula by smell. They can actually find their way to a nipple to feed on even when they're at a small distance because of the smell. I know this isn't exactly the answer you are looking for but it's still interesting.\n\n[There are actually plenty of baby smell studies listed at the end of this article](_URL_0_) if you want to take a look."
]
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| []
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[
"http://www.parentingscience.com/newborn-senses.html"
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|
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