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3rx8bt
|
how does new york have a service economy when the rent is so high?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3rx8bt/eli5_how_does_new_york_have_a_service_economy/
|
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"They don't live in Manhattan or Brooklyn... they live in the less expensive boroughs like the Bronx or Queens. And they cram more people/family members into apartments than elsewhere.",
"A waiter or cook at a nice NYC restaurant can make damn good money. For everyone else, they have multiple roommates or live in the burbs and take the sub in.",
"There's 100s of thousands of people who commute from New Jersey and Connecticut. Not to mention the lesser boroughs, the people in the service economy don't live in Manhattan.\n\nThe public transit in the tri-state area is actually pretty decent compared to most of the country.\n\nThat said, I would love to live in NYC for a few years, specifically Manhattan, but that could be a while lol."
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1nwud6
|
Monday Mysteries | Secret Societies, Cults and Organisations
|
**Previously:**
- [Astonishing individuals](_URL_14_)
- [Suggestion thread](_URL_22_)
- [More research difficulties](_URL_8_)
- [Most outlandish or outrageous historical claims](_URL_11_)
- [Inexplicable occurrences](_URL_23_)
- [Lost (and found) treasures](_URL_18_)
- [Missing persons](_URL_5_)
- [Mysterious images](_URL_16_)
- [The historical foundations of myth and legend](_URL_17_)
- [Verifiable historical conspiracies](_URL_4_)
- [Difficulties in your research](_URL_9_)
- [Least-accurate historical films and books](_URL_3_)
- [Literary mysteries](_URL_12_)
- [Contested reputations](_URL_7_)
- [Family/ancestral mysteries](_URL_2_)
- [Challenges in your research](_URL_19_)
- [Lost Lands and Peoples](_URL_24_)
- [Local History Mysteries](_URL_1_)
- [Fakes, Frauds and Flim-Flam](_URL_21_)
- [Unsolved Crimes](_URL_15_)
- [Mysterious Ruins](_URL_10_)
- [Decline and Fall](_URL_13_)
- [Lost and Found Treasure](_URL_6_)
- [Missing Documents and Texts](_URL_20_)
- [Notable Disappearances](_URL_0_)
**Today:**
The "Monday Mysteries" series will be focused on, well, mysteries -- historical matters that present us with problems of some sort, and not just the usual ones that plague historiography as it is. Situations in which our whole understanding of them would turn on a (so far) unknown variable, like the sinking of the Lusitania; situations in which we only know that something did happen, but not necessarily how or why, like the deaths of Richard III's nephews in the Tower of London; situations in which something has become lost, or become found, or turned out never to have been at all -- like the art of Greek fire, or the Antikythera mechanism, or the historical Coriolanus, respectively.
**This week we'll be taking a look at mysterious or unusual groups throughout history, whether they be clubs, cults, secret societies, or something else entirely.**
- Have there been any real "secret cults" throughout history? Around what were they formed? What did their initiates do?
- What about secret societies? What were their aims? Who were their members?
- Groups that were the real "power(s) behind the throne"?
- Secret groups that have had unexpectedly non-sinister purposes?
- Anything else that seems like it would fit.
Moderation will be light, as usual, but please offer in-depth, interesting comments that are produced in good faith.
**Next week on Monday Mysteries: In a bit of a departure from our usual material, we're going to be taking a look at some** ***historical historical misconceptions (sic)*** **-- that is, false ideas and beliefs that people in the past have had about their own past. It sounds a bit complicated, but it will be pretty straightforward once we get to it!**
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1nwud6/monday_mysteries_secret_societies_cults_and/
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"My favourite cult has always been the one created by [Hassan-i Sabbah](_URL_0_) and his assassins, which was adopted by the game Assassin's Creed, where it was loosely based on Hassan's group. It is said that the origins of the whole concept of an \"assassin\" is traced back to Hassan-i-Sabbah, who had an incredibly interesting backstory, as well as his even more interesting ways of creating assassins.\n\nHassan-i -Sabbah, or the Old Man of the Mountain, or the Sheikh of Alamut, was arguably the founder of modern Jihadist terrorist. He was incredibly strict, and ruled with incredible austerity - he banished a man for playing the flute and executed his own son for drinking wine. The way he converted people to work for him was surreal: he built an enormous gardens described as the best the world had ever seen. Within the walls there were conduits that were cut and ran wine, milk, honey and water, while groups of beautiful women danced and laughed. It was used to make people believe that it was Paradise. Marco Polo described how Hassan tricked and manipulated young men to become his obedient slave assassins:\n\n > The Old Man...had a potion given them, as a result of which they straightway fell asleep; then he had them taken up and put into the garden and then awaked. When they awoke, they ...saw all the things that I have told you, and so believed that they were really in Paradise. And the ladies and damsels remained with them all day, playing music and singing and making excellent cheer; and the young men had their pleasure of them. So these youths had all they could desire, and would never have left the place of their own free will.\n\nThey were then promptly drugged again, removed from the garden and returned to their own rooms in Hassan's castle. Hassan then told them that they would return to Paradise if they did everything he asked, as he was the guardian of Paradise. \n\nIt is incredibly chilling and effective, and by far the most interesting historical cult which bred obedient followers with unswerving loyalty. \n\n\n\n",
"I already posted this as a response to another question, but that question got little attention, and it seems to fit pretty well here in any case: The Bacchanalian cult and the associated crisis of 186 BC.\n\n* Have there been any real \"secret cults\" throughout history? Around what were they formed, and what did they do?\n\nBacchus is the latinized form of one of the names for the Greek god Dionysos. In the Roman world, Bacchus became associated with the earlier Italian god Liber Pater, also a god of wine, drunkenness and fertility (essentially the kind of God Tyrion Lannister would like to see in Westeros). So essentially, a well established cult for a popular deity. But something changed in how this cult was practiced. Like all the things corrupting the virtuous Romans, this particular evil came out of the East, possibly from Anatolia, \"like a pestilential disease\", Livy tells us, introduced by a Greek - and, as he points out, not one of the great philosophers or scholars, but a simple priest and diviner. And one that conducted his business not out in the open, but performing his services in secret and at night. Who seemed to gather a large following rather quickly. \n\nWhat made this priest out of the east and his interpretation of the Bacchus-cult so appealing? According to Livy, one of the things used to lure new followers into his services was providing wine and a meal, which is of course always popular. After that, the whole thing proceeded into a giant orgy, in which men and women did 'whatever their mind lusted after', not stopping at their own sex or even at small boys. Not content with that, they also forged documents, seals and testaments, and indulged themselves in rape and murder during their secret meetings, sounding drums and cymbals to mask the sounds. \n\nThis evil spread from Etruria to Rome and was finally brought to the attention of the consuls by one young Publius Aebutius. Publius, whose late father had been an equestrian, was living with his mother and step-father. They saw him as an obstacle to inheritance, and decided to remove him, by having him take part in the bacchanals as a victim (his mother had supposedly vowed to let him receive the bacchanalian rite in return for his reconvalescence from illness). However, his girlfriend, a whore but \"noble of spirit\" warned him of the danger that this posed to him. She had taken part in these rites while still a slave (she was a freedwoman by now) with her mistress, and so she knew what happened there - the priest would sound drums and trumpets and lead him to a dark place, where noone could hear him scream, and where he would have to be of service to the men of the cult, who, according to her preferred boys to women. If he didn't consent to his violation, they would have him killed. After she made him promise not to go, he got promptly kicked out of the house by his parents for refusing to let himself be introduced to the bacchanalian cult.\n\nHis aunt told him to bring the matter to the attention of the consuls, who launched investigations. They questioned Publius' girlfriend, Hispala, who reluctantly told them about how the cult had evolved into something that would as well fit into de Sades Justine as just another episode of orgies, homosexual libertinage and general frenzy and bloodlust. The consuls brought the matter before the Senate, and the Senators, shocked by the extent and the actions of this underground cult, saw the Republic endangered and ordered the consuls to destroy the cult, not only in Rome but in the whole of Italy, and furthermore prohibited all cultic meetings of the Bacchanalians in all of Italy. \n\nLivy gives us a rousing speech of the Consuls on the forum to the general populace, informing them about the extent and the crimes of the cult, asking them how men should in the future protect them by the sword who had been sullied by passive sodomy (the *bad* kind of sodomy for a Roman male). He then reports the general panic in Rome, how many tried to flee the city but were apprehended at the gates, and how others were driven to suicide who were involved in the cult. The curule aedils were to apprehend the cult leaders, while the plebeian aediles should prevent the conduction of cultic meetings. A bounty was offered for people involved in these cultic meetings. An edict by the senate was proclaimed that pretty much placed all Bacchanalian worship under punishment unless specifically allowed by the urban praetor. Apparently, the investigations were quite successful. The ringleaders were apprehended, and accused together with 7.000 others. Those who were not involved in murder or rape were imprisoned, the rest, which were the majority, were executed. Bacchanalian shrines were destroyed through all of Italy.\n\nWhat made the Senators and the elite so fearful of this cult that it provoked such a harsh crackdown, often called the first example of religious persecution by the state?\nLivy paints a nice picture, of the grave and ordered senate, concerned for the welfare of the Republic, contrasted with the 'unlicensed', un-public cult, following the dionysian values of seeking personal fulfillment and self-indulgence before duty to the state. The morale is quite clear: Organized religion, in the form of the public cults performed by the elite ensured the wellbeing and success of Rome as a collective. Selfishness and seeking personal satisfaction leads to sexual and moral corruption, and, ultimately destruction. One cannot help but notice that all of the ringleaders are plebeians, Marcus and Caius Atinius; while Lucius Opiternius and Minius Cerrinius were non-roman Italians. Also interesting is that the Greek who supposedly started this whole affair remains unnamed, which to me makes him likely nothing more than a literary device, part of the larger trope of the decadent hellenic influence on Rome so often bemoaned. \n\nThe problem is, there are only two sources on it. There's Livy (as well as later authors copying him, but adding nothing new), and the *senatus consultum de bacchanalibus*, a copy of the Senates edict, presumably once posted all over Italy, from the *ager Teuranus*, near modern Tiriolo. But this senatusconsultum might point to another reason: This edict showed the Italians just how powerful Rome had become. They were able to control the religious life of all the Italians. And controlling religious life back then also meant influence on politics. It is often cited as one of the drops of increasingly overbearing Roman control over the life of the non-Romans of Italy which finally resulted in the Social war of 91-88 BC. \n\nP.S.:The whole affair had a very happy ending for Publius and his Hispala: each was awarded 100.000 As, Publius was freed of military service (one of the higher honours of the state for a citizen), and Hispala was made equal to a freeborn woman in status. ",
"There is a very interesting academic article that puts forth the argument that Farinelli (Mr. Big Name Castrato) was a Freemason called [“Farinelli as Queen of the Night”](_URL_2_) (this is a reference to Mozart’s *Magic Flute* which is a big Masonic joke) by Jane Clark. (I as of yet have not had any opportunity to wedge this little idea into a conversation either here or in real life, so this is fun!) It’s an interesting argument, but I have some beefs with it. If anyone has access to the article and is interested I’d love to debate its merits with someone, I’ve never had the opportunity. \n\n1. The main thrust of her argument is that Farinelli’s career was kinda unusual with his early retirement to a pretty unsexy job singing showtunes every night to a crazy Spanish king. She argues he did it to support a political cause, possibly Jacobite. HOWEVER, I find the idea that Farinelli left the stage for secret political reasons other than those he has personally stated in letters pretty specious. I see no reason to doubt his word when he says that he left the stage because he hated both the behavior of the crowds and the hard living. The behavior of the crowds was pretty detestable back then (booing, hissing, claques), and opera singers had a very hard life with all the travelling required. There’s also pretty ample evidence that Farinelli was a wonderful singer, but not necessarily a very good *opera* singer: he couldn’t act for beans according to contemporary reports, and didn’t cut a very dashing figure on stage (big gangly guy). Plus he was making less money towards the end of his time in England, the novelty of opera was wearing off a little on the London upper crust. Why wouldn’t he take a cushy job in Spain (with no travel and no nasty crowds) for the reasons he’s actually written down? WHY DOES IT NEED TO BE A MASONIC CONSPIRACY? \n\n2. She claims there’s Masonic symbolism in Farinelli’s portraits in later life, specifically pugs. I have some big problems with this -- yes, symbolism was a *big* deal back then, but it was more used in satires, not in portraits. And of the three portraits he has with doggies in them, [only one is obviously a pug to me,](_URL_3_) I mean I’m no AKC dog judge but [this is not a pug.](_URL_0_) And maybe Farinelli just frickin’ liked little doggies and was like “Hey, paint my dog in my portrait too.” My family had a little white miniature poodle growing up and we took her to the photo studio and had her posed in our formal family portrait, and if someone tries to read political symbolism into that act in 300 years I am going to be posthumously annoyed. \n\n3. He made some rather strange lies to Charles Burney (the first opera historian) when he was interviewed towards the end of his life. Clark concludes that he is HIDING MASONIC SECRETS but I personally think he might have been being a little shrewd about his legacy -- he was always very good at “leveraging his brand” (before there was such a concept) when he was on the stage, and I see no reason why he wouldn’t continue that when he was older. One lie is that he claimed to Burney he “always meant to return to England” which is countered by letters he wrote during the time period. Masonic political maneuverings? Well I think the simpler explanation was that Charles Burney was English and Farinelli was trying to be nice and not say “I had a rotten time in England and high-tailed it outta there ASAP.” \n\n4. Someone referred to him as a “blazing star” in a letter, which was a Masonic term for the [Garter Star](_URL_1_) which was a Freemason thing. People used a LOT of codes in letters at the time. Frankly, I find this one the most convincing. But it’s the only evidence I’ll really take. \n\nSo, Farinelli the Mason? I say probably not, but it’s a pretty interesting idea! ",
"The Hellfire Club!\n\nThis is honestly going to be a short and lazy comment, and I'm going to depend on Wikipedia, as this is not my specialty, but is tangentially related to a lot of eighteenth century figures I study.\n\nThe 'Hellfire Club,' the most famous one, was founded by Sir Francis Dashwood (what a name!) in 1749, and was also referred to by its public name \"Order of the Friars of St. Francis of Wycombe.\" Their motto was: Fais ce que tu voudras, or \"do what you want/will.\" \n\nThe club picked up on an older one, which was basically founded in order to blaspheme religion and the Church. It was notable for accepting women--but many of these were likely accepted for sexual purposes.\n\nFrom Wikipedia:\n\n > According to Horace Walpole, the members' \"practice was rigorously pagan: Bacchus and Venus were the deities to whom they almost publicly sacrificed; and the nymphs and the hogsheads that were laid in against the festivals of this new church, sufficiently informed the neighborhood of the complexion of those hermits.\" Dashwood's garden at West Wycombe contained numerous statues and shrines to different gods; Daphne and Flora, Priapus and the previously mentioned Venus and Dionysus.\n\n\n > Meetings occurred twice a month, with an AGM lasting a week or more in June or September. The members addressed each other as \"Brothers\" and the leader, which changed regularly, as \"Abbot\". During meetings members supposedly wore ritual clothing: white trousers, jacket and cap, while the \"Abbot\" wore a red ensemble of the same style. Like Wharton's Club, rumours of Black Masses, orgies and Satan or demon worship were well circulated during the time the Club was around. Other clubs, especially in Ireland and Scotland, were rumoured to take part in far more dubious activities. Rumours saw female \"guests\" (a euphemism for prostitutes) referred to as \"Nuns\". Dashwood's Club meetings often included mock rituals, items of a pornographic nature, much drinking, wenching and banqueting.\n\n\nThe texts the wikipedia article reference are actually very well-written books, and highly recommended if you're interested.\n\n",
"There's a delightful bit of etymological curiosity around the development of the word 'cabal' in English. As one would expect it ultimately derives from the Hebrew 'qabbalah' meaning 'received wisdom' and was often used when referencing mystical interpretations of Jewish scripture. \n\nHowever the modern popular meaning of 'a secret or conspiratorial, politically motivated group' comes from the 1670s and the so called 'cabal ministry.'\n\nThese were five privy council members: Thomas Clifford, 1st Baron Clifford of Chudleigh, Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington, George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Baron Ashley, John Maitland, 1st Duke of Lauderdale (aka Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley-Cooper, and Lauderdal C...A..B...A...L) who formed a foreign affairs committee and were often accused of acting in their own interests against that of the crown and the nation. \n\nThe parallels between this and the modern conspiracy theories that attach around the CFR are quite bemusing. \n\n",
"Hello all! Today I thought I'd share some musings on the Biblical *Book of Esther*. Set in Achaemenid Persia, apparently during the reign of Xerxes, the story recounts how the Jewish girl Esther becomes queen of Persia and how, with the help of her cousin Mordecai, she thwarts a plot by the evil vizier Haman to wipe out the Jews. In the end, Esther and Mordecai emerge as the \"powers behind the throne,\" as they both enjoy the King's favor and gratitude. The mystery, of course, is whether any of this is historical. While many (myself included) think it best to treat *Esther* as a historical novella rather than strict history, others have argued at least for the actual existence of Mordecai. \n\nI initially stumbled upon the debate over Mordecai while studying the so-called \"Fortification Tablets\" from Persepolis (viewable [here](_URL_0_) and, more awkwardly, [here](_URL_1_)). Several of the Fortification texts, dating to the reign of Darius I (father of Xerxes), mention an individual (or possibly individuals) called *Mar-du-ka*, \"man of Marduk,\" from which the name \"Mordecai\" derives. Although overzealous scholars sometimes identify Marduka as *the* Mordecai of the Bible, the evidence is too limited to permit such a conclusion. The issue really seems moot in my opinion, and again I do not subscribe to a literal approach to the Hebrew scriptures. At the same time, I also do not find convincing the equally-dubious (and fallaciously-argued) attempts to cast Mordecai as the figure of Marduk (the Babylonian god) and Esther as Ishtar--but that is besides the point of this post.\n\nSo here's the caveat: I noticed recently that one of the entries in the archive refers not to Marduka himself but rather *Mar-du-ka-be* (PF 273.4-5). Editor Richard T. Hallock hesitantly translates this as \"the Marduka (people),\" presumably because other geographic-gentilic designations from this period feature a similar construction: for example, the *Kur-ka-be* (\"Carians\": PF 123.2), *Par-šib-be* (\"Persians\": PF 871.3), and *Hi-in-du-iš-be* (\"Indians\": PF 1548.5-6) cited in the Fortification Tablets, or the *Mar-ku-iš-be* (\"Margians\": DB 21.3) and *Par-tu-maš-be* (\"Parthians\": DB 35.68) listed on the [Elamite version](_URL_2_) of Darius' inscription at Behisitun. I suppose one could possibly interpret *Mar-du-ka-be* as \"people of Marduk\" (ergo, the Babylonians), but such an explicit connection between a people and a deity is, as far as I can tell, unparalleled within the extant corpus of texts. Conversely, peoples are in a few instances tied directly to individuals: \"the Mišakaš people of Hystaspes,\" (PF 1596.6-8); or \"people of Maušudda and Iršena,\" (PF 1622.5-7) who both appear elsewhere as officials. Moreover, the Babylonians already receive an ethnic identifier in the form *Ba-pi-li-ra* (PF 783.4-5) and its variants.\n\nIf *Mar-du-ka-be* does indeed mean something like \"the Marduka people,\" attention must be drawn to a rather curious line in *Esther*: \"But he [the Persian official Haman] disdained to lay hands on Mordecai alone, for they had told him who *the people of Mordecai* were; therefore Haman sought to destroy all the Jews, *the people of Mordecai*, who were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus [=Xerxes?].\" (3:6, NASB transl.) The repetition here places unusual emphasis on the phrase \"people of Mordecai.\" (*‘m mrdky*), which then matches the *Mar-du-ka-be* of the Fortification texts. I unfortunately lack the linguistic expertise to say much more than that. \n\nNow, *Esther* also describes a \"Book of Chronicles of the Kings of Media and Persia\" (*spr dbry hymym lmlky mdy wprs*: 10:2; cf. 2:23, 6:1) and even insists upon its own historicity by citing this official Persian account. The existence of similar documents is somewhat corroborated by the Ctesias' claim that he studied the \"royal writings\" (βασιλικαὶ ἀναγραφαί: Diodorus 2.22.5) or \"royal parchments\" (βασιλικαὶ διφθέραι: 2.32.4) during his residency at the court of Artaxerxes II. We have the testimony of Herodotus as well, who reports that Xerxes tasked his scribes with recording the names and origins of his best officers at the Battle of Salamis. (8.90.4) I believe it is possible, therefore, that the formula \"people of Mordecai\" originates from Persian administrative terminology; hence why the author of *Esther* emphasizes Mordecai's role as a representative of his community rather the community itself. Perhaps a historical Mordecai or Marduka really did advocate on behalf of his people, even if his accomplishments fell far short of rescuing them from genocide, which *Esther* then romanticizes based on some short entries in the royal records? \n\nThis is all extremely speculative, of course, and I'm not sure I even buy my own argument; at any rate, I still find it highly unlikely that two well-placed Jews were pulling the strings behind the scenes in fifth-century Persia. But if you got this far, thank you for taking the time to read this post and joining me in some historical exercise. :D\n\n**TL;DR**: The Jews Esther and Mordecai were probably not \"powers behind the throne\" during the time of Xerxes as claimed in the *Book of Esther*, though the story may have some slight basis in reality. ",
"Would anyone be able to provide some insight into the Mythraic Cults of Rome? ",
"New York City is home to many secret societies, perhaps the most exclusive of which is the fabled Zodiac Club, with only twelve members. Its founder, Major General Edward E. Potter, made a fortune in California during the Gold Rush, and famously led a successful Union raid in North Carolina in 1863. The rules of the club were relatively simple: each member inherited a zodiac symbol unrelated to their birth sign, new members could only be nominated unanimously, they would meet for dinner on the last Saturday of each month from November to May and each month one member was responsible for “catering” the dinner. Only native New Yorkers were permitted in the club, and they had to have a degree from an Ivy League University. Notable members include J.P. Morgan, James W. Clendenin, James Hampden Robb, Frank K. Sturgis, Lewis Cass Ledyard and Nelson Aldrich; they addressed themselves as “Brother” plus their sign. By the turn of the century, the club had less to do with gentlemanly dinners than with propagating negative stereotypes about the city. The club minutes (replicated in a Tiffany & Co. font and bound by Charles Scribner and Sons) include portrayals of “ditzy women, backstabbing Jewish bankers, unintelligible African-Americans, lazy Italians, drunken Irish, orderly Germans and New Jersey, where people are notorious for being loafers;” they blatantly flouted Prohibition. The [magnificent](_URL_0_) Morgan Library includes signs of the zodiac, including a prominent Libra, Morgan’s Zodiac Club sign. \n\nNot much is known about the modern-day incarnation of the Zodiac Club, but its members, some of the city’s most successful, still continue to meet today. One of the current members quite mysteriously notes that the club is “never secret, only private.” ",
"In my visits to western Ukraine, I've noticed a strange cultural obsession with Freemasonry. It's my understanding that Freemasons are really only in Britain, France, and North America. How did the region surrounding Lviv acquire this cultural feature?",
"Less of a mystery, and more of a secret society comprised of one man: George Starkey and his alter-ego the mythic alchemical adept Eirenaeus Philalethes.\n\nA Bermudan by birth, Starkey (or Stirk, originally) was educated at Harvard in the early seventeenth century. He was interested in natural philosophy and eventually turned his attention to alchemy. He eventually emigrated to England (where it was easier to obtain the necessary materials for alchemical experimentation), becoming a doctor of sorts – an iatrochemist, technically. He ended up having a fairly successful practice, and was even associated with Robert Boyle and other members of Gresham College (which was to eventually become the Royal Society). According to William Newman, Starkey even taught Boyle chemistry (though its alchemical tints might have helped contribute to Boyle's *The Sceptical Chymist*). Eventually, Starkey's focus on alchemy led to the detriment of his fortunes: he was eventually put into debtors' prison, saved by Boyle, fell to the drink, and died during the Great Plague in 1666 as he (along with other iatrochemists like Thomas Vaughan) tried to prove the worth of his alchemical medicine by treating the victims.\n\nNow, what I find fascinating about Starkey is that he invented the mythic adept Eirenaeus Philalethes (translation: peaceful lover of truth), and had pamphlets detailing practices and methods published under Philalethes' name. Later, when he was convinced by trial and error that the method Philalethes expounded simply did not work, he would dismiss the adept's methods while in the company of his fellow enthusiasts and practitioners. After he died, other alchemists claimed that they had seen and spoken with Philalethes, and commented on the generosity of his association with the unworthy drunk Starkey. The distance between creator and creation was so skillfully maintained that it was only relatively recently that Starkey was absolutely identified with Philalethes.\n\nThe precise details can be found in William Newman's work *Gehennical Fire: The Lives of George Starkey, An American Alchemist in the Scientific Revolution*, along with Newman and Lawrence Principe's *Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry*. These two scholars have gone and cornered the market on Starkey, and while I find their attempts to fit him into a scientific mold a little anachronistic, they have done some absolutely ground-breaking research when it comes to this singular figure. I'm also sorry I don't have the books on me at the moment to go on at greater length."
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"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ce73h/monday_mysteries_notable_disappearances/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1fl9uw/monday_mysteries_local_history_mysteries/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1gz7ac/monday_mysteries_your_family_mysteries/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1icd0x/monday_mysteries_leastaccurate_historical_books/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1j9zv8/monday_mysteries_verifiable_historical/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ko1ic/monday_mysteries_missing_persons/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1dcbb3/monday_mysteries_lost_and_found_treasure/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1hfffk/monday_mysteries_contested_reputations/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1mi2xe/monday_mysteries_difficulties_in_your_research/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1itbtx/monday_mysteries_difficulties_in_your_research/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1e9el2/monday_mysteries_ancient_ruins/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1m18cv/monday_mysteries_what_are_the_most_outlandish_or/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1hv6me/monday_mysteries_literary_mysteries/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1dslor/monday_mysteries_decline_and_fall/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1nfzpn/monday_mysteries_astonishing_individuals/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1eoypm/monday_mysteries_unsolved_crimes_in_history/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1k7cmp/monday_mysteries_mysterious_images/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1jqrya/monday_mysteries_the_historical_foundations_of/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1l48li/monday_mysteries_lost_and_found_treasures/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1gj0q2/monday_mysteries_what_in_your_research_is_proving/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1cvbaz/monday_mysteries_missing_documents_and_texts/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1f57b0/monday_mysteries_fakes_frauds_and_flimflammery_in/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1mz6ge/monday_mysteries_suggestion_thread_please_read/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1lkw4j/monday_mysteries_inexplicable_occurrences_in/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1g1we7/monday_mysteries_lost_lands_and_peoples/"
] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassan-i_Sabbah"
],
[],
[
"http://g1b2i3.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/jacopo-amigoni-jacopo-amigoni-and-his-portrait-of-farinelli-and-friends.jpg",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GarterInsigniaBurkes.JPG",
"http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=346559",
"http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/7484/2retratodecarlosbroschi.jpg"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://oi.uchicago.edu/pdf/oip92.pdf",
"http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/projects/pfa/",
"http://archive.org/stream/CorpusInscriptionsRoyalesElamiteAchemenid/Vallat1977_CorpusInscriptionsRoyalesElamiteAchemenid#page/n0/mode/2up"
],
[],
[
"http://www.themorgan.org/about/images/eastroom-ceiling.jpg"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
1ipjoz
|
Have terrorists through history ever succeeded in achieving their political/ideological aims?
|
I didn't see anything in the FAQ after a cursory look and this question interests me. I know the definitions will get murky, and honestly the debate over what the term means is half the reason I wanted to ask this question.
As a starting off point, lets riff off Kissinger and assume "terrorists are really people that reject the international system" and use asymmetrical force to achieve their ends. I think this nicely captures the pariah status of most modern groups as well as the unique brand of warfare they utilise, but feel free to correct me.
What I want from this topic is a sense of when/where terrorism threatens to actually work and when it can reliably be expected to fail.
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ipjoz/have_terrorists_through_history_ever_succeeded_in/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cb6uehc"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"In short, no, at least going off of the definition of terrorism you wish to be used. This isn't, however, to say that terrorist groups do not effect change in the domestic or international scene. There are really two levels of objectives for terrorist groups: short-term and long-term. Short term objectives would be things like raising money by ransoming hostages or robbing banks, gaining media coverage, and recruiting members. This is really the meat and potatoes aspect of any terrorist group. Longer term goals are probably what you're looking for, and they are normally much more significant: regime change, the complete reversal of a government's policy, etc. Terrorist groups are much more successful with the former rather than the latter. Short-term victories are pretty common, with an example being the early 1980s bombings of the US embassy and Marine barracks in Lebanon, which eventually led to the US pulling out of the country. But I honestly can't think of one terrorist group that achieved it's goals strictly through terrorism. Exceptions to this rule would be when terrorism becomes part of a broader military strategy, often guerrilla warfare.\n\nFurthermore, we have to recognize that, despite popular claims that terrorists are radical and uncompromising, their attitudes and objectives *do* change and their views have the potential to become moderated. The Muslim Brotherhood is a good example of this. The decision for moderation, or even the group's renunciation of terrorism, arises because, just like politicians, terrorist groups have their own constituencies. Of course, this discounts terrorist groups who see themselves as a revolutionary vanguard that will spring the masses to action, a la the RAF. In those cases, the terrorists group's views are often so far apart from any mainstream view that they never gain much in the way of any wider following, often because their nihilism alienates the ones they're trying to call to action. But going back to terrorist groups who actively work to form greater constituencies within a society, these groups often have to moderate their views out of necessity if they wish to have any type of political relevance. Sometimes, their constituents may accept that violence is a legitimate course of action, although there are certainly limits. For example, through the 1970s to the 1990s, the IRA and Sinn Fein heeded their constituency's demands by mainly attacking British security personnel rather than Protestant civilians. To have engaged in a wider program of civilian terror would have risked the group losing their legitimacy in the eyes of their constituency. (As a side-note this is not to diminish or marginalize IRA terrorist attacks against civilians, which still constituted roughly 20% of the group's terrorist actions). \n\nLastly, in some cases, a terrorist groups stated strategic objectives may not necessarily be the primary reason why they are committing acts of terrorism. The Weather Underground is a good example of this type of terrorist group. For the Weather Underground terrorism was an end in itself, an action that was a moral necessity against a corrupt and repressive government, no matter the tactic's efficacy. In these cases, the terrorist group's objectives are less important than the individual member's psychological catharsis through terrorism.\n\nSo, the objectives or goals of terrorist groups are multi-layered and constantly changing. Rarely, if ever, do their most radical objectives come anywhere near reaching fruition. When a terrorist group fails to moderate their views there are a few paths through which the group may follow, almost inevitably, to collapse. The group will be dismantled by the state (or a multi-state institution), which can occur through either violent or non-violent means (the Italian Red Brigades are a good example of this). The group dissolves through internal conflict, often arising over a debate as to whether terrorist violence should continue or if the group should moderate its views (the Weather Underground suits this path). The last is for the group simply to slip into irrelevance, fighting for a cause that no one cares about anymore. This final case tends to occur when terrorist groups refuse to adapt to a changing domestic/international scene, for example the RAF in post-unification Germany. \n\nEdit: Wording.\n\nEdit: I forgot to list some relevant sources for further reading if you'd wish to do so. For general histories of terrorism the best single volume is Gerard Chaliand and Arnaud Blin's [*The History of Terrorism: From Antiquity to al Qaeda*](_URL_3_). Bruce Hoffman's [*Inside Terrorism*](_URL_2_) is also a must read. For an excellent look at the ideological motivations of the Weather Underground and RAF you can check out Jeremy Varon's [*Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies* ](_URL_0_). Lastly, you may be interested to learn how exactly terrorist groups end. For that, two good books are Audrey Kurth Cronin's [*How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns*](_URL_4_) or Seth Jones's and Martin Libicki's [*How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa'ida*](_URL_1_)\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.amazon.com/Bringing-War-Home-Underground-Revolutionary/dp/0520241193/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374362590&sr=1-1&keywords=bringing+the+war+home+the+weather+underground",
"http://www.amazon.com/How-Terrorist-Groups-End-Countering/dp/0833044656/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374362816&sr=1-1&keywords=how+terrorist+groups+end",
"http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Terrorism-Bruce-Hoffman/dp/0231126999/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374362591&sr=8-1&keywords=bruce+hoffman",
"http://www.amazon.com/The-History-Terrorism-From-Antiquity/dp/0520247094/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374362250&sr=8-1&keywords=history+of+terrorism",
"http://www.amazon.com/How-Terrorism-Ends-Understanding-Terrorist/dp/069115239X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374362732&sr=1-1&keywords=how+terrorism+ends"
]
] |
|
5blgzi
|
when using virtual reality devices like the vive or rift, how do our eyes focus on 'distant' objects when they are really only centimetres away?
|
Do our eyes react in the same way as they do in the physical world? Or is there some trick being played?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5blgzi/eli5_when_using_virtual_reality_devices_like_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d9pf8u8",
"d9pfrid"
],
"score": [
5,
2
],
"text": [
"The lenses in VR device put the image at a distance. Early prototypes used infinite distance because reasons(similar how stars are essentially infinite distance away as far as your eye focus goes), it didn't really affect immersion, but now I understand the distance they use is less than that, not sure by how much.\n\nSince the entire screen either is or isn't in focus, and there's no reason for eyes to shift focus distance, this may have been a problem. Turns out, it wasn't. Brain doesn't seem to use focus distance when deciding what the world is like, it's just a mundane task eyes do.",
"Your eyes don't actually know how far the light they're receiving has come. They figure that out by comparing the image from each eye. \nThe difference between each eye's picture tells the brain what the angle between the eyes and the object is. That tells it how far away the object is. VR uses two pictures to make it seem like the light is coming from a certain angle, and therefore farther away. So your eyes focus the way they normally would to make sense of the images."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
39x3bm
|
why was dragon ball gt considered so bad compared to dragon ball and dragon ball z?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39x3bm/eli5why_was_dragon_ball_gt_considered_so_bad/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cs77m1v",
"cs77w7b",
"cs7bvap"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"I don't know what the general criticisms are, but, personally, Z did a better job building tension and had far stronger villains/plot arcs. GT felt like a hokey pseudo-parody of Z. Then again, I was quite a bit older when I watched GT as well.",
"People generally criticize GT for being too much of a retread of Dragonball and Dragonball Z. The first arc has whole episodes with plotlines ripped straight out of Dragon Ball. The Baby Saga is basically the Cell Saga. Etc.",
"Real arguments (fact based rather than opinion based) come down to the fact that GT wasn't based on the manga like DB and DBZ were. Although the studio and staff did get the blessing of Akira Toriyama, the series' original creator, input from him was minimal.\n\nAlthough, I believe that due to recent news, GT isn't part of the main timeline anymore, so that should appease everyone. \nAs an FYI, they're apparently saying GT was a 'possible future' that would've happened if Battle of the Gods and Resurection F (and future official works) didn't happen when they did, or at all. Think of it like future Trunks' timeline. Although he 'saved' the main timeline, when he returned 'the future', his timeline was pretty much as he left it. For a non-DB fan, think of it like the Star Trek reboot movies. The whole original timeline still happened (and is happening in the games, mmo, novels,etc), but the movies, due to the time travel, are now set in the 'Alternate Timeline', where basically everything that happened still kinda happen, but five years after when compared to the original timeline, so the scenarios play out differently."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
1obkn8
|
A good biography of Lenin
|
What it says on the tin. Looking for a biography or, ideally, a pair of biographies with opposing view points about good 'ol Vladimir Ilyich. I'm fairly familiar with late Russian somewhat less so early Soviet history, so I'm looking for something fairly comprehensive. Any suggestions?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1obkn8/a_good_biography_of_lenin/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ccqpei9"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"There's a great little book called [\"Lenin for Beginners\"](_URL_0_), which I highly recommend. \nIf you're looking for something more standard, give [this one](_URL_2_) a go. \n\n\nIf you ask me, I'd say you can't view Lenin in a proper context without understanding the workings of the Party as well. The [official History of the CPSU](_URL_1_) is the best one for a complete overview as far as I'm concerned."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://ge.tt/4vmCgvT/v/0?c",
"http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1939/x01/",
"http://www.amazon.com/Lenin-Reaktion-Books-Critical-Lives/dp/1861897936/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1351464974&sr=8-1&keywords=lih+lenin"
]
] |
|
4n8csp
|
are the acid levels in the hot springs at yellowstone park enough to dissolve a human body?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4n8csp/eli5are_the_acid_levels_in_the_hot_springs_at/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d41orzi",
"d41otub"
],
"score": [
4,
10
],
"text": [
"The [pH of the water in the acid springs is in the 2-3 range](_URL_0_ ), that's in the lemon juice-vinegar range. This will not dissolve a human body for a very long time. Many of the pools and geysers have underground storage chambers, where the water is heated, from which a drowned human can't be easily extracted. That's why the search ended.",
"It's not so much his body was dissolved, it's more that his body was swept into the massive system of underground rivers flowing under Yellowstone.\n\nI'm wondering if he could end up being blown out Old Faithful while school kids look on... It would make an epic field trip - or find a place in the plot line for a great horror story."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Yellowstone_Acid_Pools"
],
[]
] |
||
5z4wmm
|
Comrades: A World History of Communism - Its just me or this book is biased ?
|
I found a reference when author of Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, give a thanks for helping in his book to Robert Service. So I borrow his book, Comrades: A World History of Communism but I found it very odd.
Montefiore Stalin was a great book in portraiting a man in every aspect of his life which was due to political demonization viewed very inaccurate, without any bias.
It is a mystery for me how educated man like Service could write something what is more seems to me like propaganda than historical book. He pick very interesting topic but very loosely manipulated with Marxism as such.
It's just me or is Service not exactly good writer ?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5z4wmm/comrades_a_world_history_of_communism_its_just_me/
|
{
"a_id": [
"devk1a1"
],
"score": [
23
],
"text": [
"**Part 1**\n\nAh yes, Robert Service, focal point of lots of controversy and yet still somehow getting glowing press reviews for the most part.\n\nTo put it very succinctly: Your impression that Service is biased is completely spot on, at least for both his books *Comrades* as well as for his more recent biography of Trotsky.\n\nSeumas Milne writing for [The Guardian](_URL_0_), characterized *Comrades* as\n\n > firmly in this neoconservative mould. From the first few pages, we are left in no doubt that, wherever it raised its head, communism was a bizarre and horrific historical detour. Unequivocally siding with the \"totalitarian school\" of Soviet historiography against the more even-handed \"revisionists\", his central argument is that, whatever the local variants, communists necessarily relied on dictatorship because of their lack of support, hare-brained socialist economics and reliance on an ideology, Marxism, that was inherently violent and totalitarian.\n > \n > In what often reads more like a polemic than a historical account, Service offers a relentlessly cartoonish portrayal both of communist politics and theory. Marx, Lenin and their followers had promised a \"perfect society\" and a \"workers' paradise\", Service claims absurdly. Revolution is explained as a \"bacillus\", communist leaders as variously \"dotty\", \"foolish\", \"lunatic\" and \"gangsters\" who were guilty of \"rank hypocrisy\". The accumulation of factual errors also scarcely inspires confidence: Allende's 1970s government was not \"communist-led\"; the Malayan communists fought the British not the Dutch in the 1950s; Antonio Gramsci didn't die in prison; and Germany's Spartacist uprising didn't take place in 1918.\n\nMilne further accuses Service of delivering a polemic rather than a scholarly historical account. Dismissing the murder of one million Indonesian communists in a western-backed coup in 1965 in one sentence, Service, he writes \"shows his colours with studied disdain for such policies as job security, narrow wage differentials and \"discriminating in favour of the poorer citizens\".\"\n\nThought one of the biggest shortcomings of Service' book Milne points to is that Service completely overlooks and/or dismisses that communism as an ideology and a political movement did indeed have millions of supporters at one point or another in history. Now, whether one agrees with it or not is not the point when it comes to historical inquiry and so, the failure to distill and answer why an ideology, that as Service is so eager to point out, did take hold in Russia under extreme circumstance and then was exported to a third of the world to result in a number of dictatorial regimes did nonetheless attract millions of people to its cause, is the real shortcoming of the book. Writing about Communism as a project solely pursued and designed by a small number of conspiratorial elites wanting to establish a dictatorship for themselves while ignoring to explore the factors that made it so attractive to literally millions of followers not only demonstrates bias but also failure as a historian.\n\n\"Ok\", I already hear some say, \"Milne is hardly the best person to pass judgement here. After all, he is in the left-wing of the British labor party and recently became an important appointment of Jeremy Corbyn in the party.\" And while that is true (and does not diminish his criticism, especially when factual errors are concerned), Service has also been heavily criticized by people who are less easily dismissed as biased, foremost Bertrand M. Patenaude, fellow at the Hoover Institution and Stanford.\n\nIn 2009 Robert Service published *Trotsky, a biography*, which is attempting to do exactly what the title says. Generally well received by the press, it already started off with a misstatement of fact. Service claimed in his preface this was the first full length biography of Trotsky from someone outside the Soviet Union who is not a Trotskyite. A [claim](_URL_2_) that [is](_URL_3_) patently [untrue](_URL_4_) and inarguably [false](_URL_5_). A fact, none of his reviewers seemed initially to have picked up on.\n\nPatenaude, an expert on Soviet Russia and former teacher of international security at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California (i.e. not a Trotskyite) had also published a book on Trotsky, called *Trotsky. Downfall of a Revolutionary* in 2009 and so was awarded the dubious honor of writing [a review of Service' book for the American Historical Review](_URL_1_) in 2011; a review about which one contributor at Inside Higher Education said \"will earn a place in the annals of the scholarly take-down.\"\n\nPatenaude eviscerates Service biography of Trotsky for its numerous factual errors and questionable interpretations. He sets out writing:\n\n > It appears that he set out thoroughly to discredit Trotsky as a historical figure and as a human being. His Trotsky is not merely arrogant, self-righteous, and self-absorbed; he is a mass murderer and a terrorist, a cold and heartless son, husband, father, and comrade, and an intellectual lightweight who falsified the record of his role in the Russian Revolution and whose writings have continued to fool generations of readers—a hoax perpetuated by his hagiographer Isaac Deutscher. In his eagerness to cut Trotsky down, Service commits numerous distortions of the historical record and outright errors of fact to the point that the intellectual integrity of the whole enterprise is open to question.\n\nService main source and main exhibit in his efforts to paint a picture of Trotsky as dark and terrible as possible is Trotsky's autobiography *My life*, which he wrote in 1930 and of which Service claims to have access to a first draft significantly different from the published version. Enter Patenaude:\n\n > Yet neither here nor anywhere else is Service able to provide a single example of a significant discrepancy between the published memoir and the draft. In fact, in his depiction of Trotsky's youth, Service relies almost entirely on the published version of My Life, not on earlier drafts. Service accuses Trotsky the memoirist of being “selective, evasive and self-aggrandizing” (p. xxi) (as if most memoirs do not fit this description), yet he reads other memoirs completely uncritically (for example, those of Gregory A. Ziv and Clare Sheridan) when they show Trotsky in an unfavorable light.\n\nAnd it doesn't stop there. Concerning factual errors, Patenaude writes:\n\n > I have counted more than four dozen. Service mixes up the names of Trotsky's sons, misidentifies the largest political group in the first Duma in 1906, botches the name of the Austrian archduke assassinated at Sarajevo, misrepresents the circumstances of Nicholas II's abdication, gets backward Trotsky's position in 1940 on the United States' entry into World War II, and gives the wrong year of death of Trotsky's widow. Service's book is completely unreliable as a reference. At times the errors are jaw-dropping. Service believes that Bertram Wolfe was one of Trotsky's “acolytes” living with him in Mexico (pp. 441, 473), that André Breton was a “surrealist painter” whose “pictures exhibited sympathy with the plight of the working people” (p. 453), and that Mikhail Gorbachev rehabilitated Trotsky in 1988, when in fact Trotsky was never posthumously rehabilitated by the Soviet government.\n\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/may/12/featuresreviews.guardianreview8",
"https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-lookup/doi/10.1086/ahr.116.3.900",
"https://books.google.de/books?id=q_JoAAAAMAAJ&q=robert+payne+life+and+death+of+trotsky&dq=robert+payne+life+and+death+of+trotsky&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj6p6fJ8NPSAhUBLhoKHYkiB8wQ6AEIGjAA",
"https://books.google.de/books?id=cU3yFMLm1voC&printsec=frontcover&dq=ian+d+thatcher+trotsky&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj38ODb8NPSAhXDtBoKHfEQBswQ6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=ian%20d%20thatcher%20trotsky&f=false",
"https://books.google.de/books?id=FN3UlgEACAAJ&dq=Joel+Carmichael++trotsky&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZkqrt8NPSAhWLfxoKHZuvA4IQ6AEIHTAA",
"https://books.google.de/books?id=Im2hAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Geoffrey+Swain++trotsky&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwilgfSG8dPSAhVGrRoKHfU8B9QQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=Geoffrey%20Swain%20%20trotsky&f=false"
]
] |
|
bkaubt
|
if a helicopter were to hover 12 hours without moving forward, would it be on the other side of the world?
|
Ok I know it sounds dumb. But I came across a flat earth thing that people are making fun of that said “if the earth really were spinning, a helicopter could hover in one spot for 12 hours and be on the other side of the world.” Why is that laughable? I don’t know how the physics of that works, but it feels like a helicopter actually wouldn’t spin with the earth if it were hovering high enough.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bkaubt/eli5_if_a_helicopter_were_to_hover_12_hours/
|
{
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"text": [
"No.\n\nAll of the air in the atmosphere is spinning with the Earth. If it wasn't there would constantly be very fast wind always travelling West - but there isn't.\n\nJust like how the air moves with the Earth, a helicopter moves with the air.\n\nThis is a good watch which is kind of on topic (10 minutes): _URL_0_",
"The sort of lag you're thinking of is related to the Coriolis Effect. When very long-range shells are fired, the rotation of the Earth under the shell has to be accounted for to accurately target something. However, friction forces drag the atmosphere along as the Earth turns, so this limits the effect you're thinking of. Absent any other winds, a helicopter hovering at high-altitude for 12 hours (would likely run out of fuel and crash, but whatever) would drift a little east or west from their liftoff point depending on whether that point was in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere. In reality, you're not likely to get zero winds for 12 hours, especially at high-altitude, so this effect tends to be relatively minor.",
"The atmosphere is part of the Earth and spins with it. Otherwise there'd be 1000mph winds at the equator.\n\nThat's like saying if you jump in an airplane you'll rocket out the back at 600mph.",
"The atmosphere is a fluid just like water but less dense. By this person's logic if you spun a fish tank the fish wouldn't turn.",
"The Earth's atmosphere rotates with the Earth. Think about it this way; If you throw a ball straight upwards in a moving vehicle, the ball will fall straight down relative to you. An observer outside the vehicle would see the ball move in a parabolic motion, which is a combination of its vertical and horizontal motion. This is due to momentum, as it leaves the Earth's surface it still has the same momentum and will continue to have that momentum unless acted upon by an outside force. That is Newton's first law in action, \"An object in uniform motion will continue that motion as long as it is not acted upon by an outside force.\"",
"The earth's circumference is about 25,000 miles. If what you said was true, we would perceive the helicopter moving at a speed of over 1,000 miles per hour. Every time a basketball player jumped up for a slam dunk, he would be flung through the air at this speed. Obviously this isn't happening.\n\nThe laws of conservation applies here. The helicopter is moving with the ground before the point in time that it takes off. This motion is not lost when it leaves the ground, because as Newton's law points out, \"An object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by another force.\" So what that means is, in order for the helicopter to end up on the opposite side of the planet 12 hours later, something must act upon it to negate the motion that was imparted upon it by the ground.",
"No. The helicopter is suspended in the air and the air moves with the rotation of the earth. Kind of like if you put a floating ball in a cake pan full of water and slowly moved it across the counter, the ball wouldnt remain stationary, it would move with the water and pan.\n\nA better question for the flat earthers is \"What does exist that will remain stationary while the earth rotates around it?\" \n\nA gyro scope remains stationary to a point in space so if energized for 24 hours it would make one full rotation.",
"It's like tossing a ball and it coming right back down in a moving car and not flying backwards",
"Its also true that when you take off, you already get a lateral velocity of the rotation of the earth to begin with. So its not like you have to reinitiate all that kinetic energy again."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://youtu.be/K0-GxoJ_Pcg"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
4pmui9
|
How have the nutritional value of crops such a wheat changed over the last 1000 years and why?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4pmui9/how_have_the_nutritional_value_of_crops_such_a/
|
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"This is nearly impossible to determine considering the chemical makeup of our foods hasn't been studied with modern peculiarity for very long. The history of enrichment and GMO sourcing would be a good start and you can almost rest assured that fortified foods are fortified for a reason. Unless there is a repository of un modified seeds not unlike the plant ark we'll never know as many of the components of these plants degrade, deaminate and deteriorate with exposure to air, water, light and anything else the cosmos throw at it. All in all we're better off now than ever for energy abundance as our foods, while overconsumption is a problem, offer more energy density and nutritional broad spectrum coverage than ever before.\n\nMS in exercise science, health and human performance. I teach upper tier nutrition for performance as well as frosh/soph collegiate intro to nutrition courses.\n\nA forensic anthropologist or evolutionary biologist might have better info.",
"No one really knows. Plants haven't been bred for nutrition until very recently. You have to remember that nutrition as we know it is a very modern concept. Vitamins have only been [discovered in the past one hundred years or so](_URL_1_). \n\nPeople did figure out that eating certain things could help with certain health problems, like eating citrus and scurvy. But they weren't breeding citrus plants to have higher amounts of Vitamin C because they didn't have any idea of Vitamin C let alone a way to measure it in a given piece of fruit.\n\nAt the most basic level, plant breeding is based on what will survive in a given area. Modern day plant breeding focuses on things like disease tolerance/resistance, high yields, and how well something will ship.\n\nCurrently the hot area is [CRISPR](_URL_0_) - lots of potential there."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0734975014001931",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin#History"
]
] |
||
4d38vd
|
Is it possible that dinosaur fossils played some role in the origin of dragon myths?
|
This is something I've wondered about for a long time. Dinosaur fossils have (obviously) existed for the entire history of humanity, and while some are deeply buried, many (especially the first ones discovered) are near or on the surface, and quite easy to find. This, combined with the fact that humans have been digging or mining for thousands of years -- albeit at a much smaller scale than the last century or two -- suggests that these fossils must have been discovered pretty frequently by ancient people.
Since the concept of evolution, and our current understanding of the age of the earth, are recent developments, what would a person discovering a dinosaur fossil 1,000 or 2,000 years ago have thought of them? They would obviously have to find some way to fit this bizarre creature into their understanding of the world, and it would be reasonable to conclude that it represented an animal that might be still alive, even if nobody has ever seen it.
And if somebody 2,000 years ago imagined that a mysterious, giant, possibly reptilian animal was lurking somewhere out in the wilderness, it stands to reason that that imagined creature would end up looking a bit like the dragons of folklore.
Is there any evidence to suggest that this is a possible origin of dragon myths, or is it just wild speculation on my part?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4d38vd/is_it_possible_that_dinosaur_fossils_played_some/
|
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"It is possible, yes, that fossils (not necessarily just dinosaur fossils) did play a role in the development of dragon myths. It's mostly all speculation, really. \n\nMost fossils that people find are either recognizably some smallish organism, like a seashell or a small fish, or a disarticulated bone or piece of a bone. All perfectly laid-out skeletons just don't really happen very often at all, and even then it takes a keen eye to discern what is what.\n\nWe do know that prior to Georges Cuvier's pioneering work in comparative anatomy, people very often tended to assume large fossil bones were the bones of creatures that were still alive at the time, or possibly giant versions of them. In the Western world, it was also frequently assumed they were the remains of animals and people killed in Noah's flood. One particular thigh bone (now known to be from a type of meat-eating dinosaur) was originally thought to have been the thigh bone from a giant antediluvian person, then for the while the fossilized scrotum of said person, then recognized again for a leg and not a ballsack, and finally correctly identified as not from a flood-victim giant human at all.\n\nAlso, prior to Cuvier's work, we really didn't have a concept of extinction. The world at this point was also not fully-explored by any one group, so there was an idea that even though these giant critters may not be around *here* anymore, the might still be found out *there* somewhere. Thomas Jefferson actually gave specific instructions to Lewis and Clark for their westward exploration to try and find a living specimen of a giant ground sloth--an animal known from fossils and which the founding father assumed based on assumptions that were perfectly rational for the time to still be kicking around out *there* somewhere.\n\nThere are some speculations that specific fossils may have influenced certain mythological creatures. For example, some myths of the Griffin describe a four-legged creature with wings, a beak, a horn on the back of the head, and lives in the desert and guards gold. The dinosaur *Protoceratops* has four legs, shoulder blades that to the untrained can look sort of wing-like, a beak, a frill on the back of the head which if the sides break off--which is very common--can look like a horn, its remains are found in the deserts of Mongolia and China in areas where gold deposits are not unheard of. It's possible, maybe even plausible, but not really testable.\n\nStories of mythical beasts, like dragons, grow and change with the times. They ultimately have many sources, some from the natural world, some purely fantasy. Fossils may explain part of the stories, but not all of them.\n\nConsider that if you go to the Roman and Medieval sources, a \"dragon\" is described many different ways, many of them only having a passing resemblance to what we today would agree on is a prototypical \"dragon.\" For example, in some medieval bestiaries based on Pliny the Elder's works, dragons are described as giant snakes that live in the East (i.e. India), live in trees and hunt elephants by dropping on them from the trees and constricting them, and are deathly afraid of jaguars. ",
"Hi! fyi, you'll find more info here...\n\n* FAQ section [**Here be dragons**](_URL_0_)",
"I wrote about this recently, so I'll just copy and paste my earlier answer. The people of Mesoamerica had discovered dinosaur bones, but they thought that the bones were the bones of giants. This account is from Bernal Diaz, a soldier who fought with Cortes in conquering the Aztecs: \"The Aztecs said that their ancestors told them that a long time ago there were settlements of men and women who were very tall with huge bones; that because they were very evil and of bad behavior, they killed them fighting with them, and those remaining died. And in order that we could see what enormous bodies they had, they brought a leg bone of one of them, and it was very heavy and very large in height compared to a man of average stature. And that leg bone was from the knee to the hip. I measured myself with it and it was as tall as I, although I am of average height. And they brought other bones like the first. Most were already bare and hardened from the earth, and all of us marveled at seeing those leg bones, and we were certain that there had been giants in this country. And our Captain Cortes told us that he would be sending that great bone to Spain in order that His Majesty could see it, and so thus we sent it with the first products that went out.\"",
"Hi! Is it OK to expand on a subject, providing (sourced) additional information? While I cannot add to the current answers about specifically dinosaur fossils, I have a bit of knowledge that I imagine might be of interest to the /u/diamond and others here. I'll post the comment, and hope I do not break the rules... if I do, mods, my apologies.\n\n\nI would like to add something on the subject of ancient people interacting with fossils, altought much younger than dinosaurs; namely, fossilized mammoths in Siberia. These animals went extinct in the end of the last Ice Age (more exactly, of the last glaciation), about 20,000 to 13,000 years ago (let's ignore for now the dwarf mammoths of those remote islands in northern Siberia that managed to survive until much later, in fact they were some still alive at the time when early Pharaohs ruled Egypt^1). Moreover, the mammoths were prone to die in bogs or in regions where the permafrost (frozen underground) helped preserve their remains. As a result, there were (and still are) somewhat frequent discoveries of fossilized mammoth bones in Siberia.\n\n\nWhat did ancient people think of them? As for nomadic people native to Siberia, it is hard to say because there is little to no written record of their histories and myths (to my knowledge). We do, however, possess a very fascinating (to my opinion) written record by the Arab traveler Ibn Fadlan. The man was a merchant and an envoy of the Caliph who traveled north from Baghdad in the lands of the Bulghars, the Khazars, the Rus, and many Turkic tribes in the steppes of western Siberia / eastern Europe. I encourage you to read the book: Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North^2.\n\n\nSorry, I'll get to the point now. Ibn Fadlan recalls being shows bone-like objects that a man claims come from a Rhinoceros. While he (Fadlan) accepts this as good enough of a fact, we now know there weren't any rhinos in this part of Siberia that the bone could've come from. In the Penguin edition of the book (see below), Caroline Stone and Paul Lunde comment that the material could have come from fossilized mammoth tusk...\n\n\n > The three plates of onyx-like material (...) may have been made of the material called *khutu*, fossilized mammoth tusk; this was much sought after to make knife handles, because of its durability.\n\n\n1: Vartanyan, S. L.; Garutt, V. E.; Sher, A. V. (1993). \"Holocene dwarf mammoths from Wrangel Island in the Siberian Arctic\". Nature 362 (6418): 337–349 -- yes, the precise source was fetched from this simpler [wikipedia article](_URL_0_)\n\n2: _URL_1_\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq/religion#wiki_here_be_dragons"
],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrangel_Island#cite_note-Vartanyan1-10",
"https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/187609/ibn-fadlan-and-the-land-of-darkness/"
]
] |
|
1olsf3
|
why is hitting your child legal (corporal punishment) when hitting an adult isn't?
|
As a young adult who was constantly abused physically and emotionally as a child/teenager, I've always wondered how it can be illegal for an adult to strike another human being without consent, yet it is legal for an adult to physically strike their child, who is incapable of retaliation or self-defense.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1olsf3/eli5_why_is_hitting_your_child_legal_corporal/
|
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"the fuzzy gray line lies around intention to discipline not intention to inflict harm. ",
"I've only spanked one of my children maybe three times in 19 years. Every single time it was over something that could have gotten her kidnapped, raped, and/or killed. The punishment had to be something that would leave a long lasting impression. The \"sit-down talk\" or grounding have been sufficient for everything else. We have always set very clear rules and boundaries and we do not change them without good reason. All of the children we have raised have always known exactly what was expected and where they stood with us. Discipline is not about abuse. It is about reminding your soon-to-be adult that the real world has rules and consequences.",
"Exactly!! Kids are people too, and more vulnerable. Whatever they go through in their childhood sticks with them. I was hit as a child for \"discipline\"- I lived in fear of my dad. I will never ever hit my kids."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
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|
32p4ql
|
how does edward snowden's protection in russia work?
|
(Sorry if I can't explain myself very well - english isn't my first language)
I was wondering how can Russia give him asylum and not have the US come get him. I know and understand how refugees work, and that Snowden technically didn't commit any crime, but I'm interested in knowing how can Russia protect him and how it all works around what the US can and cannot do with him there.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32p4ql/eli5_how_does_edward_snowdens_protection_in/
|
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"* Russia is not the US, so US law doesn't apply there. They can't just invade Russia and take him.\n\n* The US must ask for Russia to \"extradite\" him (meaning to willingly turn him over to US authorities). Russia can choose to say no.\n\n* They're saying no.",
"Russia isn't really a friend of the United States, and Russia doesn't have an extradition treaty with the United States. That means that Russia isn't obligated to send Snowden back to the US just because the US wants him. \n\nAlso, if Putin does what the US is asking, there's a chance that Putin could look weak in the eyes of other Russians. \n\nFinally, international law states that a request for political asylum is more important than a country's request for extradition. Russia may also look at Bradley Manning, who like Snowden, leaked US secrets. The US kept Manning in solitary confinement for 9 months, which may be considered a type of torture by some people. \n\nOh, and also, for extradition to work, the crime must be considered a crime by both the US and Russia. Things like rape and murder are pretty much illegal in every country, but stealing or leaking US secrets isn't a crime in Russia. ",
"Giving Edward Snowden a visa to remain in Russia tickles President Putin. He knows the USA wants him and can't have him so that alone is so much fun for Putin he can't even believe he got that lucky. Ultimately Edward Snowden is a political pawn that likely will be sacrificed when the time comes. At some point Putin's going to need something from the USA and he's going to hand over Edward in return for that. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
41ip4n
|
Why do electric engines don't have gear box?
|
So to give a little bit of context, the other day i was browsing the tesla car web and i found out that the cars didn't have clutch pedal.
I thought that would be because they had an automatic gear box but the thing is they just have one gear.
I was trying to look for an answer and i found that they don't need gears because electric engines always have the best torque posible.
So here is my question: what is different from explosion engines to electric engines that make the last always work at the best torque possible.
P.S. Sorry for my english level and thank you.
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/41ip4n/why_do_electric_engines_dont_have_gear_box/
|
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"I'm not an engineer, but I am a physicist with a car hobby, so I think I can answer. The simplest answer has to do with the speeds of the energy source involved. Let me explain:\n\nThe reason why an internal combustion engine, such as the [reciprocating engine in most cars](_URL_1_), has such a variable \"torque curve\" is because, at a given rotation per minute (RPM), the cylinders are moving at a certain speed up and down. The [air-fuel](_URL_2_) mixture that is pulled into the cylinder and compressed during each cycle is ignited, and the [flame front](_URL_6_) propagates outward from the spark, increasing the pressure rapidly and pushing the cylinder downward. This downward, linear force is applied to the [crankshaft](_URL_3_), producing **torque**. The key is that the speed at which this ignition and rise in pressure happens is relatively slow, only a few tens of meters per second, and so at different RPMs the cylinders are moving at different speeds with respect to the flame front. This is also why engines have [ignition timing curves](_URL_5_): as cylinder speed increases, the ignition has to happen earlier and earlier so that the maximum compression will occur at peak burn. \n\nNow, we've come up with a variety of very clever solutions to maximize torque across the RPM range, such as sophisticated engine management and [variable valve timing systems](_URL_4_), but it isn't perfect. Consequently, all engines have a certain RPM range where they produce the most torque.\n\nElectric motors (there actually is no such thing as an electric \"engine\", since an engine is a thermodynamic machine), on the other hand, rely on the [interaction of magnetic and electric fields](_URL_0_) to generate force. These interactions happen extremely quickly, at a [large fraction of the speed of light](_URL_7_). Consequently, to the electromagnetic field, an electric motor is essentially sitting still, no matter how fast it goes. So the force that gets generated is pretty much constant, producing a very flat torque curve.\n\n**TL;DR:** Ignition is slow relative to engine speeds, so there is an optimal engine speed for producing torque; the electromagnetic field is pretty much instantaneous relative to engine speeds, producing a flat torque curve in electric motors.",
"Are you asking about why cars have clutches (which allow the engine to engage or disengage) or why they have transmissions (which allow for different drive ratios).\n\nBasically, a gasoline engine needs to breathe air in order to produce useful energy, and turning makes it breathe, so the faster the engine is turning, the more energy is available. That means that the engine has to be spinning at some decent rate before you can get enough power to make the car move.\n\nIn contrast, the energy from a battery is always available, so electric motors don't have to spin up before taking on a load, and can produce power from a stop.\n\nYou could say that electric motors have a much wider power band. (_URL_0_)",
"The answers seem to be about right - or just too wordy.... \n\nIn short - an electric motor CAN produce max torque at zero speed and then up to up to a certain design limit, beyond which you may not need full torque ( driving down the highway) - this range of good perfomance is far greater than a combustion engine. \n\nIn a combustion engine - the engine has a \"sweet spot\" or range actually, and you should use the gears to keep it in that range. ( Should because many drivers suk) - as a mechanical system with many different mechanical parts moving to keep a chemical process working well - it is very complicated.\n\nMany of the first cars were electric - the only reason we have internal combustion engines today is the energy density of the fuel - vs the energy storage and weight of batteries.\n "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromotive_force",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocating_engine",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air%E2%80%93fuel_ratio",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crankshaft",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_valve_timing",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignition_timing",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_speed",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_electricity"
],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_band"
],
[]
] |
|
5z76m3
|
when financial companies "buy" commodities, how are they stored? or they buying "rights" to have them at that price?
|
I've recently read about this fund company possessing more $2.3B worth of sugar and I was wondering how are they stored? Is it up to the financial company to pay for storage for such goods? How does it work?
Source: _URL_0_
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5z76m3/eli5_when_financial_companies_buy_commodities_how/
|
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"They are buying \"futures\". These are contracts for a ton of soybeans in 4 months. Speculators buy them in hopes the price will be high and someone who needs soybeans to make their product will buy the contract for more than they bought it for.\n\nMany suggestions have been made that only firms capable of taking delivery of the goods should be able to buy futures, but speculators add liquidity to the marketplace so such laws have not been passed.\n\nSometimes markets go away. There used to be trading in Pork Bellies. It was my favorite investment name, bacon ... . However, the pig raisers don't write futures contracts any more because they think they can make more money by not hedging their production risk and simply selling hogs on the spot market.",
"no, sugar spoils anyway, you would never store it as an investment.\n\nThey own the future rights to buy sugar at a future date (hence why the contract is called a future). \n\nwhen that date comes, they *could* demand physical delivery. This might make sense if we were talking about Delta airlines and they had a jet fuel future... Yes they could take and use the jet fuel, but due to logistical issues of such a thing, its almost never happens. They will settle in cash and the commodity will end go through the most efficient supply chain based on its location, delta will buy its fuel on the open market based on where it needs it.\n\nNow, in other cases, like a Gold ETF, they may actually own gold. of course this is different, it doesnt spoil. in these cases, the gold is held in bank vaults around the world, NY, Zurich, London, ect. They spread it around to minimize risk."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/futures-trader-goes-on-sugar-binge-20170308"
] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
azm7r0
|
Has any virus or bacteria in humans ever mutated within us to then become a serious illness elsewhere in the animal kingdom?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/azm7r0/has_any_virus_or_bacteria_in_humans_ever_mutated/
|
{
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"text": [
"_URL_0_\n\nChitrid disease in amphibians which is single handedly wiping out species across the earth is apparently spread by skin to skin contact from a fungus sometimes found on the hands of people.\nIt doesn't really affect people as far as I know.\n\nEdit: And as far as I understand it didn't really start causing mass die offs until the 70's, could be a mutation, a sudden spread of a more virulent strain, or a sudden change in environment making it much more aggressive."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthroponotic_disease"
]
] |
||
4bc8cu
|
what happens when a person such as myself, who's maybe worth $18,000 on a good day, gets sued for $10 million?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4bc8cu/eli5_what_happens_when_a_person_such_as_myself/
|
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"Lawyer here.\n\nThe trial goes ahead to determine two things: Have you wronged the person suing, you, and if so, how much money do you owe them to make it right?\n\nLet's say a court orders you to pay someone $10 million. This is called a judgment debt. You don't have that money. The other person (called the judgment creditor) has a few options to try to get that money out of you, that vary based on jurisdiction. Where I live (Canada), they can point the sheriff to any bank accounts or liquid assets that you own, and the sheriff can go and seize those, and apply them towards the judgment debt. The sheriff can also seize other assets: vehicles, furniture, clothing, anything of value, which are then sold at auction, and the proceeds applied to the judgment debt. A hilarious news story of this happening against Bank of America can be seen [here.](_URL_0_) It's well worth the watch.\n\nSheriffs can also seize land, and basically do a foreclosure just like a mortgage, but that is often a more complicated process and can take a long time.\n\nThe sheriffs can also garnish your wages/salary, so that $X off each paycheck goes to the judgment debt.\n\nThere are limits, depending on where you live, that limit what can be seized. The courts don't want sheriffs to come into your house and take the food out of your fridge, or the clothes out of your children's dressers, for example. If you're a plumber, it makes no sense for sheriffs to seize and sell your tools, because that prevents you from earning a living and paying the debt. And there are similar limits on garnishing paychecks; they want to make sure that you can still feed yourself, and have some incentive to work.\n\nIf all this doesn't work, you may need to declare bankruptcy. That's governed by different laws, again depending on where you live. Generally, it's a declaration that you cannot pay your debts. A trustee is appointed who doles out to the various creditors what he can, out of the things you own and money you are owed, and then after a certain time the debts are erased and you are \"free\".",
"You retain an attorney and defend against the lawsuit. If you cannot afford an attorney, one may be willing to help you for free--there are legal aid societies dedicated to this, and American Bar Association asks all lawyers to donate some of their time each year. Defendants in highly publicized cases often receive donations from people who believe in their cause. You may be insured against (some kinds of) lawsuits, as found in many homeowner's insurance policies--if so, that'll come in handy now.\n\nYou could try to a settlement with the plaintiff. He is probably willing to slash his claim if it means he avoids the difficulty of a trial and the associated legal expenses for himself. Then, your payment is entirely according to your agreement with him. Let's say you believe yourself quite innocent, though, and go to trial--what if you lose, and are ordered to pay a large sum? (Not necessarily the amount the defendant originally asked for.)\n\nYou will typically establish a payment plan based on your ability to pay, slowly working to pay off that debt. If you do not pay as ordered, the plaintiff could ask for garnishment, meaning your employer would be required to withhold part of your wages. The court may transfer possession of your property to the defendant to help satisfy back payments, though state law protects a basic amount of property like your primary residence and retirement funds.\n\nAt the end of the day, though, perhaps you will never be able to satisfy the debt. People can cause a lot of damage and be liable for more than they expect to earn in a lifetime. Wise plaintiffs know this, and don't sue people who won't and can't pay--such people with no accessible assets or income to speak of are sometimes called \"judgment proof.\" If there is an outstanding balance when you die, the plaintiff may recover it from your estate (the inheritance), potentially having access to assets that were legally protected during your lifetime. If the estate does not cover the bill, the plaintiff is out of luck and simply has to accept the loss of the remainder.",
"Mainly, you're not going to get sued for that kind of money, they know they'll never get it from you.\n\nWhat happens when you get sued:\n1) you get a letter telling you you have a court date\n2) you show up at court for arbitration FIRST\n3) if you guys cannot agree to something, then an actual court date is set\n4) you go to court and a judge (small claims) or a jury will decided who gets what.\n5) its then up to the person suing to collect the money. there is no way they can Force you to just pay the cash, they can sell your debt to somebody else, they can garnish your wages (and this is really state dependent), if you own property, they can put a lien against it so when you sell it, they get paid some money, and they can harass you for the money. \n\nTo be sued, people have to know that their efforts would be worth it. So unless you have a million+ in hard assets (property, and cash/cash based investments) The likeyhood of you being just randomly sued is very low. Now if you owe somebody money, they might sue you for that, but if you drag it out as much as possible there is a chance that you'll cost them more money than they'll get from you. ",
"Depends on what you're getting sued for.\n\nIf you hit someone with your car, and you have insurance, then you're simply going to notify your insurer and they'll take it from there. You might have to provide testimony at some point in the process. Your rates will go up, but that's about the only hit you're going to take."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ctLEGrOmf4"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
9jtv46
|
why do computers have a shutdown process instead of just cutting it's own power?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9jtv46/eli5_why_do_computers_have_a_shutdown_process/
|
{
"a_id": [
"e6u7lel",
"e6u7mft",
"e6u811j",
"e6uas4m"
],
"score": [
20,
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"For the same reason that people generally lie down before going to sleep instead of just falling over: To avoid damage. \n\nAt any given time, a computer is running a lot of programs in the background, and they need to be safely closed before the computer shuts down. Many of them also save their state during their shutdown procedures, so they can resume where they were when the computer comes back on. These programs can be extremely important to the operation of the computer, and if things don't add up when it comes back on, the operating system itself won't run anymore. ",
"The shutdown process does a series of things from safely stop the OS (as not to corrupt the memory) along with the kernel and bios along with powering down each device in a sequential order as not to damage hardware.\n\nPurely cutting the power can cause hardware damage along with corrupt any software that was loaded into the memory at the time of power down. ",
"Computers have a lot of various processes from many programs going on at anytime.\n\nShutting down politely asks them to halt before cutting power.\n\nIt's like the difference between being asked to leave the bar at closing rather than being physically removed ",
"You COULD simply cut the power, and it will usually be fine. However, do it often, or at the wrong time, and the operating system will be corrupted.\n\nThink of the computer like somebody building something in workshop. While you're working, you have the tools you're using close at hand, current materials and project right in front of you, and the like. You don't put a tool away in it's assigned space **every single time** you grab a different one. You'll clean up at regular intervals, or when you know you're done with a tool or bit of material.\n\nNow, when you're finished, you put all the tools and materials away in their proper place, and do some basic clean up so the workshop is ready for it's next usage. This is what a computer does during shutdown. Simply cutting power would be like walking out of the workshop mid process. The area is a mess and many tools aren't where they belong.\n\nOn top of that, computers to a lot of caching and deferring of operations that don't need to happen right away, especially if it involves reading or writing from a much slower interface (like the hard drive, network). It's usually much more efficient to do a bunch of these operations in one massive batch than several spread out here and there. \n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
1mvyaz
|
internet infrastructure.
|
I have a decent laymans understanding of it but I thought this could be a good ELI5 question anyway. In other words, I know how the internet works, how does it REALLY work?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mvyaz/eli5_internet_infrastructure/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ccd4j0m"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Inside your computer is something called a NIC (Network Interface Card). It has two main jobs - send data, and receive data.\n\nHook it up to another computer via an Ethernet cable and you have a simple network. Your computer's send is hooked up to the other's receive and vice-versa.\n\nWhat if you want another computer? You add something called a Switch. All three computers now plug into the switch, rather than each other. The switch's job is to take data from one computer's \"send\" wire and send it to another computer's \"receive\" wire. To do this, it remembers the MAC Address of each NIC connected to it. (Every NIC has a unique MAC address set at the time of manufacture).\n\nSo now we have a basic network. Your neighbour John has done the same thing, and he now has his own network. You want to connect them together. Your Switch isn't going to want to have to remember every MAC address of every NIC being connected to and disconnected from every network, so...\n\nEnter the Router. The Router does what it says on the tin - it routes traffic across networks. A router is like a computer with more than one NIC. (In fact, you can use an actual PC with two NICs as a router). One NIC will connect to the switch on your network, the other will connect to the switch in your neighbour's network.\n\nThe router will be set up with something called a \"routing table\" which is just information about the networks, now using IP (Internet Protocol) addresses rather than hardware MAC addresses, and where they are located - ie. Which NIC do I use to get traffic to John's network? (IP Addresses are structured for larger networks that NICs - ie. given a 'subnet mask', the router can work out which network an IP Address belongs to. So Routers tend to think in terms of networks, whereas switches tend to think in terms of Devices).\n\nSo when you send data to one of your neighbours computers, your computer will know that it's on a different network and will send it to the Router to deal with. Your computer doesn't know anything about John's network or how exactly to get there, and it doesn't need to. It just knows that the Router will take care of it. The router will look at the destination address, and send the packet to John's switch to be relayed to the destination.\n\nKeep adding switches, routers, computers and other devices and the network gets bigger and bigger. As is the case with the internet. Also, the networks might not be directly connected together - data might have to travel across more than one subsection of the network to reach its destination.\n\nAlso, in a network the size of the internet, every router won't know about every other router on the network - it will only know about what it's connected to. To get data all the way across the internet, each router only needs to figure out the next 'hop' until the data gets to it's destination. You can see this happening by opening up a command prompt and typing:\n\n tracert _URL_1_\n\nThat will show you the 'route' to the internet to get to _URL_1_. (Mine took 11 hops). Each entry in that list is a router. You'll probably find that the first one or two belong to your ISP.\n\nThe other thing is that routes can take different paths depending on many factors, such as if a segment of the network goes down, the routers can intelligently find alternate routes around the problem.\n\nIf the destination simply can't be reached, for example if [some old woman cuts the underground cable connecting America to other parts of the world](_URL_0_), the packets of data will just bounce around different routers until it times out."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/06/georgian-woman-cuts-web-access",
"www.google.com"
]
] |
|
59b3zl
|
What are the best books on the everyday life of individuals in the past?
|
I'm looking for books that give an insight into what life was like for normal people, over 100 years ago (kind of vague, but I don't mind which time-period/geographic area). Which books/sources can you recommend?
I'd like to know what the routine was like, what the social life was like, what they spent their time thinking about, questioning, observing etc.
Thanks!
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/59b3zl/what_are_the_best_books_on_the_everyday_life_of/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d97s0pe"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Well, there is Greenwood Press's *Daily Life in ________* series. These are of variable quality, at least the ones I've looked at. One of the strengths is the narrow scope of their focus. Like, there is a \"Daily Life during the Spanish Inquisition,\" \"Daily Life in Renaissance Italy\", AND \"Daily Life in the Reformation\"; \"Daily Life during the Black Death\", \"Daily Life in Chaucer's England\", AND \"Daily Life in Medieval Europe.\" That specificity goes a *long* way towards defeating the tendency to be overly general in accounts of daily life.\n\nThat said, books like that still do a fair amount of smoothing over--they're definitely on the more pop end of things. (Honestly, though, I'd say if you're looking for a starting point for writing historical fiction, you could do a whole lot worse!)\n\nFor the later Middle Ages, and medieval England specifically, there are two fantastic books I would further suggest: Ian Mortimer's *The Time Traveller's Guide to Fourteenth-Century England* (also the later one to 16C/Tudor England) and, more scholarly, Barbara Hanawalt's *The Ties That Bound*, which is about peasant life.\n\nOnce you move into the 19th century, or even the 18th and mayyybe the 17th in some cases, reading primary sources--diaries especially--can offer some really fabulous insight. If you can get ahold of some of the Mormon women's accounts of westward travel (Utah, California, etc), they are really interesting and fun reading. And Samuel Pepys--pronounced 'peeps', legit--is a good time in so many ways."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
2ig2kw
|
What is the worst anachronism: To impose modern theory on the past, or to assume that we're able to understand history "as it was"
|
AskHistorians
|
self
|
{
"a_id": [
"cl28l7y"
],
"score": [
8
],
"text": [
"Rankes 'bloss zu zeigen wie es eigentlich gewesen' is the core for your (and a historians) 'as it was'. Now, calling that an anachronism is in the light of Ranke a bit weird. \n\nIn 'as it was' histories, we are trying to recreate a (not the) picture of the past as best as we can, based on sources from that time. We are not using terminoligy or whatever out of historical context, we are simply holding historical sources to nothing but its own light. That is the basis of historical science and if done the right way, it is not anachronistic."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
1v1oa1
|
What actually causes you to throw up when you have the "stomach flu" ?
|
My SO didn't feel well last night and threw up this morning. I disinfect the entire house when this happens, because I absolutely hate throwing up. But if you think you may already have the bug, is there something you can do to prevent throwing up?
It seems like people only throw up when they eat. Should I just take it easy on food today?
And how long does the illness take to manifest?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1v1oa1/what_actually_causes_you_to_throw_up_when_you/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ceo0yzd"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"\"Stomach flu\" is a generic term for any number of illnesses--usually something like gastroenteritis--that are caused by an infection of the stomach and intestines. This causes inflammation all throughout the gastrointestinal tract, and makes it more sensitive. So eating, which always irritates the GI tract to some extent, is going to make the inflammation worse, to the extent that the vomit reflex gets triggered.\n\nSo, if you don't want to throw up, stick to foods that don't irritate the stomach as much. Bland carbs, water or Sprite/ginger ale (carbonation usually calms the stomach down a little bit), things like that, and stay away from spicy foods, alcohol, and overeating."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
17osad
|
What would have pre-colonial North American battles looked like?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17osad/what_would_have_precolonial_north_american/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c87pe1v",
"c87qac6"
],
"score": [
27,
9
],
"text": [
"**The Early Colonial Example**\n\nLooking at some of the earliest clashes between Colonists and Natives can give some indication of how groups at the \"tribe/complex chiefdom\" level of organization and population would have waged war. The general pattern is of a sort of sustained guerrilla warfare (i.e. [endemic warfare](_URL_8_)) with temporary flare-ups of more intense periods of surprise raids, ambushes, picking off easy/remote targets, and the occasional larger expedition to burn and pillage a settlement. That was the pattern seen in the [Anglo-Powhatan wars](_URL_6_), [the Pequot War](_URL_9_), and even in the largest early conflict, [King Phillip's War](_URL_5_). \n\nThis style of warfare is necessitated by low population densities and loose political control/organization, which both groups were experiencing at the time. The problem, of course, is that these are 17th century accounts, by which time epidemic diseases had either already swept through native populations, or were in the process of doing so. This particular wrinkle makes it difficult to truly say that this pattern of endemic warfare was a product of its time or a long standing and widespread cultural tradition. We do have early reports of contacts with some more established confederations like the Iroquois though, which do seem to indicate that consistent low-level warfare was not only an economic and political act, but also an important cultural institution. In particular the practice of [\"mourning war\"](_URL_7_) has been seen not only as a way to increase/replace population through taking captives, but also as a ritual response to death and a way to strengthen social bonds; sort of like an Irish wake, but with slightly more violence.\n\nSo while we don't (to my knowledge, someone else more knowledgeable is free to jump in) have information on the warfare practices of a large complex North American society like Cahokia, we do have evidence of a particular style of armed conflict from other groups in Eastern part of North America that everyone thinks of when they say \"Native American,\" unless they are watching a Western, of course. On the other hand, we do have detailed accounts of pre-Columbian groups that, while a few cultural removes from the Eastern Woodlands tradition, did conduct large-scale state-level warfare. I speak of course of Mesoamerica, which is technically in North America, and particularly of the Aztecs (because I've got to keeping earning this flair somehow). Let's very briefly go over what a battle in that area would look like.\n\n**The Aztec Example**\n\nThe Aztecs had a sort of universal draft system based on their organization of cities and towns in to neighborhoods called *calpulli*. This system also hosted a universal education system in the form of neighborhood schools called *telpochcalli* which all boys would attend for a few years starting around age 15 to learn the basics of warfare among other things. Through this system, the Aztecs could quickly raise tens of thousands of men in organized units for which to ware war during the dry (i.e. non-harvest/planting) season, which runs roughly from late Fall to mid Spring.\n\nThese neighborhood units would have their own insignia or particular color scheme to identify them and would rally around an experienced soldier denoted with a back-flag (*cuachpantli*), a few examples of which you can seen in the [*Codex Mendoza*](_URL_1_). Interspersed among the raw recruits would be veterans and/or members of military orders marked out by particular styles of dress, decoration, and hairstyle. Elite warriors, for instance, would wear whole body suits of thick cloth covered entirely in feathers for extra slickness and protection, which makes them sound like some sort of condom, now that I read that again. Another military order, the Shorn Ones (*Cuachchiqueh*) would have all but a single braided lock of hair cut off and their faces painted half-blue half-yellow or red. In short, the Aztec military wasn't just intimidating because of their numbers, but also because they had style.\n\nBattle would begin with salvos of projectile fire from common troops armed with bows, but particularly with slings. Ceramic sling-stones of regular size and weight, whether made by the Aztecs or demanded in tribute, were regularly stockpiled. Another soldier equipped with a wooden shield covered in feathers (covering things in feathers was the Post-Classic Mexican equivalent of \"put a bird on it,\" although the feathers did actually serve a functional purpose) would help to block in-coming fire from the enemy. \n\nAs the opposing forces closed and the ammo dwindled, the veteran soldiers would hurl [atl-atl darts](_URL_3_) to disrupt enemies ranks while closing the distance. The most experienced and skilled troops would lead the charge. Pairs of the previously mentioned cuahchicqueh, for instance, would traditionally the first to engage the enemy in melee combat, and the last to leave during a retreat. Rules about breaking rank were strict, the cuachpantli bearing \"captains\" would keep order in their immediate area, while an \"officer corps\" of nobility would signal larger troop movements and attacks using fires, smoke signals, and drums. Anyone fleeing a battle could expected *severe* repercussions.\n\nRoss Hassig, who wrote the book Aztec warfare ([literally](_URL_4_)) and whom I'm drawing upon heavily here, pieced together first-hand Spanish and Native accounts, depictions in artwork, and the basic properties of the weapons used to come up with the accepted formation during melee combat. The ranks would be fairly open and broader rather than deep. Experienced/elite warriors wielding a [*macuahuitl*](_URL_2_) and shield, or a two handed macuahuitl, would form a string of nuclei down the ranks backed up by lesser ranking soldiers wielding *[tepoztopilli](_URL_0_)*, long slashing polearms. Basically you would have a series of duels between the best warriors taking place in the middle of two groups of pikeman/halberdiers who were simultaneously trying to help their duelist while also preventing the opposing group from doing the same. Reserve troops would be cycled in periodically.\n\n\n\n\n\n",
"OP and readers: I posted a link four days ago about a [Salish naval battle](_URL_0_) that was pre-colonial, and we have a lot of oral history concerning the conflict. There was, at one point, a huge confederation of tribes that fought a sea battle off Vancouver Island. There were hundreds, perhaps a thousand or more who fought. Some of the canoes were designed for ramming and could hold up to twenty warriors. There is a *lot* of information (probably about or over 1000 words) so that's why I've posted a permalink instead of reposting the story here. I hope many of you get to read it as it is extremely fascinating."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tepoztopilli",
"http://0.tqn.com/d/create/1/0/R/6/B/-/aztec-warriors-Codex-Mend.jpg",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macuahuitl",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlatl",
"http://books.google.com/books/about/Aztec_Warfare.html?id=7M1o9g8MARgC",
"http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/horsemusket/kingphilip/default.aspx",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Powhatan_Wars",
"http://matrix.msu.edu/hst/hst202/docs/richter_war_and_culture.pdf",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endemic_warfare",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pequot_War"
],
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17fklk/before_the_invention_of_the_cannon_what_was_naval/c8566vn?context=3"
]
] |
||
f7qac
|
Does holding up your cell phone really increase reception?
|
I see people holding up their cell phones in crowded places and always think it's ridiculous that people would think a few feet would increase reception.
Am I wrong?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/f7qac/does_holding_up_your_cell_phone_really_increase/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c1dx653",
"c1dxcll"
],
"score": [
2,
3
],
"text": [
"Yes, with conditions.\n\nJust this summer, i was in a hilly area away from the nearest town. I had to be outside on a hill to have any reception. If I was sitting on the ground, no reception. If I was standing, I got enough signal to send texts, and try to make calls, although I couldn't go very long before they cut out.\n\nThis is a matter of feet with nothing immediately around me. If you were in an area with minimal reception surrounded by people, raising the phone above the crowd could be enough to get enough of a signal.",
"it's not that altitude intrinsically gives better signal, it is that your line of sight increases with altitude. If you can get better line of site to the tower, then you get better signal. if you have low buildings or rolling hills, a few feet could make all the difference."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
1svgsy
|
why do we not have a universal chatting (im) service/client? or do we?
|
I started using the internet around the time when MSN was big in the US and Yahoo! everywhere else in the world. If I'm not mistaken, the two could not talk to each other. Even if they could, fast-forward to today.
Today we have--in no particular order--Google Hangouts (or Google Talk if we backtrack a bit), Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Facebook Messenger, iChat, Blackberry Messenger, Kik Messenger, Skype, Xfire, etc.
that work very well internally. A Yahoo! user can communicate with another Yahoo! user with the *Yahoo! Messenger* client, but not with someone who primarily lurks on Skype.
And then there are multi-protocol clients like Empathy, eBuddy, etc. that let you use all of your IM services simultaneously. This seems more like a workaround than actually talking from one protocol to another.
So the question is **why has this been the case**. Is it a technical issue? I understand that ftp and http are two entirely different things that serve entirely different purposes, so maybe even "translating" between them is a foolish idea; is this the same for IM?
Or is it a security issue? A money issue? Or are companies just being dickish with their closed-sourced services?
Still, it seems highly stupid to be unable to send PLAIN TEXTS more liberally.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1svgsy/eli5_why_do_we_not_have_a_universal_chatting_im/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ce1msrg",
"ce1mvnz",
"ce1ni8h"
],
"score": [
3,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Basically [this](_URL_0_). To expand, each messenging service does well enough on its own to allow for its continued existence. Furthermore, most of them have some feature that makes them better for certain tasks. Skype is the king of video chatting. Facebook Messenger is, well, tied to Facebook. iChat blends seamlessly with your text messages. \n\n > So the question is why has this been the case. Is it a technical issue? I understand that ftp and http are two entirely different things that serve entirely different purposes, so maybe even \"translating\" between them is a foolish idea; is this the same for IM?\nOr is it a security issue? A money issue? Or are companies just being dickish with their closed-sourced services?\n\nI think you are looking at it the wrong way. It's not that companies are conspiring to make you use 5 different IM services. It's just that they don't see a good reason to work together to produce a universal solution. ",
"It's not a technical issue. XMPP (also known as Jabber), an open standard for instant messaging, has been around for quite a while now. But unfortunately, the big players didn't want to use it openly - for reasons one might just speculate, probably because monetisation is easier within the own realm. Pre-Hangout Google-Talk used it, but dropped support for it with the dawn of Hangouts - it's still possible to use XMPP for messaging with other Hangout users, but not with the outside world. Same for Facebook, you can use it to access the Chat with a XMPP-Client, but communication with other domains is not possible. I use XMPP daily, but the amount of people having such an account compared to ICQ/MSN/Skype etc. is still very low.",
"None of the IM providers wanted to make a standard because they wanted to lock their users in. SMS is basically IM and now that so many people have phones that do SMS a unified IM will never happen (Jabber aside)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://xkcd.com/927/"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
2qzdgx
|
can masturbating make your muscles bigger?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qzdgx/eli5_can_masturbating_make_your_muscles_bigger/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cnaze4g"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"To grow muscle you need to do few reps with high exertion. Masturbation is the opposite of this. You will improve muscular endurance in this way but that does not make your muscles bigger. That's why weightlifters are bulky and marathon runners are skinny."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
3qyzdr
|
How appropriate is to call "The American Civil War", a "Civil War", instead of something like "Southern States Revolt"?
|
Generally when considering Civil Wars it comes to me as indicative of a war by opposing sides with different positions for how the state conducts its affairs.
In the case of The American Civil War it seems that its focus was on whether the Southern States would or would not split from the Union.
Wouldn't it be more appropriate to name the conflict differently?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3qyzdr/how_appropriate_is_to_call_the_american_civil_war/
|
{
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"cwjvccq"
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" There's a lot of debate on 'what' the war was, which has carried on to today. And revisionism is a hotbed topic between the majority of America and regional nationalists like the *League of the South,* or the *Sons of Confederate Veterans.* (Let alone the overtly racist KKK.) There are more than a few places in the rural south where mentioning \"The Civil War\" will get you into an argument over the 'true' name, \"The War of Northern Aggression\" or \"War between the States.\" \n\n Now putting the context aside...\n\n The answer to your question obviously depends on exactly how 'Civil War' is defined. [Merriam Webster](_URL_0_) defines it as, \"A war between groups of people in the same country.\" As does [Oxford Dictionaries](_URL_2_). \n\n More importantly, we can look at the definition in terms of international law...\n\n > \"The common scholarly definition has two main criteria. The first says that the warring groups must be from the same country and fighting for control of the political center, control over a separatist state or to force a major change in policy. The second says that at least 1,000 people must have been killed in total, with at least 100 from each side.\" ^2\n\n([Edward Wong](_URL_1_), *A Matter of Definition: What Makes a Civil War? And who Declares it so?*)\n \n\nFinally, we can see that it fits the American legal definition...\n\n > Civil war exists when two or more opposing parties within a country resort to arms to settle a conflict or when a substantial portion of the population takes up arms against the legitimate government of a country. Within International Law distinctions are drawn between minor conflicts like riots, where order is restored promptly, and full-scale insurrections finding opposing parties in political as well as military control over different areas. When an internal conflict reaches sufficient proportions that the interests of other countries are affected, outside states may recognize a state of insurgency. A recognition of insurgency, whether formal or de facto, indicates that the recognizing state regards the insurgents as proper contestants for legitimate power. Although the precise status of insurgents under international law is not well-defined, recognized insurgents traditionally gain the protection afforded soldiers under international rules of law pertaining to war. A state may also decide to recognize the contending group as a belligerent, a status that invokes more well-defined rights and responsibilities. Once recognized as a belligerent party, that party obtains the rights of a belligerent party in a public war, or war between opposing states. The belligerents stand on a par with the parent state in the conduct and settlement of the conflict. In addition, states recognizing the insurgents as belligerents must assume the duties of neutrality toward the conflict.^3\n\n(*West's Encyclopedia of American Law*)\n\n\nSummary: It's very clear that though the Confederacy's war aim was not to seize control of the entire government, it's still accurate to refer to separatist movements as 'Civil Wars.'\n\n\n\nSources: \n\n1 - I use to be a member of Louisiana's *Sons of Confederate Veterans* and a serial 'Lost Causer' in my misguided teens. I live in Mississippi now, and I've been in countless arguments with Southern friends over this very topic. \n\n2 - Edward Wong, *A Matter of Definition: What Makes a Civil War? And who Declares it so?*\n\n3 - West's Encyclopedia of American Law, second edition\n\nEDIT: Added Summary"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/civil%20war",
"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/world/middleeast/26war.html?pagewanted=print&_r=0",
"http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/civil-war"
]
] |
|
sm13a
|
Is there going to be a WW3? Why weren't there any major wars like WW1 and WW2 in the past 67 years?
|
What stopped from sparking a war like WW1 and WW2? Why is everything so nice now? Will there be a WW3?
Why?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/sm13a/is_there_going_to_be_a_ww3_why_werent_there_any/
|
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"text": [
"Because MAD pretty much makes this kind of thing impossible. \nAlso, define \"World\" war. \nI could, but probably won't argue that the 'Nam war was a \"World\" war. ",
"As DrNoFriends said, nuclear proliferation has played a huge role. The world's major powers have been reluctant to engage in war with each other, with the risk of mutually assured destruction looming. Another important thing to keep in mind is that the power distribution throughout the world is drastically different now than before either World War I or World War II. Let's look at them both in order (note: obviously, this isn't by any means a comprehensive overview of things, but I think it touches on most of the major points):\n\nBefore World War I, Europe was populated by several imperial powers, each of which were equal enough in stature that one could not stand alone against an alliance of the rest of them. So, the alliance system that eventually tipped Europe into war gradually took shape. Once one of the powers declared war on another, the dominoes started to fall, and we all know what happened after.\n\nSo, let's look at Cold War Europe now. A system of alliances existed (and still in some ways does exist), but it was structured quite differently. At the turn of the century, each of the major nations had similar levels of power and strength, and they were (mostly) equal partners in their respective alliances. When it came to Warsaw Pact and NATO, however, each of these were dominated by the two superpowers, with other states being largely relegated to junior or even puppet status. While the smaller European nations may have been somewhat belligerent toward each other, they couldn't really move without the support of the US and the USSR, who both, again, feared escalation to nuclear war.\n\nAnother factor prior to World War I was the imperial ambitions of the major empires present, who had claims and counter-claims that conflicted throughout the third world at the time, which also led to escalated tensions. European forces fought over these colonies at the time (though colonial troops played major roles), and several times prior to World War I, wars that began as colonial conflicts overseas the escalated into European wars. Post-World War II, though, most of the imperialist conflicts were fought mostly as proxy wars, with one of the major powers fighting against a native enemy with supplies, weapons, and \"advisors\" provided by their opposite. Again, they were very careful not to let things escalate into open conflict between the superpowers or the major alliances.\n\nOK, so now let's look at the situation leading up to World War II. Again, we have multiple major powers - the Allies, the Soviet Union, and Germany and Italy, each of which had conflicting ideologies, and in the latter two cases, ambitions over the rest of Europe (and in Italy's case, over Britain and France's African and Middle Eastern colonies as well). This is a simplistic view of things, but once Germany became aggressive, both the Allies and the Soviet Union had a vested interest in checking her expansion and escalating power.\n\nNow, going back to Cold War Europe again - as mentioned before, the balance of power was rather different. Rather than three competing groups, we have just two, led by superpowers. Since there's no wild card third power here, they concentrate on each other, control their subordinate nations, and avoid conflict with each other as much as possible.\n\nNow we're in the post-Cold War era. China is considered by many to be a new superpower, and Russian no longer has anywhere near the power that it once did. Will we see a World War III? Possible, but personally speaking, I doubt it. The spectre of MAD still looms over everything, especially with nuclear proliferation spreading further, to India, Pakistan, and other former third-world countries. Proxy wars do and will continue to exist, as it's a lot more economically feasible and safer to fund terrorists, insurgents, and other proxy armies rather than getting directly involved in conflicts. Direct wars between nations probably will continue, but superpowers have a vested interest in avoiding getting sucked too far into them - for example, if war between Pakistan and India breaks out, although the US is nominally Pakistan's ally, and India gets a great deal of aid from Russia, neither country will want to get involved, and will instead try very hard to broker a truce instead. I think it's very unlikely that a true World War III will break out, since there's comparatively a lot more at risk now.\n\n**tl;dr - Fewer superpowers and fewer power blocs, plus the threat of nuclear war, is why there haven't been any true world wars since 1945.**",
"Albert Einstein said it pretty well:\n\n\"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but world War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.\"\n\n",
"Remember that we went 99 years without wars between major powers between Napoleon and World War I. We're still a few decades from beating that mark.",
"I would have to give credit to George C. Marshall. After World War II, everyone wanted to punish Germany again. He said, \"if we help them, then they have nobody to blame and will be our future allies, not enemies.\" So instead of having germany pay off all of world war ii's debts like world war i, The allies tried to help rebuild the country. This is a similar policy that Lincoln wanted to do for the South. Many of the Union's leaders wanted to punish the former CSA states. But Lincoln wanted to rebuild them. But, Lincoln was assassinated, and Johnson took office and wanted to do what Lincoln wanted. But Johnson was very close to being impeached so he decided to not do anything. Then Grant took office and being a Union General who fought the South directly during the war, he definitely did not share the same views as Lincoln and Johnson. So the South did not get entirely rebuilt and 'statistically' has more poverty rates, worse housing, poorer educational systems, etc. Because of this, there's still a little grudge between *some* southerners and northerners. I know from personal experience that if you have a northern state's license plate and you're in some parts of Georgia, it's very wise to take those plates off or your car will be messed with if you leave it.\nEdit: TL/DR: helping to rebuild the loser of a war's nation rather than punish it will generally make them your allies in the future lessening the risk of vengence sparking another war. Sorry for the digression into Reconstruction history"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
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p444c
|
What is happening when you drive on a highway and have only one window down?
|
When I do this there is a sensation in my ears and even the sound.
It obviously has to do with airflow, but what exactly is happening?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/p444c/what_is_happening_when_you_drive_on_a_highway_and/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c3mcydz"
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"text": [
"Pretty much the same thing that happens when you blow across a jug. Essentially, the stream of air hits the open window / jug top. The leading edge of the stream of air creates a vortex, and spins off. There's a low density region that follows, which helps to create the next vortex. This cascades for as long as the stream of air is supported. The rate at which the vortexes peel off depends on the geometry of your car / the jug, and how fast you're going. SO, when you change your car, like opening up another window, you change how the air bounces off. Flutes and pipe organs work on the same principle, except they're tuned to make the air vortexes sound like amazing music.\n\n[Here's a video that visualizes this kind of phenomena.](_URL_0_) The stream of air is coming on the left, in the middle of the screen, and the vortexes are peeling off on the right, at some frequency (which is what you would hear as sound)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ3w4bg5Tx8"
]
] |
|
2wotg9
|
why do so many free wifi hotspots have a gateway page?
|
People advertise free wifi all the time - but 99% of the time, I need to use some sort of gateway to get to it. Why don't we just have open wifi hotspots at things like hotels? Isn't it much more convenient than constantly having to sign back in?
I understand that they don't want people to poach free internet - but firstly the gateways often don't require authentication. And secondly, inside a big hotel, is this really an issue?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wotg9/eli5_why_do_so_many_free_wifi_hotspots_have_a/
|
{
"a_id": [
"coss5ec"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"There are concerns that if you use a wifi connection and you commit computer crimes, libel or harassment the owner of the wifi connection could be held liable. The boilerplate text provides a mechanism for the wifi owner to disclaim liability for your actions."
]
}
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[
[]
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e1f99b
|
Did scientists at Los Alamos genuinely believe that atomic bombs could ignite the earth's atmosphere?
|
I'm currently writing a paper on the relative totality of warfare and came across a historian arguing that the most intense humanity has come in waging war was through the testing of the atomic bomb where they believed this could be the outcome. His footnote is a bit underwhelming though, a comment from a friend 'Aaron Novick' who was there and claimed this was the case. Hard to verify and wondered if anyone had any information on it. Would be interesting to hear anything about this. Thanks!
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/e1f99b/did_scientists_at_los_alamos_genuinely_believe/
|
{
"a_id": [
"f8olwu7",
"f8ouu7p"
],
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4
],
"text": [
"No. Their general opinion was that the atomic bombs couldn't \"ignite\" the atmosphere (the suggestion was that the bomb might be able to trigger a fusion reaction). The only dissenting opinion was Arthur Compton, who was not convinced of the complete impossibility of it, but he didn't think it likely (he estimated the probability at less than 1 in a million).\n\nSee _URL_0_ for more detail and references.",
"I've written a bit about the calculations that were done, and the people who weren't totally convinced of them, [here](_URL_0_). In short: they didn't really believe it was possible, but they weren't 100% sure. So when the bomb did go off, there were a few people who wondered, as the heat increased, if they had really \"done it.\" But the bulk of the technical people had convinced themselves that it wasn't possible for several very good reasons. In the postwar it became very clear how difficult fusion reactions are to start and propagate."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/c1jei5/is_it_true_fdr_authorized_a_test_during_ww2_that/"
],
[
"http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2018/06/29/cleansing-thermonuclear-fire/"
]
] |
|
35iifk
|
why bodybuilding competitions are not considered eating disorders?
|
I've been watching my roommate this year prep.
I'm all for eating healthy and working out and having goals. Being dedicated is great.
But I'm having trouble understanding when people are prepping right before competition and only eat very little carbs or drink very little water to look lean, this is not considered an eating disorder.They get upset or feel insecure about muscle development when in reality they look great for an average person.
Why is it that if someone puts working out/ eating right before work or school, it is commended rather than raise concern?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35iifk/eli5_why_bodybuilding_competitions_are_not/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cr4p89w",
"cr4pl2h"
],
"score": [
2,
3
],
"text": [
"One of the defining characteristics of any mental illness is that it negatively impacts the life of the sufferer. \n\nIf your friend feels compelled to live in this style, against his wishes, then it may be a disorder. If it adversely affects his health, but he can't stop, then it may be a disorder.\n\nIts a gray area, but it is something that he has to decide on privately, or with the help of a doctor.",
"It *can* be a disorder. There is a specific name for it: Muscle Dysmorphia.\n\nThat said, disorders are patterns of thought, not single occurrences. It has to control your entire life, not just occur one day every once in a while."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
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aqe5rx
|
Friedrich Engels owned multiple factories. Did he manage them based on communist principles?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/aqe5rx/friedrich_engels_owned_multiple_factories_did_he/
|
{
"a_id": [
"egg2xc7"
],
"score": [
30
],
"text": [
"The simple answer to this is \"No, he did not\". Now, this is not because Engels was a hypocrite,but rather because of the following two reasons:\n\na) Friedrich Engels never actually owned any factories.\n\nThere were plenty of factories within the Engels estate, both in Germany and Britain, but because of Friedrichs radical views, his father decided against Friedrich ever getting ownership of any of the factories. The closest Friedrich got, was when he in 1864 made partner in the enterprise.\n\nb) Throughout all of Marx' and Engels' writings, they never wrote anything about how to manage industries, or how the Socialist mode of production would function. After Marx' death, Engels and Kautsky attempted to do so, but never finished any coherent works on the issue. To this day, Orthodox and Classical Marxism has always been more of a critique of the Capitalist mode of production, than a prescriptive ideology about how society should function\n\nSources:\n\nGreen, John; *Engels: A Revolutionary Life*; 2008\n\nHunt, Tristram; *The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels*; 2009\n\nKautsky, Karl; *Friedrich Engels: His Life, His Work and His Writings*; 1899"
]
}
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[] |
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[
[]
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||
3djjr1
|
how come some peppers "burn" your skin if you touch them, but your mouth doesn't get burned if you eat them?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3djjr1/eli5how_come_some_peppers_burn_your_skin_if_you/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ct5r88w"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"So it depends on the pepper, but it's not a burn like a fire would cause.\n\nWhen it comes to spicy peppers, the reason you get the spicy sensation in your mouth is because of a chemical called Capsaicin. This chemical opens up the calcium channels in your tongue which tricks your body into thinking that it's on fire (the tongue has a hard time telling the difference between actual fire and capsiacin).\n\nIf the levels of this chemical are high enough in the pepper, the same thing will happen on your skin."
]
}
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[] |
[
[]
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26o0qp
|
how can thailand go through a military coup when the same king is still in power, and has been for so many years?
|
How is Thailand experiencing a military coup when the point of a coup is to seize control? Is the king of Thailand for or against this coup since the point of a coup is to destroy the party in charge the king has been through various coups since his assent to the thrown but remains in power, correct?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26o0qp/eli5_how_can_thailand_go_through_a_military_coup/
|
{
"a_id": [
"chsudi7"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"The King of Thailand doesn't have any real power. Thailand is a constitutional monarchy, just like England. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
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2wnqly
|
why does water taste worse when our throat is sore?
|
Seriously, I can't drink water when I have a sore throat, I don't even want to. I prefer to drink something else as my waft isn't so good and the water makes this sensation a lot worse.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wnqly/eli5_why_does_water_taste_worse_when_our_throat/
|
{
"a_id": [
"costf3t"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Not a doctor but I get the same thing, and I would say it's because the throat is infected and you're getting teh bacteria into your mouth and on your tongue."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
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29goe1
|
why does football go by scores of 7 instead of 1 ' s like hockey and soccer?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29goe1/eli5_why_does_football_go_by_scores_of_7_instead/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cikqgg7",
"cikqibu",
"cikrvod"
],
"score": [
5,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"It doesn't \"go by scores of 7.\" There are different ways to score points, and each type of score is worth a certain amount of points. Some are only possible in certain situations. A common misconception is that a touchdown is worth 7 points - it's actually worth 6.",
"because many ways to score; touchdown = 6, points after touchdown = 1 (kick thru uprights) or 2 (run or pass into endzone fm 3 yd line), fieldgoal = 3 (kick thru upright w/o touchdown), safety = 2 (tackle opponent in their own endzone.",
"There are five different ways to score in football with four different scoring values -- one, two, three or six points.\n\nThe reason that different scoring plays have different values is because rugby does, and football has its roots in rugby."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
8b23ba
|
why are some viruses shaped like an icosahedron?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8b23ba/eli5_why_are_some_viruses_shaped_like_an/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dx3c9zp"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Most likely because it's a compact shape that can be built easily (make a triangle of protein 8 times, join them together).\n\nViruses hijack the cells of other creatures (or bacteria) to reproduce, so they need to keep things super simple."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
16j649
|
why is gasoline sold per 9/10 gallon?
|
This has confused me since I was old enough to notice. We can pretend that that age was 5, so someone please explain to the child in me.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16j649/why_is_gasoline_sold_per_910_gallon/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c7wiq4q",
"c7wk098",
"c7wkg0s"
],
"score": [
3,
3,
8
],
"text": [
"Marketing. It makes the price sound a cent cheaper than it actually is.",
"It's actually 9/10 cent. So you see prices like 3.39^9/10 what that means is \"3 dollars, 39 and nine tenths cents.\" It's all about being able to get the most money from the consumer. You're more willing to pay what looks like $3.39 instead of what looks like $3.40. ",
"That is not 9/10 of a gallon. It's 9/10 of a cent.\n\nWhen you see the price \"$3.78 9/10\", that's really $3.789 per gallon, not $3.78 per 9/10 of a gallon."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
bcbrpx
|
How CRT TV controls the beams so quickly back in the old days?
|
Unlike LED where each pixel has a light source, a CRT relies on just 1 set of cathode ray tube (for color tvs that has 3 color beams). I understand the control of the beam directions done by a set of magnetic coils, however even for very old B & W TV's, it would still require not just precision but super human speed to point the light at the correct spots. To do so with a modern circuit would be easy, but how did they achieve such speed & accuracy back then when even electronic calculators did not exist?
& #x200B;
also any reason no manufacturer tried to use more sets of cathode ray for higher resolution and faster refresh rate?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/bcbrpx/how_crt_tv_controls_the_beams_so_quickly_back_in/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ekpnqc0",
"ekq11jw"
],
"score": [
16,
2
],
"text": [
"Well superhuman speed maybe but when it comes to electronics it is a fairly low speed thing.\n\nRealize that the vertical refresh happens only 50/60 times per second - that's glacial speed, even for the 1930s electronics when tubes and oscillators running up to hundreds of MHz existed already. In fact, the 50/60Hz is originally derived from the mains frequency, generated by a spinning (i.e. mechanical) generator at a power plant.\n\nThe horizontal ray deflection needs to generate 525 (NTSC) or 625 (PAL) lines during that time. So that gives you (1/50) / 625 = 32us/line duration, thus 31.25kHz line frequency (for PAL). Again, that's very slow when it comes to electronics, it is just above the audio frequencies (\\~20kHz). And that is neglecting the fact that the TV was interlaced, so only drawing half of the lines during each frame.\n\nThe only thing that needs to be fast is generating pixels within the line, because you have only those 32us to do so. So you are in tens of MHz pixel clock frequencies and up. However, with the analog TV **there are no pixels\\*** \\- the camera was scanning the image a the same speed and outputting an analog voltage corresponding to the brightness of the area of the imaging tube as the scanning electron beam passed over it (e.g. vidicon tube). This was reproduced in the receiver in the same way - a smoothly changing signal was modulating the current (and thus brightness) of the electron beam in the CRT as it was sweeping across the line.\n\nElectronically, all you need to make a beam sweep is two linear ramp signals, one running at the vertical and the other at the horizontal frequency and synchronized with the incoming signal - that's what the \"sync\" pulses are for, to trigger the oscillators (well, in a real TV it is a bit more complex using PLL and such for robustness but the idea is the same).\n\nSo all of this was pretty much within reach, it wasn't much more complex than the contemporary radio circuits. In fact, the early television research has been done even using mechanical scanning, using a rotating wheel with a spiral of holes - Nipkow disc. Also the TV standards like NTSC and PAL didn't appear out of nowhere, other systems with fewer lines were common before that.\n\n > also any reason no manufacturer tried to use more sets of cathode ray for higher resolution and faster refresh rate?\n\nThat has been probably tried but it was a niche thing for special purposes in the labs (e.g. multi-beam oscilloscope CRTs). The classic CRT design is well capable of full HD (1920x1080) resolution at 120Hz with a single electron gun and one set of deflection coils (high end PC monitors) or e.g. the Japanese HDTV TV standard going back to the 80s (1125 lines@60Hz). A multi-beam system would only cost a lot more for little gain when there were no signal sources capable of feeding such CRT anyway.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n\\*Pixels are a computer thing that came much later with raster displays and cheap computer memory required for frame buffers. Original computer displays were so called \"vector displays\" that didn't work with pixels at all but were directly drawing lines (\"vectors\") by steering the electron beam around the screen.",
" > also any reason no manufacturer tried to use more sets of cathode ray for higher resolution and faster refresh rate?\n\nHD CRTs are around. Usually 720i or 1080i resolution with component inputs. They were around briefly after hd was a thing and before big LCDs took off.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nAlso each pixel doesn't have its own light source. On a OLED tv or a plasma yes that is true, but on a regular LCD either a florescent light (older lcds) or led lights (newer lcds) are a common backlight that the lcd just tries to block out when the pixel shouldn't be seen. Thats why blacks are not 100% black since some still shines through. Some lcd tvs will try to turn the backlight down when the screen is dark to make the blacks blacker. But it can do some funny things - for example when you have a picture of the sky or space that is mostly black with white dots. It will see that its mostly black so it will dim the backlight to make it blacker but that causes the stars that should be bright white to also dim."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
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2anu63
|
Is there any plausible evidence for occurrences of single combat by "champions" or highly esteemed soldiers in the field of combat?
|
There are numerous mythic and literary references to the idea of two champions of their respective forces duelling to the death in single combat, but did this ever occur in reality? The notion obviously seems fanciful, but not completely out of the realm of possibility.
I know that sometimes military commanders would fight each other in battles when they are brought together by happenstance, but I'm interested in the idea of organised and spectated duels between people in military command.
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2anu63/is_there_any_plausible_evidence_for_occurrences/
|
{
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"text": [
"Single combat is mentioned quite frequently in the history of Ancient Rome – the Horatii's defeat of the Alba Longan Curiatii in the 7th century BC is reported by Livy to have settled a war in Rome's favor and subjected Alba Longa to Rome; Marcus Claudius Marcellus took the spolia opima from Viridomarus, king of the Gaesatae, at the Battle of Clastidium (222 BC); and Marcus Licinius Crassus from Deldo, king of the Bastarnae (29 BC).\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
16xf92
|
what's all the fuss about megaupload? do that many people really need file storage?
|
With massive hard drives on home computers is there really that much of a need for offline storage? Is there something else it's used for?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16xf92/eli5_whats_all_the_fuss_about_megaupload_do_that/
|
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"Online storage is generally seen as the way of the future. If you have a fire at home and your hard drive is destroyed, what happens to your data? If you collaborate with people on many projects, how do you keep your files in sync? If you work at home and on the road and in the workplace, how can you keep your data in check? All of these are solved by online storage. \n\nEdit: also pirating. ",
"A lot of people use it as a way to give copyrighted content to the masses.",
"Sharing uncensored anime he tai... I mean, yea, sure, storage",
"ELI5 what is the difference among MEGA, Dropbox, Googledrive, etc ?!",
"FYI OP, MEGA is Kim Dotcom's new site that we are all discussing here. Megaupload was his previous one that got taken down 1 year ago. The fuss is because the FBI raided his mansion in Australia or New Zealand (can't remember which) without proper cause. His site was legal, it just had a lot of illegal content. Not like other services don't have illegal content, he just had a lot of it. Regardless, it was very much BS the way it was handled.\n\nHe has been teasing everyone about his new MEGA site for a while now. That is why the fuss. Hype has been built and our attention is caught. He launches the site with 50GB of free storage space (much more than most services offer) and teases features involving movies and document editing. That is why the internet is paying attention to this.",
"Moving large amounts of data over the internet is one of the most difficult things to do - particularly for people who aren't especially computer savvy. If your grandmother had 40 GB of pictures of dogs and she wanted to send it to your mother, it would be a very long and complicated process. MegaUpload may not be the most efficient way to move that data, but it certainly would be the easiest. ",
"fuss about megaupload like you're 5:\n\nwell, they were told off for doing bad things, and that meant they went on the news. this made it so that lots of people know about them. now that everyone knows about them, it means that if they do something, alot of people know. and because they are going from \"bad things\" to doing \"very good things\" everyone is interested.\n\nfuss about cloud storage like you're 5:\nbecause people move around alot, and use the internet while they are going around, they want to be able to see their home things while they aren't at home. people did this already and it was used by a few people, then big companies like microsoft started to use it, so now you have loads of different types. also, people have started to do jobs in teams over the internet alot more, so it's really useful for them, because then they don't have to have one person look after it, and they can all see it.",
"Why is it that when you're using Megaupload it's called \"storage\" but when you do the same thing on Amazon it's called \"the cloud\"?",
"When megaupload was shut down it removed **5% of the worldwide internet** traffic (possibly only counting the public part for personal use of the net)!\n\nMost internet service providers measured a 5% decrease of total client data traffic after megaupload got shut down.",
"The main fuss about Megaupload (and the new Mega) is the way Kim Dotcom was treated. \n\nMegaupload was never that famous before, it was a dubious ad-filled site that let people upload and share any files. It's supposed to be users own files, but they let people upload anything including copyrighted films and music. Rather than automatically blocking copyright files like Youtube, Kim did the minimum required by law which is to remove files that companies request to be deleted, except that the US government told him to save some of the files because they were to be used as evidence in trials.\n\nThen, despite basically following the law, the FBI raided Kim's New Zealand mansion in a very over the top way on very dubious evidence, such as his \"refusal to delete files\" that the US government had previously told him not to delete.\n\nBecause of this he became an internet celebrity against government heavy handed copyright policing, especially in tech circles as if raids like this are allowed almost no websites are safe, as even YouTube could have been raided for the same reasons.\n\nIt's mainly because of this that his new Mega site is getting so much attention. Mega's also a little different as unlike other services the data is encrypted by users so no-one, not Kim or anyone else, can see your data. This is unlike even Dropbox who can unencrypt your data if they want."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
31tiks
|
Does motion/speed influence sound waves?
|
To further explain my question: if a silent object was moving at X speed and at X distance emitted a sound, would the sound differ any from something not in motion from the same distance?
If so, how does the direction of the object factor into the sound perceived?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/31tiks/does_motionspeed_influence_sound_waves/
|
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"text": [
"Absolutely. It's called the [Doppler effet](_URL_0_). A source moving towards the observer will sound higher pitched, and a source moving away from the observer will sound lower.\n\nThe same effect happens with light, too! Sources moving towards the observer look more blue, and away look more red.\n\nE: As pointed out by /u/Patbott, I mistakenly switched red and blue. ",
"Ever hear a video of a car race? \neeeeeeEEEEEEOooowwwwwww!\nThat's the Doppler Effect. \nAs the object comes towards you, the frequency of the sound is compressed, making the pitch higher. \nAs it moves away from you, the frequency of the sound is lengthened, making the pitch lower. \nThe same thing happens with light waves, but the change in the frequency is MUCH smaller. \nA car traveling at 200 mph is traveling at almost a third of the speed of sound, versus a miniscule part of the speed of light. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppler_effect"
],
[]
] |
|
4b4t1n
|
since all digital memory has to be stored as physical hard copies, will we ever have an information technology crisis?
|
This is an age of crisis, where we are running out of fossil fuels, influencing climate, warfare, hunger etc. that we humans have to deal with. So the question arises as to how the Internet and digital memory (what we take for granted in this day), might one day become harder to achieve or keep up with.
I am not very familiar with the subject, so my question might sound half-baked. But I would appreciate an explanation to how a IT crisis may occur, where we aren't capable of handling our burgeoning data (because all technologies come with limitations and will plateau at some point in time)? Also what new technologies in memory storage and transferring are prospective saviors in the future where such a crisis may happen.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4b4t1n/eli5_since_all_digital_memory_has_to_be_stored_as/
|
{
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"text": [
"We're going to have a lot of other problems before we run out of computer storage. Silicon is one of the most commonly occurring elements on Earth, and it doesn't take all that much to create a flash drive or solid state drive. Plus we can make storage out of other things too, like plastic (CD/DVD/Blu-Ray) and aluminum (hard drives). \n\nThe more likely problem is that we'll have too much data and no fast way to search through all of it. ",
"I don't believe that there is going to be any sort of Information Technology crisis occurring that is related to data usage. Over time, computer storage has gotten larger, faster, and more reliable. The real Information Technology issues that we should be worried about is cyber security and encryption as those are some serious issues right there. Currently data storage in and of itself isn't a major problem."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
el7qqx
|
how do machines calculate body fat percentage?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/el7qqx/eli5_how_do_machines_calculate_body_fat_percentage/
|
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"text": [
"Usually scale use two electrod under your feet and use Tiny Ac current. By measuring the impedance and frequency responce of the human body they can deduce the ammount of fat and water.",
"The accuracy is a bit rubbish to be honest. \n\nExample. Hand held device - electrical pulse is sent out of one hand and recorded in the other. As you already know from lots of other things electricity will try to find the shortest or easiest path to ground/form a circuit ( the thing your holding in the other hand ) and that shortest path is usually up the arm across the chest and down the other arm. You've missed out a huge part of your body.\n\n\nExample 2. Floor scales. Even worse pluses goes up one leg to your crotch and down the other leg. Missed out entire upper body\n\n\nSome devices make you stand on a floor scale and also hold connected hand things. These are better because you're getting a more realistic reading because it's measuring more of the body.",
"Different body tissues have different conductivity, meaning electricity passes through some parts easier than others. The machines pass an electrical current through your body and use the information to estimate how much fat you have. Lots of things can throw off this estimate: any artificial body parts (like a joint replacement), how hydrated you are, if your limbs are longer or shorter than average, how much food you have in your stomach. They aren't that accurate. The more accurate ones are the seats with grabbing handles you might see at a gym. Most of these have instructions for ideal use conditions, usually hydrated and on an empty stomach. \n\n\nSome scales just have a setting where you input your age, build, height, and weight, and it gives you a BMI (body mass index) number. In this case, no measurement is actually being made, the scale is just letting you know how your weight compares to average health standards. \n\nHigher accuracy methods include a \"bod pod\" or the water displacement method. These aren't available at home, though."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
11dqtk
|
Can a fruit without seeds be genetically modified?
|
My friend refuses to eat navel oranges because she says they are gmo. I explained to her the whole story of how the orange is a natural mutation. Then started to think about it can a seedless fruit be gmo? Are the navel oranges I buy at the store gmo?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/11dqtk/can_a_fruit_without_seeds_be_genetically_modified/
|
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"text": [
"Most likely, no. Most fruits and vegetables are the result of simple breeding (that we've been using for millenia) experiments to develop produce with the most desirable qualities. If that's your friend's reasoning for not eating oranges, then there isn't anything see can eat except what she finds in the wild.",
"Two things:\n\nFirst, Navel oranges have been around since the late 19th century, which would exclude them from being genetically modified by us. They are the result of a natural mutation, but even natural mutations are very unlikely to be able to reproduce, so the fact that they don't have seeds isn't remarkable in a any way.\n\nSecond, pretty much everything that is alive right now or has ever been alive is the result of a mutation of some kind, just a mutation that had the good luck to not be sterile. Literally everything your friend is eating is genetically modified in much the same way as the food we go out of our way to modify. \n\nAll this being said, this isn't to say that certain modifications couldn't be harmful to us, given certain pathways being altered, it's just fairly unlikely and this has all been studied and regulated fairly rigorously, your friend can sleep easy at night.",
"Infertile, or seedless, fruits are natural and have no means of reproduction without human intervention such as graphing. While they aren't GMO, I'm positive there is research being put into them to genetically modify them to increase disease resistance. Seedless oranges, bananas, and all other infertile plants can't swap genes and can be easily wiped out by pest and disease."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
cda74g
|
How did Houston communicate with the astronauts on the moon?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/cda74g/how_did_houston_communicate_with_the_astronauts/
|
{
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"ettnz24"
],
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4
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"text": [
"[USB](_URL_0_). But not the adapter type. Radio waves - the general method of communication in space for basically everything (laser links are a very recent development).\n\nBy changing the amplitude or (better) the frequency of the radio waves you emit many times per second you can transmit information."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_S-band"
]
] |
||
7ohc36
|
If male lyrebirds are so good at mimicking the sounds of other objects and animals , how do female lyrebirds know what is a bird and what is the real deal?
|
The mimicking of lyrebirds are incredible. I've seen the videos of them mimicking other birds, people, and inanimate objects. I know that their song is a part of their courtship ritual. But how do the female birds know that it is another lyrebird if the mimic ability is so amazing? Is it only so indistinguishable for us?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/7ohc36/if_male_lyrebirds_are_so_good_at_mimicking_the/
|
{
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"dsaw964"
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"text": [
"Having seen many lyrebirds to the south of Sydney, it seemed to me that they're curious about any loud noise. I'm going to guess the the calls attract the female's attention, but it's the courtship displays which count the most."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
4nmlvl
|
Is the graphical fidelity of games limited by computational power available currently or is it very difficult to make a realistic looking game?
|
If the resources were available to run it, could a game that looks like real life be made?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4nmlvl/is_the_graphical_fidelity_of_games_limited_by/
|
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"It's both. You need a lot of data to represent all the realistic details, and that means either scanning them from real life objects (limited by scanner quality, issues with lighting, animation etc.), generating them procedurally (requires effort to make it look realistic), or creating them in the traditional ways (a lot of artists' work).\n\nIt's further complicated by the \"uncanny valley\" issue: the closer you get to the realistic looks, the more discrepancies you notice with the real life, making it look \"just a bit off\", while those discrepancies are usually overlooked with stylized visuals.\n\nAnd as a game developer, I can say that when people want \"realistic graphics\" etc., they actually mean \"like in a movie\". And movies are not realistic, they use a lot of tricks to get a good looking picture, often fighting against realistic lighting etc.\n",
"Google or YouTube some photorealistic renderings. Or go watch an action movie. That's what happens when you have both the artists and the machines capable of making real looking stuff. That's not real time yet, but we're really damned close. Look up modded videos of gta v or other tech demos. The hardest thing will probably be human facial expressions (because we have specialized brain parts to look at them with) , but we're also making great progress on that with face mapping. Cars and other non living things we can already render very very well. Even things like fluid simulations have been simplified to a point where they can be used in games to good effect. ",
"Rendering in video games is all about tricks to do more with fewer resources. They use a technique called triangle rasterization to create various photorealistic and nonphotorealistic results. Typically objects in a triangle rasterization scheme will have textures assigned to them. All modern game hardware and software is built to optimize this strategy.\n\nBut the actual physics-based rendering equation for real life is known to us. It can be implemented in a technique called ray tracing. Objects in ray tracing tend to have material properties rather than textures. If you Google \"realistic ray tracing\" you'll see some of the amazing things that can be achieved with this technique. It's more computationally expensive than triangle rasterization and hasn't benefited from much love by DirectX or Nvidia for example... But ray tracing is highly parallelizable (each pixel can be colored independently from all others) and will benefit more from additional CPU and GPU cores."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
t63vz
|
Who really built the Kaaba in Mecca
|
I always wondered who really built the Kaaba and why that specific artifact is so sacred to Islam?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/t63vz/who_really_built_the_kaaba_in_mecca/
|
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"I am not an expert in pre-Islamic Arabia, but I do have some knowledge of the area; as I recall, the Kaa'ba was already a sacred artifact in the Arabian peninsula centuries before the rise of Islam, and the Koran makes it fairly clear that non-muslims in the area considered it sacred themselves, otherwise they wouldn't have 'profaned' the artifact with idols. So I would conjecture that the reason it is important to Islam is because it was already a prominent feature of Arabian culture and imagination; despite its evangelical intentions there are clear footprints of a distinctively Arabic perspective of the world in Islam. But I would take my own analysis here with a grain of salt, I am only really familiar with Arabian culture through its contact with others such as the Assyrians, Babylonians and Romans. \n\nOr pinch of sand for that matter.",
"I'm not an Arabist, but I've spent quite a bit of time reading about the Middle East in general. The truth is that no one knows who built the Kaaba.\n\nOne of the most convincing arguments I've heard is that there was a well in Mecca called \"Zamzam\" which was a holy site before the Kaaba was built. The theory holds that the Kaaba was originally a place to store the relics or objects used in rituals at Zamzam and eventually became a holy site itself.\n\nAnother theory says that it holds astrological significance, perhaps like the pyramids at Giza. There is a meteorite that is still housed in the Kaaba and revered as a holy object. Some speculate that the circumambulation around the Kaaba during the Islamic hajj may have originally been a symbol of the movement of celestial bodies.\n\nI'm going to leave the reason it is sacred to Islam to someone who knows more about the subject. As far as I understand it, the Kaaba is sacred to Islam because it was sacred to Muhammad (meaning, it was already considered an Arab holy site by the late 6th century).",
"According to Islamic tradition, the Kaaba was built by Abraham (yes, the same Abraham from the Bible) as a holy site to God/Allah thousands of years before Muhammad was born. When Muslims travel to Mecca to perform the hajj they reenact important moments of their Abraham story.\n\nHowever, again according to Islamic teaching, the monotheistic and correct religion was lost to the Arabic peninsula. Eventually, idol worshippers begun using the Kaaba to store their pagan idols. \n\nSo, when Muhammad and his young Islamic community gained control of Mecca it was very important to them to destroy the idols being held in the Kaaba and (in their minds) return it to its proper use; which was to serve as a tribute to Allah/God. \n\n",
"I've heard the central stone is a meteorite. I think if there was an meteor impact long ago, and curious people later discovered the rock at the bottom of an impact crater, it could seem a gift from heaven.",
"There is no simple answer to this question, I'm afraid. As has already been posted on here, Islamic tradition - and the tradition at the center of the Haaj - states that it was a construction of the Prophet Abraham, who had traveled there to settle down with Hagar and Ishmael, although some stories even suggest it was a home for earlier Prophets, too. It's primary significance for a Muslim today, though - the events of the Islamic pilgrimage, or Hajj - are largely a reenactment of the events that are purported to have happened during the lifetime of Abraham, as well as the guidance of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad.\n\nThat Mecca was a holy site for quite some time before the coming of Islam is also known, and Islamic tradition itself recognizes this, too. It argues that the Arabs of the region had had their faith corrupted and had become polytheists, and the home of Abraham that had been built in Mecca - the Ka'ba - had become a shrine of veneration to the numerous Gods of the Arabian milieu. Mecca is therefore recorded as having become a holy place among the Arabs, a sanctuary (Arabic: *haram*) where the constant in-fighting and blood feuds that categorized ancient and late antique Arabia were not permitted to occur. This allowed trade to thrive, and it is argued that the worship of the many Arabian deities brought wealth to Mecca and the region. \n\nIslamic traditions also says that once the Prophet Muhammad had established his new religion in the nearby town of Medina. After successfully gaining control of Mecca, he destroyed all of the idols of the Arabian deities that had been placed by the Arabs inside the Ka'ba. The site has been the location of pilgrimage ever since, although that pilgrimage has changed and developed over the near 1400 years since its establishment, of course! The [wikipedia page on the Ka'ba](_URL_4_) is actually quite good in helping to explain some of the events that surround the Islamic hajj, and is a really great starting point for better understanding why it is important to Muslims. \n\nAside from Islamic tradition, we do know that Mecca was a site of Arabian religion prior to the coming of Islam, and work has been done to reconstruct what Arab life would have been like in the region prior to Muhammad's revelation. Robert Hoyland's [*Arabia and the Arabs*](_URL_3_) is an excellent source of information for the pre-Islamic religious traditions if you want to know more. For a more basic introduction, Karen Armstrong's early chapters [here](_URL_6_) are foundational reading that includes much of the information I've mentioned. \n\nThere is also a very clear argument to be main *against* the Islamic tradition for the practical purpose of what became the Hajj. If we can say, for instance, that the Meccan economy was thriving because of its role as a center of religion, and/or if we can say that there were Arabs in the region who were committed to the ceremonies and religious practices that already existed in Mecca, it could have been a very shrewd political move for Muhammad. To incorporate already established religious rituals and traditions into his \"new\" religion would have provided a comfortable transition for those committed to the old ways, while ensuring the local elites remained in an area shielded from warfare and where pilgrims would continue to come and spend money. \n\nAs for specifics on the building itself, we don't have great or reliable details on the condition of the structure prior to the coming of Islam. Not much else can be said there. I've mentioned this in a previous post, but the Ka'ba has actually been raided, damaged, repaired, and significantly rebuilt many times just over the 1400 years since Islam's establishment. This has included combat in the second Islamic Civil war between the Caliph [Abd al-Malik b. Marwan](_URL_5_) and another claimant, [Abd Allah b. al-Zubayr](_URL_0_) where the structure was either completely reconstructed or damaged depending on reports, a raid by the [Qarmatians](_URL_7_) in the tenth century that saw the famed \"black stone\" stolen from Mecca temporarily, and subsequent damage a number of times in the Ottoman period. An excellent source for some of the building work that has taken place around the Ka'ba and the Mosque which was built to surround it - the Masjid al-Haram - can be found [here.](_URL_2_)\n\nLastly, I think it important to mention that the the way most people think the Ka'ba looks is from pictures which almost always include the special shroud which is created to cover it, known in Arabic as *kiswa*. The structure beneath the shroud is quite [plain](_URL_1_).\n\nEdit: Clarity"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd_Allah_ibn_al-Zubayr",
"http://whi-a.wikispaces.com/file/view/kaaba.jpg/101457901/kaaba.jpg",
"http://archnet.org/library/sites/one-site.jsp?site_id=8803",
"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Arabia-Arabs-Bronze-Peoples-Ancient/dp/0415195357",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaaba",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd_al-Malik_ibn_Marwan",
"http://www.amazon.com/Islam-History-Modern-Library-Chronicles/dp/081296618X",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qarmatians"
]
] |
|
6rqrkz
|
when you mix the same quantity of cold and hot water in a bucket, is the result the average of the two temperatures?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6rqrkz/eli5_when_you_mix_the_same_quantity_of_cold_and/
|
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"In a perfectly closed system with no loss of temperature to the air or buckets, yes. A 50 degree bucket and a 100 degree bucket will make a 75 degree double bucket. \n\nIn reality it will be slightly less than 75 as some heat is lost to the bucket and the air. \n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
2flkgl
|
what is the point of having the marine corps and the army separated?
|
I understand the separation of navy and airforce, but why are both infantry based marines and army seperated?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2flkgl/eli5_what_is_the_point_of_having_the_marine_corps/
|
{
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"text": [
"The missions of the Marine Corps and the Army are entirely different, those differences came out of design and necessity. The Marines are a department of the navy, operating as their own entity and are constantly defending why they exist.\n\nThe Marines are referred to as \"America's expeditionary force in readiness\", they are always forward deployed ready to go into hotspots around the world. Generally Marines are sent first to gain a foothold of beachheads, ingress routes, supply lines, etc. Following that same general thought process, again generally they're meant to get in and get out fast and then transfer authority to a much larger force, like the U.S. Army who can better maintain a protracted conflict. However that has not been the case in recent wars/ conflicts.\n\nAlso the Marines are the only force that be called upon to react to conflict and or go to war or really do anything without the authorization of congress, the President holds authority over the Marine Corps and can \"send them in\" at his own discretion. \n\nAlso the Air Force was born out of the Army and was originally the Army Air Corps and didn't become its own branch of service until 1947.\n\nThe Army is responsible for land based operations where the USMC is responsible to maritime operations... soldiers of the sea. Their mission is as follows, from wikipedia: The United States Army serves as the land-based branch of the U.S. Armed Forces. §3062 of Title 10 US Code defines the purpose of the army as:[8][9]\n\nPreserving the peace and security and providing for the defense of the United States, the Commonwealths and possessions and any areas occupied by the United States\nSupporting the national policies\nImplementing the national objectives\nOvercoming any nations responsible for aggressive acts that imperil the peace and security of the United States\n\nAlso can confirm stuff about Marines, am one."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
1vqcuo
|
why does it seem like the large majority of movies from the 80s were set in either chicago or illinois in general?
|
Bit of an odd question. It's just that it seems like every other 80s movie that I watch just happens to be set in Chicago.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vqcuo/why_does_it_seem_like_the_large_majority_of/
|
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"John Hughes was arguably the 80s movie king, and he filmed most of his stuff in and around Chicago.",
"Often it has to do with licensing costs and union obligations. New York is extremely expensive to film in, so Chicago provided an alternative that was probably less expensive but still provided the \"big city\" feel. Similarly, New Orleans and Atlanta are used for modern filming because they are cheap to film in and you can find non-union crew members in these locations fairly easily.",
"John Hughes mostly and the fact that a majority of your most popular movies were comedies at that time. Chicago is home to Second City improv the feeder company for Saturday Night Live. So with Hughes being located there, the city being cheaper to shoot in than NY or LA, and The actors being comfortable in the city where they trained to become actors... It seems like a natural win win for everyone involved. Plus it was a closer city to fly to from LA as opposed to cross country one way or the other. ",
"Live literally right next to the scene where Kevin talks to Santa.",
"Because Illinois is awesome. Suck it Indiana.",
"Not really. New York and L.A. have always remained in the top for all films. Now it's parts of Canada, and Atlanta, Georgia."
]
}
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1rmalf
|
How much value has been placed on humor by societies of the past? Has being funny always been considered such a positive trait as it is today?
|
I've been noticing lately what a huge portion of the conversations I have on a daily basis involve humor or jokes of some kind at some point. In fact it seems being able to make a witty little quip is the #1 most important asset to social success among your peers.
I feel this probably hasn't always been true though, especially in the upper crusts of society. Carrying yourself with a certain degree of pomp and circumstance seems to be the social norm for well off people until 20th century. I'd imagine if you were nobility, cracking jokes all the time would cause your peers to not take you seriously and could undermine your social standing. Is there merit to such a theory or has lighthearted joking banter consistently been the cornerstone of daily interaction as far as we can tell?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1rmalf/how_much_value_has_been_placed_on_humor_by/
|
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"Rhetoric scholar here. Cicero and Quintillian wrote extensively about the persuasive use of humor, and at least some of Cicero's reputation as an an orator derived from his wit. \n\nRoman jokes tend to seem [not too funny](_URL_0_) to contemporary taste, though.",
"Lysistrata by Aristophones was written in 411 B.C. The title character tries to get the women of Athens and Sparta to deny sex to their husbands in order to end the Peloponnesian War. It's battle of the sexes comedy that holds up very well to modern sensibilities. To be honest, I haven't read it in many years, but when I did it had me laughing. Of course all ancient Greek theatre was divided into comedy and tragedy, both considered crutial to the culture. ",
"Aristotle listed \"wittiness\" among the virtues in his *Nichmachean Ethics*, so on that basis I'd think that being funny has been considered important for a long time.\n",
"The poetry of Catullus and other Roman poets from Vergil to Horace to Ovid are full of jokes as well; Martial, a bit later, is something of a master of the 'twist ending.' A couple of examples -- many Martial poems are funny, but a couple which stand out include one regarding a man who is actively courting a woman; Martial spends the brief poem listing all of the things that make the woman unpleasant, but finished by saying that her one positive attribute is that 'tussit' -- she had a cough. The joke being that the man was hoping she would die soon after he married her. Another Martial poem pokes fun at another person for 'never dining without a boar,' which is both expensive and far too much food to eat daily, but concludes by admitting that at least he 'has a good dinner-guest' since the host must, therefore, be a pig himself.\n\nPerhaps the most-quoted and beautiful of Catullus's poems is carmen 5, \"Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love\" which often confuses first-time readers with a bit in the latter half about the number of kisses Catullus demands to avoid being cursed by those who envy his relationship; it seems clear to me that this is all a wittingly lame joke; Catullus showing off his bad pick-up lines -- \"hey baby, we got to kiss like three thousand three hundred times, because otherwise, uh, somebody might cast a spell on us? I don't know, let's make out.\" Many other Catullus jokes are more clear, but these obscure self-deprecating jokes are my favourites of his.",
"[Here](_URL_1_) are a few more. According to [Reuters](_URL_0_) the oldest known joke is Sumerian from ~1900BC: \"Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap.\" I'd guess they wouldn't find our jokes (that they understood) funny either. So perhaps humour is relative.",
"I'm studying for my PhD in the history of humour, primarily in 16th century Germany, but my research has brought be throughout much of time and many places. I'll keep this short because I've got a thesis' worth of research and I don't have the time to put it all in to comments, but feel free to ask follow up questions and I'll try to answer them if I can.\n\nHumour goes through phases of being valued and reviled. Matthew Innes notes that in Thegan, Louis the Pious only smiled rather than laughed, when his fool interrupted his Easter celebration. Perhaps this was because it was unseemly for an emperor to outright laugh? At the same time Rudolf of Fulda's 'Life of Leoba' notes that Leoba was often cheerful but never went in to fits of extreme laughter. Bursts of uncontrolled emotion were seen as weak willed and unchristian.\n\nIn the 16th century, printing was in full swing, literacy rates in cities boomed, and books such as Schwanksammelungen and Volksbuecher were popular in the Holy Roman Empire, the former were often owned by the emerging middle class. These contain what are essentially small funny stories and anecdotes, usually laughing about how stupid peasants are or how raunchy a priest was.\n\nFor an idea in to the history of humour, look up Guy Halsall's 'Humour, History and Politics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages', and Keith Cameron's 'Humour and History'.\n\nEdit: Here's a joke from the 'Rollwagenbuechlin' by Wickram, published first in 1555. Translations my own:\n\n**Of a mercenary and \"Lord God, protect us\"**\n\nIn Switzerland, near Zurich, a mercenary went to an inn, he greeted the host, \nand the host allowed him to stay.\n\nFor supper, the landlord had presented the mercenary with a sour wine,\nwhich turned out to be from a nauseous year;\n\nwhen people drank it, they said “Lord God, protect us, as the wine is so sour!”\n\nso that the wine of this year became known as: 'Lord God, protect us'.\n\nNow when the mercenary sought to eat and have the sour wine, he said:\n\n“By jove! Landlord, this wine is so sour!”\n\nThe host replied “Our wines are such that they are only good in old age.”\n\nThe mercenary said: “Host, if this wine was so old that it was on crutches, it wouldn't do it any good.”",
"I have two answers for you. One is very general based on my impressions from studying history (and is mostly personal conjecture), the other quite specific to my area.\n\n**General:** The nature of what is considered humorous changes enormously throughout different regions and time periods, but I don’t think that there has ever been a time in which “being funny” wasn’t valued in day-to-day social interactions, provided that your jokes conform to the zeitgeist of humour for that particular period, decade, year, region, social class, etc. Also keep in mind that day-to-day social interactions are not the same as pieces of art or writing, and there are plenty of instances of satires, plays, or novels being censored despite a large readership finding them funny.\n\n**Specific:** In relation to your question about differences in social classes and whether the “upper crust” is more humourless, my own research on libertines can be illuminating. I’d like to point you to English Restoration and the court of [Charles II](_URL_0_) as an example of a period in which fairly bawdy humour, stuff that we would considered unseemly today, was valued at the highest levels of society.\n\nThe typical historical narrative for this period is that after the oppressive moral Puritanism of Cromwell’s commonwealth, the reinstatement of the English monarchy brought about a period of general social liberalism that allowed for humour to become pervasive in public discourse. Regardless of how true this is, there’s no question that during the Restoration English literature and theater was obsessed with the idea of wit or witticism as being an extremely valuable trait to possess. This strong desire to demonstrate intelligence and humour in speech/writing frequently led to very risqué statements, often mingling politics and sexuality.\n\nThis carried over into the court of Charles II, composed mostly of nobles, who all aspired to win the affection of their peers and the King through displays of wit in speech, poetry, or writing. None were more successful than [John Wilmot, the 2nd Earl of Rochester](_URL_1_), probably the most definitively libertine figure there is.\n\nRochester is best known today for his poetry, which was never intended for publication and usually written on a manuscript that was passed around and copied by members of the court and parliament, something I think makes him a particularly good example of the “day-to-day” humour of the nobility. While he produced excellent works using standardized poetic formats with reference to Greek classics etc. It’s his obscene works that are most notable, and also most topical to the period. They directly referenced members of the courts and their entourage with scathing satire.\n\n\nIt’s difficult for me to describe quite how hilarious, edgy, and crude this guy could be. In one poem he dedicates to Sue Willis, a prostitute who operated around the King’s court, he says:\n\n*Her belly is a bag of turds*\n\n*And her cunt a common shore.*\n\nOccasionally he would even target the King himself and this got him exiled from court repeatedly. One of my favourite lines attacking Charles II is:\n\n*His scepter and his prick are of a length,*\n\n*And she may sway the one who plays with th' other.*\n\nHis life reflects his writing, despite being highly educated and showing bravery in several naval battles, he lived a debauched and hedonistic lifestyle until an early death in his thirties from venereal disease.\n\n\nRochester combined real poetic eloquence with crudity and humour in a way that enchanted and infuriated many members of the nobility and made him infamous. Both his obscene poems and his serious works show genuine brilliance and even depict fairly melancholic human truths, and there’s no question that he embodied the English Restoration's obsession with wit and witticism. Consequently I think Rochester and the court of Charles II is a really good example of humour being a “day-to-day” social function of nobility.\n\nKeep in mind that everything I described in my general answer still applies to Rochester. Only 70 years after his death, moralists like Samuel Johnson decried Rochester as wasting his talents, being a dissolute rake, and someone not suitable to be read, and he was almost entirely ignored throughout the Victorian era. Humour seems to me a product of taste, and subject to the whim of societies that constantly shift and change. But that also means I'm confident there are many other examples of humour being similarly prized by the upper crust of those societies even while in public. The parliamentary quips of Winston Churchill and Lady Astor come to mind. I hope you get lots of responses!\n\nMy information for this post comes mostly from the David Vieth collection of Rochester’s poems, published by Yale University Press in 2002. It’s the most well-researched and thorough collection I’ve found to date.\n\nIf you want to read more about the court of Charles II, Matthew Jenkinson’s “Culture and Politics at the Court of Charles II, 1660-1685” cannot be beat. For more information on Rochester’s contemporaries the book “Libertines and Radicals in Early Modern London: Sexuality, Politics, and Literary Culture, 1630-1685” by James Grantham Turner is your best bet. Turner is the definitive scholar of libertinism and (I’d argue) Rochester.\n\nFor anyone who wants to read more about the Restoration rock-star, Rochester's poems should all be available online. I think the following verses best depict his unique blend of crudity/eloquence.\n\n* *The Imperfect Enjoyment* – about a time he prematurely ejaculated\n\n* *The Disabled Debauchee* – hoping he can cheer on young rakes when he’s old and gross\n\n* *A Ramble in St. James’s Park* – account of a night in London and philosophizing on love\n\n* *A Satyr on Reason and Mankind* – Pokes fun at anyone who would obey reason above nature"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.theguardian.com/culture/charlottehigginsblog/2009/apr/03/classics"
],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://uk.reuters.com/article/2008/07/31/uk-britain-joke-life-idUKL129052420080731",
"http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/mar/13/roman-joke-book-beard"
],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_England",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wilmot,_2nd_Earl_of_Rochester"
]
] |
|
70jv3o
|
what keeps people who work at kfc/coca-cola from stealing a sample of their secret recipes, reverse engineering them, and then selling them?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/70jv3o/eli5_what_keeps_people_who_work_at_kfccocacola/
|
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"text": [
"Not a huge amount, really. We already pretty much know what's in these products (I mean, with Coke, you can basically just read the label). The difficulty is only getting the exact formulation and mixing right. For most people, the prohibitive part of that is not knowing how it's done - it's having access to the kind of production chain that can produce that product consistently and cheaply.\n\nNobody buys KFC because their recipe is so much better than anywhere else. They buy it because it's convenient and consistent. Stealing or even improving on the recipe isn't (relatively) difficult, but entering the market as a competitor is."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
1fe0hq
|
Nomadic animals
|
I happened to notice on the Wiki entry for black swans that these birds are truly nomadic, wandering across Australia according to the weather and feeding opportunities. Many animals are migratory - many, many birds, caribou, etc. - but I can't think of many that are truly nomadic. One other suggestion might be polar bears. How do zoologists qualify a truly nomadic animal, and what others are there?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1fe0hq/nomadic_animals/
|
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"text": [
"Migratory describes species which regularly return to the same spot at a particular point in time. Examples (as you noted) are most frequently birds, but also many marine mammals (humpback whales for example) and sea turtles. These species usually move to foraging areas in one part of the world where food is abundant, then migrate to breeding grounds (which are often warmer, which increases offspring survival rates).\n\nNomadic animals generally have no fixed point to return to. I notice on the wiki for black swans that they nomadic within Australia - This strategy has likely evolved because unpredictable weather means they cannot have a fixed breeding ground - they just have to go wherever conditions are suitable. \n\nAnother example I can think of is army ants (for example *Echiton burchellii*), the food source of these ants is ephemeral as they voraciously forage in whatever area their nest is in. After removing all available forage, they then move to a different site. They have no particular fixed area to return to - they just need to move when the food supply has been exhausted. They can do this easily as their nest is a 'bivouac' formed of their own bodies."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
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2pj5b1
|
how do manufacturers get the little "pop/freshness seal bubble" on the tops of jars to stay down?
|
And why can't I do it?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pj5b1/eli5_how_do_manufacturers_get_the_little/
|
{
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"text": [
"You can. /r/canning\n\nYou boil what is inside so the steam pushes out all the atmospheric gasses. Then when the can cools the water vapor condenses (mostly) back to water and leaves a vacuum."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
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3z6tt5
|
I am a typical peasant farmer in western Europe in the 16th century. Where do I get my drinking water from and how safe is it?
|
I read that beer consumption was high because of unsafe drinking water. Was that an issue restricted to urban areas?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3z6tt5/i_am_a_typical_peasant_farmer_in_western_europe/
|
{
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"text": [
"There's always room for discussion, but perhaps the sections [Drinking Water](_URL_1_) and [Beer](_URL_0_) from our FAQ will answer your inquiry.",
"One thing to keep in mind is that Cholera, one of the more severe pathogens spread through contaminated drinking water, isn't believed to have spread out of the Indian subcontinent until the 18th or 19th century, so medieval European peasants had that going for them. (Source: _URL_0_). "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/health#wiki_beer",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/health#wiki_drinking_water"
],
[
"http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs107/en/"
]
] |
|
6d0bpl
|
how do teeth know how to grow in the pattern so they fit together when you bite down?
|
How to teeth grow a certain way to fit to themselves? As in upper and lower teeth? And also, What causes teeth to grow crooked and not fit together?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6d0bpl/eli5_how_do_teeth_know_how_to_grow_in_the_pattern/
|
{
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"They don't \"know\". Your body starts out with some stem cells. These are basically cells without an assigned function. They don't know where to go and what to do yet. They just divide. When your cells divide functions do get assigned to the new cells that form. This is done based on what it says in your DNA, which is basically a script. It'll tell a cell \"you are part of the eye\" or in this case \"you are part of the jaw that's responsible for growing a tooth\". \n\nSo the cell now knows where to go and what it's supposed to do. There is a rough pattern, but nothing like your actual teeth. While growing and through movement of your mouth pressure will be placed on each seperate tooth causing it to move. Not immediately, but like with braces this is a gradual process. The one tooth pushes the other to the side to make room, etc.\n\nThis isn't an overnight thing. Over many, many years the script (your DNA) has been refined enough to get to the point where we are now, with teeth sort of in a usefull position. But it's not hard to imagine that the first humans with teeth had horrible teeth with all sorts of issues, like soft enamel or issues like falling out because of a badly written script that left a lot of room for interpretation.\n\nTeeth are still not perfect though. Many people have issues that influence how their teeth grow. Wisdom teeth for example are something that will probably dissapear at some point. They serve no function and often cause infections. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
3d9a4t
|
How did US gov't mints turn mined ore into coins?
|
One of the guests on the BBC's In Our Time episode on the California Gold Rush claimed that the gold coming out of California mines increased the supply of gold coins in the United State twenty times. Further, he claimed that there was a mint in San Francisco by 1860. These mines were private claims, so how did the gold flakes and nuggets they pulled from the rivers of northern California become coins? Did the government purchase the ore, mint the coins, and then issue them in fashion? Did private banks commission the mints to convert gold they purchased into US currency?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3d9a4t/how_did_us_govt_mints_turn_mined_ore_into_coins/
|
{
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"text": [
"This also involves the Carson City federal mint in Nevada (drawing on the famed Comstock Lode), established in 1869. These mints purchased bullion, either directly from major mines or from banks, which purchased bullion from the market (including from smaller producers). Although the mints were capable of refining the bullion, they often acquired precious metal that required nothing or little more than assay work to make certain the bullion met the purity standard required for a US coin. The rest is a matter of transforming ingots into round blanks, which is merely an industrial process involving heat, rollers, and cutting followed by the actual stamping of the mint press."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
de4x3u
|
why doesn’t isopropyl alcohol damage electronics? are there other liquids that also don’t do damage to electrical components?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/de4x3u/eli5_why_doesnt_isopropyl_alcohol_damage/
|
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"it's neither corrosive nor conductive, so it doesn't dissolve or short anything. it also evaporates at low temperatures, so cleanup is a nonissue\n\ncandle wax shares the first 2 properties, but not the 3rd. this means letting a candle drip into your PC won't destroy it, but requires careful cleaning as it traps heat",
"If you use it while the power is off, it's fine. It evaporates very quickly without leaving a residue so there's no chance of it shorting anything out. \n\nI can't say for sure if its conductive while in liquid form, but it sure as hell **is** flammable!",
"To answer your second question, oil is non-conductive as well. Back in the day before active cooling and radiators people used to fill their gaming rigs with cooking oil. Any liquid that is pure and contains no conductive properties will work.",
"Electronics are mostly plastic, copper, silicon, and solder. Alcohol neither corrode nor dissolves any of these things. It also evaporates without leaving harmful gunk. There are plenty of other liquids that won't hurt electronics, some of which are used for things like cleaning.",
"plastics are very choosy about what they dissolve in. Almost no plastic dissolves in IPA, so it wont mark any surface. It also evaporates quickly and doesnt leave a residue, or corrode metal, doesnt smell bad, and is non-toxic. It is better at dissolving oils and fats and other organic stuff than say ethanol (normal alcohol), and so good for cleaning. Acetone is just as good as cleaning, but more plastics are soluble in acetone, so not used. Other possible fluids (petrol, kerosene, turps etc) either smell too bad or might slightly dissolve some plastics."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
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||
4vldsz
|
When is a rock's birthday? At what point in it's formation does a rock become a rock?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4vldsz/when_is_a_rocks_birthday_at_what_point_in_its/
|
{
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"text": [
"That's a fun question.\n\nLet me distinguish between 2 things: the date when some geological material becomes a rock vs the date when a rock becomes \"the specific rock it is\".\n\nThe answer plays into the general classification of rocks classes [sedimentary, igneous & metamorphic].\n\n**Sedimentary rocks** start from loose sediment, sand, gravel, mud and similar materials. When buried, sediments undergo a process called [\"diagenesis\"](_URL_1_), where they undergo a series of changes where compaction and the precipitation of minerals (termed \"cement\") such as carbonates, clays and quartz will bind together these loose particles into a cohesive whole. This is usually a gradual process where you will not be able to easily pinpoint a specific date/year where you may affirm \"today, this is now a rock\". There are exceptions where the process can be quite rapid, say the formation of beachrock which can happen in decades, but usually you are waiting for a gradual process which operates at the pace of millenia.\n\n**Igneous rocks** are figuratively simple to understand, as they form from the cooling of molten material [lava or magma]. Smaller bodies cool off quicker and might in some cases be said to have a precise date of formation [for instance, the Vesuvius ash flow of the 24^th of August 79 AD], while larger ones may take years or even millenia to cool off and completely solidify. Heat loss is a process controlled by the ratio of surface to volume, so while a magma body of about 1 cubic km might take a few years to cool off, another one of several million cubic kilometers might take a few millenia. The latter might have the opportunity to undergo a process called [\"fractional crystallisation\"](_URL_0_), whereby minerals precipitate in a certain order and separate from the remaining melt by gravity, either floating to the top [e.g.: anorthosite] or sinking to the bottom [e.g. olivine cumulates] - the process is not completely unlike a salad dressing unmixing.\n\nBut then there are **metamorphic rocks**. These guys start as rocks, but they usually progressively change their composition and features as they re-equilibrate to match the pressure and temperature stability conditions of their environment, as they are either buried or exhumed. Thus, a rather banal clay stone made up of an assemblage of clay minerals, quartz & feldspar, might as it is progressively buried deeper change it's mineral composition to a muscovite-garnet shist, then a cordierite-garnet shist , then a quartz-K-spar-biotite-sillimanite shist before reaching temperatures where it starts turning to liquid again. \n\nThus, when studying metamorphic rocks, one is always concerned with 2 \"birthdates\": the first one being the time when this lump of geological material first became a rock [termed \"protolith\"], and the time where the rock reached it's current state. Rocks being not unlike books, metamorphic rocks will often preserve quite a bit of the history of the various changes they underwent as they transitionned from their protolith to their final current state [see [P-T-t-path](_URL_2_)], and are great sources of information that way."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_crystallization_(geology)",
"http://eps.mcgill.ca/~courses/c452/CHOC_Week%2012a_2010.pdf",
"http://serc.carleton.edu/research_education/equilibria/PTtPaths.html"
]
] |
||
2vsmva
|
Around 1975, almost every major progressive rock band "sold out" and started producing more radio friendly material. Why did this happen?
|
Notable groups like Genesis, Rush, and Camel demonstrate this trend.
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2vsmva/around_1975_almost_every_major_progressive_rock/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cokl66w"
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11
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"text": [
"Your question is unanswerable because its central premise is flawed. \n\nWith Genesis, the change is easily explained - Peter Gabriel left as bandleader, Phil Collins took over. Phil Collins has a different style and sensibility, so naturally their work reflected that. \n\nRush released their first record in 1974, so to say that they \"sold out\" around 1975 is pretty ridiculous; what else do you have to compare it to? And in what universe is that material more radio friendly? As the 70's wore on, their songs became longer and longer and incorporated more and more synthesized elements and odd time signatures. \n\nFor Camel, you get an orchestral concept album in 1975, which again goes against your conceit. And their material became more jazz-influenced, which in the late 70s isn't exactly a big seller. You might as well say that Steely Dan was getting more commercial with Aja, or that Joni Mitchell was getting more commercial with The Hissing of Summer Lawns. \n\nIf you could provide more examples we could possibly answer your question, but as it stands your question is based on a flawed premise. As bands go on, they tend to get better at what they do and often have access to better technology due to bigger budgets and improved recording technology; oftentimes this can give the illusion of \"more commercial\" when compared to earlier work, when it really just means \"played better, recorded better, in better facilities\". Most of the time, though, \"My favorite band sold out!\" translates to \"I liked the way they sounded before.\" "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
3egveu
|
There were ancient Pacific Islanders- were there Atlantic Islanders? What happened to them?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3egveu/there_were_ancient_pacific_islanders_were_there/
|
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"In the north, the Irish and then the Norse settled the Faeroes before the Norse jumped off to Iceland, Greenland, and (briefly) the coast of North America. \n\nIn the south, the Canary Islands were inhabited by the Guanches, who were present on the islands around 1000 BC and were originally from North Africa. (Although about half of the current Canarian population's DNA is Guanche, the culture and language have been largely extinct for centuries.)\n\nThe Guanches were reliant on stone tools when encountered by the Portuguese in the 15th century. They lacked metals and had no remaining tradition of navigation; the Canaries have strong currents and trade winds, so smaller vessels would have been death traps. As a result, the Guanches never expanded west or north into the rest of the islands in that region (Cape Verde, the Azores, Madeira, collectively known as \"Macaronesia\"); they were uninhabited when the Portuguese explored them, although there was some evidence of Roman and Viking exploration on Madeira."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
1mx316
|
how does fingerprint authentication store the fingerprint information?
|
I know how regular password authentication works: the password, "hunter2", is stored as a hash, 2ab96390c7dbe3439de74d0c9b0b1767, then you re-hash and compare when the password is entered.
But fingerprints have way more information and also you may be working from a subset of that information, as if you had "unter2" or "hunte" as the input.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mx316/eli5_how_does_fingerprint_authentication_store/
|
{
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"text": [
"Fingerprint scanners are basically capacitive touchscreens minus the screen part. Fingerprints are made of ridges and valleys. When you press your finger against a scanner, it registers what parts of your finger are ridges and what parts are valleys based on what touches it. It then takes several parts of this information as markers. The next time you scan your finger, it looks for these parts. For example, just as your fingerprint is unique, so too is the upper half of your fingerprint, or the bottom left corner, or a random square millimeter. All sufficiently large segments of your fingerprint are as unique as your fingerprint itself. Therefore all the scanner needs to see is one or more of those parts. That's how it deals with not having the exact same scanned section each time. It doesn't need the entire fingerprint."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
hy27z
|
How can I understand the motion of gyroscopes intuitively?
|
I haven't been able to find an explanation that gets me past the fact that because it's not over its center of gravity it must fall. To me it shouldn't matter that you have for instance a spinning disk anchored inside a black box; the box should still behave like a solid box of the same weight. I understand the mathematical explanation that you get in first year college physics with momentum and torque and all that, but that doesn't do it for me...
Edit: These were all very helpful thanks =D
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/hy27z/how_can_i_understand_the_motion_of_gyroscopes/
|
{
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"text": [
"A gyroscope doesn't resist movement, it resists moment. So if you had a box with a gyroscope in it on a table, you could push it forwards/backwards/left/right with ease, but it would be difficult to spin it.\n\nTo see why this is, imagine you have a friction-less disk spinning clockwise and you want to reverse its spin. To slow it down to a stop and get it spinning counter-clockwise would require a couple moment to be applied for some time. The faster the wheel is spinning and the more rotational inertia it has the more energy required to reverse its spin. Of course, you could skip the whole slowing down and speeding up part and just turn the disk over. But since you are effectively reversing the spin by turning it over it requires the same amount of energy as slowing it all the way down and speeding it back up.\n\nThis isn't a perfect explanation and I may have botched a few terms but that's how I envision it.",
"Non-scientist here.\n\nGo to this link, and moved to 9 minutes (I don't know how to deep link). This animation changed my way of thinking when I was in my teens.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4242610371139275474#"
]
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|
80g0e2
|
What's the deal with the Celts and the Norse?
|
This is poorly written, apologies.
What's the historical relationship between these people? Not just Celts and Norse but the people of Britain and Ireland and the people of Scandinavia.
Was the art at Newgrange influential to Nords?
Are Nordic standing stones derivative of Stonehenge?
The Celtic knot is the most obvious example of influence, Nordic knot work styles are very similar.
I understand there were Viking settlements at Dublin/etc but that was after similarities started to appear. What's the timeline of meetings between the cultures?
EDIT what I meant was not just Celts and Norse but any and all peoples from Ireland, Britain, and Scandinavia at any time, and how did they influence each other artistically culturally etc
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/80g0e2/whats_the_deal_with_the_celts_and_the_norse/
|
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"One of the most thoughtful recent scholars on this subject was the late Bo Almqvist (1931-2013) - a Swedish folklorist who was the director of the Irish Department of Folklore at University College, Dublin. His \"Viking Ale: Studies on Folklore Contacts between the Northern and the Western Worlds\", edited by Éilís Ní Dhuibhne and Séamas Ó Catháin (Aberystwyth: Boethius, 1991) is an excellent collection of articles, many of which address what you are asking. Here is a quote that helps frame this discussion:\n\n > [The Norwegian folklorist Reidar Christiansen] has pointed to a series of close parallels between certain Scandinavian and Scottish-Gaelic and Irish legends, and has introduced the term North Sea legends. It is not easy to account satisfactorily for these similarities. It may be that some of the motifs and legends are part of a common stock, but there can be little doubt either that the Norse and Gaelic speaking communities influenced one another, and that certain types and sub-types spread in either direction.\n\nWhat is true of folklore is equally true of art and various other cultural motifs. We cannot speak of something like Newgrange without acknowledging that it is pre-Celtic, but the point is well taken - what seems to be elements of common cultural inheritance also seem to pre-date both the Celts and the Scandinavians - as we understand them. The question remains - why do these similarities exist? Diffusion through various periods of contact seems like an obvious answer, but aspects of shared cultural elements seem too deep to be accounted for strictly through diffusion. \n\nI address this to a certain extent in my forthcoming, [\"The Folklore of Cornwall: The Oral Tradition of a Celtic Nation\"](_URL_0_). The following is an excerpt - before the copyeditor makes me seem far smarter than I am (so apologies for any clunky language!):\n\n > Almqvist addresses a question in British studies, looking to those who conclude that Anglo-Saxons invaders gave as much as they took, creating a hybridised society. Almqvist applied this to assist in his life-long study of the interaction of Celtic and Scandinavian folklore. In his essay, ‘Scandinavian and Celtic Folklore Contacts in the Earldom of Orkney’, he attempts to determine which traditions were borrowed and which may represent common inheritance. It is no mean task, but Almqvist writes with authority, having spent decades pondering the question, reading sources in multiple languages to consider possible origins of parallel texts. \n\n > Cornwall presented a similar situation since it encountered not only Anglo-Saxons but also Scandinavians. Cornwall cannot be regarded as the ‘Venice of the North’, as Almqvist characterises the medieval earldom of Orkney; nevertheless, the Cornish nation was also something of a crossroad. While it resisted medieval Anglo-Saxon advances, Cornwall was not as secluded as the hinterland of Wales or north-western, mountainous Caledonia. One would expect that the Cornish had their own oral tradition before the many forces of history had their way. Regardless of how factors affecting lives and culture played out, the folklore of Cornwall certainly exhibits the same common inheritance that Almqvist suggests ‘is part of the explanation of the unity that exists today among the peoples of the British Isles.’\n\nWhat can be said about similarities throughout Britain and Ireland, can be extended effortlessly, also, to Scandinavia and Iceland. In otherwords, yours is an excellent question, and many have pondered the answer(s) with various degrees of success.\n",
"To clarify, I don't just mean 'Celts' and 'Norse/Nords', I mean any and all peoples from Ireland, Britain and Scandinavia. \n\nPrehistoric peoples, Gaelic peoples, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, etc. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.exeterpress.co.uk/en/Book/1068/The-Folklore-of-Cornwall.html"
],
[]
] |
|
u5bzn
|
What is the total population of all life on our planet?
|
I know this would be difficult to calculate because we don't have the population numbers of every single organism on this planet. I specifically am asking for life as in the Animalia kingdom. So, what is the best estimate of the population of life on earth?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/u5bzn/what_is_the_total_population_of_all_life_on_our/
|
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"text": [
"Do you count bacterias? The rest of the animals are just a rounding error for the bacteria population.\n",
"I'm not sure about animals, but if you're interested in all life, prokaryotes outnumber everything else at about [5 * 10^30 members](_URL_0_).\n\nThe [wiki page on biomass](_URL_1_) has some other numbers."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://www.pnas.org/content/95/12/6578.full.pdf",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass_(ecology\\)"
]
] |
|
2tt8jz
|
would 2 equally loud noises combine to make a louder sound? why or why not?
|
Like if i dropped 2 of the same object and they hit the ground at the exact same time...would it be louder than dropping one object?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tt8jz/eli5_would_2_equally_loud_noises_combine_to_make/
|
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"Depends on where you're standing. Sound waves can add or cancel as they mix together.\n\n(That's the science behind noise canceling headphones, which actually create a sound that is opposite in phase to the noise it's cancelling.)",
"Sound travels through air much like ripples in a pond. What would happen if you dropped 2 pebbles in a pond at the same time? You would get spots in the water where the waves would cancel each other out and then some spots where there would be a wave that is twice as big. (see: _URL_0_ with some nifty information). You can think of the crest as the part of the sound wave that is compressing the air and the trough as the part of the sound wave that is decompressing the air. \n\nSo, if you dropped 2 things at the same time, it would be either twice as loud or silent depending on where you were standing. "
]
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|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
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"https://community.emc.com/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/38-3215-27965/interference_water_waves.jpg"
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|
42xfsi
|
Have there ever been mafias/organized crime syndicates in the United States that were German, French, or Scandinavian?
|
More broadly, I'm wondering if there's a specific reason that certain ethnic groups (Italian, Russian, and Irish) are associated with organized crime syndicates more often than others?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/42xfsi/have_there_ever_been_mafiasorganized_crime/
|
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"There has been one case of plagiarism, several jokes, and a number of contentless posts offered up as \"answers\" to the OP's question.\n\nThis is AskHistorians. We ask that your answers be in-depth, comprehensive, and such that an historian might give. You should also be able to back your post with proper sources if requested. If you cannot provide an answer that meets our requirements, please refrain from posting. We prefer no answer to speculation, educated guesswork, jokes or memes.\n\nThank you.",
"Historically, the Jewish mob is probably the closest to what you're looking for. Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Arnold Rothstein, all mainly known for their connection to early Italian mafia outfits but they were in somewhat ethnic jewish gangs in their own right. There's a problem of differentiation because they generally were connected to Italian mob outfits, and the larger scale criminal endeavors were joint endeavors. Similar to nowadays with the Mexican mafia using central American gangs for certain jobs. Early American crime wasn't based on drug trafficking and before prohibition was primarily centered around gambling (gambling parlors as well as local lottery pools) and paying for protection. Meyer Lansky in his early years was well known for his gambling parlor, specifically it was known to be less likely to be rigged (he relied on more modern understanding of odds) and Rothstein was famously believed to have rigged the world series. \n\nAnother group of famous ethnic gangs are the collection of tong and triad found in San Francisco's Barbary coast/Chinatown. It's tricky to discuss because membership wasn't as regimented, a member of one tong could be a member of up to around 6. This made gang conflicts much trickier. Now in San Francisco (and portland) the main criminal organizations were focused on roughly the same as the Italian and jewish, but with a much weaker focus on sports betting. Opium smuggling/parlors and prostitution were very much a point of wealth. Particularly women were essentially treated as a commodity, around 1880s-1910s (the exact time escapes me) the Chinese male to female ratio was often close to 20:1 due to immigration policies of the day against the Chinese (Chinese exclusion act and the geary act) . This led to a pretty large black market for Chinese women, often a woman could be held as a sorta bank note between rival tong during war/deals. There were severe ramifications of a Chinese man bedding a white woman, even a prostitute, due to the craze of the yellow peril. \n\nSources: \n\nHerbert Astbury's the Barbary coast. \n\n_URL_0_ - a collection of archival news articles. \n\nHatchet men: the story of the tong wars by Richard dillon\n\nNOTE: I'm not a historian so I can't tell you whether the sources are considered_good_ sources by the historian community. But they seemed generally well researched in my amateur view. I believe Hatchet men is primarily sourced from historic police files (and all the biases contained within). I used them to write a screenplay a couple years ago about a turn of the century gang war. \n",
"Can I expand the original question to ask about Polish syndicates? \n\nI know there were Poles and Polish-Americans who clashed with Al Capone (like [Hymie Weiss](_URL_0_)), but I don't know if there was any kind of organization, or if they just happened to grow up in the same neighborhoods as other gangsters. ",
"There was the French connection, which sold heroin on the US market. Heroin was smuggled from Turkey to the US through the French port Marseille, where they operated. I don't know if it's a satisfactory answer as the leaders themselves operated from France (they were from Corsica by the way) but that is the only recognized French crime organization known to have operated in the US. ",
"The reason traditional organized crime groups tend to be from certain ethnic backgrounds (Irish, Italian, Russian, Jewish) is because these groups comprised of immigrants who were considered outsiders from mainstream American society (i.e. \"non-white\") during the time when most of them immigrated (1800's). The immigrants tended to be poor and lived in slums, most notably in New York City.\n\nSince these immigrants were considered outsiders, many of them tended to band together to illegally make money since it was hard for them to find work at a decent wage due to their ethnic background. New York City street gangs were primarily dominated by Jewish and Irish organized crime until the influx of immigrants from Southern Italy and Sicily from the 1880's onward. The immigrants from Southern Italy and Sicily were so used to thousands of years of oppression and poverty and tended to only trust people from their immediate family and people from their town. The early founders of the Bonanno Family in New York is a good example of this because they tended to be mostly from Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily and didn't trust people who were from other parts of Sicily.\n\nAfter Italy unified in the 1860's much of Southern Italy and Sicily was left unguarded from police and the government for many years, which led to the creation and rise of the Mafia in the vacuum. The Mafia is unique because of how much family blood ties, culture, and distrust of government permeates throughout the culture. When the immigrants through Southern Italy and Sicily arrived in the US, they soon became the dominant criminal group. Where NYC had been controlled by the Irish and Jewish gangs the clannish nature and ruthlessness of the Italians soon led them to take over the majority of organized crime, so much so that the few remaining groups of non-Italian gangs were soon forced to either align with the Italians or have their rackets taken from them. \n\nAnother big reason for the strength of the Italian groups in the US is the members frequently brought in their sons into the Mafia to strengthen group loyalty, whereas it was a lot less common in Jewish groups to bring in family members. This is still very prominent in the current mafia groups in Sicily, Naples (known as The Camorra), and Calabria (known as the 'Ndràngheta). You'll see lots of intermarrying between mafia groups: Mafia sons marrying mafia daughters. Examples in the US: Joe Bonanno's son Bill was married to Thomas Lucchese's daughter. In fact, the Sicilians are notorious for first cousins marrying each other, Carlo Gambino's wife Catherine Castellano Gambino (Paul Castellano's sister) was reportedly his first cousin. All of these things strengthen the blood ties of the criminal family and increase loyalty.\n\n**As far as French, German, or Scandinavian crime groups:**\n\nThis depends on how you define \"organized crime.\" It's possible there's evidence of groups from these ethnic backgrounds committed crimes in unison, though whether they'd be considered organized crime depends on how loosely you'd define that term. There was evidence of white, anglo-saxons committing bootlegging during prohibition, complete with bribery of police officers and politicians, but there's not much else that I've found so far *[source: Ken Burns' Prohibition]*.\n\nYou're more likely to find evidence of non-Italians who were associates of the Italian Mafia in the US, as opposed to running their own gangs. Examples of this include: Frank Schweihs, aka \"The German\", in the Chicago Outfit or Joseph Watts with the Gambino Family in New York. Others outside the US include many French-Canadians in Montreal, Raynald Desjardins (French-Canadian) and his lieutenant Juan Fernandez (a Spaniard), being the most notorious. Both of these men worked with the Rizzuto Family, an Italian group in Montreal.\n\nPlease let me know if you'd like any more context or if you have any questions.\n\n*[More sources: \"The First Family\" by Mike Dash, \"Cosa Nostra\" by John Dickie, \"Five Families\" by Selwyn Raab, \"The Sixth Family\" by Adrian Humphreys, and \"Mafia Inc.\" by Andre Cedilot]*",
"Swedish Fredrik Lundin built a crime syndicate in Chicago that was taken over later by Al Capone in the 1920s and was also a republican congressman.\n\n\nGustav Skogens (2011). \"Svensk styrde Chicago före Al Capone\". Allt om historia (1/2011): p.46–49"
]
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[] |
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[
[],
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|
3qow2p
|
since essentially everything nowadays causes cancer, should we just assume that we still don't really know what causes it?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qow2p/eli5_since_essentially_everything_nowadays_causes/
|
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"Here's the thing with cancer: at its most basic level, whether or not you get cancer comes down to statistics and randomness. Cancer happens when you get a combination of mutations that cause a cell to reproduce continuously, avoid cell-suicide, infiltrate other tissues, etc. All a carcinogen is is a substance believed to increase the odds of such a combination of mutations occurring. Thing is, you could be a lifelong smoker, eat tons of processed meats, regularly get exposed to radiation, and yet never develop cancer just because you were lucky enough to never have the right mutation combination in the same cell at the same time. Conversely, you could do everything right and still get cancer due to a simple transcription error during cell reproduction. \n\nBecause of this inherent randomness, it's *extremely* difficult to predict and understand which substances actually create a significantly increased risk of developing cancer.",
"What? No, we should not assume that. We know exactly why cancer starts. \n\nOur bodies can fight off cell damage that becomes cancer... ususally. Cancer is only a problem when the backup plans our cells have fail to work correctly. \n\nStuff we identify as carcinogenic (cancer causing) are things that damage cell DNA, which is the mechanism for cancer. The more damage sustained, the more likely our cells won't be able to deal with the damage. \n\n",
"Basically cancer is when a chemical reaction damages a chunk of DNA in such a way that it causes flawed cell copies to be created which no longer self terminate.\n\nThe problem is damn near everything causes chemical reactions. We are creatures of chemistry. Things are determined to be carcinogenic by a larger than normal tendency to cause the sort of chemical reactions that could conceivably lead to the wrong sort of cell damage.\n\nBut you could eat tons of carcinogenic stuff, and not get cancer (like the smoker who lives to 110), and you could eat very little carcinogenic stuff, and get cancer. There are a ton of random factors involved.",
"You've stated two poor assumptions as well as a false relationship between them. We know precisely several mechanisms which cause or contribute to cancer development, e.g. loss of immune surveillance, disinhibition of growth factors, etc. There are numerous known carcinogens, but not all substances are thought to cause cancer, and some actually reduce its incidence. There must also be considered the matter of degree. Daily intake of processed meat increases incidence of colorectal carcinoma by about 20%, whereas daily smoking increases lung cancer risk about 3000%.",
"\"Cancer\" is not just one thing, one \"it\": _URL_0_",
"I don't really get the logic of why you think your assumption follows your premise. Also, it's not like nowadays everything causes cancer, it's just that we only know about it now.\n\nHere's what I think you are trying to say: since essentially everything is now known to cause cancer, should we just do whatever we want because avoiding all of the risk factors would be too restrictive on our daily life choices?",
"Cancer, despite most people's impression of it, isn't actually one disease. It's HUNDREDS, maybe THOUSANDS, of diseases. It's like...a greyhound and a chihuahua are both dogs, but if someone called them the same type of dog, people would LOL. Cancer researchers and oncologists LOL a bit at the whole \"cure cancer\" thing because of this. We can and have cured *some* kinds of cancer, but there's probably never going to be a single cure for *all* cancers.\n\n\n\nAny cancer, though, as u/notmiefault explained, is ultimately the result of *some* kind of series of mutations. Just one mutation is not enough. Most people carry mutant genes that put them at increased risk of cancer, but barring *subsequent* mutations, or epigenetic/environmental shenanigans, not everyone with the risky mutant genes will develop cancer.\n\n\n\nThe \"everything nowadays causes cancer\" should really be looked at as \"this specific thing is linked with developing this specific cancer.\" And, since a lot of cancers are rare and/or not a lot of people have underlying risks of that particular cancer, the risk of getting it could go from 0.0001% to 0.001%. Media would sell this as \"coffee drinking increases risk of cancer ten-fold!\" But that's really misleading, because it was rare to begin with.\n\n\n\nTo answer your question, though, we *do* know what causes cancer. Mutations in a cell's DNA that lead to the cell: \n\n\n* Replicating faster than other cells of its type \n\n* Becoming resistant to death and the body's attempts to kill it\n\n* Gaining the ability to move from that cell's normal area in the body and take over in new types of tissue (metastasis - lung tissue shouldn't be able to set up shop in bones, but lung cancer can). \n\n\n\nSome cancers are defined specifically by which genes go wrong (retinoblastoma = retinoblastoma protein, lots of leukemias = specific chromosomes got squished together in ways they shouldn't, aka a chromosomal translocation). Other cancers, there are several possible mutations that lead to basically the same outcome/kind of cancer, or the same mutation can lead to different cancers depending on which cells it springs up in.\n\n\n\nThen, some cancers are caused by viruses getting freaky with cells' DNA - HPV and cervical cancer, for example.\n\n\n\nSo, we know what causes cancer in basically most cases, or we can figure it out. The really interesting questions, though, and the ones people looking for treatments and cures to specific cancers are interested in, are:\n\n\n* If in two people with the same underlying risk, one develops cancer and another doesn't, what protected the cancer free person, and can we apply it to other people? \n\n* Not all cancers of the same type, like breast cancer, are caused by the same mutation, so can we tailor drugs specific to the mutation the individual has, and get better outcomes? \n\n\n\n**Edit:** Formatting",
"What? Your question is so... \n\nOK, basically it is the complete opposite of what you are suggesting. \n\nThe more we find that causes cancer, the more we know about what causes cancer.\n\nDo you see how obvious that statement is?",
"It's an interesting debate and i see that \"random factors\" are mentioned as possible triggers and pollution is also a factor. I would postulate that these \"random factors\" are of increased significance due to environmental changes and man made factors. The most obvious being the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons prevalent last century. I'm curious if there is a correlation between that activity and cancer rates worldwide? Does anyone know if cancer rates increased dramatically after World War 2 or if they have stayed roughly similar between the pre WW2 non-nuclear and post WW2 nuclear ages?",
"Cancer is not one disease.\n\nCancer is a group of diseases which have in common that a mass of cells in the body is \"freeloading\"\n\nThey take space and nutrition without contributing to the bodies functions, eventually causing problems for other important systems which wont function properly anymore.\n\n\nAnother thing that can be said in general about cancers is that they are mutated cells which do not get removed by the bodies own immune system.\nYou have mutations everyday, millions of them, but your body can handle it fine.\nOnce your body cannot handle the load of mutated cells, a mass which we named tumor develops.\nIf those are masses are growing fast, they are dangerous. Also called malign tumors.\n\nNow, for some types of cancers we know the causes as there is a correlations with specific infections for specific types of cancers. \nFor example a certain HPV virus strain is responsible for ovarian cancer.\n\nFor most cancers we dont really know what the cause is since the huge amount of processes in the body are to complex and manifold to be permanently monitored and measured during their regular daytoday routine. Hence a direct correlation is difficult to observe and verify.\n\nCausally we have established links with certain types of substances which our bodies cannot dispose of easily. We named those substances carcinogens as exposure to them statistically increases risk of developing various types of cancers.\n\nCertain types of radiation directly damage chromosomes which leads to mutations when cells divide. Some of which cause malignant tumors.\n \nSo we know, but we dont know.\n\nFurthermore..\n\nRegarding cancer therapy, the new best bet are targeted therapies, but those are far from becoming \"mass market\" standard medical therapies which you will get in your insurance covered hospitals.\n\nThey differ in method and application and are still labeled as experimental. Sometimes even made specifically for the patient from their cells. Which makes them expensive.\n\nAs of now, the current state of standard cancer therapy does not even involve testing the various chemo therapies to the specific individual cancer in question before they are given to the patient.\nRendering them ineffective for many patients...\n\nTherefore targeted therapies are really far away for the regular person/patient/aka consumer without a large war chest of money and competent consulting to even be able to navigate through the huge amount of effective and ineffective therapies available.\n\nThere is no doctor or researcher on this planet who is educated on them all, even if an oncologist would never admit to that fact.\n\nSo that's the overview in short.",
"At this point in history, *life* is cancer. Cancer is the uncontrollable replication of cells, right? Well. 7 billion people in and we still haven't learned.",
"What I don't understand is why everyone feels this need to \"rebel\" against the silly WHO.\n\nThere has been so much criticism while the message is clear.\n\nThe regular consumption of red meat causes a small increase in the chance of getting certain types of cancer, the risk to the individual is in most cases relatively minor, but to large groups of a population it is significant.\n\nIt's just another small bit of evidence that as a society reducing the amount of meat we eat carries a multitude of benefits, not that meat will kill you and we should all become vegetarians or vegans.\n\nThe other thing people seem upset is the WHO's classification system which may be unintuitive, but is not very complicated and when supplemented with additional information is quite helpful.",
"What is cancer - SEVERAL diseases sharing the common trait of rapid cell multiplication.\n\nHow does this happen? - in general when a cell's life cycle comes to an end it enters a stage where it splits (thereby creating new cells). Normally it resumes its intended role in the body (skin, etc) but sometimes the restart button doesn't work and it stays in replication mode - this is now a cancer cell. Luckily our cells also have some kill switches just in-case this happens, nearly every person has cancer cells being destroyed daily by these kill switches. problem arises when just like how the re-start button didn't work, neither does their kill switches - This is when you have what most people consider Cancer.\n\nWhere do carcinogens play into this? well as you see there are a couple steps that turns normal cells into uncontrollable cancer, therefore anything that - reduces cell life cycle, or disrupt the DNA kill switches (among a few other things) are considered carcinogens. The reduction in life cycle is \n\na carcinogen example (numbers are for illustration only not accuracy)- say in theory - all lung cells replicate simultaneously, a normal life span is 1 month, average cancer cell per replication is 1. -- If you are a smoker, the smoke makes the cells in your lungs work 2x as hard, thereby cutting their cell lives in half. instead of a normal 1 lung cell per month you are now dealing with 2 cancer cells a month. In this case you are now doubling you chances of developing cancer. It also helps explain why a person who quit smoking long-term has a similar lung-cancer rate. the cells are no longer stressed and are now replicating at the normal rate.\n\nTL;DR - Cancer is a multi-step process and anything that affects a step in the process, to increase the chance of contracting Cancer is a carcinogen.",
"In addition to other posts, it isn't so much that 'everything nowadays causes cancer,' it more like we are now able to detect that certain things make cancer more likely than if you weren't exposed to them. Cancer isn't new, it has been around and killing people for a very long time. Its just that we are now at a point where we know what it is.",
"We know what causes cancer, mutated DNA that causes a cell to multiply continuously. There isnt only one mutation that can cause this to happen, and eating a banana is enough to cause it. (bananas are radioactive)\n\nI would say we see a great increase in cancer because:\n\nA. We know the cause of death now\n\nB. Widespread increase of carcinogenic chemicals (pesticides, paints, car exhaust, x-rays etc)",
"**tl;dr:** You can safely ignore any claims that a substance tested positive as a carcinogen.\n\n**Full version:** The [Ames test](_URL_1_) uses bacteria to test if substances are mutagens, but it is extremely sensitive and has lots of false positives. On top of that [about two thirds of cancer cases are caused by random mutations during cell division](_URL_2_), so eliminating all carcinogens will only prevent about a third of cancer cases.\n\nAlso, meat being on the list of positives is nothing new. [Here is an old interview with Dr. Ames in a clip about the test's propensity to make us worry about minor issues](_URL_0_), and he mentions hamburgers at around the 3:48 mark.\n\n**tl;dr addendum:** If you want to not get cancer, then don't smoke. If you otherwise want to live a long and healthy life, eat a reasonable balanced diet and exercise regularly.",
"Cancer is inherent as said, its a waiting game. You technically COULD have cancer but cells are removed before or kill themselves (apoptosis) to avoid futher spread and you would never even know. Mutations occur. Accumulated mutations may end up TOGETHER causing a cell to become cancerous. Accumulations may occur by themselves or may be aggravated by exposure certain chemicals and agents. Mutagens as these are called, may affect specific processes in the cell, and these interruptions can be temporary or permanent mutations that can accumulate if not fixed. We do have certain ways of fixing mutations but sometimes it doesnt work or there may be too much damage.\n\nELI5: You get cuts and scrapes, if you dont clean them out and let them accumulate, you can get sick. If you aggravate these wounds by rubbing in dirt, germs, or anything else that isnt to clean the wound, they will only get worse, and eventually you can get really sick or beyond normal fixing of the wounds and need surgery/etc ",
"It's not that *essentially* everything causes cancer.. it's that *literally* everything causes cancer. Just being alive is the primary cause of cancer. \"Cancer\" is mutated cells. It's a safe bet that every person has some \"cancerous tissue\" in their body. Mutated cells are created naturally and constantly through cell division. 99% of the time, your body knows that the cancer doesn't belong and destroys it in favour of creating healthy cells. Sometimes your body doesn't fix the problem and instead duplicates the mutated cells. That's when you \"get cancer\".\n\nStrictly speaking, a person without a single cancerous cell is extremely rare. I have some cancer, you have some cancer, pretty much everyone has some cancer... kinda like how pretty much everyone has some manner of birthmark.\n\nWe should just assume that it's out of our hands and that our time comes when it comes.",
"See, essentially everything doesn't cause cancer. This is not a problem of medicine, it's a problem of the media. \n \nWhen the media talks about cancer as if it's one disease, they're completely wrong. When they talk about something causing cancer, they're also wrong. [Cancer is a whole crapload of different diseases](_URL_0_) that are all cells reproducing uncontrollably. If you get a melanin producing cell doing it, it's melanoma, and completely different to a bone cell (osteioid) doing it, where it would be osteosarcoma. If it spreads to other parts of the body, its behaviour is still like that of the original cancer cell. If you get skin cancer spreading to your brain, it's still skin cancer, just in your brain. However most media still talks about it like it was all one thing, with one cause, which obviously gets confusing. \n \nIf we talked the same way about something with a similar range of causes, and similar variety of treatments, you'd be talking about scientists looking for a cure for \"I've hurt my arm.\" \nIt'd show up how insane some statements are. They might figure out how to deal with a broken bone and the media could report the great advance we've made in curing \"I've hurt my arm\" and be completely oblivious to the fact that this doesn't apply to everyone they've grouped together. They could get completely confused about how smacking your arm with a plaster cast could actually CAUSE \"I've hurt my arm\" as well as curing it, and claim these so called 'scientists' don't know what they're talking about. \n \nSuggesting a cure for cancer makes around as much sense as a cure for \"I've hurt my arm.\" You need to cure hundreds of different things, many of which work in massively different ways. \n \nThe other big isse is that the media cannot describe risk. \n \nThey will say that benzene causes cancer, and say that bacon causes cancer. Rarely do they reference the details of the actual studies, so they give no context that while both increase risks of certain cancers, one of them does so with immensely more potency than the other. Even worse, some things can give increased risks of some cancers, and reduce others. Some things can interact with other things which changes the risks further. In a day you come into contact with a lot of chemicals, especially because [everything is chemicals.](_URL_1_) The media can't fit this into a headline that sells papers, so it flat out ignores most of it, creating the impression that we don't know anything about cancer. \n \ntl;dr We know a lot about what causes it, but it doesn't fit in a headline.",
"Cancer isn't an \"it\" - it's a number of reactions that all amount to unregulated cell growth and division. That's why saying \"a cure for cancer\" is like saying \"a cure for sick\".",
"Short answer: No.\n\nCancer is a disease in which a cell gets a mutation in a critical gene, it reproduces and all of its progeny all contain the mutation, one of those progeny down the line gets a mutation in a second critical gene, now its progeny have mutations in two critical genes, one of those progeny cells acquires a third mutation in a critical gene, etc, etc, etc, until you have an N-th generation cell that has mutations in a minimal set of genes that results in the phenotype (observable behavior ) that we call cancer: 1) sustainable uncontrolled cell growth (i.e. the cells are able to grow into large tumors which can establish their own blood supply and invade surrounding tissue boundaries); and, eventually, 2) the ability to move to different locations in the body (what we call metastasize). \n\nSo, for a given type of cancer, you have to acquire a cell line that contains all of some minimum set of mutations in a critical list of genes.\n\nCancer, therefore, is driven by several things:\n\nIf you ARE BORN with mutations in certain critical genes (for example, one of the genes on the critical list, or another set of genes that are involved in repairing DNA damage) then it will be easier for you to acquire the remaining mutations that result in cancer. Some forms of cancer are driven by a very large extent on heritable genetic factors, some to a lesser degree. Heritable genetic factors usually play a role in forms of cancer that affect young children and in families that have a high incidence of one form of cancer or another.\n\nIf you expose yourself to things that are known to cause a higher rate of DNA mutations, you increase your chance of getting cancer. We all know this. It's why people who spend huge parts of their life in the sun have high rates of skin cancer, why heavy smokers have high rates of lung cancer, and why heavy drinkers have high rates of esophageal/stomach cancer. \n\nYour DNA acquires mutations (damage) even when you live a healthy lifestyle. It's a simple fact of statistical mechanics (i.e. probability-based events that occur at the molecular level). This is why AGE IS THE SINGLE LARGEST RISK FACTOR FOR CANCER. I'll say it again: AGE IS THE LARGEST CONTRIBUTOR TO THE RISK OF ACQUIRING CANCER. I'll say it a third time: THE LONGER YOU LIVE, THE GREATER CHANCE YOU HAVE OF GETTING CANCER.\n\nAs to the risk of getting cancer:\n\nThe largest driver of cancer rates is AGE. Everyone seems to obsess over the minor contributors (pollution, radiation, etc.) while ignoring (or not understanding) the single largest contributor. The reason we see more cases of cancer today than we did 50 or 100 or 200 years ago is because WE LIVE LONGER. \n\nWe all know the major risks associated with cancer: Smoking, heavy drinking, exposure to sun, poor diet, obesity, physical inactivity. \n\nAs to \"essentially everything nowadays causes cancer\":\n\nFirst, anything that causes DNA mutations can, theoretically, contribute to an increase risk of cancer. And you can show - in a dish of cells, in a mouse or rat - that nearly everything (in a large enough amount) causes DNA mutations and/or cancer. Here is a list of things that have been known to cause cancer when administered in a large enough amount: mushrooms, sugar, nitrates (found in bacon and cured meats), ingredients found in toothpaste, shaving cream, and soap, naturally-occurring fungi found on most grains, acetaldehyde (found in most fruits and vegetables), etc.\n\nThis is the crux of toxicology - it's not important that \"nearly everything\" can cause cancer, it's important to understand, what - in in the context of normal everyday living - can realistically contribute to a significant increase in your risk of cancer. This fact is lost on most people. \n\nFor example, you probably read in the news this week that bacon causes cancer. Well, that's true, but consider the following. If you are 18 years old, choosing to smoke a pack of cigarettes per day for the rest of your life will raise your risk of getting lung cancer by 2,500%. That is a big increase in the risk of lung cancer. If you are 18, choosing to eat two slices of bacon each day for the rest of your life raises increases your chance of getting colon cancer from 5% (no bacon) to 6% (2 slices bacon/day). \n\nUnderstanding this risk, you wouldn't view eating bacon as the same as smoking, would you? Sure, both can be shown to cause an increase in the risk of obtaining cancer, but that isn't what is important - is the degree to which each can raise your risk of getting cancer. So while it's true that \"nearly everything [including bacon]\" can cause cancer, it isn't true that \"nearly everything can cause the same risk of getting cancer\".\n\nUnfortunately, both the media an the general public are TERRIBLE at understanding statistics and risk. ",
"A simple metaphor I remember:\n\n > Cancer is like a shitty lottery, but in this lottery everything that can cause your cells to degrade can give you a ticket, but you could have a million tickets and never get a whiff of cancer. Or you could get one ticket and \"win\" immediately. \n\nCancer is, as far as we can tell, caused by cells degrading and the error checking built into the immune system, instead of destroying and replacing, will keep making broken copies.\n\nOversimplified, I know, but close enough."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://cisncancer.org/cancer101/what_is_cancer.html"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://youtu.be/2gI0QqqkfHs?t=2m41s",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ames_test",
"http://consumer.healthday.com/cancer-information-5/mis-cancer-news-102/random-mutations-responsible-for-about-two-thirds-of-cancer-risk-study-695065.html"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1162",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-MA9NKooSk"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
a18tq2
|
why are tickets (to concerts, sports events, etc) purchased through third parties (stubhub, ticketmaster, etc) as opposed to directly from the venue hosting the event?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a18tq2/eli5_why_are_tickets_to_concerts_sports_events/
|
{
"a_id": [
"eanz7uk"
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"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Back in the day you had to buy directly from the venue. You had to get in line and buy paper tickets often having to campout overnight for best seats or for high demand shows. Buying from a ticket seller is much easier for everyone. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
4nw02z
|
us federal income taxes
|
I realize tax law is vastly complicated. I have heard that there are seven tax brackets, but all of your income is not taxed at the same rate? Or if you get a raise you are taxed more?
Can someone explain the general mechanics behind income taxes? How much of your income is taxed and how is this decided?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4nw02z/eli5_us_federal_income_taxes/
|
{
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"d47dh4d"
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"score": [
6
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"text": [
"It is complicated, but the part that throws most people is the progressive tax rate. Think about it that instead of you specifically being taxed at one tax rate, each individual dollar you make is taxed at a changing rate. Let's say the first 10,000 dollars aren't taxed at all, dollars 10,000-20,000 are taxes at %10, and dollars 20,000+ are taxes at 20% (these are made upbrackets).\n\nAmy makes $9,000. The first 10k is not taxed, so Amy owes nothing. If she has been having money withdrawn automatically from her paycheck, she will get it back as a refund.\n\nBob makes $15,000. The first 10k isn't taxed. After that, he has 5k left, which is taxed at 10%, so Bob owes $500.\n\nCharlie makes 25,000. The first 10k isn't taxed. The next 10k is taxed at 10% = $1000. The remaining money is taxed at 20%. 20% of 5k also - $1000. So Charlie's total tax bill is $2,000.\n\nDebbie uses deductions to her total income. She makes $25,000, the same as Charlie. However, she is able to make $5,000 of it tax deductible, which means it is not taxable income. So instead of $25,000, the IRS treats it like she made $20,000. As we saw above, the first 10k is untaxed, the next 10k is taxed at 10%, so she only pays $1000."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
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gupi1
|
How do surgeons sew arteries together?
|
Or tendons, nerves, and the like? [This video prompted my question.](_URL_0_)
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/gupi1/how_do_surgeons_sew_arteries_together/
|
{
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"c1qicew",
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3,
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"text": [
"I'm really hoping someone will answer your question.\n\nAnd if you'll allow me to make a related comment: Does anyone know of a freely available source the general public can learn about surgical procedures *in detail*? I mean... say you take someone's intestines out. *How do you know how to fold them back in?*",
"Pretty much exactly as you'd expect. They just use really small stitches. \n\nThere are an immense number of necessary tricks and techniques, like how to pull the ends together without tearing through the tissue, and how to maintain the blood supply while you're moving stuff around. But at the most basic level it's just really teeny sewing.\n\nIf you have a more specific question, I could probably find a resource to refer you to"
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/gu9ev/hand_transplant_science_fuck_yeah/"
] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
1sfqd3
|
the negative effects of the industrial revolution
|
(I'm not sure if this is the right subreddit, feel free to redirect me)
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sfqd3/eli5_the_negative_effects_of_the_industrial/
|
{
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"text": [
"Immediate or long term?\n\nThe immediate negative effects was the lowering of living standards (today we have higher living standards because of it). Working hours increased, deaths due to injury increased, pollution shot through the roof.\n\nLong term is, well, still the pollution. ",
"There were unsafe working conditions. \nDramatic rise in urbanization. \nLiving conditions were awful. Diseases spread like wildfire. \nRidiculous environmental degradation.",
"Thanks, I know that all of these happened in America from books about it, but I forgot to mention that I'm curious about the effects on Britain and the rest of Europe. Did this negative effects still effect Britain?"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
34m8up
|
why are motorcycle helmets so heavy when the human neck is comparatively fragile?
|
Whenever I've worn a motorcycle helmet, I've often been surprised at how heavy it was compared to my neck which keeps it up. I've imagined that if the helmet spun around, the weight of it would snap my neck. Why aren't they made just as durable but lightweight?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34m8up/eli5_why_are_motorcycle_helmets_so_heavy_when_the/
|
{
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"cqvzblq",
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"text": [
"Now think about what happens in a car wreck. The body is fastened to the car via seat belt so in an accident, the neck is the moving part which gives you whiplash. In a motorcycle accident , your entire body is in motion as you flail across the horizon to your new destination. So there is no worry of whiplash in a sense. Easy way of putting: most people prefer a heavy helmet that can cause a neck injury over your head being split open and brain matter all over the road. ",
"The point of a motorcycle helmet isn't to be durable, it's to protect the skull from impact. It does that by providing extra space between a person's head and the road, slowing the deceleration. It needs a lot of material to do that. Also, they're usually designed to break on impact, in order to absorb energy during a crash.\n\nI recently listened to a presentation on motorcycle helmet safety testing, and it seems that neck injuries like you describe are less of a cause for concern than protecting from impacts at different angles."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
4w395y
|
how did bugs such as bees and ants come to have "queens"? how did physiologically different creature originate but remain the same species? why is there no "queen" human?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4w395y/eli5_how_did_bugs_such_as_bees_and_ants_come_to/
|
{
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"Efficiency!\n\nA small number of specialized *breeding caste* is enough to supply eggs for the whole hive. Keep in mind the queen is not *in charge*, she is just another specialized caste like workers or soldiers or drones. \n\nWorker bees can override and evict a queen if circumstances require, and some ant nests have multiple queens.\n\nThere are other sorts of bees or wasps that live in much smaller groups, like a bumblebee queen that only has a nest with half a dozen brood cells or hunting wasps that make a nest for one baby at a time.",
"In some ways, _all_ human females are \"queens\", because the queens are the fertile ones that do the reproduction. It's really the worker class that is the unusual innovation of bees and ants.",
" > Why is there no \"Queen\" Human?\n\nElizabeth II, Margret II, Margaret (a different one), Máxima, Mathilde and a bunch of others would like a word with you. \n\n",
"Here's a better way to think of it:\n\nAnts are cells with legs.\n\nYou have many types of cells -- muscle, skin, brain -- that comes from the same genome. Ants do too, but they divide their energies into lots of units that can walk around, whereas we kind of make one big mobile colony and walk it around.\n\nKind of a trip, but humans and ants actually weigh about the same, in terms of the sheer mass of life on the planet for each.",
"There's one thing that still needs to be answered, how come we don't have queens.\n\nQueens are dedicating to producing offspring, this is all they ever really do. Fundamentally, this is because sex-determinism in ants and bees is very different from humans. Human males have both an 'X' and a 'Y' chromosome whereas females have two 'X' chromosomes, but males are similar to females in all other aspects. On the other hand, male bees however are Haploid, meaning they only have half the chromosomes that females have.\n\nEvolutionary, your only objective is to propagate your genes, create as many offspring as possible. Haplodiploidy means that female bees are more closely related to their sisters than they could possibly be to their own children. Thus it makes sense for them, evolutionary speaking, to invest resources in raising more sisters rather than raising children of their own. This is why we don't have queens.",
"This basically comes down to how you reproduce: Here's a quick overview of the different options:\nFirst, we have cell division or asexual reproduction. This only works for organisms that consist of one cell. They copy their Genes and other parts of the cell and then simply split into two identical cells(if no mutation happens). \n\nThen we have sexual reproduction, what all multicelled organisms do. You take two members of a species and each provides a random half of their genes to form a new set of genes.\n\nHow exactly you go about the second one can vary greatly. We humans are pretty simple: Any member of the species is fully sexually developed after a few years and can reproduce at basically any time. Most other animals, especially mammals, can only reproduce during certain timeframes(You may have heard people talking about a cat or dog being \"in heat\", that means the animal is able to reproduce). Animals like ants(So-called eusocial animals) go about this in a more complicated way. At certain periods, fertile male and female ants are produced by feeding the larva a certain way and thus influencing their development unil they are grown up. These fertile individuals have wings and all go out to mingle at the same time. Femals find a male and collect and store a large amount of semen. Then they find a good place to found a hive and begin producing eggs and fertilize them with the semen they've stored. These eggs produce females who are infertile by default, and these become workers. The queens job from now on is only to produce eggs, which the workers take care of. Eventually, some of these eggs are given special food that makes them become potential new queens. Remember, the eggs and their genes are identical, it's the special treatment that makes these eggs become queens. How are males produced? These happen when the queen lays eggs but doesn't fertilize them. These dudes are only there to provide semen to queens and then quickly die off.\n\nSo to sum up, individuals of the same species can come out differently because of their different development due to outside factors such as food. This happens to any organism, to some degree: If you're not fed enough while you're young or if your mother smokes while she's pregnant, you're going to come out differently, even though your genes didn't change at all. These types of animals simply use this to their advantage.\n\nBonus fact: There's actually a mammalian species that's eusocial: The naked mole-rat. Not much to look at, but they also have a \"queen\" that produces kids while keeping other female members of the hive infertile.\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
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] |
||
8a588c
|
what makes deer/moose antlers symmetrical?
|
Straightforward question, since they’re like bones I was wondering why they don’t grow asymetrical. Also, they’re probably not exactly symmetrical but at first glace they are, and that is what I mean. Thank you
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8a588c/eli5_what_makes_deermoose_antlers_symmetrical/
|
{
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"dww5dbe"
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"text": [
"A symmetrical set of antlers are called typical, as opposed to a set of non typical which are not symmetrical. Antlers are \"shed\" and regrow every single year, a mature rocky mountain elk can grow 1 1/2\" in mass a day during the peak. What trips me out about antlers... during the antler growth they're covered in skin and hair with lots of blood, the antler can become injured creating a deformity in the antler. This deformity will recur every subsequent year! The DNA for the shape of the antler changes and remembers that injury, how the heck does that happen! "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
3jztiq
|
How do technological changes affect musical styles?
|
I hope this question is answerable and not too vague or too much of a "throughout history" question. I was listening to a program on BBC 6 Music the other day about early music using samples. The invention of the sampler made sampling a lot easier, but there are examples predating the sampler.
That got me thinking about how technology has influenced and enabled musical styles. I don't mean how music responds to the idea technology (eg. Chicago House as a response to industrial rhythms) but how much the use of new technology impacts musical styles. There are obvious genres of modern music that couldn't exist without certain technologies (what's a rock concert without amplification and electric guitars or disco?). It seems the relationship is most obvious in popular music.
How much does this apply to older music?
Looking at the development of western classical music, could the Rite of Spring have been composed for an 18th century orchestra? What would Bach have done if the pianoforte had been developed earlier? How has amplification or recording affected classical music?
Bonus question: are there overlooked technologies that are crucial to changes in music? The acoustics of cathedrals? New ways of making strings from catgut?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3jztiq/how_do_technological_changes_affect_musical_styles/
|
{
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"You're asking kind of a lot of questions here. Typically classical music developed and changed with technology. \n\nTake Baroque instruments, for example. You have [Baroque Horns](_URL_0_) with no valves, so they can only play in a handful of keys, and can't play scales, chromatics, and so on, so what you write for them is very limited based on the ability of the instrument. Same with writing for a harpsichord. It can't play any dynamics, can't play sustained notes, and so on, so you are writing within the constraints of the instrument. \n\nAs for writing in the baroque era, there was no formal agreement on what constituted an orchestra, it was just however many musicians you happened to be able to afford. As such, the music in the baroque era was very flexible, by necessity. A part for flute could easily be played by oboe, or recorder, or likely even violin. Ornamentation was never written in because it would always be improvised by each individual player. \n\nAs for bass instruments, you had what is called a [Figured Bass](_URL_1_) or Basso Continuo wherein there was never a written bass part that you played note for note. You were given the chord numbers of what was going on in the piece, and whoever was playing the bass part would completely improvise bass line around that. Whether it was an organ, or a Viola de Gamba, or a harpsichord, or whatever you had on hand. \n\nThe music was extremely versatile and flexible, but it was more so due to necessity. \n\nAs you get into the classical era, the instruments keep developing, and all the winds gain the ability to play full chromatic scales, and the orchestras get larger, and the complement becomes more standard. So you lose the figured bass lines, and you see composers write pieces that are more complex for the newer, more versatile instruments. You also see pieces that are more fixed to their instrument - a flute concerto from the Classical era likely wouldn't ever be played on any other instrument, as it was written specifically for the flute. \n\nThen you get into the Romantic period, and the instruments keep getting better. At this time you also see much larger works, bigger orchestras, grander operas with massive casts, works for hundreds of players and singers. At this time the orchestra was getting larger, and composers must have assumed that this growth would continue, so you see works like the [Mahler's 8th Symphony](_URL_2_) known as the \"Symphony of a thousand\", written for double orchestra (plus lots of additional instruments that are not normally in an orchestra), 8 soloists, double choir, children's choir, 2 brass choirs, and full cathedral organ. It's an insane amount of people. (wicked fun to perform, though)\n\nSo, what would have happened if Mahler wrote this in 1702? First off, most of the instruments he was writing for existed in very primitive forms and wouldn't have been able to play a good chunk of the notes written for them. Some hadn't even been invented, like the [Celesta](_URL_3_). Next, you would have had to empty the entire country of musicians just to be able to find enough to play the piece (and somehow find the money to pay them). Then you're dealing with a style of music that no one had ever heard. It would be like playing Bob Marley or Tom Waits. No one would get it. \n\nMusic progresses, but not as quickly as we think. Tastes do change, but it's a gradual change where you add a few new elements to an already established, known, and popular formula. To take a totally unknown style and throw it into a different era, would likely scare and confuse the hell out of people. \n\nRite of Spring is an excellent example. A piece of music that went way beyond the boundaries of what audiences expected, and what was \"good taste\". As a result, there was a riot in which the police were called. The audiences of the 20th century weren't ready for a piece like that. ",
" > Looking at the development of western classical music, could the Rite of Spring have been composed for an 18th century orchestra? \n\nThat kind of question doesn't make a lot of sense. It's like asking if a Mexican girl could just, out of nowhere, start reciting a Korean translation of Pushkin while building a microwave, in her room. In principle, her anatomy allows her to do that, but she would need the background, the knowledge and the tools to do all that (not to mention the motivation).\n\nIt doesn't make much sense to even ask that for a composer of the same period. Could Schoenberg compose the Rite of Spring? Even if we know Schoenberg's music and interests were completely different to that, it's just speculation that won't take us very far.\n\n18th century music has very little in common with The Rite of Spring...\n\n > What would Bach have done if the pianoforte had been developed earlier? \n\nAgain, speculation. Bach did know the early pianoforte. At first, it was a rather experimental instrument (and it was quite expensive). [This is probably the oldest surviving piano we have](_URL_0_) (the first ones came about 20 years before, when Bach was in his teens). It's not like Bach had any rush to switch because the harpsichord was serving him well. [He actually had two with gut strings](_URL_1_) (instead of the normal metal ones) by the time of his death. The man liked what he liked, and he was into rather conservative stuff. This Italian dude was making these instruments, so what? There was also this Frenchie suggesting a new way to think about music... Why should he pay attention to them? \n\n > How has amplification or recording affected classical music?\n\nYes, probably. We can compare our performances to others from the past. Music is no longer so ephemeral! We have a growing collection of performances, young musicians are exposed to way more performance ideas than in the past. Everybody can listen to orchestras and performers from all over the world, our taste is no longer based just in our local context.\n\nGuitar players play with orchestras more often because of amplification (\"for better or worse,\" some people would say). \n\n > Bonus question: are there overlooked technologies that are crucial to changes in music? The acoustics of cathedrals? New ways of making strings from catgut?\n\nArchitectural acoustics is a topic most musicians are not familiar with, but it has been discussed both in musicology and acoustics. Instrument makers (working on very old instruments) have started working on new techniques and designs in the last decades. Now that they can make functional \"historical\" instruments, they have tried to make some experiments. I don't know if there are new techniques to make gut strings.\n\nI am not that much into organology to say \"yes, there are some overlooked things and I am researching them.\" However, people doing historical research find and/or propose the darndest things."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.aswltd.com/egghorn.jpg",
"http://www.wmich.edu/mus-gened/mus170/170notes/170prepweek5W_files/image002.png",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSYEOLwVfU8",
"http://www.britannica.com/art/celesta"
],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2WdjyKQ57A",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woh8UHdjl1M"
]
] |
|
3amojp
|
why is the prices of games going up in canada even though the dollar has remained the same for about a year.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3amojp/eli5why_is_the_prices_of_games_going_up_in_canada/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cse15pj"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"There is an ever increasing competition between game makers, and the cost of development is increasing."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
4wp1qe
|
if i try to hit a small insect, e.g. a fruit fly, with my hand at high speed, will i hit it or will the air which my hand pushes in front of it will save the insect?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4wp1qe/eli5_if_i_try_to_hit_a_small_insect_eg_a_fruit/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d68sflo"
],
"score": [
6
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"text": [
"The air in front of it will actually be hitting it itself if you swing hard enough. Of course this is way faster than your hand can really go on its own. So it depends on what you mean by 'high speed'.\n\nThat's why the space shuttle coming down from space catches fire. Not from friction, but by pushing the air so hard in front of it that it hits more air hard enough that it glows and gets super hot.\n\nIf you had some kind of superhuman punch the force from the punch could hit the fly with air molecules hard enough to kill it well before your fist made contact.\n\nHave your punch go fast enough and you could turn the air into superheated plasma that would vaporize the fly. But at that point your hand has become a fist shaped weapon of mass destruction. As you'd be vaporizing everything in a vaguely cone shape for a large distance.\n\nOf course, with a slow enough human hand speed, the air currents are likely pushing the fly away, because you're not moving the air fast enough to make it damage the fly. And your hand isn't moving fast enough to damage the fly. And because the fly is so small it will absorb way less kinetic energy from your hand than say, somebody's face.\n\nAt THIS speed, the air is doing you a disfavor, and that's why the air holes in a fly swatter help it snap down fast enough. But even a fly swatter hitting a fly will often not harm it. It's the impact against the fly swatter and the wall the fly is on that crushes it."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
4927xa
|
in a microwave, can i heat my food on half the heat for twice the time?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4927xa/eli5_in_a_microwave_can_i_heat_my_food_on_half/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d0og8bb"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Pretty much that is what you can do. You can also in a sense turn it into a slow cooker if you set the power low enough. I do not know if your power level goes low enough, or why you want to do this at all.\n\nI use mine to prepare fine chicken soup inside ten minutes using things from the refrigerator and freezer. Frozen vegetables do well this way as do noodles kept at room temperature. Seven minutes in the microwave at regular setting and I have better soup than Raman ever made."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
1kq15k
|
how do throttleable rocket engines work?
|
How are liquid fueled rocket engines able to produce variable thrust? Why can they only do this within a certain range?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kq15k/eli5_how_do_throttleable_rocket_engines_work/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cbrgi8d"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Simply put you alter the fuel flow using pumps on the fuel line. More fuel means more thrust being generated in the combustion chamber.\n\nDue to the inability of the pumps to work arbitrarily fast and the inability of the combustion chamber to handle all fuel combusting simultaneously you have an upper limit on how much you can put out per unit time."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
5m76k4
|
why does shaking (like in a train or bus) and rocking a baby's crib help us sleep?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5m76k4/eli5_why_does_shaking_like_in_a_train_or_bus_and/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dc1cygs"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"I am going to take a dig at this. I think the exact word you are looking for is \"Rocking to sleep\".\n\nAs to why Rocking helps us sleep, it is a matter of brain waves.\n\nFirstly, we have been put to sleep a hundred times since our birth by gentle swinging motions of our parents. Hence our **brain associates these gentle movements to a relaxing environment**. As a result, we feel a little less stressed and calm, the perfect conditions for inducing sleep.\n\nNow comes the question: Why do babies rock to sleep in the first place? I read about it a while back, so I might not be accurate here. It is still poorly understood, but the bottom line is, **any sort of slow rhythmic movement is sleep inducing**. The reason is that our brain is made to respond to any stimuli. This is an evolutionary trait, and is one of the most important traits in our survival as a species. While observing a slow rhythmic movement, our brain functions at a much slower rate than if it was observing a random fast paced movement. Since there is nothing much new to intake, that means nothing much new to process. *Same input, same output, less processing*. This applies to all the senses: sight, hearing and so on. Hence our brain functions at a slower rate, which is the ideal condition for sleeping.\n\nAnother reason is that, rhythmic movement **calms down our Amygdala - the part of the brain which responds to fear**. Since Amygdala is a key element in the sleep-wake cycle, calming it down is one of the foremost tasks before sleep.\n\nSo there it is. Hope I have remembered it well.\n\nNote: Rocking does not only put us to sleep, it also helps us to sleep deeply.\n\nP.S. This is my first comment on Reddit, please be gentle.\n\nEdit: The article I read was probably about this study: _URL_0_. You can check this out. It more or less states the above."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(11)00539-2"
]
] |
||
l5y7v
|
why couldn't you lose weight by just not eating until you were thin?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/l5y7v/eli5_why_couldnt_you_lose_weight_by_just_not/
|
{
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"Your body can't produce all of the various things it needs to function properly on it's own. That's why we eat: it provides us with energy, as well as vitamins, proteins, etc, that we otherwise wouldn't have (but still need). If you simply stop eating, you're starving your body of that fuel. You'd become very sick, mainly because your body would start shutting down non-essential functions as it switched into starvation mode. Your immune system would be compromised, and it'd become very easy to get ill on top of your already ailing body. \n\nYou'd definitely lose weight, but become very sick in the process, and it's very dangerous. Safer to just stick with calories in < calories out. Your body NEEDS at least 1200-1500 calories a day (depending on the individual).",
"Because of the starvation response.\n\nYour body is meant to be digesting food pretty much all the time. It's the constant digestion of food that supplies your brain with glucose.\n\nIf you go without eating at all long enough for your digestive system to stop producing glucose — anywhere from six to twenty-four hours, depending — your body will start metabolizing something called glycogen. Glycogen is a substance your body stores in your liver and your muscles and which can be broken down in your liver to make glucose.\n\nWhen the liver starts breaking down glycogen, your body notices, and the regulatory endocrine system starts releasing a variety of hormones that get picked up by your liver and your digestive system in general.\n\nThis *hurts.* It's very unpleasant, like feeling hungry only more so. Headache, muscle and joint pain, irritability and generally feeling extra-emotional … it all adds up to a *profound* urge to eat.\n\nBut you can ignore it. It's not crippling or anything; it doesn't leave you writhing in agony. It just puts getting some food at the very top of your list of priorities, is all. If you choose to ignore it — or if you have no choice, because you don't have access to food, like if you're on a liferaft in the middle of the ocean or something — your body initiates what's called the *starvation response.*\n\nWhen your body gets to the point where no more glucose is available from the digestive system or the liver, anywhere from a day and a half to three days after last eating, your *body* switches over to metabolizing fatty acids, and your *brain* switches over to primarily metabolizing ketone bodies. Your metabolism as a whole slows down because less energy is available — fatty acids and ketone bodies aren't as good a supply of energy as glucose is — which also has the effect of conserving what energy reserves you have left. Your body does begin digesting your own adipose tissue deposits — that is, at this point you do begin losing weight — but it happens *very* slowly, much more slowly than it would happen if the starvation response hadn't kicked in.\n\nBut there's a bigger problem. See, your body is now *mainly* running off fatty acids and ketone bodies, but it still needs a trickle of glucose to stay alive. Ordinarily, when your metabolism is normal and you aren't starving, you need about 200 grams of pure glucose a day just to live. After the starvation response kicks in, that requirement drops to just about 30 grams a day. Your body can synthesize glucose out of the byproducts of fatty acid metabolism, but that only adds up to about *20* grams a day. You still need ten more … and to get it, your body begins metabolizing proteins. Proteins are long chains of amino acids, and your body can make glucose out of amino acids in your liver. So your body begins eating its own core structures.\n\nTo synthesize one gram of glucose in your liver, your body has to break down about three grams of protein. While in starvation, your body needs to make about ten grams of glucose a day from protein, so that means your body loses about 30 grams of protein a day. This mostly comes from your big skeletal muscles.\n\nSo yes, by starving yourself you are indeed losing weight … but not in the way you wanted to. In addition to burning off body fat, you're also breaking down and digesting your own muscles, which *hurts!* It's *extremely* painful! And because your metabolism as a whole is slowed dramatically by starvation, you just have to endure that discomfort *longer* to lose a given amount, in pounds, of body fat.\n\nSo yes, you can in principle just stop eating to lose weight. But it's the slowest and most agonizingly painful way to do it.",
"Your body can't produce all of the various things it needs to function properly on it's own. That's why we eat: it provides us with energy, as well as vitamins, proteins, etc, that we otherwise wouldn't have (but still need). If you simply stop eating, you're starving your body of that fuel. You'd become very sick, mainly because your body would start shutting down non-essential functions as it switched into starvation mode. Your immune system would be compromised, and it'd become very easy to get ill on top of your already ailing body. \n\nYou'd definitely lose weight, but become very sick in the process, and it's very dangerous. Safer to just stick with calories in < calories out. Your body NEEDS at least 1200-1500 calories a day (depending on the individual).",
"Because of the starvation response.\n\nYour body is meant to be digesting food pretty much all the time. It's the constant digestion of food that supplies your brain with glucose.\n\nIf you go without eating at all long enough for your digestive system to stop producing glucose — anywhere from six to twenty-four hours, depending — your body will start metabolizing something called glycogen. Glycogen is a substance your body stores in your liver and your muscles and which can be broken down in your liver to make glucose.\n\nWhen the liver starts breaking down glycogen, your body notices, and the regulatory endocrine system starts releasing a variety of hormones that get picked up by your liver and your digestive system in general.\n\nThis *hurts.* It's very unpleasant, like feeling hungry only more so. Headache, muscle and joint pain, irritability and generally feeling extra-emotional … it all adds up to a *profound* urge to eat.\n\nBut you can ignore it. It's not crippling or anything; it doesn't leave you writhing in agony. It just puts getting some food at the very top of your list of priorities, is all. If you choose to ignore it — or if you have no choice, because you don't have access to food, like if you're on a liferaft in the middle of the ocean or something — your body initiates what's called the *starvation response.*\n\nWhen your body gets to the point where no more glucose is available from the digestive system or the liver, anywhere from a day and a half to three days after last eating, your *body* switches over to metabolizing fatty acids, and your *brain* switches over to primarily metabolizing ketone bodies. Your metabolism as a whole slows down because less energy is available — fatty acids and ketone bodies aren't as good a supply of energy as glucose is — which also has the effect of conserving what energy reserves you have left. Your body does begin digesting your own adipose tissue deposits — that is, at this point you do begin losing weight — but it happens *very* slowly, much more slowly than it would happen if the starvation response hadn't kicked in.\n\nBut there's a bigger problem. See, your body is now *mainly* running off fatty acids and ketone bodies, but it still needs a trickle of glucose to stay alive. Ordinarily, when your metabolism is normal and you aren't starving, you need about 200 grams of pure glucose a day just to live. After the starvation response kicks in, that requirement drops to just about 30 grams a day. Your body can synthesize glucose out of the byproducts of fatty acid metabolism, but that only adds up to about *20* grams a day. You still need ten more … and to get it, your body begins metabolizing proteins. Proteins are long chains of amino acids, and your body can make glucose out of amino acids in your liver. So your body begins eating its own core structures.\n\nTo synthesize one gram of glucose in your liver, your body has to break down about three grams of protein. While in starvation, your body needs to make about ten grams of glucose a day from protein, so that means your body loses about 30 grams of protein a day. This mostly comes from your big skeletal muscles.\n\nSo yes, by starving yourself you are indeed losing weight … but not in the way you wanted to. In addition to burning off body fat, you're also breaking down and digesting your own muscles, which *hurts!* It's *extremely* painful! And because your metabolism as a whole is slowed dramatically by starvation, you just have to endure that discomfort *longer* to lose a given amount, in pounds, of body fat.\n\nSo yes, you can in principle just stop eating to lose weight. But it's the slowest and most agonizingly painful way to do it."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
5hhnah
|
How much farmland was needed to sustain classical/ancient cities?
|
I'm mainly thinking of Mediterranean and English isles cities, but any example are incredibly welcome.
I'm doing some worldbuilding and in creating temperate island cultures, I realised I didn't know how much land would be needed to sustain population centers and if their was some ratio (environmentally and geographically based ones) of so many acres per group.
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5hhnah/how_much_farmland_was_needed_to_sustain/
|
{
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"db0azxu"
],
"score": [
6
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"text": [
"Quite a lot. Indeed, most large cities in the Mediterranean world got that way because they were able to exceed the production limitations of their surrounding hinterland by importing food. Few cities, even in the most productive regions, could sustain a particularly large population from their local area alone. Even smaller cities had difficulty sustaining themselves. Athens, while a decently large Classical city-state, was not particularly large compared to contemporary cities in the east or later cities in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods. With a population of probably only a few hundred thousand, and only something like 20,000 adult citizen males (estimates vary wildly, and I'm hardly on top of them) in the 5th Century Athens was absolutely dwarfed by the likes of Rome, Alexandria, Roman Carthage, or Antioch. But even the Athenians were forced to depend heavily on imported grain, receiving hundreds of thousands of μέδιμνοι. Much of this import was during the Peloponnesian War, when the city was cut off from its hinterland, but the Attic countryside could not supply the city during normal periods without imported aid in any case. \n\nFurthermore, grain import was crucial to protect cities from famine. Prior to the Green Revolution farming was a much more risky ordeal. Even a slight dip in a region's temporary productivity might have devastating effects for cities that were packed full of inhabitants. The already strained food supply of large cities in antiquity could completely snap in the face of a poor harvest. Famine was a big fucking deal, and grain import helped provide a buffer against that sort of thing. Grain import allowed excess grain to be easily stockpiled, and it also ensured a steady supply of food even when the local countryside could not produce, even if that hinterland was in fact capable of providing for the city. \n\nOf course the most notable example of a city that survived on the grain trade is Rome itself. With at least a million inhabitants by some time in the 1st Century, B.C. the city was totally unable to be provisioned by the local Latin countryside, and when the grain trade broke down in late antiquity the city's population dwindled rapidly. Imports from Campania and fertile Apulia (for real, go to Apulia some day, it's just wheat farms as far as the eye can see) were originally enough, but soon the city was demanding more grain than could be reasonably supplied for cheap. That's another thing, cost. A city of any reasonable size *might* be able to provision itself via overland routes, but it was too expensive to do so. It cost vastly less to haul grain by sea from Sicily and Africa, which were more productive in any case, than overland from Apulia or Campania. The acquisition of provinces allowed the city to provision itself at previously unthinkable levels, with the population rising in tandem. The Roman grain import, obtained largely through provincial grain taxes, was absolutely enormous. Sicily paid 3 million *modii* of grain a year, a tenth of its total production--more could be purchased if there was need, as was the case in 73 when nearly 4 million more *modii* were purchased to offset famine. According to Josephus the province of Africa alone supplied the city for eight months per year. Pseudo-Aurelius Victor reports that Egypt under Augustus supplied the city with a whopping 20 million *modii* of grain per year. The overseas grain trade was so crucial to the city that threatening it was tantamount to putting the city under siege. When the Cilicians disrupted the grain trade from Sicily and Africa the Romans were forced to grant Pompey an extraordinary magistracy to clear them out--Cicero reports that the day that Pompey's magistracy was enacted grain prices plummeted as traders began to become more assured of the survival of their cargo. \n\nMuch the same could be said about other large cities. Constantinople had to import most of its grain from Egypt in late antiquity. Alexandria also could not rely on its local hinterland, collecting grain taxes from throughout Egypt and almost certainly importing a significant amount as well. A smaller city might not need to import its grain, but once we start talking about real metropoleis the story becomes very different very quickly"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
1e83i9
|
Why did the Germanic invasions of Britain result in conqueror's language becoming the spoken tongue compared to the rest of the Germanic conquests in Europe?
|
Was it sheer numbers? Were Franks, Lombards, Visigoths, Burgundians, etc. just too few compared to the conquered lands to convert them linguistically?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1e83i9/why_did_the_germanic_invasions_of_britain_result/
|
{
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"The traditional narrative is that it was just that, a large scale population exchange with the Romano-British being killed, dying of plague and being driven West by the Anglo-Saxons, later becoming the Welsh and Cornish. The remaining small population of Romano-British in what became England and Lowland Scotland, merged into the Anglo-Saxon majority and soon began speaking the English language. The old Brythonic language and any Vulgar Latin that had developed were soon eradicated.\n\nThis viewpoint is supported by the historical sources we have available, place name studies - Brythonic influenced names are rare in England and tend to occur the most in regions close to Wales and Cornwall, for instance 'coombe' in Devon which is the cognate of 'cwm' in Welsh and the River Avon, which is a corruption of 'Afon' - Welsh for river. Another piece of evidence is vague records of plague in Britain in the 6th century. It's also supported in the English language itself, which shows very little Brythonic influence anywhere, I'd be surprised if I've even used one Brythonic word in this entire post aside from when quoting.\n\nIt's important to note that nowhere else in the former Roman Empire did the language of the Germanic invaders supplant the native languages, in England it replaces both Brythonic and the Vulgar Latin there. Something major had to have happened for this to occur, as it breaks the pattern of every other Roman province.\n\nThe alternative viewpoint is a little less defined. It's become vogue amongst some historians in the past 20/30 years to downplay the extent of the Anglo-Saxon invasion. The new ideas suggest that the Anglo-Saxon migration was much smaller, the Romano-British remained where they were and a hybrid population developed. However the population was politically dominated by the Anglo-Saxons (some suggest an apartheid-like system) and thus English was adopted. This idea is a bit troublesome in my opinion, as in history up until the modern day, very rarely did a minority impose their language upon the majority aside from in religious environments. When a minority language was imposed such as Latin, it ended up heavily corrupted by the original language, thus Vulgar Latin and eventually the Romance Languages. English shows no evidence of this language merging (sorry, I don't know the linguistic term) until the Norman Invasion, which is an example of language evolution similar to. Nearly every instance of language interaction has either the majority language killing the minority, the two co-existing together or a hybrid language being formed. Under this theory the Romano-British would have had to have spontaneously given up Brythonic and spoke Old English, because there's little evidence of Brythonic in Old English to suggest a slow transition over centuries. For this to have been true it would be like the Gauls suddenly speaking Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin/French never developing.\n\nSupporters of this theory tend to point towards genetic surveys done recently such as Oppenheimer's which suggests that the population of Britain has changed little since the Ice Age, but they're somewhat unproven, as other surveys such as the Wellcome Trust/Oxford University's 'Face of Britain' survey have given results that back up the tradition 'Germanic domination' model. Furthermore this argument doesn't explain why the historical evidence and place name evidence is so heavily in favour of the traditional narrative.\n\nSo essentially, you can believe the historical narrative of 'German dominance', a Romano-British population collapse and that the English people are primarily a Germanic people speaking their German language; or you can believe the 'Elite Adoption' model, where the Anglo-Saxon invasions were small and the English people emerged as mixture of the Anglo-Saxons and Romano-British and the English language was adopted wholesale because of the political power of the Anglo-Saxons. A definitive answer is unknown, although you'll probably be able to tell my position from this post."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
qss2j
|
If milk chocolate has milk in it, how does chocolate have such a long shelf life?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/qss2j/if_milk_chocolate_has_milk_in_it_how_does/
|
{
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"text": [
"Chocolate has almost no water in it. [There is a minimum water activity that is necessary for microbial growth](_URL_0_). Chocolate is below that, so microbes can't get in there and spoil it. Even when making things like truffles with liquid centers a lot of care is taken to make sure that the amount of water is low enough to retard mold growth while still keeping the center liquid. \n\nMilk chocolate will eventually go rancid thanks to the unsaturated fat that reacts with air. This is slow, especially wrapped in an airtight and opaque covering. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_activity"
]
] |
||
9qk271
|
why is airplane fuel measured by weight instead of volume?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9qk271/eli5_why_is_airplane_fuel_measured_by_weight/
|
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"Many aircraft are limited by their “maximum gross weight” for takeoff and/ or landing. It makes the math easier when you don’t need to multiply the gallons by the specific weight of the fuel / gallon. Make sense?",
"Volume changes with temperature. By using weight you can calculate everything better, from mass & balance down to fuel flow and therefore endurance, fuel required, everything pretty much.",
"When it comes to flying, weight is directly correlated to the distance you can fly. They even calculated fuel usage in lb or kg per min/hr. Therefore, they can calculate the distance you can fly vs. the weight of fuel directly.",
"Volume doesn't really impact the flight capabilities of the aircraft; any fuel it is carrying will obviously fit into its tanks, and it isn't like the aircraft can swap out fuel volume capacity for anything else. How much weight the aircraft is carrying is important though because for example it impacts how it can safely land, or how much fuel it burns to stay aloft. So weight is much more useful and relevant than volume.",
"Aircraft are regularly weighed because their weight affects the aircraft's performance, especially during take off and landing, the aircraft needs to be within the Maximum Take Off Weight allowed for that specific aircraft. The fuel is measured into the Take Off Weight, and it is much easier for the fuel to already be in weight units. \n\nWeight is also a better unit of measure when dealing with fuel because it is an indication of mass which is more relevant when considering it's chemical energy. \n\nAnd finally, volume changes as temperature changes, but weight will not, and therefore weight is a more accurate measure of how much usuable fuel there \"really is\"."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
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] |
||
3jwah1
|
why are some photographs considered art?
|
Some photographs by certain people are worth a lot of money but others of almost the exact same thing are worth anything at all. Why is there a difference?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jwah1/eli5_why_are_some_photographs_considered_art/
|
{
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"custnmg"
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"text": [
"From google:\n\nart\n\nnoun: art; plural noun: arts; plural noun: the arts\n\n1. the expression or application of human creative skill **and imagination**, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.\n\nThe ELI5 answer would be that most people agree that photography meets that definition."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
fhft8e
|
Why did England and France develop a strong centralized government while the Holy Roman Empire stayed decentralized and fragmented?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/fhft8e/why_did_england_and_france_develop_a_strong/
|
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"#**Summary**\n\nPossible reasons for a decentralized and fragmented HRE\n\n1. Structural causes\n - Elective monarchy and papal coronation\n - No single \"capital city\"\n - Harder taxation and recruitment?\n2. Religious and political causes\n - Augsburg and Westphalia led to confessional stalemate\n - Religious fragmentation triggered foreign interference against the emperor\n - The threat of Habsburg encirclement motivated this interference\n - The threat of imperial encroachment over princes' rights motivated the princes to search foreign allies\n3. Other factors\n - Dynastic luck?\n - Geographical causes? May have a role but it's not very convincing for me.\n - Failed reform attempts in the beginning (Maximilian I), lack of motivation near the end\n\n#**Background**\n\nIn the Medieval period, the power of rulers over their subjects was very limited. It is in the early modern period that this started to change visibly, with complex political, economic and legal developments. These are dynamic historical processes and as such, a centralized France and a decentralized Holy Roman Empire (HRE) were not inevitable, and identifying their causes is difficult and usually controversial.\n\nHere I will attempt to explain the reasons why the Holy Roman Empire was not centralized and unified, by mainly focusing on the period between 1450 and 1806. As the main differences in centralization between the empire and France and England arose in this period, I believe this focus will be largely sufficient. This has the benefit of simplifying dynastic issues in the HRE, as Habsburgs were nearly always in power in this period, but it also disregards possible paths to centralization under Hohenstaufens, Luxembourgs etc, so it won't be the whole picture.\n\n#**Structural causes**\nThe first difference of HRE that comes to mind is that emperorship is elective instead of inherited like in England and France. Beginning from the Golden Bull of 1356, seven (later increased to eight) electors voted on the next emperor. Therefore the emperor had to spend political capital and money in order to secure the succession to the title. Even in the Habsburg era, there were many contested elections which got in the way of centralization.\n\nIn addition to this succession issue, emperors had to worry about the papal coronation as well. From the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 until the coronation of Charles V in 1530, nearly all emperors were crowned by the pope. Again, the emperor had to spend resources: the trip to Italy was often dangerous, incurring military and logistical costs, and the pope didn't always consent to the coronation easily.\n\nThe elective nature of the HRE also had another effect hindering centralization. There was no fixed \"capital city\", but every emperor used his own seat of power. Even though Habsburg domination led to this city being either Vienna or Prague, the Reichstag was held in different places (such as Regensburg, Nürnberg, Augsburg, Worms etc.) and the political organization of the empire never had a center like Paris and London were.\n\nNeither Holy Roman Emperors nor kings of France and England could extract resources from their subjects at will. However, emperors' attempts at taxation, recruitment and reform were often blocked by the Reichstag. Maximilian I's attempt at Reichsreform is a good example, it succeeded in some legal reforms, but centralization is mainly about resource extraction, and at this point, it failed. The new tax, *Gemeiner Pfennig* was met with massive resistance and it could never be collected properly and was soon abolished. Admittedly, I don't know enough of English and French assemblies to compare them with the Reichstag, so I will leave this comparison to others.\n\n#**Religious Conflict and Foreign Interference**\nThe reformation began in the empire, and there it had a very strong decentralizing effect. The conversion of many princes to Lutheranism and Calvinism brought them in conflict with the Catholic emperor, and being weak on their own, the Protestant princes formed large networks of alliances -or leagues- against him. These leagues attracted foreign support: France intervened in the Schmalkaldic War of 1546, and with the resulting Peace of Augsburg the Lutherans gained the guarantee that they can follow their religious practices in their own lands ([an old post of mine explains this in detail](_URL_0_)). Augsburg was successful in preventing another religious war for 63 years, but recatholization efforts, increasing tensions and the exemption of Calvinists from the treaty resulted in another, bigger conflict, the Thirty Years' War ([another old post] (_URL_1_)).\n\n#**Sources and Reading List**\nNormally I use page numbers with my sources as well, but this time I didn't have much time so I will list the names without them. For page numbers, you can check the two posts on Augsburg and 30YW (linked above in text) which have more detailed bibliographies. \n\n* *Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire* by Peter H. Wilson\n* *The Thirty Years' War*, edited by Geoffrey Parker\n* *Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy* by Brendan Simms",
"***Not a historian but ill give you the best explanation i can as a long standing enthusiast.***\n\nThe most influential reason would be circumstance. England and France, although having similar roots to the HRE, and from a similar time, were in different positions domestically.\n\n# ENGLAND:\n\nEngland was beginning to form into what is considered \"England\" in the 800's with the loose subjugation of the kingdoms of; Essex, Sussex, Kent, and East Anglia, under the dominant kingdoms; Wessex and Mercia. They struggled for dominance until Alfred the Great laid a foundation for Wessex to stay the predominant power for the coming century. (Although this can be subjective, Alfred the Great is commonly considered \"The First King of England\"). Their loose unification eventually grew to a single unified government under the temporary gains of King Æthelstan, the great grandson of Alfred. In his reign (927-939) he had consolidated control of most the previously Dane-occupied lands in Great Britian; North Umbria, York, and Scotland. To simplify the rest, the predominance of \"English rule\" came under the reign of William The Conquer, who claimed the throne and invaded England in 1066. His reign set England on a path to being where it is today, conquering lands even further into Scotland, and parts of Ireland.\n\nThe takeaway: The Danes, eventually, and with constant pressure for hundreds of years, united the Anglo-Saxons under a single crown. The tales of the savagery of Danish rule meant that the less influential kingdoms would rather willingly or begrudgingly join their Anglo-Saxon brothers, than be forcefully subjugated by the Danes. This was only later magnified, by the Norman rule after 1066.\n\n*Addendum: This does* ***not*** *mean there wasn't infighting. The kingdoms of England still did squabble and fight all out wars, best example would be Mercia & Wessex's long standing rivalry.*\n\n# FRANCE:\n\nFrance can be harder to explain, they've been the dominant power of French region (Western Europe) since the fall of Rome. The first accepted \"King of the Franks\" was Clovis I, he, under Roman rule ascended to the \"King of Salien Franks\". Eventually gaining independence of Rome, he continued to rule and expand the realm of the Franks until 511. The Kingdom he founded came to be Francia. After the division of Francia in 843, West Francia was ruled by the son of Louis the Pious, and grandson of Charlemagne; Charles the Bald. He would be the dominant of the 3 inheritors of Francia during his reign, and later come to rule the Rhineland, all of Northern Italy, and Northeast Iberia.\n\nMuch of Frances history from the 8th century to 10th century was dominated by Danish conflict. Danes had been pillaging across Frances coast and rivers, settling in Normandy before the official recognition and creation of The Duchy of Normandy in 911 when the French king Charles III officially ceded Norman controlled lands to their leader Rollo. The Normans later became the ruling class in England. From the already mentioned, Invasion of 1066, til 1204, Normandy was controlled by the English crown. After the Danes power began to peter across Europe, Frances struggle with the Normans evolved to a struggle with the English as a whole, which escalated until the 100 Years' War.\n\nThe takeaway: French culture, since the fall of Rome, has remained independent of its Germanic brother. France and its predecessors consolidated control swiftly in its early years, and for the vast majority of its history, stuck to a single royal bloodline, The House De Capet. House De Capet ruled France from the 10th century to the French Revolution. (House De Valois, House De Bourbon, and House of York are its 3 most well known branches). Through constant external pressure, first from the Danish, and later from the English; the French as a culture had to constantly come together to resist outside rule.\n\n# The HRE:\n\nFocusing specifically on when \"The Holy Roman Empire\" as a term came about, the HRE didn't technically become what its popularly known as today, until the 13th century. Before then, there was the conception that an Emperor ruled certain per-ordained lands, but generally speaking it was not the same HRE we know of today. It was still considered East Francia (or several other names). From the 13th century on, most the HRE's conflicts were not external until the Napoleonic Wars. A vast majority of its conflicts were infighting between different states, later exemplified by the religious wars that began in the 16th century after the reformation.\n\nThe takeaway: The Germanic cultures never had the need to unite under one flag, one family, or one culture. Generally speaking there weren't many constant or overbearing external threats from the 10th century to the 19th century. Even if their were, from the fall of Rome til the 12-13th century, they were generally regarded as a single nation, made up of several large powerful kingdoms which usually did, yes, answer to an emperor. If anything they had reasons to not unite, centuries of infighting left bitter rivalries and grudges between states. The only thing to overcome these differences were very similar to what united the French, or English hundreds of years prior; a serious external threat, otherwise known as the Napoleonic wars, and the Franco-Prussian war.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n**Closing Statement:**\n\nIt was rather common for large nations to be comprised of several small states all owing allegiance to a government. The government couldn't always control those states, or protect them, so all of Europe was rather fragmented in the medieval ages, not just East Francia/The HRE. A good way to reformat the question would be:\n\n\"How did the HRE stay decentralized through the Early Modern Period.\"\n\n & #x200B;\n\nEdit: Some grammatical errors, and fixing phraseology.",
"Well, this is not an easy question, but I would like to put some light.\n\nIn fact, France was never well centralized until Henry IV, Louis XIII and Louis XIV. This was because France was the most populated Kingdom in Europe (around 15-20 millions in XV-XVI century), and controlling so much people was very difficult in such times. The French monarchy tried to centralize the power multiple times, but there were ruined almost every time (100 years war, the Religious Wars, etc.).\n\nOther reason that made France a kingdom that was very difficult to control was the feudal and legal system. The Northern part was dominated by the germanic law, while the southern was by the roman law, creating a huge difference between both parts, and if we add to this the apanage system to maintain the rest of the royal children content (spoiler: it didn't work very well), we have a perfect formula for a very strong nobility, and a weak king.\n\nThis was reversed by the mentioned kings, that changed the king-vassal system by the state system, the establishment of intendants (to keep under control the regional nobility), using the tribunals in their favor, establishing of regional parliaments, etc.\n\nIn the case of England (which I wouldn't say is a centralized country), the centralization efforts started after the War of The Two Roses, because the Tudor dynasty was in a very difficult position, without any legitimacy. This dynasty unsuccessfully tried to control the Parliament (the heart of the representation system), but when Herny VIII passed the Supremacy Act, things changed.\n\nWith a renewed church and faith that was made for the crown, the figure of the king was strengthen. This was used by Isabelle I, James I and Charles I to go further, and used the mercantilism, propaganda, religious minorities repression, sale of titles and the continuous campaigns in Ireland and Scotland to avoid the Parliament.\n\nBut, at the end, when the kings of England tried to establish a truly absolute monarchy, the failed and a series of uprisings and a civil war made it become a parliamentary monarchy.\n\nBut the case of the HRE is different, because the Empire never was politically unified after the Otons, and was divided in a plethora of counties, duchies, margraviates, free cities, a few kingdoms and an archducated. The first problem was that the HRE was an elective monarchy, which made the power of the Emperor, in the start, weaker than the other two examples.\n\nBut it must be said that Maximilian I made a very good job at strengthening the Emperor figure (and the Habsburg dynasty at the same time). In fact, there was an option of an unified Empire under the figure Charles V, even of an Universal Monarchy, but it was ruined by the Reformation.\n\nAnd the Reformation is a key point in the history of the Empire, because the confessional matter was enough to divide the Empire in two factions, factions than periodically involved in wars that weakened the Empire until it became practically irrelevant for the political matters of Europe (making it only interesting for the germans and french powers), until it was finally destroyed by Napoleon.\n\nI would like to give a more in-depth explanation to this, but ekinda pointed out some interesting things. Anyways, I hope that my answer pleases you and can be useful.\n\nPD: sorry about my english, not my first language"
]
}
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[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7nfder/why_was_the_peace_of_augsburg_and_the_principle/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/awfa78/how_much_did_dynastic_politics_serve_to/"
],
[],
[]
] |
||
e5nvy0
|
Do stars normally complete a full rotation around a galaxy?
|
Is star life long enough to do so?
If it depends upon the size of galaxy, please consider milkyway.
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/e5nvy0/do_stars_normally_complete_a_full_rotation_around/
|
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"Our sun, roughly middle, takes ~225-250 million years to make a full trip around. (this is called a cosmic or galactic year).\n\nThere are stars that are much bigger, and as such burn so quickly, that they do not make it a full trip around.\n\nIt would vary heavily based on type of star, and orbital period but it definitely happens and my gut tells me most make multiple trips around. (too lazy to do the research and math to back up that vague assertion)",
"Most of them, yes. As mentioned by /u/Bloodyneck92, there are very heavy stars that live so briefly that they'll explode into a supernova before even completing a single orbit. However, most stars are relatively light, and therefore can live for a long time, even longer than the current age of the universe, so they can easily complete multiple orbits around the center of the galaxy."
]
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[] |
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[],
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|
2a85kq
|
Why is moonlight white?
|
I know that the sun, like all stars, emits light on a variety of wavelengths, both visible and non-visible. This means that light from all stars, including the one we orbit, are seen as pure white in space. I also know that (somehow), Earth's atmosphere filters out light of specific wavelengths, making sunlight appear more 'yellow' to our eyes.
So if moonlight is reflected sunlight, why, on a brightly moonlit night, is everything so devoid of colour compared to the daytime?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2a85kq/why_is_moonlight_white/
|
{
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" > why, on a brightly moonlit night, is everything so devoid of colour compared to the daytime?\n\nIt's a function of your eyes, not of the scenery.\n\nRetina:\nrods return something akin to luminosity (sensitivity peaking around the blue end of green) with no colour response;\ncones respond to colour but are less sensitive overall.\n\nAs the external illumination level drops, the signal from the rods begins to dominate, so effectively you're preserving luminosity-channel information at the expense of colour (with a shift toward blue as the last thing to go). \n\nIt's known as the [Purkinje effect](_URL_0_), and explains why a 30-second night-time photographic exposure looks like daylight colours (because camera sensors respond equally across R+G+B rather than separately to L/ab) whereas to you everything looks shades of inky blue and silver. Enjoy.",
" > why, on a brightly moonlit night, is everything so devoid of colour compared to the daytime?\n\nSimply because the level of illumination is very low. Only the rod cells in your eye work well at that level, and the rods are color-blind. The cone cells could see the colors, but the cones don't work well in low light.\n\n > sunlight appear more 'yellow' to our eyes\n\nIf you look at the Sun through a neutral density filter, it actually looks very, very white; you're almost tempted to say it's blue, at least for the first few seconds. The yellow tint you think you see is one of the many optical illusions generated by our eyes and brain.\n\nLook online for \"Baader solar film\". It's very cheap, it's neutral-density, and it's safe to use as a solar filter (it's used for telescopes to observe the Sun directly)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purkinje_effect"
],
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] |
|
5ettnl
|
what's happening in our brain when we're looking for an object, but we're actually holding it in our hand?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ettnl/eli5_whats_happening_in_our_brain_when_were/
|
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"You can think about the brain working in 2 modes, one is the Subconscious mod (or auto-pilot) and the Conscious mod. Due to evolution the brain is mostly relying on the \"auto-pilot\" when we do simple tasks like walking or breathing.\nWhen we do something like talking on the phone and looking for the phone to use the flashlight, the brain thinks about the phone and the flashlight as 2 separate _URL_0_ that moment our brain being on auto-pilot doesn't realize that until we think about what we are doing, which consumes energy, that why sometimes the brain makes mistakes trying to conserve energy.",
"Sensory information is represented in 'maps' in your brain. Meaning a certain small area in your brain (eg if you poke the back of your head, your primary visual cortex is around that area. If you poke the top of your head your primary somatosensory (skin sensations) is located around there. So zoom in to the top area on your brain, like really zoom in until you start to see cells. The cells are arranged in a sheet. If you move along a certain direction on the sheet of cells, the activity of those cells represents a continuous area of skin sensation on your body. These sensory cells then send signals to other areas of your brain (approx around top of forehead) which have 'goal related' brain cell activity. As in some cells are active and that represents the goal that you have, like 'i want this object'. \n\nNow ultimately your behaviour (for example searching for an object) is just a sequence of muscle movements (for example to move your eyes, visual search. Or arm muscles to make reaching/grasping). \"Attention\" has to do with specifically what sense signals are used to program a movement. So maybe the object is in your hand. But the physical area of sensory cortex being investigated isn't the correct position of the object. So in this example. Maybe the cells in your frontal cortex (responsible for your goal of 'i want this object') is looking at the vis sensory cells in more detail than the sensory cells that represent skin sensation). So takes a bit longer to \"find\" the object in this particular event. ",
"Focus Blidness, google it. Your brain is so focused on finding the item where it must be, that you fail to actually \"scan everything in the surrounding environment\".",
"There is too much information coming through our senses at any given time for our brains to process.What we refer to as 'attention' is our ability to focus on some aspects of sensory input at the expense of others. When we miss something that might seem obvious because attention is elsewhere, we call it 'Inattentional blindness'. There is a famous experiment where most people miss a Gorilla walking though a basketball game! [ref](_URL_0_). In the sace of your keys, your attention is focused on vision and not on on touch. ",
"Sometimes this is related to habit \"subroutines\" we have created. For example, one of my habit routines is to grab my keys, wallet, phone when I walk out of the door. I do this without thinking about it, but if I'm on the phone when I go grab my wallet and my keys I might have a hard time finding my phone because my subroutine is used to it being there. Then my conscious brain has to take over and figure out that I'm an idiot and that the phone is already in my hand because I'm talking on it. ",
"Sensory Adaptation. For example, when you go looking for your sunglasses but they are already on your head. After the sunglasses have been sitting on your head for a while, you may not feel them because you adapt to the sensation of the sunglasses weight and pressure. My prof, said after a short period of time the brain will adapt and then disregard the sensation as a way to save energy and focus for other things.\n\nSource: recent lecture in a sensation & perception class at university.",
"I read something about that once. The brain starts to ignore things that you see, but aren't looking for. By accident it can ignore the thing you're actually looking for.\n\nI don't have any source for it, and I have no clue whether it's true or not. It makes somewhat sense though.",
"the real answer is completely ELu5. \n\nNo one knows how the brain works to that degree you're asking. They barely understand any aspect of it's function."
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67y4pw
|
A recent Crusader Kings II expansion introduced a mechanic that allows your ruler to join a secret society of demon worshipers. Is there any actual historical precedent for the existence of anti-Christian, organized demonic worship in Christian Europe during the Middle Ages period?
|
I know that accusing people of witchcraft and demon worship wasn't all that uncommon of a occurrence in the Middle Ages, but are there any examples of actual organized societies, cults or sects that were based around explicit demonic worship or occultism born out of the Christian (I guess in this case mainly Catholic) concepts of demons and devils?
To be a bit more specific, I'm thinking of something similar to modern forms of Satanism that are philosophically founded on being anti-Christian, as opposed to just being a non-Christian belief system that might have been deemed heretical, occultist or "devil worshiping" by Christian authorities.
(Note that I'm very aware that Crusader Kings and Paradox's other grand strategy games are several degrees separated from anything remotely resembling historical accuracy. Nonetheless, this particular element peaked my interest.)
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/67y4pw/a_recent_crusader_kings_ii_expansion_introduced_a/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dgubd4k"
],
"score": [
22
],
"text": [
"I haven't played the game, but this sounds a lot like the fate of the Knights Templar. \n\nBefore I go into this story, let's make one thing clear: There is no evidence of organized Satanic ritual activity on any scale. I assume there are small groups of iconoclasts who paint themselves as faux \"Satanists,\" and at various times in history people who practiced pagan religion were called \"Satanists.\" But in the sense that you mean... No, it didn't happen.\n\nHere's what *did* happen:\n\nDuring the Crusades there existed a number of \"Militant Orders\" which were groups of crusading knights who lived a quasi-monastic lifestyle. The knights organized themselves in a manner similar to monks living in a monastery, and devoted themselves to both war and religious practice. One of the most prominent of these was the Knights Templar. The Templars were a powerful and wealthy order of knights whose influence waxed and waned throughout the Crusades, but by the end of it they were pretty well off, to say the least. Some go so far as to credit them with the invention of modern banking.\n\nThe King of France (Phillip IV, the Fair) wanted to get his hands on some of this wealth, and the easiest mechanism by which he could do this was to have the Knights tried as heretics. In 1307 he put forth a list of charges that included such things as: worshipping various Satanic beings and idols, taboo sexual practices, and performing certain acts that disgraced Christian symbols. The concept that they were a secret Satanist cult gave him the political and legal justification to abolish the order, execute the knights, and steal their stuff. It is virtually certain that these charges were fabricated.\n\nIt's all a rather fascinating (and tragic) story. These accusations and other invented stories about the Templars have led to them becoming something of a pop culture trope. Rumors of Templar mysticism or cults flourish in conspiracy theories or speculative writing, and you can see the influence of this in media such as \"The DaVinci Code\" and \"Assassin's Creed\" video games.\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
1zgkoh
|
what makes elevators so safe? seems like few deaths occur on what seems like a potentially dangerous machine.
|
Uberfacts' Twitter account shared a statistic that there were ~12,000 stairs-related deaths every year vs. only 27 for elevators.
Edit: Thanks to all for the explanations. I had an inkling that fail safes were in place but I was unawares of how they worked.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zgkoh/eli5_what_makes_elevators_so_safe_seems_like_few/
|
{
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"cftgtu5",
"cfth0ul",
"cfthlcc",
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],
"score": [
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"text": [
"Elevators have many safety features built in whereas stairs, well, there's no accounting for stupidity. How hard is it to walk up and down stairs? ",
"There are usually triple redundancies on elevators. i.e. far more than one cable holds the weight, so even if one snapped it would still be absolutely fine and would just be closed for maintenance. People are just stupid on stairs.",
"Almost all elevator-related deaths happen in movies.\n\nThere are numerous safety features, including friction brakes that are independent of the motor drive. Inspection of elevators is a regulatory issue in many areas, which means a scenario where an elevator car goes into some kind of free fall like you see in movies is almost impossible, save for sabotage.",
"Many elevators have a built-in failsafe: the weight of the elevator hanging from a cable keeps the brakes from being deployed. If the cable were to somehow break or become detached from the elevator car, the brakes would automatically push out against the sides of the shaft to stop the descent of the elevator. \n",
"I know most elevators have more than one cable. Big cargo elevators have around 7 if I remember. Each cable can support the weight of the cart with a full load. So even if a cable breaks, there are others to hold it. Also the brakes would prevent it from free falling. ",
"Modern elevators are supported by 6-8 cables, any one of which can fully support the weight of the fully loaded elevator. Plus they have a breaking system that can stop the elevator if all of the cables break. So the only feasible ways to get killed by an elevator are to be a maintenance worker in the shaft, or being stuck between the elevator and the hallway after the elevator starts moving.",
"\"And what of the elevator doors on a given floor,\" I hear you cry. \"What prevents an electrical glitch or something from causing them to open when there's no car there and somebody not paying attention to walk through and plunge to their death?\"\n\nForget failsafes and triple-redundant systems for this one: it's physically impossible. Elevator manufacturers twigged to that possibility almost from the start, so they simply took the door-opening motor *off the doors* and put it on the elevator car.\n\nThe doors are held closed with a powerful spring and a latch. When the car comes into position, it trips the latch, then the motor in the car opens the doors.\n\nIt *is* possible to FORCE open an elevator door with no car present, but it takes some determined work. It absolutely cannot happen by accident.\n\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
4s0aup
|
How would early Anglo-Saxons decorate their shields?
|
Metal bits like Sutton-Hoo? Cloth, animal hide? Paint? Depictions of animals, symbols, runes, deities?
What colours did they use? Apparently Vikings thought pale blue and pale yellow were homosexual and garish colours, did Anglo-Saxons think that as well?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4s0aup/how_would_early_anglosaxons_decorate_their_shields/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d55ogwx"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Frustratingly, we don't know. Everything we know about shields in this period comes from archaeological sites (we don't have any contemporary art showing shield faces), and the fronts of shield, along with any decoration they may have displayed, have never survived.\n\nWe do know from archaeological excavations that shields were always covered with leather (probably rawhide), and in one case ([Tranmer House](_URL_1_)) this leather was covered in some sort of preparatory layer for paint (maybe gesso); but, the painting didn't survive. Many shields had metal appliqués (like Sutton Hoo, often less fancy), and some had a pair of large flat circular rivets whose functional purpose isn't clear (so, possibly another form of metallic decoration). But what, if anyting, would have been painted onto their faces is unknown.\n\nIn many cases, shields were buried to display their faces toward assembled mourners, and several graves at Mucking had shield boards (noe visible only as a dark soil stain) buried in the grave eithout their metal bosses. To me, that implies that shield faces *were* decorated: you wanted guests at the funeral to see the shield face and know who your family's friends were by recognizing the design(s) painted on it (even if you wanted to keep and recycle the still useful iron components).\n\nWe do have a record of late Roman shield designs, the [Notitia Dignitatum](_URL_2_). It's very possible that some of these designs would have continued to be used in Britain after 410. One might also wonder whether some of the circular motifs on Style 1 jewelry were also used to decorate shields, but that's just speculation with no hard evidence to support it.\n\nIf you want to read further, see [Dickinson and Harke's book on early Anglo-Saxon shields](_URL_0_), available free on Harke's _URL_3_ page."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.academia.edu/477692/Early_Anglo-Saxon_shields_Archaeologia_Monograph_110_._London_Society_of_Antiquaries_of_London_1992",
"https://www.britishmuseum.org/pdf/BMTRB_5_Bullock_et_al.pdf",
"http://lukeuedasarson.com/NotitiaPatterns.html",
"academia.edu"
]
] |
|
3i5yn8
|
If dragonflies see almost 360 degrees how come they don't go blind looking at the sun?
|
...and most other insects for that matter.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3i5yn8/if_dragonflies_see_almost_360_degrees_how_come/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cueydur"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"First a side note about insect vision, many insects, including dragonflies and damselflies, have ocellus. These are single lens eyes and are located on the top of the insect's head. So many different insects have \"eyes\" point up at the sun. \n\nTo answer your question: I'm not sure. [Scholarpedia](_URL_1_) makes a brief mention of changes in the nerve synapses with changes in light intensity meaning the nerves change the signal that they send to the ganglia (one of the insects brain's). This [book](_URL_0_)(page 426) mentions that the pigments change in adjacent ommatidia so, I believe, that the amount of light entering any given lens is diminished, decreasing the intensity of the light. I'll rummaged through my general entomology text book when I get to work and see if it has any thing else helpful to add.\n\nEdit: The text book didn't say much more except that the light sensitivity of ommaitdia isn't that great due to their small diameter (nocturnal insects have a slightly different eye physiology to help compensate for this) so that may aid in their ability to deal with direct sunlight."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://books.google.com/books?id=rYI4AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA426&lpg=PA426&dq=ommatidia+bright+light&source=bl&ots=QK2P67oWAr&sig=IGBCqp-tnwwsgMjZVg7_qkm1VFo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEAQ6AEwBWoVChMIvObDwY_ExwIVAZoeCh2SnAzx#v=onepage&q=ommatidia%20bright%20light&f=false",
"http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Function_of_compound_eye"
]
] |
|
325mzk
|
numbers and letters on processor model?
|
Ex: Core i7-4710HQ @ 2.5 GHz
What does that all mean?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/325mzk/eli5_numbers_and_letters_on_processor_model/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cq83zcf",
"cq842tf"
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text": [
"For starters, that's an Intel Chip. \n\ni7 is the product line. i3 is entry level, i5 is a step up, i7 is higher end.\n\n4710HQ is the model, which is assigned to that specific chip.\n\n4=4th generation (the current generation of the \"i\" product line)\n\n710=model number (the specific chip from this generation and product line)\n\nHQ=suffix, a feature code. Specifically, that's a \"quad core\".\n\n(K=unlocked, as in, you may change the speed of the processor. S and T are low-power versions (gen 2, gen 3, respectively). R means it has Iris Pro Integrated Graphics. M is for standard dual-core mobile (laptop) processors.)\n\n2.5GHz refers to the speed of the cores. \n\nThe other big name in processors is AMD, a common processor is an \"FX-8350\".\n\nFX is the product line (FX is high end desktop, A are mid level processors, E/C series are low-power).\n\n8350 is the model.\n\n8 is series, which means, it has 8 cores. (A 4-core would be a 4350)\n3 is the generation (3rd gen).\n50 is the model number (tied to speed, so an 8350 is faster than an 8300, but both are 8-core 3rd-generation)",
"Core i7 is the marketing name for Intel's current high end processors. A model number in the 4000s means it's part of the 4th generation of processors marketed as Core i(3/5/7). The \"Q\" at the end means it's a quad core processor. \"H\", \"M\", \"U\", or \"Y\" tells you that it's mobile- the H are the highest powered chips, they tend to use more power but also support the most features. \"M\" is a normal laptop chip, \"U\" is a low-powered chip designed for ultrabooks, and \"Y\" is an even lower-powered chip designed for tablets (you sacrifice speed to get the lower power). I've never been able to figure out what the third and fourth digit in the processor number mean but the second number tells you roughly where in the current series it falls. A 4800HQ is almost certainly faster than a 4700HQ.\n\nThe 2.5GHz is the only number that actually has meaning outside of Intel's marketing department. It tells you how many times per second the processor's clock ticks. Higher numbers are better, but you can only really compare processors with the same design. So a 2.7GHz fourth generation quad-core with hyperthreading Core i7 processor is strictly faster than a 2.5GHz fourth generation quad-core with hyperthreading Core i7 processor, but you can't compare clock speeds between a 2.5GHz fourth generation Core i7 and a 3GHz first generation Core i7 (By any realistic measurement, the fourth generation processor is faster despite the slower clock speed)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
8ywy5p
|
why is mouth breathing bad for humans and why are we able to do it?
|
Some of youtube videos I listened to recently said that mouth breathing cause facial problems like a recessed chin and sinus problems. Some guy named Dr. Mike Mew even claims it causes crowding in the teeth.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ywy5p/eli5_why_is_mouth_breathing_bad_for_humans_and/
|
{
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"e2ebw9h",
"e2efrxi"
],
"score": [
5,
4
],
"text": [
"They don’t really say that mouth breathing is bad it’s just that breathing through your nose is better... the hairs in your nose “filter” the air hence why you get boogers(they are the “bad” stuff in the air)",
"Breathing through your nose is better because your nasal passages filter out some bacteria and other germs but not all. Breathing through your mouth is actually bad and less efficient because a lot of times you end up swallowing the air you need. Also, prolonged mouthbreathing leads the physiology of the mouth to change (meaning they shape and “environment” of the mouth is also changed. Most noticeably people who mouth break for a long time develop an openbite meaning the natural state of their mouth is open. It doesn’t happen to everyone but to a lot. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
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