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1akcbu
|
what is this vault everyone is talking about? did i miss something?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1akcbu/eli5_what_is_this_vault_everyone_is_talking_about/
|
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"guy found a safe in his friends basement, that used to be owned by a drug gang, asked reddit for advice on how to find out what's inside.\n\nOP has yet to deliver.",
"Dude recently moved in a house previously owned by drug dealers. Finds safe/vault in basement. Asked reddit how to open. Spawned a huge subreddit.\n\n[/r/whatsinthisthing](_URL_0_)"
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145os8
|
Why does it seem that revolutions break out in waves (eg. 2011, 1989, 1968, 1848)?
|
When revolution was at in the Middle East and North America last year, it wasn't hard at all to find commentators compare the Arab Spring to the EU austerity riots or the Occupy movement, or even historical revolutions like Europe's Revolutions of 1848. If you want to be even broader, the American, French, Haitian, and Latin American Revolutions happen in pretty quick succession, and so do the Turkish, Persian, Russian, and Chinese revolutions at the beginning of the 20th century. What is it that makes so many people stand up against their governments at once? Does it have to do with global economic conditions? War? Cultural diffusion? Domino effect? Just people seeing patterns because they want to?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/145os8/why_does_it_seem_that_revolutions_break_out_in/
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"Revolutions are usually the result of the break down of a given social or political consensus, which in turn is usually butressed by certain economic conditions. This consensus can break down for any number of reasons. However, these waves of revolution usually occur in a given region where political institutions are loosely based on one another and they share common economic and demographic changes. For exmple, in 1968 most of the nations in the West (France, Mexico, the US) that had large student movements that came from the post war baby boom and came of age in istitutions and legal framework that was shaped prior to, or immediately after, the second world war(Suri, Power and Protest) The same can be said about Latin America in the late 1960s, A well as the contemporary middle east, where young students came of age and were increasingly critical of their situation and from being excluded from power by dominant groups. There are often elite groups that are indirectly backing these groups (in the middle east - hardline islamists - in Latin America the progressive or nascent industrial bourgeois). In these examples the states were more or less organized along the same fashion \n\nWhen a state reaches a crisis, or a tipping point, they can either reform or react. (Huntington) Non-democratic states usually choose the latter and stagnate by violently excluding certain marginal elite groups from power. When repressed these groups usually will react by organizing and or arming. \n\nIn terms of economic crisis, the relation between crisis and revolution is less clear. One study (i forget the citation), showed that revolutions are more likely to occur when the economy is doing quite well, but if there is a certain acute drop in economic prosperity, then a revolution is more likely. \n\nApologies for incompleteness of this idea, have to run, and for over-generalizing. ",
"It has been shown to be directly related to spikes in food prices. People can tolerate a lot of bullshit, but when they are starving they might as well revolt: _URL_0_\n"
]
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2e8vqg
|
what causes people (recently highlighted young muslims) to become radicalized?
|
What is it that is so appealing that would cause them to leave what they grew up with and devote themselves to a life of such evil?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2e8vqg/eli5what_causes_people_recently_highlighted_young/
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"Well, to give you the ELI5 answer it would be education. There is a lack of education in the Middle East, which in turn affects the income of the average person. Eventually, when you're stuck in poverty and your government (Iraq), which is created by some other Western Democracy (The U.S.), does nothing, you tend to blame the U.S. because they created your government, so you create a group of like-minded individuals, such as the Muhajadeen, you fight off the government, and you choose to fight in the name of your God. \n\nThat's how I view it. ",
"I don't believe that it actually has much to do with religion when you look deep enough. These young men join these groups ultimately for the same reason poor young men here in the US join street gangs. Most of them (I realize there are exceptions) are quite poor and uneducated, with little to no prospects for a future. So they start to gravitate towards people who claim to offer something more. What is offered varies, but it's mostly a sense of belonging to a particular group. Human beings are tribal creatures and most of us seek to belong to one \"tribe\" or another. The only differences come from what \"tribes\" are readily available. If this is too simplistic or just plain wrong, I apologize. I'd love to hear from someone who has grown up beside young Muslims like this.\n\nAngry young men who are dissatisfied with the hand they've been dealt are easily manipulated.",
"[Once again, time to post this](_URL_0_)"
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ks03m
|
How long would it take, in SUBJECTIVE time, travelling at just below the speed of light (say, 299,000 km/s) to reach Alpha Centauri?
|
Which is to say, taking into account time dilation. It's about four years away from the point of view of a stationary observer, but how long would the man on the spaceship feel the journey lasting? Hours? Days? Months?
What about the nearest possibly inhabitable planet?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ks03m/how_long_would_it_take_in_subjective_time/
|
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"An arbitrarily small amount of time for any distance, depending on your quantification of \"just below\".\n",
"The equation when you're going near the speed of light is (4 years)*sqrt(1-v^2 /c^2 ). Plug v in and see.\n\n[Here's a graph](_URL_0_), which is more valid towards the right side.\n",
"Forgive a potentially ignorant question, but from the space traveler's perspective, what's to stop him from assuming he's moving faster than light, considering he measures four months to reach 4ly?",
"[Wolfram Alpha](_URL_0_) makes it really easy to calculate this stuff.\n\nGo to that site and enter: relativistic time dilation at 299,000 km/s\n\nYou'll get a calculation page with another input box for moving time. Enter: 4 years\n\nThe calculation will come back and tell you that the subjective time is 0.2906 years, or 106 days. That's about three months.\n\nIf you're interested in learning the math instead of just reading the answer, any necessary equations and constants are included at the bottom of the page.",
"Can I add that this effect is, at least for you in the spaceship, better thought of as a length contraction effect (the distance to Alpha Centauri decreases when you get up to near c) rather than a time dilation effect (which is what an earth-bound observer would observe for a clock on your ship that you see running at 1 tick / sec)?",
"Additional question: how much energy would you need to accelerate a ~100 tons spaceship (assuming it's the minimal weight to carry a human crew) to c*0.99 and then decelerate it to reach alpha centauri ?\n\nWhat kind of device can provide this energy in a reasonable weight/form factor?\n\nIn other words: are we doomed to stay inside the solar system?",
"An arbitrarily small amount of time for any distance, depending on your quantification of \"just below\".\n",
"The equation when you're going near the speed of light is (4 years)*sqrt(1-v^2 /c^2 ). Plug v in and see.\n\n[Here's a graph](_URL_0_), which is more valid towards the right side.\n",
"Forgive a potentially ignorant question, but from the space traveler's perspective, what's to stop him from assuming he's moving faster than light, considering he measures four months to reach 4ly?",
"[Wolfram Alpha](_URL_0_) makes it really easy to calculate this stuff.\n\nGo to that site and enter: relativistic time dilation at 299,000 km/s\n\nYou'll get a calculation page with another input box for moving time. Enter: 4 years\n\nThe calculation will come back and tell you that the subjective time is 0.2906 years, or 106 days. That's about three months.\n\nIf you're interested in learning the math instead of just reading the answer, any necessary equations and constants are included at the bottom of the page.",
"Can I add that this effect is, at least for you in the spaceship, better thought of as a length contraction effect (the distance to Alpha Centauri decreases when you get up to near c) rather than a time dilation effect (which is what an earth-bound observer would observe for a clock on your ship that you see running at 1 tick / sec)?",
"Additional question: how much energy would you need to accelerate a ~100 tons spaceship (assuming it's the minimal weight to carry a human crew) to c*0.99 and then decelerate it to reach alpha centauri ?\n\nWhat kind of device can provide this energy in a reasonable weight/form factor?\n\nIn other words: are we doomed to stay inside the solar system?"
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ndnm7
|
What would happen if we put tons of radioactive waste on the Sun?
|
Sending it up there, political and economical issues aside.
Would the sun disperse the junk and would it reach us somehow? Would it mess with the sun in other ways?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ndnm7/what_would_happen_if_we_put_tons_of_radioactive/
|
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"nope. 'a drop in the ocean' wouldn't even do it justice.",
"To put this in perspective, the sun is over 300,000 times more massive than the earth.\n\nIf we shot the *entire earth* into the sun, it wouldn't make a difference. ",
"nope. 'a drop in the ocean' wouldn't even do it justice.",
"To put this in perspective, the sun is over 300,000 times more massive than the earth.\n\nIf we shot the *entire earth* into the sun, it wouldn't make a difference. "
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6gmv0w
|
Was there a Tsarist secret police? What was the transition from the Cheka to the KGB? How much continuity has there been throughout the history of Russian espionage services, in general?
|
Edit: Related: if there wasn't a Tsarist secret police, did the Cheka inspire Chekism or did Chekism inspire the Cheka?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6gmv0w/was_there_a_tsarist_secret_police_what_was_the/
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"Significant state censorship and surveillance followed the failed 1825 uprising known as the Decembrist movement. Tsarist Russia, by the late nineteenth century, had a secret police force called the _Okhrana_ which was preceded by a brutal, infamous, secretive police unit called \"the Third Section\" which was abolished by Tsarist decree in 1880. The _Okhrana_ served the state by enforcing censorship of dissident opinions, including secret files on the Russian intelligentsia whose writings were closely monitored. In 1917, the _Cheka_, derived from the initials referring to the \"Extraordinary Commission to Fight Counterrevolution and Sabotage,\" began to persecute writers and activists who wrote subversive texts against the Bolsheviks. The fanatical and efficient Felix Dzerzhinsky or \"Iron Felix\" led the _Cheka_ as an organ of state repression during the Russian Civil War until his death in 1926 of a heart attack. Several anarchist and \"counterrevolutionary\" forces were arrested and tortured at the dreaded Lubyanka Prison in Moscow. Leon Trotsky also led _Cheka_ units, along with the nascent Red Army, in executions of \"Kronstadts\" or White Russians and Mensheviks who opposed the regime and had taken shelter in Kronstadt, Finland, then still a part of the new Soviet Union in the Kronstadt Revolt. After the Civil War, the _Cheka_ became the State Political Directorate or GPU which by 1934 had been reorganized with broad judicial powers over forced labor, the persecution of \"rightists\" opposed to the regime, and the ability to execute enemies of the state after brief interrogation and trials. This successor agency, the NKVD, formed in 1934 used their expanded role in the Soviet state to perform the extrajudicial killings of political opponents to the regime, specifically during the Great Purges from 1936-1938. The Great Purge was started after the mysterious murder of Sergei Kirov, a party leader in Leningrad. Some, such as historian Martin Malia, suspect the NKVD was responsible for the murder at the behest of Josef Stalin and was used as pretext to purge the Politburo and Orgburo. The NKVD recorded and punished internal dissent and was responsible for the removal of key members of the upper echelons of the Soviet establishment who had fallen from favor. The NKVD also controlled the vast labor colony system, gulags, of the Soviet Union, and used slave labor to build public works for the Stalinist regime. In the Red Army, the NKVD worked through _politruks_ or political commissars, to monitor and police dissent. Soldiers who complained about the war effort during the Great Patriotic War (eastern front in WWII) could be prosecuted for sabotaging the war effort. The NKVD politically indoctrinated soldiers, or attempted to do so, considering many Red Army soldiers did not like or trust _politruks_. During the Second World War, SMERSH, from an acronym of Russian words for \"Death to Spies,\" was formed to police the failing army in 1941-1942. SMERSH troops formed behind the lines of attack to shoot deserters. SMERSH and NKVD troops policed Soviet communities behind the frontline, seizing vital goods and arresting deserters. NKVD troops were also responsible for the infamous 1944 mass deportations of Chechen, Ingush, and Tatar populations to Central Asia due to fears that these traditionally persecuted populations would be a fifth column sabotaging the war effort. As the Second World War drew to a close, the NKVD was responsible for contact with Polish communists to establish a puppet regime in Poland and also looked to round up and destroy both a Russian raised German unit called Vlasovites after Andrei Vlasov, a captured Soviet officer who led other Soviet POWs against the Soviet State and anti-Soviets in Ukraine. In 1941 and again from 1943-1946 the Soviet state formed \"The People's Commissariat for State Security\" or NKGB which had a broad influence over Soviet society including policing ideology, stopping sabotage of the war effort, and conducting intelligence gathering operations abroad. The NKGB also worked to control and coordinate partisan bands behind German lines during the Second World War. The creation of the NKGB's successor agency, the KGB (Committee of State Security), in 1954, actually signaled a vast reduction in power and autonomy for the secret police forces and intelligence services of the USSR under the De-Stalinization reforms of Nikita Khrushchev. As Martin Malia wrote in _The Soviet Tragedy_, \"This was a signal to the _nomenklatura_ and to the population at large that the mass terror had ended and that the Party was now supreme in the country.\" (p. 318).\n\nSome sources;\n\nSheila Fitzpatrick. _The Russian Revolution, 1917-1932._ Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.\n\nSheila Fitzpatrick. _Everyday Stalinism, Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s._ Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.\n\nCatherine Merridale. _Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945._ New York: Picador, 2006.\n\nMartin Malia. _The Soviet Tragedy, A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991._ New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.\n\nNorman Naimark. _Fires of Hatred, Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth Century Europe._ Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. (Specifically chapter 3 for information on the Chechen-Ingush and Tatar deportations of 1944)\n\nA good survey for Russian history for context on patterns of repression through secret police and censorship is Catherine Evuthov et. Al _A History of Russia, People's, Legends, Events, Forces._ Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004.",
"Pushing the character limit here — I hope this answers most of your questions, but happy to clarify anything I've glossed over. Anyway, let's get into it...\n\n#From Okhrana to Cheka\nThere was indeed a Tsarist secret police force — or rather, a series of them, starting with the [Oprichina](_URL_5_) of the 16th century and eventually evolving into the [Okhrana](_URL_14_) (formally, the Department for Defense of Public Security and Order), created after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II by a proto-socialist militant in 1881. Part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Okhrana was tasked with monitoring and disrupting the growing assortment of left-wing revolutionary groups that had sprung up within Russia. \n\nThe Okhrana proved a dangerous foe for revolutionaries in Tsarist Russia: highly adept at the recruitment of agents-in-place and the infiltration of *agents provocateurs* into revolutionary groups, and a pioneer in the field of cryptography. The perennial fear of penetration by the secret police made revolutionaries deeply anxious and paranoid — with good reason, it turns out: well-placed Okhrana agents included Roman Malinovsky, leader of the Bolsheviks in the Duma and a key ally of Lenin; Georgy Gapon, the priest and populist ideologue who led the Bloody Sunday march in 1905; there have even been [longstanding \\(though never definitively proven\\) allegations](_URL_13_) that Stalin was an Okhrana informant.\n\nAs one of the most feared and despised components of the Tsarist apparatus of repression, the Okhrana was quickly abolished after the February 1917 revolution. After the Bolsheviks seized control in October 1917, the need for their own internal security force to defend the nascent revolutionary state was immediately apparent. In December, the All-Russian Emergency Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage — better known by the abbreviation [Cheka](_URL_3_) — was established. \n\nThe Cheka is the direct ancestor of the KGB (and, by extension, most of the modern Russian intelligence services) — long after the Cheka name was abandoned in 1922, officers of the Soviet security services proudly called themselves '*chekists*', and, according to intelligence historian Christopher Andrew, \"were paid their salaries not on the first but on the twentieth of the month ('Chekists' Day') in honor of the Cheka's birthday.\"\n\nThere was, initially and very deliberately, no continuity whatsoever between the Okhrana and Cheka. The founder and first chief of the Cheka, [Felix Dzerzhinsky](_URL_10_), was a longtime revolutionary and zealous Bolshevik who had spent many years in Tsarist prisons. The Cheka was to be the 'sword and shield' of the state (a symbolism that carried over into [the insignia of the KGB](_URL_8_) — and even into [that of the post-Soviet FSB](_URL_16_).) Chekists were ideological enforcers, not just professional intelligence officers. \n\nThere were some cases of former Tsarist personnel being brought into the fold, usually to provide specific technical expertise, but they are exception rather than rule. Vladimir Dzhunkovsky, who served under Tsar Nicholas II as First Deputy Minister of the Interior, overseeing the Okhrana, and as chief of the Special Corps of Gendarmes, became an unofficial advisor to Dzerzhinsky and his successor, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky. Ivan Zybin, one of the Okhrana's most talented cryptanalysts, became a key figure in the Spetsotdel, a department of the Cheka created in 1921 as the Soviets' first cryptography and signals intelligence service.\n\nBut, lacking any institutional expertise in intelligence or counterintelligence, Dzerzhinsky and the first chekists had little choice but to learn from and mimic the tactics employed by the Okhrana. Again, per Andrew:\n\n > Dmitri Gavrilovich Yevseyev, author of two of the Cheka's earliest operational manuals, *Basic Tenets of Intelligence* and *Brief Instructions for the Cheka on How to Conduct Intelligence*, based his writings on a detailed study of Okhrana tradecraft. Though the Cheka was \"an organ for building the dictatorship of the proletariat,\" Yevseyev insisted—like Dzerzhinsky—that it must not hesitate to learn from the experience of \"bourgeois\" intelligence agencies.\n\nA while ago I came across [a very interesting doctoral thesis](_URL_1_) which explores in detail the methodological/tactical continuity between the Okhrana and the Cheka — and how the Cheka and its successor services built on that foundation to develop their own complex doctrines of internal security, political policing and counterintelligence. [Christopher Andrew](_URL_17_), meanwhile, has done peerless work on Soviet foreign intelligence — a unique and challenging discipline which had not been a particular specialty of the Okhrana — beginning in 1920 with the INO (the Foreign Department of the Cheka) and eventually evolving into the First Chief Directorate of the KGB.\n\n# From Cheka to KGB\n\nThe Cheka underwent a long series of reorganisations and rebrandings between 1920 and 1954, when the KGB was formed, but the core of the organisation and its missions remained more or less the same. Here's the chronology of names:\n\n* Cheka (1917-22)\n* GPU (State Political Directorate, 1922-23)\n* OGPU (Joint State Political Directorate, 1923-34)\n* GUGB (Main Directorate of State Security, 1934-41)\n* NKGB (People's Commissariat for State Security, 1941)\n* GUGB/NKVD (Main Directorate of State Security/People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, 1941-43)\n* NKGB/SMERSH (People's Commissariat for State Security/'Death to Spies', 1943-46)\n* MGB (Ministry of State Security, 1946-54) and KI (Committee of Information, 1947-51)\n* KGB (Committee for State Security, 1954-1991)\n\nMost of these reorganisations were simply down to fairly banal administrative reorganisations: the secret police function was repeatedly shuffled between ministries — sometimes it was independent, and given various ranks (Directorate, Main Directorate, etc.); for the most part it was under the supervision of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), later the Ministry for Internal Affairs; eventually it was made a standalone ministry/all-union committee. \n\nOther changes were more substantive: SMERSH was a wartime reorganisation of the counterintelligence function, and KI was a decidedly unsuccessful experiment in unifying the foreign intelligence departments of the MGB and the Red Army's intelligence service, GRU. (That particular experiment was a kneejerk response to the news that the United States was unifying its foreign intelligence functions into the new CIA.)\n\nThese reorganisations often also reflected shifting power dynamics in the Politburo: the re-merger of MGB and MVD in 1953 was a power-play by Lavrentiy Beria, who sought to shore up his control over the Soviet security services; the splitting-up of regular and political police forces and the creation of the KGB in 1954 was a direct effort to undo that centralisation. But despite the dizzying array of acronyms (and a great deal of turmoil in personnel and leadership, particularly during the Stalinist purges), there's a direct line of evolution from Cheka all the way to KGB — and beyond.\n\n#Post-Cold War\nI wrote at some length about the post-Cold War evolution of the Soviet security services in [this thread](_URL_11_). The short version is that the KGB wasn't so much abolished as it was dismantled; its subordinate directorates were hived off and merged together to create the modern Russian security and intelligence services, particularly the SVR and FSB, with a great deal of continuity in terms of personnel, institutional philosophy and methodologies. (That breaking-up of the KGB now looks like it's in the process of being [substantively reversed](_URL_18_), however — but it'll be another 19 years or so before we can talk about that on /r/AskHistorians without incurring the wrath of the mods...)\n\n# Sources for more information\n\n## Tsarist Russia\n* Jonathan W. Daly — *[Autocracy Under Siege: Security Police and Opposition in Russia, 1866-1905](_URL_12_)*\n* Jonathan W. Daly — *[The Watchful State: Security Police and Opposition in Russia, 1906-1917](_URL_9_;)*\n* Fredric S. Zuckerman — [*The Tsarist Secret Police in Russian Society, 1880-1917*](_URL_0_)\n\n## Soviet Union\n* Christopher Andrew & Vasili Mitrokhin — *[The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB\n](_URL_4_)*\n* Christopher Andrew & Vasili Mitrokhin — [*The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World*](_URL_2_)\n* Jonathan Haslam — [*Near and Distant Neighbours: A New History of Soviet Intelligence*](_URL_19_)\n* Amy Knight — *[The KGB: Police and Politics in the Soviet Union](_URL_6_)*\n\n## Post-Soviet Russia\n* Andrei Soldatov & Irina Borogan — *[The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia's Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB](_URL_7_)*\n* Mark Galeotti — [*Putin's Hydra: Inside Russia's Intelligence Services*](_URL_15_)\n",
"Expanded from [an earlier answer of mine](_URL_0_)\n\n\n\nThere indeed was a tsarist secret police known as the Okhrana, but there was very little continuity in either personnel or mission between the Soviet secret police and its tsarist predecessor. \n\nThe tsrarist state set up the Okhrana in the wake of the assassination of Emperor Alexander II and it continued in the tradition of other semi-official policing by the state of potential subversives. The overarching actions of this tasrist state agency was often shrouded in a degree of mystery which the Okhrana chiefs often contributed. Most infamously the Okhrana employed *agents provocateurs* paid agents that would infiltrate subversive organizations and chaos by encouraging rash or violent actions. The extent to which the Okhrana's activities lived up to their reputation though was questionable. There was a large political underground in tsarist Russia but it did not help matter that the Russian state including the Okhrana considered most political opinions subversive. The Okhrana certainly paid a good many people as informants, but there is evidence that many of these radicals were playing a double game by accepting money and continuing their politics. Stolypins's assassin in 1911 was a paid informant of the Okhrana and the Okhrana did not help matters by sometimes falsely planting rumors of cooperation onto individuals they could not turn. \n\nAlthough the Okhrana proved to be reasonably effective at suppressing the various opposition parties within Russia, it could not resolve the underlying causes of political dissent. Its operatives could not stop the 1905 Revolution, nor could the secret police fully eliminate subversive groups. The scale of the task was simply too large. The Okhrana's most visible (and dubious) legacy was to perpetuate the forged *Protocol of the Elders of Zion* which alleged a global Jewish conspiracy was behind various subversive groups around the world. \n\nAlthough the bureaucratic chaos created by the civil war precludes any firm answer, there were very little institutional continuities between the Okhrana and its Bolshevik successor, the Cheka (or more properly, VeCheka for this time period). The personnel who transitioned over from the Tsarist police forces to the Cheka tended to be white-collar types and other administrative personnel who were needed to staff the nascent Bolshevik state. Specialists in cryptography managed to make the transition as did one Okhrana agent in Paris, but the number of personnel used was quite limited. This was break in what was a common practice for the Bolsheviks during this period which tended to be pragmatic when it came to employing specialists who worked the same jobs in the pre-1917 regime. But the Cheka, by the very nature of its mission, tended to be very leery of employing personnel of the former tsarist state. One study based on the Soviet archives found that the Cheka had the second-lowest percentage of white-collar employees from the former regime among the central state organizations. \n\nMuch of the groundwork for this administrative culling of the Okhrana had been laid by the Provisional Government's actions after the February Revolution. While the Bolsheviks and subsequent Soviet propaganda held that they were the primary targets of the Okhrana, the reality was that the secret police's mission portfolio had expanded significantly since the turn of the century, and included keeping tabs on all sorts of potential sources of disquiet. Not only did this expansion chip away at the Okhrana's much vaunted, and quite overblown, effectiveness, but it made it an enemy to a broad spectrum of Russian political opinion. Thus one of the first acts of the Provisional Government was to put Okhrana leaders under arrest and begin a large-scale ministerial shuffling of Imperial police, including abolishing the Okhrana's parental organization, the Ministry of Police. After the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution, they completed this process of official ostracization and exclusion for the secret police. The Soviet constitution of 1918 had provisions directed against the Okhrana denying them civil rights and sanctifying their automatic arrest. \n\nYet pragmatism can sometimes overcome rhetoric, and there were some senior Okhrana personnel who served in the Cheka. The most famous one was the Okhrana's chief cryptographer, Ivan Zybin. Described by his contemporaries as a manic for cryptography, Zybin was at the forefront of one of the few tasks the Okhrana did exceptionally well, decrypting foreign communications and enciphering state documents. But Zybin was very much the exception rather than the rule, and his skills were of obvious, immediate utility for a Bolshevik state that was eager both to export the revolution and protect itself from foreign and White intrigues. \n\nThe Cheka's use of *agents provocateurs*, informants, and other unsavory methods of secret police work called to mind its tsarist predecessor, even among contemporaries. But to term the Cheka an augmented successor to the Okhrana based on it using the same tactics is misleading. For one thing, men like Dzerzhinsky had cut their teeth in underground revolutionary circles and appreciated the need for these tactics; he did not need the precedent of a tsarist secret police to understand the value of political intelligence given his status as a revolutionary. The Bolsheviks' pre-1917 experience acting inside political cells as well as their own styling as a revolutionary vanguard made them ideologically amenable to using these various methods. \n\nOne of the main differences between the Cheka and the Okhrana, the former's extensive use of torture, suggests that the Cheka lacked both the manpower and training to immediately take up the duties of its predecessor. Okhrana interrogations seldom used torture and their interrogators tacked to a more subtle and psychological approach that in many cases managed to \"flip\" the prisoner. While wartime pressures certainly added to the impetus towards the use of torture among the Cheka, it also speaks to the professional immaturity and lack of training of this Bolshevik organization that it did not have the patience for tsarist methods. Although he is definitely a biased source, Petrograd Okhrana chief K. I. Globachev's memoir wrote of the Cheka's in condemnatory terms:\n\n > As investigative organs they [the Chekas] were highly unsatisfactory. That is, on the one hand the composition of the personnel was [chosen] by chance, from highly unreliable elements, without specialised knowledge and experience, and on the other hand, the technical work left much to be desired.\n\nGlobachev's condescension towards the Cheka is apparent, but it also speaks to the idea that the Cheka, like the Okhrana, was nowhere near as effective an organization in the early years of the Bolshevik state as its predecessor. \n\nYet the Cheka had the benefit of serving a government that survived its civil war. But as Globachev's dismissal notes, the Bolsheviks' secret police was far from a professional organization. What happened in the 1920s was a professionalization of the Cheka and a further clarification of its duties. This included the \"alphabet soup\" of renaming (GPU, OGPU, later NKVD in the 1930s) which was not just a caprice of Moscow, but rather a sign of the growing professionalization of the police. The Stalin turn of the late 1920s which coupled collectivization and industrialization created a number of social problems which in turn fed the expansion of Soviet policing. The creation of new industrial towns and the flocking to the cities during the famine years led to greater calls for regulation of the populace and more powers. Discontent and a paranoid political culture also led to the erection of gulags and other forms of forced labor. \n\nThe expanding missions of the secret police led to the promotion of individuals that were able to navigate the system. By the 1930s, there was a cadre of youngish professionals who had cut their teeth in the earlier policing regimes of the 1920s and the NKVD (as the secret police was known after 1934) tended to become more professional in its ethos and conduct. The purging of the NKVD's head Yagoda in 1936 was largely because he represented an unprofessional and corrupt form of Soviet bureaucrat. Yagoda's successor, Yezhov, had managed to position himself to succeed his boss by posing as the very type of capable police chief the venal Yagoda was not. Moreover, Yezhov excelled at finding the \"evidence\" of disloyalty that Stalin suspected existed within the Soviet state, which is always a useful skill for a secret police chief in a dictatorship. \n\nBut serving as Stalin's chief of secret police was still a dangerous position as it cultivated enemies. Yezhov's fall was caused by his protege Beria, who in turned remained chief of the secret police, now renamed the KGB (after about 3-4 acronym changes) until Stalin's death, whereupon Beria himself was purged by the post-Stalin leadership. But these purging of the secret police's chiefs should not obscure the long-term process which the secret police had become a professional agency with its own mission and internal powerbase within the Soviet system. The KGB would remain a major facet of the state bureaucracy for the duration of the USSR. \n\n*Sources*\n\nDaly, Jonathan W. *The Watchful State: Security Police and Opposition in Russia, 1906-1917*. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004.\n\nZuckerman, Fredric Scott. *The Tsarist Secret Police in Russian Society, 1880-1917*. New York: New York University Press, 1995. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"https://books.google.ca/books?id=6BAWCgAAQBAJ",
"https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=ohiou1398772391",
"https://books.google.ca/books?id=4eSR1rHg5_YC",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka",
"https://books.google.ca/books?id=9TWUAQ7Xof8C",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oprichnina",
"https://books.google.ca/books?id=J07oAQAACAAJ",
"https://books.google.ca/books?id=pR8CRMDXg_YC",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KGB#/media/File:Emblema_KGB.svg",
"https://books.google.ca/books?id=PpdwQgAACAAJ&",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Dzerzhinsky",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/59ae51/how_did_us_and_russian_intelligence_agencies/",
"https://books.google.ca/books?id=bz1iQgAACAAJ",
"https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/stalins-greatest-secret/158643.article",
"https://www.britannica.com/topic/Okhranka",
"http://www.ecfr.eu/publications/summary/putins_hydra_inside_russias_intelligence_services",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Security_Service#/media/File:FSB_Emblem.png",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Andrew_\\(historian\\)",
"http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/09/21/putin-has-finally-reincarnated-the-kgb-mgb-fsb-russia/",
"https://books.google.ca/books?id=kgl4BgAAQBAJ"
],
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6gmv0w/was_there_a_tsarist_secret_police_what_was_the/"
]
] |
|
2nk3ap
|
what is the difference between the european union and the european commission and the european community?
|
Can someone please explain what the difference is between the European Union and the European Commission and the European Community?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nk3ap/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_the_european/
|
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"text": [
"The European Union (EU) is a group of 25 countries that have signed various treaties giving them close political and economic ties.\n\nThe European Community is an older name for the same thing.\n\nThe European Commission is the executive governing body of the EU, it is responsible for proposing legislation that will affect each of the member countries.",
"As explained earlier, just a bit different.\n\nThe European Union is a group of (now) 28 countries which have agreed to enhanced economic, fiscal and political cooperation and integration. \n\nThe European Community is the older name for it.\n\nThe European Commission is the civil service of the European Union, and their job is to propose new laws, and monitor the general performance and adherence to EU law by EU member states. \n\nSource: I'm a civil servant in an EU member state that has attended meetings in Brussels."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
eveqy1
|
when we look at stars in the sky that are light years away, are the stars there at the moment we look, or are we looking at a years-old after image?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eveqy1/eli5_when_we_look_at_stars_in_the_sky_that_are/
|
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"text": [
"Simply, yes - we're seeing stars after the light has travelled all the way to us. Ten light years isn't that far (space-wise) so some of the stars we see have already died. And there's lots of stars that exist that we can't see yet, because the light hasn't reached us.",
"You can think of it like smell. If someone wearing perfume walks by you, you'll smell it a few steps later, because that \"information\" takes time to reach you",
"Yes, the light you see from a star that’s 10 light years away has been traveling for 10 years. Most stars are way farther than that, so you’re correct in thinking that most of the stars we see are no longer there, if they even exist anymore lol",
"Actually the sun you see is about 8 minutes old, so if it were to magically disappear we would t know for 8 minutes... and then go careening off into the dark abyss of interstellar space",
"Yes, when you look at something, you are seeing the light that left it in the past. If that something is a distant star, then the light left years ago. If it's the Sun, it's about 8 minutes ago. \n \nAnd think about this. It's *always* true. If you are looking at an object a meter away, you are looking about 3 billionths of a second into the past (if I remember correctly). \n \nThat doesn't even count the time it takes your brain to process the input. Interestingly, sound travels much much slower than light, but it takes our brains longer to process visual input. So the images we see and the sounds we hear tend to synch up, even though we are hearing further into the past than we are seeing into the past.",
"We are looking into the past. If it is 10 light years away, then we are seeing 10 years ago. That goes for everything. Our sun is 8 minutes ago. Even the moon is 1.3 seconds ago.\n\nAnd, yes, everything in the universe is moving, so all stars are moving. So seeing that star 10 light years away, it has moved since then, though nothing we could notice without incredibly powerful telescopes.\n\n\nBut it's not just light. Everything in the universe is bound by the speed limit of casuality. Light, gravity, everything. Because of that, even though the light from a star 10 light years away is 10 years old, for us where we are viewing it, it is happening now."
]
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[] |
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[
[],
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||
wfv4a
|
Is their a psychological or physical benefit to tennis players who "moan", "groan" or scream every time they hit the ball?
|
I was visiting my grandma the other day. While watching tennis I noted how some players "moan","groan", or scream with every hit they give. It annoyed me terribly so I asked my grandma (who watches a lot of tennis) why they do it and she couldn't give me answer. She did, however, note that it only started a couple of years ago with Venus Williams - though she may be wrong since she is over 80 years old.
So if tennis players didn't always do it, why do they do it now? Did someone realise they can hit the ball harder or more accurately? Is it a scare tactic to use against other players?
Thanks in advance!
Edit: Seems like the word I was looking for is "grunting". Thanks for the great answers.
Edit 2: Just realised I used the wrong "there". I wish I could change the title now...
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/wfv4a/is_their_a_psychological_or_physical_benefit_to/
|
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"Comming from a martial arts background where we scream at the end of some of our techniques, here's why we do it:\n\n1) Psychological - anything that distracts or disrupts the other person's concentration is a benefit to you. It doesn't take much when two people are evenly matched. If you're outclassed, this isn't going to be the thing that puts you over the top.\n\n2) Physical - Breathing out when tensing muscles for impact is the best situation. It means all your muscles are contracting at the same time, and your body is in unison on doing so. You don't have your chest expanding from intake, wile you're arm is trying to tense for control and strength. Again, this is going to add a 'smidge' to your technique. But when you're playing at the top of the sport with other people a 'smidge' is sometimes all it takes.\n\nBoth of these things are applicable to tennis, or any physical competition. We have other reasons we do it, but worrying about getting hit when you attack and other stuff doesn't apply to tennis.\n\nAs for why didn't they do it before? It was considered a more gentile sport. Think about when Andre Agassi wore denim shorts and how much that upset the tennis elite. There were unofficial rules of decorum that don't become official until someone decides to test the bounds.\n\nI personally have no problem with it, but then I don't think sports should be played in silence.\n\nGolf... I'm looking at you.",
"Not sure if this the reason they started grunting, but seems like a good reason to do it.\n\n > In the current study, 33 undergraduate students watched tennis players hitting balls across the tennis court. Each shot was either quiet or contained a brief \"unnh\" noise that occurred as the player struck the ball.\n\n > The participants were asked to enter the direction of the shot in each clip on a keyboard, answering as quickly and accurately as possible. As it turned out, the extraneous sound significantly slowed the students' response times. They also made more mistakes in entering the direction of the shots with grunts. \n\n_URL_0_",
"Originally I thought there was a study showing that grunting can actually increase athlete performance, but upon further research, it seems it's the opposite:\n_URL_0_",
"If I understand, especially if done out of sync with hitting the ball, it can confuse the opponent and mess with their timing since they use audio cues to assess the trajectory and location of the ball.",
"A lot of players do this tactically, to prevent their opponents from hearing the sounds of the ball coming off the racquet and judging its speed and spin."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://www.livescience.com/10772-unnh-grunting-tennis-players-edge.html"
],
[
"http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pms.1999.89.1.233"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
1m0f5s
|
Did women of the renaissance have a renaissance?
|
Although they were allowed to be educated, did they get better social status? And most of all, did she have a renaissance? (I would prefer an argument against the fact that they had a renaissance but just give me everything.)
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1m0f5s/did_women_of_the_renaissance_have_a_renaissance/
|
{
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"text": [
"In my very humble opinion, the question is ill posed.\n\nThe *renaissance* is not a renaissance of man. It refers to the rebirth of interest in concepts of Antiquity, and encompasses changes and new ideas in science, society and art. It is described as a radical change in the view of the world. Women certainly were affected by it."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
f283op
|
how are structures able to be built such as oil rigs or bridges where the foundations are hundreds of meters deep in water?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f283op/eli5_how_are_structures_able_to_be_built_such_as/
|
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"oops didn't realize oil rigs float",
"There are devices called caissons that they construct where the pilings need to go. They are hollow boxes/cylinders that extend from the bed to the surface and the water is pumped out, and workers go down and install the foundation. They then remove the caisson. \n\nThis is obviously not for water hundreds of meters deep, though I think they don't build foundations that deep.\n\n*edit*: further investigation shows that they can make concrete blocks that they bring down and simply rest on the sea floor. Probably other methods but I gotta get to work.",
"Simple. We make really long piles that are driven to the sea bed. Then the foundation is made on top of those. It sounds too simple to be true, but that how it is. But even the deepest bridge foundations aren't actually that deep. Some tens of meters, which is a lot when it comes to water. \n\nBut oil rigs can also just float if the the water is really deep. As in deep enough that making foundations isn't practical. There are numerous ways to anchor and stabilise the rig a floating rig, which can be moved and reused.",
"Most drilling rigs are actually floating on the surface. They are meant to be moved around frequently from job to job drilling wells for production platforms. They have complex ballast systems that let water in and out to account for the weight of the rig to keep her afloat.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n Production platforms, depending on the location, are more likely to be fixed to the seafloor. They would typically be built adjacent to land somewhere in a drydock and then floated out to the field and dropped into place.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)",
"I was told that to build hydroelectric damns they would temporarily reroute the river, I assume they do it by dumping tons of material in the river to block it off and reroute it. They then build the damn in dry conditions and when it’s ready they destroy the initial barrage and let the river flow back to it’s original course, hitting the dam.\n\nNot your initial question but still related and interesting.",
"It’s really interesting. The will drive sheets of steel into the river/lake bed and make a water tight box around the area to be excavated. Massive pumps are used to keep ground water down. Then you’ve basically got an air pocket around the area you want to work. \n\nI’m not an engineer I’m just a labourer that works on these types of jobs. There is a lot more to it obviously but that’s the basics.",
"The tallest built in my area is the Troll platform, that's 472 meters. Way taller than empire state building and taller than Petronas tower. It was towed to sea and sunk and now produce gas with only the top above sea level.\n\nImagine towing something way larger than empire state some 100s of miles to sea, it was an amazing view.\n\nThey used concrete and built it from bottom and kept pouring the concrete.\n\nKatie Melua held a consert in one of the legs once.",
"Rigs float while platforms stand on the seabed. The Troll platform stands in water 303m (994 feet deep.) _URL_0_",
"Structures can be anchored to the sea floor via a variety of means. In shallower waters such as the North Sea structures tend to be secured directly to the sea bed via 3 ways, in order of depth\n\nPiled Jacket/Monopile: a support structure composed of steel beams is rested on the sea floor and piles driven in to the sea bed to anchor it down, similar to how you might nail something to the floor. Monopiles are where the whole support structure is driven into the sea floor and whatever platform is placed on top of it. These are generally used in shallow water and for smaller structures (e.g. wind turbines).\n\nGravity base: think of a garden umbrella with water in the base. This is generally concrete caissons that are filled with water and rest on the sea floor. The mass prevents any movement of the top side structure. Troll A is the largest gravity base structure in the world at 300m (_URL_0_)\n\nSuction base: similar to a gravity base but instead of using mass, the bottom is open and water is pumped out of the cavity to create a vacuum, holding the whole structure in place.\n\nFor deepwater applications, resting the production facility on the sea bed is not an option as sometimes the wellheads are kilometeres below the waves. A couple of different techniques are used:\n\nTension lag platforms have steel cable running from the base of a floating platform to the sea floor, tensioned to hold the platform in place against weather.\n\nSemisubmersible platforms operate like an iceberg, using inertia and a Dynamic Positioning system (thrusters linked to GPS) to keep position and prevent stress on the risers which are connected to the wellheads below. These tend to be used as drilling rigs as they can easily be moved from one field to another.\n\nFPSO (floating production storage and offloading) vessels are also used, which tend to be for existing fields. These are often converted oil tankers which production facilities placed on the top deck. The largest of these (Shell Prelude) has a liquefied natural gas processing plant on its top deck and is almost 500m in length, making it one of the largest floating structures in the world. \n\nSource: 5 years oil and gas Engineering followed by 3 in offshore wind.",
"I'm a civil engineer working on building cruise ship harbours. Imagine you're a giant and you want to build a bridge or Harbour. You grab a giant nail (around 50 meters long) and your giant hammer and start hammering it into the seabed. Once the nail stops going down, you're set. Drive down as many nails you need and then you put a structure on top of them.\n\nSome oil rigs have long legs that go up and down and you stabilize with the seabed. These rigs are obviously limited for shallowish water (50-80 meters). Others float but I have no experience with floating rigs."
]
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[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
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"https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/hebron-oil-platform-leaving-bull-arm-1.4144886"
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[],
[],
[],
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_A_platform"
],
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||
5rfk0v
|
why is it called "latin" america when spain/portugal are the biggest european influences to the region?
|
[deleted]
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5rfk0v/eli5_why_is_it_called_latin_america_when/
|
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"Spain, Portugal, France and Italy(and a few other minor countries) make up Latin Europe. The all speak romance languages which evolved from Latin after the fall of the Roman Empire. Since as you mentioned Spain and Portugal had the biggest influence on them they are subsequently known as the Latin America similar to their European counterpart. ",
"The French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian languages are the languages descended from Latin. Because of this they are called the Latinate, or Romance languages. \n\nSo to answer your question, it is specifically because Spain and Portugal were the large European Influences of the region that they are called Latin America. Hispanic is the term specifically for the subset influenced by Spain. ",
"Latin America is bits of the Americas that were influenced by Latin descended/Romance languages. Now don't confuse Latin America with South America because they are two very different things despite having people use them interchangeably. South America is South America, while Latin America is South America-Guyana and also includes Mexico, central American countries, some of the islands in the Caribbean, southern parts of the United States, and Quebec.",
"It was named by the French. And it includes the Caribbean. I imagine that might be a reason for the broad name. ",
"Napoleon wanted a better claim on the americas after Spain and Portugal had a firm grasp on their expansion. He started using the term 'Latin America' so that he too (French has Latin roots) could justify expanding into that territory",
"Here is [a good explanation from Wikipedia](_URL_0_):\n\n > The idea that a part of the Americas has a linguistic affinity with the Romance cultures as a whole can be traced back to the 1830s, in the writing of the French Saint-Simonian Michel Chevalier, who postulated that this part of the Americas was inhabited by people of a \"Latin race\", and that it could, therefore, ally itself with \"Latin Europe\" in a struggle with \"Teutonic Europe\", \"Anglo-Saxon America\" and \"Slavic Europe\". A further investigation of the concept of Latin America is by Michel Gobat in the American Historical Review.\n > \n > The idea was later taken up by Latin American intellectuals and political leaders of the mid- and late-nineteenth century, who no longer looked to Spain or Portugal as cultural models, but rather to France. The term was first used in Paris in an 1856 conference by the Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao and the same year by the Colombian writer José María Torres Caicedo in his poem \"Two Americas\".\n > \n > The term Latin America was supported by the French Empire of Napoleon III during the French invasion of Mexico as a way to include France among countries with influence in the Americas and to exclude Anglophone countries. It played a role in his campaign to imply cultural kinship of the region with France, transform France into a cultural and political leader of the area, and install Maximilian of Habsburg as emperor of the Second Mexican Empire. This term was also used in 1861 by French scholars in La revue des races Latines, a magazine dedicated to the Pan-Latinism movement."
]
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|
2tye40
|
why do people rub their faces when they are tired?
|
It feels good, but why?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tye40/eli5_why_do_people_rub_their_faces_when_they_are/
|
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"Just a theory, but by rubbing your face, you are stimulating nerves (which in your face are closer to the epidermis). By stimulating nerves, you are sending signals to your brain, occupying it to delay sleep.\n\nEdit: if you meant *eyes* then you are opening up your tear ducts which have most likely closed, thus drying out your eyes",
"my own personal bullshit theory:\n\nto get all the sleep out of your eye. or to just stimulate your eyes so you can get proper waking blood flow again. plus it kinda makes your eyes water up if they're dry.",
"Well we often rub the bags under our eyes because blood has pooled there (due to slowed circulation during sleep), so it's an action to get the blood flowing again.",
"Do you mean [rubbing your face in general,](_URL_1_) or [rubbing around the eyes?](_URL_2_)\n\nThe second one is doing a multitude of things, such as clearing mucous from your eyes, moving the set mucous membranes, and very importantly, stimulating the [lacrimal gland](_URL_0_) to secrete its lubricant.\n\nFrom Junqueira's Basic Histology:\n\n > The lacrimal glands produce fluid continuously for the tear film that moistens and lubricates the cornea and conjunctiva and supplies O2 to the corneal epithelial cells. Tear fluid also contains various metabolites, electrolytes, and proteins of innate immunity such as lysozyme. The main lacrimal glands are located in the upper temporal portion of the orbit and have several lobes that drain through individual excretory ducts into the superior fornix, the conjunctiva-lined recess between the eyelids and the eye.\n\nIf you're just playing with your face, I don't really know what you're doing.\n\nJust realized which Subreddit I'm in, so ETA... **ELI5: You rub it to make it wet.**",
"I believe it's because when you're tired your eyes dry up. When you rub them the whatever you call it gland pumps out fluids to get em wet again. There's a \"that's what she said\" in there somewhere.\n\nEdit: [Lacrimal Gland](_URL_0_)\n\n\n\n",
"Rubbing your eyes stimulates nerves that play a part in orgasms = it releases dopamine = it feels good = people do it.",
"My dog always scrubs at her face with her front paws when I wake her up. Definitely see a similarity there.",
"changes to your senses stimulate your body and trigger a higher level of alertness",
"You're subconsciously massaging your facial muscles and encouraging blood flow to them.",
"Your face has a TON of nerve endings. It's super sensitive, so when you touch it, your brain gets a lot of information. Stimulating your brain can help keep you awake. \n\nIf you ever do it yourself, you'll notice it feels \"good\" when you're really tired. That's just your brain processing all of the info it's being sent when you rub your face.",
"What is the most scientifically-proven effective way of delaying fatigue? Excluding crack or meth or any chemicals etc.",
"Well... Try sleeping with someone touching your face, and you'll know soon enough :p",
"Above your nose at the inner ends of your eyebrows you can feel two little holes/dimples. This is where a bunch of nerves travel from your face into your skull. Rubbing those helps release endorphins I think. \n\n",
"I actually don't rub my face when I'm tired. I start scratching the top of my head instead. I didn't even realize I was doing it until my (now ex) wife would tell me to go to bed because when I was tired, I would do that.",
"Rubbing your eyes stimulates the [oculocaridac reflex](_URL_0_), which slows the heartbeat. This is also why you might rub your eyes when stressed.",
"I rub my face when I'm tired to help me realize that I'm conscious. I feel myself touching my face, like splashing water. I think \"yep, I'm here\".",
"Don't have an official answer for you but I think it's safe to say that stimulating your face increase stimuli to your brain, thereby waking you up a little. Think about splashing water on your face or if someone slaps your face... your reaction is far greater than if they say slapped your foot or poured water on your foot. \n\nThe body is designed to \"WAKE UP\" when something touches our face, because there's a lot of important stuff on our face that needs to be protected :)\n\n",
"You don't want dry eyes, do you? \n\nIt's same reason why you move (ie. inadvertently do face yoga) to wake up -- stimulate circulation of blood, lymph; stimulate gland secretions, after long moments of inactivity. You don't want any stale blood sitting there; Think of it this way: circulation brings about nutrients and oxygenated blood to area; carries away waste products and carbon monoxide. ",
"I do it so I can close my eyes for a minute without looking like a dumbass",
"Now I'm just sitting here rubbing my face like an asshole",
"My fiancée were wondering that because we both were rubbing our faces before bed. \n\nI said, \"Let me rub your face and see if it feels better. Kind of like when someone else scratches your back it feels so much better.\"\n\n\"Ok.\"\n\n**OH MY GOD THIS IS AMAZING**",
"Couple of reasons, there are thin layers of muscles on your forehead,temples and around your mouth that allow you to make all kinds of expressions. Rubbing them relieves tension and increases blood flow which feels good. You might also be closing your eyes in the process, so that to your brain feels like a tiny refreshing nap coupled with a face massage. Ahhh : ) ",
"Reading this made me want to rub my face alot.",
"Mostly people rub their faces when recently they have been through a good amount of emotional stress. The facial muscles have to constantly keep up with the mental state. We articulate a lot with our facial muscles. They get tensed and stressed over time and like any other muscle in the body starts having a buildup of waste materials in them. By using our hands we turn the muscles from the outside and help in more blood circulation which removes the waste products faster and we feel the tension from our faces going away. \n\nAlso we inadvertently while rubbing our faces get rid of the oil and other deposits on the skin and hair of our face. Facial skin being very sensitive feels a considerable pressure lifting when you rub your face and wipe away all the dirt and oil deposits get removed. \n\nThat is my experience. The accurate scientific reasons may be different.",
"I catch myself doing this quite often when I'm tired. The best I can figure is that it's soothing and relaxing. Sort of like a mini massage for the face. I feel as if for me it helps to ease tension and be better able to wind down in the evening. Otherwise, I have no idea.",
"Well the rubbing the eyes part can have to do with the oculocardiac connection. When rubbing your eyes you decrease your heart rate",
"Because it would be weird to rub other people's faces when you're mad. Some people might even get upset about it.",
"I do not know. But I do have a theory. Humans have something called a [sympathetic nervous system](_URL_0_), which is a bunch of nerves that fire that generally tell the body to go into fight or flight mode and for the heart to beat fast. These nerves have historically been useful for life-or-death situations: the classic example is our prehistoric ancestors running from a wild beast. We also have a [parasympathetic nervous system](_URL_3_) which is a bunch of nerves that cause the body to relax. In modern times, a lot of people have written that working and going to school and interacting with other people who are not friendly to you (in other words, most of your day) causes the sympathetic nervous system to be always running. This is probably part of why they say people who are always stressed or anxious have more high blood pressure (when your are running from a tiger, you would want your blood pressure to be high! But it is not good for your body for your blood pressure to always be high when you are just sitting around).\n\nNow here is the interesting thing. There are a bunch of physical maneuvers that cause the nerves of the parasympathetic nervous system to become more active! One of these is the [oculocardiac reflex](_URL_2_), which produces increased vagal tone. The vagus nerve is one of the main nerves in the parasymathetic system, and \"tone\" is the word we use to describe how active a nerve is. The oculocardiac reflex is triggered by stretching some of the muscles that are directly around the eye, as well as by pressing directly on the eye. So, it is possible that after a long day of being stressed, rubbing the face around the eye causes the body to relax a little bit and let go of some stress!\n\n(Please note: do not push on your eye to cause this reflex intentionally. It is bad for your eye. A easy way to feel what stimulating the parasympathetic nerves feels like is to put your head under the water in a bathtub for a few seconds, which stimulates the [mammalian diving reflex](_URL_1_).) ",
"Because they've already taken the stairs and drank ice water. ",
"According to this book \"Improve your social skills\" by Daniel Wendler, your face has a lot of nerve endings and rubbing your face causes you to feel good. This rubbing is sending stimulus to your brain which the brain interprets as good. i.e. People rub their faces and necks when they are stressed to comfort themselves. \n\n",
"Im doing this almost all day, partially because I'm tired, but mostly because it feels like a hair is brushing my face or I walked into a cobweb. All-fucking-day.\n\nIve realized the less or worse I sleep, the more it bothers me.",
"Maybe it stimulates the nerves in my face, making me feel more awake. Same thing with cold water or cold air in your face.",
"Because its considered impolite to rub other people's faces when you're tired.",
"My theory:\n\nEven when we're babies, we like to cozy up with someone to feel comfortable. Rubbing your face just gives you that same feeling of snuggling.",
"To disguise the cocaine they're shoving up their nose. ",
"I love this topic! \nMy 6month old does it all the time when tired, and now I have a better understanding as to why.\nThanks!",
"There's alot of 'to stay awake' related arguments but as a recent father, I'll tell you that a newborn does this all the time and its more a signal of 'I'm tired'. In fact, when you put something soft on their faces, they snuggle into it and fall asleep faster. I haven't answered the question but I'd guess its more of an instinctual snuggle into mother's shoulder type reaction just before a person falls asleep. This reaction carries over into adulthood. ",
"I don't know, but I've noticed that it's something babies do, so it must be a semi-instinctive or universal feeling, not something we're socially conditioned to do when we're tired. ",
"Oculocardiac reflex! So the compression of your eyeball and/or the associated muscles actually effect your parasympathetics and work to lower your heartrate allowing sleep to come easier. A prof mentioned it offhand in a patient assessment class and this is the first time it's been relevant. Cheers!\n\n_URL_0_",
"No one here seems to have the full story, so I'll just chip in my two cents as well. \n\nA big part of sleep is the regulation of fluid and oil within your body, when you haven't gotten enough sleep this fluid is improperly distributed and leads to thinner, saggier, clammy skin. This is why you have bags under your eyes when you haven't slept as well, the phenomena happening underneath your eyes is actually happening to your entire body, but you see it more predominantly underneath your eyes because that skin is exceptionally thin.\n\nSo what does this have to do with rubbing your face? Well I suppose it has something to do with readjusting nerve endings which are receiving additional pressure due to saggy skin. Relieving the additional pressure for a bit because there are a very large and excessive amount of nerve endings there. ",
"I've got a 6 month old and he learned to rub his eyes when he is tied before he was 3 months. At that point I don't think it could have been a learned behaviour. ",
"I only do it to let other people know that I am tired...",
"Finally- I've been waiting six months for this answer. Similar ELI5 that I saved hoping it would be answered- [here](_URL_0_)",
"Because your face has muscles and it takes energy to keep your eyes open. To be conscious even, over the day you make a multitude of expressions that exercise and tire those muscles. Tired facial muscles are the easiest to rub/massage when you're, tired. Probably rubbing out some lactic acid as well (from muscles).",
"I can't be the only one who rubbed their face while reading these comments",
"Late to the game here but I do this ALL THE TIME. I'm talking deep rub on my whole face, NOT just my eyes. It feels amazing when I'm tired.... I couldn't really explain why. I guess I'd agree with some responses in this thread in that it stimulates your brain and \"wakes it up.\" Honestly I do it because it feels good.",
"Ok why do I stretch when I'm tired?",
"We're wiping the tired away. Don't ruin this for me.",
"This is just a theory, consult an expert and that shit but it could be to get the blood flowing. Like slapping your cheeks or tickling your lips with a feather after keeping a horn to your face for a long time.",
"If you feel good when you rub your face you could be a dickhead?",
"Because the last point of coke made your face numb. ",
"Simply for massage and moving the blood flow. ",
"I've read somewhere that rubbing your forehead when you're tired stops you from yawning and it seems to work, so I take it has to do with enhancing fluid flow in your facial muscles. ",
"Why did I yawn when I read this?"
]
}
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[] |
[] |
[
[],
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"http://i.imgur.com/1Sob7Ht.jpg",
"http://i.imgur.com/z7LJtiJ.gif",
"http://i.imgur.com/HowWu6a.gif"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrimal_gland"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oculocardiac_reflex"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_nervous_system",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammalian_diving_reflex",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oculocardiac_reflex",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasympathetic_nervous_system"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oculocardiac_reflex"
],
[],
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[],
[
"https://reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29ybef/eli5why_when_im_tired_does_rubbing_my_face_with/"
],
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|
2whm3l
|
why don't television shows and movies show male genetalia as much as they do female genetalia? [nsfw]
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2whm3l/eli5_why_dont_television_shows_and_movies_show/
|
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"text": [
"You don't see pussies, you don't see dick. \nYou'll see both topless, and the ass of both.",
"Men will tune in more if theres boobs involved. Women arent as quick to jump at the opportunity to see another pair of balls. ",
"You haven't watched Spartacus...",
"I dunno about you but I've never seen female genitalia in a (non-porno) movie once, I've seen penises at least 10 times. ",
"What type of television shows are you watching? I gotta troll Cinemax at 4am just to see a glimpse of bush.",
"But do they really show female genitalia? I mean, I agree we see bush, but I certainly can't remember actually seeing labia in a non-porn. I think it's just that it's easier to show a woman naked without really showing her genitalia than it is to show a man naked without really showing his genitalia."
]
}
|
[] |
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[],
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||
1i0x5z
|
Can the effect of semantic satiation occur in things other than words?
|
Semantic satiation is when you repeat a word over and over until it loses meaning and becomes strange to you. Can one do this with something other than a word? I find if I just continuously think about, for example, a family member, they start to just seem strange, meaningless, and different. It's very unsettling and somewhat upsetting. Would this be the same effect as what happens with semantic satiation?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1i0x5z/can_the_effect_of_semantic_satiation_occur_in/
|
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"text": [
"Maybe this is too far off topic, but it's reminiscent of the way we think about cliches and colloquialisms. If you hear a phrase repeated to you throughout your lifetime, you may stop thinking consciously about the literal meaning of the words while still understanding the implication of the phrase.",
"Our minds are very *ironic.*\n\n\nDaniel M. Wegner, a cognitive neuroscientist discusses them at length [here](_URL_0_) and [here.](_URL_1_)\n\nHere's a snippet:\n > The theory of ironic processes of mental control (Wegner, 1994, 2009) holds that any intentional control of the mind introduces an operating process that directs conscious attention--focusing our minds on positive thoughts, for example, if we are hoping to improve our mood. This process is accompanied, however, by an ironic monitoring process that looks for the failure of our intention. Such monitoring can, when we are stressed or under mental load, actually promote the unwanted mental state--for example, making us sad when we want to be happy. Ironic processes were first discovered in the study of thought suppression, where unwanted thoughts can return merely because we try not to think about them. But ironic processes seem to underly a variety of unwanted mental states, from obsession and depression to anxiety and insomnia, and can produce unwanted actions in sports and performance settings as well. ",
"I think actions/emotions also do this. Think about disaster situations, you see a dead guy, you're mortified. However you see you 10th dead guy, by that time sure you understand it sucks but it may no longer \"feel\" like it sucks as bad. So I guess in a way you have been \"de-sensitized\" to seeing dead people, you forget the meaning of what it is.",
"First note that \"Semantic Satiation\" is in no way a psychological term. \n\nWhen we hear a word, the sound gets translated into neurosignals and sent to the sensory cortex (in our brain), which then recognizes it and responds by sending a signal to a part of the cortex, an association area, to be specific (where our brain remembers certain relationships, a huge part of our cognitive processing), and that association area gives the brain feedback, eg, what the word means to us. However, when the signal from the sensory cortex goes to the association area, the path it takes has a \"refractory period\", or time it needs before it can be taken again. If the word is said again in that time, our brain may not be able to take the path it is used to, due to the refractory period, and may treat the word like a brand new word, which we would sound out and try to give meaning to, in which the phenomenon takes place and people say \"Well now the word sounds stupid!\"\n\nIn your case, your brain is not doing this. Your brain thinks of a person, then uses the responsible association area to give itself information about the said person. The fact that after multiple times of trying to retrieve this information, your brain decides that it's \"uninteresting\", does not mean anything close to the mental processing of semantic satiation, you're not exhausting a neural pathway and resorting to analysis skills to try to find meaning, rather, re-evaluating old information and refreshing its meaning\n\nHave a great day"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
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"http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~wegner/seed.htm",
"http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~wegner/ip.htm"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
369unt
|
why don't women ever have "butt-chins"?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/369unt/eli5_why_dont_women_ever_have_buttchins/
|
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"Women do have chin clefts. I'm not sure why you think they don't. It happens.\n\n[Here is incredibly famous actress Sandra Bullock for one such example.](_URL_0_)\n\nYou can Google Image Search \"Woman Chin Cleft\" to see plenty more examples. It's usually not as prominent on women as it is on men, but it definitely exists."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
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"http://media.celebrity-pictures.ca/Celebrities/Sandra-Bullock/Sandra-Bullock-53.JPG"
]
] |
||
67x0n1
|
why did people use to pickle vegetables to preserve them?
|
Why did we do it? What are the processes that turn pickling a viable way of food preservation?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67x0n1/eli5_why_did_people_use_to_pickle_vegetables_to/
|
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"text": [
"Because that was the only way they had to preserve vegetables. When growing your own vegetables, you have to pick the vegetables when they're ready, and vegetables go bad very quickly. If you have more vegetables than you can eat in a short time, you would want to preserve the rest until you could eat them later.\nPickling is a relatively simple process, so it's something that could be done in an afternoon. This means that after harvesting vegetables, a member of the family could pickle most or all of the vegetables in the same day. The equipment required for it is not particularly expensive either.",
"Pickling creates a low pH, low oxygen environment, which is hostile to lots of microbial life, the little jerks ruining our fruit and veggies. For the why, well it helps you extend the useful lifespan of harvested foods, and the availability of seasonal foods. Oh and they taste awesome.",
"Many kinds of bacteria and other pathogens have difficulty surviving in the acidic, oxygenless environment of the pickling process. In addition, some kinds of bacteria that *do* thrive in such conditions are harmless and in fact improve the taste via fermentation, while also shooing away other bacteria that could potentially survive in such conditions that could potentially be harmful.",
"Well back before refrigeration, you needed a way to keep food edible for long periods of time (winter). By taking perishable food and putting it in an air-tight container filled with vinegar and salt, bacteria and things that will turn the food inedible have a much harder time of forming, so the food can be eaten months later when it would spoil in days if left to the elements. ",
"Because if you remove the oxygen from something and drop the pH below 4 or so nothing dangerous can grow. Pickling is the process of growing specific bacteria that consume oxygen and lower the pH. Yes these bacteria can survive, but they are safe to consume. Other bacteria that are dangerous can survive, but they can't grow, and thus can't become dangerous if not already so.\n\nSo the benefit of pickling is you can take food, put it in a jar that you rinsed the dirt out of and put a top on it to keep the bugs out. You only need to do a moderate job at sealing it, and you have no requirements to sterilize it. The food will keep for years in this condition. Not even a fire is needed to prepare the food. No fancy canning equipment is required either."
]
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|
[] |
[] |
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[],
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|
4kifbl
|
why can't helicopters deposit large oxygen bottles strategically on mt. everest or pick up people in trouble by harness?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4kifbl/eli5_why_cant_helicopters_deposit_large_oxygen/
|
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"The air pressure at the top of Mt Everest (29,000ft) is only about 1/3 as much as at sea level so your helicopter can only generate 1/3 of the lift. In addition it's cold so you risk ice forming on the rotors, fuel and hydraulics freezing and finally the weather isn't always very nice.",
"29,029' that's why.\n\nYou realize that helicopters fly by beating the air in to submission, right? If there's no air to beat into submission (let alone keep a human alive), they don't fly.\n\nThere is a video of a helicopter that made it to the top and actually hovered for a little while under the most ideal conditions. Go take a look at that. It's a turbine powered squirrel (high-performance version) that has been stripped of everything. Watch the pilot's control inputs. His wild correcting inputs are almost at full deflection just to keep the thing level and hovering... that's with a reasonable amount of transitional lift in the form of updraft over the summit.",
"They cannot fly that high. The air is too thin to support the helicopter. There are some ultralights that can go that high, but not one capable of carrying an airtank yet alone picking up passengers. ",
"Who exactly is going to pay for that? The (very poor) Nepalese government? People climb Mt. Everest knowing the risk. And who's going to rescue the helicopter pilots after the inevitable crash?",
"Seriously though, why don't they end this madness and build an escalator to the top already?"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
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[]
] |
||
4b9c4i
|
gear mechanics?
|
Hi, without being an engineer I may not be able to understand how 2 gears fit together.
I've been playing in this "algodoo" physics software and I'm trying to understand basic mechanics of 2 gears.
The gears I have going at the moment, fit together for a few rotations but then start skipping a tooth and jam up..
I googled it and all of it is very... difficult.
Is there an incredibly simple way to explain this to me?
If not I understand, mechanics is incredibly complex.
Thank you
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4b9c4i/eli5_gear_mechanics/
|
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"To ensure proper tooth mating, your \"diametral pitch\" on both gears has to match. Read [this](_URL_0_) for a technical brief if you want to know more.",
"_URL_0_\n\nHere is a link to a gif that I think will answer a lot of your questions. For two gears to mesh smoothly, the points where they contact have to all lie on the same line (the blue line in the GIF). Also, the two gears have to be in contact at at least one point at all times."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.bostongear.com/pdf/gear_theory.pdf"
],
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involute_gear"
]
] |
|
2ffrof
|
why can a baby scream endlessly for hours on end while an adult loses their voice after a short period?
|
I have a 2 month old colicky baby.
Why is it that when I go to a concert and cheer/scream a bit for less than an hour I lose my voice, yet my child can scream until they make me deaf - FOR HOURS - and it's nothing to them?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ffrof/eli5_why_can_a_baby_scream_endlessly_for_hours_on/
|
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"text": [
"It is because babys use the full potential of their lungs - kind of like opera singers. That way they don't Stress their vocal cords that much. We as adults don't do that anymore, our breathing is much more shallow, so we have to use our muscles as a compensation. And that is exhausting and you lose your voice.\nSource: i watched a documentary about it and thats what i remember...",
"A voice teacher of mine once mentioned this. She said it was because when we learn to speak, we are socialized to constrict our voices and hold back when we speak so we aren't too loud and don't overpower other people. It becomes so natural to us that we don't think about it. When you learn to sing correctly, so you can sing for a long time without tiring yourself out, you relearn what you did naturally when you were a baby. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
14kpyx
|
What would happen to a small piece of neutron star matter if you were able to remove it from the star and place it alone in space?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/14kpyx/what_would_happen_to_a_small_piece_of_neutron/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c7e1801",
"c7e51yv"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"The star matter stays so dense due to the immense gravity. If you plucked a chunk out and placed it into space, I bet it would explode rather violently. I'm no scientist, just dig physics, so don't take my word for gospel...",
"Considering that it is super-pressurized, if you put it in a perfect vacuum it would explode (just like anything else, except much more dramatic). "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
57em5n
|
how does the lever, one of 6 simple machines, work?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/57em5n/eli5_how_does_the_lever_one_of_6_simple_machines/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d8rc4fj"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"A first class lever trades range of motion for force, second and third class levers the opposite."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
2ydk2q
|
History teachers of reddit, I have a question...
|
Do you enjoy what you do? I love history (I'm 15) and I've aced every test. I'm seriously considering going to university and training to become a history teacher. I have a few questions, if you could answer any I'd be so grateful:
* Do you enjoy it?
* What grades do you need to get into a university? (I know every one is different but what did you take? Also I'm in Scotland, UK so that will likely make a difference).
* Have you ever had a student that you truely liked (inspired you/you inspired them) or one that you just hated?
Anything else you could tell me about your job would be great!! thank you
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ydk2q/history_teachers_of_reddit_i_have_a_question/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cp8olku"
],
"score": [
17
],
"text": [
"It depends very much on the class. Mostly I TA sections for large (500+) survey lectures (I'm scheduled to teach my second class as instructor this summer - yay!); I don't know if you have those in Europe. They usually fill a GER, and that means you get a spread of students: Freshmen who never had a class before, seniors who just realized they need a GER to finish, and then some students who are genuinely interested.\n\nI've TAed all of our World History courses (11000 BC-Present) and Western Civ courses (1000 AD-Present), and a lot of Greek Myth, so more often than not I'm working with material I'm not too familiar with (I'm pretty good with Myth - WW2 not so much), which is actually really fun. The assigned primary sources are usually straight forward, and when things go well I'm there not really to be too active - ideally the students would just sit in a room for an hour and discuss the texts themselves, but reality, right? - I talk the students through the assigned texts (by which I make them talk me through them) and show (again, get them to show me) how the assigned texts are related.\n\nIf the students have done the reading and are willing to participate, it's really fun. Engaging with the students is cool, seeing learning accomplished is cool. As a matter of fact, my favorites are C students who want to do better. As don't need me, and other students just aren't trying. Even when students completely misunderstand a text (and incredibly often students read a text and take *the exact opposite* of the intended meaning from it), walking them through the argument of the text and helping them understand what's going on in it is rewarding.\n\nOn the other hand, sometimes groups of students come without having read a damn thing, and it becomes habitual. Total refusal to engage with the course. Those sections are just torture. They wreck my self esteem, they eat of tons of energy as I try to figure out how I am going do class next time, they basically make me hate life. Is this happening because I'm a bad teacher? What can I do to fix it? Myth is the worst. I go into Myth sections wanting to talk about psychoanalysis or sexual politics or experiences of war or the hero cycle or all kinds of things that require the students to have read the texts, and I find out they just want me to tell them the stories. Sigh.\n\nThese aren't isolated students - you get good and bad students in almost every class.\nSometimes the whole class picks up an attitude, both good and bad. Getting a section go bad on you is just the worst. I remember one 8AM section I had where I absolutely could not convince the students to read anything. One morning I just gave up and straight up asked them what I could do to make them participate, and one kid in the back said \"bring us coffee.\" I'm not buying 30 students coffee, so I took them to a coffee shop next time. No improvement. Someone in their eval of my teaching that term wrote \"LegalAction is too hands-on. He should just let us fail.\" Worst feeling ever.\n\nI'm friendly with several of my old students, and many of them take multiple classes from me. That's pretty cool (and good for getting a section on your side - \"Now, I know that quiz schedule looks scary, but Jessica was in my class last year. It wasn't so bad was it?\" \"No, it's really not.\" A little manipulative, because Jessica is never going to say to my class in front of me \"It was hell,\" but it keeps people from complaining).\n\nSorry I can't help you with the British system admission requirements."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
6p8x7m
|
why do some sound systems not hurt your ears at high volume levels?
|
[Specifically I'm talking about the large rigs used in club, rave and even gig environments - as opposed to home systems]
Basically I've noticed two types of experiences that you can have with sound on nights out, the second being much more delightful but at the same time harder to come across.
**1) Everyday, *Normie* System**
* Loud volume levels
* Sound can feel unbalanced i.e. very full bass or lots of high end
* Variably tactile experience of sound i.e. feeling bass in body etc
* Commonly experience ear fatigue after some period of time (have to take breaks from dance / trance / stage floor in order to lessen this)
* Difficult to hear and talk to people
* Can't stand near speakers for very long at all
* ^ The above can often lead to temporary ear ringing for the next day or so
**2) Superior but harder to find, *Patrician* System**
* Volume feels comparably the same loudness to a Normie System
* More balanced sound - can hear a full range of frequencies and pick out individual instruments / tracks quite easily. Feels like the music can *b r e a t h e* more
* Consistant and enjoyable tactile experience of sound i.e. feeling bass through body; possibly even feeling air movement from speakers etc
* No ear fatigue whatsoever
* Can hear and converse with people perfectly
* ^ This is true even when I'm close to the speakers, which doesn't seem to put the same excessive pressure on my ears
* Tinnitus is not something I have to worry about
I don't want to taint peoples answers too much but if I remember correctly, one of the Patrician systems that I definitely managed to identify was the much praised Funktion One rig..
How does this work guys? It interests me because it kind of breaks everyday wisdom (mostly imparted us by worried parents / aunts / deaf grannies..) that louder music is going to kill our ears or give us STDs or something equally as terrible. I'm not denying that volume levels are something that should be taken seriously, but I guess I kind of want to know what the real story behind the story is, if you get what i mean? ;) A bit like how all calories aren't made equally and things of that nature.
Many thanks guys!
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6p8x7m/eli5_why_do_some_sound_systems_not_hurt_your_ears/
|
{
"a_id": [
"drkv4er"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"100% deaf here, and the loudest volumes possible do not hurt my ears but they hurt my eyes, and makes the hair inside my ears itchy.\n\nLike putting head next to speaker."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
5mub22
|
What would William Shakespeare's (~1564 - 1616) education have entailed?
|
[Inspired by an image on r/funny](_URL_0_), I became curious, as he is a major part of our education for literature, just what would Shakespeare's educational studies look like? Would he be reading classic Greek and Latin texts such as Antoninus Liberalis's *Metamorphoses* or something more English like Chaucer's *Canterbury Tales*?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5mub22/what_would_william_shakespeares_1564_1616/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dc72b7y"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text": [
"Stand back, finally an r/askhistorians question I am qualified to answer!\n\nShakespeare is often depicted as uneducated, but we have to understand what that means in context. Many literary figures of the day were Oxford or Cambridge graduates or drop-outs, and so it is tempting to depict Shakespeare as a simple country rube by comparison. Some of his fellow writers actually did so. The first mention of Shakespeare in print as a playwright is from Robert Greene (MA from Oxford *and* Cambridge), who wrote of Shakespeare as \"an upstart Crow\" who thinks he can compete with properly (by Greene's standard) educated writers. Perhaps from these attitudes grew the popular image that persisted for many years of Shakespeare as an \"untutored genius\". Shakespeare authorship conspiracy theories take this further and insist that someone of his education *could not* have written the Shakespeare plays, which is certainly inaccurate. \n\nThe problem is when we hear \"grammar school\" and try to compare Shakespeare's education with the grammar schools of today. We don't know anything about Shakespeare's specific education, but we know quite a bit about the school he, as a child of his social rank, certainly attended, and the schools in England of the time. The curriculum was far more rigorous than today's grammar schools. We know the names of the headmasters at the King's New School when Shakespeare would have attended, and we know they were both Oxford graduates. His education would have included reading, grammar, and writing in English and Latin, including exposure to Cicero, Ovid, and other classical authors. Shakespeare scholar James Shaprio writes: \"Scholars have exhaustively reconstructed the curriculum in Elizabethan grammar schools and have shown that what Shakespeare...would have learned there...was roughly equivalent to a university degree today, with a better facility in Latin than that of a typical classics major.\" (p. 276)\n\nSources: \n\n* Ben Shapiro, *Contested Will*, 2010, p. 273-276\n* Ian Wilson, *Shakespeare: The Evidence*, 1993, p. 40-42"
]
}
|
[] |
[
"https://np.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/5mr6ws/shakespeare_in_school/?ref=share&ref_source=link"
] |
[
[]
] |
|
u0jun
|
Are the number of biological discoveries increasing or decreasing?
|
I often think back to the turn of the 20th century when information and transportation had finally allowed for the scientific community to begin to discover, catalogue, and study new species from unheard of corners of the planet. I wonder what it must have been like discovering species that must have seemed so alien almost everywhere we looked.
Now that we've found so many animals, both on land and under sea, are we running out of discoveries? Or are we just not hearing about them?
I assume microbiology and extremophiles are the new biological frontier, but are my observations correct? Have we nearly discovered all there is to discover on earth?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/u0jun/are_the_number_of_biological_discoveries/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c4rbp7b"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Even if you only categorize biological discoveries as finding new species, there is so much in the ocean, and still some in jungles we have likely not discovered yet.\n\nHowever, to classify biological discoveries as finding new species would be like classifying physical discoveries as finding new elements. There is so much incredible research going on in protein function, cell structure, evolution theory, neuroscience, computational biology, and vastly many more areas that is far more exciting (in my opinion) than trying to classify species.\n\nIn short, we have not come even a tiny bit close at all to discovering all biology."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
11jcmv
|
What happens to the umbilical cord when twins, triplets, etc. are formed?
|
Does the umbilical cord split with them? How does that whole part really work.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/11jcmv/what_happens_to_the_umbilical_cord_when_twins/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c6n32pu"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"It depends on what kind of twin it is. With fraternal (dizygotic) twins, each fertilized egg produces its own placenta (and umbilical cord), and thus each twin is completely independent of the other. With identical (monozygotic) twins, it depends on the stage at which the twins separated. If they separated very early on, they would each produce a placenta and cord, similar to dizygotic twins. If they separate at a later stage, they may [share a placenta, but still have independent umbilical cords](_URL_1_) - basically, instead of one umbilical cord coming off the placenta [there will be two](_URL_0_). "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://info.med.yale.edu/obgyn/kliman/placenta/twins/twindiagrams/R%26M%20Placenta.jpg",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_mono_twin"
]
] |
|
35gav4
|
if regular sun exposure increases your chance of skin cancer, why do people in warmer states generally have lower rates of skin cancer?
|
_URL_0_
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35gav4/eli5_if_regular_sun_exposure_increases_your/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cr44wnm"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Those statistics don't take into account racial distributions in the statistics. People with increased skin pigmentation have lower rates of skin cancer.\n\nBasically, the whiter the state, the higher the incidence of skin cancer. "
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/skin/statistics/state.htm"
] |
[
[]
] |
|
b65omj
|
What makes metals like iron melt when exposed to very high tenperature?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/b65omj/what_makes_metals_like_iron_melt_when_exposed_to/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ejjmy2o"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Temperature is a representation of the kinetic energy within the molecules of a given material. In other words, temperature is a way for us to quantify how fast the molecules in an object are travelling - longitudinally (side to side), rotationally and vibrationally. \n\nWhen a metal like Iron absorbs a lot of heat, the kinetic energy stored in the molecules becomes stronger than the chemical bonds keeping them together - they basically shake themselves loose. As the molecules break down the links between themselves, they become softer, until they become liquids or even gases. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
489dav
|
How was stone transported all the way from Egypt to Rome?
|
[This](_URL_0_) video states that the Parthenon in Rome is constructed of granite transported all the way from Egypt. How was this accomplished?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/489dav/how_was_stone_transported_all_the_way_from_egypt/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d0i0dm6"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text": [
"The Parthenon is in Athens, not Rome. The Pantheon, built by Marcus Agrippa is in fact built of granite, although I don't know whether it's Egyptian stone or not, though I have no reason to doubt it (there were major granite quarries in Egypt that supplied the city). People in antiquity were perfectly capable of transporting stone by boat, the same way they transported everything else. The marble trade, for example, was one of the more lucrative trades in the Mediterranean, especially in imported stone from Paros, Naxos, and Mount Pentelicus in Attica. Between 10, B.C. and 367, A.D. the Romans brought to the city some seven Egyptian obelisks, all of which still stand in the city. Transporting some granite presented no difficulty"
]
}
|
[] |
[
"https://youtu.be/e_phjB19ZEg?t=586"
] |
[
[]
] |
|
ivkrm
|
What would be the best method for us to use if we wanted to send and receive information across vast interstellar distances?
|
Is it possible to create, say, a radio wave laser? How far could such a laser reach though space? I've heard that even lasers do spread out a bit.
Would a radio wave laser be our best option for interstellar communication, or would it be better to transmit with something like the [Arecibo Observatory?](_URL_0_) I heard from *Cosmos* that it would be possible for the Arecibo Observatory to communicate with another similar-sized dish located half the distance to our galactic center. That's pretty far. Is that really true? (Of course, it would take a very long time.) How focused of a beam can this thing make? Would a laser reach farther?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ivkrm/what_would_be_the_best_method_for_us_to_use_if_we/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c26z8jd",
"c26ztzd",
"c26zu53",
"c2700bh"
],
"score": [
2,
3,
3,
3
],
"text": [
" > radio wave laser\n\n= \"maser\", I think. \n\n\\- _URL_0_ - ",
"I don't know about the 'maser' wonderfuldog mentioned, so it's worth looking into that. I also don't know about this talk on Cosmos about the Arecibo Observatory. Last time I checked, there really wasn't any feasible way to transmit data over interstellar distances - the power required to overcome the inverse-square law when it comes to communicating to other star systems with current technology is absolutely mind-boggling, and practically insurmountable. Probably we would have to rely on good old space-ship communication; much slower than the speed of light.\n\nThat being said, it's been a few years since I've looked to see how things are going, so there could be something with that observatory or some other new technology. But my 'hunch' is that neither option is too realistic (so considering this is askscience, feel free to ignore that hunch as it should be ignored).\n\nA laser would not reach too far. My post [here](_URL_0_) details an estimate of the strength of a standard laser reaching Mars. The area of the laser, which would start off at a few square millimeters, expands to 1.3 x 10^11 square kilometers by the time it reaches Mars, something extremely close relatively speaking. By the time this laser reached even the closest star at 4.2 light years distance, the beam would have expanded to be about 79 billion kilometers across. This would give a beam 'area' of about 2 x 10^22 square kilometers - or enough that you would get (roughly) 1 photon from the original laser occupying every million square kilometers of the final laser beam at this star, per second. That's already so far beyond un-detectable that it's silly, and that's just the closest star.\n\nSpecialized lasers could of course greatly improve power outage and cut down on this expansion rate quite a lot - but unless technology is improved tremendously, the inverse square law will still overpower any linear increase in laser technology quite fast.",
"Well, this is not going to be a very scientific answer, but if we can find a way to efficiently detect neutrinos, that'd probably be the way to go. The problem is that neutrinos would be great specifically because they *don't* interact very often, making them less likely to be absorbed (unlike EM radiation). They also travel close to the speed of light.",
" > I've heard that even lasers do spread out a bit.\n\nMore than you realize. Between the surface of the Earth and the surface of the moon, a distance of a quarter million miles — so small it rounds down to zero even on *interplanetary* scales — the most collimated laser pulse you could make diverges to the point where it's more than a mile in diameter."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Observatory"
] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maser"
],
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/iumgx/if_i_point_a_laser_to_a_planet_does_it_reach_its/c26u7p7"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
14jq8u
|
What happened in America during the English Cromwellian period, and how much did the influence of parliamentarians influence the nascent "American" ideology?
|
I've been listening to the book Savage Kingdom by Benjamin Woolley, and the above question occurred To me, given that King James had an interest in the endeavor of Virginia after the Virginia Company basically imploded, what happened to the colony during this period?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/14jq8u/what_happened_in_america_during_the_english/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c7doidp",
"c7dou22",
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"c7dt896",
"c7dwj4l"
],
"score": [
2,
43,
27,
9,
7,
3
],
"text": [
"A similar question was asked [here](_URL_0_) but it's not a 100% fit with your own question, so take what's written there in addition to any answer you might receive here.",
"During the Cromwellian period we don't see a King James, James I was the king before Charles I, (the start of the Cromwellian) and Charles II whose directly after the Cromwellian, James II is after him.\n\nHowever we see a large migration of Puritans in this period, Cromwell himself was getting ready to leave directly before Charles' I attempted to arrest Members of Parliament. New England colonies then became much more puritanical, and colonies were often either Catholic or Protestant with resentment in between, many of these were immigrants throughout the Thirty Year War in Europe, or Catholics and Puritans moving from England and Scotland due to increased hostilities between them.\n\nI'm not especially sure on the effects in America as I studied the English Civil War, rather than America in this period",
"In addition to naryn's comment about religion:\n\nWe also see the development a characteristically American distrust of government, preference for militias over armies, and most of the ideology behind the second amendment. \n\nWhat became known as the rule of the Major-Generals was imposed in the late summer of 1655. As Lord Protector, Cromwell called two parliaments, elected on a franchise more democratic than Britain (or many American states) enjoyed again before the mid-nineteenth century. We see Cromwell’s commitment to liberty - and he really was, in a weird way. Religious liberty was a huge deal to him. But Cromwell’s regime was always underpinned by the threat of pike and musket. When Parliament resisted the government’s tax program and Cromwell’s wish to impose Reformed values on the population at large, he imposed government by his generals. \n\nIn August–September 1655, even as Menasseh Ben Israel traveled to London to request readmission for the Jews, England and Wales were divided into a dozen districts and a Major-General commissioned for each, with authority over all troops and tax-collection in his area and a wide range of other powers and instructions. They actually administered their regions only until September 1656, when the second Protectoral parliament began its sessions.\n\nIn January 1657 the episode was definitively ended when Parliament rejected a bill for continuation of the Major-Generals’ rule. In this period, effectively just a year, they generated enough hostility not only to ensure that their authority was short-lived, but also to create a long-standing suspicion of standing armies that was to be transmitted from Britain to North America, where it produced a pronounced preference for a citizen militia. It in turn produced the constitutional guarantee of the right to bear arms; the controversy this still generates is thus one of the legacies of Cromwell’s experiment in military government. ",
"_URL_0_ Virginia and Maryland fought over territory, mainly Kent Island. Protestants uprising in the Maryland capital where Catholics were purged. The colony no longer becomes a Catholic-only settlement",
"The only book on the subject I've ever encountered is Carla Gardina Pestana's [The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 1640-1661](_URL_0_). She considers how the different colonies were forced to take sides during the Civil War, the Interregnum, and the Restoration, and basically argues that this was the first American Revolution. It's well argued, a great read, and I highly recommend it.",
"It's not a complete answer to the question, but I know that Virginia is nicknamed the Old Dominion because it remained loyal to the crown."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12xdmq/what_happened_to_the_new_world_colonies_of/"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plundering_Time"
],
[
"http://www.amazon.com/The-English-Atlantic-Revolution-1640-1661/dp/0674024125"
],
[]
] |
|
5t618t
|
Is 'staying up late' a new habit since the advent of the electric light, or have humans always been night owls?
|
I kind of imagine living in a time with relatively dim oil lights, or even before that, not much artificial light at all, and I'd figure that once the sun went down, there wouldn't be much more to do. Was it as common in the past to stay awake hours after sunset? Were there certain cultures, or roles within cultures that were more nocturnal than others? Was 'sleeping in' considered improper or a sign of laziness as we sometimes might see it today? If there has been a significant change, how much of that is owed to the electric light allowing people to continue to be productive into late night hours?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5t618t/is_staying_up_late_a_new_habit_since_the_advent/
|
{
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"ddkjwbr",
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"ddkzkaq",
"ddlk0bp"
],
"score": [
438,
30,
169,
4
],
"text": [
"The evidence from medieval Latin Europe is mixed. While we can trace adaptations to the shorter winter days even at the institutional, official level, it's clear there was plenty going on in the dark.\n\nI'd like to direct your attention to the wonderful discussions in this thread by me, /u/mikedash, /u/Limond, and /u/alriclofgar (truly, the whole thread is worth reading):\n\n* [What would an English serf do to occupy his time during the long dark evenings and nights of fall and winter?] (_URL_0_)",
"As a follow up, was it Ben Franklin that had the sleep pattern involving waking up and working from 2-4 am then sleeping again until like 10am? And how common was this with his contemporaries?",
"There is evidence, both empirical and historical, that sleep in the pre-industrial era followed a notably different pattern from our ideal today. Specifically, evidence points to a segmented or biphasic sleep pattern ([Hegarty](_URL_3_), 2012).\n\nIn research conducted by psychiatrist Thomas Wehr in the 1990s, participants were placed in a \"short photoperiod\" environment in which it was dark 14 hours a day. After a few weeks of acclimatization, participants developed a distinct pattern (Hegarty, 2012): They slept for four hours, woke for one or two hours, then slept an additional four hours ([Wehr](_URL_1_), 1992).\n\nThis pattern is supported by historical evidence as well. While some empirical evidence suggests that stone-age conditions encourage early bedtimes and prolonged, uninterrupted blocks of sleep ([Piosczyk et al.](_URL_4_), 2014), in \"[Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-industrial Slumber in the British Isles](_URL_5_)\" (2001) and the subsequent book *At Day's Close: Night in Times Past*, Roger Ekirch shares hundreds of references to a segmented sleep pattern from multiple cultures and historiographies.\n\nMoreover, sleep patterns appear to be bounded not just by history and biology but culture as well. Carol Worthman, an anthropologist, has done extensive work to define a \"cultural ecology of sleep\" ([Worthman](_URL_2_), 2011). She has found sleep to be a much more social ([Worthman & Brown](_URL_6_), 2007) and fluid construct than traditionally imagined in the West. The way some Asian cultures treat sleep as a activity to be indulged whenever the need or opportunity arises, as evidenced by people sleeping on a train or Chinese workers napping on their desks after lunch ([Randall](_URL_0_), 2012), highlights this point.\n\nEkirch begins his article with a quote from the German scientist and write, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, \"Our entire history is only the history of waking men,\" which emphases how incomplete the historiography of sleep truly must be. In this book *Evening's Empire*, historian Craig Koslofsky points out that until the Reformation and the introduction of street lights in the 17th Century, associations with the night were largely negative (Hegarty, 2012). As a result, people were disinclined to document their nocturnal activities which, as Ekirch points out, were sometimes quite active indeed (Ekirch, 2001).\n\nIronically, it was an emphasis on efficiency and productivity during the Industrial Revolution that changed perceptions of the night, encouraging people to talk about their nocturnal activities, that likely led to the demise of the \"first sleep\" (Hegarty, 2012). Instead of rising in the middle of the night to read, eat, walk, and socialize, cultural attitudes began to view laying in bed or napping as lazy (Hegarty, 2012).\n\nTo summarize, it appears that our modern concept of good sleep is a relatively recent construct. While \"staying up late\" may not have been popular, waking and being active in the middle of the night likely was, at least in some European cultures before the Industrial Revolution.",
"I'm gonna jump well ahead of the other two responses.\n\nRobert Caro describes life in pre-electric texas hill country (through the 30's) in his first volume of his LBJ bio. After a day of almost literal back-breaking chores and ironing that would often burn the women's hands they would spend their only free time reading. \n\n > “Evening was often the only time in which Hill Country farm couples could read (“There was no other time,” says Lucille O’Donnell. “There was never a minute to read during the day, it seemed”), but the only light for reading came from kerosene lamps.\n\n-Ch 27\n\nChildren would do homework and women described squinting to read after their husbands fell asleep. Farmers had to get up around 3 AM to milk cows so staying up was out of the question. they had to wait to do some lighter household chores such as sewing when there weren't enough lamps to go around while the children did homework. \n\nPeople cannot live on bread alone and unlike men there was almost no time to talk with friends for women. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5f86lb/what_would_an_english_serf_do_to_occupy_his_time/"
],
[],
[
"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/opinion/sunday/rethinking-sleep.html",
"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10607034",
"http://anthropology.emory.edu/home/documents/worthman-lab/book%20chapters/b-2011-Worthman-CultEcolSleep.pdf",
"http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16964783",
"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4067433/",
"https://sites.oxy.edu/clint/physio/article/SleepWeHaveLostPre-industrialSlumberintheBritishIsles_TheAmericanHistoricalReview_2001_Ekirch.pdf",
"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3771325/"
],
[]
] |
|
5p83nb
|
Did the Romans have a sign laguage for deaf people?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5p83nb/did_the_romans_have_a_sign_laguage_for_deaf_people/
|
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"You ask for Rome, I answer with Greek (but perhaps it will be a little bit helpful).\n\nSo the Greek word for deaf - κωφός (kophos) - also means mute and unintelligent. In an oral culture where literacy rates are low, hearing, speaking, and intelligence are tightly associated. There aren't very many people who are explicitly described as being deaf, but there are a few. For example, Herodotus talks about one of the sons of the king Croesus:\n > ἦσαν δὲ τῷ Κροίσῳ δύο παῖδες, τῶν οὕτερος μὲν διέφθαρτο, ἦν γὰρ δὴ κωφός, ὁ δὲ ἕτερος...\n\n > For Croesus had two sons, one of whom was destroyed, for he was deaf, but the other...\n\nThat's a pretty emphatic verb and later on when the king is explaining some of the things he has done to the not deaf son, he says:\n\n > εἷς γὰρ μοι μοῦνος τυγχάνεις ἐὼν παῖς: τὸν γὰρ δὴ ἕτερον διεφθαρμένον τὴν ἀκοὴν οὐκ εἶναί μοι λογίζομαι.\n\n > You are my one and only son: for I do not consider the other whose hearing is destroyed to be mine.\n\nWhich is... pretty harsh. Maybe a little considerable since it would probably be difficulty to be a deaf king at this time, but it shows you a little bit about how sever the ancients saw this disability as (good news for anonymous Lydian prince though, he recovers his ability to speak the day his father dies).\n\nNow this is pretty much our only explicit source on deafness in ancient Greece and while some scholars have argued for a sign language at this period, there just isn't enough evidence to say either way. Certainly it was not a widespread or standardized phenomenon, but it is possible that there were some ad hoc sign language systems used on a local scale.\n\nTo turn to another piece of evidence - this time a Greek language source from the Roman empire - there is an evidence for some kind of signing system in the gospel of Luke. When Gabriel makes Zechariah mute (Luke 1:20), the word used is again kophos and is described in a way that indicates he is both deaf and mute. When Elizabeth tells her neighbors that she's going to name her baby John, they go to check with dad. The Greek uses the verb ἐνένευον which means to nod, Zechariah gets the message that they're asking him what to call the baby and asks for a tablet to write it down on.\n\nWhile it's a lot of work for one little word to do, a number of scholars have taken this to mean that there was some kind of rudimentary sign language. Some have taken it to mean that there was a developed system, but it's more likely that this was a more localized phenomenon. You see similar descriptions of communications by gesture or nod when Greeks/Romans run into peoples with whom they share no mutual language."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
9w1fm5
|
why do some analog watches contain quartz/rubies/other gems?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9w1fm5/eli5_why_do_some_analog_watches_contain/
|
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"Those jewels are used whenever you need a moving piece; as jewels are really hard, they present little or no wear over time.",
"Synthetic rubies are used to mate moving parts to prevent metal-on-metal contact and wear. The reduced friction created by the rubies' hardness increases the lifespan of the tiny metal parts.\n\nQuartz is used in most modern electronic movements as a way of keeping time because it vibrates at a very precise frequency when exposed to current.",
"The \"rubies\" are Jewel bearings. These are tiny sleeves and thimbles which support the rotating shafts of various parts. Note that they're more often clear synthetic sapphire, ruby is simply a red colored variety of sapphire.\n\nRuby is traditional in the clock industry, and may also be used for cosmetic reasons in watches with clear cases with the inner parts exposed. In terms of performance it's the same as clear sapphire.\n\nThe high hardness and rigidity of sapphire/ruby means it has low friction and reduces metal-on-metal sliding wear of parts. Rolling type bearings like balls wouldn't be practical for tiny watch parts. However it's not as hard as diamond, so diamond abrasives can be used to grind, drill and hone the parts into shape.\n\nQuartz is used for electronic watches, likely your smart phone has one too for various reasons.\n\nQuartz has the unusual property that if a voltage is applied to it, it resonates at a very regular frequency. This can be accurately tuned by carefully grinding the crystal in length. Smaller crystals oscillate faster. This doesn't vary based on temperature, a problem with mechanical clocks.\n\nAn electronic counter can then used to count the number of of vibrations, and this can be used to measure the length of one second very reliably. \n\nQuartz and sapphire front panels have also been used on expensive watches instead of glass, due to increased scratch resistance. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
6jh86b
|
If it's true that the brain alone uses 25-30% of our calorie intake? How do they even measure that? And do smarter people or people who think more actively in general burn more?
|
Multiple questions, thought I'd pile them together as they are so similar.
- 25-30% of our total calorie intake for the brain seems like a lot
- How is that even measured
- Do thinkers and dreamers burn more calories via the brain than a "stupid mindless person"?
- Again how is that even measured if research is done on it?
- On a brain to calorie% ratio, what animals are in the top with us humans?
- What parts of the brain functions spends the most energy?
Edit: Messed up the title, sorry :(
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6jh86b/if_its_true_that_the_brain_alone_uses_2530_of_our/
|
{
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" > 25-30% of our total calorie intake for the brain seems like a lot\n\nThe typical estimate is that your brain uses about 300-400Kcal per day (typically around the upper end) which is about 18-20% of an average height man's daily calorie intake. Yet the brain is only about 2% of your body weight. It is often erroneously cited that the brain requires these calories in the form of glucose and in turn this is used as justification that you should consume at least 100g of carbohydrates per day (as there are 4Kcal per g of carbohydrate).\n\n > How is that even measured\n\nFlux in oxygen consumption (masks over people's faces), changes in neural blood flow and pressure have been used to estimate how much more calorie burning is being done while thinking hard. Today Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRI) can be used to directly measure oxygen flow/consumption in the brain from there you can directly calculate the amount of respiration and calorie consumption.\n\n > Do thinkers and dreamers burn more calories via the brain than a \"stupid mindless person\"?\n\nIt turns out that the brain's energy consumption is somewhat constant irrespective of the cognitive load. To my understanding it is changes in the neuron firing patterns and connectivity that represent changes in thinking. It is not simply that increased thinking increase the amount of neuron firing across the board, however this is not my field and perhaps someone with deeper expertise can fill in more details there.\n\n > Again how is that even measured if research is done on it?\n\nTo do the experiment about the effects of thinking hard you have someone lie at rest in the MRI machine to get baseline data and then you get them to solve hard problems (often arithmetic) while still in the MRI machine.\n\n > On a brain to calorie% ratio, what animals are in the top with us humans?\n\nTo my understanding energy consumption per neuron is not that much different for most animals. What is usually seen as an important measure is the brain-to-body-mass ratio. Humans are nowhere near the top here. Ants can have 15% of their body mass in their brains. Animals which are similar to humans (ratios within the same order of magnitude) are small rodents, small birds, many primates. Animals towards the bottom are things like hippos and whales where there brain might be less than a 2000th of their total body weight.\n\n > What parts of the brain functions spends the most energy?\n\nI don't know this but from the info above it seems unlikely specific bits of the brain use much more than other bits. I hope someone can infill some more information here\n\nCitations:\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_3_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.jci.org/articles/view/103159",
"http://www.pnas.org/content/99/16/10237.full",
"http://www.pnas.org/content/99/16/10765.abstract?ijkey=5f8fdd472fecb88d021ba4b5967fa732f9090c97&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-to-body_mass_ratio"
]
] |
|
ljbt3
|
Am I really looking at individual atoms here?
|
[This picture](_URL_0_) is the one in question.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ljbt3/am_i_really_looking_at_individual_atoms_here/
|
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"Yes, it is an image reconstructed from [scanning tunnelling microscopy](_URL_0_).",
"Hey OP, here is a picture of a single molecule: _URL_0_",
"Guys, \"surface reconstruction\" is a technical term in surface science, it's not the normal English usage of \"reconstruction\". The idea is that the surface of a crystal is different from the bulk, so the termination at the surface sometimes behaves a little strangely -- the surface often has dangling bonds that tend to attract each other and \"reconstructs\" the surface a little bit in comparison with the bulk. In this picture the surface reconstruction can be seen by the alternating rows or stripes of yellow and orange in the picture (I'm assuming this based on context since I didn't find a link to the article immediately) -- these stripes correspond to a new surface periodicity (of low and high electron density) which forms because the dangling bonds tend to point perpendicular to the direction of the rows. If you were to do diffraction on this material, you'll find that the surface will have additional diffraction peaks because of these stripes.\n\nFeel free to ask more if you don't understand.",
"Not to hijack this thread, but why do atoms look like spheres? I was under the assumption that they are lots of spheres together with a bunch more whizzing around the group. To me, it look like they have an outer \"shell\" that houses the electrons, neutrons, protons, etc. ",
"You are seeing the effect of the individual atoms yes. However, I've heard from some of the people in the STM group at our institution that there is some disagreement as to whether you're seeing the atoms or the gap in between them.",
"STM depicts antibonding orbitals, as they are the lowest available state for electrons to tunnel into. If you reverse the bias on the STM tip, you'll see the bonding orbitals as you draw electrons out of the surface atoms.",
"Looking at an individual atom is not accurate, you are looking at a computer interpretation and colorization of electron density patterns induced by atoms on a gold surface. ",
"Yes, it is an image reconstructed from [scanning tunnelling microscopy](_URL_0_).",
"Hey OP, here is a picture of a single molecule: _URL_0_",
"Guys, \"surface reconstruction\" is a technical term in surface science, it's not the normal English usage of \"reconstruction\". The idea is that the surface of a crystal is different from the bulk, so the termination at the surface sometimes behaves a little strangely -- the surface often has dangling bonds that tend to attract each other and \"reconstructs\" the surface a little bit in comparison with the bulk. In this picture the surface reconstruction can be seen by the alternating rows or stripes of yellow and orange in the picture (I'm assuming this based on context since I didn't find a link to the article immediately) -- these stripes correspond to a new surface periodicity (of low and high electron density) which forms because the dangling bonds tend to point perpendicular to the direction of the rows. If you were to do diffraction on this material, you'll find that the surface will have additional diffraction peaks because of these stripes.\n\nFeel free to ask more if you don't understand.",
"Not to hijack this thread, but why do atoms look like spheres? I was under the assumption that they are lots of spheres together with a bunch more whizzing around the group. To me, it look like they have an outer \"shell\" that houses the electrons, neutrons, protons, etc. ",
"You are seeing the effect of the individual atoms yes. However, I've heard from some of the people in the STM group at our institution that there is some disagreement as to whether you're seeing the atoms or the gap in between them.",
"STM depicts antibonding orbitals, as they are the lowest available state for electrons to tunnel into. If you reverse the bias on the STM tip, you'll see the bonding orbitals as you draw electrons out of the surface atoms.",
"Looking at an individual atom is not accurate, you are looking at a computer interpretation and colorization of electron density patterns induced by atoms on a gold surface. "
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atomic_resolution_Au100.JPG"
] |
[
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanning_tunneling_microscope"
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[
"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1209726/Single-molecule-million-times-smaller-grain-sand-pictured-time.html"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanning_tunneling_microscope"
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[
"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1209726/Single-molecule-million-times-smaller-grain-sand-pictured-time.html"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
9n34p0
|
Can historians help explain the truth behind African Americans being Israelites and Africans being Hamites?
|
I recently saw a meme stating African Americans are of Israelite and Africans are Hamite, and it seemed to be causing controversy and nobody could share any real articles about it. Please help me understand the truth
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9n34p0/can_historians_help_explain_the_truth_behind/
|
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"Africans being Hamites comes from an old Biblical tradition about the origins of the races. Basically, Noah had three sons (Shem, Ham, and Japheth) who went on to repopulate the world after the flood. Shem’s line went on to become the Asian peoples, Japheth’s became the Europeans, and Ham’s became the Africans. It’s not really accepted as fact anymore for obvious reasons but for much of history Europeans believed that all the peoples of Africa were descended from Ham, thus they were Hamites.\n\nAs for African Americans being Israelites, this one’s a little more complicated. There’s a group of Jews within Ethiopia (though most of them now live in Israel) called Beta Israel (meaning House of Israel). These Ethiopian Jews have been around for a very long time, and even had their own independent kingdoms before becoming part of Ethiopia, but despite being African Jews they’re not usually what people mean when they talk about Black Israelites.\n\nStarting in the late 1800s, certain African Americans such as William Saunders Crowdy began to claim that Africans were the true descendants of the ancient Hebrews. A number of groups with similar ideas sprung up in the 20th century as well. In general these groups tend to call themselves “Hebrew Israelites” but are usually called “Black Israelites” by others for clarity’s sake. Most Black Israelites aren’t actually Jewish and don’t claim to be; they just claim they are descended from the ancient Israelites, and thus that Africans are actually God’s chosen people. You can see how this movement easily became intertwined with black nationalism.\n\nSome fringe black supremacist groups have given Black Israelites a reputation for anti-Semitism and racism, but to most it’s just a part of their identity. As for the truth behind it, well, there isn’t really any evidence supporting the theory that African Americans are the true descendants of the ancient Hebrews. But it’s a pretty interesting social movement.",
"I haven't seen the meme, but the argument seems similar to the argument that was made in early US history when it came to defending slavery. \n\nWhen the abolitionist movement really began building up in the states, various ministers went to the Bible in order to show that slavery was not just unChristian, but also was not Biblical. \n\nIn response, those supporting slavery also went to the Bible, and what they came up with as a defense revolves around the Curse of Ham, or Noah's Curse. Stephen Haynes wrote a great article on this subject awhile back, called Original Dishonor. \n\nSo a bit of back of background. Noah's curse appears in Genesis 9:20-29. This story happens post flood, and also is somewhat of an origin story of wine. Noah makes wine for the first time, and gets drunk. He passes out naked in his tent. Ham, who is said to be the father of Canaan, finds Noah like this, and tells his brothers Shem and Japheth. So Shem and Japheth take a blanket, or some garment, and walking into the tent backwards, places it on their naked father. Noah later wakes up, and the text says that he saw what Ham did to him, and curses Canaan. That curse is that Canaan will be the servant of both Shem and Japheth. \n\nIts a fascinating story, because the Hebrew isn't quite clear on what Ham did to his father, and scholars have long speculated. It is likely that whatever was done to Noah was left out of the final text, and we just get a hint of it. Some speculate that maybe Ham castrated Noah, or performed some lewd sexual act on him. We don't know, but whatever it was, it angered Noah, and there is the curse. \n\nSo how does this story relate to slavery, and how was it used in defense of slavery? That is a wild road. But keep the name Ham present, as it is where Hamites comes from. \n\nNow, the curse of Canaan, or Curse of Ham, was the primary Biblical justification for slavery in the south. Religious tracts from that time don't really delve into what Ham's crime was, but they make it clear that whatever it was, it was worthy of eternal punishment. What their arguments also make clear is that idea that the descendent of Ham, Hamites, were Africans. \n\nSo, for those southerners, slavery of Africans was justifiable because of Noah's curse. The descendants of Ham, Africans, were bound by eternal servitude, or slavery, as the Bible never states that the curse is ever broken. \n\nWhy they chose the curse of Ham as defense, I have no idea. If one wanted to argue for slavery, there seems to be a lot easier passages to use, but that was their primary justification. And it is where we get the association of Hamites with Africans. \n\n\nNow, for African Americans being Israelites. This is a much newer idea, and is associated with Black Hebrew Israelites. Now, it needs to be mentioned that for the most part, Jews don't recognize them as part of the faith, or being Israelites. \n\nSo this view really begins in the late 19th century. It somewhat formalized in 1886 when Frank Cherry founded the Church of the Living God. Not saying that Cherry was the originator of the idea, but it appears he started the first church. The idea was somewhat of an offshoot a traditional view of Black Christians who, from a spiritual standpoint, identified with the Israelites. This, in the late 19th century, transformed to some Black Christians going one step further, and claiming to be biologically related to Israelites. \n\nThis was done for a couple reasons. One, it was an attempt to piece together their history. Basically, it allowed them to regain something of their past. The other reason was in response to socio-economic realities associated with slavery and discrimination, as well as the view that Blacks were inferior to Whites. Attaching themselves to the Israelite identity helped make sense of this.\n\nIronically, within this group, an extremist fringe did develop, that is seen as black supremacists. They believe that Jews are devilish imposters, and that whites are evil personified. But it has to be acknowledged that this is a fringe group within the larger movement. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nNow obviously, the meme is rather ridiculous, as African Americans are descendants of Africans, at least in part. Some may be descendants of Israelites, but that has nothing to do with them being in America, or being African, or anything like that. But there are other reasons why the idea is ridiculous. First, it has to do with Ham and Canaan. Canaan didn't move to Africa. He isn't the ancestor of Africans. That was never the idea within Judaism (even though this story is largely taken as fictional). Canaan was seen as the ancestors to the Canaanites, in the Middle East. The story with Noah acts as just one more justification, or sign, that the Israelites were the proper rulers of the land called Canaan. Its one of these origin stories that often pops up in the Torah. So the descendants of Canaan would have been Middle Easterners. So the argument makes no sense on that ground (and the fact that they would take a racist idea and promote it is beyond me). \n\nSecond, the claim for Israelite dependency also doesn't make any sense, as the whole argument with the Curse of Ham, and the designation of Hamites, was specifically made to justify slavery in the United States. Now, not all African Americans in the United States are descendants of slaves, but many were, and this whole idea of being a Hamite revolves around just that. So to keep the terminology and the ideology around the Hamites would mean that these Black Hebrews weren't Israelites (at least many of them wouldn't be) but were in fact themselves Hamites. \n\nThird and final, tracings one lineage back to the Israelites is extremely difficult. One can trace back to a Jewish heritage, but that doesn't necessarily make one a descendant of the Israelites. Whenever one makes such a bold claim, the need to have some bold evidence. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
31otju
|
Photographs from WWII almost always seem to show Soviet soldiers as not wearing helmets. Why?
|
Examples:
[1] (_URL_2_)
[2] (_URL_0_)
[3] (_URL_1_)
Caps instead of helmets in every picture. Was there a shortage of metal or something?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/31otju/photographs_from_wwii_almost_always_seem_to_show/
|
{
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"cq469xw"
],
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"text": [
"There was no strict rule of wearing helmets in Red Army (and in memoirs Soviet soldiers were amused by US soldiers wearing helmets at all times).\nIn early years of war lot's Soviet soldiers didn't want to wear helmets since they're were cumbersome, heavy and sometimes it was considered an 'unmanly cowardice' to wear a helmet.\n\nIt was changed in late years of war, because 'cowards with a helmet' tend to survive more.\n\nEdit: And even in late years Red Army was no 100% helmet wearing."
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://albumwar2.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/39451.jpg",
"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Soviet_liberators_marching_through_the_Korean_county_road._October_1945.jpg",
"http://espressostalinist.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/soviet-troops-in-czechoslovakia.jpg"
] |
[
[]
] |
|
axp7mc
|
Are Bound Muons More Stable?
|
I understand the muon has a half-life of 2 microseconds or so. Is there any impact of being bound in a hydrogen or deuterium atom on the half-life? Has anybody even measured that?
Obviously this question is germane to muon-catalyzed fusion.
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/axp7mc/are_bound_muons_more_stable/
|
{
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],
"text": [
"No.\n\nThe binding energy of ~3 keV doesn't matter for the muon which releases 105 MeV in the decay. Even heavier nuclei won't affect its lifetime much. You can get \"muon capture\" as additional process, however, similar to electron capture."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
8msb1t
|
Is the earth a perfect sphere? How/why did it become this form?
|
[deleted]
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8msb1t/is_the_earth_a_perfect_sphere_howwhy_did_it/
|
{
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"text": [
"The Earth is approximately an oblate spheroid due to its rotation. Even if the Earth were not rotating, it would only approximate a sphere due to its non-perfect surface. The tidal effects caused by the moon and sun also deforms the shape of the Earth.",
"I don't think the actual \"why\" of your question has been sufficiently answered so I'm throwing my hat in.\n\nFirst off, no, the Earth is not perfectly spherical. This can be easily surmised by noting that mountains exist, whereas a perfect sphere wouldn't have any protrusions. Even on a planetary-scale the rotation of the earth causes it to bulge slightly at the equator giving it a non-spherical form. However, it is still a very \"smooth\" object from a planetary scale (check [this](_URL_0_) out for math).\n\nThe reason the Earth is quasi-spherical is actually very simple. The Earth is held together by the gravitational attraction of all the matter that composes it. The lowest energy configuration for matter under a radial force like gravity (meaning it extends outward in all directions and reduces in strength in proportion to distance) is a sphere. If the Earth was another shape, say a cube, then the corners of the cube would have so much mass that they would collapse into a less energetic, more spherical configuration.\n\nThe same concept (though with differing forces) leads to bubbles being round when blown, the surface tension forces the matter into a low-energy configuration."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://www.curiouser.co.uk/facts/smooth_earth.htm"
]
] |
|
32wa96
|
how does a python digest an alligator?
|
I saw a post about a massive python swallowing an entire alligator whole. How could the python's stomach break down the tough skin and armor of the alligator? Does the python have super strong stomach acid? Thanks for responding.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32wa96/eli5_how_does_a_python_digest_an_alligator/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cqf8by0"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Pythons swallow all of their food whole. Large pythons often over estimate their ability eat something. \n\n_URL_0_\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.livescience.com/16805-python-snake-swallows-deer.html"
]
] |
|
6pb2ar
|
why is it that spicy tastes considerably amplify when a person chokes on it and it gets into the throat, compared to swallowing normally?
|
Choked on peppercorn sauce, RIP
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6pb2ar/eli5_why_is_it_that_spicy_tastes_considerably/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dkokpja"
],
"score": [
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],
"text": [
"Your mouth is literally made to eat and experience taste, it's specially equipped to eat stuff!\n\nYour throat is made to transport all the goop you just chewed up into your stomach and the rest of your body, after your teeth break down the major chunks and your saliva gets in there and breaks it down even further.\n\nTherefore, your throat just isn't made for taking in things like spice. It's not equipped to do it! \n\nYour body sends you those painful feelings because it's freaking out, basically. It's saying, \"dude, what the hell is this stuff get it out!\" because your mouth is better equipped to deal with it and your throat is getting beat up by the spice. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
9h0va7
|
if our eyes have a large field of view why cameras with wide field lens distort images spherically and our eyes don’t?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9h0va7/eli5_if_our_eyes_have_a_large_field_of_view_why/
|
{
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"text": [
"Being that a camera shows that distortion is a very good indication that there is in fact a distortion with the field of view of our own eyes, the reason why you don't perceive the distortion from your eyes, whether or not it's there, is because your brain regularly makes up for distortions and makes corrections to our perception. A good example of our brains making such corrections are the illusions created from optical illusions, our brains can literally fill in the gaps, even if they don't nessisarily exist.",
" > why cameras with wide field lens distort images spherically and our eyes don’t?\n\nBecause our eyes are projecting our view onto a curved surface, our retina, rather than a flat surface such as with the camera. If for example a camera with a 170 degree field of view had its captured image projected onto a screen with a 170 degree inner curve then there would be no distortion (a flat image sensor would still mean some areas would lose resolution, but again a curved sensor would solve that issue).\n\nCompressing the wider view onto a flat plane is bound to introduce distortion but human vision is not based on a flat plane.",
"Point - Our eyes have narrow field of view, we are predators. \n\nNow a cow, antelope, they have a wide field of view.\n\nThe distortion is because they are cramming a view into less degrees than it actually takes up.\n\nAy Epcot they have a 360 degree theater. It projects a movie completely around you in evert direction. Showing 360 degrees in 360 degrees/ It's perfectly indistinguishable from really looking around.\n\nCramming 180 degrees into 80 so you can view it causes distortion.\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
279sgm
|
why do the numbers on dice have the orientation that they have?
|
It seems that most dice are made in such a way that each face and each number on each face follow a specific orientation.
For any two n-sided dice I pick up, I observe two things:
* Any specific number occupies a specific face relative to the other faces (Example: On a d20, the 20 side is surrounded by the 2, 8, and 14 sides)
* The numbers are all oriented in a specific way relative to the other faces (Example: On a d20, when viewing the 20 face with the "20" oriented in a readable way, the "8" on the 8 face is upside down)
Is there a reason for this specific orientation?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/279sgm/eli5_why_do_the_numbers_on_dice_have_the/
|
{
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"I don't know about larger sided dice, but the 6 sided dice is arranged such that the front and back of every orientation adds up to 7. If this is true with 20 sided dice, that would be part of the explanation. Otherwise, it is just a fluke with the 6 sided version.",
"All I know is that if you have a d6 (a six-sided dice), if you sum opposing sides, you'll get 7.\nIf the side 6 is showing up, the side 1 is facing the table.\nIf the side 5 is showing up, the side 2 is facing the table.\nAnd so on...",
"The most common type of dice is a six-sided cube with the numbers 1-6 placed on the faces. The value of the roll is indicated by the number of \"spots\" showing on the top. For the six-sided dice, opposite faces are arranged to always sum to seven. This gives two possible mirror image arrangements in which the numbers 1, 2, and 3 may be arranged in a clockwise or counterclockwise order about a corner. Commercial dice may, in fact, have either orientation. The illustrations above show 6-sided dice with counterclockwise and clockwise arrangements, respectively, when viewed from along the three-fold rotation axis towards the center of the dice."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
4sa4bq
|
Suicide in the trenches. I have never heard of any discussion about this topic, but it had to occur. What information do we have about it?
|
WW1 is the primary focus.
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4sa4bq/suicide_in_the_trenches_i_have_never_heard_of_any/
|
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"text": [
"Follow up question:\n\nWhat was the punishment (if any) if a soldier was unsuccessful in his suicide attempt? ",
"As a clarification on your question. How would you distinguish between a fatality and a suicide, when the simplest form of suicide would be intentionally getting yourself killed? For example, simply standing up in some areas would be an almost certain death by enemy snipers.",
"This is one of those things - it's easier to take an individual case of suicide and declare \"this is because of his experiences in the war\" than it is to take suicide trends and declare that they are all because of their experiences in the war (which is what I think you're asking for). Emile Durkheim's theory on suicide (social integration) is that suicide rates are in great part dependent on society at large, and society's attitude towards suicide. \n\nWriting in the late 1800s, he declared that the total subordination of the individual to the group present in the modern military created what he called \"altruistic suicide\" - in which a poorly-functioning member of the military kills themselves to benefit the overall fitness of the group.\n\n[A paper](_URL_1_) by two Canadians tracks historical attitudes towards military suicides. During the early phase of the First World War, they say \n > \"many military leaders and doctors believed that suicidal soldiers were predisposed to suffer from depression and delusions due to hereditary weakness and innate cowardice... armies tended to treat soldiers who attempted to kill themselves as deserters.\" \n\nSo the jokes by other posters in this thread are not entirely incorrect. But by the late period of the war, perhaps from 1917 onward, people were much more aware of the war's psychological effects and trauma. There was a growing sense towards the end of the war that suicides were not simply cowards, and there was more sympathy.\n\nIn the case of Lt.Col. Sam Sharpe, who killed himself in 1918 once he had returned to Canada, the paper says that the Toronto Globe reported that \"he gave up his life as truly 'on the field of honour' as if he had fallen in action\".\n\nIn terms of *rates* of suicide, It appears that it depends on what war, in what country, among which people.\n\n[A study](_URL_2_) of the *Second World War* found that among *Scottish* people, \n > \"the likelihood of suicide ... was higher than during both the pre-War and post-War periods\". \n\nThis takes into account a long-term declining trend in suicide in general in Scotland. In addition, it seems the greater availability of guns (and especially explosives) shifted the *method* of suicide during the war.\n\nAnd [another study](_URL_0_) of the *first* world war's effect in *Ireland* found that the overall rising trend starting in the 1860s was punctuated by a sharp decline during the war years.",
"Ok, a bit more on suicide in the trenches. I concur that it's difficult to find source material on this. I'll try to show you what we can scrape together and, through that, perhaps illustrate why this is so hard to answer.\n\n1. Veterans suffered from their memories of the war and took their own lives. From the New York Times we can see that veteran suicides were a serious concern in the US after the war, rising to at least 2 a day at the time of [this article's](_URL_1_) publication in June of 1922. Less official looking (but the site seems to check out) is [this account of Capt Guy Warenford Nightingale](_URL_0_) who took his own life in 1935 for reasons seemingly credited to his war experiences. \n\n2. Likewise, we can draw from contemporary non-historical sources like \"[Suicide in the Trenches](_URL_2_)\" by Seigfried Sassoon. Published in 1918, this poem tells of a young man who \"In winter trenches, cowed and glum, \\ With crumps and lice and lack of rum, \\ He put a bullet through his brain. \\ No one spoke of him again.\" Sassoon's own WW1 experience and the publication date of the poem suggest strongly that suicide was a significant issue in the eyes of the men who served in the trenches but also hints at a culture of silence with respect to the same.\n\n3. That culture of silence is confirmed in other, non-artistic sources as well though these are ahistorical^1 by nature. Consider [this article](_URL_3_) from the Brimingham Mail, dated July 26, 2014, which relates the uncovered heroism of a WW1 captain when his grandaughter found his medals. \n > My father was 22 years old when his father died and was serving in the army in India,” she said. \n > “He never spoke about Captain Walford because the stigma of suicide was so huge at the time. It was the big family secret. \n\nLong story short, there was a real stigma around suicide in the early 20th century and there were a lot of people with a lot of incentives to make suicidal soldiers go away. That is not to say that there was a concerted effort to cover suicides up, but the militaries had little reason to discuss suicides as a problem given the state of morale in the trenches, the civilian governments had little reason to discuss it given the difficulties with conscription, and the families of the dead had little reason to wish to remember their fallen sons and fathers as anything less than heroes. \n\nPerhaps that's why David Noonan's work \"Those We Forget Recounting Australian Casualties of the First World War\" required such a deep dive into Australian WW1 records to extract meaningful data. While Noonan's scholarly work is behind a paywall and I don't have access to it, he wrote a [brief piece for the Sidney Morning Herald](_URL_4_) which gives us some data to work with. Of the 376,000 men with digitized records n the National Archives of Australia, only 308,000 actually made it to a theater of war. Records show that about 62,000 of those 308,000 were hospitalized for \"shell shock.\" Of the soldiers that survived combat, approximately 550 took their own lives, though, again, Noonan notes that these were mostly between 1919 and 1920 - after the end of the war.\n\nWith suicide so commonplace in post-war rememberings and experience, you're right to assume that it should have been as much of, if not more of a problem during the war. Unfortunately, it seems that figures on suicide rates in WW1 are likely impossible to obtain and, even if obtained, difficult to trust. At best we could hope to establish a lower bound but, with no one incentivized to keep good records and all the opportunity in the world to throw one's self into mortal danger, doing better than that would require more intimate knowledge of the lives of individual soldiers than history will afford us. \n\n1. That may not be the right word."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[
"http://researchrepository.ucd.ie/bitstream/handle/10197/7332/Osman_WW1_Suicide_2015.pdf?sequence=1",
"http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vol15/no4/page22-eng.asp",
"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1526726/"
],
[
"http://www.royalmunsterfusiliers.org/b4night.htm",
"http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9804E2DB1439EF3ABC4A53DFB0668389639EDE",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_Trenches",
"http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/ww1-captain-branded-coward-after-7512658",
"http://www.smh.com.au/comment/why-the-numbers-of-our-wwi-dead-are-wrong-20140428-zr0v5.html"
]
] |
|
dg4lf8
|
why does smoking kill slower than smoke inhalation?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dg4lf8/eli5_why_does_smoking_kill_slower_than_smoke/
|
{
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"text": [
"You're not totally absent of oxygen when smoking. If you're inside a burning room, the oxygen is helping to keep the fire going and is being replaced by smoke.\n\nEdit: I should add that firefighters are increasingly looking to test their gear to see if they've been exposed to anything harmful. I kinda sorta helped on a project for just that. So that's a potential death closer to regular smoking than smoke inhalation.",
"Smoke inhalation means that the air you are breathing lacks oxygen (and might have other dangers). Smoking cigarettes and the like will slowly destroy your lungs ability to take in oxygen at all and have other effects (cancer)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
2uhbcu
|
why are china and korea still litigating japan's ww2 behavior in the press, while the western ww2 countries have moved on?
|
If you follow news in the Pacific, stories about China and Korea demanding that Japan apologize for WW2 behavior pop up constantly.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2uhbcu/eli5why_are_china_and_korea_still_litigating/
|
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"text": [
"Well Greece is just this past week bringing up Nazi looting and destruction to try to force Germany to restructure some of their debts, so I would say your premise that it is dead in Europe is false. ",
"Because Japan has been horribly negligent regarding their atrocious behavior during WW2. From ridiculous and furious denials after the war to a refusal to teach their younger generations about their transgressions. If the debate still rages it is because Japan has yet to fully make amends...if it had China and Korea would not be hounding her to do so like in the west\n\nIn the West Germany and Axis powers took the fall and the spotlight was placed on their atrocities but Japan really scraped the bottom of the morality barrel in order to pull off her exceedingly sadistic crimes",
"Germany has admitted most of the horrible things it did during the war, apologized for them, and payed a fair bit of reparations to the victims of their crimes. Japan continues to deny the horrible things it did, honor some of the people who did horrible things, and has refused to pay reparations to their victims. That is, almost certainly, a big part of the difference. ",
"Basically, Japan has apologized a number of times and has donated money however it hasn't \"been enough\" of an apology to China and Korea. They keep on moving the apology goal posts further and further. \n\nHere is a [Time](_URL_0_) article about it. It's does a better job than I can do.",
"Asians have a much different culture and ideas about things. Honor, ancestors and unity are very strong points to Asian cultures. They don't see it so much as it being different people who did certain things, that it is the countries themselves that did it. Europeans are much more individualistic and think that certain people did the atrocities, not the country as a whole. ",
"It's astounding how so many people here believe Japan just got away with the atrocities they did in WWII. They did pay reparations and apologize. \n_URL_0_ \n_URL_1_ \n \nI am Japanese and was taught about the Rape of Nanking and all that other nasty stuff the imperial Japan did in WWII. Although admittedly some Japanese politicians have been going revisionistic lately, their suggesions about revisions on textbooks never pass the standards set by the Ministry of Education of Japan (Monbu Kagaku Syo). So, it's not like Japanese kids are actually taught history using textbooks with whitewashed contents. \n \nThat being said, i have to admit the apologies made by Japanese politicians in the past are horribly ambiguous and people have no idea what they even apologized for. It's obvious that they were trying to avoid clarifying the responsibilities. i really wish there was someone like President Weizsäcker in our govenment who can just man up and clear the air. Also, I don't want all these politicians trying to whitewash history in our government. They are embarrasing our country by doing those things and more people all over the world are getting the wrong impressions about Japan because of their foolish actions.",
"/u/nasebanaru pointed out that there is a wiki article stating how often Japan has apologised in the past. \n\nHowever in that same article there is a section \"Controversy\" which pretty much explains why this is not jet settled. This sums it up nicely:\n\n > Criticisms regarding the degree and formality of apology, issued as a statement or delivered person-to-person to the country addressed, and the perception by some that some apologies are later retracted or contradicted by statements or actions of Japan, among others.\n\n[Article](_URL_0_)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://nation.time.com/2012/12/11/why-japan-is-still-not-sorry-enough/"
],
[],
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1e1bfl/why_has_germany_accepted_and_apologized_for_wwii/",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_Japan"
],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_Japan"
]
] |
|
2yr2gf
|
when you hear about pharmaceutical companies lobbying congress, what are they actually doing?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yr2gf/eli5when_you_hear_about_pharmaceutical_companies/
|
{
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"They're trying to prevent laws that might hurt them from being passed. This includes, but is not limited to, laws regarding the patents of medicines that are nearly identical to one that is public domain, regulation of the \"disease mongering\" ads where they take normal human behaviour and call it a disease (for example, calling natural testosterone decline due to age \"low T\"), and changes is FDA approval requiring medicines to be tested against more than a placebo.",
"Lobbying means they visit congressional offices, throw gala lunches, convince them to vote in the way that will be advantageous to the lobbyist. They see to it that large amounts of money are donated to reelection campaigns if they vote in a favorable manner. And they give them pre-written information--papers, reports--that support their viewpoint. They also create campaign ads to support the congressperson. They appear on TV and get favorable articles published in support of the politician."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
3ntujw
|
The Chinese have historically always controlled large areas of land. The Korean peninsula is comparatively very small. Why have the Chinese never occupied the Korean Peninsula?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ntujw/the_chinese_have_historically_always_controlled/
|
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"I think it's worth pointing out that under the command of Ögedei, the Mongols did conquer the Korean peninsula, and the Mongols are a recognised Chinese dynasty (the Yuan dynasty), so you could almost make the case that the Chinese *did* conquer Korea. Unless you mean specifically the Han Chinese dynasties, but in that case I'd like to remind you that many Chinese dynasties weren't Han Chinese, the most prevalent being the Manchu.",
"The Han Chinese tried to subdue Korea during the Sui and early Tang period. Sui's military campaign was disastrous. Tang first allied with Silla and defeated the other two Korean kingdoms Baekje and Goguryeo. The alliance soon broke down and the two former allies fought for control of Korean Peninsula. Silla ended up taking over the Southern half of the peninsula, while Tang had control over Manchuria and Northern part.\n\nThere were many reasons why Tang could not take over the entire Korean Peninsula. But the most prominent one was simply that Korea was a very remote location to the Chinese. The earlier Tang-Silla alliance made provisions easier, but when war started between Tang and Silla, Tang had no ally close by to supply their forces. The harsh winter also made it difficult to sustain long military campaigns. \n\nThese difficulties made wars against Korea prohibitively costly. Tang also faced greater threats from Turks in the North-West frontier. Allocating resources to support conquest of Korean Peninsula became impossible. The subsequent Chinese dynasties faced similar challenges in the North. \n\nAfter the Tang-Silla wars, Korean kingdoms generally maintained a peaceful relationship with the dynasty in China. The Chinese had greater threats like Turks, Mongols, and Manchus to deal with. So there was no incentive to conquer Korea thereafter."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
9v6gmv
|
In WWII European theatre and Pacific theatre, how would combatants on both sides dispose of slain enemies?
|
Also, were any unit formations (details, even task forces) on either side created specifically for the purpose of recovering their own slain soldiers? Especially after a territory was lost and but later regained?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9v6gmv/in_wwii_european_theatre_and_pacific_theatre_how/
|
{
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"text": [
"In both the European and Pacific Theaters, the primary U.S. Army unit tasked with the location, transportation, identification, and burial of friendly and enemy dead was the Quartermaster Graves Registration Company. Mass graves registration operations in the interwar period remained basically confined to the theoretical, and large-scale organization of these units only began in early 1942; before then, and after when these units were not available, combat units themselves were to appoint a Graves Registration officer and gather, identify, and bury their own dead. Quartermaster Graves Registration Companies in the Mediterranean, European and Pacific Theaters during the heaviest periods of combined action for the most part operated under the general guidance of Table of Organization and Equipment 10-297, dated 1 July 1943 (minor changes followed; note earlier and later tables of organization and equipment displayed in my third link at the bottom of my answer). The company had 6 officers and 124 enlisted men. A more heavily modified table of organization and equipment, 10-298, with 5 officers and 260 enlisted men, was issued on 26 September 1944. Experience with this organization was limited, as few units converted. \n\nThe Quartermaster Graves Registration Company under T/O & E 10-297 of 1 July 1943 was organized as follows;\n\n* Company headquarters with 2 officers and 24 enlisted men\n\n* 4 platoons each with 1 officer and 22 enlisted men\n\n * Platoon headquarters with 1 officer and 4 enlisted men\n\n * 3 squads, each with 6 enlisted men\n\n* Medical Department detachment with 12 enlisted men\n\n > It was recommended that unburied dead be removed as rapidly as possible and buried. The removal was to be carried out in a most considerate manner and with the least confusion in order to sustain the troops’ morale. Bodies were to be covered, especially if mangled or in an unpresentable condition, when carried or transported to the cemetery or other place of interment. Routes were to be selected in order to avoid contact with troops as much as possible, and places of burial were to be screened from roads if feasible. The removal of the bodies and remains was to be accomplished with a reverent attitude toward the dead. If any wounded were to be found, their removal would be the task of the Medical Department and troops detailed for that purpose. In all cases the bodies were to be wrapped in clothes, parachute material, sheets, blankets, mattress covers, or shelter-halves fastened securely with large horse-blanket safety pins (there were no body bags in WWII, and sheets and blankets being in short supply, white cotton mattress covers were normally used in lieu of body bags) before burial, if possible. When interments were made by Company Commanders they were instructed, as soon as possible, to report all facts to the GR personnel operating in the sector, in order to maintain complete data and records of the burials.\n\n > Normally, a Graves Registration representative was to be present to supervise the burials and the preparation of burial records. If not, a Chaplain, a Medical Administrative Officer, or some other Officer could be designated as a burial Officer. Whenever possible, it was recommended that a Chaplain of the Faith of the deceased should perform the burial rites.\n\n....\n\n > Procedures for collection, evacuation, and burial of enemy dead took place following same procedures, with the exception that information concerning enemy dead was to be handled through the Prisoner of War Information Bureau, and as prescribed by the Geneva Convention. Enemy dead were then buried in a separate section of the cemetery apart from regular burial sites of members of the own or Allied Armies within the cemetery (separate American and German cemeteries would be established later). Such graves were to be properly marked and registered and remained in the custody and care of the Quartermaster Corps. A metal Tag marked “ED” was to be prepared and attached to the temporary grave marker.\n\nAfter World War II, the several hundred temporary cemeteries established across Europe, Africa, and the Pacific began to be closed. Fourteen large permanent cemeteries and memorials administered by the American Battle Monuments Commission were opened, and the families of American deceased could have the bodies of their loved ones returned home, or reinterred in these cemeteries.\n\nCemetery|Identified burials|Listed on the Tablets of the Missing\n:--|:--|:--\nArdennes American Cemetery and Memorial|5,317|463\nBrittany American Cemetery and Memorial|4,409|500\nCambridge American Cemetery and Memorial|3,812|5,127\nEpinal American Cemetery and Memorial|5,254|424\nFlorence American Cemetery and Memorial|4,399|1,409\nHenri-Chappelle American Cemetery and Memorial|7,992|450\nLorraine American Cemetery and Memorial|10,489|444\nLuxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial|5,075|371\nManila American Cemetery and Memorial|17,184|36,286\nNetherlands American Cemetery and Memorial|8,301|1,722\nNormandy American Cemetery and Memorial|9,385|1,557\nNorth Africa American Cemetery and Memorial|2,841|3,724\nRhone American Cemetery and Memorial|860|294\nSicily-Rome American Cemetery and Memorial|7,860|3,095\n\nThe Honolulu Memorial has a Court of the Missing with 18,095 names of American servicemen missing in action from the Pacific Theater. The East Coast Memorial has 4,611 names, while the West Coast Memorial has 413; most of these men were declared missing while engaged in antisubmarine or merchant shipping operations. The Suresnes American Cemetery and Memorial, while primarily a World War I cemetery, also bears the names of 24 Americans missing in action from World War II.\n\n**Sources:**\n\n[American Battle Monument Commission History](_URL_0_)\n\n[American Battle Monuments Commission Cemeteries and Memorials](_URL_2_)\n\n[Quartermaster Graves Registration Company](_URL_1_)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.abmc.gov/about-us/history",
"https://www.med-dept.com/articles/quartermaster-graves-registration-service/",
"https://www.abmc.gov/cemeteries-memorials#.W-O3TS_Mw1L"
]
] |
|
1z37er
|
why do webpages seem to lose all aesthetic features on a bad internet connection?
|
It may seem like a trivial question, but (from my very small understanding of HTML) shouldn't the webpages keep all of the attributes defined in their code?
Also, how do webpages decide what parts to display and what to remove when coping with a poor internet connection?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1z37er/eli5why_do_webpages_seem_to_lose_all_aesthetic/
|
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"The page's style is usually located in a separate file - the CSS file. This is done on purpose, in order to separate the page's contents from its appearance."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
4dlpfi
|
how does china justify censorship to its citizens?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dlpfi/eli5how_does_china_justify_censorship_to_its/
|
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"They are doing it to protect their people from the influence of the west. That influence corrupts and taints the cultural and familial heritage of the Chinese people. Corrupts their families and youth, so to protect their people from those tainted values they block the acces to then. The government is doing it for the sake of their people. \n \nBasically the same thing the American government is doing by removing the right of privacy from their people to protect then against the threat of terrorism.",
"Chinese here... \n\nOriginal answer got removed because it's too short. But in fact they don't admit censoring anything, so they don't need to justify it either.\n\nAlso sometimes here on Reddit, I see some people think censor equals to banning the use of this word altogether, which is not the case.",
"Your question assumes there is a need for the Chinese government to justify their censoring to its citizens...they don't. \n\nYou come to China, you play by China's rules; don't like it, then GTFO. This was pretty much the case with Google when they tried to challenge China's censorship rules.",
"For their protection. \n\nAll gov'ts have to balance the rights of the group with the rights of the individual. Even western democracies censor some forms of speech when the deem it too harmful.\n\nChina sets that balance far in the other direction, censoring things they feel are a threat to social order.",
"If you look at the formal laws, they talk about crimes like \"destroying social harmony.\" So, maintaining social harmony is used as a justification.",
"They don't justify it to citizens, as others have mentioned they don't actually admit that they're censoring as much material as they do.\n\nIt always kind of intrigued me how such a large country was capable of controlling what does and doesn't get released to the public. At first I thought it's purpose was solely for population control and keeping their own people in the dark for the government's benefit, which one could still argue is the case. In theory political scandals, opposition groups, foreign propaganda, disappearances, and demand for public policy change are all easier to suppress if there isn't a mass awareness of it.\n\nHowever my opinion on their motive has changed since reading first hand accounts and bearing witness to current national strife in the US.\n\nSo if I were to guess how China's Gov would justify it? For it's own people's happiness (ignorance is bliss). Imagine if you didn't realize how fucked up the world was, or if you knew significantly less about how fucked up it was? In the entire 'free' world, news is considerably more negative, so imagine if the news you saw on a day to day basis was feel-good stories? If that was all you have ever known to be true for your entire life up until this point, wouldn't you in theory feel better about the world and your life in it? \n\nI don't agree with the process, but it's easier to be happy when you don't know shit compared to knowing too much.",
"This is based on the assumption that the Chinese believe that they have an inherent right to individual free speech. This is a western, post enlightenment concept, in most cultures it is considered normal and necessary to stop people from spreading ideas that interfere with the social order.\n\nIn other words, they don't have to go out of their way to \"justify\" censorship, because it is just a modern version of what has always taken place. ",
"Chinese here. With a lot of relatives in early 20s I talk to in Guangzhou. \n\nThey don't know what they are being censored from. Even though they know the government IS censoring stuff (fb and Twitter is obvious as they make accounts when they come to the US for grad school).\n\nThe majority of Chinese is content with the direction of the government, as they care more about material gain over intangibles like freedom to _____. \n\nChinese middle class and the government FEARs instability. When shit goes down in the US, it will deal with whiney redditors, angry public demonstrations, but eventually it blows over. The West never has to worry about the backbone of its government being dismantled. Westerners in general take pride of its political system (democracy) so the worst they can do is impeach a president or replace some politicians. China is different as in discontent leads directly to the backbone of its government. In China's long history almost every national \"demonstration\" lead to revolution and bloodshed. For many Chinese, things like censorship is a small price to pay for general stability.\n\nAlso, Chinese admire Western freedom but they also know West wants it to collapse and in general has no good intentions towards the Chinese people. They believe the Chinese government cares about its people more than any Western countries would so they are skeptical whenever it receives criticism from West. Like \"US only wants democracy for China because they know it'll lead to unrest and unseat China from its current power. So hah! I'll support the Chinese govt. cus fk the west\" mentality ",
"Do they even need to \"justify\" or care enough to make an effort?",
"The way it was explained to me is that the Chinese have a deep, ingrained fear of *luan*, 乱 or chaos. Because throughout their history there have been so many horrific civil wars, fracturing off of kingdoms or warlord fiefdoms, invasions, and other calamities, there is a deep sense that it is OK for the government to exert strong control over individual lives as long as they maintain order. Censorship is necessary to maintain that order.\n\nJust look at this [list](_URL_0_). Five of the ten deadliest events in human history happened in China, and three of them were entirely domestic fighting. There are a lot more domestic wars that didn't make the list. In the 20th century alone just domestically China went from the Qing dynasty to the Warlord period, to rule by the Nationalist KMT, to rule by the Communist party, and every one of those transitions was bloody. At that point you might be willing to accept overbearing leaders so long as they stopped the fighting.\n\nImagine the US had a Civil War or major foreign invasion every 20-30 years for the past 200 years (instead of exactly once). You'd imagine we would also be comfortable with a strong government that held the country together.\n\nEdit: Also in response to other posters, China does make some attempt to justify the censorship to their citizens. Keeping order is the justification. At least in the major cities where I lived *everyone* with a college education knew that the government censored the internet. It's impossible not to notice that you can't access sites that you know exist like Facebook and Twitter.",
"All countries have censorship something; for example in the UK the government censors us from child porn and from extreme speech (people telling us to harm others).\n\nThey justify this because they say it protects the people.",
"Most people in China have no idea there is censoring at all. Or maybe they know about it but it really has no impact on their daily life. Like as someone living in America, do you really care or know about things happening in Beijing right now? or Japan, or Russia? Probably not... it's just not relevant to your daily life.",
"I imagine it's pretty much the same way Reddit does it. Convince people that wrong/harmful speech should be removed/censored for the good of everyone. Easy as that.",
"They are the government and they do what they want. In communism the leadership does not have to justify anything they choose to do. They have full control of things. ",
"Used to live in China. The great firewall hasn't always been there, I used to surf YouTube and use Gmail all the time. Now it's blocked, I'm sure some people noticed but most don't as they use other websites that do just the same such as Baidu instead of Google. Others choose to work their way around the wall by using VPNs and proxies.",
"Remember that not all people are the same, and that the way governments operate are usually a result of the culture of the common people, and what they expect from their government.\n\nWestern Civilization is culturally rooted in Judaeo-Christian religion, which teaches that there should be a single moral code that all people follow; Chinese culture does not have that, and for most of their history they operated with the idea that morality was based in respecting people above you in the social hierarchy. \n\nThe idea that a government would have to explain itself (as long as it was succeeding with its major responsibilities) is pretty new to China.\n\nLook up Confucianism and the Mandate of Heaven, those ideas dominated China for about 2000 years, and the Communists actually have followed them to a fair degree."
]
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||
b3pscp
|
what are the main technologic advancements that make it possible to store so much more data in increasingly smaller circuits?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b3pscp/eli5_what_are_the_main_technologic_advancements/
|
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"Our ability to make tiny transistors which is largely driven by the machines that build them. I wouldn't say there is on specific thing that allows it, chip companies put a lot of effort into developing the machines that make the chips, and it's many advancements that come together to make what it ultimately a smaller process that can pack more stuff into a smaller space.",
"Optics. We make chips by etching patterns onto little silicon (glass-like material) plates. The smaller we can make the patterns, the more chips we can pack in for cheaper. Data *storage* is a special type of chip make of specific elements but made the same way. \n\nThe way we make the patterns is by coating the plates with a waxy substance called *photoresist*. Then we take an oversized template called a *mask*, and hold it above the plate. The template is a black sheet with holes cut in it to represent where the patterns go. We use the shadow it creates on the plate to make a pattern. \n\nWe shine light through the mask and it cures the photoresist — hardening the wax in certain places. \n\nThen you pour off the uncured resist and wash it so only the cited pattern remains. Finally, you use an acid to etch away all the non-covered parts of the plate and wash off the resist. Now you have a patterned plate ready to make microcircuits. \n\nSo the part that makes chips smaller, is our ability to use lenses to project the shadow from the mask and shrink it down to a smaller pattern on the plate. The better the lenses we can make with less distortion, the smaller the patterns can be. \n\n"
]
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|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
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||
t6npg
|
Does Heartbeats per minute have anything to do with the length of a life?
|
For example, Dogs and other animals that live shorter than us have faster heartbeats? does this have anything to do with it? or am i just far away from the truth?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/t6npg/does_heartbeats_per_minute_have_anything_to_do/
|
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"text": [
"Check this article out: [\"1 Billion heartbeats\"](_URL_0_)\n\nI think it is the [heartbeat hypothesis](_URL_1_) that you are thinking of",
"Thanks for the answers :D",
"So I spend my day as a cardiac electrophysiologist and academic dealing with questions of heart rates in people, and I can tell you that when you compare heart rates between species there may be some correlations you can draw between life span and heart rate. But within a species, and in particular among humans, there would almost certainly not be any meaningful causal association between the two. Lots of people live very short lives with slower heart rates or longer lives with relatively faster heart rates. A correlation very well could be drawn between the two, but it would likely be only an association because healthier people tend to have slower resting heart rates. But they also have less diabetes, hypertension, obesity, other obesity related problems and such.",
"There are some interesting points made regarding this in this Skeptics-StackExchange posting : _URL_0_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.beholders.org/mind/scienceandfacts/124-1billionheartbeats.html",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbeat_hypothesis"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5701/does-every-species-get-around-a-billion-heartbeats-on-average"
]
] |
|
3m1v8v
|
is there any real danger of muslims implementing sharia law in western societies?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3m1v8v/eli5is_there_any_real_danger_of_muslims/
|
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"No, there isn't. \n\n* The vast, vast, vast majority of Muslims living in the West have no intention or reason for implementing the Sharia in any Western country. \n\n* The few extremists who do have no chance of doing so. How would they?\n\n* Do not forget that Muslims are a very heterogeneous group. The cultural differences between Muslims of different denominations and origins is a major source for the tension in the Middle East. \nAny generalizations about 'Muslims' are usually entirely meaningless. ",
"Not really. Most countries have laws regarding how you change laws, and what constitutes a misdemeanor vs felony.\n\nThey'd need a majority in their senate or whatever to push any such change through without veto.\n\nUnofficially? Yeah, vigilante sharia enforcers could be a thing.",
"There are already Sharia courts in the UK. These are for religious matters and for arbitration - when both parties agree to be bound by the decision of the Sharia court. They are not for criminal matters - needless to say it is a contentious subject.\n\n_URL_0_ \nEdit for clarity: legal matters to criminal matters ",
"It's like saying \"Hebrew\" law, just because a certain religion has rules for their own religion, doesn't mean we will suddenly have to up and follow it if that religion \"enacts\" the law in an area. You have as much choice over it as you do worshipping or believing anything. ",
"The issue is that it will be implemented *de facto* rather than *de jure.* There's little chance (barring extreme demographic shifts) of Islamic law being codified in a Western country any time soon. But what is far, far more likely is that enough people who do want Sharia will start to enforce it outside the law though harassment and intimidation. And it doesn't even have to be as egregious as what happened to 'Charlie Hebdo.' How many times are you going to put up with men angrily shouting at you to wear a hijab before you do just to get them off your back? Everyone has to eat halal when it's too much of a hassle for restaurants and grocery stores to sell pork.\n\nEdit: [So there's this.](_URL_0_) \n\nIs this common? Is this indicative of every single Muslim? Is this the case in every Islamic country? Will angry, gun-toting, turban-wearing, suicide-bombing racist caricatures 'take over' your community and institute draconian laws, stoning Tindr users on every street corner?\n\nNo. Nobody is saying that's the case.\n\nAnd yet that woman still gets harassed. It's something that woman deals with in the morning when she gets dressed. And so long as we refuse to accept that it's happening and continue to tolerate the intolerance of others, it'll still be a thing. And it will grow. And after the fifth or seventeenth time one angry asshole ruins the store's pork products in protest, they'll stop carrying it.",
"Depending on who wins next year, America might even get the Christian equivalent to Sharia Law most Republicans seem so eager to implement. Of course this \"new\" version of Jesus hates the poor, gives more money to the rich, and only really crusades about eradicating abortions, homosexuality, Muslims, as well as rolling back centuries of scientific knowledge because the topics of evolution and the history of the universe weren't officially endorsed by The Book. Believe me it's not only many Muslims that want to shit all over secular law and establish a state religion, any country with a single religious majority is at risk of establishing itself as a theocracy unless everyone manages to agree that's a terrible idea and the laws put in place to prevent that are actually upheld and not sabotaged at every opportunity.",
"Don't forget that a lot of muslims leaves their countries to escape the politics and laws there.\n\nLike with most issues, the ones that we hear a lot are the loudest few.\n\nThere could not be a legal sharia law without a majority of people wanting it and I can't see that happening. But there could be unofficial implementation inside communities. They would be bound by law like everybody else so I dont know to what extent that could go.",
"Assuming you're asking about Sharia law applying to you, also assuming you're not a Muslim.\n\nShort answer: No.\n\nLong answer: Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.",
"No more likely than Christians implementing biblical law. Except unlike Christians, Muslims in most communities are still a minority which makes it even harder.",
"No.\n\nBut unfortunately we cannot remove the idiotic inflammatory tabloids that people readily buy into which spread this sort of rubbish.",
"They could probably be established, even in the U.S., for the resolution of religious/cultural disputes, much in the same way the Jewish Beth Din courts have for years.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Fuck no. There's no real danger of Sharia law in America. But there is real danger from idiots who claim \"god's laws\" supercede actual y'know, LAWS.",
"Only by doing so illegally. David Koresh was a Christian extremist who created his own laws in the US, but the government didn't accept that. The thing was this was just a small group of whackos where Muslim whacko populations are growing larger in Europe. Trying to get a few thousand people to follow the law could end up deadly.",
"I know it is the cool and hip thing atm to be seen hands down supporting religion but:\n\n1) Out of 500 UK Muslims questioned not one supported gay rights.\n\n2) 97% of those questioned believed that sex between unmarried men and women was immoral.\n\n3) British Muslims identified more with their home nation.\n\n4) Four major inquiries are taking place over a group of conservative Muslims are taking over a number of schools in Birmingham.\n\n5) Quarter (27% of those asked) British Muslims sympathize with Charlie Hebdo terrorists\n\n6) Personally i have seen men on London streets (where there are mosques) enforcing shiria law, no alcohol, no skirts, no kissing etc (they have been arrested since). \n\nSo yes there is a danger its the same with any 2 massively different cultures only preventative measure is for **both** sides to educate themselves.\n\n*I know this will be down voted anything that goes against religion is... oh well truth hurts...*",
"In France, it's impossible.\n\nWell, let's suppose that, for some reasons, the minority of 6% get enough friendly deputies (mostly white christian males) to vote a law and same at the Senate (average senator: 75yo white christian male). You also have to suppose that those 6% all speak together and think the secular Republic don't suit them, which is false.\n\n3 possibilities for the law:\n\n- it mentions religion as a condition to apply the law, which would be unconstitutational (since the state officially doesn't know what is a religion)\n\n- it hands judicial power to a religious court, which would be unconstitutional too (complete separation between the State and the Church since 1905)\n\n- it's a law applied to all French citizens, and it would be complete fiction to say it's possible a deputy would defend such a law",
"Through legitimate means? Not unless the following happens (using Canada as an example):\n\n* Firstly, an Islamist political party needs to be formed or an existing party needs to become an Islamist party.\n* The Islamist Party of Canada (IPC) now needs to be elected to a majority mandate (compromises with non-Islamists would mean no Sharia law) in every province and territory, because they're probably going to have to change the constitution, which requires provincial cooperation. This will prove very difficult in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, as they do not have political parties represented in their legislature.\n* The IPC must retain a majority government across the board long enough to appoint a majority of senators and court judges, which can take a very, very long time.\n* Now, the IPC can begin changing the existing laws in Canada to Sharia law.\n\nTL;DR: **No.**"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
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[],
[],
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"https://fullfact.org/factcheck/law/80_sharia_courts_britain-38319"
],
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/offmychest/comments/3i5k1l/looking_forward_to_coming_back_to_my_home_country/"
],
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[],
[],
[],
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"http://www.nylslawreview.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2012/11/NYLS_Law_Review_Volume-57-2.Broyde.pdf"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
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] |
||
bdhxfq
|
Are there contemporary accounts of how early modern bayonet versus sword encounters played out?
|
I'm curious about whether there were stories told or lessons drawn about how well one did against the other in battle or combat.
Was it expected or unusual for the two weapons to fight each other?
Was there also a social class element at play that might affect the answers to these questions?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bdhxfq/are_there_contemporary_accounts_of_how_early/
|
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"This would be modern, rather than early modern, but *D.A. Kinsley's \"Swordsmen of the British Empire\"* has a 30 page chapter comprised of contemporary accounts of Bayonet vs Sword combat in Indian and other colonial wars. The format of this book is just the first hand anecdotes rather than analysis, but I'll do my best to summarize.\n\nBayonets were generally found inferior to swords in a swirling melee or chaotic assault. The swordsman was either able to parry (or block with shields and bucklers) and get inside the bayonet, or even if stabbed, fatally or otherwise was able to close with his opponent and deliver an equally fatal counter attack. There are dozens of firsthand accounts of Afgans, Sikhs, and Baluchi swordsman doing just that after receiving bayonet wounds. Despite it's general inferiority, Bayonets were thought to have the advantage when troops fought in very close order or charged in a close packed mass. These accounts are by both officers and enlisted men, but of course are almost entirely from the British point of view rather than from their colonized adversaries. As may perhaps be expected, there is a great deal of complaining about the quality of arms (both bayonets and swords, but especially the sword-bayonet) given to British soldiers by the British government with Indian Tulwars and other swords (as well as Zulu Assegai's and other weapons) given lavish praise in contrast.\n\nHowever, all in all, I don't find the accounts totally convincing that the bayonet was always inferior to the sword. Perhaps the most we can say from this work is that men equipped with Bayonets by no means felt themselves better equipped than their sword wielding foes!"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
43n6tg
|
why does sleep paralysis usually only occur when sleeping on one's back? does it have to do with blood flow or the inner ear?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43n6tg/eli5_why_does_sleep_paralysis_usually_only_occur/
|
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"I've definitely gotten it before in different positions, but I can tell for sure my position has a lot to do with it.",
"I don't know if there is enough data to say. All I know is that when I do get sleep paralysis it is usually when I'm laying on my back. Even when I sleep on my side I usually role over at some point. When i was a teen it got so bad I had to sleep on my tummy. Even then I had the occasional bout of sleep paralysis.",
"I get it when I lay on my stomach most of the time. Only once on my back. Laying on your belly during sleep paralysis is worse IMO. More terrifying. ",
"I remember reading that it was to do with the pressure on your lungs while your sleeping on your back that can trigger an episode of sleep paralysis. Over tiredness can trigger it too so when combined your more likely to have an attack. \n\nDon't take my word as gospel though."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
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||
2krxcg
|
why was /r/creepshots not ok (perv pics taken in public places), while it is ok to have entire subs dedicated to pictures of freshly murdered woman, or bloody babies recently aborted?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2krxcg/eli5_why_was_rcreepshots_not_ok_perv_pics_taken/
|
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"This post is not asking for a layman-friendly explanation to something complicated or technical, so it doesn't belong here and it's been removed. Entirely subjective questions generally belong in /r/askreddit."
]
}
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[
[]
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c51h7a
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Marco Polo is quoted to have said on his deathbed, "I did not tell half of what I saw, for I knew I would not be believed." What things may he not have described to the public and why?
|
It is also possible that the quote refers to the general doubt of the truth of his documented travels. If there is more evidence to support this interpretation, then I would like to ask what aspects of his travels did people doubt during his time?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/c51h7a/marco_polo_is_quoted_to_have_said_on_his_deathbed/
|
{
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"Jacopo da Acqui's report of Marco Polo's last testament should be put in its proper context. His family members were trying to get him to repent and disown all the lies he'd written, to which Polo sneered that he had not told even *half* of what he'd seen.\n\nAssuming the anecdote is true (or even if it's an invention by Jacopo, defending his subject, which seems just as likely), there are two ways to take it. First, if Polo told the other half, it would be realistic enough to make the whole story seem plausible. Second, the stories in the other half were *even wilder*.\n\nFortunately, we have ways to investigate both possibilities. Boring one first.\n\n**Scribes Gonna Scribe**\n\nThe manuscript tradition of the Travels is a mess. It's maybe not as bad as Piers Plowman, but it's a mess. We don't have the original. There's no single surviving manuscript from which all others derive. Which is to say, there is at least something missing from/added to every existing version.\n\nSome changes are surely accidental, or the result of translation problems. Others, though, are substantial omissions/additions. In those cases, it seems likely that somewhere along the way, a scribe/translator either thought the text needed that story, or saw that story and thought it did not belong for whatever reason.\n\nOne good example is the large void in the overall narrative, which occurs when Polo is basically hanging out in the East. Some manuscripts don't really say anything. Others explain that he was specially chosen as governor of a city for three years. Oh, and that he, his father, and his uncle pretty much single-handedly won a siege for the Khan by reinventing the trebuchet.\n\nA passage like this one, especially since it was almost certainly added to some rather than omitted from the rest, suggests a couple of possibilities for reconciling skepticism/maintaining the book's veneer of \"plausibility,\" fully aware it was just a veneer and part of the genre.\n\nFirst, it fills in a large temporal gap at least in part. Useful in and of itself. Second, it casts the Europeans in a *really* good light. It's usually thought that even when pointing out good qualities of non-Christians, medieval European travel narratives relate tales and descriptions in ways that emphasize their Otherness. Massaging the awesomeness of the Polos serves those ends quite well--especially useful in a post-fall of Acre world.\n\nA lot of additions seem to point to scribes feeling that the version they had in front of them was just missing a few details. Like a description for how horse thieves or bar brawlers were punished will have the procedure for punishing murderers added to it in later recensions. If the scribes thought the story needed it, Polo's friends and family could well have thought the same.\n\nBut really what you're here for is shipwrecks and cannibals, right?\n\n**Diamond Poop, or, 1001 Mediterranean Nights**\n\nIn [this earlier answer](_URL_0_), I discuss how one episode that Marco Polo recounts traces back in time to amazing 12th century Persian poet Nizami, to a 10th century natural history text in Arabic, to a 4th century Christian bishop, to...Herodotus. From Polo:\n\n > Among these mountains there are certain great and deep valleys, to the bottom of which there is no access. Wherefore the men who go in search of the diamonds take with them pieces of flesh, as lean as they can get, and these they cast into the bottom of a valley...When the eagles [who also eat the deadliest snakes known to the ENTIRE WORLD] see the meat thrown down they pounce upon it and carry it up to some rocky hill-top...\n\n > The people go to the nests of those white eagles, of which there are many, and in their droppings they find plenty of diamonds which the birds have swallowed in devouring the meat that was cast into the valleys.\n\nThe details of the story change (Polo's diamonds are Herodotus's cinnamon sticks), but the underlying \"plot\" is the same.\n\nThis matters for present purposes because it shows how stories like this one are circulating around the Mediterranean-Asian world, crossing geographic and linguistic barriers as though they didn't exist. Ibn Battuta, Marco Polo, any interested traveler might well have heard the same basic story, with different details (snakes? no snakes? Alexander the Great? Random peasants?) from multiple sources. Heck, the valley of the diamonds story will even eventually be recorded in *1001 Nights* (the messiest manuscript tradition yet), although the MS is more recent than Polo but the story was probably part of the collection beforehand.\n\nThe Mediterranean-Asian world was a world of stories. So in addition to whatever Polo did/did not see with his *eyes* firsthand, there's what he \"saw\" in the sense of having heard or overheard. And thus, the question becomes: what stories or what kinds of stories might we expect, that Polo nevertheless leaves out?\n\nLooking at a 10th century Arabic text known as the *Marvels of India*, I'm going to suggest that what he left out includes shipwrecks and cannibals.\n\n*Marvels of India*, like Polo and Ibn Battuta, is a collection of anecdotes, although it doesn't really attempt to be a cohesive travel narrative of any sort. The reason I think it's particularly useful for present purposes is that taken as a whole, the book is *really, really repetitive.* How many stories do you need that emphasize THIS FISH IS REALLY BIG? (At least four in a row, at one point, to say nothing of elsewhere in the text). It's a mishmash of tales, of the \"1001 Mediterranean Nights,\" just like Marco Polo. (And yes, it includes the 'valley of the diamonds' legend.)\n\nAnd some of the most common themes suicide, monkeys, snakes, REALLY BIG FISH...shipwrecks and cannibals.\n\nMind you, cannibals and shipwrecks both appear in Marco Polo's books. But not like this. The cannibals of *Marvels* sometimes have tails. Sometimes the book's author goes into *way* too much detail about how the cannibals cook their meals. And over and over, we read the trope--that survives to day--of the shipwrecked sailors on the island of the cannibal king.\n\nIn a world of travelers, merchants, and educated people across cultures (or the product of one author with a really thorough education), Marco Polo would have heard a lot of stories from a lot of people. One way or another, some of them wound up in his *Travels.* And one way or another, Jacopo da Acqui had his character Polo defend the \"truth\" in his own voice--whether that truth was what Polo saw--or what he had heard from someone who had heard it from someone."
]
}
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[] |
[
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5570ic/in_one_story_of_sindbad_the_sailor_and_in_marco/d88riob/"
]
] |
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334jur
|
was there any efficacy to leaches or bleeding as a medical treatment? if not why was the practice so well accepted?
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explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/334jur/eli5was_there_any_efficacy_to_leaches_or_bleeding/
|
{
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"text": [
"The practice of blood-letting was based on the idea that all medical problems are due to an imbalance in the four humors, blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phelgm. If you were sick, doctors would try to fix you by bringing the humors in balance, and blood-letting was a way of doing this.\n\nNow that we know more about medicine, we don't do this very much anymore. There are some conditions that benefit from blood-letting, but not so many that we should blood-let to the extent that doctors in the past did."
]
}
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[] |
[
[]
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2mw0r0
|
Why was it so important for us to take all the beaches involved in Operation Overlord.
|
I read that The Allies were worried they weren't going to take all of the beaches invaded in Overlord. Why was that such an important point? Couldn't we have surrounded the other landing zones from behind, after we'd successfully taken the others and then make the Nazi's surrender or take them out more easily?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2mw0r0/why_was_it_so_important_for_us_to_take_all_the/
|
{
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"cm88kpz"
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"The securing of the beaches also meant the denial of causeways leading *to* the beaches. An invasion on a broad front had to be accomplished fully to prevent traffic jams (which occurred anyways as resistance inland was fierce) and to deny the Germans a salient from which to hit the flanks of a beach-head. The deliberate avoidance of assaulting a port directly meant that as much real estate as possible would be needed; especially since the Allies had to begin landing supplies directly onto the beaches in addition to their improvised harbors.\n\nConsider: If say, Omaha beach repelled the assault battalions back into the ocean (as indeed, Bradley at one point feared would happen), the units destined to land at Omaha would instead jam up into Utah. The Utah beachhead would then have been open to attack from its flank from the still-secured Omaha causeways. You have to understand the logistical difficulties of defending a beachhead on two fronts while simultaneously attempting to expand it. \n\nAs for pockets of Germans surrendering...unlikely. For reasons of politics and (arguably) sound military principles, pockets would hold out for as long as possible; and evidence for this on all fronts are manifold. Leaving large pockets of Germans in such a critical area of supply would be unimaginable to a military planner, and considering the beaches necessitated a steady build up of manpower, would be impossible to crush in an acceptable amount of time. It would be a dangerous tying down of forces that would need to be pushing in land and setting up blocking positions for inevitable counterattacks. "
]
}
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[] |
[] |
[
[]
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9bqf4h
|
how does the supreme court's decision affect laws nation wide?
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explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9bqf4h/eli5_how_does_the_supreme_courts_decision_affect/
|
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"text": [
"It sets a legal precedent.\n\nThe Supreme Court is the final court in the US. When they make a decision, that decision is essentially final, and the only people who can overturn that decision is the Supreme Court, or Congress could change the laws the decision was based on.\n\nAfter they make a decision, if someone in the future has a similar case, they can basically say \"look this went all the way to the Supreme Court, and this is what they said then. If you don't find things this way now, we'll just keep appealing until we get to the Supreme Court too, so they can say the same thing again\".",
"The USA is a constitutional democratic republic. That means that any laws passed by your elected officials are limited by the rights guaranteed in the constitution. This is known as majority rule restrained by minority rights. If a federal constitutional right is found to overrule a law than all such laws are void. All courts will follow SCOTUS and void the laws. ",
"In Law there is a concept of precedence which means that if judges make a decision in one form or another this is how decisions on similar cases should be made in future.\nLiterally a lawyer will stand up and say that in this previous case,this happened and I'd like it to happen again and the judges will most likely agree if the situation is indeed similar.\n\nAdditionally the supreme court is the court with the highest authority, so if they rule one way on something they are likely to again if someone brought their case there again. Even if other lower courts initially disagree, they can be overruled.",
"Federal law trumps state and local law. That means that a decision by the Supreme Court is officially the supreme law of the land. So for example, if the Supreme Court says that it's unconstitutional to discriminate against trans people by restricting which restroom they can use, then that's it, no state or local municipality could have a policy that allowed such discrimination. \n\nNow lets put it in actual 5 year old terms. Growing up, I could ask dad (the state government) for permission to do certain things. If dad said it was cool, then I could do it, so long as mom (the federal government) didn't disagree. If mom laid down the law though for instance by saying that X activity was too dangerous, that was it, dad would never overrule her. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
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[]
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4q53da
|
How many African countries aside from Egypt have a legitimate basis for national unity that goes further back than their colonial institutions?
|
Or the opposite, which African countries had no real basis or example of national/ethnic/cultural unity prior to their colonial institutions?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4q53da/how_many_african_countries_aside_from_egypt_have/
|
{
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"I believe the question being asked is if there are any African nations that owe their shape and/or territory to native institutions (cultural or legal), or if they owe it to colonial politicking and treaties.\n\nI don't think Egypt is too proper an example. Its territory had been reduced and culturally developed through numerous invasions prior to the European colonial period. ",
"Because of the wholesale nature of how each country was created, this question isn't quite practical. You can point back to ethnic or cultural groups that have historically controlled the regions that modern countries reside in, and posit a national identity forwards. If you're asking which countries have a longer continuous national identity ala Egypt, I can name a few (Ethiopia, Mali, Madagascar) most countries in Africa had some sort of polity existing there before they were taken over by European countries. You're going to have to be much more specific in wording your question if you want a better answer. There are hundreds of countries and even more unified cultural groups that have existed in Africa throughout history. "
]
}
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[] |
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[
[],
[]
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6zi0ph
|
how is it that we can take our pulse and not completely block out veins/arteries when we do so?
|
Like whenever runners check their pulse on their neck, they'll press two or three fingers against the underside of the jaw, sometimes pretty firmly, and it appears not to have any effect. Does it have an effect on blood flow, and if so, why is it so negligible?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6zi0ph/eli5_how_is_it_that_we_can_take_our_pulse_and_not/
|
{
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"text": [
"You may temporarily reduce blood flow when you do this, but the body isn't *so* delicate that this would hurt you.",
"Nurse here. It does reduce blood flow but the blood pressure does push it to stretch on the side of the artery without pressure. But you can fully stop flow with enough pressure. There are arteries and veins on both sides of the neck. That's why you only see a runner check one side at a time. You could make someone pass out if you depressed both firmly enough to cut off major blood vessels. "
]
}
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[
[],
[]
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1hqeev
|
sun tzu - why exactly was he so great?
|
I understand he was a good war general, but what was so great about him? His strategy? Why does his philosophy influence so many lives?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hqeev/eli5_sun_tzu_why_exactly_was_he_so_great/
|
{
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"Sun Tzu's philosophy is a widely applicable approach to any sort of battle, from war to competing business to schoolyard cliques. It forms a very good foundation of techniques to prepare and instigate a \"battle\" to ensure that all your weaknesses are covered and the target's are exploited. As well as great risk assessment to determine whether a battle is even worth fighting.\n\nHe basically wrote \"conflicts for dummies\".",
"He carefully put into words many strategic principles and philosophies that hold true in all aspects of life. The art of war isn't simply his view or opinion on war, they are principles that have been proven time and time again to be correct. \n\nAnd he didn't write one or two well aimed statements, he wrote a comprehensive work on the subject. As a thought experiment, switch the word \"war\" with \"conflict\" and his writings hold just as true.\n\n\n > “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” \n\nAt face value a noble statement. It's also an efficient one. Defeating an enemy without fighting means you suffered no losses, expended little and have caused a minimum of animosity in your opponent. This sentiment is as true in war as it is in an office meeting.\n\n > “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win” \n\nPreparation is everything. Like GI Joe said, knowing is half the battle. Going into a task unprepared, half assed and hoping to wing it, will leave you helpless at the hands of an opponent who knows what he's doing.\n\n > “When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.” \n\nIf you put someone with his back against the wall, he'll have no alternative but to fight you tooth and nail. If you want compromise, leave him room to compromise.\n\nSun Tzu's art of war is the truth of life. And part of what made it so long lasting is that while it is absolutely the art of *war*, all of life is conflict. His lessons can be as easily applied in the workplace, school or even simply the way you live your life as on the battlefield. Everyone can learn from his work."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
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5pfld0
|
what does chemo do to your body?
|
Someone I know recently finished his first round of chemo. From what I understand it was extremely rough on his body. What exactly does it do to you? What are all the possible side effects from chemo?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5pfld0/eli5_what_does_chemo_do_to_your_body/
|
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"Chemo basically kills all fast growing cells. It normally causes some kind of DNA damage that will kill cells. This is more harmful to cells that are quickly dividing because they don't have time to repair the damage. The cancer cells are growing fast so it can hopefully kill all the cancer cells, but there are a lot of fast growing normal cells in the body which is why it is very rough to go through.",
"There are many different categories of chemotherapeutic anti-cancer drugs, all of which have varied effects, but most of them are involved in disrupting the cell division and DNA / RNA synthesis of cells in the body. \n\nA cancer tumor is really just a large mass of cells that have stopped responding to the rest of the body. Normally your body regulates how many times a cell can divide, and can induce a cell to kill itself. Cancer cells have stopped responding to this, and are just reproducing uncontrollably \n\nCancer tumors require a certain threshold size to be \"cancer\", and to withstand the body's immune system. A general rule of thumb is that the larger a cancerous mass is, the more powerful it is. That is why a large part of treating cancer is reducing its size.\n\nEnter chemotherapy drugs - drugs that hurt the ability for cells to divide. Now, it is important for *many* cells in your body to divide, but because your body regulates the process, most cells divide much slower than cancer cells. So chemotherapy harms cancer tumors *more* than most other cells in your body. \n\nIt is an extremely delicate balance, and that is why oncologists have a very difficult job. They need to ensure that the drugs are strong enough to hinder the tumors ability to replicate, but *not* so powerful that they make it impossible for your own immune system to fight the tumor. \n\nChemotherapy is often used with spot-radiation therapy, which is where doctors bombard cancer tumors with powerful radiation, which shreds the cells DNA and kills them. This is an extra attack on the tumor to ensure that your immune system is stronger than the tumor. \n\nIn the end, it is the body's immune system that ultimately needs to destroy the cancer. Chemotherapy is a double-edged sword, but doctors try to make the side that's stabbing the cancer cells *longer and sharper* than the one stabbing your immune system. Since cancer cells divide more rapidly, they're more vulnerable to chemotherapy, so the goal is to give your body the edge. \n\n\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
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3wsfhe
|
How much did medieval and renaissance society know about the Ancient World?
|
How much did medieval/renaissance societies like in Europe know about civilizations such as Rome or Greece? Or has Greek/Roman history mainly been uncovered in the last 200~ years?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3wsfhe/how_much_did_medieval_and_renaissance_society/
|
{
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"This question is a difficult one to respond to, since it's both difficult to quantify, and of course the early Middle Ages were right after the Classical era, so it was, essentially, yesterday to them. By the time you get to the Early Modern period, Shakespeare is still writing plays about classical figures for popular audiences (for example, *Julius Caesar*), clearly expecting even the groundlings to know who these figures were. \n\nSo, it strikes me that the answer to your question is probably \"a lot.\" Heck, since the classical education wasn't really replaced by liberal arts education until the early 20th century, educated people in the Middle Ages/Early Modern Era almost definitely knew **more** than educated people in the 21st century -- but again, this is difficult to quantify, and so hard to defend. \n\nPerhaps you could word your question in a more pointed way?",
"Like /u/ProfAwe5ome said, it's a difficult question to answer precisely, because it's so open-ended, but the answer is a lot. I will just give three examples of some common types of works available to scholars throughout the Middle Ages that would have helped them know about the Greek and Roman world. It was of great interest to them for a number of reasons, perhaps especially so that they could understand the details of the bible, but also to help advance other areas of knowledge such as law and medicine.\n\nHistories: Many Roman historical texts were preserved and read, but perhaps more popular is something like Orosius's *History against the Pagans*, basically a history of everything that had happened in Rome from its founding from the point of view of someone proving that bad things happened when they were still pagan (because people complained that the sack of Rome in 410 was the result of conversions to Christianity and the abandonment of the old gods).\n\nScholarly works: Commentaries on Roman literary texts, such as Servius's comments on the *Aeneid*, explained a great many of the small details of the text that might have been unfamiliar to a later audience, much like the footnotes in a student edition of Shakespeare.\n\nEncyclopedias: Isidore of Seville wrote a large work on the meanings and etymologies of Latin words that is really just a huge encyclopedia of classical knowledge.\n\nMuch could be added to this."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
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2zsztn
|
How is it that DNA is like a computer even though it seems nothing like a computer?
|
I often hear this analogy in science journalism articles, but they never go into detail about exactly what this means. I get that the molecule stores information, but, being a computer programmer, I need a bit more to be satisfied.
If DNA is a computer, what does it take as input and what does it produce as output. What kind of information is being stored on it? Does it write information back to itself? What are the 'programs' that it runs? Biologists often speak of turning genes 'on' and 'off'; what does this mean?
Perhaps this could be a bit involved of a question. I'd be happy if anyone could point to a good textbook or website on the subject to help those of us interested in learning about this topic pursue it further.
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2zsztn/how_is_it_that_dna_is_like_a_computer_even_though/
|
{
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"The DNA encodes a series of commands using a four-letter code. This code then has commands written into it for starting and stopping replication into RNA. Within the part that can be copied into RNA are three-letter instructions to direct ribosomes to make proteins. In this way, there is essentially a programming language with sequences of code that direct how a cell should function.\n\nSo DNA isn't a computer. It is the code...computer language. The computer is the cell, directed by the code to function in specific ways.\n\nEdit: also, the analogy between DNA/cells and computer language/computers is a huge stretch. Biology isn't nearly as literal as computer function. Nothing in biology is as exact as that with errors and mistakes being expected and even sometimes used as a feature.",
"It's really not accurate to compare DNA as a computer. It's better to compair the entire cell as a computer while DNA is really the hard drive.\n\nInput is usually a hormone. A hormone reaches a cell, interact with its surface receptors. The surface receptors then trigger a cascade of chemical reactions that will result in an enzyme that will go to the DNA and start the DNA translation process.\n\nThe output is usually a protein translated from the DNA. The protein can be more hormones, or other kinds.\n\nDNA store information using only 4 bases. The arrangement of those bases will determine what protein will be made and how it will be made.\n\nDNA can sometimes rewrite itself if there is error in it. That is, there is a specific enzyme that will travel down the length of DNA and find the mismatched bases and correct it.\n\nThe programs is runs is basically the proteins that it makes that will serve functions to build a human being. Your eye cells will use the \"eye\" information coded in the DNA to create proteins that will make an eye.\n\nWhen biologist say that they can turn genes on and off, it usually means that they're going to make a cell start making a protein that it normally doesn't.\n\nEach cell in your body is pretty specific to its function. That is, the cells in your eyes serve its function to make an eye. Although, it contains all of the genetic information of every other cell, it will only use the ones that make an eye.\n\nThink of it like your computer where you have a bunch of software installed. Most of those softwares, you don't ever use. But they're there.\n\nWhen biologist say they can turn on a gene, they litterally mean that they can make a cell start expressing that gene to make other kinds of protein a cell normally doesn't make.\n\nKind of like when you start the server program for your computer and turn your computer into a server. Normally, you don't use your computer as a server, but, in that one instance, you did.\n\nHowever, like a nonspecialized computer, a cell that is made to express other genes aren't very good at it.\n\nA bio 101 book will give you the gist of it. A biochemistry book will give you great details about it."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
3ps3z7
|
Did any Roman emperors attempt to have themselves elected to the papacy?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3ps3z7/did_any_roman_emperors_attempt_to_have_themselves/
|
{
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"Essentially no. The position of pope as we recognise it now didn't really exist, and no emperor ever attempted to claim the position of the time we now call \"pope\". Those in the time period that we now call \"pope\" would have been seen at the time as simply the bishop of Rome. While this was certainly one of the more important bishoprics, it was not seen as the undisputed master of Catholicism as it is today - Alexandria and Constantinople were of at least similar influence.\n\nGiven that, the emperors had a vast amount of power over the Catholic church, and at points were very involved in major church rulings, for example with Theodosius I and the second ecumenical council. This meant that in a way the emperors were able to act as an ultimate arbiter above all the bishops, like the pope, but were far from the enshrined head of the church. More of a point of interest rather than meaningful, but the Roman emperors were the holders of the title \"pontifex maximus\" before it was passed to the bishop of Rome."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
elwbal
|
can ocean water be used to extinguish large scale forest fires?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/elwbal/eli5_can_ocean_water_be_used_to_extinguish_large/
|
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"text": [
"Ocean water is full of salt.\n\nSalt interferes with plant growth.\n\nScooping up a bunch of ocean water and dumping it on vegetation might help put out a fire, if you ignore the logistics needed to transport ocean water like that, but you'd be screwing up the long-term health of the place.",
"Yes. But it would poison the land with salt making it such that few to no plants can grow there and it could take centuries for the salt levels to wash away to the point that the soil can grow plants again. Salt was used by armies to permanently (relatively) destroy farm land as they invaded. It is not something you want to do in general if you actually want to save the forests.",
"Yes, but there are issues. Transporting that much water is difficult. There are some helicopters that can actually use big buckets to do just that, but it's not a lot of water compared to the scale of most forrest fires. \n\nI imagine another issue over the long term is the salinity of ocean water.",
"Salt is like poison to plants. Once salt gets in soil, it is very difficult for anything to grow there for a very long time. It is much worse for the local ecology than a fire, infact"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
cw5huq
|
why does it feel like hitting concrete when you jump into a body of water from 50 feet or higher?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cw5huq/eli5_why_does_it_feel_like_hitting_concrete_when/
|
{
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"text": [
"Liquids have viscosity that differ. The thicker a viscosity the more it can mimic (for lack of a better word) the properties of a solid. Water has a relatively low viscosity compared to oil, but when you get to a certain velocity, that viscosity is enough to injure.",
"if you think about being squirted by a hose or gun full of water then think about this when your going like 30+ mph and it is all your weight in your body hitting something , it doesnt matter if it is water it still hurts . imagine pressure washing your self , it would hurt even though its water",
"Just as an added note to the other good explanations here. Water \"feeling\" like concrete when hit from a great height is just a saying, it does not have any scientific truth.\n\nWater results in far less G-forces (what actually kills a person) as compared to concrete if you were to fall on both from the same height. Mythbusters did a very good episode on this.\n\nIn short, water can absolutely kill you if you fall from high enough. But concrete will kill you from a much lower fall because concrete is significantly harder than water."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
egxdl6
|
the science behind having naturally really dry skin
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/egxdl6/eli5_the_science_behind_having_naturally_really/
|
{
"a_id": [
"fcfkwe7"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Many people wash their skin too much. Soaps strip the skin of the naturally occurring oils that protect skin and keep moisture in."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
49kn5x
|
Why is the eastern United States so different in climate compared to to the western United States?
|
I'm talking little things like why does a town like Millers, Nevada have such a different climate than Charlotte NC (both roughly 300 miles from their closest ocean.) One is in a dry high desert while the other is a relatively hot and wooded region. There isn't a big north vs south difference yet they are so different from each other.
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/49kn5x/why_is_the_eastern_united_states_so_different_in/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d0ucps7"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"One of the reasons is that the ocean water by California is much colder than the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean (currents push the water from near Alaska all way down to California). Colder water evaporates less and cools the air. Cooler air can hold less moisture as well. \n\nAlso, mountains and hills filter moisture from the air mass as it moves westward. By the time it reaches central California, it's basically desert air. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
9tuf26
|
What was Adam Smith denouncing with his plea for ‘laissez-faire’?
|
(Was recommended by r/ask_politics to post here)
Learning about Smith in class right now and was wondering if someone could please help me understand further.
& #x200B;
A redditor mentioned the following to me:
(He was denouncing) arbitrary state power and stifling role of guilds and other corporatist entities that restricted the free exchange of goods and services.
The state in Britain tended to make a lot of its money by selling the monopoly right to provide some good or service. Guilds tended to heavily restrict entry and exit into professions and control output.
The liberal argument he was making was that these actions restricted free exchange, stifled innovation, and blocked the creation of new wealth.
& #x200B;
Could someone perhaps expand on this idea a bit further please?
& #x200B;
Thanks!
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9tuf26/what_was_adam_smith_denouncing_with_his_plea_for/
|
{
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"text": [
"I can't say much about all the English guilds in the 18th c. But I can say something about state-granted monopolies, or monopoly patents.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe origin of such things seems to have been a recognition that some industries were useful and needed to be encouraged. If some French glass-makers, say,were interested in coming over and setting up their shops in Tudor England, they would be incurring lots of costs and there would be some risk that, if they established themselves, they would suddenly be faced with competition from others and it would be difficult to make up their expenses. So, they might be granted exclusive rights to making glass for a period of some years. This would make the French an attractive venture for investors ( note that this is before the existence , really, of what you'd call banks) and a useful industry could be established. And the cost to the government would be nothing, at a time when most wealth was land and so most monarchs had to be very careful about gifting it away. It might not be glass: it could be a company wanting to start anything expensive, like a coal mine, and they needed to attract lots of up-front investment. Or someone who had intellectual property- like, a way to dye cloth- and wanted to develop it, but didn't want someone to jump in and copy his methods after he had spent much time and money making it go. In the 16th c. there would usually be some investigation into how the new monopoly would affect the current trades: the French glass makers would not be granted their monopoly until it was determined that what they were doing was not already being done ( this actually happened: they weren't, and got their patent).\n\nHowever, the system began to be greatly expanded under Elizabeth and her chancellor Burghley. Courtiers could ask for money for advancing a petitioner's patent application, and more patents began to be awarded to those courtiers and their clients for no new industry or invention, just for money to the Crown, or just so the Crown could reward a courtier. A patent could be granted for the right to exclusively judge dyed silk, or sell beer in Bristol. There were some attempts to at least make the awarding of them consistent and systematic, but it was too attractive a source of revue for the Crown- and by the 1620's King Charles really needed a source of revenue, so abuses grew. It began to be recognized that the monopolies were actually quite costly. One historian has noted that as much as 200,000 pounds each year were drawn from the public in order to hand only 1,500 pounds to the king. The granting of monopolies was high on the Committee of Grievances list of abuses of the royal prerogative in 1640, and later in the 17th c. it was thought to have been a major reason for the Civil War.\n\nEfforts to reform the system were complex, not uniform and went in fits and starts, but a patent system more based on protection of intellectual property came into being by the late 16th. c.. By the Adam Smith's 18th c., \"monopoly\" was a very pejorative term.\n\nChristine MacLeod, Inventing the Industrial Revolution: The English Patent System 1660-1800\n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
2i0qfg
|
when i have a tube filled with marbles and push in on one end, another pops out instantly. what if the tube was a mile? would it still be as quick?
|
Would the problem be the weight of the marbles? And if so what if we could ignore the weight?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2i0qfg/eli5_when_i_have_a_tube_filled_with_marbles_and/
|
{
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4,
12
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"text": [
"The pressure wave will be transmitted from marble to marble at the speed of sound in marble.",
" > What if the tube was a mile? Would it still be as quick?\n\nNope. There is the limit to the speed that a physical force can propagate through a medium. In fact, we have a name for this speed, based on one of the most common examples of a physical force propagating though a medium. It's an example that you're very familiar with: Sound.\n\nThe speed of sound is nothing more than the speed at which physical forces move through a material. Assuming that the marbles were all touching each other, the amount of time it would take for the marble at the end to pop out would be the length of the tube divided by the speed of sound in the material that the marbles were made of.\n\nAssuming glass marbles, we can take the speed of sound in glass as 13,000 ft/s, and get a time of ~0.41 s. So just under half a second for the marble at the other end to move.\n\nAnd, interestingly enough, this will work for a solid rod, as well. If you had a mile-long rod of solid glass, and you pushed on one end, it would take ~0.41s for the other end to move."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
1rc5ir
|
why are canadian and american accents almost indistinguishable, even to residents of either country? why are the two countries so similar?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rc5ir/eli5_why_are_canadian_and_american_accents_almost/
|
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],
"text": [
"I wouldn't say that's necessarily true. I would say a lot of accents are distinguishable, especially in the east. ",
"Canadian and American accents both vary wildly. It's pretty easy to distinguish.",
"Canadian accents are very distinguishable by most. ",
"Guessing you are from the British Isles, where accents vary over very short distances.When you become more familiar with the North American nuances you will find a similar, but more subtle variation amongst us."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
thhu7
|
pink lemonade. if it's not strawberry or raspberry, then what is the pink?
|
I mean, there are no pink lemons.
Are there?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/thhu7/eli5_pink_lemonade_if_its_not_strawberry_or/
|
{
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"c4mnr5g",
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"text": [
"There is a pink lemon, but it's not used.\n\nPink lemonade is just normal lemonade colored pink. It's dyed using artificial dye, raspberries, cherries, red grapefruit, grapes, cranberries, strawberries, grenadine, or, as in the origin story, cinnamon candy. The flavor may or may not be different.",
"The taste is the same. The color is fake.\n\nIts a color marker that indicates the beverage. Pink has become associated with lemonade (especially artificially flavored very sweet version) and pink is a pleasing and distinct color. \n\nRegular lemonade has a dull, mostly clear, slight yellow tint color that isn't all that distinctive. [but I still like it]\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
3b9o3q
|
why doesn't wifi quality correlate with wifi range?
|
* When I use wifi in the same room as my router, my internet speed is nice and fast, and the wifi strength indicator on my laptop/phone etc is at maximum.
* When I move two rooms away, the internet on my device all but stops. Pages load slowly or not at all, and I receive error messages saying that there is not internet. However, the wifi is still connected at full strength.
* I understand that the distance from the router and the material of the walls impact on the wifi, but how is it that the data transfers slow down/stop, yet the signal strength is perfect?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3b9o3q/eli5_why_doesnt_wifi_quality_correlate_with_wifi/
|
{
"a_id": [
"csk6gbi"
],
"score": [
15
],
"text": [
"Excellent question, I used to work on corporate and hospitality systems (think like the Marriott or Sheraton wifi) and this I had to learn fast.\n\nSo a wireless signal transmits also called broadcasts a lot of information in the signal. Some of your signal is the data (we call it throughout), some of it is the wifi name (also called the SSID), and then there's some technical information transmitted that we won't get into (depending on the system).\n\nYou computer clumps data together in small bursts called a packet, think of it like a snowball. So when you ask for _URL_0_ you computer begins sending packets, or throwing snowballs to servers on the Internet, and as the servers process they throw snowballs back. The ideal is you have to collect all the snowballs (packets) before you can build a fort (web page, image, etc.).\n\nYour wifi has a radius (circle which is your wifi name like mine is District13) in which it broadcast, think of this like a large frozen water disk above you making sure the sun can't melt your snowballs (packets). So as you move away from the center of your protective circle, the circle melts and the sun comes through. You can still see the frozen water (your network name) but now the sun (interference) is melting your snowball (we call it packet fragmentation). So now you see the circle (name) but instead of getting back 10 whole snowballs you got 1 and a half, which isn't enough. \n\nI am sorry if that sounds ridiculous, it's the analogy I once used to explain it to a middle schooler. There are a lot of other things to consider too. Ever hear the term 802.11a or 802.11n, also called wireless N? 802.11 tells techs what the protocol or language is, the letter specifies a version and sometimes frequency range. A/B/G were some of the first, followed by N and AC (5G). If you are on say A or B then max speed at the wifi point is 11mbps, walk 50 feet away it's now 8mbps. Compare that to Standing next to an AC home wifi point, 7GBps, that more than 700 times faster (approximately 875 or so). Walk 50 feet away the AC wifi point, speeds are now 3GBps."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"Google.com"
]
] |
|
7yg3ar
|
synthetic meat
|
Does anyone know what has happened to the synthetic meat we were all promised many years ago that would be just as good as the real thing (One step closer to Blade Runner ). It's now 2018 I haven't seen one synthetic burger.
and is it really that good for you... or not ?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7yg3ar/eli5_synthetic_meat/
|
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"text": [
"No one has figured out how to make it cheap enough yet. Consider the price of ground beef, if you have a multimillion dollar lab making lab-grown beef then you're going to need to make millions of pounds to have it pay for itself.\n\nThere are a bunch of companies work on it, but none of their products are commercially viable yet.",
"They've started selling them in some supermarket chains in Denmark already! It's a bit more expensive and has a bit higher calorie count than normal beef, but it's there! Haven't tried it yet, but will soon. ",
"ELI5 for synthetic meat. First you want to start by clearing up the terminology a bit which might be leading to some confusion. The meat itself is being called 'synthetic' because it's not coming directly from the standard source IE. a living creature. \nEssentially at its most basic level how synthetic meat is produced is as follows. Proprietor cells are taken from the type of organism whose meat you wish to replicate. In my example I'll use some beef. So some cow muscle cells are extracted from an animal and then they are placed on a template in a specific arrangement so that as they grow and replicate they will form muscle spindles and fibres. For the sake of a simple explanation think of this template as a 3D printed petri dish with special shelves for the cells. Once the scaffolding has been completed and the cow muscle cells are ready to start growing the template is bathed in a lab developed solution which contains all the vitamins, minerals and other nutrients required for the muscle cells to develop into full articulated structures. In normal meat production this is done by feeding the cow as it grows and allowing the cows body to replicate the cells and form all the structures. The muscle cells absorb the nutrients from the \"lab broth\" and grow into a product which has similar nutritional properties to actual meat. \nAfter the meat has fully developed into its final cellular structures it is then harvested and undergoes a variety of chemical and mechanical processing treatments to make it food ready. Think of this stage as being similar to grinding up regular meat to make ground beef for patties. \nAnd voila! You've got your synthetic meat. \n\nTLDR; Synthetic meat is real meat but it's called synthetic because its grown in a dish instead of on a cow. The original cells taken to grown the meat are taken from the animal and the meat is \"fed\" through a nutrient broth allowing it to grow in much the same way the animal would being fed its normal diet. ",
"Two questions - doing my best to ELI5 them both.\n\n1st Question:\n\nImagine you have decided to sell jelly beans - but you have a friend who sells them too. He is your competition. Jimmy grows his jellybeans on plants, but when he picks the jelly beans the plants die. It takes a long time for Jimmy's jelly bean plant to grow and it requires a lot of water and fertilizer to keep them growing.\n\nYou found a way to grow your jelly beans inside of a metal container. However, you're still trying to make sure that the jelly beans taste as good as Jimmy's. You're close but you need a bit more time. Once you have this figured out you can scale up your efforts and quite possible outsell and outproduce Jimmy. \n\n2nd Question: \n\nYou and Jimmy both grow jelly beans. They are made of the exact same material whether they are grown on the plant or grown in your metal vat. One will be as healthy as the other. \n\nNon-ELI5: Companies working on this have almost gotten the taste correct and are working on bringing down the price and improving the flavor. Once they do this they can ramp up production and potentially shave off the costs competing directly with beef farming practices. \n\nSince at the cellular level synthetic or lab grown beef is the same biological material as actual dead cow, the cells are as beneficial/harmful as the ones you eat today.\n",
"The best overview I've found is at:\n_URL_1_\n\nRight now, it looks like the biggest hurdle is not macro-nutrients, vitamins or minerals. It's hormones and other serum proteins that can't be easily synthesized. Basically, it's the things in serum that make it different than, say, a protein-enhanced sports drink.\n\nSome of these animal proteins can be obtained via genetic engineering, but that is expensive as well - consider that recombinant human albumin (from GM rice) runs about $60 dollars a gram (_URL_0_). I couldn't find a price for recombinant (non-animal) bovine serum albumin.\n\nAn egg has about 2 grams of ovalbumin.\n\nETA: Only about 60% of cow is sold as beef; the rest has various uses. One is as a source for bovine serum albumin. You can buy this in bulk, at purity suitable for cell culture, for roughly 11$ per gram (_URL_2_). \n\nThe current price point for cultured meat might include this relatively cheap animal-based albumin source. The price may well go up using recombinant sources.",
"I have only really been following the progress of one company, Memphis Meats, because I believe they are the front runner for \"synthetic\" meats since they have had some big name investors in their company like Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Kimbal Musk, and more; thus some of my information might not be accurate for the progress of \"synthetic\" meat as a whole.\n\nAs many other users have pointed out the technology to create \"synthetic\" meat is there and has been for awhile now. This technology allows for creation of meat that is better tasting and healthier since you can manipulate the parts of the meat that effect the healthiness/taste to become optimal. I put \"synthetic\" in quotes because it misleads people into thinking that it is unhealthy but in reality on a structural level it is the same other than the optimizations done as regular meat the real difference is the source is a lab rather than an animal.\n\nMemphis Meats from understanding has pushed back their commercial release of their products, it is now set to 2021; this is due to the cost of production. They have been making progress in lowering the cost it has just been slower than many have expected. They are also not making the product on industrial scale yet or receiving subsidies from the government like regular meat production so that adds to the price. \n\nAnother major challenge for Memphis Meats has been avoiding Bovine serum which is usually acquired from the blood of unborn baby cows. The meat they have produced so far has used this so it has technically not been Vegan/Vegetarian according to some people's definitions."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/sigma/a9731?lang=en&region=US",
"http://elliot-swartz.squarespace.com/science-related/invitromeat",
"https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/life-science/biochemicals/biochemical-products.html?TablePage=103994915"
],
[]
] |
|
b99m98
|
what is a white dwarf star made out of?
|
I get the process more or less, star contracts and gets super dense after all the energy gets used up. What's it actually made of though, molecular structure/atomic structure/particle wise, that makes it so much denser than say Earth while possibly being the same size? By what composition and structure does a white dwarf have such a great mass and density while confined to such a relatively small space?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b99m98/eli5_what_is_a_white_dwarf_star_made_out_of/
|
{
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"ek3edti"
],
"score": [
3
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"text": [
"To an extent it depends on the star that died. A White dwarf is essentially the exposed inerds of a sunlike star once the outer atmosphere has been cast off and nuclear fusion has ceased. What it's made of depends on it's mass and what it was last fusing before the reaction ceased.\n\nStars begin and spend most of their life fusing hydrogen into helium, then either stop or move on to Fusing Helium into elements like Carbon and Oxygen and Silicon (plus a few others)\n\nReally heavy stars can go on to start fusing them into other things, but I think your average white dwarf is probably going to be a ball of mostly carbon, oxygen and silicon "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
3w9vjk
|
What is the evolutionary reason to losing all hair on our faces besides eyebrows and, for men, beards?
|
A friend and I are curious about the existence of eyebrows and beards vs. hairless foreheads and cheekbones. Why do these parts of our faces lack hair? What caused this change over the course of our history?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3w9vjk/what_is_the_evolutionary_reason_to_losing_all/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cxv854i"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"We obviously lost quite a bit of hair if we compare humans and our cousins the chimapanzees, though maybe not as much on [the face](_URL_2_). Humans probably lost our hair [roughly 1.2 million years ago](_URL_0_). I don't know of one dominant theory of why there was hair loss in general, but it could be for cooling more efficiently or to [get rid of parasites](_URL_4_).\n\nSo why do we have hair on our beards and eyebrows then?\n\nAs a general rule, if a feature differs between men and women there is a good chance it offers some sort of sexual selection advantage. For beards, that would mean they offer some combination of making men more attractive to females, making it easier to identify sexually mature males, or helping to establish dominance over other males. The [wiki page on beards](_URL_1_) has references supporting all of these theories.\n\nFor the eyebrows, I've often heard that they protect the eyes from dirt and bright light, but I couldn't find a paper backing that up. I did find [this study](_URL_3_) showing eyebrows play a major role in facial recognition, even larger than the eyes. That makes sense given that eyebrows are a useful way of communicating non-verbal information."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://user.xmission.com/~wooding/pdfs/rogers_mc1r04.pdf",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beard#Evolution",
"http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1490756/images/o-CHIMPANZEE-facebook.jpg",
"http://pec.sagepub.com/content/32/3/285.abstract?id=p5027",
"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0020751999001332"
]
] |
|
13za0r
|
what is redshirting in ncaa sports?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13za0r/what_is_redshirting_in_ncaa_sports/
|
{
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"text": [
"NCAA rules say that a player can only play for 4 years. They don't want students essentially becoming professional college sports players. The primary reason they're in college is supposed to be to get a degree.\n\nBut, the team might not want a player to play in their first year. They may want a particularly good player to practice with the team for a year, develop their skills and generally become a better player. So, they don't let the player play in any games for his first (or even second) year. They aren't allowed to put on a normal uniform. They can still be on the sidelines during a game, but they have to wear a red shirt to make it clear that they're not eligible to play.\n\nThis way they still get the full 4 years of eligibility but the player gets to develop a little bit more.",
"It allows 4 years of a student athlete's NCAA eligibility to be spread out over 5 years. It's a way for an athlete who is likely not going to get any playing time in their freshmen year to still gain the experience of being on the team but not have that time count against their four years of eligibility. When redshirted, a player will still attend classes and practices, but not be able to play in any games that year.\n\nPlayers are typically redshirted because there is another older player on the team already who plays the same position. For instance, an incoming freshman quarterback may be redshirted if the team already has a senior quarterback and a junior backup quartback. The next season, the senior will have graduated and the redshirted player now can be on the active squad."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
2l4ayc
|
Did early humans (cavemen) have access to or eat rice, sugarcane, potatoes, etc.?
|
Or basically what consisted of an early humans diet during the hunter-gather phase?
|
AskHistorians
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2l4ayc/did_early_humans_cavemen_have_access_to_or_eat/
|
{
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],
"text": [
"Hunter-gatherers ate the same plants we do today, but in their wild forms. Most plants we eat today, including rice, sugarcane and potatoes, are domesticated versions. These were only domesticated after the advent of agriculture, so they were not available to hunter-gatherers before agriculture, but their wild forms were.\n\nA \"wild state\" means that the very features that have made them staples today, such as high yield, good nutrient profile, pleasant taste -- did not exist, or were much attenuated. However, they must have provided *some* useful nutrition, or they would not have been eaten.\n\nFor example, [here is a picture](_URL_0_) showing the domestication of corn. The image at the left shows wild or undomesticated corn, the middle image shows an intermediate during the process of domestication, and the right image shows modern domesticated corn. As you can see, the number of kernels have increased dramatically due to domestication. What you can't see is that the nutrient profile has also changed, and each of those kernels now has a lot more starch and calories than it used to. In many cases, domestication has also improved the taste, turning bitter and unpalatable fruit or vegetables into the familiar tasty varieties. Or [removed inedible seeds](_URL_1_) such as in the case of the banana.\n\nHumans are limited by their physiology, not being able to digest cellulose and not being able to chew tough fibers to extract nourishment from them. We (and our ancestors) could overcome some of these problems (using stones to crush or grind foodstuffs that were too tough to chew, cooking to break down nutrients to make them easier to digest), but we still have our limitations. Humans selected plants that contain nutrients suited to our physiology - lots of starch/sugar, protein, fats. This includes grains (precursors of all modern cereals), roots and tubers, fruits, berries, nuts, seeds, etc.\n\nThe wild versions of these plants have been used by humans ever since there have been any humans. Agriculture began by deliberately planting foods that we were already accustomed to eating as hunter-gatherers, and over the course of time we selectively bred traits that were useful, which is what plant domestication is all about."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.plosbiology.org/article/fetchObject.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0000008.g001&representation=PNG_I",
"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Inside_a_wild-type_banana.jpg"
]
] |
|
7qqt3f
|
how is phobias treated?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7qqt3f/eli5_how_is_phobias_treated/
|
{
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"Education and Exposure mostly, depending on severity, you can generally treat phobias first by educating yourself on the actual risk and facts of the phobia, then exposing yourself to it. This doesn't mean if you're afraid of spiders you need to go handle a live spider, but it does mean approaching the situation in a way where you can adapt to being able to cope rationally in the same environment with them.\n\nIn most cases people won't get rid of phobias but they will learn to manage them. You can get to a point where it's not a crippling fear that sends you screaming and running but manage it down to a point where it just makes you uncomfortable.",
"Different treatments based on person. They can do anything from hypnosis to conditioning. for example i heard of a case where a person was scared of an animal (i forget what kind of animal specifically so i'll just say spider) so they eased them into it. They said \"somewhere in the building we have a spider\". And they would do that for awhile or few sessions. Next they would say \"there's a spider in the next room\". Do that for awhile then \"the spider is outside the door' then they would move it in the room and closer. Til eventually the person with the phobia was holding the spider in their hands",
"From personal experience, I had crippling arachnophobia until I was about 10yrs old. My parents got me help, which took about 3 years. Nowadays I can move spiders outside instead of freezing in place panicking for up to an hour straight. (One night I got zero sleep, frozen and panicking because a spider was in the corner above my bunk bed.)\n\nFirst it began with education. They made me read about spiders, then they introduced pictures of them about the therapist office and home where I had to do my best to simply touch the pictures, (maybe above a door knob or above the wash)\n\nThen it moved to exposure. We went to the arachnid exhibit twice a month for a fucking year. The first time I panicked so bad they called the EMTs. By the end of that year I could walk through and begrudgingly was a bit curious to see what was new. Even if it made me antsy.\n\nFinally it came to contact. This wasn't part of the therapy but my dad did it. I'd been fine on several camping trips and I'd even managed to contain spiders in a glass instead of panicking. Seeing one would give me a start but I wouldn't shut down. \n\nSo my dad took me to my uncle's place and had him teach me how to care for his redknee. (A type of tarantula) and I did that for a few months, weekly.\n\nAt this point, I'm almost 30, it's been over a decade and a half since spiders have given me a real start, much less a panic attack. Yeah it took fucking forever to get over and I don't know how normal that is, but I actually love the little creepy shits. Believe me, they're petrified of you. And they should be.\n\nAnyways I still freak out when watching masses of spiders, like funnel web babies or farms. Just no fucking escape. Id never watch 8 legged freaks, the posters make my skin crawl, but I'm not going to go into distress over a lomglegs or even a wolf simply marching up the couch. I'm functional.\n\nAn aside, my brother had/has monophobia. It's much more difficult to treat and he's only in his late 20s and gotten barely over it. Still coping. It's harder to address phobias that aren't strictly object oriented as far as I've been told. For example he couldn't handle driving alone in a car for a few years, and he only in the last 5 managed to get an apartment alone. On the upside he's got a stellar dating record because he jumps to cohabitation like instantly XD. He's learned to be incredibly likeable as a coping mechanism. I swear he could get a date from someone who doesn't even speak the language.\n\nOther ways of treating it involves hypnosis, drugs of course SSRI's like Zoloft, and submersion/exposure therapy. (Mine was obviously submersion. Hypnosis has never worked on me and drugs tend to need a really high dose to have any effect.)"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2yaoci
|
microfiber cloths. they seem to be recommended to clean everything? what are they and why are they so amazing?
|
So no matter what I look up, the solution is to almost always to wipe with a microfiber cloth. Whether to clean cars, glasses, computer screens, laptops, windows, etc.
One day they were just everywhere and I kind of took it for granted. But...some questions
1) What are they?
2) Why are they so amazing?
3) Are they all the same? Any brands to avoid? Any brands preferable?
4) How to clean microfiber cloths?
5) Do they have a lifespan?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yaoci/eli5_microfiber_cloths_they_seem_to_be/
|
{
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"text": [
"Better question: why do we even have OTHER options?",
"1 they are cloths with a far higher surface area than more common ones\n\n2 the surface area means holding more water and particles, so you can clean more easily. All are synthetic, and high quality ones can be squeezed almost completely dry as well.\n\n3 no they are not the same. oh I don't know about brands\n\n4 for most, the safest/only way is to rinse in water. Some are more tolerant of soaps, but all will loose their qualities more quickly this way.\n\n5 Yes they do. It varies widly by the model. You should learn the purpose for the particular cloth, and follow the manufacturers care and use instructions. Also, if you were shopping for microfiber cloths for a particular purpose, you can safely bet that price and quality will line up lineirly. So the 2$ cloth for cleaning glasses will be inferior to the $10 one, but may serve you well.",
"I use microfiber mitts when washing my car to apply soap and a waffle weave microfiber to dry it.\n\n\nLike others have said they have a higher surface area and can trap water easier and pick up dust easier without creating \"swirls\" or micro scratches on a cars paint.\n\n\nSome brands are definitely better made. Cheap ones I just use to clean the inside of the car or dust around the house. You can tell they're cheap when they're really thin or have loose fibers coming out.\n\n\nThe more expensive ones with more intricate weaves I use to dry the car since it holds so much water. I can do my entire car without having to wring it.\n\n\n\nTo clean them I use a special microfiber soap that gets all the wax and compounds I use on my car out. It's also supposed to help keep the microfiber in better shape but I'm sure any detergent would work if you're not using them with detailing products. I bought a pack of about ten towels from a reputable detailing shop online and they've lasted me 4 years so far and still look new so maybe there is something to the microfiber soap."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
2sgczp
|
Is the lava from different volcanos around the world made out of the same material, or do different volcanos have diffetent lava composition?
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2sgczp/is_the_lava_from_different_volcanos_around_the/
|
{
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"text": [
"There are indeed several different types. Lava is classified in various ways, SiO2 content increases from Komatiite (ultra low), to basalt, andesite, dacite and rhyolite (high) ([example of SiO2-based classification](_URL_0_)).\n\nThere are also more subtle geochemical signatures recognized by trace elements (Zr vs Y, or normalised REE spectra), such as Tholeiitic and calc-alkaline series ([example](_URL_1_)). The series is more of a geo-tectonic indicator. Thus, one can distinguish basalts formed at a mid-ocean ridge (which would be tholeiitic) from basalts formed in a collision zone (which would typically be calc-alkaline).\n\n",
"The material that gets erupted has spent decades to possibly even tens of millenia developing from its original melt, and there's lots of things that can happen to it.\n\nHow the melt originally forms will have a strong impact; for example, melt formed under different pressure and temperature conditions will have been produced by the melting of slightly different phases of crystals in the mantle. In fact, different parts of the mantle can have different chemistry, so the location matters as well.\n\nAs the magma then moves through the crust it can melt surrounding host rock, which becomes assimilated., That will again change the chemical composition of the mixture.\n\nAs the magma cools some crystals might start to form. These can settle out, but because those crystals preferentailly accepted certain elements, they have removed those from the melt mixture, so eagain, the magma has evolved. In fact as the magma melt chemistry varies, or the conditions change, the crystallisation processes in crystal formation can incorporate different chemical compositions, which leads to things like [crystal zoning](_URL_1_). This can be observed in a majority of igneous materials.\n\nThe net result is that by the time of eruption, every single batch of magma can be geochemically different to those that have erupted before from a single volcano, let alone at different volcanoes. In fact, as an eruption progresses, the magma at the start of an eruption can be different to that in the middle and end, as they tap different levels in the magma chamber.\n\n[This graph](_URL_0_) shows the variation in just two species (silica and potassium) at a single volcano (Merapi)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://thesis.geology-guy.com/images/image058.jpg",
"http://econgeol.geoscienceworld.org/content/98/3/535/F5.large.jpg"
],
[
"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_l_4ZuulvMnk/TM_-gBdP2NI/AAAAAAAAAEA/SMX_iFpyoqM/s1600/fig9.jpg",
"https://wwwf.imperial.ac.uk/earthscienceandengineering/rocklibrary/viewglossrecord.php?gID=00000000184"
]
] |
||
4j4x9h
|
What was the Stalin era Soviet leadership's stance on Tsar era or before Russian military heroes and leaders like Nevsky, Suvorov and Bagration?
|
It seems to me that such men would be a pretty strong symbol of Tsarism and would be considered counterrevolutionary, yet you see homages to them like Operation Bagration and photos of tanks with "Suvorov" scrawled on them and the like. Was this simply tolerated as a part of Russian military tradition or were they actively honored by the Soviet leadership, or something else entirely?
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4j4x9h/what_was_the_stalin_era_soviet_leaderships_stance/
|
{
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"text": [
"The 1930s witnessed a return of sorts by the Soviet state towards its Great Russian past. Both during the Revolution and the 1920s, the state had looked at the historical past of tsardom and its various forms of commemoration of it with a rather jaundiced eye. The Soviet government of the 1920s devoted relatively little effort to historic preservation and sometimes sold off the valuables in museums and archives abroad to foreign parties as a way to raise needed hard currency. This 1920s leeriness towards the Great Russian past covered two interconnected ideological bases for the bolsheviks. One, valorizing the past was one of the chief legitimization tactics of the tsarist empire and upheld the Great Russian culture and its past as superior to the non-Russian subjects of the empire. Lenin and his cohorts were deeply concerned that Great Russian chauvinism would undermine the Bolshevik experiment and took active measures to discourage it ranging from promoting national cadres of non-Russians into the nascent Communist Party and the state apparatus (*korenizatsiia*/ indiginization) to engaging in an iconolcastic approach to the mores and celebration of the past. Secondly, the Bolshevik state was one that was self-consciously and avowedly *new* and took great pains to advertise that the results of 1917 was a solid break from the tsarist past. The state embellished tales of the tsarist past as a time of decadence and wanton cruelty in which the new Soviet state had transcended. \n\nThe shift towards the Great Russian past in the Stalin period caught a number of contemporaries by surprise and a number of Stalin's opponents abroad connected this shift in cultural policy with Stalin dictatorship. The Russian emigre sociologist Nicholas Timasheff in a famous 1946 book collectively termed these policies \"the Great Retreat\" in which the state backed away from the modernism and internationalism of the 1920s when it recognized that such sentiments had little persuasive power outside a narrow circle of intellectuals and true believers, and instead embraced a more conservative culture and society. For example, the Stalin state backed away from the relatively liberal divorce laws of the 1920s and recriminalized abortion in 1936. Soviet art policy under Stalin moved away from the avante garde experimentalism and into more recognizable forms and aesthetics. Although Timasheff was more neutral about the Great Retreat, he connected it with the imperative to fight fascism and saw it as a normalizing factor for the USSR's international position, Stalin's opponents, particularly the factions surrounding Trotsky, took up the paradigm of Great Retreat as part of Stalin's larger betrayal of the grand ideals of 1917 in exchange for the USSR becoming just another normal state, and a dictatorship to boot. \n\nThere certainly was a good deal of justification to the charge that the Stalin turn served the Stalin dictatorship and emerging cult of personality. The titular hero of the Eisenstein film *Alexander Nevsky* shared many of the treats associated with Stalin such as his personal remoteness and stalwart and decisive leadership. The state's rehabilitation of the two tsars, Peter I and Ivan IV, was in no small measure because they were two historical figures that built up the Russian state from comparative backwardsness. History textbooks and fictional portrayals toned down Ivan IV's personal cruelty and emphasized his *étatisme*. Stalin famously harangued Eisenstein over his portrayal of Ivan IV's degeneracy into cruelty when the latter was preparing for *Ivan the Terrible, Part II* with the dictator noting that the such cruelty was often necessary for a leader. \n\nHowever, the idea of that the cultural politics of the Great Retreat represented a complete break with the 1920s practices obscures some important lines of continuity between the Stalin and Lenin eras. Some of the policies of the Stalin state were the rather logical responses to the consequences of the more liberal Lenin decade. Liberalized family law, for example, created a larger number of divorces and broken families than the Soviet state expected and the authorities connected the rise of various social ills such as youth hooliganism in part to the breakdown of the family. The writers of the Lenin-era family laws expected that the new socialist society would eliminate the social conditions that led to the breakdown of the family; higher divorce rates were not expected by these men and women who conceived of these reforms. The Lenin state also was just as willing to instrumentalize the tsarist past as its successor. In former imperial cities like Leningrad and Moscow, the state appropriated various palaces and historical art treasures and reopened them as museums for the masses. This reinvested the surviving relics of the tsarist past with a new, somewhat politicized, meaning in which the Soviet state was the national curator of the past and preserved what it felt was relevant for the present. The cultural politics of the 1920s practiced a highly selective and politicized reappropriation of the past and created a pattern subsequent Soviet governments followed. \n\nThe Stalin state's reappropriation and celebration of tsarist military figures highlights this process. Historical personages like Suvorov and Bagration imparted a useful heritage to the growing Red Army of the 1930s and had added importance with Barbarossa as these men had fought off invaders before and won. Drawing connection to these figures served a useful propaganda purpose, as in this [famous poster](_URL_0_) which dramatically superimposed the advancing Red Army in front of Nevsky, Suvorov, and an anonymous fighter of 1917 urging them onward. But there was more to the celebration of the martial past than an exigent need for a historical narrative in wartime. The biographical background of these men made them relatively safe figures for the Soviet state to celebrate. Although the Russian imperial army upheld the Romanovs, many of its leading figures did not come from the elite nobility, but rather from the provinces and margins of Russian elite society. Bagration was Georgian-born and Suvorov was alleged to have Armenian background, a convenient point that the Stalinist histories emphasized in that it drew parallels between the present Soviet state's attempt to draw together non-Russians and Great Russians together in a grand project. Additionally, the Russian imperial army was an institution of its own during the tsarist period and even though being a part of the nobility was a usual precondition for officer status, the officer academies and other forms of training emphasized technical skills and practical knowledge for its cadets. So while these men may have belonged to an innately counter-revolutionary class and upheld a counter-revolutionary order, the Soviet state maintained these generals were more akin to specialists than the nobility. Biographical accounts of the generals from the Soviet era, which sometimes verged on hagiography, emphasized the generals' common sense and plainspoken qualities as well as their sympathies for progressive politics and dislike for tsarist discipline. In short, they were the idealized picture of a Red Army general, but in tsarist garb. In a process of appropriation similar to the state's approach to cultural luminaries like Tolstoy, Pushkin, and Tchaikovsky, state media portrayed these historical figures as individuals whose biographies show they *would* have been Bolsheviks had they been alive during 1917; but had the singular misfortune of having been born when the social preconditions of Russia were not present for such a movement. \n\nThe Stalin state's approach to commemorating the past was often laden with ideological meaning, and in this regard, it was not too dissimilar from its Leninist predecessor. In the post-Civil War period, the Russian past and its heroes was still too closely associated with the departed Romanov state to be employed easily by the state, but the Bolsheviks established a pattern of depoliticizing the past and then repoliticizing it that the Stalin dictatorship was able to capitalize upon to meet either the immediate needs of the moment like the war, or to appease Stalin's emerging cult of personality. \n\n*Sources* \n\nBrandenberger, David. *National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931-1956*. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. \n\nHoffmann, David Lloyd. \"Was There a\" Great Retreat\" from Soviet Socialism? Stalinist Culture Reconsidered.\" *Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History* 5, no. 4 (2004): 651-674.\n\nLenoe, Matthew Edward. \"In Defense of Timasheff's Great Retreat.\" *Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History* 5, no. 4 (2004): 721-730.\n\nMaddox, Steven. *Saving Stalin's Imperial City: Historic Preservation in Leningrad, 1930-1950*. Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2015. \n\nPlatt, Kevin M. F., and David Brandenberger. *Epic Revisionism: Russian History and Literature As Stalinist Propaganda*. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. \n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://www.ganesha.org/hall/suvorov1.jpg"
]
] |
|
1w7890
|
How were the cracks and streaks on Europa formed?
|
Europa: _URL_0_
|
askscience
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1w7890/how_were_the_cracks_and_streaks_on_europa_formed/
|
{
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11,
2
],
"text": [
"The current theory is the moon is being flexed by Jupiter's gravitational tides, and the ice crust that floats over a liquid sea continually heaves and buckles under that stress. Water then percolates up through the cracks and leaves streaks of material behind on the surface of the ice, within those cracks. ",
"Tidal forces make the moon expand and contract as it rotates around Jupiter. When it expands it creates a gap on the ice which quickly gets filled up with the underlying ocean. How ever the temperature is so cold that it freezes not completely but it becomes almost a slush. Then when the satellite goes back to the original shape the gap that it created closes up and the old ice being much harder than the new ice crushes it. The excess goes above the surface and bellow. The above slab creates a Ridge. That is what we see as the cracks in Europa. "
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Europa-moon.jpg"
] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
1juqs4
|
why do tv shows and movies sometimes have to change the names/logos on items for copyright reasons? wouldn't it just be free advertisement for the company/product?
|
I've always wondered this.. Please, explain this to me!
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1juqs4/why_do_tv_shows_and_movies_sometimes_have_to/
|
{
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"text": [
"There are a number of reasons for this.\n\nFirstly, it limits liability for trademark violations. If, for whatever reason, the company who has their products featured on a given show doesn't like the way in which the products are presented (or doesn't want to be associated with that particular show for some reason), that company may then try to take legal action against the show's producers for trademark violations (unauthorized use of the company's brand name/logo).\n\nSecondly, advertisers generally don't like it when shows feature products from other companies (especially competing products) at no cost because the advertisers feel it's not fair that they should have pay for the privilege to have their product shown in the program when other products are featured freely. So basically, products which are not official sponsors of the show are often blurred out or modified to be generic in order to attract advertisers and sponsors to the show and make it look like the show provides more value (and advertising exclusivity) to them.",
"You're asking this question backwards. Of course it would be free advertising, which would lessen the amount they could charge for paid product placement. By blocking your product, they are raising the value of your paying to have that blockage removed."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
8uxqn1
|
What's the difference between an ionised hydrogen atom and a proton?
|
This is probably a super dumb question, but I was watching the latest scishow space video and they mentioned ionised hydrogen atoms, and that it meant it had lost its only electron. Wouldn't that mean it was just a singular proton?
|
askscience
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8uxqn1/whats_the_difference_between_an_ionised_hydrogen/
|
{
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"text": [
"A ^(1)H^(+) atom is exactly the same thing as a proton.",
"They are synonymous, sometimes. \n\nA proton is a subatomic particle that has a charge of +1e (1 positive elementary charge) which is equal to about 1.602*10^-19 Coulombs. That is an extremely small amount of electrical charge.\n\nAn ionized hydrogen atom is a Hydrogen atom composed of subatomic particles that have a non-neutral charge (net charge is 0 Coulombs) meaning they either gained or lost an electron that causes a charge polarity (positive or negative). \n---\nIn the case of comparing the two, there are scenarios where they can be the same and different. \n\n\n-SAME-\nAn ionized Hydrogen atom composed of one proton that has lost its electron and has no neutrons is the exact same thing as a proton. This makes sense as a proton is one singular subatomic particle and an ionized Hydrogen atom with only one proton would be considered the same thing, the usage of the terms depends on context. By the way, a Hydrogen atom with no neutrons and one electron is called Protium. So by definition an Ionized Protium atom is the exact same thing as a proton.\n\n-DIFFERENT-\nAny Hydrogen Ion in which an electron is gained making the net total of electrons, equal to > 1 is considered to be ionized Hydrogen and not a proton because the proton is not isolated. So technically an Ionized Protium Atom can also have -1 charge which is not the same as a +1 Protium ion (a proton).\n\nNow, Hydrogen atoms can also be composed of more than just a proton and neutron, they can also have neutrons. When a Hydrogen atom has one neutron, it's referred to as Deuterium (the deu- prefix suggests that there are two nucleons, a proton and neutron). There is also Tritium, which is a Hydrogen atom with a proton and two neutrons (I think you can see where this is going). \n\nSo, when you have either an Ionized Deuterium or Ionized Tritium atom (meaning they both lost their only electron - the same method by which we made a Protium atom a proton), it means that you have an ion with a proton AND neutron or a proton AND two neutrons, respectively. \n\n-SUMMARY-\nIn short, this means that the proton is not isolated from its neutron, meaning that it is not synonymous. Because remember, a proton is a single subatomic particle, these two aforementioned have neutrons, making them not the same.\n\nTL;DR - It depends on the types of Hydrogen you're dealing with because some can have neutrons making them not just a proton.\n\n\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
3m1lnu
|
how did disney delay mickey mouse from being in public domain?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3m1lnu/eli5_how_did_disney_delay_mickey_mouse_from_being/
|
{
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"cvb634r",
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"text": [
"Money. They gave so much money to the law makers that they actually made a Mickey mouse law. ",
"Every time the copyright for Mickey Mouse is about to expire a bill goes into law stating that the length of time a copyright lasts is longer than the last one.\n\nFirst it was creators death, then +25 years, +50 years, ect. Honestly I wish it would end so we could listen to \"I Have A Dream\" and \"Happy Birthday\"...",
"By paying politicians to extend copyright for them. Extending copyright lengths after the fact is so clearly against the public interest that it is hard to put any other interpretation on it."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
3qyrw5
|
union between countries (denmark-norway, austria-hungary etc)
|
I don't fully understand unions between countries. Is it a type of alliance? Same rulers or do the rulers work togheter?
??
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qyrw5/eli5_union_between_countries_denmarknorway/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cwjhj5b"
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"text": [
"In the case of Denmark-Norway the king of Norway (Håkon Magnusson) married one of the daughters of the Danish king (Margrethe). They had a son, Olav, who was hair to the Norwegian throne. All of Margrethe's siblings died, and her son, Olav, now was chosen as hair to Denmark to. Olavs grandfather, Valdemar king of Denmark died when Olav was five years old. When Olav was ten, his father Håkon of Norway died. Olav was now king of both countries. His mother ruled trough her son. Unfortunately Olav died when he was only 16 years old. The nobles choose Margrethe's nephew, Erik of Pommern as hair to both Denmark and Norway. He choose Copenhagen as his seat, but ruled both kingdoms as separate countries. Later on more and more power was moved to Denmark, with the dissolving of the Norwegian Riksråd (council of realm) as the final blow to Norwegian self government. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
cv8ziu
|
what's the"resolution" of film photography?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cv8ziu/eli5_whats_theresolution_of_film_photography/
|
{
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"text": [
"There isn’t a specific “resolution.” It depends on two main physical characteristics of the film itself - the size of the film and the speed of the film - as well as the way that film is exposed.\n\nThe first physical aspect is what format of film you’re using - there’s small, like a standard 35mm film that your average point-and-shoot camera would take; medium, which takes a range of film sizes (popularly 120mm); and large, which takes film sheets with dimensions of several inches.\n\nThe second physical aspect is the speed of the film, or how long it takes for light to affect the film; the higher the speed, the lower the quality of the image. This speed references the density of the film’s grain- a higher speed has a larger grain, and thus the image is a lower quality, because a finer grain has the ability to capture more detail. This is probably the most direct similarity to digital photography and resolution, because the grains are essentially like pixels; more pixels = more details.\n\nThe combination of film size and film speed essentially boils down to how many grains of film the image is being captured on - a large format film with a low speed will capture the most detail, because it has the most crystal to capture the details with.\n\nThese physical factors are then combined with the way the film is shot - specifically, the length of exposure - because again, the longer the film is exposed to light, the more time that light has to affect the film in greater detail.",
"Film can have a higher 'resolution' or sharpness than you can effectively use.\n\nNow this isn't exactly for five-year-olds but [this](_URL_0_) document has everything you need to know, and this part sort of answers your question:\n\n > Film Resolution defines the potential resolving power of a film; Kodak calls this sharpness. Resolution is determined using the MTF Curve, which is found in the film data sheets supplied by manufacturers. However, the MFT curve is measured using a sine wave bar chart printed directly on the film. The actual resolution of film is made on the film through a lens in a camera. \n\n > Based on the Resolving Power Equation(s) used by both Kodak and Fuji, the actual resolution of a “film-and-camera system” must be decreased by 30-80%, from native resolution. The greater the resolution of the film in a system, the greater the loss of the system resolution, for a specific lens with a given resolving power. This loss of system resolution is due to degradation of the image (1) exposed through a lens and (2) due to variables in film transport and film processing. \n\n > The MTF Curve of Kodachrome 200 (PKL) transparency film shows a native resolution of 50-lp/mm, (2540 ppi digital equivalent). Using the Fuji Resolving Power Equation, PKL shot through an excellent 35mm format lens (100 lp/mm lens) will have a final resolution of 33-lp/mm, with a digital equivalent resolution of 1962 ppi. This is a loss of 34% from the native MTF data, due to lens and film related issues.",
"It seems infinite at first, since film looks seamlessly smooth and lacks a familiar grid of pixels, but there are in fact tiny individual particles of chemicals. Exact numbers vary, but there should be *at least* 100,000 x 100,000 individual particles on 35mm film.\n\nHowever, the particles are so small that they can't really count as a pixel of resolution. They only work reliably in groups or clumps, because the waves of light often occupy a space larger than the individual particles, and other physical limitations depending on the film.\n\nSo what is the effective resolution? Just depends who you ask, what film they used, and how they measured it. Most people would agree it's very high, at least that of a 4k tv."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://www.tmax100.com/photo/pdf/film.pdf"
],
[]
] |
||
2putaa
|
how computer languages work in different (spoken) languages. if i wanted a computer to communicate with a computer in russia, would i have to speak russian, or is there some international standard?
|
Just curious
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2putaa/eli5_how_computer_languages_work_in_different/
|
{
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"text": [
"Pretty much every programming language is in English, if that's what you're asking. People who can't speak English well have a very hard time learning to code, since it's harder to remember what (for example) an \"if/else\" command's name is if you don't know what if and else mean.",
"Computers use standardized protocols to communicate, regardless of language or location of the user. The protocols use a predetermined order and positioning of bits that are universally predetermined, so every computer that knows the protocols are on the same page. \n\nThink of this as the 'To' and 'From' areas on a letter. The actual contents of the letter don't matter to the post office.\n\nIts up to the programmer to code the client (user software) and server to ensure that the letter contents are understood by both parties. \n\n",
"There are two levels of computer language here.\n\nThe *programming* languages are almost always based on English, although there are a few based on other languages, and some that are completely abstract.\n\nThe *machine* language the computer run no longer has the human language part, and is basically just numbers. And when two computers talk, they use numbers that conform to an known standard."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
cjg8kc
|
Regression after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire
|
I read in a documentary about Roman Britain that the withdrawal of the Roman Empire from Britain set back the clock back quite a bit. In fact, immediately pre-roman Britain seemed to be a bit ahead of post-roman Britain (5th-6th centuries). That got me thinking. How far back did the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west set back civilization? And how quickly did they recover?
I know Spain recovered quickly when the Arabs invaded, and then the Byzantine Empire probably also helped with rebuilding in some areas, but I'm not sure about other areas of the empire in the west.
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cjg8kc/regression_after_the_fall_of_the_western_roman/
|
{
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"evei3lr"
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"text": [
"Britain and Italy were two special cases of regression, it's not possible to guesstimate how things would have continued to evolve if the Roman Empire hadn't withdrawn from the West and how that compares to what happened in real life, but it's worth noting that each region was different.\n\nFrance, the Low Countries, and Western Germany relatively quickly came to be dominated by the Franks, who had sophisticated and powerful states. There was certainly change from the Roman Empire, but Gallo-Romans and Franks co-oexisted in the Frankish state(s). I would rather have been born in France in 500 AD rather than 400 AD for sure.\n\nThe Visigoths had a relatively stable kingdom in the Iberian peninsula for over 200 years, it wasn't as stable or prosperous as their Frankish neighbours, but it was a functional state with an impressive culture. The man known as the \"last scholar of the ancient world\", Isidore, Archbishop of Seville, was a key player in this kingdom. Romans and Visigoths also coexisted peacefully in the Visigothic Kingdom.\n\nThe Vandals in North Africa were not as high functioning. North African Trinitarian Christianity had been beset by significant internal challenges for over a century when the Vandals showed up, and in an unfortunate accident of history, the non-Trinitarian Vandals were the most aggressive of the Germanic peoples in promoting their version of Christianity. This persecution led to social division and was a factor in allowing the Eastern Romans to retake North Africa relatively easily about 100 years after the Western Romans lost North Africa. The contentious history of Christianity in North Africa is, IMO, the principal reason why Christianity vanished so quickly when the Muslims invaded, in contrast to Egypt, where Christians remained the majority for centuries after the Muslim conquest, and still constitute a significant minority in Egypt.\n\nItaly functioned relatively well and with a great degree of continuity under the Ostrogoths, they continued to recognize the Eastern Roman Empire in theory, and kept many Roman institutions. Ironically Roman Italy was truly destroyed when the Eastern Romans conquered Italy in the Gothic Wars. Ultimately the Lombards invaded and were much less interested in equality and coexistence with Romans, but the Roman society and economy had basically been destroyed by decades of war at that point.\n\nEngland was another special case. The Anglo-Saxon invasion and settlements were much less organized, there was very little continuity, the economy was disrupted, Christianity retreated into the hills, and there was significant population decline. While historians don't like to use terms like \"Dark Ages\" to describe post Roman Europe, it is pretty accurate to describe the situation in England for large parts of the 5th and 6th centuries.\n\nThe Welsh maintained a consciously post Roman identity and held onto their Christianity, but there were impacted as well by interactions with their new Anglo Saxon neighbours."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
15dvle
|
what was going on in libya when gaddafi was in power and why was he killed.
|
I'm seeing a lot of contradictory articles on great things he did for his people and how they loved him but then articles talking about how his people hated him and how evil he was. What's the deal?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15dvle/eli5_what_was_going_on_in_libya_when_gaddafi_was/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c7lvwlz"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Gaddafi was about to introduce a new currency, the gold Dinar, made from real gold for the african countries. He would have then sold the petrol from libya for gold only, wich the usa cannot afford. So the usa went in to abolish the gold dinar"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
2whflw
|
why are recorders still taught in music classes in school if they all sound so terrible?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2whflw/eli5_why_are_recorders_still_taught_in_music/
|
{
"a_id": [
"coqv5ju",
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],
"score": [
4,
3,
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"text": [
"Because they are really cheap instruments you can't make everyone buy a $1000 violin. ",
"They are cheap and easier to play with tiny hands.",
"They're cheap, small, simple, don't require any real maintenance and don't require any skill to get a somewhat-acceptable tone out of or get correct pitch.\n\nThey also don't have to sound terrible - breath control for proper tone production isn't typically taught to the kind of students who are playing recorder to begin with (little kids), that's all."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
9zr9oj
|
Why did Battleship design in the Pre-And-During WW2 Era seems to settle on the A-B X turret arrangement?
|
(That being two Super-firing turrets foreward, one turret aft.)
Eg: Iowa/South Dakota/North Carolina Classes, Yamato Class, Lion Class (As planned,) KGV Class (as Built.)
Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. Nelson Class (due to Treaty weight restrictions,) Vanguard, Bismarck Class (due to, I understand, German inability to make space efficient Triple Turret shell carriers?) The French Dunkerque and Richelieu classes.
I do still contend there is a trend (if I'm wrong, please correct me.) And I would like to know the reasons behind it.
|
AskHistorians
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9zr9oj/why_did_battleship_design_in_the_preandduring_ww2/
|
{
"a_id": [
"each8yy"
],
"score": [
11
],
"text": [
"Balanced ship designs tended to have 8-9 guns for complex reasons linked to the interaction of armament weight vs armor weight to stop the same caliber of shells. A smaller number of guns makes it hard to fire rapid salvos, required to spot your fall of shot and thus shoot accurately against moving targets. Salvo spotting BTW works on the basis of the mean point of impact, the center of all the splashes. That tells you where your aim of all your turrets is actually landing, any one splash tells you very little. Before the 1943-44 period you had to do all of this by visual observation, from the spotting top or an aircraft. Even the earliest radar could provide accurate range, but not bearing, nor track your splashes prior to this. But no battleship laid down after 1942 was ever completed anyway. \n\nA larger number of guns then 9 meanwhile tends to rapidly increase the ship size, which means much greater cost. People would rather build more battleships then mount more guns. You see more guns in earlier dreadnoughts, but those dreadnoughts tended to both be slow and have little deck armor because they did not expect to fight at long ranges. Increased speed and deck armor greatly increased ship sizes. The earlier ships could 'afford' the extra guns while still controlling size and cost growth. The trend towards more speed and deck armor began around 1914-1915, but was greatly accelerated by the battle of Jutland.\n\nI don't know of a reasonable short form way to explain the armor interaction issue past that but the springsharp warship design program can let you do your own experiments with reasonable accuracy. Friedman's US battleships book is also an excellent place to read about the detail design processes that lead to this, it's expensive but most major library systems can get you a copy in the US. If you like battleships you'll love this book and it's very approachable as a text. \n\nThe problem with all the treaty battleships was 35,000 tons wasn't enough for a ship with 16in guns and armor against 16in guns and 30 knot speed, South Dakota came closest to this combo but all such designs were compromises. So they all gave up one thing or another, or several things, in an effort to mount a reasonable balance of guns, armor and speed. \n\nAt that point two quads uses the least weight, but means half the armament can be lost to one hit, the French quads had a bulkhead of armor down the middle to make this less likely. Nobody else would accept that risk. The French ship however had excellent armor. Four twins uses the most weight but most redundancy. Three triples weighed little more then four twins and gave the most gun barrels, but the worst distribution of fire. \n\nSo now we have three triples... why two forward? \n\nThe reason to have two turrets forward and one aft is two fold at that point. One is aggression, you can use the forward turrets while closing with the enemy, increasing your chances of winning an offensive battle. One reason the Germans stayed with the 38cm twin was they knew they had a smaller navy and might need to run away. They also indeed did not have a triple turret ready for this caliber of gun, but they really didn't want one either. Their H-39 battleship laid down with 40cm guns also still used twins. These ships were cancelled as soon as WW2 began.\n\nIn contrast the French all forward gun ships, and RN forward gun ships were built on the basis of 100% aggression. Though by 1940 the French had decided that the next quadruple turret ship was in fact going to move one turret aft, for equal fields of fire but slightly greater weight. \n\nThe other big factor is weight balance in the ship, the engines and reduction gears are aft and very very heavy, battleships, and even missile armed warships all tend to be stern heavy because of that engine weight. You want them stern heavy to a point so the bow doesn't plunge into the waves as well. This improves habitability of the ship and lets you keep up your speed in bad weather. Which can be an important advantage if you are trying to run down an enemy with similar speed in calm weather, or just get somewhere in the world in a hurry. This favors putting more main armament forward to maintain the proper weight balance without excessive displacement. \n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
aagyft
|
what exactly does "airplane mode" do and how does it keep my phone from disrupting airplane functions?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aagyft/eli5_what_exactly_does_airplane_mode_do_and_how/
|
{
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"text": [
"It disables the cellular transceiver in your phone. It just turns off the part of your phone that sends and receives data from cell towers. The idea is that you will not be creating electromagnetic interference that could potentially interact with the aircraft's instrumentation. The reality is that everything is so well shielded now, it probably wouldn't matter.",
"\"Airplane Mode\" turns off all the radios in your phone, for example your cellular and wifi radios. This is why your connection goes dead whenever you use Airplane Mode.\n\nIn theory airlines make you do this (or shut off your phone entirely) because they don't want transmissions from your device interfering with the plane's instruments. It's a very very old regulation and its applicability to modern aircraft is dubious at best but the airlines still take a \"better safe than sorry\" approach.",
"Wasn't it proven that phones don't disrupt aircraft functions at all?\n\nAnyways, airplane mode just turns off Wifi/Mobile Data/Cellular Service/possibly radio",
"Airplane mode disables the radios on your phone that talk to Cell Towers. Phones periodically ping phone towers basically saying \"Hey, are you there? How many of you are there?\" the further away a phone gets from a Cell Tower, the louder it yells \"HEY!!!!\". That's why older phones, when they are out of service range, drain battery really fast. Its because they are pumping as much power as they can into that little antenna trying to yell \"HEY! Is anyone there?\". Modern phones give up after a while and check a lot less frequently after enough attempts have failed. Which is why if you are in an area with low reception and your modern phone loses bars, it helps to flip it into airplane mode and flip it back so the phone can try checking for cell towers one more time! \n\n\nCellphones don't really disrupt aircraft systems as much as they cause an annoyance in the captains ears. When 100 devices are going off yelling \"HEY\" at 50,000 feet, each \"HEY\" sounds like a high pitched chirp in the ear of the radio the captain, who is listening to Air Traffic Controller instructions. If the chirps are really loud (on unshielded equipment) it can prevent the captain from hearing important information, or delay how long it takes for information to be conveyed! (that's how turning Airplane mode on helps!)",
"As others have said, Airplane mode mostly just turns off the radios on your phone.\n\nThese features by themselves will not disrupt airplane functions. You can think of it this way incidentally, if having dozens of devices with radios would cause problems with the avionics, why would they equip planes with wifi for you to use?\n\nIt was a theorized fear years ago but not a practical one.\n\nThe big reason they make you put your phones and such away during takeoff and landing is that those are the points most likely for something to go wrong during the flight. They want you focused on the plane and what's going on outside both for safeties sake (you may have a bit of information that makes you slightly faster at responding in the emergency) and so that after the incident, you might be able to provide some critical piece of information (I saw a duck hit the wing!) that would help the accident investigation."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
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