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how do internet browsers (ie, firefox, chrome, netscape :p) make money/profit? | They don't, at least not directly in most cases.
Internet Explorer and Safari are "part" of their respective operating systems, there's no reason for them to be monetized. Safari is available for Windows freely as part of Apple's "halo effect" strategy - i.e. see how cool and easy to use this is, now go buy a Mac. IE used to be vice versa but MS abandoned that.
Chrome is part of Google's overall package of free "give us every detail about your life so we can advertise to you" tools. In other words, Google doesn't care about your money, they make their dough off advertisers and giving you a nice browser guarantees you'll surf and see those ads.
Netscape.... Really? Best I can tell Netscape no longer exists as a browser. They were bought by AOL several years ago who were in turn bought by Time Warner... A series of hilariously retrospectively bad decisions. If we rewind and think back to the earlier days of the Internet, Netscape actually was sold for money. Remember in the mid 90s the Internet and the web browser were not typical parts of the computer experience, you actually had to go to a physical brick and mortar store and buy a copy of Netscape in a box on a disk. Fast forward past that and for a few years they sold a pro version and gave away a free version. Then after being bought by AOL they became part of a package that cost money anyway.
Firefox is a unique example, none of the above apply... Instead its just simply that they aren't out to make money. Mozilla is a non profit seeking to drive open source tech and freedom of information. It's right on the home page when you go to download it.
I'll expand on your examples a bit too: Opera is probably the biggest browser you didn't mention, and they have an interesting strategy - they sell their browser on an enterprise level. Meaning that when a company wants to build a browser into their product, like say the Nintendo DSi, they pay to license the Opera browser.
There are more browsers out there, some that actually do have a cost, but most mix and match with the above.
Edit for the nitpickers: This is a ELI5 answer, not a comprehensive quarterly earnings report for the Wall Street Journal. My intent was to provide the OP a summary of the money making strategies used by these companies outside of the obvious direct sales model. Additionally, I did inadvertently omit revenues from search engines, but keep in mind that while various figures quoted are impressive for us poor plebeian users, they are minor parts of the income in most cases for these large corporations.
Edit 2: [Avenger_v3 linked to an AMA with a Mozilla developer](_URL_0_) who explains the bulk of their revenue does come from search engine sharing. |
why does putting a mug of water in the microwave keep bread from getting soggy when heated? | The water acts as a 'dummy load' when you have it in the microwave with bread. So it reduces the amount of energy going to the bread. Think of it in terms of cranking down an energy knob. The higher the energy the faster it heats up which means it gets soggy. If you have less energy and cook it slowly and evenly it won't get soggy.
& nbsp;
**Edit: Some additional details. Happy to see all the interest in this.**
It's assumed the bread is frozen.
**Why is the bread frozen?** *It stays fresher longer. Good for when you're living by yourself and don't go through food as fast. As a poor graduate student who knows the struggle lol.*
**Can I lower the power for the same effect?** *Yes, basically it will do the same thing. Lowering the amount of energy reduces the amount of 'work' used to heat the bread. You'll have a lower temperature and this will allow for the heat to dissipate evenly throughout the bread.*
**Wait a minute, what happens if I heat room temperature bread?** *If you heat it the moisture from the bread will be released and moisten the bread. If you do this with water that water will be 'added' to the atmosphere in the microwave and may condense to make the bread wet on the outside. Of course if you heat it long enough it will dry out or burn.*
**Edit 2: Why does bread get soggy?** *At room temperature for example the bread is saturated with moisture, kind of like a damp sponge that has been sitting out for a couple hours. If you heat it up it softens the pores of the material and you get that 'soggyness'. When heating frozen bread at high temperatures it can be concentrated in certain areas and the heat may not be able to spread out. If you lower that temperature the heat can spread out and let the vapor escape.*
& nbsp;
*I worked in a bioenergy lab for a year with some people who studied pyrolysis with domestic and industrial microwaves. We had a metal 'mixer' to mix up the wood pellets or other biomass. We used water as a dummy load so that the microwaves would not be reflected back and damage the magnetron.* |
Why do multiples of 9, always come back to 9 when their digits are added together? | To see why this works, we first have to start with how a number, when written down, is constructed.
Take the number 123. This notation means: 1 * 100 + 2 * 10 + 3 * 1. To deconstruct a number in this way, you take a digit and multiply it by the power of 10 appropriate for the position of that digit within the number.
Now we make a brief detour through the realms of divisibility and remainders. Note that we only work with integers, so no decimals or funny stuff behind the period. When we divide something like 52 / 9, we can fit 9 a total of 5 times and are left with a remainder of 7. So we can write:
52 / 9 = 5
but also
52 % 9 = 7
The %-sign is often used for the function that gives you the remainder in a certain division. This function is called the modulo function. If a number fully divides another number, the remainder will be zero:
18 % 9 = 0 (this says: The remainder when dividing 18 by 9 is 0)
Now, the modulo function has some nice properties. One of which is that it is distributive with addition and multiplication. What does this mean? It means that if we have an expression like (a + b) % c (or: the remainder of (a + b) when divided by c), then that's the same as a % c + b % c (or: the remainder of a when divided by c plus the remainder of b when divided by c). The same holds when you replace the addition-operation by multiplicaiton.
Now, lets put the pieces together. First we look at the remainder of a few numbers when divided by 9:
1 % 9 = 1
10 % 9 = 1 (10 divided by 9 is 1 with remainder 1)
100 % 9 = 1 (100 divided by 9 is 11 with remainder 1)
1000 % 9 = 1 (1000 divided by 9 is 111 with remainder 1)
Notice a pattern?
If we have a number of the form abcd, then from the first section we know that this can be written as:
a * 1000 + b * 100 + c * 10 + d * 1
So if we want to see what the remainder of this number is when divided by 9, we can use the properties of the modulo function:
abcd % 9 = (a * 1000 + b * 100 + c * 10 + d * 1) % 9 = (a * 1000) % 9 + (b * 100) % 9 + (c * 10) % 9 + (d * 1) % 9
Each term can be rewritten as:
(a % 9) * (1000 % 9)
Since we know that a power of 10 has remainder 1 when divided by 9, these factors drop out and we're left with:
(a % 9) + (b % 9) + (c % 9) + (d % 9)
Once again applying the distributivity of the modulo function:
(a + b + c + d) % 9
So the final conclusion is that the remainder of a number when divided by 9 is equal to the remainder of the sum of the digits of the number when divided by 9. More specifically, if a number is fully divisible by 9 (so remainder 0), then the sum of its digits is too.
In some cases, the sum of the digits will be a number consisting of multiple digits. In that case, you can reapply the same reasoning to the sum of the digits of the sum of the digits. And repeat this process until you end up with a one digit number that is divisible by 9. And which one digit numbers are divisible by 9? Just one, 9 itself.
So a general conclusion is that if a number is divisble by 9, then the repeated summing of its digits in this way will always end up with a 9. And, to check if a number is divisible by 9, you can add up its digits and check if that value is divisible by 9. If that value is still to big to quickly check, you can repeat the process.
Note: There is a similar property when dividing by 3: A number is divisible by 3 if and only if the sum of its digits are divisible by 3. The proof of this statement follows the same reasoning as for division by 9.
Finally, homework for the interested reader: There's a similar, but slightly more involved trick to determine whether a number is divisible by 11. Find it and prove it :-) |
Is a cat's field of view the same as ours, or is it more ovular as opposed to circular because of their pupils? | There are important differences between the vision of cats and humans, however these are not due to the field of vision, which is fairly similar for us and cats, extending out to 180^(o) and 200^(o) respectively. Instead, the shape has more to do with how blurry objects look when you move out of focus either vertically or horizontally. These differences are actually quite important, which is why mammals have there different types of pupils: circular [(as in humans)](_URL_4_), horizontally elongated [(as for sheep)](_URL_3_) or vertically elongated [(as for cats)](_URL_1_). What is interesting, is that the shape of the pupil appears to be closely linked to the biological role of the species in question (e.g. prey vs predator), as studied [in this recent paper](_URL_2_).
It turns out that predators often have vertically elongated slits, while species that tend to end up as prey (e.g. sheep) usually have horizontally elongated slits. The reason for this difference is that each shape has certain advantages, which suit certain species better than others. One key advantage of a horizontal pupil is that it allows the eye to collect more light in a direction parallel to the ground. As a result, it becomes easier to make out horizontal contours (outlines) and to maintain a panoramic view in a horizontal plane. I think it's easy to see how the ability to easily scan the surrounding horizontal region is useful for animals for whom the biggest threat is becoming a snack for a predator sneaking up on them.
In contrast, for predators a vertically elongated pupil presents more advantages. First of all, the elongated shape makes it easier to dramatically vary the total area of the pupil (by a factor of 100 in cats), which makes it possible both to see (and hunt) during they day, but also to then open up the pupil during the night and have dramatically improved night vision. Secondly, a vertical slit allows for better depth perception along a vertical axis based on out-of-focus blurring. To get a sense for what this means, take a look [at this picture](_URL_0_) taken using a camera with a vertical slit. Notice how the picture becomes blurrier faster as you move up and down then when you look laterally. These visual cues aid depth perception, which allows ambush predators to more accurately assess the distance to the prey they are stalking. |
Are there any known cases where a serial killer has targeted one of the main investigators in their case? | I've read hundreds of books on serial + mass murderers and this one is stumping me. I don't think there are any cases of a rather silly targeted "I'm coming for you Detective Biff McBifferson". Closest thing I can think of might be Eric Rudolph. He was hard core anti-gov't. He bombed an abortion clinic, but that wasn't the real target. He knew ATF and FBI would cordon off the area, and he had a second bomb set to go off later just outside this area, the goal being to kill the investigators themselves. It's a tactic that the IRA used to use. In that instance it didn't work because due to blind luck someone parked a big car in between the bomb and the investigators, and it deflected most of the blast. |
does our digestive system digest stuff in the order we eat? eg, will caffeine work slower if it is taken after food? | It’s more that everything gets thrown together into a big pot in whatever order you eat it, but once it’s in there it dissolves fairly simultaneously.
You might get a small change if you take it simultaneously with a big meal or other drinks, because that dilutes it down and means it takes longer for everything to be digested, but your stomach is definitely not some sort of conveyor belt that digests things one at a time. |
Why is it possible to freeze semen and then have it function properly when thawed? | Before I offer my insight I would point out: sperm are not organisms. They are differentiated cells of an organism.
Bacteria in laboratory settings are frozen at -80°C on a regular basis. I haven't been in the lab for long, but I'm yet to encounter any stored for under two years that have not grown when thawed. My understanding is that most biological cell samples (including sperm) are frozen in a glycerol stock (a low percentage usually 10-20%), which massively reduces the formation of ice crystals that damage the cell membrane.
As for limitations, there are many. Only certain small multicellular organisms such as some select insects can survive freezing, as they have adapted to protect against and repair cellular damage. The temperature is also an important factor, and -80°C is the generally accepted temperature (-196°C aka liquid nitrogen is also an option). At these temperatures the molecular mobility is low enough to halt cellular function. The duration for which the biological sample is frozen is also a factor, largely due to accumulative DNA damage that prevents the cell(s) from functioning properly.
Edit: Another important factor that is being highlighted in this discussion is that not all the sperm need survive. Even if 99% of the sperm died (which is a grossly exaggerated proportion) there is a chance of fertilization. Healthy sperm are more likely to achieve fertilization, and a large portion of the frozen sample will be undamaged. |
Were knights on foot feared by normal men-at-arms? Were they in a sense "elite" fighters and avoided in combat? | The medieval period was more than 1000 years long, and covered whole Europe, parts of M.East and Asia, and the military culture in it varied wildly, so I can only give a very general TLDR answer, unless you specify what century you are interested in.
Simply put, there was a great spectrum of "quality" between a common foot soldier (presumably a peasant volounter or a drafted farmer/townsman) and knight. In between there would be various groups of more and less skilled soldiers: ad hoc volounteers, volounteers on short contract, hired brigands, mercenaries, swornmen, squires and knights, as well as higher nobility.
Usually, the higher up the feudal chain the person was, the richer they would be, meaning they would own better armor and weapons, and have had more time to train.
Realistically however, the best trained group would be elite mercenaries, and if said band of mercenaries were famous enough, they could be feared. A good example of that would be the leftovers of the *Sirotci Bratctvo* (the Orphans) an ofshot of the Hussite Army turned mercenaries. While not exactly feared, they were considered a significant force to be reconed with, especially since the Hussite Army defeated almost every force it fought against, including the most elite knights that the German Empire could muster against them. Some of the orphans were knights (or to be more precise, former-knights, outcasts), but most were commoners, and their prefered tactics included soldiers on foot, armed with polearms, crosbowmen and armored carts.
Prior to that, the most prolific "feared" warriors in early Medieval times were viking mercenaries, hired by almost all European powers of that time (included, but not limited to, Poland, Kiev Russia, Byzantine Empire, knigdom of Wessex etc).
Technically, the prowess of a warrior in battle was not based on his personal skill, but how well he cooperated with others, and contrary to Holywood depictions, medieval battles were not a riot of personal duels, but combat of two or more tightly packed forces of men shielding and protecting one another, with differently armed soldiers taking different roles (example: the viking shiledmen protected the spearmen, who in turn cooperated with the axmen and all of them protected the archers, as well as provided a temprary stop for riders).
In such a formation, a good tactician or a leader could possibly stand out, but individual warriors would be of much less importance.
The situation would be different with riders, who often WERE famous, and "allowed to show off" with pre battle duels and feats of provess, and thus, would be feared for their skill. You however, asked specifically for footmen. |
how is isis able to sell oil on the black market to the tune of $3,000,000/day? who is buying it, where does the oil end up, and how does this network remain active? | Turkey produces and transports a significant amount of oil. Most of the effort in securing this oil is to ensure that nobody steals it or disrupts its delivery, but very little infrastructure exists to ensure that illicit oil is not being added to the system.
Before oil ever makes it into a pipeline or a ship, it has to be transported from its site of origin to a terminal. There are small ground-based wells all over the region and their production is not well regulated. A small operator can simply overreport production and then send a tanker of oil from a different, illicit well and take a sizable kickback for very little work. |
How was France able to afford an army conquer Europe during the french revolution if it was so poor? | Several reasons:
1) France wasn't necessarily poor: the French *government* was because it had problems generating revenue since that required them to increase taxation on the nobility, who had a large degree of immunity from taxes as part of their privileges. The Revolution did away with those privileges, and in the more radical parts simply confiscated their asset wholesale.
2) Occupied territories: one of the reasons why French revolutionary armies were so mobile is that they didn't depend as much on supply trains, which mean that they "lived off the country". This translated to looting and stealing from the locals, which meant that France did not have to pay as much for their upkeep. There was also more organized system of forcing "liberated people" to pay for French armies: in Belgium for instance this was done through taxation, in Holland through indemnities. In Italy Napoleon managed to extract a "tribute" of 60 million Francs during the first 3 month of his 1797 campaign.
3) Rationalization of the internal economy: the revolution did do away with systems of internal tariffs which expanded markets. Traditional guild privileges were abolished, and the new government were somewhat more efficient administrators than the old one.
Source: The French Revolution and the Birth of Modernity by Ferenc Fehér
The French Revolution By George Rude |
why some games absolutely hate being alt+tabbed out (tf2, civ v, skyrim, etc.) while other games don't seem to be bothered by it (wow, diablo 3, dishonored, etc.) | A lot of games that run while fullscreened essentially "take up" the top priority for a job and the rest of the system sits quietly (this is what Source engine games do). Other games that run fullscreened aren't running "fullscreen" per se, but windowed and borderless, so it looks full screen but it's still running alongside everything else.
EDIT: Horrendous wording on my part wording. Should have said they're running "like" the windowed and borderless modes on Source games. Usually, games like TF2 and CS:S take up a full core or, if you have multi core enabled, two to themselves and your GPU and put your OS and other tasks on the backburner. They'll take up the highest task priority aside from some system programs. When you alt+tab out of them, you have to essentially put the whole game on the backburner and devote your limited RAM to whatever other OS functions are going on and load it all in again. Seriously, go try playing a Source game in borderless windowed mode, and note your CPU usage graphs from the task manager and compare them to Source games in fullscreen. Then compare other games that don't have alt tab issues fullscreen vs windowed borderless CPU usage graphs. The difference is marginal and the option mainly exists in case you have problems with your mouse leaving the window (like is the case with Mount And Blade: Warband's windowed mode) |
How many plants would I need to have in a sealed room with me to never run out of oxygen? | **tl:dr - answer: 17.5 trees** - madmaxola
One of the things you have to be concerned about is that the room itself, depending on its material, will absorb a large amount of potential oxygen unless the surfaces have been cured. I know I've seen some research done on this...
[I found this on Yahoo Answers](_URL_1_) which led to [some information on the Biosphere II project] (_URL_4_) (ignore the hideous colors) that explains: "A vast majority of Biosphere II was built out of concrete, which contains calcium hydroxide. Instead of being consumed by the plants to produce more oxygen, the excess carbon dioxide was reacting with calcium hydroxide in the concrete walls to form calcium carbonate and water.
Ca(OH)2 + CO2 -- > CaCO3 + H2O"
From NASA: [the average man needs 0.63 kg of oxygen per day] (_URL_3_) (near the bottom of the page). They estimated 17.5 trees per person, so you need to find the equivalent number of house plants.
[Or, as another source suggests, algae:](_URL_0_) "A net production of 500 g to 600 g of dry algae per man per day is required for oxygen regeneration, CO2 absorption, water regeneration, nutrient removal and organic waste treatment."
This is mostly relevant: [scientist seals himself in a box with plants.](_URL_2_) It's not a research paper, but it has some information.
As for all those who are commenting on the validity of the information contained in this post due to where it was obtained: rather than judge the origin of the information, judge the information itself - if there is incorrect information, please let me know so I can fix it. Information.
*I edit for science* |
How common were prison escapes in the middle ages? What are some notable escapes and attempts? | Duke Kestutis, pagan Duke of Trakai, brother and close ally to Grand Duke Algirdas of Lithuania escaped from Marienburg, where he was held by the Teutonic Order 1361.
Being an important nobleman and someone the Teutonic Order hoped to convert to christianity, Kestutis was kept in relative comfort and not in cell far down the dungeon. Still, his escape was, according to German chronicler Wigand of Marburg, quite daring and quite demanding.
Kestutis, who was supposedly 65 at the time, but in fine physical shape (he would go on to lead Lithuanian military campaigns 1363 and 1370, the latter at the age of 74), escaped from his cell or room through a locked door, climbed up through a chimney, stole a Teutonic Knight's cloak/mantle and simply went out in the courtyard, mounted the Grand Master's own horse and rode out of Marienburg (which was the largest and strongest castle in Europe) like no-one's business. |
What happened to polygamous Mormon families after the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints disavowed the practice in 1890? Did families just split up, or did any of them continue to practice polygamy in secret? | This is not a super easy question to answer because there aren't a lot of statistics on mormon families after the first manifesto disavowing the practice of polygamy. On top of that, the records don't usually differentiate between monogamous and polygamous marriages.
There are a few references about what happened though. The church stated that they did not see the manifesto as an excuse for men to abandon their families and made it pretty clear that their temple marriages still counted and that they needed to continue to support their other spouses. [Abraham H. Cannon diary, Oct. 7, 1890, Nov. 12, 1891.]
Many families seperated/divorced on their own naturally (my guess is that they weren't happy and only stayed together out of religious duty). But others continued continued to support their other spouses but stopped cohabiting with them. [Embry, Mormon Polygamous Families, 13–14; Francis M. Lyman journal, Dec. 15, 1893, Church History Library; Utah Stake High Council minutes, Aug. 5, 1892, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.]
Then you have the families who continued cohabiting and actually continued to live the same as before the manifesto and actually continued to produce offspring into the 20th century. [Kenneth L. Cannon II, “Beyond the Manifesto: Polygamous Cohabitation among LDS General Authorities after 1890,” Utah Historical Quarterly 46, no. 1 (Winter 1978): 24–36.]
The third group is what I think you were probably most interested in. What it came down to is that the church disavowed the practice of polygamy to protect itself from having it's property taken by the government for not complying with the law. The manifesto was a public cooperation which gave them that protection. The church didn't disavow the practice because they wanted to but as a means of survival. The church basically let those families be and the U.S. government either didn't have the resources and infrastructure in the western United States or didn't care enough to check every family and a confirm the we're not cohabiting. So, ultimately it's a combination of the LDS church accomplishing their goal of protecting their assets and the organizational difficulties the U.S. gov wasn't willing to work through.
Even after the first manifesto the church performed polygamous weddings in Mexico. One of the men in my family history was actually called to take on more wives post first manifesto. His first wife left him because of this and he lived out the rest of his days in Mexico.
P.S. I tried to get references for everything but I don't have them all on hand currently. I'll try to add more a bit later but there are some for you to mull over. |
why is the reversible, and compact design of usb-c only made recently? why couldn't they have used this design decades ago when they were designing usb-a? | Reversible plugs require better microcontrollers to determine powe distribution.
Basically directional plugs are dumb and easy, you always know what pin is going to be where and sending what. If its directional then you need a microchip to check which pin each slot got and how to act accordingly
Think like water taps that have 2 handles (one hot, one cold) or just one lever. The one lever is more complicated to design and requires more balancing and math on the engineering side, the 2 tap one is cheaper and leaves it up to the user to know what each does. |
If elements above 83 (+43, 61) are all man made, is it strictly impossible for them to appear in nature? | It's not that they're never created naturally, it's that they decay too fast to be found naturally on Earth. All of the material that makes up Earth is the product of stellar fusion that occurred at least 4.5 billion years ago (the age of our solar system), but most of it is much older than that. These larger elements simply decay so fast that they can't stick around long enough to be found on Earth today. What we find instead are their remains - lighter, more stable elements that were the products of their decomposition. |
The Netherlands seemingly went from cutting edge to obsolescent and backwards to cutting edge again in our modern day. What happened there? How did the Dutch, who industrialized quite late, surpass the Belgian early adopters? | Though the Netherlands was late to the game when it came to industrializing, its economy did already have certain traits that are associated with more modern economies, such as a large service sector, and a very productive agricultural sector. In 1800 43% of Dutch people were employed in agriculture, compared to 36% in GB and 62% in Germany, 26% were involved in industry (GB 30%, Germany 21%), and 31% were working in the service sector (GB 34%, Germany 17%). (Sources: De Vries & Van der Woude, 'The first modern economy'; Van Zanden, 'Taking the measure').
During the period between 1815 and 1830, investments in heavy industry grew. This trend was halted and reversed and until 1865 more traditional fields such as the textile industry, sugar trade and shipbuilding rose back to prominence. Only around 1870 did the Netherlands really start industrializing like the UK, Belgium, Germany and the United States had done.
'Why were the Netherlands so late?'
Many have argued that the Dutch were too focused on their glorious past and refused to let go of outdated technology, or that its focus on windmills and watermills to provide power had led it towards a technological dead-end.
Recent historians however, point out that the Netherlands never truly fell behind its neighbours economically, but rather that its economic profile was different from its industrialized neighbours, with a larger focus on services and agriculture.
GDP per capita in 1990 dollars:
1820 - Belgium 1319, Germany 1077, Netherlands 1838, UK 1706, US 1257.
1850 - Belgium 1847, Germany 1428, Netherlands 2371, UK 2330, US 1806.
1870 - Belgium 2692, Germany 1839, Netherlands 2757, UK 3190, US 2445.
1900 - Belgium 3731, Germany 2985, Netherlands 3424, UK 4492, US 4091.
1930 - Belgium 4979, Germany 3973, Netherlands 5603, UK 5441, US 6213.
Source: Maddison, 'Historical Statistics'.
Furthermore, the Netherlands did innovate its technology further throughout the early 19th century. On one hand through further improvements in its traditional technologies (such as windmills), but on the other hand through selectively taking foreign innovations and applying them on a small scale to Dutch production methods.
'Why didn't the Netherlands develop a modern industry earlier?'
\- One reason that has been given is the country's republican history. As a Republic, Dutch cities had enjoyed various liberties and privileges. This decentralized system, which had allowed for a dynamic society in which various regions within the country competed economically, proved to be disadvantegeous in an age of increased centralization and integration into one national economy supported by a good infrastructure. Local interests and power struggles inhibited a quick Dutch conversion to this new nationalized model. Increased taxes that were aimed towards building a national infrastructure further inhibited risk-taking by businesses and left the country with relatively high national debt.
\- Another reason was the country's first King, Willem I (r. 1815-1840). Often called 'Koopman-koning' (Merchant-king) by his own people, Willem I attempted to modernize his country's economy through large investments into infrastructure, industry, and trade. Like stated in the previous paragraph, these taxes had the opposite effect of what he had intented, causing Dutch business owners to shy away from investing while the country's finances were in chaos.
\- A final factor that inhibited the development of a Dutch industrial base was the liberalization of international trade in the 1840s. When a liberal party rose to power in 1842, they abolished most tariffs on imports and exports. This was good for the modernized Dutch agricultural sector, but had a large impact on Dutch craftsmen, who couldn't keep up with much more modernized foreign manufacturers.
To conclude, the Dutch economy was more heavily focused on the service sector and agriculture, rather than industry. So rather than competing with Belgium, Germany, and the UK on an industrial level, the country specialized in other fields.
Source: Touwen, Jeroen 'Expansie, stagnatie en globalisering: economische ontwikkelingen' in eds. Davids, Karel & 'T Hart, Marjolein *De Wereld & Nederland. Een sociale en economische geschiedenis van de laatste duizend jaar*, Amsterdam, 2011, 185-200. |
how does somebody like aaron swartz face 50 years prison for hacking, but people on trial for murder only face 15-25 years? | If you kill somebody, it's just one crime : murder.
If you hack a bunch of computers, you're facing a criminal charge for each system you hack each time you hack it. It's the same as robbing five banks at gunpoint.
A dozen crimes with two two year sentences can potentially have a longer penalty than a single ten year sentence.that doesn't mean you always get the max time in prison. They might not be able to prove every crime. They might give less time for some of them. You might be able to "stack" sentences.
He was highly unlikely to actually be sentenced to and require d to serve the max time in prison. Saying "50 years" just gets attention so journalists will use that number.
**edit**: By comparing hacking to robbing a bank, I wasn't trying to establish any sort of equivalency between the two crimes, simply saying that you're breaking a bunch of different laws when you hack a computer and redistribute the data.
I'm also not saying he's guilty or making any judgement about whether the laws, charges or the behaviors of anyone involved are ethically sound. I was just writing a simplified explanation as to how he was facing "50 years". It's an /r/ELI5 post, not part of an in-depth discussion in /r/politics - please keep that in mind. |
when i microwave a dry muffin, it get's moist (and tasty). where did the water come from? | A microwave works by heating up water molecules in the small atmosphere of the microwave door with a certain form of radiation. There is moisture in the air around and inside the muffin. The heated water molecules then get hotter and hotter turning into steam throughout the muffin delivering a moist delicious muffin. |
why do news websites insist on using terrible video players when it would be easier and more user friendly to embed youtube videos? | Youtube has an infamously crappy report system that can be abused, so a breaking news story might be yanked because it offended some 14-year old in a basement somewhere. I'm also not sure about the rights situation, Youtube might stake a claim in the news station's video if they upload it there. |
The Seven Year's War had a theater in every continent and involved all of the major powers at the time -- why don't we refer to it as World War I? | The difference between WWI and WWII, and the Seven Years' War is mass conscription/mobilization and mechanization. These changes created wars that led to enormous loss of life and destruction, unlike anything in the past. Hence, you can understand why people previously called WWI the Great War or the war to end all wars. The 'democratization' of war, so to speak, really begins to take hold in the 19th century, after France notably employed the [*levée en masse*](_URL_1_) (basically large scale conscription of able bodied males) in the 1790s. Prior to this, war was relatively separate and disconnected from society, and not subject to popular political pressure--thus the demands on the population were smaller--which is why many states used mercenary forces to wage war in Europe prior to the 1800s. Literally, conflicts occurred with 10,000 Swiss troops battling 10,000 Swiss troops, each fighting for a different state. This means that, on par, war was less devastating since it was limited in scope and size.
The most direct answer to your question is that WWI was only named that later, and that the name is more a reflection of unprecedented destruction brought on by a geographically large conflict, which was compounded by the fact that mechanized warfare and large-scale mobilization of society, sometimes termed 'total war' (though this is a much more complex concept) created an unprecedented wave of destruction.
EDIT: For a great book on how warfare changed over the centuries, see Charles Tilly, [*Coercion, capital, and European states, AD 990-1992*](_URL_0_) |
Why do humans have such long hair on our heads (if we left it uncut) when close relatives such as chimps do not? Does it serve some purpose? | In a similar vein, long hair can get pretty horrific if left unchecked. Before we formed societies and began cutting and brushing our hair, did it form the same crazy dreads and gigantic mats of hair that we see today in people who don't take care of their locks? Perhaps it had some kind of practicality then? I've got some pretty lengthy hair, so this has always intrigued me a little bit. |
what happens to an uninsured patient with catastrophic injuries in the u.s.? | Everyone receives emergency care, regardless of their insurance. If you can't pay it, eventually the hospital will write it off. So ultimately the taxpayers pay for it, indirectly.
Once you're stable, don't expect stellar care, but hospitals don't typically kick people to the curb to die. |
We often hear about the great battles the Allies won during WW2, and how victory in Europe was in some part because of Hitler's poor decision making. But what were some of the largest tactical fuck ups the Allies made during WW2? | The Dieppe raid was pretty disastrous. Of the 6000 men, mostly Canadians, who landed that day over half became casualties or POW's. There were multiple goals to the raid. The primary goal was to capture a port on the French coast and hold it for sufficient time to put it out of action. This would allow the allies to test their weapons, tactics and intelligence in preparation for the future invasion of France. It would also serve the purpose of boosting British morale and show the Russians that their allies were serious about opening up a second front.
The landings themselves were a clusterfuck. Intelligence on the landing site was poor, with many Germans positions having been overlooked and the beach terrain improperly researched for tank suitability. There was no preliminary bombardment from the air and the naval bombardment was minimal. An insufficient number of tanks landed late and promptly became bogged down. This forced the infantry to attack machine gun emplacements unsupported, leading to heavy losses. The RAF kept the Luftwaffe at bay in the beginning of the day but losses began to amount as British fighters were operating at the limit of their effective range. At this point in the war also RAF ground support tactics were very underdeveloped. The raiders were forced to call a retreat after just 5 hours.
Afterwards the heavy losses, which were particularly devastating for the Canadians, were called a necessary evil. They were justified by claiming the intelligence and experience gained on the beaches led directly to successful landings in North Africa and D-Day. Personally I think that was a convenient sop to the allied commanders conscience after a disastrous raid which was undertaken without sufficient preparation or consideration for its dangers. |
Yoga: Are the benefits of yoga scientifically proven? If yes, how did the inventors of yoga make up the asanas and know their benefits? | Penn and Teller did an episode of Bullshit on yoga. They claim that all of what is modernly known today as 'yoga' in America was invented very recently (I think the 60's) and just artificially tied to ancient stuff to give it credence.
Is stretching, strength training using your own body weight, and regular exercise good for you? You bet! Body and mind are known to improve from these conditions.
#Is yoga magical and healing? No reason to believe that.
Edit - claims require evidence. I don't have to prove yoga isn't magic.
Yoga advocates (including instructors of yoga classes I personally attended) do not merely argue yoga is a good exercise/meditation practice. They claim the asanas and other positions are somehow an enhanced way of doing things. That the breathing and 'finding your center' within these stretches opens up your mind beyond normal self- or guided-meditation and exercise.
If you want to argue that yoga *specifically* is more than just an analogous exercise routine, that requires evidence. |
- why do we just not globally exterminate mosquitoes? since this insect is a major cause of disease-spread and has no solo-purpose that can't be replaced by another existing insect? | Two main reasons off the top of my head:
1. We don't know how to extermine only mosquitoes.
2. At best we can guesstimate what will happen to other animals due to mosquitoes dying off, but not much more. Historically, surgical attempts to mess with ecosystems haven't gone too well.
Pesticides kill lots of pests, they get concentrated in bigger animals who eat those smaller pests. Remember DDT? It's rarely used now because it messed with the way large birds (bald eagle being the most recognizable) breed.
Mosquitoes make up the a huge part of the biomass that feeds water animals (fish, insects and amphibians), both at the full grown stage and as larvae. I'm sure some insect would come to take its place, but in the meanwhile the ripple effect on the ecosystem would be enormous... introducing rabbits to Australia enormous. |
Are there any European families that still exist today that can trace their origins to the aristocracy/patrician families of the Roman Empire? | They can't document it (and it seems a common enough root to derive a name from) but the Massimo family at least makes the claim.
_URL_0_
> When asked by Napoleon (with whom he was negotiating the Treaty of Tolentino) whether the family descended from Fabius Maximus, the then Prince Massimo famously replied "I do not know that it is true, but it has been a tradition in the family for some thirteen or fourteen hundred years." |
How did the Romans go about demolishing buildings as well as other large man-made structures- particularly as they razed cities? | A couple of things: if you think that Scipio Africanus "salted the earth" of Carthage, he didn't. It's been a persistent myth from the 19th century, but Polybius and other ancient sources make no mention of it whatsoever. It may be based on the destruction of Shechem in the Book of Judges.
But, regarding the demolitions of structures/cities:
They did it by hand. Several thousand, or tens of thousands, of fit men can accomplish far more demolition (perhaps de-construction would be a better word) in a few days than you might think. This was a military force that routinely built a fort to stay in every night while on the move. They had shovels, pickaxes, hammers, and men used to heavy labor. The structures they were demolishing, after all, were built by hand as well.
In any case, there would not have been a need to rush, particularly.
The destruction of Carthage would of course have been helped along greatly by the fact that the city burned extensively during the battle.
Sources: Complete Roman Army, Polybius I guess (how do you source a negative?), The Bible, Carthage Must Be Destroyed
Additional non-academic source: I watched six guys pull down a small house by hand and stack it in a couple of dumpsters in a single day when I was a kid. |
What was the popcorn and hot dogs of the Roman coliseum? What did Romans have for snack foods while watching the events? | Not to discourage any future answers but we have actually had a few interesting thread on Roman street food:
[I'm sitting here eating chips. Did the people of the Roman empire have an equivalent of such snack foods?](_URL_0_) by /u/samadhii
[What kinds of street food would of been available in Ancient Rome?](_URL_1_) by /u/JDHoare |
Why there are no blue people, green people, etc., when there are blue birds, green birds, etc.? | > Mammals and even monkeys have a range of different colors and patterns.
You say that, but in truth, mammals only produce two types of pigment; eumelanin (black-brown pigment) and pheomelanin (reddish-yellow) - which is why, with little exception, almost all mammals have a sort of 'earthy' colouration. There are no green mammals__*__, no purple mammals, and almost no blue mammals - the latter only appearing [blue in parts](_URL_8_), not due to any pigment, but by a physical phenomenon known such as the [Tyndall effect](_URL_3_) or coherent scattering, where light is scattered in the skin by very fine collagen fibers n' cellular structure.
As it happens, all tetrapod animals (everything with four limbs) rely only on these two coloured brown-ish n' yellow-red-ish pigments, and the symphony of colouration you see in, say, amphibians and birds is likewise due to taking advantage of some physical light scattering phenomenon. Green frogs, for example, combine the Tyndall effect, to produce blue, with yellow pigmentation (from pheomelanin) in their skin, to look green. Many birds, alternatively, use [microstructures](_URL_7_) within their feathers to scatter light in particular ways to produce green or blue colour and [iridescence](_URL_6_).
So why don't mammals take advantage of these scattering phenomenon more often to become as colourful and resplendant as their [bird](_URL_4_) n' [cold-blooded](_URL_5_) contemporaries?
Well, turns out mammals were nocturnal for an incredibly long period of their evolutionary history - going right back beyond the dawn of the dinosaurs. For this reason, mammals lost two of the four genes that encode for colour vision in tetrapods, leaving them with very poor colour vision - which most mammal groups still retain to this day. Unable to see colour as, say, we do, there's little selective pressure on most mammal groups to therefore don the rainbow and strut about in style. Instead of colour, mammals therefore rely on shading and patterning as a means to both camouflage (tiger stripes, leopard spots) or display (skunk stripes).
Colour vision has however reemerged in a few mammalian groups - which leads us back to primates. If you're primarily feeding on fruit and leaves, it's important to be able to distinguish when a particular foodstuff is ripe and ready to eat and no longer bitter and poisonous, and the best way to do that is often via colour. Hence why monkeys and other primates see and utilise colour.
As for why we and the other great apes don't have [fabulously blue butts à la the mandrill](_URL_9_), well, rather unsatisfyingly, there simply was never any selective pressure for us to start considering that sort of thing as attractive. Like most mammals, including most primates, we stuck to the usual brown-yellow-red-ish eumelanin-derived hues.
Perhaps though, if we started preferentially banging people who look maybe slightly a bit blue, we might just manage to populate the Earth with blue men in a million years or so. It *is* possible! Da bu dee da bu da...
___
^(**Sources & Further Reading:**)
[^(Jacobs, G.H. (2009)^) ^(Evolution of Colour Vision in Mammals. *Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci*. 364 (**1531**)^), ^2957-2967](_URL_1_)
[^(Prum, R.O & Torres, R.H. (2004)^) ^(Structural colouration of mammalian skin: convergent evolution of coherently scattering dermal collagen arrays. *J Exp Biol*. 207 (**12**)^), ^2157-2172](_URL_10_)
[^("Evolution of Color Vision in Primates. *Wikipedia* article)](_URL_0_)
____
^__*__ ^(With possible exception to a couple of sloth species, which may *appear* to have a green-ish tinge owing to the blue-green *cyanophyta* algae that sometimes clings to their fur. See )[^here](_URL_2_) ^(for more sloth fuzz facts!) |
The convoy system worked great against U-boats in WWI. Why did it have to be "relearned" in WWII? | The question describes the traditional picture of British anti-submarine efforts in the interwar period. It is ultimately derived from Stephen Roskill's *Naval Policy Between the Wars*, and to a lesser extent from Arthur Marder's monograph *The Influence of History on Sea Power*. These two authors were hugely influential on the historiography of the Royal Navy - Roskill wrote the Royal Navy's official history of the Second World War, while Marder wrote one of the most detailed works on its actions in the First. Roskill alleges that the RN believed that the development of ASDIC (sonar, in American parlance) made the submarine useless. He claims that 'not one
exercise in the protection of a slow mercantile convoy against submarine or
air attack took place between 1919 and 1939’, with the RN choosing instead to focus all its anti-submarine warfare (ASW) efforts on hunting submarines. Marder, meanwhile, argues that the interwar RN failed to adequately study the lessons of WWI. In Marder's picture of the topic, the Navy chose to focus its efforts more on the more spectacular areas, especially its failure to defeat the German fleet at Jutland, over ASW. He describes a navy that, in its 1934 Staff College course, spent three days on Jutland, and just one hour on anti-submarine precautions. Most later authors have repeated the assertions of these two authors, furthering the picture of the RN as rejecting the convoy system and other lessons of WWI. However, more recent scholarship has reassessed this picture. In particular, George Franklin's work has painted a completely new picture of the RN's thinking on ASW in the interwar period. This answer will reflect the newer scholarship.
In the 1920s, the main strategic threat to Britain was not Germany, which had been neutralised by the Versailles Treaty and had a nominally friendly government. Instead, the key threat was from Japan. While Britain and Japan had been allies, differences in foreign policy, especially over the 1923 Washington Treaty, forced a wedge between them. As a result, the Admiralty's planning for a war in the 1920s focused primarily on Japan. While British trade routes would be hugely vulnerable in the event of such a war, the Admiralty appears to have correctly assessed Japanese doctrine. The Imperial Japanese Navy put little emphasis on the submarine for hunting merchants, choosing instead to focus on raiding cruisers. The IJN's submarine force would, instead, hunt for the enemy's battlefleet. As a result, British planning for commerce defence in the 1920s focused mainly on the surface threat, moving away from convoy to some extent. From 1932-3, though, it became clear that Germany might not be as quiescent as was earlier thought. It soon became clear that Germany intended to build up a submarine force, a fact made abundantly clear by the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement. A major review of ASW efforts was carried out by the RN in 1932, with Germany seen as the main threat, despite them not having any submarines available at the time. In 1936, the tri-service Joint Planning Committee estimated that, by 1939, the German Navy would have between 56-66 submarines in operation (the real number, for September 1939, was 56). To this end, the RN began to refocus its efforts on protecting commerce against submarine attack. Convoy was generally understood to be part of this protection, especially if Germany resumed its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.
The RN's main anti-submarine establishment was the Anti-Submarine School at HMS *Osprey*, Portland. *Osprey* had several main roles; as well as training officers, ASDIC operators and ships' crews, it was also intended to develop new tactics and equipment for hunting submarines. *Osprey* trained specialist ASW officers for the staffs of fleets and destroyer flotillas. It also hosted a 15-day course for officers on ships without one of these specialist officers. Every ASDIC operator in the fleet was trained there, and all destroyers and escorts spent time at *Osprey* when they were working up, to gain experience in ASW. At the School, training would include time spent in shore-based simulators, and exercises at sea. Many of these exercises would involve the ship protecting merchant ships, as they would in a convoy situation. While single ships were often used, these were generally understood to represent a full convoy, as providing such would be too expensive. Between 1927 and 1938, records describe nine large-scale convoy exercises, involving between four and 18 destroyers as escorts, and up to at least ten submarines in the attacking force. Five of these, in contradiction of Roskill's statement, were slow, with speeds of below 9 knots. These large-scale exercises appear to have been accompanied by additional, smaller-scale exercises, of which details have not survived. This meant that there was a general understanding of good convoy tactics. However, this was accompanied by a belief that convoy had to be accompanied by hunting as a way to kill submarines. While this would prove to be somewhat true, the convoys had to be adequately protected first. Due to a lack of submarines, there were few opportunities to test 'wolf-pack' tactics, with multiple submarines attacking. Similarly, policies restricted the ability of submarines to act on the surface at night. While there was some understanding of the threat these tactics posed, the true effectiveness was unclear, meaning that the protection initially given to convoys would prove insufficient.
The first RN guide to convoy tactics and formation in the interwar period held the ungainly title of *Mercantile
Convoys: General Instructions for Port Convoy Officers, Ocean and Destroyer Escorts
and Commodores of Convoy*. Issued in 1919, it was intended to condense down every lesson learned during WWI. In 1934, it would be updated and streamlined into the *Mercantile Convoy Instructions*. The year after this was published, Paymaster Rear-Admiral G.H.W.Eldon Manisty was appointed to the Naval Staff. His role was to set up a Naval Control of Shipping organisation (NCS). The NCS would provide officers to guide and form convoys in the event of wartime. Manisty toured the world, appointing reservists for this organisation in likely assembly points. Two years later, Admiral W. James formed the Shipping Defence Advisory Committee, with Manisty as his vice-chairman. This brought together naval officers, ship owners, Ministerial representatives and other technical experts to hash out methods of commerce defence. Convoy was emphasised here, with James stating that 'the convoy system is considered by the Admiralty to be the most effective form of protection against surface, submarine or air attack'. This was not an isolated opinion. Captain T.S.V. Phillips, the RN's Director of Plans, would write in a 1938 memo that
> … it is open to doubt whether the delays due to convoy will be any greater
than those caused by evasive routeing and shipping being afraid to sail on
account of real or imagined dangers. … Moreover, if, as seems probable,
losses in convoy are considerably less than losses in independent sailings,
then the number of ships available to carry cargoes will remain greater under
a convoy system.
Phillips' memo sought to shorten the wait between the start of any conflict and the implementation of the convoy system, through methods like the NCS and increased mobilisation of the Reserve Fleet. His arguments, and those produced by the reports of the SDAC, were taken up by the highest levels of the Admiralty. The result was a new 1939 edition of the *Manual of Anti-Submarine Warfare*, which emphasised the utility of convoy in protecting merchant shipping. However, British planning was also flawed. Subs travelling from German bases would have to make a long journey around Scotland to reach the Atlantic convoy routes; they would likely not have the endurance to range deep into the Atlantic after such a journey. Given this, it was assumed that the submarine threat would be greatest in waters relatively near to the UK, especially in the heavily trafficked waters of the East Coast and Western Approaches. As such, British building programs focused on coastal escorts, like the 'Hunt' class destroyer escorts, *Kingfisher* class sloops and 'Flower' class corvettes. These ships would prove to be insufficient after the fall of Norway and France gave Germany bases closer to the mid-Atlantic. |
why does having general anesthesia feel like you blink and you're in the recovery room when normal sleep feels like time passed? | No one really knows. Seriously we do not understand how it works. An anaesthetised unconscious state is not like sleep at all but more like a coma, though the exact details of what happens remain a mystery so far. Obviously the parts of the brain that are responsible for creating a sense of time having passed when we sleep are also prevented from working or prevented from recording it for a while. |
how do some insects fly so sporadically and change direction so quickly? how many g's are they under during maneuvers like that? | What a cool question.
To start, most people could probably withstand around 9 Gs for a very short time. Then they would pass out and possibly suffer brain damage. The highest G-force ever put into a roller-coaster was around 6 Gs, but most very high G coasters are somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 Gs.
So,
Fleas can jump about three inches into the air. Which is around 40 times the length of their body, and they do that in around 1/1000 sec. They pull more than 100 Gs in that maneuver.
Dragonflies can see 360° and can execute a hairpin turn at 100 Kph. They're pulling around 25 Gs in that turn.
Jumping froghoppers and click beetles are probably the masters here though. A fly being knocked out of the sky by a swatter is taking around 200 Gs and that kills it. So we generally think of that as lethal for insects. Froghoppers catapult themselves about 28 inches into the air. That's about 1400 times the length of their body and in doing this they pull 400 Gs.
Click beetles will generally match the froghopper. But one individual was calculated to have pulled peak brain deceleration of around 2300 Gs. in a leap.
So they can really move. |
why, at airport security screenings, do electronics need to be put in a separate tray? can't scanners see through a bag/luggage? | They can, but when you have a lot of wires and circuitry all densely packed together things can be hard to see. Remember that the scanner only shows a two-dimensional image of a three-dimensional bag.
So, they have you pull out the electronics and lay them in a single layer in one of the bins so they are easier to see on the scan. |
Old Western movies have the “Wanted Dead or Alive” posters for outlaws plastered all over town. Now-a-days, there are rewards for fugitive capture but not kill, for that is now murder. When was the last time the US government actually encouraged people to go out and kill fugitives for a reward? | This is a question that has come up before, and while definitely more can be said, [this previous thread](_URL_0_) I suspect will be of interest at least as a starting point, especially the comments from /u/amescg . |
In terms of a percentage, how much oil is left in the ground compared to how much there was when we first started using it as a fuel? | Estimates vary wildly, especially for [how much we've used so far](_URL_1_), but they say we've used up to 1 trillion barrels and have 1.5 trillion left that we think we can get to with current technology. [Here's a video](_URL_0_) with some additional sources in the description. |
why do amish think that 17th century had an ideal technology for a pure christian life? | The Amish do not universally shun modern technology, it can vary between groups and communities. There are Amish who drive cars and use voicemail. That being said, they have a tendency to not immediately accept new technology automatically. Rather, to them they place a high value on community, family, and separation from the world at large. And in assigning these values primacy, they deliberate on whether a new piece of technology will be a benefit to them, or detrimental. For instance, a phone may be considered detrimental, because you rely on it instead of meeting and socializing with your neighbors. Electricity might be useful because it allows you more utility with nighttime hours, but being connected to the power grid reduces your separation from the outside. And so on. |
why is everything so cold? why is absolute zero only -459.67f (-273.15c) but things can be trillions of degrees? in relation wouldn't it mean that life and everything we know as good for us, is ridiculously ridiculously cold? | The more atoms vibrate the hotter the temperature. The slower they vibrate the lower the temperature. They can vibrate as fast as they want but once they stop vibrating the temperature doesn't go any lower.
In other words, the lowest temperature means they are standing still. But they can always vibrate even faster no matter how fast they are vibrating right now. |
I'm interested to know how the political attitude in Germany changed after WW2 from what appeared to be predominantly nationalist and anti-semitic facism to the democracy we know today. | There are lots of answers in many threads on Denazification in this sub what will likely provide lots of answers to this question I think. For instance.
- [What effects did Denazification have on the German and Austrian society?](_URL_0_)
- [How quick of a process was the denazification of Germany after the end of WWII?](_URL_3_)
- [What was done to make sure Germans didn't become Nazis again?](_URL_1_)
- [In what ways and to what extent did DeNazification fail to change Germany in the post-war period?](_URL_2_) |
what is the difference between all types of soap. i.e. shampoo, hand wash. body wash, bar soap, dish soap, detergent etc... | Actually, soap isn't soap. Kinda.
Depending on what sort of saponificator you use, you get two very different types of soap. Lye will produce a hard soap, like what you get in bars. Potash produces a liquid soap.
The type of fat you use also matters. Lard make a very, very hard and dry bar of soap, while olive oil makes a very soft soap. Other fats have all sorts of other things that can be added. Then, you add different scents and colors and stuff.
So, soap for your hands will be made with lye and will generally be less "harsh" than powdered laundry soap, which doesn't have to worry about potentially drying your skin out. Shampoo is potash soap with lots of water and fragrances and magical chemicals that companies say repair damage. Liquid detergent is a potash soap that's designed to be "tougher" on grease.
Soap for the body tends to have more fat in it compared to soap for other things. This is why "dish hands" used to be a thing. A high-quality body soap will leave fat on your skin, which is why it feels soft and smooth afterwards. Yes, that's either plant or animal fat that's covering your skin. Enjoy! |
what really happens when country a's leader calls country b's leader, where the language isn't the same? | Both leaders have trusted translators who are also on the line. It's a big teleconference.
Edit: It's actually an interpreter instead of a translator. I myself am a big stickler for using the correct term even if the vernacular might allow for others. Corrections accepted. |
doctors, what difference does it make if the pain is sharp or blunt? why do you ask me this? what do different kinds of pain "mean"? | Doc here.
Technical Speak coming up, TL;DR and ELI5 at the bottom of the answer.
Pain is a subjective sensation that has an effect on emotion, mood, thoughts and the physical status of a person. It is subject to individual perception, and the intensity of pain varies from one individual to another based on their emotional state, individual pain threshold, health conditions and a few other things.
Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage. It is needed in order to ensure that the organism takes steps to minimise or avoid bodily harm. There are a lot of different ways in which pain is perceived, and some of these ways have been correlated to actual pathology in the body.
For example, the pain of a heart attack is very distinctive, and is typically described as feeling as if there is "a tight vice around your chest". This is in contrast to the pain from pneumonia, which is a sudden, abrupt and temporary sensation, often described as sharp or stabbing, and typically increases everytime you breathe or cough.
Other types of pain can be muscle aches or bowel pain such as cramps or bloating, which are more diffuse, harder to point out and generally feel like a tube is twisting or stretching inside.
Again, these are all subjective sensations, which require the person suffering from it to articulate it properly. Vague complaints would be "just pain", which is very unhelpful, so doctors use words such as sharp, burning, twisting, stabbing and so on to try and narrow down the kind of pain, to more accurately diagnose the problem you come with. You could look it up, there are about 50 different attributes to describe "just pain", and each one is indicative of some disease or the other.
All pain is in your head. Technically, it's perceived in several parts of the brain, with the final say coming in from the wrinkly portion of the old noodle, which points out where in the body the pain is being felt. Because your skin, muscles and bones tend to come in contact with the outer world more often than your spleen or intestines, the skin tends to have a very rich supply of receptors in order to detect pain. This sort of pain is very well represented in the brain, and is easy to localize and point out. Typically, injured cells release a lot of stuff, which triggers the body's clean up crew to come in. The chemical triggers that call for help, also stimulate nerves to create the sensation of pain, in order to warn the organism on a conscious level. This sort of pain is what we call, in doctorspeak, as somatic pain.
In contrast, visceral pain comes from the internal organs. This pain is not very well localized, and tends to be extremely vague, partly because the area of representation allocated in the brain is much smaller compared to the sheer surface area of organs inside the body. These sort of pain fibers are also stimulated by the same chemical triggers as somatic nerves as well as other things like stretch, inflammation and so on, but the pain perceived in these areas is felt as different. As /u/bezoarboy rightly pointed out.
**TL;DR**
Pain perception on a conscious level is complicated and incompletely understood, simply because the answer to it lies in the mechanism of consciousness. On a physiological level however, pain transmission has been mapped out fairly well, and the knowledge and understanding of the cause of different sensations of pain aids doctors into narrowing down the patient's actual problem.
**ELI5**
Pain feels different depending on where in the body it is coming from. **Doctors ask people who suffer from pain to describe it, because they have learnt about what can cause such pain from studying and treating people who have complained of the same kind of pain before.** There are a lot of different ways pain can be felt, and the reason for this is because of the way the nerves carry pain from different areas. Some pain such as pain from a heart that's not getting enough blood, feels like your chest is being crushed. Why ? Because a lot of people who had heart attacks said they felt that way. There are other kinds of pain too, and the way this sort of pain can be felt and understood by you depends on how much attention your brain is giving it.
Edit : Added a brief bit on pain perception. ELI5'ed at the end.
Thanks to /u/fragilespleen for the accepted definition of pain. |
How did whaling work? I imagine whales are pretty hard to catch with just harpoons. | It was pretty hard, incredibly dangerous, but still very profitable.
I can't speak for all whalers ever, but the whalers that operated around the southern parts of Australia in the 1800s basically would sail around looking for whalespout, then when they got close would launch smaller boats. These smaller boats would row up to the whales, and one man would hurl or shoot a harpoon into the whale. Then they would wait for the whale to die (taking a long time, as you'd expect), they they would tow the carcass back to the larger ship for processing.
EDIT: Ok, I'm going to add some more detail, for reasons.
Whaling had an enormous impact on the economies of the Australian colonies. It wasn't until 1830 that land-based economic activity overtook whaling and sealing.
Whales were valued primarily for [whale oil](_URL_4_) and [whale bone](_URL_2_). Whale oil was used as a fuel in lamps and streetlights, baleen was used in corsets. You cut massive strips of blubber off the whale carcass, and boiled it in big pots. Here's a picture of whalers in NZ cutting blubber: _URL_1_ you boil it, then the oil would collect on the top. This is just speculation, but I imagine the smell would have been *spectacular*.
My home state of Tasmania saw huge numbers of whales migrating past on their way south. The diary of [Robert Knopwood](_URL_7_) records:
> 'we passed so many whales that it was dangerous for the boat to go up the river [the River Derwent, where the major city of Hobart was founded] unless you kept very near the shore'.
Whalers came from all over the world to work the seas, and within just under a century the stocks were nearly completely fished out. The first whaling expedition left Tasmania in 1804, the last in 1900. The vast majority of the damage was done in the first 40 years though.
As for the actual hunting, this is a painting of what it was supposed to look like (off the coast of New South Wales): _URL_0_
Why was it dangerous? Well, in Tasmania whale season is in the middle of winter, so it's cold and rough. But at least early on, the whales came so close to shore that wasn't an issue. The danger was more in the wounded whales thrashing about and breaking up the whaleboats. Harpoons were designed a bunch of different ways (_URL_5_), the vast majority of the ones used in Tasmania were hand-thrown one-flued harpoons. Again just speculation, but imagine the pressure on the harpoonist. The whole whaleboat crew are risking life & limb to get you there...
I'll leave it there for now. There are some pretty cool museums in Tasmania where you can see the harpoons and boats they used. It's kind of unsettling to get in an actual whaleboat and realise the size of the whales they were hunting. I would have been absolutely packing my dacks if I was crewing one.
EDIT THE SECOND: You should check out /u/khosikulu's [comment](_URL_3_) for some more reading, and of course a bunch of people have suggested Moby Dick (which you should read anyway). But IMO nothing is better than heading to the various maritime museums around the world and looking at the replica whaleboats, harpoons and the like.
EDIT THE THIRD: You should also check out /u/The_Alaskan's excellent [comment](_URL_6_) about whaling techniques used by indigenous Alaskan people. |
Why are car antennas so small now, when 10 years ago they were 2-3 feet tall? | Aesthetics and durability. You probably still have a long antenna, in your front or rear windshield. If you see a really tiny antenna then it's likely made available for premium service radios (SiriusXM, etc.). Some luxury cars have a panel antenna hidden behind a plastic part of the roof. |
Aliens, Bigfoot, and Ghosts? What's the history of "the paranormal" in Western thought? | An interesting case study would be the Loch Ness Monster; a creature attested as far back as St Columba's early medieval hagiography before its resurgence in the mid 20th century. As we'll see, shifting cultural and scientific paradigms completely altered the ways in which people from the same geographical location "constructed" their monster.
To pre-modern Europeans, a monster’s physical form was significant because its composite parts or overall bodily shape held some kind of metaphorical or allegorical significance. Whether their forms were interpreted by pagans or Christians, animalistic monsters seem to have been more important as vehicles of symbolic meaning than as flesh-and-blood entities to be found in the wild. Many believers in the Loch Ness Monster regularly cite the existence of similar creatures in early medieval Irish hagiographical literature, notably the Life of Saint Colum Cille, who banished a reptilian monster in the River Ness adjacent to the Loch, as historical evidence for the existence of some prehistoric creature. I will briefly situate these occurrences within the symbolic rather than scientific pre-modern worldview to highlight the allegorical significance of monstrous animals. Dáithí Ó hÓgáin’s article “’Moch Amach ar Maidin dé Luain!’” explains that reptilian lake monsters are a surprisingly common trope in early Irish secular literature, hagiographies and oral tradition; in each instance, a monstrous reptilian creature terrorizes the nearby countryside, devouring livestock before being challenged and slain by a hero (whether he be a pagan warrior or Christian saint), turning the lake red with its blood. Ó hÓgáin explains that this trope may be the synthesis of several forms of symbolism where the reptilian lake monster represented paganism enslaving the Irish population before being routed by the powerful Christian saint (which popular tradition concretized from a metaphor to a literal representation of a monster) while the dramatic narrative of martial heroes overcoming lake monsters predates hagiographical sources, suggesting pre-Christian origins.
Serpents appear to have held important symbolic significance in pre-Christian Celtic art. Because of their ability to disappear into impossibly small crevices beneath the ground, regular shedding of their skin and incredible reproductive capacities and movement which mimics the meandering of slow-moving waterways, snakes were likely associated with the underworld, fertility and regeneration by pre-Christian Celtic speakers. Celtic societies regarded bodies of water as liminal spaces between a supernatural otherworld and the physical world (explaining the overwhelming amount of votive offerings found across the Celtic speaking world in bogs, streams, rivers and lakes), meaning that the combination of the otherworldly serpent with the liminal space between worlds would have had a significant symbolic meaning to pre-Christian Celtic speakers. In such a cosmology, the lake serpent would have represented a believable manifestation of otherworldly power on earth, and its defeat by a mortal hero would have accentuated his martial prowess, an important concern in a society dominated by a warrior-aristocracy. In this context, the physical existence of the lake monster would have been less important to the pre-Christian and early Christian audience than the respective symbolic meaning that it represented; the overcoming of a powerful otherworldly entity by a mortal warrior-hero and the overcoming of pagan influence by a virtuous saintly hero.
Similar, later Christian monster narratives used their subject’s bodies as vehicles to convey symbolic meaning. Using ancient Greek compilations of marvels and wondrous creatures, St. Augustine laid the foundations for the medieval genre of Bestiaries by demonstrating God’s power through the existence of seemingly impossible natural creatures, with the added goal of compelling believers into marvelling at God’s creation. Like modern believers in monsters, medieval Europeans did not consider monstrous animals as ‘unnatural’ (or contra naturam) but instead considered them ‘natural’ members of God’s creation who were intended to relay some kind of symbolic meaning to those who viewed them as Isidore of Seville explained: “portents and omens [ostenta], monsters and prodigies are so named because they appear to portend, foretell [ostendere], show [monstrare] and predict future things… for God wishes to signify the future through faults in things that are born…” One was not required to personally witness such a monster to glean symbolic meaning from its form or behaviour as medieval Bestiaries listed fantastical creatures alongside more mundane ones with a moral lesson in each entry; descriptions of mermaids drawing in sailors to their dooms were meant to teach that one should always be wary of flattery.
Modern observers, it seems, are obsessed with the physical composition of their monsters not because their composite parts may reveal some portentous symbolism, but because the post-19th century western episteme forces them to rationalize the existence of their monsters within a scientific context. This change came about in an astonishingly short amount of time – it took only some four decades of scientific research, analysis and theorization to completely change the West’s understanding of the natural world, the creatures that inhabited it, and their own relationship to both. The scientific fields most crucial to this intellectual revolution were the sister disciplines of geology and palaeontology, as a rapid succession of discoveries in both completely challenged the established episteme.
How was this episteme established? I don't think it's necessary to provide a play by play of the intellectual revolutions of the early modern era and 19th century, but to give you a short run down; in the late 18th century a French savant named Georges Cuvier published a paper detailing his studies of fossil mammal species which proved that at some time in the earth's history, distinct and separate species of rhino, elephant, deer etc. had roamed the planet before going extinct. Though his discover may seem trivial today, Cuvier’s suggestion was an absolute paradigm shift. By demonstrating that long-lost species of animals had once roamed the earth possibly tens of thousands of years in the past, Cuvier had challenged the conventionally accepted Creationist worldview which purported that the earth was only several thousands of years old, and that all the planet’s creatures had been present since Creation. Cuvier further complicated the traditional worldview when in 1824, he named and described several hitherto unknown fossil species found in the Maestricht fossil beds: ichthyosaurus, a fish-like marine reptile; mosasaurus, a large crocodilian marine reptile and pterodactyl, a species of birdlike flying lizards. Plesiosaurus, a large predatory marine reptile notable for its small head atop a long serpentine neck was also discovered in that year, and as I will describe below, provided the visual template for lake monsters such as the Loch Ness Monster. These discoveries laid the ground for a profoundly new conception of historical time: that the earth and the organisms that inhabited it were not static but were subject to some sort of change, and that completely alien forms of life had preceded all kinds of currently existing plants and animals by thousands of years. |
how does shampoo and body wash work so effectively when it only stays on our body for a few seconds before getting washed off? | If I understood correctly, you are basically asking how soap works.
Soap/shampoo/body wash has molecules that can interact with both the water and the fat/dirt you want to remove. These molecules have a polar portion, which binds them to water, and an apolar portion, which makes them able to interact with organic matter (fat, dirt, basically what you want to remove when using soap). So in a way, soap allows the organic matter (dirt) to become "soluble" in water. You're not really destroying the dirt molecules per se, as much as allowing them to be washed away and go down the drain. |
How does physical manipulation (e.g. massage) relax muscles? Does pressure create physiological changes in the tissue? | Stimulation of mechanoreceptors in the skin/muscle/fascia tissue can also activate inhibitory interneurons in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord. This dampens the activity of A-delta and C pain fibers, resulting in short term reduction of pain. This obviously is only a small part of how a massage works physiologically, but its all that i can contribute |
why, if we are searching for something, can we not seem to see it even if we are looking right at it? | These are all excellent answers, but i think it's mostly attention fatigue and familiarity. You know how in Jurassic Park the T-Rex couldn't see anyone unless they moved? Kind of the same thing - your brain is built to see unusual things first, but when you're looking for something that's right in front of you you can't see it because your brain has already decided it's part of the background, and safe to ignore.
Or brain tumors, sometimes. It could be tumor. |
How are underwater tunnels built? (Such as the one from Copenhagen to Malmö) Additionally, what steps and precautions are taken to ensure it will not flood both during and after construction? | This is called an *immersed tube tunnel*. The first thing to do is to cut a trench in the seafloor along the route of the tunnel. Meanwhile, prefabricated sections of the tube are built in dry docks from steel or reinforced concrete. These are then sealed at each end with temporary bulkheads and floated to the construction site. When it is in the correct location, the tube is ballasted and sunk to the seabed alongside the previous section of tube.
The two sections are linked using rubber seals and the bulkheads removed. Then the tube is covered with gravel which weighs it down on the seafloor and prevents it being damaged by ships. The next section can then be moved into position. This site has some nice graphics about how it has been done including in Scandinavia.
[_URL_2_](_URL_2_)
Immersed tubes only really work in shallow waters. For deeper channels the tunnel - until now - has been cut into the bedrock below the seafloor using a tunnel boring machine. However, the Norwegians are looking at a *submerged floating tunnel* to cross the Sognefjord. Here, the tunnel actually hangs in the water from giant floats - the idea has been around for a long time, but no one (and I really can't think why anyone would have a problem of being in a tunnel hanging in the middle of the ocean) has yet built one. There's a list of proposed projects here:
[_URL_0_](_URL_1_) |
If a huge and dense enough amount of coherent light was emitted, would it create a black hole traveling at the speed of light? | A system of photons all moving in the same direction has no invariant mass, so you can Lorentz-transform into a frame where they have arbitrarily small energy. And in such a frame, it's clear that they should not form a black hole.
And, a black hole has mass so it can never move at c.
But anyway, it's in principle possible to create a black hole purely out of light, you just need to make sure that it's not all moving in the same direction.
If you have two photons moving in opposite directions, this system has nonzero invariant mass.
So you can imagine an inwardly-moving spherical shell of photons all converging onto a single point. When the invariant mass of this system is within its Schwarzschild radius, in theory a black hole could form. This is called *kugelblitz*, but it's never been observed. |
why haven't we invented a better way to clean teeth than brushing/flossing? | A few reasons contribute to why a new method of cleaning teeth is not out.
1. The need for a new method to clean teeth is almost non-existent. Brush, floss and go to the dentist every 6 months can guarantee healthy teeth in the long run.
2. Products like toothbrush and toothpaste are cheap for the regular joe. Customers are satisfied.
3. It's only a minor hassle that people have accepted. If it is a hassle that is big enough, the demand for a new cleaning method will rise and it might be on the market really soon. But as of now, the demand for a new method is low.
4. Yes, it is true that we need a water source. To satisfy the need for a water source, we have invented plumbing. The majority of the human population aren't nomads, just one good water system and we're good to go.
5. The hair on a stick and the durable string tools is simply good enough to do 95% of the job. The other 5% is done by dentists every 6 months. Why must we invent another tool or method simply because its predecessor is ancient?
Here are more tools that are way older than your great grandmother. Paper, ink, pencil, fork, spoon, knife and the list goes on and on. If you use my argument to say "then why the fuck did we invent the computer that replaces the calendar, dvd player, newspapers etc?" Here is my answer. It is easy enough to program a computer to do the job. Perhaps in the future there exists a full body cleansing machine which will replace the floss and the toothbrush. |
Did sailors/pirates really walk bare foot on wooden ships? Wouldn't they get stubbed toe's and splinters very fast, especially after and during battles? | Shoes were expensive, and sailors were supplying their own clothing. In the British Royal Navy sailors had pay deducted even for canvas pants. So there was a real incentive to keep shoes for special occasions (such as exchanging them for rum at a tavern).
Soles of the feet can become calloused and somewhat impervious to splinters pretty fast. |
- how is it scientists are finding links between meat and cancer when humankind has always existed on meat and vegetable diet? | Just because we've always done something doesn't mean that it wouldn't cause cancer. We've always lived under the same sun, but sunlight is a cause of cancer.
Humankind has more cancer now than ever before *primarily* because we're living longer than ever before. When your primary causes of death aren't childbirth, starvation, exposure, or preventable disease, you start seeing more late-onset disorders than before. |
why is it so difficult to memorize some of the things which we really need to whereas somethings we easily memorize without even putting in the effort to do so? | The amount of interest one has in the endeavor. Say for instance, as a language teacher, you’re teaching students that are either very keen on the subject or resistant to it due to the amount of interest they have in the language. The students who are more interested in the subject will always do better than the students who are in class due to parental pressure.
Another good example is when I moved to South Korea with my best friend, we both came to the country with an equal amount of knowledge of the language spoken here. I went on to learning the language far quicker than he did due to his lack of willingness to learn. But, we both also studied Japanese too, here he excelled at the same rate I did in Korean.
The brain has a tendency to turn off the recording mechanism when it appears to have found unimportant information, where as it records and holds onto information it enjoys or has an interest in.
This is just one example I’m giving to why somethings are memorized faster and longer than other things. From my experiences as an ESL teacher for 15 years in South Korea. |
When did the sentiment, "That America was founded on Christian principles", begin to be popularized? | This is a great question! I will love to jump into it.
This notion that America was founded on as a Christian nation stems religious revivals that took America by storm during the first half of the 19th century. This period, often regarded as the "[Second Great Awakening](_URL_1_)" began in a period right after the Constitution was created (usually around 1790) and lasted until 1840. This movement flourished in American history, causing many new sects of Christianity to be created (like Mormonism) along with seeing established minorities (like Millennialists) transform into what would become the Evangelical movements. In order to explain what changed, I feel like it's worthwhile to address what things were like *before* 1790, otherwise, it appears to be much less significant as to why things changed.
**Pre-Constitution American Religious History**
America's early religious history is quite different from what most people believe today. If you were doing a straw poll in 1775 and asked colonists from all over the 13 colonies, “Do you identify as a Christian?” the overwhelming majority would say, “yes,” however, it leads to another question that begs to be answered: What did “being a Christian” mean in 1775? Most Christians didn’t simply identify themselves as “Christian” when regarding their religion. More importantly, they did not view *others* as Christian simply because they were a part of a Christian denomination. By 1775, well over a dozen major sects of Christianity were present across the United States, and some were more divisive than others. The most popular religion was the Anglican Church, whom, by 1775, had majority populations in many states, including Maryland, where at least 66% of their 94,000 population (of white people) was estimated to be Anglican.(1) About 7.5% were Catholic, about 6% Presbyterian, about 3% Quaker and the remainder being various other sects, (Unitarian, Methodists, etc.) This is just one example, but it's an easy example to show that most people identified as one of these major sects. However, that does not mean that because someone identified as part of a religion, that it was actively part of their life.
Historians acknowledge that while most American professed to being religious, around 15% actually belonged to a church in 1775 and at most, 20% of Americans attended at least one church service annually.(2) This varied from state to state, with people in South Carolina having the highest rate of annual church attendance (30%) versus rural parts of New York, now present day Vermont having the lowest (10%). It's worth mentioning that there was also a strong distrust of people of different faiths during this period. Protestants distrusted Catholics. Everyone distrusted Quakers (who, generally speaking, refused to fight or support the war). And nearly all minority religions hated Anglicans because Anglicans had all the power during the pre-war years.
The idea of saying that America was established as "Christian Nation" is factually inaccurate because to 18th century Americans, being a Christian was not good enough. You had to be the *right type* of Christian, thus people relied on a form of tribalism that splintered parts of the country. During the American Revolution, multiple states, including Pennsylvania and Maryland both had state legislatures that sought to prevent people of some religions from voting and/or holding public office.(3) The wording also precluded non-Christians, specially Jews from having any say in the democratic process.(4) Things changed in every state during the next decade, but there was a ton of fighting for it. A minority voice in the Virginia state legislature fought to impose a tax to support local churches during the 1780s, and was even privately supported by Founders like George Washington, but was shot down in 1786.(5) My major point is that there was a lot of distrust and between people of different religions which in turn caused a ton of friction between feuding sects during this period.
The victory of the American Revolution deeply emboldened many founders where most, generally speaking, did not hold passionate religious convictions. (6) Jefferson’s Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom stands as an obvious example of this, but I actually went into a lot [more detail about this in another post](_URL_0_). Private letters from the founders to each other also suggest that it was extremely important to them that America be established as a place deeply rooted in secular ideals.
**Post Constitution American Religious History**
So how did the narrative change? Well, as stated above, the tone of Religion began to change in 1790, but really started to ramp up in the 1810s. Jon Butler, a leading American religious historian repeatedly argued that the reason we believe today that the earliest generations of Americans were highly religious, and in turn started to claim we were a "Christian Nation" is because later generations desired that we believe it. Butler argues that religion was used as a tool for the religiosity of later generations who were exaggerating and even fabricating some of their claims about America’s religious past to spread their own messages. This can clearly be seen in many of his works, including his book *Awash in the Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People*. In this book, Butler also explains that America’s religious leaders feared this secularization, and sought to bring back religion into American society. Here Butler explains:
> Between the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and George Washington’s death in 1799, American church and denominational leaders renewed efforts to stamp Christian values and goals on a now independent society. three of these attempts proved especially important: powerful Christian explanations of the Revolution and of the proper political order that ought to govern American society, attacks on irreligion, especially on skepticism and deism, and the creation of new religious groups, which evinced principles that for the first time might be called distinctively American. (pp 212)
This push towards having a religious revival was not orchestrated by united leaders of different Christian denominations, but rather happened independently that road the waves of change in American society during this period and can be seen when examining independent religions. Methodists, which were a minority religion in 1776, boomed to having 250,000 members by 1820, and by 1830, that number doubled. (7) Similar themes for Bapists happened, where their numbers tripled between 1783 and 1813.(8) Part of why this was so effective is that Christianity became an effective enterprise where being a part of a growing church was highly desirable.(9) Part of this revival also intertwined from the desire to repaint America’s origin stories as being extremely virtuous and Christian. An example of this can be seen through biographies written on the founders by American pastors and ministers. Mason Weems, for example, invented the story of George Washington being unable to tell a lie about chopping down his father’s cherry tree. [The story appears in his fifth edition of Washington’s biography, and is certainly a figment of his imagination](_URL_2_) however it was at the beginning of a trend that sought to paint the founders as deeply moral men that would never do anything that lacked virtue. This is especially true for other founders who held deistic beliefs, which was harshly frowned upon by the 1810s.(10)
Ultimately, the founders sought to instill secular values into the American government when support of organized religion was comparatively low. When religious revivalism spread through America during the ensuing decades, people sought to portray America’s religious history as being deeply rooted in Christianity, although the sources do not suggest this is true.
1) Maryland State Archives, *Brown Book:* Letter from A.(?) L.S. 1781 April 17 - 461 VII. 71 pp 89
2). Jon Butler. "Magic, Astrology, and the Early American Religious Heritage, 1600-1760" *The American Historical Review*, Vol. 84, No. 2. Apr., 1979, pp.
3) Alan Taylor. *American Revolutions: A Continental History*, 1750-1804. W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition. 2016. pp 359
4) R. Marie Griffith. *American Religion: A Documentary History* Oxford University Press. New York. 2008 pp 148-149
5) Proposed Resolution of the Maryland House of Delegates. Broadside, January 12, 1785. Broadside Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress pp 131
6) John Butler: *Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christionizing the American People* Oxford University press, 1992. pp 214
7) Nathan Hatch. *The Democratization of American Christianity*. Oxford University Press. 1990. pp 3
8) Hatch. pp 3
9) Hatch pp 4
10) Butler. pp 214 |
if a pilot crashes a plane due to a mechanical failure and crash lands into some number of people, killing them, who is at fault? | Well, 'mechanical failure' excludes the pilot entirely.
Now, it's up to the National Transportation Safety Board. (NTSB) or equivalent agencies to investigate and determine whether it's the maintenance (airlines, military branch, or private operator) at fault, or the manufacturer (who built the plane(Boeing, Lockheed, Airbus, Cessna), etc.).
They do this by collecting every piece of the plane after it crashes, and look for anything out of order for any reason not caused by the crash itself.
For example: if they find a segment of hydraulic line with a leak in it, enclosed in an unaffected segment of wing, then good chance is that's at fault.
They then look at the maintenance logs, and see if it was checked and replaced as frequently as it needed to be. If not, maintenance at fault. If it is, they look to see if it's happened more than once, indicating a substandard grade element used in the manufacture, or if only once- more likely a defect made by the manufacturer or subcontractor.
If it's a defect, covered by relevant insurance, if substandard element- planes retrofitted with better alternative, victim payout comes out of general liability insurance. |
What civilisation existed before Sumer? I know a little bit about Jericho & Cathalhoyuk, but I’m not too sure about anything else & can’t find too much around the internet | **Sumer is the first "civilization."**
Archaeologists have used many definitions of "civilization" over the years, but today most use it to mean urbanized, state-level societies.
A "civilization" has *all* of the following: (1) cities, with large, complex social organizations, themselves in much larger territories than in earlier times; and (2) centralized economies based on tribute and taxation; and (3) advances toward formal record-keeping, as well as some form of written script or a close alternative; and (4) impressive public buildings and monumental architecture, such as palaces and temples; and (5) some form of all-embracing state religion and ideology in which the ruler played a leading role, often as a living god.
By this definition, the first civilizations were Sumer and Egypt. People were farming in northern Iraq by 8,000 B.C.E., and the city of Eridu had a mud brick temple by 4,700 B.C.E. As early as 3,500, a secular ruler governed the city of Uruk, and writing evolved around 3,400. True Sumerian civilization evolved around 3,100 B.C.E.
Likewise, people farmed along the Nile River by 5,000 B.C.E., and Upper Egypt (in the south) consisted of several pre-dynastic kingdoms by 3,500 B.C.E. The first pharaoh of unified Egypt ruled in about 3,000 B.C.E.
**TL;DR: there was no "civilization" before Sumer. Sumer became a civilization in approximately 3,100 B.C.E. Egypt evolved independently as a civilization around the same time.**
**What about humans before Sumer?**
Modern humans (*homo sapiens sapiens*) evolved before 100,000 years ago. They lived as roving bands of hunter-gatherers until they learned to farm in approximately 10,000 B.C.E.
The inhabitants of the Abu Hureyra mound in Syria hunted gazelle to the exclusion of almost any other game. They also lived off about half a dozen staple grasses but knew of at least 200 others for eating, medical, and ritual purposes. To a considerable extent, they were managing and tending their environment well before they domesticated plants. Abu Hureyra began as a small village around 10,500 B.C.E. and flourished until 6,500 B.C.E.
Similarly, Jericho in the West Bank (Israel/Palestine) is indeed one of the most important antiquity sites that teaches us about the change to settled agriculture.
Underneath extensive Iron Age and Bronze Age occupation layers, Kenyon unearthed two much earlier farming settlements with substantial houses. The earliest of these, dating to earlier than 9,000 B.C.E., was a cluster of beehive-shaped huts. The closely packed dwellings nested inside a rock-cut ditch nearly 9 feet deep and a well-built stone wall complete with a tower.
The fortifications of this large village, which covered nearly 10 acres, are a mystery. They were either built for defense—Jericho lies astride a strategic route from the coast to the desert⎯or, perhaps, as flood control works.
After farming developed in Southwest Asia, it spread to Europe by 7,000 B.C.E. We know less about farming in East Asia, but archaeologists believe wild rice collectors in the Yangtze Valley turned to deliberate cultivation between 7,200 and 5,500 B.C.E. Archaeologists believe Mesoamericans domesticated squash by 8,000 B.C.E. People may have domesticated maize in the Mexican lowlands by 5,000 B.C.E. The Andeans tamed quinoa and the potato earlier than 2,000 B.C.E.
**Okay, but what about art, culture, religion, and burial practices -- the other elements of proto-civilization?**
Sometime between 40,000 and 30,000 years ago, Europeans first began making ornaments, such as beads, pendants, and perforated animal teeth to adorn their persons. At about the same time, the Cro-Magnons (modern European humans) started painting images of animals, signs, and anthropomorphic figures on cave walls.
The Cro-Magnons were brilliant artists in stone, antler, bone, clay, ivory, and probably wood. The Cro-Magnons are most famous for their rock art—paintings and engravings deep in the caves of southern France and Spain.
Humans had developed ideas of kin ties and the supernatural by 18,000 years ago. During the summers, neighboring groups came together at specific locations where game or salmon were abundant for a few weeks a year. At these times, groups arranged marriages, performed initiation ceremonies, practiced highly intense rituals, and invoked the ancestors and forces of the spiritual world to ensure the continuity of life. Shamans told tales and wove spells.
**TL;DR: I know you didn't ask about Cro-Magnons and the Neolithic Revolution (invention of farming), but these are crucially important for understanding human technology and culture before the first civilizations arose in Sumer and Egypt.**
**Paleolithic and mesolithic humans (hunter-gatherers before humans invented farming) made beads, jewelry, decorated weapons, and magnificent rock art starting 40,000 years ago. They developed kin groups, marriage, story-telling, ceremonies, and shamanic proto-religions.**
**The oldest archaeological evidence of farming dates to Abu Hureyra in Syria in 10,000 B.C.E. People farmed near Jericho in the West Bank around 9,000 B.C.E. Farming developed in Europe, East Asia, and the Americas after that.**
**Human groups lived in tribes, settlements, and villages with this primitive art, social organization, and farming until Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations arose around 3,000 B.C.E.**
Sources:
Brian Fagan, *People of the Earth*.
Bruce Smith, *The Emergence of Agriculture*.
Clive Gamble, *The Palaeolithic Societies of Europe*.
Kathleen Kenyon, *Digging up Jericho.*
Brian Fagan and Kenneth Garrett, *Egypt of the Pharaohs*.
Chris Scarre and Brian Fagan, *Ancient Civilizations*.
Paul Kwiwaczek, *Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization*.
Samuel Kramer, *The Sumerians*.
Note to self: don't type about archaeology on my phone. Corrected multiple misspellings of the words "arch(a)eology" and "pharaoh." |
Since a Muslim cannot enslave another Muslim, most of the Ottoman Janissaries were kept Christian. Why didn't they convert to Islam to win their freedom? | I think you have a slight misunderstanding. Muslims can absolutely *have Muslim slaves*. The Mamluks for whom the Ottomans' predecessor empire was named started off as, yup, Muslim slaves. The famous "singing girls" of the medieval Islamic courts from al-Andalus to Baghdad were almost all slaves. ~~Muslim children of Muslim slaves are still slaves.~~ *(This only ends up true in rare cases; see discussions below.)* The issue is that a Muslim cannot *enslave* another Muslim, that is, they cannot take a free Muslim and make him or her into a slave.
The janissaries were indeed typically taken from the Orthodox Christian population (until the corps became prestigious enough that Muslim families volunteered their sons freely); however, their education amounted to a forced conversion. (Of course their teachers would have maintained conversion was simply the natural result of good moral instruction and perhaps peer pressure.) For example, 16th century janissary Sokollu Mehmed Pasha was Serbian Christian by birth but eventually became grand vizier, and in his extreme wealth he founded/patronized mosques all over the Empire. |
There are thousands of pigeons in central London. They don't seem to be eaten by birds of prey. What's preventing predation? | The volume of pigeons far outweighs the predatory ability of birds of prey.
That said, there are plenty of good examples of predatory birds making a living off of pigeons.
[From wikipedia](_URL_1_)
[One example: Pale Male in NYC](_URL_0_) |
why is there a difference in voltage between america and pretty much the rest of the world (240v vs 120v i believe) and what are the impacts of this in terms of energy transport/conservation and usage. | Every country developed their basic infrastructures independently with different scientists and during an era that communication between countries took days at best, weeks on average, and sometimes months if conditions were bad. As time progressed infrastructures and communications were improved and those countries that lived next to each other often started to share standards and even interconnect their infrastructures. The US being mostly geographically isolated kept its own standard. Our neighbors match our standards. |
how are about 1000 books the #1 best selling in new york? | I assume you are referring to the New York Times bestseller list. Those are for everywhere, not just New York.
The list goes out every week, so if a book is #1 for even a single week, it can call itself a #1 bestseller. So technically there could be 52 #1 bestsellers a year in each category (fiction, nonfiction, hardcover, paperback). Realistically there will not be that many, as books tend to stay on top for several weeks.
Another reason it might seem like every book is #1 is that the bestselling books are the ones you hear the most about... because they are bestsellers. |
Did the bizarre practice of turning men into eunuchs (and then giving these men substantial responsibilities) emerge independently in many places, or do we have some evidence of it starting in one place and then spreading through cultural diffusion? | Sorry for the delay… I’d have gotten this last night but it appears IFTTT is down, and that’s how I get summoned to the subreddit!
Well first let me spoil the ending here: we don’t know, you can definitely argue for a single-eunuch-creationism theory or a multiple-convergent-evolution theory, and historians certainly do, there are a few eunuch traditions we can argue were directly inspired (or instigated) by one culture to another, but in general this historian believes eunuchs are as close to a biotruth as anything else in human history.
SO, to begin, let us begin nicely at the beginning, who were the first eunuchs? We don’t know, but it’s likely that eunuchs were born sometime before writing. The first records of eunuchs (meaning men serving a specific social/cultural role for which castration had qualified them, and not just merely castrated men, the difference is fine but very important) come from Assyria. Eunuchs in this society are documented pretty much exactly as we’d expect in any other era and place - serving as politicians/servants in the court. The funny thing is though, they basically spring onto the historical record fully formed, there is no “gradual” appearance of eunuchs, it’s just bloop, they’re there, like anyone else at court, and why wouldn’t they be? There is no explanation for them, their existence was apparently as obvious to the Assyrians as they are baffling to us. This indicates that they are older than their appearance on the record. But, since then, you can draw a pretty straight timeline from culture to culture in the area of the Cradle of Civilization of eunuchs, from Assyria down to the Ottoman Empire in the 1930s, and I think it would be hard to argue that the technology of eunuchs was ever really lost and rediscovered in that area of the world. So there’s a decent argument you can make that it was invented once, and meme’d its way around the world, and we just don’t know the particulars of how it was passed in all instances. There are more clear examples too – the Korean eunuchs would be the easiest; they were explicitly passed from China to Korea, who they had subjugated.
There are however, some oddities of eunuch traditions that you can’t easily draw a line from their culture to another to say how they invented it. China is the big one – some make the argument that China was inspired by the ~~Byzantines~~ Ancient Romans, but I find it hard to support, unless you’re just desperate to prove this nasty little eunuch habit came from someplace else. Chinese eunuchs, like the Assyrian ones, pop up more or less as if they’d always been there. Same for the Italian castrati, they also pop up at the end of the 16th century, already there casually leaning on the edges of history, with no explanation for themselves, like almost every other eunuch tradition. There’s a few weak attempts to say they got the idea from someone else (usually “The Moors,” a nicely convenient scapegoat of a different religion and ethnicity) but after years and years, I have found no good support for blaming the castrato phenomenon on anyone. [Here’s a link to an old post where I wrote in more detail about the theories of the origin of castrati in particular.]( _URL_2_)
Separate to all this… there is an argument that castration of humans was invented after the discovery of the benefits of castration in animals as part of the invention of agriculture, and you’ll see a few people arguing the jump went from animal to man. But for my money, I think they have it a bit backwards. Messing with private parts (circumcision and other stuff) is something close to a cultural universal, you see it in lots and lots of cultures, and not all of them agricultural. Men have external sex organs, they’re hard not to look down and notice, their function would be easy to observe through sex and accidents, nor is it hard to look over at your neighbor and think “hmmmm.” Castration is not exactly that complex of an idea, to be plain, you think it’s “bizarre” now but you also codex books are normal and that’s way more complicated of an idea. But there’s no reason eunuchs can’t be independently invented.
[I believe this is the most recent work on Assyrian and Hittite eunuchs,]( _URL_3_) and free to read online! Discussion of the origin of Chinese eunuchs is good in [this book.]( _URL_0_) [Gary Taylor]( _URL_1_) works on the agricultural theory in this book… I, uh, have some Big Problems with this book, but maybe if you want a different opinion on the origin of castration. :) |
Did anyone ever figure out what caused the massive bird and fish deaths last year? | I am slightly involved with research on some of the die-offs that involve marine mammals, or UMEs as they are known in the trade. (Unusual Mortality Events) Basically there are always die-offs, every single year, in every group of animals, somewhere in the world. That list for last year doesn't actually look unusual, and I was always sort of puzzled about why it hit the news that year and not in other years. There are a hell of a lot of animal diseases out there, and epidemics sweep through now and then. For marine mammals the most common causes are epidemic disease (for example morbilliviruses that sweep down fom the north now and then when northern seals sometimes stray south), and red-tide-related outbreaks of toxins like domoic acid and brevetoxin. See [here](_URL_2_) for a great review. In other taxa there are very similar issues.
Marine mammal UMEs in the US are tracked by NOAA. (See [here](_URL_3_) for more info) but the monitoring program is not well funded and is very imperfect. UMEs often only get reported in areas were there's a good marine mammal stranding network and a good necropsy facility to look at the carcasses. Last year there was clearly a die-off going on of harbor seals in the Gulf of Maine, but it took forever to get it reported because nobody in Maine had any funding to compile the necessary evidence and send it to NOAA. There was also another pinniped dieoff in Alaska that had different symptoms, and sick sea lions in Calif. Anyway, the Maine harbor seals turned out to have a new strain of influenza A.
By far the UME of greatest interest is the one that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico starting *three months before* the BP oil spill began (see [here](_URL_1_) for NOAA's page on it), with mortality worsening rapidly during/after the spill - BP is going to try to play this into "they were already dying, it wasn't our fault" so there's quite a few people trying to figure that one out. Hornet's nest of lawyers and I personally wouldn't touch that case with a ten-foot pole, but that's another story.
Backing up to the bigger picture: are epidemic disease outbreaks more common in wildlife than they used to be? Certainly a lot of introduced diseases like West Nile have, with human assistance, colonized new places where they didn't used to be. Climate change is likely accelerating spread of certain diseases to new areas, especially tropical diseases spreading slowly poleward. There's a lot of speculation about whether chronically stressed animals, or animals carrying high toxin loads, are more vulnerable to disease than they would have been otherwise (see [here](_URL_0_)). Probably stress/toxin load/etc do play a role - for example dolphins living in polluted estuaries are known to be more vulnerable to disease than "cleaner" dolphins (see above refs).
So it's probably not one thing. It's a bunch of different diseases and toxins that often are hitting stressed, vulnerable animals in polluted/degraded habitats. |
If birds have hollow bones, and bone marrow produces red blood cells, how do birds make red blood cells? | Birds have bone marrow it just doesn't intersperse through the central region of bones like in humans. Avian bones aren't hollow in the sense that they're like straws with absolutely nothing inside them. There are networks of structural fibers that help give their bones strength. Bone marrow is likewise interspersed and around the hollow cavities in a bird's bones. |
what happens in our brains when we realize we've driven miles/minutes and don't even remember consciously driving them? | This happens when your subconscious mind starts handling processes that you normally control consciously. Normally, you're paying attention to the road and staying alert. When you're an experienced driver, you can pass the task of staying between the lines to your subconscious, and stop being alert for hazards. Because you're performing subconsciously, your mind doesn't bother to record these times to memory, so you won't remember more than a hazy idea of driving those minutes/miles. When something snaps you out of the subconscious routine, you realize you haven't been alert for hazards, which is a decidedly unsettling feeling. |
why do people say they will treat bombs as a terrorist attack until proven otherwise? isn't a bombing in nature an act of terrorism regardless of who did it? | > Isn't a bombing in nature an act of terrorism regardless of who did it?
No. Terrorism is using fear as a tool to try to force some sort of political or social change.
If the point of a bomb is to try to cause a group of people to comply with some sort of demand because they're terrified of being blown up if they don't, that's terrorism. But if someone is setting off a bomb just because they're crazy and want to kill people, that's not terrorism.
In short, whether or not something is terrorism is a matter of intent (much like whether or not something is first degree murder is a matter of intent). |
why does it take 5 seconds for credit card/debit card companies to take money out of my account but 5 days for them to refund it? | Different systems... First you have to realize there is a difference between authorizations and postings.
A charge is only "real" against your account when it's posted. It's posted when the merchant does their batch close (typically) except for debit. When you do a credit transaction there is an authorization against your account but you don't "owe" the money until it posts.
Refunds to debit if done at a POS terminal should be automatic (just like charges).
Refunds to credit take time because they go through the same path as charges. If it took 3 days for your charge to post you can be assured it will take 3 days for the refund to post.
Now why don't they just authorize refunds? I suspect because when you auth a charge no money has changed hands yet. The bank [or credit company] still has the money they were lending you. It only goes to the merchant when they do a batch close and post the transaction. So if they did an auth refund there would be two copies of the same money. You'd have your refund and the merchant wouldn't have had to cough up the money yet.
Now why do they take so long to do batch closes? Probably because each close costs money (+ transaction fees and percentages). So they do them every few days to save money. |
how do wall street firms (like the one mitt romney ran) make money acquiring businesses and shutting down the entire operation? | Because sometimes a company is worth more cut into pieces and sold as scrap than it is as a functioning unit.
Other times a company has one really profitable unit that could (in theory at least) be worth more than the original company... if it wasn't shackled to the corpse of the larger company.
Private Equity is a very interesting and complex business. |
Was it common for Allied soldiers to execute Nazi guards when they liberated concentration camps out of revenge or anger? | Yes, Allied soldiers did summarily execute concentration camp guards or allow prisoners to do it themselves.
A famous example took place in the hours after the liberation of Dachau by elements of the 42nd and 45th Infantry Divisions. The remaining German guards (some SS but mostly *Volkssturm* militia made up of old men and Hitler Youth) had put up some resistance in the form of a short firefight, but they were quickly subdued and rounded up. However, when the Americans found several rail cars full of dead bodies, they began shooting the captured guards, by some accounts over 120 in total. Other guards were turned over to the prisoners, who made short work of them. The official 7th Army report of the liberation makes no mention of the executions, but many eyewitness accounts exist.
Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria was liberated by the US 11th Armored Division. The camp commandant surrendered the camp to the Americans, but many of the SS guards tried to flee and were shot by US soldiers. Other guards were killed by prisoners while in custody in locked cells awaiting processing as prisoners of war or war criminals. One American GI was standing around when a prisoner shuffled up to him and through gesturing asked for the GI's carbine. The GI complied, and the prisoner went off, shot several *kapos* (prisoners who acted as lower-level guards, often acting as the most brutal of all the guards), and then returned the carbine.
At Bergen-Belsen, the British captured about 50 Hungarian SS guards when the camp commandant handed the camp over to them (the German SS slipped out before the handover). Belsen was in the middle of a massive typhus epidemic that would eventually claim the lives of tens of thousands of prisoners. The British were incensed by what they found and forced the Hungarian SS to bury the dead in full uniform (under the hot sun) and without protective gloves to guard against the lice that transmit typhus, fully intending to work them to death. 20 of the 50 Hungarian SS died before higher British authorities intervened and had the Hungarians removed from the camp.
At Buchenwald, American soldiers watched (and in some cases aided by providing firearms) as the prisoners killed around 80 former guards who were trying to hide in prisoners' garb or in the surrounding forests.
Sources:
Abzug, Robert H. *Inside the Vicious Heart: Americans and the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps*. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Bridgman, Jon. *The End of the Holocaust: The Liberation of the Camps*. Ed. Richard H. Jones. Portland, Oregon: Areopagitica, 1990.
Flanagan, Ben, and Donald Bloxham, eds. *Remembering Belsen: Eyewitnesses Record the Liberation*. Portland, Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 2005.
Hirsh, Michael. *The Liberators: America's Witnesses to the Holocaust*. New York: Random House, 2010.
Perry, Michael W., ed. *Dachau Liberated: The Official Report by the U.S. Seventh Army*. Seattle, Washington: Inkling Books, 2000.
Sacco, Jack. *Where the Birds Never Sing: The True Story of the 92nd Signal Battalion and the Liberation of Dachau*. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.
Shephard, Ben. *After Daybreak: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, 1945*. New York: Shocken, 2005.
Smith, Marcus J. *The Harrowing of Hell: Dachau*. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1995. |
Were prisons in the US segregated? And if so, what was the transition period like? | I have an earlier answer that addresses legal versus de facto segregation in California prisons...specifically, [one very famous California prison](_URL_1_). I've highlighted some of the most relevant portions here:
* [Has the percent of incarcerated people of color increased since Johnny Cash played at Folsom Prison or were only white men allowed to see him perform?](_URL_0_)
According to Jim Marshall, **Cash's audience for his two January 1968 concerts included black, white, and Hispanic prisoners alike**. And Marshall should know--he's the guy who [took the photographs](_URL_2_) demonstrating [exactly that!](_URL_3_)
Black Americans have been incarcerated at rate disproportionate to population demographics since--surprise, surprise--white people killed Reconstruction. This has been as true in California as anywhere else, and perhaps insidiously so given the state's generally liberal reputation. And Folsom Prison had its part to play. In 1940, California's population was 1.8% black but the population of inmates at San Quentin 9%; Folsom, recently reorganized into the state's maximum security prison, had a black population of 12%. As more and more black Americans sought safety and success in California over the decades of the Great Migration, the black prison population swelled. By 1960, black people comprised 5.6% of California's population and *22%* of new prison inmates overall.
So what gives with the photo?
**Like most prisons, Folsom had a long history of internally segregating prisoners where it could. And as testimony after testimony reflected, into the 1960s this was an explicitly and purposefully racist move.** In 1943, a black man incarcerated at Folsom wrote to a committee sponsored by the governor:
> Our servitude here is limited to inferior work. The only work that is given to Negroes is such as porter work, digging in the ground and breaking rock or what ever else the white inmates don’t want to do.
To be clear, Mills was only describing the few white men who were also forced to labor in the quarry alongside the black prisoners--most whites had better jobs altogether, including some that took them outside prison walls. (The quarry was later closed when outside groups and labor unions protested that it was taking their jobs). It's no wonder that black intellectuals like Angela Davis and Eldridge Cleaver (himself incarcerated at Folsom) depicted the American prison system as the new plantation slavery.
The situation wasn't any better either away from labor in Mills' day or during the 1950s and 60s, either. Black prisoners were routinely shunted to overcrowded cells on Folsom's top floors, suffering the worst in midsummer sweltering heat and always called last for recreation and meals. In 1959, a lawsuit brought against Folsom by a black inmate claimed that this was an ongoing problem, along with other officially imposed efforts at segregation.
Ethan Blue, meanwhile, highlights the **de facto social segregation** imposed by inmates on themselves even in common spaces:
> **There was plenty of [cross-racial collaboration and antagonism in the prison yard]**, when black,
white, Asian, and Mexican prisoners gambled, traded, joked around, and even loved each other...Nevertheless,
**racial segregation became the norm in San Quentin and Folsom. White prisoners enforced racial spaces to delineate privilege and hierarchy...Black prisoners could be booed (or worse) if they tried to sit and eat in the “white” section of the dining hall.**
Music, so racially politicized outside prison walls, became another focus for both crossing racial lines and policing them. Prison radio stations' variety shows happily broadcast performances by "in-house bands" like the (black) Hot Jivers and the (white) Rhythmic Stringsters, and individual performers might even cross racial lines to perform together. But when shows' hosts picked inmates to interview, they universally selected guests who "sounded white," and often used racially-coded descriptors like "freckled" and "ruddy" to affirm the audio's stereotypical assumption. And eagerly-anticipated drag shows and other annual events wouldn't be complete without a good dose of white prisoners in blackface.
So there were good reasons both for inmates of all races to attend Cash's concerts at Folsom in 1968, and for white inmates to try to muscle out black and Hispanic prisoners. Nevertheless, Johnny Cash was able and eager to close his shows with a song written by a white inmate, and shake hands with black and Hispanic inmates in the prison yard afterwards. But I mean--this is a man who prefaced a performance of *Battle Hymn of the Republic* ("As [Christ] died to make men holy / let us die to make men free") with remarks about how the song brought together a cleft country as soldiers and mothers on both sides could sing it. Whatever his own or prison racial politics, he at least wanted his music to bring people together. |
If bloodletting was rubbish, why was it considered as a medical procedure for such a long time? | I am not a historian, but rather a doctor who runs a podcast about medical history. Hopefully someone with a lot more experience in history of medicine will go into depth on Galen, the four humors, and the birth of scientific medicine. I actually want to address the second part of your question, and talk about the first actual clinical trial of bloodletting (therapeutic phlebotomy), and it was lost for almost 175 years. Alexander Lesassier Hamilton was a British military surgeon during the Peninsular War. He served with two other surgeons, and sometime during 1816, he decided to perform a clinical trial for his MD thesis. He was inspired by James Lind's famous scurvy trial, and actually included randomization of a sort. He and his colleagues treated 366 soldiers, and randomized by rotation each patient to one of the three surgeons. Lesassier Hamilton and a Mr. Anderson (surgeons would be called Mr. after completing their medical training, still done today in the UK) did not use bloodletting; the third surgeon did. I will just quote his conclusion here, because it's quite remarkable:
> It had been so arranged, that this number was
> admitted, alternately, in such a manner that each of
> us had one third of the whole. The sick were indiscriminately
> received, and were attended as nearly as
> possible with the same care and accommodated with
> the same comforts. One third of the whole were soldiers
> of the 61st Regiment, the remainder of my own
> (the 42nd) Regiment. Neither Mr Anderson nor
> I ever once employed the lancet. He lost two, I four
> cases; whilst out of the other third [treated with
> bloodletting by the third surgeon] thirty five patients
> died.
Just some back of the envelope calculations puts the number needed to harm (or really number needed to kill) at 4. That is, for every four patients treated with therapeutic phlebotomy, one would die. These days, in medicine we get excited about treatment effects with an NNT of 60 (by example the NNT to prevent a non-fatal stroke in a daily aspiring in 10,000 patients -- 10,000 people need to be given a daily aspirin for a year to prevent one non-fatal stroke).
What I find really interesting is that these papers, rather than being published, were locked up in a trunk until 1987, and apparently had very little impact on medical practice in the nineteenth century, if they were known at all.
The first widely-disseminated study that cast suspicion on bloodletting was from French physician Pierre Louis in 1828. He examined case records (he is known by some as the father of epidemiology, and did much to establish the field). He selected 77 patients who had been diagnosed with pneumonia, and then analyzed them as part of several groups -- notably, one being bled early (1-4 days after onset), and the other late (5-9). The two groups had roughly the same age (the Table 1 that doctors get so excited about in RCTs). His conclusion was that early bleeding led to a shorter duration of illness -- but a markedly higher mortality (44%, compared to 25% in the late group). He attempted to control for other factors, but the difference still remained. His ultimate conclusion was that bloodletting might have some useful effects in certain conditions, but far fewer than was previously thought.
After this, modern epidemiology, biostatistics, and our knowledge of physiology caught of with the practice of bloodletting. In 1855, Bennett confirmed Louis's findings, showing with statistics that declining phlebotomy led to increased survival in pneumonia. In the 1860s, Koch and Pasteur developed germ theory, and gave a pathophysiological explanation for the "inflammation" that phlebotomy was supposed to treat. The indications for phlebotomy narrowed -- but I should still note it was used in its traditional sense will into the 20th century. To quote from the Parapia article I have below:
> The first edition of ‘The Principles and Practice of Medicine’ published in 1952 states that venesection is indicated whenever pulmonary congestion or venous engorgement is extreme and other measures are ineffective
And therapeutic phlebotomy is STILL used today! It is an evidence-based treatment for polycythemia vera (where the body makes too many red blood cells), hemochromotosis (a genetic defect leads to iron overload; through phlebotomy people can lead normal lives), and porpyhria, not to mention for testing and for blood donation.
Okay, that turned out more than I thought -- I might actually use some of this for the podcast. Let me know if you have any other questions!
**Sources**
* Morabia A, Pierre-Charles-Alexandre Louis and the evaluation of bloodletting, J R Soc Med. 2006 Mar; 99(3): 158–160.
* Milne I and Chalmers I, Alexander Lesassier Hamilton’s 1816 report of a controlled trial of bloodletting. J Royal Soc Med. February 26, 2015
* Greenstone G, The history of bloodletting. BCMJ, Vol. 52, No. 1, January, February 2010, page(s) 12-14 Premise
* Parapia L, History of bloodletting by phlebotomy. BJH. (_URL_1_)
EDIT: As suggested! Thanks
I've gotten several messages, and as this is my public account as opposed to my private one, I don't mind any identification. The podcast is Bedside Rounds and you can find it in any of these fine purveyors of podcastery: [Apple Podcasts](_URL_0_) | [Stitcher](_URL_3_) | [Website](_URL_2_)
EDIT 2: Finally read what I wrote and fixed some egregious typos. Also took out the part about Austin Flint -- I hadn't had my AM coffee yet; Austin Flint's big contribution is the development of the placebo. |
I've often heard that the Battle of Britain was won by the Hurricane since it was so cheap to produce Britain could outnumber the more advanced German planes. Whilst the Spitfire was mostly used for propaganda as it was the "sexier" aircraft. Is this true? | The Battle of Britain is indeed a major reason for the Spitfire becoming an icon, a battle in which the Spitfire "plays the mythological role of a magical weapon, the equivalent of [...] Excalibur" (Stephen Bungay, *Most Dangerous Enemy*). As James Holland puts it "No other veterans of the Second World War are as hallowed as the Few [Churchill's description of RAF pilots in his famous [tribute] (_URL_1_)], but equally no aircraft is as hallowed as the Spitfire. This aircraft, above all others, has gained an iconic reverence not given to any other. (...) No wonder that generations of children have built models of this beautiful aircraft, or that thousands still flock to air shows every summer to watch them fly." For the UK the Battle was a defining moment of the war, before the massive contributions of the USA and USSR came into play, when Britain stood alone (though of course it wasn't *really* alone, with the rest of the Commonwealth behind it; around 20% of RAF pilots in the Battle came from overseas).
Most people with an interest in the Battle are aware that the RAF had almost twice as many Hurricanes as Spitfires (34 squadrons compared to 19), and they shot down more German aircraft (1,560 claims compared to 1,189). It certainly wasn't a case of outnumbering the Luftwaffe - the Luftwaffe outnumbered the RAF around 2:1 in July 1940 considering all types, it had 1,107 single-seat fighters to Fighter Command's 754. Radar, as part of the wider air defence network, was indeed essential to allow those aircraft to be deployed as efficiently as possible. The RAF's fighters had to have good performance to quickly climb from their airfields to engage incoming raids, and to be able to engage German fighters; though the Hurricane was slower than the Spitfire and Bf 109 it could turn more tightly than either, it could hold its own in a dogfight and was more than a match for German bombers. Where possible Spitfire squadrons were used to strip away fighter escorts from formations of bombers for the Hurricanes to engage, though in the chaos of air combat such distinctions often became moot.
The Hurricane was a less revolutionary design that the Spitfire, it had a fabric covered fuselage and thicker wing, making it was easier to build and repair - important considerations for a battle of attrition, as the Battle of Britain was. Production of airframes alone was only one element, though; someone had to fly them, pilot numbers were the critical factor by the end of August. Some considered the Hurricane a better aircraft for average pilots, a "brick-built shit-house" (in the words of Bob Doe), sturdy and reliable and easier to keep the guns on a target, but for a good pilot the superior performance of the Spitfire made it deadly. It wasn't mere "propaganda", on a per-aircraft basis Spitfires made more claims than Hurricanes. The Spitfire did catch the public imagination more, probably slightly unfairly; [Spitfire funds] (_URL_0_) were set up all over the country, raising a huge amount of money for the government, much to the chagrin of some Hurricane pilots. As Bungay puts it: "[The Hurricane] was very good, but a somewhat plain and homely country girl, well-behaved and reliable. [...] [The Spitfire was] a real glamour-puss, a lady of such refined but curvaceous beauty and class that she instantly seduced every young man who climbed into her cockpit, and with such charisma that the public as a whole just stopped and stared every time she passed. They still do."
The Spitfire also had greater longevity than the Hurricane, its fundamental design allowing ever more powerful engines to be fitted in, ultimately, 24 different marks. The Hurricane performed sterling service in overseas theatres and was replaced by the Typhoon then Tempest, the Spitfire remained the primary air defence fighter of the RAF throughout the war. The two aircraft were both vital elements during the Battle, and though the Spitfire might be a bit of a glory hog, almost blotting out the rest of the RAF in the public imagination, it was (and is) a great, and beautiful, aeroplane, not a case of style over substance.
(See also [a previous post about the Spitfire](_URL_2_)) |
What is the earliest known instance of a type of weapon/warfare being "banned" by both sides of an armed conflict? | Chemical weapons were actually banned before the UN came about. The 1929 Geneva Protocol to the Hague Convention banned their use in international warfare, but in theory they had been already banned by the 1899 Hague Convention.
As for Nukes, my understanding is that there is no treaty that explicitly bans their use but that at the request of the UN, the ICJ has stated that they are effectively banned by other laws concerning conduct in war, but this isn't a total given.
Anyways though, the Hague Conventions was the first major codification of the laws of modern war. Among other things, it banned the use of dum-dums and other ammunition designed to expand when striking soft tissue, and as I said, they banned gas warfare... that wasn't really listened too... There were attempts to ban the use of aerial warfare, but it didn't work out all that well. 1899 had a short term ban which didn't get renewed at the 1907 Convention.
The Hague wasn't the first example of weapon bans in war. The Pope banned the use of crossbows in war - only against other Christians though - in the 12th Century at the Second Lateran Council. Just how often that prohibition was followed though, I am unsure.
Hague wasn't the first in terms of modern warfare either. Preceding it, at the very least I know of the 1868 St. Petersberg agreement which banned exploding bullets to be used. Artillery was fine, but projectiles under a certain weight couldn't be exploding. The first Geneva Convention dates to 1864, but I don't believe it dealt with weapons, just with dealing with the wounded.
So to filter out all the extra babble I had there, a short incomplete list would include:
Crossbows - 12th Century
Exploding bullets - 1868
Dum-dums - 1899
Gas Warfare - 1899/1929 |
If you continued to grind sand into finer and finer particles, would it ever begin behaving like a like a liquid? | Powders with a spherical morphology that can slide past one another will behave like a liquid even with a rather large particle size. I have some spray dried silicon nitride powders at work that are ~30-40 um spherical agglomerates and you would think I was pouring liquid if you saw it come out of the bottle.
The problem when you grind is that you get coarse/angular particles that do not flow well, in addition as the particles get smaller and smaller the surface interaction become so strong that they start to stick together and agglomerate really badly. This agglomeration and self attraction is a big hurdle for commercial nanotechnology. In addition powder flow behavior is a very big deal for ceramic processing, if you are dry pressing parts you want the powder to flow into your mold well but not fall apart when you press it so some balance is needed when engineering your powder system. |
Before cars were in invented, was "Horse-riding Under the Influence" a thing? | **Yes on all three counts.**
For an example, allow me to present you [with this short item](_URL_1_) from the April 30, 1887 issue of the *New York Times.*
> CHICAGO, April 29.--James Howard, a muscular young man, was sent out yesterday afternoon to break a young saddle horse for a Mr. Davis, of Wells-street. Howard was drunk, and encouraged the young animal to some marvelous feats. He made a dash up La Salle-avenue so fast "that you could hardly see anything but a streak," as the officer declares, and at the corner of Division-street urged the horse upon a passing milk wagon. There were three witnesses to swear that the horse "took" the wagon, and cleared it at one jump, but in striking the ground on the other side it dashed out its brains. Howard went headlong several feet over the asphalt pavement, and arose with no worse damage than that of a skinned nose. Justice Kersten fined him $10 for fast driving this morning, and held him pending further action by the owner of the horse.
Now, in this case, Howard was fined for "fast driving." Yes, you could be fined for speeding on a horse. City streets in the era of the horse-and-buggy could be just as crowded as they are today, and even more so in places like New York City's Lower East Side, which was notorious for its tenements.
Speeding through crowded areas could injure or kill someone, and both police and the public took a dim view of reckless behavior that endangered people. Nevertheless, the antics of drunks were just as enticing to the general public as they are today.
[As the *Milwaukee Wisconsin* declared on Oct. 1, 1880](_URL_3_):
> "The freaks of drunken men take turns that surprise everybody, themselves included. The newspapers chronicle many of these insane freaks, but none more sensational than the performance of James Streden, an employe of the Bay View Rolling Mills."
You see, Mr. Streden managed to drive his horse and buggy onto a railroad trestle, and if you know railroad trestles, you know they don't have solid decks. They're just ribbons of iron suspended with wooden beams. They're absolutely *not* intended to carry a buggy with narrow wheels, nor does it seem possible for a horse to step from railroad tie to railroad tie, minding the gaps.
> "The bridge has for a bottom only ties placed about 22 inches apart, and the task of walking across on a dark night like that of yesterday is quite a ticklish one, even for a sober man. For a horse, and especially for a horse controlled by a drunken driver, the task is well nigh impossible."
Needless to say, Mr. Streden's horse and buggy made it halfway across before they plunged into the river below. Man and horse swam out unharmed, but the buggy became lodged in the trestle. It was removed before the next train came by.
There's also a story from the *Kansas City Times* of Feb. 28, 1878, [that describes how a drunken man managed to swim his horse across the Missouri River](_URL_2_) at a spot where the river was nearly half a mile across, wracked with eddies and (because of the season) full of ice chunks. Man and beast were eventually pulled up a bluff with the help of ropes.
But all this doesn't answer your question. Did people get ticketed *specifically* for drunken driving on a horse? Yes. Turn to the July 29, 1929 issue of the *New York Times*, which includes this piece:
> EATONTOWN, N. J., July 28.--Arthur Berry, 53 years old, of Pine Brook was arrested today for driving a horse while intoxicated. Berry, in a light surrey, was pursuing an uncertain course up the State highway toward New York when he made a sharp left turn at Lewis Street and Johnson Avenue. The horse crashed head on into an automobile operated by Wallace Chase of Eatontown. Chase and his wife and young daughter were painfully cut when the windshield was smashed. The horse's legs were cut."
You can find even find drunken-horse-riding cases in the modern record, particularly out west. In the historical record, there's the Sept. 14, 1946 issue of the New York Times, which carries a United Press wire service account of a 56-year-old man in Detroit arrested and sentenced to 15 days in jail for "drunken driving of a horse and wagon."
If you're interested in the way horse culture was used in the United States, you might try [*The Horse and Buggy Age in New England*](_URL_0_) by Edwin Valentine Mitchell. It was published in 1937 as a reminiscence of how things operated "when stables and blacksmiths flourished" and was targeted at an audience that grew up after the automobile replaced the horse and never experienced what life was life with the horse. |
how does a pharmaceutical company come up with new drugs? do they just try various chemicals on animals until something shows promise, or is there an approach that's more "targeted" than that? | Yo ho ho! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:
1. [ELI5: How do pharmaceutical companies create new drugs? ](_URL_7_) ^(_5 comments_)
1. [ELI5: How are new Pharmaceutical drugs "designed"? ](_URL_4_) ^(_2 comments_)
1. [ELI5: How do pharmaceutical companies develop drugs without knowing the chemicals function on the body? ](_URL_6_) ^(_4 comments_)
1. [Reddit - explainlikeimfive - ELI5](_URL_5_) ^(_._)
1. [ELI5: How do we produce and synthesize new drugs? ](_URL_3_) ^(_1 comment_)
1. [ELI5: How are new drugs synthesized/discovered? ](_URL_2_) ^(_3 comments_)
1. [ELI5 How do scientists create artificial drugs/chemicals ](_URL_1_) ^(_12 comments_)
1. [ELI5: How we know what a medicine will do when we create and test it. ](_URL_0_) ^(_8 comments_) |
why are there unique hats for different professions, such as a painters hat or chefs hat? | Chefs hats (think the big white one with all the folds) started in France, you traditionally earned a gold for every technique of cooking eggs. An apprentice chef would wear a floppy “toque” until they started mastering techniques. Current day you’ll see a lot of skull-caps, worn to keep hair contained with a cool-vent top to promote air circulation because it easily gets to 120+*F in restaurant kitchens depending on where your restaurant is located.
Source: am a chef therefore only knowledgeable on those hats |
why is the euro collapsing? it seems like such a good idea for all of europe to share a currency. | A single currency allows for more efficient trade, but removes monetary policy from the individual nations and gives it to the bank of the entire EuroZone.
As everyone is using and borrowing the same currency, when some countries *cough Greece cough* lie about their finances to get in and then do a terrible job on their own economy, it hurts their currency which is also the currency of everyone else in the Eurozone. This makes it harder for other countries to borrow money, which hurts their economies, and makes it even HARDER for the others (and those initial countries) to borrow money, etc. etc. |
How was sliced bread first received by the general public? Was it really considered one of the "greatest inventions?" | Automatic sliced bread was introduced to Chillicothe, Missouri in 1928 via a machine by Otto Rohwedder in Frank Bench's Chillicothe Bakery. The power driven multi blade slicer dated back to 1917, but had no takers until Bench. Sliced Klean-Maid Bread took off like a rocket and sales soared 2000% within weeks. By 1928, sliced bread was a national US sensation, and by 1929 sliced bread was available in most towns of more than 25,000. By 1936, 90% of commercial bread was sold sliced.
(from Aaron Bobrow-Strain's book *White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf* ) |
How do those little winter birds, like chickadees, not freeze to death, and, if they are just little well-insulated furnaces, where does all their energy come from, just seeds? | 1. They insulate themselves from air by floofing their feathers (stagnant air between their feathers is an excellent insulator)
2. They insulate themselves from ground by using a countercurrent heat exchange in their legs, aka a [rete mirabilis](_URL_0_) and by keeping their feet dry |
When will we be able to industrialize graphene and when will the consumer likely see graphene in household products such as computers? | I currently work in a research lab where several members are studying the properties and manufacturing techniques of graphene. There is a lot of research in the topic right now, and this is mostly because of increased media exposure and "buzz" surrounding the material.
The graphene that we can grow today is small and expensive, that's the bottom line. Making large scale devices of material that is incredibly delicate is hard. You may be thinking "but graphene is super strong!," and it is. But maintaining a certain phase of material at conditions we consider "normal" is not straight forward.
One leading researcher in the field is Dr. Jamie Warner at Oxford. Look up some of his stuff if you're interested in real science on the subject of graphene.
This is probably not the answer you wanted, but there is no good way of addressing this question. Often times research is non-linear. Also, we may or may not get to that point. There are other promising avenues for technology processing that we are exploring.
TL;DR: Not anytime soon. |
What would the horizon look like if you were standing on an infinitely stretching and perfectly flat plane? | Actually, the question "where is the horizon?" and "what does the horizon look like?" are different questions. Let's answer the first question.
Where is the horizon?
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How do you find the horizon anyway? Suppose you are on a spherical object (like Earth). [Here is a picture](_URL_3_) to make things clear. The variables are
* R = radius of Earth
* H = height of vantage point (e.g., distance from your eyes to the ground)
* θ = viewing angle (i.e., the declination angle at which you see the horizon)
The farthest point you can see is the point where a line passing through your eyes is tangent to the circular cross-section of Earth. From the diagram, some simple trig shows that your viewing angle is
> θ = cos^(-1)[ R/(R+H) ]
With H = 6 feet, we get [θ = 0.043 degrees](_URL_2_).
What is your viewing angle for an infinite plane? Well, go back to the picture of Earth. Can the viewing angle be any positive angle? Nope. If you look exactly parallel to the plane, then your line of sight does not end on the plane. But as soon as you look down at even the slightest angle, your line of sight meets the plane. So your viewing angle on an infinite plane is always 0 degrees, no matter how high your vantage point is. So if Earth were an infinite flat plane, for instance, the horizon would be pretty much exactly in the same place where it is now (at least for low vantage points). The angle 0.043 degrees is imperceptibly close to 0.
What does the horizon look like?
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Okay, so what would the horizon look like? For this, we need some physics. For reasons that will become clear, let's also assume that there are no other planets, no other stars, etc. The universe is just this infinite plane of uniform density (and you, I suppose).
An infinite plane with a constant mass density has a very simple gravitational field. It is uniform on each side of the plane, no matter how far you are from the plane. So if you are right on the surface of the plane, you measure some gravitational acceleration *g*. If you go up a height *H*, you measure the same acceleration. It is a completely uniform field (on each side) that always points towards perpendicularly toward the plane.
So what? What does this mean? Well, the path of light gets bent by gravity. Even the path of light passing by Earth gets bent, by a very small amount. (Deflection of light by the Sun is a classical test of general relativity.) The same happens for an infinite plane, but the difference now is that it has all the time in the world (or I suppose, distance) to deflect right back to the plane itself. [Here is another picture.](_URL_1_) Light emitted from the plane will eventually curve back to the plane. Yes, it takes a very large distance for this to happen for, say, a gravitational field as strong as Earth's gravity, but that's fine: the plane is infinite. When the light finally is received, it is received at some angle. Our brain always perceives light to have traveled a straight line. So even though the light path is curved, we will perceive the light to have come in from some point in the sky.
Ultimately, this means that the entire sky is entirely filled with images of the surface of the plane some distance away. (This is why I assumed there were no other planets, stars, etc. so that light rays do not get obstructed.) In other words, it looks as if the entire world has curved up around you and closed at the top. So it looks like you are actually in some very large spherical planet, for which the "surface" is the interior of the sphere. But remember that images above you are really emitted from points on the plane *very* far away. (The point directly above you is infinitely far away.) So as you walk in a straight line on the plane, you won't really see the entire sky rotating around to meet you like you would expect if you were inside a spherical planet. For instance, the point directly above you never appears to move. Try as you might, you will never reach the point where the image directly above you was emitted.
By the way, what *does* the point directly above you look like? Well, it's where all the points infinitely far away from you are sent by ray-tracing all of the light back. But points infinitely far from you in this world make up the horizon! So instead of *seeing* the horizon exactly where it is now on Earth, you would see the horizon directly above you all crunched up into a single point.
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**edit:** A few people have (falsely) noted that a 45-degree launch angle maximizes horizontal range and that all the photons start with the same speed. So you end up only seeing some finite portion of the plane around you. This is not correct. That line of reasoning treats light as a ballistic particle in a Newtonian uniform gravitational field. Light cannot be treated in Newtonian gravity: it is neither affected by nor affects gravity in the Newtonian framework. For one clear difference, note that the light paths in a uniform field are not parabolas; they are actually semicircular arcs.
Also, the oft-repeated statement "the speed of light is constant" is simply not true in GR if you take it at face value. The speed of a light signal next to you is always *c*, sure. But the local speed of light for distant light rays, in general, depends on the coordinates. This is not a contradiction; it is an artifact of the freedom of choosing coordinates in GR.
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**edit 2:** I have to admit that I have committed a cardinal sin that I absolutely hate to see committed by others: indulging hypotheticals that are sort-of unanswerable.
If we do everything in a Newtonian framework, then the first part of my response is just fine. The horizon is at 0 degrees, which is barely less than the Earth horizon at about 0.043 degrees for the height of a typical person. For the second part of my response, I did two things:
* used Newtonian gravity to deduce that the gravitational field of the plane is uniform
* used GR to determine the paths of light rays in a uniform field
(Now, technically speaking, there is no metric in GR that has all of the desired properties of a uniform field from Newtonian gravity. There are several candidates though. I just used the simplest of them, which is Rindler coordinates for flat spacetime. But that is a small technicality that doesn't matter too much.)
There really is no metric that describes an infinite plane of uniform density, at least not one that I can think of or calculate. Perhaps there are some good GR models of such a matter distribution. Anyway, my error of combining the two frameworks of gravity was subtle, but important enough to point out. So take what I said about what the horizon looks like and light deflecting back to you with a grain of salt. There are some unphysical assumptions that go into that.
Better... just assume that the infinite plane of uniform density is not there. Assume space is just a vacuum, but there is a uniform gravitational field nevertheless. (You can have non-trivial metrics even in a vacuum, e.g., black hole, so this is not a contradictory statement.) If the field is in the *z*-direction, then we can talk about what happens to light emitted at points on the plane *z* = 0. That is a more physical problem that can actually be answered in GR somewhat. Just don't think too hard about *how* we could produce such a uniform field with matter.
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**edit 3:** With the second edit above in mind, [see this post](_URL_0_) for my thoughts on concerns about my not taking into account any atmosphere. |
why does co2 make a drink like coke feel 'fizzy' while nitrogen gas makes a drink like beer/ale feel smother? | Bubble size. imagine bubble wrap for mailing packages - it comes in different sizes, some with lots of little bubbles and then some with fewer but bigger bubbles.
In beer, N2 makes lots of little bubbles while CO2 makes fewer big bubbles. And just like how fine silt feels smoother than rough sand in your fingers, finer bubbles feel smoother in your mouth. |
how is a global recession possible? doesn't the reduction of money from one economy doing poorly have to go into another economy doing well? | If you have a factory making things, and then it shuts down, does the production of that factory go somewhere? No, it just disappears.
GDP isn't about money, it's about how much valuable stuff is produced by an economy, and that can go up or down independent of what's going on elsewhere in the world. A global recession is when the production of most or all economies goes down. |
I’ve read previously that Australian troops were the first in WW2 to fully stop the Germans on land, in Tobruk, and the first to stop the Japanese on land, in New Guinea. How did axis troops/leaders view Australian troops in general? | Some gentle clarification: by the time Australia and Japan went to war against each other, the latter had already suffered a number of relatively minor but symbolically significant defeats in China (contemporary observers saw these as challenges to the myth of Japanese invincibility), most notably at Taierzhuang and Changsha.
Mark Johnston's *Fighting the Enemy: Australian Soldiers and their Adversaries in World War II* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) deals directly with your question and seems to confirm that the Germans held the Australians in high regard. To quote some passages from the chapter "The Germans: Mutual Respect":
> An Australian in another battalion reported that German prisoner he met in July 1942 claimed that the Australians had gone home, but that English troopers were continuing to '*dress up as Australians to frighten us*'. (52f.)
> Early in the siege [of Tobruk], the German commander, Rommel, described Australians as 'fighting magnificently' and showing 'remarkable tenacity'. In a well-known passage he described a group of fifty or sixty Australian prisoners as 'immensely big and powerful men, who without question represented an élite formation of the British Empire, a fact that was also evident in battle'. (53)
> A German infantry major described the Australians at Tobruk as 'extraordinarily tough fighters', superior to the Germans in their use of camouflage and individual weapons, particularly as snipers. German accounts of the desert campaigns describe the Australians at Tobruk as 'crack shots', delivering 'incredibly accurate' fire. A mortally wounded German infantryman ... said, as he smoked a cigarette, 'Thank you, you very good fighters'. Another German captured at Tobruk in vicious hand-to-hand fighting during the first German attacks on the 2/17th Battalion, told one of his wounded captors, 'Australian soldiers are very brave', to which an Australian in the party replied 'My bloody oath'. (54)
> Early in October 1942, a German intelligence summary concluded that the Australians were, in attack, the best British troops on the Alamein front. At about the same time, General Stumme, the acting commander of the German-Italian *Panzerarmee*, told a conference of commanders that Australians were the enemy's 'best troops'. Similarly, in 1983 a German writer claimed that the General Staff of *Panzerarmee Afrika* had considered Australian soldiers 'the best we found in Africa'. (56)
The Japanese, on the other hand, appear to have had much more ambivalent views on the Australians, and Johnston notes that this likely began with Japanese propaganda, which emphasized the inferiority of non-Japanese. Concerning the Australians' military performance, I again quote from Johnston:
> ... a Japanese wartime account of fighting at Ayer Bemban, in Malaya, said that despite continued Japanese attacks, 'the [Australian] warriors continued suicidal resistance like wounded boars'. It described an Australian counterattack, which won them a brief respite before retreating: 'the enemy, defying death, strangely and impudently counter-attacked with bayonets along the whole line'. Similarly, a propagandistic Japanese article about the Japanese capture of Ambon said that the 'desperate resistance of the Australians after the breakthrough was not to be despised'. (124)
> The instructions [to Japanese forces in Papua in 1942] depended on information based on clashes which had occurred earlier at Rabaul and Kokoda, and included the assertion that 'The fighting spirit of the Australian infantry soldier is strong'. This spirit was said to be superior to that of the American troops in the area. The instructions highlighted Australian marksmanship, and the skilful Australian use of cover and grenades. On 11 August, a Japanese lieutenant on the Kokoda Track conceded: 'Although the Australians are our enemies, their bravery must be admired'. (125)
> A Japanese intelligence summary written in November, possibly in reference to the Milne Bay operations, said that the Australian soldier's 'will to resist is strong and though we attack him, he resists further'. It also told of Australian skill in the use of hand grenades, and a diary written at about the same time at Gona said 'Their firing is very accurate'. A Japanese diary entry, written at this desperate point, admitted: '27th November- Strength of Australian soldier is superior to that of Nippon soldier'. (125)
> ... a comment appeared twice in a Japanese report on fighting on the Huon Peninsula that 'Sniping at the enemy is easy and gives substantial results'. In an echo of the Australian assertions that Japanese did not like 'cold steel', Japanese soldiers were told after the Milne Bay battle: 'Enemy lacks fighting spirit in hand to hand combat'. A pamphlet captured the following year said that 'The enemy cannot stand up to hand-to-hand fighting or charges'. Not only could they not face charges, according to the official line, they also could not make them... These criticisms of Australian courage were directed towards the conclusion that the Australians, with their 'materialistic civilisation', were spiritually weaker than the Japanese. (125f.)
In addition, Japanese reports and recollections frequently emphasized the superior firepower available to the Australians and Americans, which the Japanese would need to overcome through their "spiritual superiority." This complements the views of one veteran, Ogawa Masatsugu, who "drew a contrast between conditions in China, where the dead fell in man-to-man conflict with a 'real enemy', and New Guinea, where 'we didn't know what was killing us'." (127) He seems to have had a low opinion of the Australians overall. To quote Johnston again:
> Masatsugu was rather scathing about Australian infantry, saying of the early success in the counterattack of October 1943: 'I was amazed how weak the Australian soldiers seemed'. Australians supposedly ran when attacked, and returned to mop up only after artillery, aircraft and exhaustion had robbed the Japanese of their ability to resist. (127)
As an odd footnote to all this, after the war the famous Japanese officer Masanobu Tsuji offered his personal assessment ("the subjective view of just myself") of the fighting prowess of the enemy soldiers that he faced. The Australians here ranked fifth in a list of twelve, at least under hypothetical measures (*Masanobu Tsuji's 'Underground Escape': From Siam after the Japanese Surrender*, ed. Nigel Brailey [Leiden: Brill, 2012], 235):
> If we were to assume that we could give the same equipment and the same training and assume that a fight is waged on the same battlefield, on the basis of actual combat experience in eight years of front-line fighting, I would place the fighting strength of the soldiers of various nations that I fought against in the following order (Japanese soldiers excepted):
> 1. Chinese
> 2. Soviet
> 3. Indian-Gurkhas
> 4. American
> 5. Australians
> 6. Other India
> 7. English
> 8. Filipino
> 9. Burmese
> 10. Thai
> 11. Annamese
> 12. French
I highly recommend Johnston's work if you want a fuller picture of the complexities of this subject. I simply repeated the material that related directly to your question. :)
EDIT: I forgot to include the Italians, whom Johnston does briefly discuss. It seems, in general, that the Italians feared the Australians, due in part to misinformation (apparently spread by Italian commanders) that the Australians behaved like "barbarians" and "took no prisoners." (22f.) At Alamein, the Italians also attributed the Australians' successes to inebriation. Per one Italian division commander: "The enemy generally attacks with very well-trained troops ... These special units, generally Australians and New Zealanders, attack with decision and brutality generally rendered bestial and brutal by drunkeness." And according to another officer: "Hand-to-hand fighting is going on. The Australians, *roaring drunk on whisky*, are like madmen ... The wounded, both German and Italian, have horrifying tales to tell." (23). Johnston dismisses these claims as explanations or excuses for impending Italian defeats. |
why do so many right wingers dislike green energy and are stuck that oil is what we should go for when there are so many political and geological benefits to drop it? | The core of conservatism is that government regulation restricts the growth of businesses and thus the economy. The government can't just "drop it", because they aren't the major users of it. Most oil is used by shipping companies that import and export products, and ship stuff across the country. The government can create regulations that make oil less profitable and offer incentives to make green energy more profitable, that's it. |
Are all the stars we can see with naked eyes part of the Milky way galaxy? | Yes.
You can see things like the Andromeda galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds with the naked eye, but not individual stars in those objects.
Supernova SN 1987a in the Large Magellanic Cloud was naked-eye visible, but a supernova is, of course, a special case. There was a supernova in Andromeda in 1885 (SN 1885a) that was just bright enough that it might have been visible to the naked eye, but there is no record that anyone actually saw it that way.
Edit: Typo fixed (thinkgs -- > things) |
Is the arrangement of our small intestines fairly similar across humans, or unique to each person like a fingerprint? | Your intestines (specifically small intestine) are attached to the back of your abdominal cavity by a tissue structure called the "mesentery". Basically this is a sheath that surrounds the guts and allows them to move pretty freely around the abdominopelvic cavity. An interesting example of this freedom of movement is when you have surgeries on certain structures, the surgeon will just move your intestines to the side and shove them back roughly into position when they're done. Then the intestines will rearrange themselves back to their initial position (which it's moderately uncomfortable to say the least!). So basically, the points of attachment for the intestines are the same for everyone, but there is some room for variation.
TL;DR- guts are attached in the same way for everyone, but have freedom of movement inside the body cavity, so there's some room for variation |
How did Project MKUltra maintain its secrecy so effectively for twenty years? Across 80 reported institutions, how was there not even one whistle-blower? What eventually compelled the government to go public in 1975? | Here's an interesting piece of history that helps us understand:
It was a different time, people going for "weird psychiatric cures" at leading institutions in their city or country would have thought less about the brutal and suspect methods.
**Exhibit A.**
Montreal Neurological Institute / McGill and the Peter Allan Institute. In the 1900s, Montreal, Canada was one of the Mecca's in neuroscience and still is. There was a guy named [Dr. Ewan Cameron](_URL_0_) who at points in his life was the head of the American Psychiatric Association (1952–1953), Canadian Psychiatric Association (1958–1959), American Psychopathological Association (1963), Society of Biological Psychiatry (1965) and World Psychiatric Association (1961–1966). He had a theory and afaik was the one who came up with the "Depatterning" idea of giving drugs then subjecting people to images with their eyelids kept open, think Clockword Orange and the stereotypes of that kind of "mind control" or "mind wiping".
His research was funded by the U.S. government. While he knew his research was being funded by a foreign government, I'm not sure if he knew it was being funded by CIA/more secretive groups. Regardless, he was doing some heinous research with the money.
People would go for depatterning at his institution of the neurological institute, be completely messed up, substance induced or activate a permanent psychosis, then they would end up at the hospital, then to Mcgill, then hospital, then to the Peter Allan institute. There was little cross-talk between institutions even in the same city and people would be shunted from one to the next in the worst cases. This is how it went undetected. Otherwise, people probably thought "o they didn't get a lobotomy, they must be crazy though, wonder how they got this way, must be in their blood".
Even Donald Hebb, of "fires together, wires together" fame was funded by the same foreign bodies but he claims he didn't know how insidious the money was, and we believed him. That's another story and he is a well loved and important figure in neuroscience. Ewan Cameron, however, who's heard of him anymore? He permanently injured and indirectly killed many with his depatterning.
------
**All in all,** the CIA funded research all over the world, it was decentralized and they looked for researchers with credentials and no scruples to conduct the kind of research we know they did. It also took ignorance, willful or otherwise, a different time and standards of care/research subjects, as well as no one connecting the dots. Think of it this way, you are a scientist with existing research, a granting body promises money in return for your research, you take the money in return for giving your results to them. Maybe it's only 1/4 of the research your lab does anyway, you take the money from this non-scientific body and your department either doesn't know or doesn't think it's all that bad or out of the ordinary.
Not familiar with how the dots were connected or by whom but I hope this gives a picture of the actual context for how things went down.
- editing to add that also, because of the lack of what we consider modern scientific rigor, not only were Ewan Cameron's findings unethical, the research methods were crap. They did not work to "depattern" or "wipe a mind" like he claimed. He just made a whole lot of psychosis and we learned next to nothing from all that suffering. |
since a person's skin is constantly being renewed and growing back, why don't moles simply fall off after so long? | ::Borrowed text::
Your skin contains several different types of cells. The skin cells you're thinking of that regenerate and slough off every so often are called keratinocytes. The cells that make up moles/birthmarks are a different cell type called melanocytes. Melanocytes do not get replaced by keratinocytes.
As far as cancerous moles go, the skin regeneration is the problem! UV light causes damage to cells by forming abnormal linkages in the DNA. Often this damage can be corrected, but the more UV exposure, the more damage that occurs. If it cannot be corrected, then it is possible that certain regions in the DNA are not read correctly during replication. Some mutations can cause this new cell to become immortal, and it will keep on replicating. This abnormal growth is cancer. |
Why can I see star clusters better when they’re in my peripheral vision? | There are 2 types of photoreceptor cells in the eye: rods and cones. Rods are more sensitive to light than cones, and they are more concentrated on the edges of the retina. Thus peripheral vision is more sensitive to faint lights. When you look straight at the stars the light falls on centrally located cones which are less sensitive to light, and you can't make out the stars. |
What actually happened to the Roman Ninth Legion that "vanished" from present day Scotland in the second century? | It's important to remeber that IX Hispana was always under strength since its near destruction during Boudicca's revolt (Annals 14.29) so that by the campaigns of Agricola, it numbered only 1000 under Lucius Roscius Aelianus (CIL 14, 3612). Because of this it almost saw destruction once again in Caledonia during 83/84AD. Little more is known until it's construction of a gate way at Eboracum fortress which is dated to 107-108AD (RIB 1,665). then due to the legions absence during the construction of Hadrians Wall some consider it to not even be in Britain. Some evidence even tells us that a legate of the legion in 121AD was buried in 127AD in Petra after serving as governor of Arabia Petraea (CIL 3,87). It seems likely that the legion was not destroyed in Britain, but possibly in the Second Jewish Revolt or one of the Armenian Campaigns.
Edit* Tiles found in Noviomagnus on the Rhine suggest the legion was transferred to Germania around 121AD before being moved to the East. |
What kind of dances did Romans have? Were there dances that the higher classes were expected to know like ballroom dancing in the 18th and 19th centuries? | Upper-class Romans were typically spectators, not performers, of dance.
At least some elite Romans, in fact, considered participating in a dance nothing less than shameful. Cicero, for example, is at pains to explain why one of his clients - accused of being a dancer - would never stoop or shimmy so low:
"Cato calls Lucius Murena a dancer....you ought not \[O, Cato\] rashly to call a consul of the Roman people a dancer...**For no man, one may almost say, ever dances when sober**, unless perhaps he be a madman, nor in solitude, nor in a moderate and sober party; dancing is the last companion of prolonged feasting, of luxurious situation, and of many refinements." (*Pro Murena* 1.6)
It was perfectly legitimate, however, for elite Romans to dance in certain religious contexts. Only patricians, for example, could be *Salii* \- the dancing priests of Mars. Twice a year (probably), 24 of these men would put on a stylized version of ancient armor and process through the city of Rome, pausing at intervals to perform an elaborate dance while clashing their shields and singing ancient songs. The dance itself (the *tripudium*) seems, like the Pyrrhic dances of ancient Greece, to have evolved from military exercises. Plutarch gives a disappointingly brief description: "the dance is chiefly a matter of step; for they move gracefully, and execute with vigor and agility certain shifting convolutions, in quick and oft-recurring rhythm" (*Numa* 13).
Roman women might also dance in ritual contexts. A traditional (and therefore respectable) example was the "rope dance" at least occasionally performed to honor Juno. As described by Livy:
"Then the seven and twenty maidens in long robes marched, singing their hymn in honor of Juno the Queen...From the gate they proceeded along the Vicus Iugarius into the Forum. In the Forum the procession halted, and passing a rope from hand to hand the maidens advanced, accompanying the sound of the voice by beating time with their feet." (27.37.12-14)
Other sacred dances were less reputable. The *Galli* \- the eunuch priests / devotees of the Anatolian goddess Cybele, whose worship had been imported to Rome in the third century BCE - were known for their ecstatic dances, which often seemed disturbingly exotic and indecorous to the Romans. Their fascination and otherness are captured by a passage from Lucretius:
"The Galli come: and hollow cymbals, tight-skinned tambourines resound around to banging of their hands; the fierce horns threaten with a raucous bray; The tubed pipe excites their maddened minds in Phrygian measures; they bear before them knives, wild emblems of their frenzy, which have power to panic with terror of the goddess' might the rabble's ingrate heads and impious hearts" (2.614f)
Unless they happened to be part of a priestly college, however, elite Romans were almost exclusively spectators of dances. Roman banquets often featured professional dancers - male, female, or both - who would perform carefully choreographed pieces for the pleasure of the diners. Spanish dancing girls seem to have been especially popular in the late first and early second centuries. Juvenal, with characteristic sourness, condemns those who indulge in such things:
"You may look perhaps for a troop of Spanish maidens to win applause by immodest dance and song, sinking down with quivering thighs to the floor..." (11.162-4)
Most Romans, however, seem to have had no problems with immodest dance or quivering thighs.
Outside of banquets, the Romans were very fond of watching pantomime, a ballet-like entertainment in which a highly-trained masked dancer (usually male) performed an episode from mythology as a stylized dance, to musical accompaniment. Pantomime was sometimes criticized:
"The pantomime dancer, \[a Cynic philosopher\] said, was a mere appendage to flute and pipe and beating feet; he added nothing to the action; his gesticulations were aimless nonsense; there was no meaning in them; people were hoodwinked by the silken robes and handsome mask, by the fluting and piping and the fine voices, which served to set off what in itself was nothing." (Lucian, Of Dancing 63)
But many appreciated the talent and range of the star pantomimes, who could imitate episodes from the madness of Ajax to the love of Venus and Vulcan to Saturn devouring his children (I would have liked to see that one).
Elite Romans, in short, knew and appreciated a great variety of dances; but they very seldom polished the dance floor themselves. |
Why does our Sun have so many planets compared to other stars/solar systems? | It's mostly B. With our techniques we can mostly detect planets that are massive enough to make their stars wobble, or big enough to make a dent in their brightness AND do so fast enough for us to detect the pattern. This is why most exosystems found so far are so similar, yet so different to ours. Detecting planets like our trans saturnian ones would be almost impossible with either technique (brightness dip too small, orbital period too slow)
Edit: Thank you for the silver!
Edit 2: I went and looked for the original comment I'm quoting down below, and I haven't found it yet but I did find another thread which I found interesting back at the time. It touches up on the subject of our current bias for detecting exoplanets in certain configurations of solar systems rather than things more akin to our own: [check it out!](_URL_0_) |
Without mass production, how did Rome supply it's vast armies with weapons and armor? | By the use of production en masse of course.
Dedicated assembly line production with individual workers and work teams focussed on repetitive single tasks didn't really originate with Henry Ford.
The [Flavian Amphitheatre](_URL_0_) (aka *the* Colosseum) took nearly a decade of continuous labour to design and build starting with the draining, infilling and relevelling / compacting of 6 acres of lake.
The subsequent quarrying and shaping of 100,000 cubic meters of stone for the outer wall and the mining, smelting and fashioning of 300 tons of iron clamps to bind them were obviously big jobs, as were transportation, laying, tile making, etc., etc., etc.
The romans *had* mass production, just not mechanised.
Glassblowers and smiths were artisans at the apex of small armies of wood cutters, charcoal makers, miners, refiners, stokers, bellow monkeys, and (of course) beer & wine makers.
Getting tossed down the salt mines was a grim punishment for those that didn't fall in line and a useful source of salt and human urine for tanning all those hides for all that leather for all those soldiers. |
what does crossing the co2 levels crossing 440ppm mean for the rest of us? | While warming isn't an instant concern, ocean acidification is very much a concern. Many of the simpler organisms (that form the basis of food webs) in the ocean form shells by precipitating calcium from the water. Changes in pH alter their ability to do this.
Source: Ph. D in environmental chemistry and employed as an ocean chemistry researcher. |
How do super storms like Hurricane Dorian affect marine life as the storm travels through the area? Do they affect deep sea creatures? | I'm not sure on other life, but whenever a decent hurricane blows through the Florida area, lobsters migrate. Gigantic pods of them, divers call it a "walk" because... That's what they're doing lol. It's really quite impressive to see, they're also insanely easy to catch that way. Just dive down, find the big ones while they all back into each other to try to defend, grab and bag. |
What is the smallest amount of matter needed to create a black hole ? Could a poppy seed become a black hole if crushed to small enough space ? | black holes must be significantly heavier than the Planck mass M_P, which is about 22 μg. Anything quite heavier can form a (extremely short-lived unless it is really heavy) black hole, while anything quite lighter cannot. So yes, poppy seed is good, *E. coli* bacterium doesn't work.
Imagine you have an object lighter than M_P and you're trying to compress it to inside its Schwarzschild radius, which is smaller than the Planck length l_P. In fact, ignoring some pesky numerical factors, you have the formula
M / M_P ~ R / l_P
where R is the Schwarzschild radius of the mass M, the radius in which you'd have to compress M to make it a black hole. Since at the length scale of l_P smooth classical spacetime stops existing to give way to a quantum foam, for R to be smaller than l_P sounds already fishy.
But you try anyway. What you find is that well before your compressing mass even reaches the Planck length, in compressing it you have already given it a lot of energy, which increases its mass (through E = Mc^(2)). In the end, it turns out you have made it into a black hole with M > > M_P and R > > l_P. |
What is actually happening when an image is out of focus and how do lenses focus them? | The basis of a lens is the refraction index (n) (I studied it in Spanish so idk if the terms I'm gonna use are the correct terms in English too) each material has it's own n. Vacuum's n is 1 and air's is a bit more. When light changes from a material to another one with a different n, it "bends" (that's what happens to water for example).
A light source emits light in all directions, a (convex) lens converges all its light rays into a single point (due to it's shape and having a different n), the image point. In case of cameras that point must be in the sensor to be on focus. If it isn't, a single light source will "activate" more than one point in the sensor, and thus, become blurred.
You can't focus the whole scene because objects are at different distances, so the image point is at different distances too. When you focus you change the distance between the lense and sensor. In your case you'd have to move the torch closer or further. (I'm not entirely sure about this last one). |
How did British civilians react to losing the Revolutionary War? How did they take the news? How was it broken to them? | Interestingly, though it doesn't directly answer your question, the British people were presented images of Cornwallis surrendering his sword to General Washington. [A painting by John Trumbull of the same name hangs in the Rotunda of the Capitol](_URL_0_)
However Cornwallis didn't actually meet Washington and surrender. On October 19, 1781 he called in sick and sent his aide-de-camp Charles O’Hara with the sword. Washington refused to take it and sent his aide, General Benjamin Lincoln, to collect it.
So to some extent, the British people were presented a lie in this case. Cornwallis did not behave honorably according to protocol.
Source: Ferling's "Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence"
In fact, in spite of behaving dishonorably at the surrender of Yorktown, Cornwallis did not go down in shame and ignominy. The king still favored him and the new Prime Minister, William Pitt, held him in esteem. He was made a Knight Companion of The Most Noble Order of the Garter in 1786. |
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