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when the large baby boomer generation begins to die and their homes flood the market, will real estate prices drop dramatically? | No, because for the most part their homes will pass to their children (who are, for the most part, currently renting off other baby boomers)
Hopefully it will help to "reset" some of the mess the Baby Boomer generation has left the housing market in, where so many of them own multiple homes that they rent to each others kids for a profit. |
why have i learned so much about the holocaust and the war crimes committed by the nazis, but i have never learned anything about the japanese war crimes during wwii? | My understanding (in the US) is that post-war, Japan grew to become a vital trading partner with the US. As such, it would be better to avoid touching on "controversial" topics such as Japanese atrocities during the war, or the US's Japanese internment camps.
On the other hand, Germany kind of embraced a cultural shame about the Holocaust, forcing extensive education on the subject in an effort to prevent it ever happening again. I think everyone else basically followed suit with that. |
the old testament, new testemant, and the koran all have passages denouncing and prohibiting the practice of collecting interest on loans, so when and how did this practice become accepted in society? | It's not quite that extreme -- notably the Old Testament only said not to charge interest to the poor, or within the Jewish community. This left Jews free to charge interest to others.
It became more permissible over time, as the definition of usury moved from "charging any interest" to "charging an unfair amount of interest."
It is still not acceptable under Islamic law, though, not even today. |
How will the waters actually recede from Harvey, and how do storms like these change the landscape? Will permanent rivers or lakes be made? | I Googled this yesterday cause I was afraid to ask on here. I am curious of the actual paths it takes to get to the gulf. The only thing I can imagine is how a tsunami rapidly recedes back to the ocean but I know that isn't how this works. |
Does the placenta have the DNA of the mother or the baby? What about the umbilical cord? | The placenta is fetal tissue! Very, very early on in development the blastocyst implants in the endometrium of the womb. The outer layers of cells in of the blastocyst become the trophoblast that becomes the placenta, embedding deeper and interfacing with the blood supply of the mother. The foetus essentially builds it's own disposable organ to get what it needs from the mother and aid it its regulation as it develops. It's kinda freakin' cool.
Likewise, the umbilical cord is fetal tissue and isn't sourced from the mother. It's basically just arteries and a vein to connect the foetus to the placenta and, by extension, the mother. |
why is crying a natural response to both extreme sadness and extreme happiness, but not so much for anything in between? | Crying is a response to extreme emotion- I’ve seen people cry from being scared, angry (kind of the same thing) etc. it’s a natural way to release those pent up emotions. You wouldn’t need to cry over something mild happening, like say, your food order being late, unless you already had a bunch of unexpressed emotions that were piled on. |
Did the Allies in World War II ever entertain the idea of offering a conditional surrender to Nazi Germany before the end of the war? Do we know any details on what the conditions of these offers might have entailed? | The Allies had different goals of victory for the end of the war, so a discussion of conditional surrender has to take this into account. Churchill, coming from a more traditional British school of thought, was primarily focused on restoring the old European balance of powers system of international governance which relied on equilibrium. It would have seemed natural and logical to allow the Germans to negotiate a conditional surrender on the Western front while rebuilding the Western world (including Germany) to balance the ever growing Soviet Union. However, President Roosevelt had a colliding viewpoint. He instead imagined a 'new' world order, one that was based upon international harmony and cooperation rather than the somewhat anarchic balance of powers system. Kissinger quotes the US Secretary of State:
> ...there will no longer be need for spheres of influence, for allies, for balance of power, or any other of the special arrangements through which, in the unhappy past, the nations strove to safeguard their security or to promote their interests.
The balance of power and the new world order were in direct conflict with each other, and, as mentioned in /u/orincoro's comment, Churchill did not want to 'push his luck' with the American aid he was now dependant upon. Even in 1944, before the Americans had landed, Roosevelt was already expressing ideas associated with American isolationism, and regretting that America had to come to the aid of Europe:
> As I suggested before, I denounce and protest the paternity of Belgium, France and Italy. You really ought to bring up and discipline your own children. In view of the fact that they may be your bulwark in future days, you should at least pay for their schooling now!
Statements like these would have been extremely worrying to Churchill, who at this point was the head of a tired British war effort. He simply could not risk pressuring Roosevelt too hard at the risk of losing the war. In order for Roosevelt's vision of the Four Policemen to come to fruition, a complete removal of Hitler and disarmament of Germany was required. This put an enormous emphasis on an unconditional surrender from Nazi Germany.
Stalin's peace goals were instead based entirely on Realpolitik. The more land Stalin could acquire, the larger the security-belt or buffer zone would be to protect Russia. Roosevelt's unconditional surrender proposal was therefore very appealing since it would remove the Axis from peace negotiations entirely, allowing for a great deal of flexibility and exploitation at the negotiating table for Stalin.
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Kissinger, Henry. "Three Approaches to Peace: Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill in World War II" in *Diplomacy*. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. |
In Medieval Europe, women were considered inherently lustful and prone to sexual sin. Would modern stereotypes of male sexual appetite apply to them? | No. Latin medieval culture could, and did, spin a fancy tale of the devil seducing Eve seducing Adam, and the humoral composition of women making them "leaky" and "open" to demonic influence. They made up theological and biological backing for this teaching.
Popular comic literature came down equally hard on both sexes, each in their turn. Canon lawyers ruled that husbands and wives owed each other sex on demand ([within Church limits, of course](_URL_0_))
But when it came down to actual, on the ground practice: women might well be accused of being sluts, sure. In one of the texts I work with, widow Katharina Tucher has a vision of Christ calling her, essentially, a ho. Men, on the other hand? Could be *rapists*. Of course, the standards for conviction were ridiculously and hatefully high. This does not change that medieval people understood the force to come from men in cases that they did see as rape.
Thomas Aquinas wrote that prostitution was sinful but women prostitutes might well be tolerated, *because men can't control themselves* and otherwise would corrupt good women. His words can't be compartmentalized off as "normative," either. Legal brothels in late medieval cities hosted women prostitutes, not men.
The medieval stereotype of the lusty women was a convenient veneer for and form of for misogyny. The late 20th-century figure of the "player" is aspirational. |
When a nuclear bomb goes off underwater. Does it create a giant air bubble? | It creates a massive steam bubble, it doesn't last too long (not sure on actual time it is there for) but something interesting happens when the "bubble" is there. The gas makes the bubble expand until it reaches the maximum size it can as the pressure forcing the bubble to expand becomes weaker the water pressure causes the bubble to collapse on itself before expanding again (this can also result in a flash of light as the bubble collapses). This actually happens a few times, each time the "bubble" gets smaller in size until the energy is depleted. I will try to find a video explaining it as I may not have done a terribly good job of explaining it.
Edit: What I am talking about happens at the three min mark of this video: _URL_1_
Edit 2: a more in depth video of the bubble side of things, _URL_0_ starts explaining it at the 6 min mark.
I couldn't think of the word but the video reminded me, the bubble oscillates in the water. The size of the bubble would depend on the energy released by the explosion. |
why does a deep scrape on elbows/knees/shins stay white for a period of time before bleeding? | This is because initially after an injury, blood vessels contract in order to minimise blood loss. They increase again in diameter later to facilitate healing and the movement of specialised cells and materials towards the site of injury. You can see this contraction and subsequent dilation of blood vessels anywhere; try scratching your arm with your nail (don't cut yourself!) and you'll see that your skin will become pale initially, then redden. |
In films like "The Pianist" and "Schindler's List," German guards seem able to kill prisoners at any time without restriction. Did concentration camps and ghettos have rules stating when and how soldiers could kill inmates? | The problem with camps was a lack of oversight once the initial responsibilities had been established. Meaning the answer to this question depends largely on who the camp commandant was and how tight a ship they wanted to run.
Let's start, not with concentration camps, but with Soviet POW camps. Soviet POWs were kept in horrible conditions, and German guards often tormented them. A common practice was siccing guard dogs at prisoners and betting on which dog would do the most damage. Guards also liked to use Soviet POWs for "target practice." So needless to say random killings of prisoners was a common practice, at least among certain aspects of the army.
Now moving to camps, as said above it depended on the camp commandant. Majdanek stands out in this regard. It's two successive commandants, Karl Koch and Hermann Florstedt, stole from the camp massively and instituted a regime of terror in the camp. It became notorious for its corruption and brutality at every level. So in this case random murders of inmates was a common feature of life in the camp. The guards were also Romanian and Croatian, they developed a reputation for savage cruelty and brutality, as well as being difficult to control. Eventually both Koch and Florstedt were arrested for wastefulness. Koch was particularly famous for an event, where in he selected a group of Jews marched them in front of a gate and had them executed; later claiming they tried to "escape."
So there wasn't a time when you could just kill whenever you wanted, but if a guard did just randomly execute an inmate, depending on the camp the punishment would range from nothing, to a slap on the wrist. Radicals on the bottom worked to satisfy the whims of those at the top. Take low ranking SS lackey Gustave Sorge. He enjoyed beating defenceless prisoners to death in Buchenwald. He later would testify: "We believed that we were helping state and leadership when we abused prisoners and drove them to their deaths."
This violence wasn't just during the later periods either. In early 1933, when groups of Jews were temporarily sent to Dachau, hundreds died from abuse/murder by the guards despite the Nazis not yet wanting to kill Jews. Another example is the case of four Jews in Dachau, Erwin Kahn, Rudolf Benario, Ernst Goldmann, and Arthur Kahn. They were made an example of by the newly inaugurated SS leadership. However, the SS commandant had worked his men into a frenzy, and one day a group of SS guards took it upon themselves to lead the 4 Jews out to the woods and execute them. A wave of killings by power hungry SS guards followed after that.
Here is what a Czech prisoner, named Karel Kašák, wrote in his observations while spending time in one of the camps:
> May 9 [1941]. Again a Jew shot in Freiland II. He started to run. The sentry told us that although he has instructions to shoot without warning, he shouted twice. The [prisoner] stopped and just exclaimed: “I want to go there” and fell after two shots … Again they have put a group of lifeless and unconscious Jews on the cart. Human flesh, the bodies of these sons of God, stacked like logs, arms and legs swaying limply—a horrendous picture that we witness daily …
> May 14. In the afternoon they again shot a Jew in Freiland II …
> May 15. Again a Jew shot. They threw his cap behind the sentry and the Kapo forced him with a truncheon to fetch it. Complete exhaustion has made [the Jewish prisoners] unrecognizable, like in a trance, with a far-away gaze …
> May 16. At nine in the morning two more Jews shot in Freiland II. They threw the exhausted men into the water and held them under water until they had almost lost consciousness, and definitely lost their minds, and Kapo Sammetinger hit them with the spade until he had forced them to cross the sentry line, whereupon they were immediately shot.
Now Ghettos were worse for this type of behaviour. The liquidation of the Ghettos was an orgy of violence. In one roundup in the Warsaw Ghetto during 1942, 10,000 people were shot. Mostly because the soldiers later claimed they were "resisting" or they were trying to send a message to get the other Jews moving faster. A similar story is told in other ghettos. In Luniniec ghetto around 2000 were shot during the liquidation. During the liquidation of Yanov another 2000 were shot. Liquidations were never pretty, and by their nature very chaotic.
A source I would recommend if you want some reading. Check out *KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps*
by Nikolaus Wachsmann. |
why is it that when my feet are cold and i put them under my covers, they start sweating but they're still freezing? | The control center in your brain for body temperature (the hypothalamus) is part of a different network than the sensory system for perception of heat (primary somatosensory cortex).
The control center for body temperature is more concerned about the temperature in your brain and other vital organs; so if your core is too warm, you will sweat all over. The will happen no matter how cold your feet are. Cold feet is less of a problem than a brain that is too hot. |
why do some recent films from the 2000s need to go through a remaster process into higher resolutions like 4k? aren't the original source files already at their native resolution, especially if they were filmed digitally? | No, there was still a lot of film used in the 2000s. Even so, digitization for HD (1080) is very different from digitization for 4K (2160) because different bitrate limits are needed for the different formats. There might have been a 4K "digital" version for theaters with digital projectors in the 2000s, but that's not the right bitrate for an Ultra HD Bluray. |
how come being outside in 90 degree weather is uncomfortable, but 90 degree water is amazing...65 degree weather is very comfortable, but 65 degree water is awful? | The thing is, your body doesn't really measure temperature - it measures a little something known as heat flux.
Heat flux is pretty much the rate at which heat enters or leaves your body. For us, the most comfortable state is when we have a little bit of heat leaving our body.
In all of these cases, heat is moving from the body to the surrounding environment, since your body is always warmer, but the important part here is the rate. Different materials touching have different willingness to transfer heat to each other, as it turns out, water transfers heat easier than air does. The farther the temperatures between the two materials is, the faster the heat transfer will occur as well.
So, 90 degree air is uncomfortable because your body wants to move more heat from your body to the surrounding environment, but water, which conducts heat better, will transfer the heat from your body to it much faster, making it a comfortable feeling.
The opposite is true. 65 degree air pulls quite a bit of heat from you, but still it is within normal comfortable range. Water on the other hand will pull much more heat from you, making it cold. |
Why is the French Revolution (1789) is considered much more important than English Revolution (1649)? | There are a number of contributing factors to this disparity. First and foremost is the wider global impact of the English Revolution, or rather the lack thereof. The French Revolution is particularly unique among revolutions(other than the Russian Revolution, but I won't get into that) in that the ideas of it spread throughout all of europe, and thus the world. When looking at a single point to mark the beginning of the modern world, the revolutionary period (marked as 1789-1815) is one of the most important transitionary periods(at least in terms of the society, modern tech seems to have made another change on that scale...). Looking at areas where you wouldn't expect much rest-of-world impact, such as Latin America, we can see the direct impact of the French revolution (more on that later). Secondly it's about the final state of these periods. When everything settled out, Parliament being the dominant power within England had been settled, but it had been the de facto case for decades before that - hence why the parliament was able to challenge the king successfully in the first place. In France on the other hand, it was something of a shock that something like this could have taken place, one of the best analogies I've ever heard for grasping this is "Imagine if the modern United States were overthrown by Maoists [communists]", France under the bourbon's had been one of the most autocratic governments in Europe, and the legacy of the Sun King made France the most important nation in European politics, so when France of all places was overthrown by an enormous burgher revolt it was quite shocking to everyone. Although there was a king again at the end of the period, it didn't last and France ended up settling out as a Republic so it's not accurate to say that it ultimately failed to change (though if you don't count the whole period it's understandable that you'd believe that). The final major factor involved is the nature of the revolution. In England it was largely a question of religion and of who has authority, it was never a question of what form society should take. In France on the other hand, as things spiraled out of control and more heads started being taken during the terror, the whole structure of the society began to be under question - the peak of this being all that silliness around changing the calendar to 'Thermidorian'. This meant that the French revolution had a much broader range of thought, and the notions of freedom would later go on to infect everywhere that napoleons troops went as he conquered most of Europe(the Napoleonic ideas ended up being the largest influence on Sardinia-Piedmont when it started marching to unite Italy, and for that alone it would be important).
1) Global Impact:
The list of places impacted by the French Revolution is too long to reasonably mention if it's explained (which I intend to do). The list ranges from the USA - the Louisiana Purchase would never have happened without it. To Latin America(something of a pet focus of mine) where the independence of the entire region, from Mexico to Argentina happened directly as a result of the Revolution. The important thing to understand about the independence revolutions of the various latin american states is that they were fundamentally run by local Creole elites, quite different from other independence movements. The revolutions all had the same casus belli, the restoration of the 'Desired One' which was the heir to the King of Spain that had been deposed by Napoleon. Here we see the link. Napoleon deposing the king of spain and putting his step-brother Joseph on the throne directly led to the independence of Latin America. This is just one of the many Global reasons why the French Revolution is much more important than the English one.
The next two are closely linked so I'll actually discuss them as one.
2) Long-term results:
3) Intellectual Nature:
In the long run, France settled out as a republic, as I said before, whereas we see that England still has a monarchy, power reduced though it might be. The Ideas of the French Revolution and the societal changes, particularly to the idea of war, are unmatched in any other revolution of history(Except maybe the Russian Revolution, but this is something that is under much discussion these days in the post-Soviet world). The change in armies from a small professional group to an entire society at arms is crucial to understand the gap between pre-modern warfare and early modern warfare. In addition to this, the soldiers of Napoleon's armies mingled with people all across europe as he marched around taking stuff, which spread the ideas of the revolution which were FAR from unified. Everything from Liberal Democracy to Communism that we see in the modern world has some roots in the French Revolution, and it was spread all over the place as a result of it, so the long term impact is undeniable. It's quite possible, though this part is debatable, that Unified Germany was strongly impacted by the experience of the Napoleonic Wars, which are linked intrinsically with the revolution by most historians - the process of divide and conquer that allowed Napoleon to steamroll the Rhine made it a much easier to argue that Germany should become one state with one policy to defend against 'the vile french'.
In conclusion, the English revolution ended merely having codified the de facto laws that existed before, whereas the French revolution was a fundamental change to the way France worked. In addition to this, the scope was much larger, with the French revolution impacting places all across the globe in both the short and long terms. Finally, the nature of the Revolution was much more intellectual and helped give birth to many modern ideologies and setting the roots in place to the others.
This was just a basic overview of the reasons, but I hope it answered your question satisfactorily.
Some of my Sources: (I was mostly drawing from memory and don't have specific page numbers for my facts without tracking down each book again)
Small unprofessional note: WHY ARE ALL FRENCH REVOLUTION BOOKS SO BORINGLY NAMED????
Connolly, S. (2003). The French Revolution. Chicago, Ill.: Heinemann Library
A good timeline orientation with some pleasant asides. Rather standard as I recall, but fairly good for further reading nonetheless
Kates, G. (1998). The French Revolution : recent debates and new controversies. London: Routledge.
I think there's a newer version of this but I can't vouch for anything about it. I'd also tend to read this one last as it's at times a bit preachy but gives an important unusual perspective to some of the discussions that few other books give.
Lefebvre, G. (2001). The French Revolution: from its origins to 1793. London: Routledge.
I'd recommend this alongside others since it's originally a French Source, though it introduces a few associated biases, it still offers some good perspective.
Melton, J. Van Horn. (2001). The rise of the public in Enlightenment Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
This book was one of the first books I had to read for a class in undergrad, the chapter on the rise of the public in France is CRITICAL to my own understanding of the societal changes associated with France during this period.
There's one other book that's on the tip of my tongue as it were and I'll add it here once I've found it...
EDIT: Here it is: (if i recall correctly, which it's possible that I don't) this book provides some nice details on how the Latin American revolutions were different, including the impact of the French Revolution on it, which has a special place in my heart.
Graham, R. Independence in Latin America : CONTRASTS AND COMPARISONS. THIRD edition. |
How strong/muscular were ancient warriors? Did they know enough about muscle growth to be the same build as many athletes/bodybuilders now? When did humans start becoming adept at bodybuilding? | In general, the population today is much larger than they were during ancient or medieval times. Better access to food, especially rich in protein and fat has allowed the human population (at least in the western world) to become much taller.
That said, the population back then were much more accustomed to hardships and laborous work. The Athenian army that fought at Marathon marched out about 42km to fight the Persian army, donned their armour (the full equipment of the hoplite would weight about 60 kg) and charged the Persian army and forced them to retreat to their ships. Then they turned around and ran back towards Athens as they feared that the Persians were attacking the city in their absence.
It is not entirely certain if the Athenian hoplites all had heavy bronze armour, or if a majority of them were rich enough to have servants carry their equipment for them while on the march (the Spartans often had Helots do this for them), but almost none of them would have been professional soldiers, yet they had the stamina to march 42km, charge and fight the Persians and then RUN back to Athens, with all their equipment (regardless if someone else carried it for them or not).
Something that was trained a lot in ancient armies was an inverted tug of war, where two sides would form lines and try to push each other back (to be strong and coordinated enough to break the other side's line), somthing I suppose would train your strength and dexterity - and your stamina, doing that all day in the sun - a lot.
Fit is of course a relative term. A viking *Hirdman* would spend his days training, but also eating and drinking. Providing good food and drink and getting your *hirdmän* large was a matter of prestige. On campaign, food could be scarce, and having a reserve layer of fat for less bountiful days was seen as a wise precaution for soldiers, as long as they kept their strength and stamina up. A heavy soldier is also in a better position to push when the shield walls meet.
Roman gladiators were known to consume huge amounts of barley gruel in an attempt to develop a thick layer of underskin fat, which would protect the muscles and organs beneath from superficial cuts and wounds.
So, to answer your question, most soldiers from those times would be strong, have a great stamina, be very much used to harships and hard labour, but would not necessarily look fit as we define it in modern terms. |
if someone receives a full organ transplant will the organ be eventually replaced by the host's cells or will it remain as the the donor's cells for the rest of the host's life. | It will always be the donor's cells. It can be possible to wean off of antirejection drugs as your body gets used to the new organ, but if your whole liver is replaced by a donor liver, you do not have any of your own liver cells to replicate and replace the donor cells. |
how do frogs, toads and other amphibians know how and where to find new bodies of water? | Amphibians explore and migrate during cool moist weather. They can cover a lot of distance that way, especially if they can find damp places to take shelter in between stages of their journey.
Most animals (including us) are also perfectly capable of smelling water from a good distance. Wind blowing across a body of water will have more moisture in its air than the surrounding air. An exploring frog that smells water on the wind will likely come to check it out. |
why are salmon from the pacific prone to parasites while salmon from the atlantic safe to eat raw? | I don't believe this is actually a thing? Atlantic Salmon also frequently have warnings put out about parasite risks. [The NHS publishes warnings in the UK](_URL_0_) about it.
Now you can get sushi-grade fish, of course, but that's fish that has been flash frozen to kill any potential parasites in the fish. That can also be done with Pacific salmon. |
Is the optic nerve stretchy or is there some slack to let your eye move? | The optic nerve in an adult has about 8mm of slack to allow the eye to move.
Nerves in general do not stretch very much, and the optic nerve in particular cannot stretch at all. That's because it is part of the central nervous system.
Because the nerve connects directly to the brain, it is covered in an extension of the brain's protective membrane envelope. Those membranes are called the "meninges," and consist of three layers: the dura, the arachnoid, and the pia mater. The dura is the outermost layer. It's relatively thick and consists of tough, fibrous, connective tissue, to protect the other membrane layers and the underlying nerve itself. It doesn't stretch significantly, and that means the whole bundle has to stay a pretty much constant length. |
if horse racing tips had any merits, why wouldn't the bookies adjust their odds to match? | Betting on horse races is fairly straight forward. If more people bet on a particular horse because they think it has a good chance to win, odds will adjust. The horses with low odds stay that way because few people will bet on them. The bookies do adjust the odds, in horse racing and pretty much any sporting event. |
Is it possible to ever encounter plastic in nature that wasn't made by humans? | Not in the strictest sense, as most definitions I have seen for plastic specifically use the words synthetic or man-made. As such a non-manmade plastic is impossible.
However plastics are really just polymers, long chain molecules that are usually organic (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, maybe a few heavier elements). There are tons of those in nature, you are probably touching a couple right now. Cellulose and starch are good examples, glucose polymers that are in almost every plant. Spider silk, DNA, and proteins are all polymers too. They usually don't look like what we think about when we say plastic but they have the appropriate properties and structures. |
why will youtube show people dying but freak out over nudity even non sexual nudity? | For the exact same reason a film can have dozens of deaths depicted yet remain PG but throw a couple breasts and swear words in and it's an instant R rating. American prudishness, pure and simple. All nudity is considered inherently sexual (not long ago there was a question on here freaking out about the idea of children at nude beaches) and sex is considered inherently bad. |
How did Buddhist-majority nations reconcile state violence (wars and so on) with Buddhist precepts of non-violence? Did they bother to do so? | A really interesting case study on this is japan during WWII and Zen Buddhism.
Two important works on this topic are "Zen at War" and "Zen War Stories " by Brian Daizen Victoria. These books examine how Zen Masters justified and contributed to pro war propaganda.
Here are some quotes from Zen masters during WWII:
> "[If ordered to] march: tramp, tramp, or shoot: bang, bang. This is the manifestation of the highest Wisdom [of Enlightenment]. The unity of Zen and war of which I speak extends to the farthest reaches of the holy war [now under way]." - Harada Daiun Sogaku
> "Showing the utmost loyalty to the emperor is identical with engaging in the religious practice of Mahayana Buddhism. This is because Mahayana Buddhism is identical with the law of the sovereign." -- Seki Seisetsu
> . "I wished to inspire our valiant soldiers with the ennobling thoughts of the Buddha, so as to enable them to die on the battlefield with confidence that the task in which they are engaged is great and noble. I wish to convince them.... that this war is not a mere slaughter of their fellow-beings, but that they are combating an evil." -- Shaku Soen
> "In the present hostilities, into which Japan has entered with great reluctance, she pursues no egotistic purpose, but seeks the subjugation of evils hostile to civilization, peace and enlightenment." -- Shaku Soen
So what we are seeing are men who are just as susceptible to nationalism as anyone else who are able to justify aggression using twists of Buddhist logic. Its the nature of belief structures that they can always be twisted to support a world view.
Also, understand that not every "Buddhist" "takes the full precepts". The full precepts would only be taken by Buddhist monks and nuns who "renounce the world". The average soldier would not have necessarily taken any preceipts personally. Even if a soldier has received something like the Soto Bodhisattva precepts which includes instructions not to kill, these types of things can be twisted subjectively.
For example:
> ""It is just to punish those who disturb the public order. Whether one kills or does not kill, the precept forbidding killing [is preserved]. It is the precept forbidding killing that wields the sword. It is the precept that throws the bomb." -- Sawaki Kodo |
why have some languages like spanish kept the pronunciation of the written language so that it can still be read phonetically, while spoken english deviated so much from the original spelling? | Spanish has an academy whose mission is to standardize and grow the Spanish language, so that helps Spanish to keep its strict pronunciation. English is, and has always been, a total shitshow, linguistically speaking.
[_URL_0_](_URL_1_) |
Are Tardigrades susceptible to viral and/or bacterial infection? Can they get ‘sick’? | Virtually all living organisms (probably all, but I am not 100% certain) can get infected with viruses. And many are susceptible to bacteria.
Surprisingly, a web search turned up the following article, [_URL_0_](_URL_0_) , which reports a tardigrade that was infected with a fungal pathogen. The most surprising part is that the paper is over 40 years old. I didn't even realize people studied tardigrades back then. |
Are battle depictions of one or two extremely skilled swordsmen that kill dozens of men, while thousands of poorly trained infantrymen that usually die true? | The most important things to remember about battles is that if you're alone you're dead. Skill definitely plays a role, but so does morale, equipment and luck. The last two I think are most important - a good armour allows one to face many opponents and deal with them. And will save you when a bunch of people start hitting you at the same time.
Rober De Clary describes such an event in his account on the fall of Constantinople. There one of the crusader ships manages to latch on a tower and assault it. The first person over the wall is a venetian man who is quickly slaughtered by the defending Greeks. The second person however is a well armed knight. The Greeks bring him to the ground and shower him with blows. Our fella being well protected by his shield and helm manages to get up and drive the defenders away.
On the other hand - if you are overwhelmed and cannot make a good use of your armour and skill you get killed. Examples are the Battle of Odrin from 1204, where the Latin emperor Baldwin managed to get separated from his main forces and overwhelmed by the forces of Ioannis of Bulgaria.
It seems that the overall skill and resolve of the army is way more important. For example in the battle of Philipoppolis in 1207 the Latins managed to defeat the Bulgarian army that outnumbered them vastly. The battle of Azincourt is a famous example of what happens when you cannot make a good use of the situation - the french knights got so bunched up that they could barely fight effectively and managed to get slaughtered by the English... |
why do i never have to poop when i'm on vacation or camping, but as soon as i come home, i'm taking the biggest shit of my life within minutes? | I'm no poop expert but I think it's a territorial thing. Think about our evolutionary ancestors. They were comfortable and safe pooping in familiar territory. If they were on a hunt for a Wooly Mammoth or something, the act of pooping would put them in a vulnerable position. |
Theoretical physics- What if there was no speed limit like the speed of light? | TL;DR: In non-relativistic quantum mechanics, particles can't decay.
If you take the limit where the speed of light goes to infinity, but you keep ["Galilean relativity"](_URL_0_) (the notion of relativity we'd been using before special relativity), a very large change occurs at the level of elementary particle physics.
In particular, there's a theorem that allows you to classify what kind of states you can have in a quantum mechanical theory given the symmetries of your system. If you apply the symmetries associated with special relativity, you find that states "look like" particles - they're characterized by a mass and a spin, massless particles move at the speed of light, and particles can be created and destroyed. You can also define the "chirality" of particles.
In contrast, if you use the symmetries associated with just Galilean relativity, some of this changes. First, you have no massless particles, and everything must be massive. Second, chirality goes away, though spin is still there. Most drastically, you cannot have any particle decays - every particle must be infinitely stable. So a non-relativistic quantum theory of particle physics is extremely different from a relativistic one like our universe, where everything but the least massive particles decay very quickly. |
If person A is travelling at a fast speed away from person B, why is it that person A's time runs slower when you could say that person B is travelling away relative to A? | Your assessment is spot on. They both see the others clock running slow, which is generally called 'the principle of reciprocity' in introductory textbooks.
If you have two space ships pass each other while traveling at constant velocities, each will feel 'at rest' with respect to the other. This results in each of them seeing the others time slow down. This may seem spooky, but it's a straight forward consequence of the Lorentz transformations. |
How can a paper cup full of water not burn up on a 2400 degree billet of steel? | The reason is that, perhaps surprisingly, the paper simply does not get hot enough. Paper has an autoignition temperature (the temperature at which it will burst into flame) of about 210-250^o C. If you were to just put an empty paper cup on the hot steel, it would rapidly reach this temperature and start burning. However, with water in the cup the situation is different. The presence of water on the other side of the wall of paper will reduce the rate at which the paper can be heated by the steel because it will cool the material. This cooling can be fairly efficient since [convection](_URL_0_) will cause hot water to move away from the walls, letting cool water replace it. Once you reach 100^o C, the water will start boiling. However the temperature of the water will not rise any further at that point, because as happens at any phase transition, all the extra heat added to the system will go into that driving that transition (boiling).
So surprising as it may sound, you can get into a steady state regime, where even if the water is hot enough to boil, because this process occurs at 100^o C, the boiling water may still be "cool" enough to prevent the paper from going above 210^o C(ish) and burn. |
britons of reddit, can someone explain the "first past the post system"? | The country is divided into "constituencies".
Each constituency elects a single representative, or MP. (Edit, as pointed out below): they do this by voting on the candidates, and the candidate with the most votes wins. The winner doesn't need a majority of votes, they just need more votes than anyone else.
Most MPs represent a party (although independent candidates are allowed to stand, and occasionally win). The party with more than 50% of MPs gets to form the government.
If no party has more than 50% of MPs, the party with the most MPs gets to try to form a government by going into coalition with other parties, so that the parties in the coalition have more than 50% of the MPs between them. |
Was suicide among "commoners" normal during time periods like the renaissance? Or is it something that became more prevalent recently? | I have an earlier answer on [suicide in the Middle Ages in western Europe](_URL_1_). If you don't mind, I'll copy-paste it here for now so people have something to read while I work on one that extends into the Reformation/later Renaissance era. (Normally I'd just wait, but the topic seems to demand it.) ([Now posted!](_URL_0_))
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[1/2]
*I'm borrowing some pieces from earlier answers [here](_URL_3_) and [here](_URL_2_), but it's mostly new.*
It's impossible to calculate the rate at which medieval people in the Latin West killed themselves or tried to. First, for the usual reasons--lack of records, bias of records that do survive in favor of focus on specific groups, the sketchily-drawn nature of calculating medieval demographics in general. Equally important, however, are the immense social, legal, and Christian religious consequences not just for the ones who killed themselves, but for those staring numbly at their loved one's body. While we can't say "how commonly did medieval people kill themselves," it is evident that suicide was not only a common problem for survivors, but became an even bigger emotional burden over the course of the Middle Ages.
The central drumbeat of any examination of suicide in the Christian Middle Ages must be: suicide was a sin. And not just any sin, but an absolutely, fundamentally unforgiveable one. It was understood that the act of self-murder was the last thing that a person would do; there was no time for confession and absolution. No cleansing purgatorial fire awaited those who killed themselves: they were eternally bound to hell. As early as 570, Gregory of Tours writes that the body of a nobleman who had killed himself was taken to a monastery by his survivors, but the monks could "not put [him] among the Christian dead, and no Mass was sung for him." The refusal of burial with the Christian community in consecrated ground is an earthly symbol of the theological belief that the count was separated from the Christian community in the afterlife.
This story shows us two further things. First, the intimate relationship of suicide and death means the theology of suicide was doctrine that wrapped itself around every level of Christian society. Even if not every single person over a thousand year span was excited to hear every last sermon or could recite the Paternoster (prayer) without prompting at their goddaughter's baptism, everyone dealt with death, whose aftermath was the domain of God and the Church.
Second, it shows the desperation of the count's family. They still took his body to the monastery even knowing he had killed himself, holding out some shard of hope for his soul, that the holy men might still be able to help. Already in the earliest years of the Middle Ages, we witness the desperation of the survivors.
The fallout of this desperation--even a generalized sadness of pious writers upset at the consignment of *any* soul to hell--permeates the medieval source record on suicide. As with Gregory, it's not that suicide isn't mentioned. We hear about it in monastic chronicles: a 12th century monk and prior of Le Dale monastery named Henry fell in love with a local woman and, officially absent from his house to earn money for it, moved in with her. When his affair was discovered and he was forced to return to the convent, "Taking guidance from the Devil he got into a hot bath and opened veins in both arms; and by way of spontaneous, or rather foolish, death he put an end to life." From late medieval England, we have cases mentioned in coroners' rolls: A man sentenced to sit in the stocks overnight is found dead in the morning, having stabbed himself.
Miracle stories attached to saints and shrines describe people who attempted suicide, maybe even appeared to have killed themselves, but were (literally) miraculously revived: a young woman was raped repeatedly by her uncle, who forced her to have an abortion each time she became pregnant. The third time, she did so directly, by ripping open her stomach with a knife. But when she cried to the Virgin Mary--here as both mother and *mediatrix*--Mary healed her external as well as internal wounds, and the woman took vows in a Cistercian convent to spend the rest of her days in praise of Mary/out of sight of mainstream society. And fictional literary sources talk of suicide, too: Boccaccio's *Elegy of Lady Fiammetta* describes a woman who decides to kill herself by jumping from a tower, because the people who find her body won't be able to tell whether it was suicide or an accident.
But in these stories, a clear pattern emerges: an emphasis on secrecy, privacy, and shame. A traveler who drops back from the group; a nun who barricades herself into a room for "private prayer" but slips out the window. Fiammetta (who is ultimately rescued) wanted to camouflage her death as an accident; the noblewoman in Gerard of Frachet's miracle tale hid herself away in the aftermath.
This only increases as one moves up the social scale in considering cases. Although typically we'd say the source record is *radically* denser for religious and the upper class than the small but growing middle class and peasants, with suicide this is not so. Alexander Murray, who composed the most important study of suicide in the Middle Ages (and to give you an idea of the weight of this project: he only ever made it through two volumes of a planned three before it was too much), instead says we must look to "whispers".
The sources ideologically and personally closest to a named noble or royal will shy away from mentioning suicide or suicidal ideation; those further removed in time and alliance will be less reticent. One example of this in operation is the possible attempted suicide of Henry IV, 11th (mostly) century Holy Roman Emperor. A lot of chronicles discuss his wars with the pope and his own son. But it is only one account, by known opponent Bernold of Constance, who includes this detail:
> He betook himself to a castle and there remained without any regal trappings. He was in a state of extreme dejection and, as they say, he tried to give himself over to death, but was prevented by his men and could not bring his wish to effect. *(trans. Murray)*
While the modern reader will recongize circumstances of deep depression and suicidal desire that feel all too familiar, there is an even darker angle in play. A given "mental illness" is of course a name attached of a web of symptoms that frequently travel together, manifesting slightly differently in all cases; but even the concept of *illness* is a cultural-scientific attachment. *Tristitia*, *acedia*, *melancholia*, and their fellows in medieval writings appear to aligns with different manifestations of what we call major depressive disorder today. But in the Middle Ages, they were sins. Even before one stepped onto the tower window ledge or threw the rope over the rafters, sorrow over worldly matters like *your own son leading an armed rebellion against you, nbd* was a sin that divorced you from other people and from God. It's not an accident that so many accounts of suicide attribute the act to possession by the devil or the influence of demons, and describe the victim's diabolical fear or behavior in the days or years beforehand.
It's no wonder, then, that even an anti-Henry partisan like Bernold can only bring himself to write "As they say" (*aiunt*). It's a common pattern. Dante Alighieri refused to identify thirteenth-century king Henry Hohenstaufen as one of the inmates of the seventh circle of hell in *Inferno*, despite rumors to the effect he was among those violent against themselves. It's not agreement or disagreement with this decision that is picked up by commentators, it's the *debate*: "but others write," hedges Bevenuto da Imola, and "if this is true."
There was good reason for those left behind to be cautious. As laws and legal systems coalesced over the course of the Middle Ages, death by suicide came to have extensive legal consequences for one's heirs (and whatever a grudge against the dead, might not be good to antagonize the living). Laws permitted or mandated the "ravage" of the property of someone who committed suicide: that its, its seizure by the lord or city rather than passing down to one's heirs. This could extend all the way to the home that a house-owner's family was *still living in*, throwing them onto the street.
A 1280 case from England illustrates these laws in action. Upon the death of one of his tenants, a lord had claimed it was suicide and thus her property reverted to him. Her heirs had sued to get the property back, claiming his "presumptions" were (a) wrong and (b) even if they were right, presumptions weren't strong enough to be evidence of suicide. Notably, the judge ruled in the lord's favor because one of the 'presumptions' was the dead woman's threat to do something to shame her friends. Suicide was shameful for the immediate victim, but it also smade victims of the survivors who had to deal with public shame and material loss in the midst of private grief. |
I've read that nazis' hate for jews derived of the fact that they were a race without a nation, and as a result were considered "parasites"[sic] of other nations. Would nazis then have approved of the construction of a jewish state like Israel? | Not really, no.
What is important to understand regarding the Nazi world view is that not only were Jews regarded as an existential thread due to their "international character" but also that Nazi policy did undergo an evolution during the Nazis' tenure in power.
As for the first factor: Rather than thinking of the Jews as "parasites" and dangerous because they didn't have a state/homeland, the lack of a Jewish state/homeland was seen as an expression of their "parasitic" and dangerous character. Within the formation of modern anti-Semitism in the 19th century, the fact that Jews were regarded as different because they had no nation/homeland quickly was turned upside down and what had been one of the initial causes for the construction of difference quickly became a viewed as a symptom of an alleged "racial character".
In the tradition of völkisch thought as formulated by thinkers such as Gobineau and Houston Steward Chamberlain races as the main historical actors were seen as acting through the nation, the latter being basically their tool or outlet to compete in Social Darwinist competition between them. The Jews thought of as a race had no nation - seen as their own race, which dates back to them being imperial subject and older stereotypes of them as "the other" - but were a "race" that acted internationally rather than nationally – the absence of a nation both evidence and symptom of this. In order to be able to compete within the racial conflict them having no nation were seen as acting in a conspiratorial manner. Chamberlain e.g. made them out to be the controlling parasites behind political action and order that was seen as anti-national such as the Catholic Church or the Habsburg Empire. The anti-Semitism that formed here in the later stages of the 19th century is in effect a ideology of conspiracy, alleging a Jewish conspiracy in order to weaken their racial competitors.
The clearest example of such a way of thinking can be found in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a political treatise produced by the Tsarist Secret Police at some point in 1904/05 that alleges to be the minutes of a meeting of the leaders of the Jewish world conspiracy where they discuss their plans to get rid of all the world's nations and take over the world. Despite these protocols being debunked as a forgery really quick, they had a huge impact on many anti-Semitic and völkisch thinkers in Europe, not at least for some in the Habsburg empire such as Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels and others which were most likely read by the young Hitler.
The whole trope of the Jewish conspiracy as formulated by völkisch thought took on a whole new importance with the end of WWI, the Bolshevik revolution, and the subsequent attempts at revolution in Germany and elsewhere.
The defeat of the Central powers were seen by many of its soldiers and ardent supporters not as a military defeat but as a "stab in the back". The way the war ended in Germany with revolts of soldiers and the deposition of the monarchy by Social Democrats was the foundation for this myth that in essence revolved around Germany not being defeated by the Entente but by the enemies within. The trope of the enemy within being Jews and leftists had been brewing for a long time (see the Jew count of the German army in 1916/17) but really came to the forefront with the defeat. What follwed compounded this further. The violence of revolution and counter-revolution as well as the treaty of Versaille lead to many völkisch inclined thinkers and political actors believing that Germany's defeat and the subsequent peace terms could only be explained by a concerted act of the jewish conspiracy leading to internal enemies stabbing Germany in the back, threatening the very German way of life through Bolshevism and preparing the Jewish-Bolshevik takeover of Germany by making it defenseless through the Versaille treaty.
Democracy seen as faulty and antithetical to the German racial character and communism as an essential anti-national movement were both shunned by these völkisch ideologues and explained through a concerted effort by a conspiracy of the anti-national "race", the Jews. This was the very core idea of völkisch thought and of Nazi Weltanschauung. In the end, for Hitler and many of his followers it was the only way to explain the state of the world because it hinged on this Social Darwinist, ultra-nationalist view of history being a history of races competing for power and supremacy.
Within this matrix of ideological delusion, the effort of the Zionist movement to establish a Jewish national homeland in Palestine were not seen as an attempt to overcome this assumed "international character" of Judaism but rather as a further ploy in its international machinations to fight the "Aryan race". Rather than being welcomed by völkisch ideologues, Zionism was condemned as "unnatural" for there was no traditional, bllod-and-soil homeland of the Jews and "artificially" creating rather than having one through racial tradition was seen as dangerous rather than welcomed. Thus, the Nazis very explicitly did not approve of any such initiatives to create a state like Israel or the Zionist project as a whole, because no matter where they were, the Jews were always regarded as a danger and a mortal enemy.
But the Nazis once in power were also following a path of what was possible and thus an internal, ideologically constraint pragmatism. Once in power, what seemed possible was to rid Germany of the Jews. Not having had concrete plans of physical annihilation, the program that seemed viable was to rid all of their controlled territory of Jews. Thus, the frequently cited Haavara agreement between Zionist organizations and the Third Reich represents an outcome of this ideological pragmatism in the sense that while for the Zionists it was a way to save Jews from German discrimination, for the Germans it was a way to reach their intermediate goal – ridding Germany of Jews – and profiting economically from it. Rather than an endorsement of Zionism, it represented a policy of what was possible at the time.
The same applies to the Madagascar Plan, meaning the plan to deport the Jews in Europe under German rule to Madagascar after the capitulation of France. I've written about this before [here](_URL_0_) but it is imperative to recognize the plan for what it was: A proposal that already contained elements of genocide.
Rather than envisioning a Jewish state on the Island, the proposal for the plan made it out to become what was basically a large scale concentration camp: Deporting 5 million people toparts of the island that could only support – according to their own estimates – 7000 families. They designed the whole thing basically like a ghetto and assumed the Jews would succumb to the harsh conditions as they were already in other German Ghettos.
So, in short, the creation of a Jewish homeland was never planned nor welcomed by the Nazis. Rather, it was regarded as dangerous and any plans made by the Nazis themselves such as the Madagascar Plan did not want to establish a Jewish state, rather planning a huge ghetto/concentration camp where the Jews would die slowly under German supervision.
Sources:
* Chrisoph Dieckmann: Jüdischer Bolschewismus 1917 bis 1921. In: Fritz Bauer Jahrbuch 2012.
* Robert Gerwarth: The Central European Counter-Revolutionary: Paramilitary Violence in Germany, Austria, and Hungary after the Great War.
* Andre Gerrits: Anti-Semitism and Anti-Communism in Easter Europe.
* Peter Pulzer: The rise of political anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria. |
why was cloning such a big deal in the 90's but now is rarely spoken about? | There were a lot of breakthroughs in the '90s, and that made it new and exciting and a big deal. And naturally also very blown out of proportion.
There are still advances being made, but nothing huge.
Cloning would not make a species viable, either. You need genetic diversity, which is the exact *opposite* of cloning. |
I'm a king in an average sized European castle in the Middle Ages. How do I get candles? Surely my candle use would be enormous. Do I have a guy whose sole job is candle maker, or do I have to import them from somewhere else? | I completely love this question.
The courts of the late Middle Ages used an absolutely *mind-blowing* amount of lighting--individual tapers, full candelabras and chandeliers, larger torches when brighter light was culturally significant. (For example, on either side of the altar at Mass, or using twice as many to light the duke of Burgundy's dining table as the table of his relatives/rivals.) To give just one example, when Edward I lay in state following his death in 1307, the royal household purchased *843 pounds* of wax for candles to surround his body. A *minor* court official under him would still receive a candlelit wake of 300 candles. Yes, supplied by the royal family--in fact, distribution of candles as gifts/livery to court members was a *major* drain on medieval royal wax resources.
When it came to acquisition of necessary goods in late medieval royal courts, Malcolm Vale argues that it was almost always the case that the king relied upon a group of outside merchants for the supply, rather than having designated "court artists" to provide e.g. furniture or tapestries. (Often, though, the same names appear in records at numerous points in a king's reign, suggesting the existence of favorites/known reliable workers to turn to). It was little different with candles.
Responsibility for the acquisition of candles and related goods in the court culture orbit of late medieval Burgunday-France-England generally lay with a designated official of the king's household. Often candles, specifically, were the responsibility of someone with another central task--but not always the same task. French king Philip the Fair, for example, had a specific staff dedicated to making sure fruit, dates, and nuts appeared on all tables at meals. One or more of these *fruitiers* was responsible for the acquisition of "candles and wax" and "great torches." And not just for meals, either. Household accounts often add "for the chapel" or "for the Mass-altar" or some such.
Meanwhile, under Henry III of England, a *goldsmith* actually seems to have been in charge of candle selection! Edward Fitz Odo was an "ascended craftsman" of sorts--he was actually responsible for overseeing a *lot* of the artistic-type needs of the court. He would find and hire painters for ever-more elaborate decoration of the royal chamber (four Gospel authors for four walls, amirite?)--and sometimes, it seems, for new *construction* on the castle. Among Odo's responsibilities was, you guessed it, acquiring the candles needed to put on the proper show.
One thing I'm really intrigued by is the way many of the primary sources (quoted by Vale, and then a few I found via typing phrases in Google because *that is how I roll*) distinguish between "candles" and "wax." I'm not sure if this means that lump beeswax was acquired, at which point the household organizer would also have to have hired chandlers to finish the job; or if we are to make a distinction between *wax* candles and *tallow* candles. I would honestly assume the latter, except tallow candles are generally associated with middle/lower classes, being cheaper but less user-friendly. And if we're dealing with people who can burn down *843 pounds of wax* for a *dead body*, cost is probably not the first factor on their minds. |
how redbull can afford to sponsor so many different (and expensive) sports, yet their product is only a drink? | > They cant make that much money can they?
They really do. They brought in over 4 billion in 2011 (revenue, so that wasn't all profit of course).
Edit - It is ridiculous this is one of my highest upvoted comments. |
what happens short-term and long-term when a person defaults on their student loans? | The usual suspects. Credit score tanks. Collections calls start flowing in. Stuff gets repo'd or your wages get garnished until the debt is repaid.
Of course it might vary by state and by whatever agency granted the loan (federal vs state vs whatever), but the basic pattern of "this person owes us money" doesn't change much. |
Would two people pointing guns at each other have enough time to react to the first gunshot? | Let's take [600 feet per second](_URL_0_) as the speed of the bullet (this would be a pretty slow bullet). At 10 feet, the bullet would take ~0.02 seconds to get to the target. Average human reaction time is in the order of [0.2 seconds](_URL_1_). So to have any chance of reacting in time, you need a bullet traveling around ten times slower or ten times further away. This ignores the fact that you may notice the protagonist's hand moving before they actually fire the gun.
So in conclusion, Han must have shot first.
Edit: I accidentally a word. |
just how much less nutritious is food that has been frozen such as frozen fruits/meals | Calories should stay exactly the same. Mineral content will also be exactly the same. Some vitamins can be changed by various environmental factors including temperature. Vitamin C, for example, is degraded by exposure to oxygen. Freezing can actually help protect against oxidizing since liquid water more efficiently transports oxygen than frozen water. I honestly don't know chemistry details on most of the other vitamins, so hopefully someone else can weigh in there.
Freezing will primarily change the texture of food. This happens mostly because cell walls and other microstructures in the food get destroyed by the expansion and crystallization of water when it freezes. This is why thawed frozen fruits are almost always more mushy than fresh fruits. This destruction will make the food degrade *very* fast after the food is thawed. This is why most frozen foods are meant to be eaten directly after defrost and often instruct you to avoid refreezing them.
With frozen meals, the makers know that freezing will change textures to be less palatable. This is often alleviated by making meals that are heavily dependent on sauces which usually means adding considerable salt and simple sugars. Carb-heavy foods like potatoes are also more likely to reheat deliciously than most meats, fruits, and some veggies. This can make frozen meals tough to fit with some diet goals. |
Why was Bill Clinton's approval rating so low in the first few months of his presidency? | As you said, at this point of his presidency a few months in, in early May of 1993, Clinton was at a 45% approval rating. Clinton's lowest approval rating then actually slipped to 37% - a low-point mark I believe he reached in early June of 1993.
The reasons for these low ratings early on were largely tied to what many deemed to be Clinton's poor handling and implementation of his domestic agenda out of the gate. His initial attempts at implementing his early economic policies after taking office were quickly called out very effectively (largely by the Republicans of course) as being something that would raise taxes for the bulk of Americans, and that was deemed very troublesome by many of the population, as Clinton initially failed to counter those claims very efficiently or effectively.
Clinton's support of the "Brady Bill" (aka the *"Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act"*) early on into his presidency when it was initially introduced by Chuck Schumer in February of 1993 also hurt Clinton's numbers badly amongst 2nd Amendment advocates in the next few months.
The whole "gays in the military" and the plan for the *"Don't ask, don't tell"* Clinton/Democrat policy also is deemed to have hurt his polling numbers early on amongst a considerable number of the electorate (both Dems and Republicans). He also took some early flak for his health care reform ideas (championed in large part by the then First Lady Hillary Clinton), and his early plans and support for NAFTA (the *North American Free Trade Agreement*) brought him a lot of heat from both sides of the aisle (and from Ross Perot supporters as well).
Of course, there was also the crazy *"HairGate"* scandal in early May of 1993, where Bill Clinton infamously received an hour-long haircut aboard Air Force One while it was parked on the tarmac at LA International Airport, where the delay caused by him getting his haircut was said to have forced the closure of two runways at the airport for security reasons for about an hour (said to have resulted in huge delays for many passengers on other flights inbound and outbound from the airport). That did not play well in the media at all, and was made by many in the press to initially have Clinton look like an entitled ass who cared little for the average traveller, even with some press calling it *"the most expensive haircut in history"*. It was later revealed a couple months or so later that no flights were actually affected by Clinton's desire to get a trim that day aboard Air Force One on the tarmac at LAX, but the initial damage had been done and that hurt his May (and June) 1993 polling numbers as well.
Basically, it was a host of all those things that affected domestic policies that served to drop his early poll numbers quite low. As we know though, Clinton later rebounded quite well, and even survived the Monica Lewinsky affair and impeachment proceedings to emerge to be recognized as quite a popular President after his two terms in office were complete in 2001. |
It is often said that middle age era male English skeletons are deformed due to excessive archery practice, are examples of such deformities found in warrior cultures as well? (Mongols, Huns, Spartans, etc) | To be clear before we start, "deformed" isn't exactly how I'd describe *os acromiale*, which is the condition you're describing. Very briefly, what happened to longbowmen (and current competitive archers, etc) was that the growing point (growth plate) on the scapula does not fuse with the bone itself; appearance of that in the left side seems to indicate that arm was taking strains consistent with holding a bow.
There's an interesting chapter on this in Fury (ed) *[The Social History of English Seamen, 1485-1649](_URL_0_)*, concerning the archaeology of the *Mary Rose*. |
Why were so many willing to fight for and defend the institution of slavery, even when they owned no slaves? | So when speaking about Southern society in the Antebellum period, what is important to understand is that the South was *not* simply a society in which people owned slaves, but rather it was a *slave society*. I hope that the difference is appreciable, but to make it clear, what I mean to say is that slavery permeated it at every level, from the richest of plantation owners with hundreds of slaves working their fields, to the lowliest backwoods 'cracker' barely scraping sustenance from their small patch of dirt. I'm incredibly fond of this quote from Bertram Wyatt-Brown in describing what a slave society means, as it also will be of the utmost importance in the next point:
> Policing one's own ethical sphere was the natural complement of the patriarchal order. When Southerners spoke of liberty, they generally meant the birthright to self-determination of one's place in society, not the freedom to defy sacred conventions, challenge longheld assumptions, or propose another scheme of moral or political order. If someone, especially a slave, spoke or acted in a way that invaded that territory or challenged that right, the white man so confronted had the inalienable right to meet the lie and punish the opponent. Without such a concept of white liberty, slavery would have scarcely lasted a moment. There was little paradox or irony in this juxtaposition from the cultural perspective. Power, liberty, and honor were all based upon community sanction, law, and traditional hierarchy as described in the opening section.
The point is, the slave was a *foil*, of sorts, something which any whiteman could hold himself up against, and in fact, in many ways it was the *non*-slave owning whites who felt invested in the system. Not only was "slave owner" something to which a poor whiteman could aspire to, but the slaves provided him with someone who, no matter how low he might sink, he still could look down upon. The thought of a blackman outranking him would be an abhorrent thought to a poor white man. One very interesting aspect which Wyatt-Brown talks about in "Southern Honor" is the slave patrols, which would generally be made up of lowerclass whites, and led by *slightly* better off Yeoman farmers, and often found themselves in conflict with slaveowners, especially those who were seen as too lenient and lacking in discipline. The men of the slave patrol had a vested interest in ensuring the blacks remained the lowest rung of society, and they felt threatened by masters who, to quote one incident "upheld his negroes in their rascality" - in this case didn't whip one of his slaves enough for a perceived transgression.
The fear of a post-slavery society was a terrifying prospect, and one which was played upon heavily in the bid to 'sell' secession. The best example of this comes from the Southern Commissioners, men who were sent by the earliest states to secede to other slave states then 'on the fence' in an effort to sway them. In their speeches and correspondence, they make apple reference to the basest of fears of what free blacks, unfettered from the institution of slavery by Northern abolitionists, will unleash. They don't only speak to the possibility of black persons negatively affecting the labor market at the expense of poor whites, or of the 'negroes' elevating themselves above whitemen, "the slaveholder and nonslaveholder sharing the same fate; all be degraded to a position of equality with free negroes", a prospect that was bad enough, but speak of whitemen being murdered in their sleep, "*wives and daughters [subjected] to pollution and violation to gratify the lusts of half-civilized Africans*", and in the end, an "*eternal war of races, desolating the land with blood, and utterly wasting and destroying all the resources of the countr*".
So the point is that slavery, and the desire to protect it, was far more than simply about the economic interests of the planter class with their plantations, or the small farmer who could best afford one or two. The very structure of Southern society was in too many ways focused around slavery, and what it meant to be free, to be white, to be a *man*, were all set up in explicit opposition to the enslaved blacks. To be sure, we can find an unending parade of Southerners, both slaveowner (roughly 1/3 of Southern soldiers came from slaveowning families) and nonslaveowner (roughly 2/3 of Southern soldiers came from nonslaveowning families) alike, who echo the sentiments of one Kentuckian in his desire to emulate Washington in "*bursting the bonds of tyranny*" or a Texan enlisted man who wrote home that "*Liberty and freedom in this western world [...] so we dissolved our alliance with this oppressive foe and are now enlisted in 'The Holy Cause of Liberty and Independence' again*" . If I had the time or inclination I could find thousands of those, as we have no shortage of letters and diaries preserved from this period, but we must return to Wyatt-Brown above in understanding what *Liberty* meant to a Southerner. To them *Liberty* was a very different concept than what it is to us today. *Liberty* was part of slave society, and defined by slave society. They were going to war in the name of *Liberty*, but that *Liberty* was not only the *Liberty* to own slaves, which many of them could only aspire to, but to define oneself in opposition to a slave, which was available to every white man.
To be sure, not all necessarily expressed themselves in such 'high-falutin' terms - and we can find our fair share of grumblings that "*this is a Rich mans Woar But the poor man has to doo the fiting*". In his study of letters and diaries, James M. McPherson notes that it patriotic and ideological sentiments were more common with soldiers from slaveowning families, or from states with high slave populations (he notes the most interesting difference being "82 percent from South Carolina avowed patriotic convictions, compared with 47 percent from North Carolina"), as well as a similar split with soldiers who joined in the first year, and those later on, but but even those who saw their need to fight as a more basic defense of home and family from Yankee aggression were fighting for a way of life which they saw as threatened, and one which would be irreparably changed with abolition.
"Apostles of Disunion" by Charles Dew
"Southern Honor" by Bertram Wyatt-Brown
"What They Fought For, 1861-1865" by James McPherson
Edit: Formatting |
whats happening when a sneeze ‘gets stuck’ then just burns your nose and makes your eyes water. | Sneezes are a protective response to alert you to less than ideal breathing conditions and remove irritants/allergens from your nose. They’re triggered by the presence of irritants, but only a certain concentration, which is mediated by multiple nerve endings that generate “spikes” when they’re irritated. Once the number of spikes passes a certain threshold, you sneeze.
Sometimes your nose will be irritated to the point of feeling like you have to sneeze, but there isn’t quite enough to push you over the threshold. So you “get stuck.” |
how can a human possibly survive a headshot? what would the bullet have to miss? | As long as the bullet misses the Medulla Oblongata, a small section of your brain responsible for basic life support, you could in theory survive the gunshot if you were treated for the complications afterwards, such as internal bleeding. Obviously you'll suffer massive brain damage as the bullet rips through your skull, so it's impossible to be completely unscathed.
The Medulla Oblongata sits right around the nape of your neck, which explains the common execution pose of kneeling face down.
Edit: I've been getting a lot of comments about alligators and the movie Water Boy. It's a hilarious scene alright, but the medulla oblongata does NOT affect aggresssion. The amgydala has more of an affect on that. Hollywood just likes using Medulla Oblongata cause it's a sciency word. |
what makes "the cloud" different from just a regular server? why is there a new term for something that was already done before? | The "cloud" is mostly just a buzzword to refer to a concept that is a little more abstract than just "server".
Instead of your data being stored on one particular server (e.g. that you own or rent), your data is being passed off to a third-party company (i.e. "the cloud") that handles the data for you and stores it as they see fit. The data may be stored on some random server that third-party owns, or it may even be stored / replicated across different servers in different locations, etc.
As the end user of the cloud service, none of this matters to you. You don't concern yourself with what server(s) the data is being stored on or how the data is being stored, you just know that if you pass data to the service then they will store it for you and then you can later retrieve that data (from anywhere you have internet access).
So, before companies started moving to "the cloud", they would (for example) often host their own email servers in-house and often the only way for employees to access their work emails would be to connect to the corporate network (either physically at the office or remotely via a VPN connection) and then use a desktop email client like Outlook to read their emails.
Now companies move stuff like email "to the cloud" where they get major service providers like Google and Microsoft to provide cloud-hosted solutions where all the corporate email etc. is managed by those third-parties and employees can login to their corporate email from anywhere via "the cloud" (using just their web browser).
Now the company no longer has to worry about things like server operating costs, server maintenance / security, etc. now they just pay a provider like Google/Microsoft for a corporate cloud-solution and they handle everything instead. |
If someone were to die today because of an accident involving an unexploded WW2 bomb, would they be added to the list of WW2 casualties? | I am not a historian and I've never posted here before. Please let me know if I've done anything wrong mods.
Let's start with who is considered a causality. That alone doesn't have an easy answer and is considered a controversial subject. Groups like the US Military, UNICEF, and [WHO](_URL_4_) all have their own definitions. Then to make things more confusing further distinctions are made like 'civilian casualties' and 'casualties of war'. [This is one of the reasons you'll see different estimates for the same wars.](_URL_3_) (p. 16)
[I am not able to properly source this but it seems UNICEF counts after the war deaths as civilian casualties, like in the case of landmines](_URL_2_). According to wiki (I know!) "3. Those dying, whether during or after a war, from indirect effects of war such as disease, malnutrition and lawlessness, and who would not have been expected to die at such rates from such causes in the absence of the war;" are included in their counts. I only include this because the numbers UNICEF releases don't make sense unless they are counting indirect after the war causes.
[The nato definition for casualty is as follows:
](_URL_5_)
> In relation to personnel, any person
> who is lost to his organization by
> reason of having been declared
> dead, wounded, diseased, detained,
> captured or missing.
> Related terms: battle casualty; died
> of wounds received in action; killed
> in action; non-battle casualty;
> wounded in action.
The definition for non-battle casualty is (same source):
> non-battle casualty / perte hors
> combat
> A person who is not a battle
> casualty, but who is lost to his
> organization by reason of disease
> or injury, including persons dying
> from disease or injury, or by
> reason of being missing where
> the absence does not appear to
> be voluntary or due to enemy
> action or to being interned.
> Related terms: battle casualty;
> casualty; died of wounds received
> in action; killed in action;
> wounded in action.
> 01 Sep 2003
There is an in-depth paper discussing the increase of civilian casualties of war [from a professor at the University of Oxford and it seemingly includes civilians killed by landmines after the war as casualties](_URL_0_).
The definitive answer seems to be that they can be, but most organizations do not include after battle casualties unless their injuries were sustained during the war. From the definitions I read it seems that social type groups include them ([as evidenced with mines casualties which is a large problem even today](_URL_1_)) and government groups do not include them.
Edits: Added more sources. |
In 1095, the First Crusade is called to aid Byzantium, a Christian power, against their Muslim enemy. In 1204, the Fourth Crusade conquers the capital of Byzantium. How on earth did this happen? | While it is true that the relationship between the Catholic and Orthodox churches did decline this isn't them main reason for the 4th Crusade conquering Constantinople. The 4th Crusade wasn't called against the Byzantine Empire, infact the pope excommunicated the participants of the 4th Crusade because they weren't fighting against the target the pope had intended.
The 4th Crusades' original target was Egypt, the Crusaders planned to capture Egypt, and then move on to the holy land, in order to prevent a counterattack from Egypt against the Holy Land when the Crusaders left, as happened after the 1st and 2nd Crusades.
The Crusaders decided to travel by boat because they were heading to Egypt, and because previous expeditions by the German and French contingents that travelled by land through Anatolia during the 2nd and 3rd Crusades had suffered high casualties.
Therefore the Crusaders commissioned Venice to build a fleet for them, promising to pay them 85,000 marks when the crusade began, however when the Crusaders showed up they only had 35,000 marks, and since Venice had made a huge investment in building the fleet they weren't willing to reduce their price by that much.
Instead Enrico Dandolo, who was the Doge of Venice said that they would transport the crusaders, if the crusaders would help the Venetians recapture the city of Zadar(also known as Zara), which had rebelled against Venetian rule in 1181. Doge Enrico also prevented food from being transported to the island the Crusaders were stationed on until the crusaders agreed to the deal. Therefore the crusades' leaders agreed, despite the fact that Zadar was a Catholic city, and under the protection of Emeric I, King of Hungary and Croatia.
In October 1202 the Crusade left Venice and they besieged and captured Zara in November 1202, in response to this King Emeric asked Pope Innocent III to excommunicate the Crusaders, which he did, although most members of the Crusade didn't hear about this fact.Since the siege had ended on November 24, by which time the weather wasn't suitable for sailing, the Crusade had to spend winter in Zara.
Meanwhile Boniface I Marquess of Montferrat who was one of the leaders of the Crusade had left to visit his cousin Philip the Duke of Swabia, and King of Germany. Philip was married to Irene. Irene had a brother, Alexios IV (who wasn't emperor at this point I'm just including his regnal number to avoid confusion) who was living at their court. The father of Alexios IV was overthrown imprisoned and blinded in a coup carried out by his older brother Alexios III, in 1195. Ever since this Philip had supported Alexios IV claim on the Byzantine throne and they plotted to place Alexios IV on the Byzantine throne. When Boniface went to Swabia he met with Alexios IV, and they presumably reached an agreement, although we don't know exactly what happened at their meeting due to a lack of primary sources.
In January 1203 Boniface arrived at Zara alongside envoys from Alexios IV, Alexios IV offered to give the crusaders 200,000 marks, as well as pay off all of their debts to the Venetians, give 10,000 men to the crusade and permanently maintain 500 knights in the holy land, have the Byzantine navy transport the crusaders, and mend the great schism of 1054 by placing the Byzantine Church(Eastern Orthodox) under the authority of the Pope. This offer was strongly supported by Boniface, Doge Enrico, and Louis I Count of Blois. The other leaders of the crusade eventually agreed to the offer as well. This prompted a few of the crusaders to leave the Crusade, however the vast majority of the crusaders remained with the crusade.
When the weather improved and the crusade gathered supplies, in April 1203 the crusade left Zara alongside the Venetians, at this point a majority of the Crusading force was Venetian. With there being 14,000 Venetians and 10,000 "regular" non-venetian crusaders. The Venetians relationship with the Byzantines was much worse than that of other Catholic countries. Since Venice made a large amount of its wealth by trade, and the Byzantines were rivals to the Venetians, and through their competition and their favourable treatment to Byzantine merchants were harming Venetian profits. Also in 1182 after Alexios II was overthrown by Andronikos I, the supporters of Andronikos I performed a massacre of Catholics who lived in Constantinople, which resulted in over 10,000 Catholics dying (there is a wide number of estimates for the death toll ranging from 10,000-80,000). Before 1182 there were a large number of Venetians living in Constantinople, and many soldiers in the Venetian navy had lost relatives in the massacre, causing the Venetians to hate the Byzantines a lot more than average Catholics hated them.
In June 1203 the crusade arrived in Constantinople . The Crusaders had hoped having Alexios IV with them would convince the garrison to defect, but that didn't happen. During the siege in July Alexios III, after a failed sally attempt fled the city prompting the people of Constantinople to release Isaac II from his imprisonment and proclaim him as Emperor, the Crusaders then demanded that Alexios IV should be proclaimed as Emperor as well, at which point they stopped besieging the city.
At this point the Crusaders didn't control Constantinople, instead it was in the hands of their ally Alexios IV. In August 1203 another smaller massacre of Catholics happened in Constantinople, due to the Crusader army being away fighting against Alexios III in Thrace. Meanwhile Alexios IV was trying to fulfil the promises he had made to the Crusaders. Placing the Eastern Orthodox Church under the Pope was very slow, however even this little effort annoyed a great many Byzantines. The main promise Alexios IV tried to fulfil was the financial one, however even after melting down statues to make money he could only raise 100,000 of the 300,000 marks he needed to make the payment.
His attempts to fulfil his promise to the Crusaders made Alexios IV very unpopular with the people of Constantinople, who overthrew and killed him and his father on February 1204, and named Alexios V as Emperor instead. The crusaders still demanded that the promise of Alexios IV should be fulfilled, however when they realised that Alexios V wasn't going to abide by the deal the Crusaders besieged Constantinople, sacking it in April 1204.
In summary political upheaval in the Byzantine Empire resulting in the massacre of Catholics soured the relationship between the Byzantines and Catholics, leading to the Venetians hijacking an indebted Crusading force and taking it to capture Constantinople. The pope had called the 4th Crusade against Egypt, not the Byzantines. |
Russian roulette - what is the origin? Has it actually been played? Are there testimonials from survivors? | One of the first mentions of Russian Roulette in literature was in a 1840 novel by Russian poet Lermontov "Hero of Our Time" (Full ebook available on [Gutenberg Project](_URL_1_), scene is in the last chapter of the book).
Since Lermontow was a Russian officer who served in Caucasus and at least some facts\stories in the novel (which is a work of fiction) were autobiographical, the Russian Roulette story might have some real background behind it.
EDIT: I did some additional research and found some obscure references in a biography of Russian general Mihail Skobelev (russian only, Google Books link [here](_URL_0_), unsure if it was ever translated), who lived 1843—1882 and was famous due to his service in one of many Russian-Turkish wars in 1870-s. The books mentions that Skobelev was aware of the risky game his officers played, unofficially approved it as a display of valor and bravery, but was forced to punish it severely due to special order from Emperor Alexander II by demoting involved officers to common soldiers (officers were mostly nobility, soldiers were mostly peasants, so this demotion would be quite shameful). Book fails to reference any sources though, and I also was unable to find any traces of such law or order.
But if those facts are true, it all fits quite well. Early 1800s during Lermontov time the Roulette appeared among officers on Caucasus (note that Lermontov describes the game, but never actually calls it Russian Roulette), late in 1870s it is well known, has its official name "the Roulette" and is popular enough to requite special actions from Emperor and generals to stop its spread among officers. |
The United States Second Amendment starts with "A well-regulated militia...". What was intended by the phrase "well-regulated" if the right extends to gun owners who are not part of an organised group? | Looks like I am a little late to the party, however, I just answered a very similar question a few days ago, so [I will copy and paste it here:](_URL_3_)
Specific question I answered: "Why would Thomas Jefferson write in, and founding fathers put their signatures on, the 2nd amendment after Shays rebellion?"
This is an incredible question and I'm very glad you asked. Before I answer it, I'd like to briefly describe what Shay's Rebellion actually was:
**Context:**
Shays' Rebellion was an armed uprising led by former Massachusetts Militiamen and Veterans of the American Revolution which took place between 1786 - 1787. Daniel Shays led several thousand "rebels" to fight against the economic injustices that were facing farmers and agrarian peasants all across America. These farmers were experiencing extreme poverty following the end of the Revolutionary War. All across Massachusetts (and the rest of America) farmers saw their lands foreclosed on in unfair property seizers, and they wanted to fight back, which they did here. They were also trying to fight taxes which were beginning to be levied against them. They fought this in many ways, but among them was closing and obscuring roads so that government agents couldn't reach rural parts of the state. Shays' Rebellion would ultimately be put down, but it startled the gentry who feared further uprisings throughout the United States.
I also like to point out that the naming of this event is really interesting. The people who did this, called themselves Regulators ( [modeling off of the North Carolina Regulators](_URL_2_) who also fought against economic injustices before the start of the American Revolution.). The idea of Civilian Regulation was a popular idea that sought to end government corruption and stamp out the overwhelming power of the gentry. They believed that if the government wasn't regulating itself on behalf of "We the People", then "the People" had the right to regulate, or take back the government -- to take it back and do what they believed was right. They didn't see themselves as a rebellion, but rather the gentry labeled them as such in order to de-legitimize their cause. The gentry didn't want to call these men "militiamen" or "regulators" for this reason (which they clearly were), but instead, branded them as "rebels" who needed to be stopped.
Veterans like Benjamin Lincoln would raise militias on their own and mounted their own assaults against the "rebels." They call themselves the "the Massachusetts Militia" even though it was the former militias who they were fighting! So as they begin to debate this on the national stage, especially in 1787 at the Constitutional convention, the gentry singled out Daniel Shay (even though there were actually many other leaders), and they said he was crazy and people were only following a demagogue. They hailed The Massachusetts Militia as the victors and saviors and asserted that militias are what will save America in the future against such madness.
**Answer:**
Although the Constitution was drawn up in 1787 and ratified in 1788, the Bill of Rights was not ratified until December of 1791 when the Bill of Rights was finally agreed upon. Whether or not to include the Bill of Rights (and what to include inside it) was a matter of extreme contestation between the Founders and everything within it was deeply fought over.
When we look at the Second Amendment specifically, we should look at a few things before hand. First, by the 1790s, other small rebellions had popped up all over the country. Terry Bouton's article "A Road Closed: Rural Insurgency in Post-Independence Pennsylvania" (The Journal of American History, Vol. 87, No. 3 (Dec., 2000), pp. 855-887) masterfully explains the fighting and rebellion that took place in the rural countrysides of Pennsylvania that mirrored what had happened in Massachusetts with Shays' Rebellion. Simply put, the gentry were terrified that they were losing control of rural America, and as a result they would not be able to seize foreclosed land and collect taxes, which they deeply wanted. Empowering militias to be trained and carry firearms allowed the gentry to call up these men in times of need and suppress these rebellions that were taking place.
Now there was already precedent in existence for protecting militias and their rights to bear arms in many states. Multiple other bills of rights from other states had already protected a militia's right to bear arms (such as [Section 13](_URL_1_) of Virginia's Declaration of Rights) and many of these states were fighting to have the federal government protect this as well.
Now, look at the very wording of the [Second Amendment](_URL_0_).
> A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
"A well regulated Militia" is the key phrase. They are referring to the militias led by people like Benjamin Lincoln and his Massachusetts Militia not Shays and his "rebellion". The initial goal was to protect a state's right to call up arms against rebels, not to arm the masses. The Founders feared that in some states (like Rhode Island) that were already being drastically controlled by the poor (rather than the gentry), that local governments would start being able to choose who could keep and bear arms, and that by creating the Second Amendment, the gentry would always have the ability to call up and arm militias in times of need.
**Clarification:** I also need to stress that this question mentioned Jefferson by name, however he was not a signer of the Constitution, but did certify the adoption of the Bill of Rights in 1792.
Tl;Dr: The second ammendement wasn't passed *in spite of* Shays' Rebellion, rather it was passed *because* of Shays' Rebellion.
**EDIT: 1**
Wow, what a response from everyone! I started posting responses to people below, but alas it is Father's day and I am heading out with my family to do some fun stuff for the day. I will do my best to answer questions I wasn't able to answer when I return tonight and will also answer any news ones that I can. I would like to say thank you to /u/DBHT14 , /u/Georgy_K_Zhukov , and /u/FatherAzerun who have helped me answer many of these follow ups (and given some pretty fantastic answers themselves)
**EDIT: 2**
Thank you to everyone for your patience. Sorry for the delay. Father's day and then NBA Finals and then Game of Thrones -- busy day!
Here are some great secondary sources that many of you have requested from me. I will post some more by tomorrow evening. Please let me know if you have any follow up questions.
Shalhope, Robert."The Ideological Origins of the Second Amendment" *The Journal of American History*, Vol. 69, No. 3 (Dec., 1982), pp. 599-614.
Bouton, Terry. "A Road Closed: Rural Insurgency in Post-Independence Pennsylvania" *The Journal of American History,* Vol. 87, No. 3 (Dec., 2000), pp. 855-887
I always recommend starting with this one. It's an excellently written article that is extremely well-respected in the field. It helps set up a much broader perspective for what was going on in the rural countryside with agrarian peasants who were rebelling during this time period.
Parker, Rachel. "Shays' Rebellion: An Episode in American State-Making" *Sociological Perspectives*, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Spring, 1991), pp. 95-113
Konig. David. "The Second Amendment: A Missing Transatlantic Context for the Historical Meaning of 'The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms'". *Law and History Review,* Vol. 22, No. 1 (Spring, 2004), pp. 119-159
**Edit 3**
Once again, thank you to everyone for your patience. I am still getting PM requests for books, so I am adding two plus a few more articles. If would you like the articles emailed to you, please PM and I will send them to you. **Please be aware** that I am posting books that are on **both** sides of the gun control debate because **both** sides pretty much universally agree that regardless of what the founders' original intent was, a major (if not the major reason) for including the Second Amendment for the Bill of Rights were the incidents of rebellions, insurgencies, and regulators.
If anyone has more questions on this, I am perfectly willing to discuss them. Just ask the question in /r/AskHistorians and feel free to tag me.
Cress, Lawerence. *Citizens in Arms: The Army and the Militia in American Society to the War of 1812* The University of North Carolina Press; First Edition edition. 1982
Malcolm, Joyce. "To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right* Harvard University Press. 1996
Cress, Lawerence, *An Armed Community: The Origins and Meaning of the Right to Bear Arms" *The Journal of American History*, Vol. 71, No. 1 (Jun., 1984), pp. 22-42
Higginbotham, Don. "The Federalized Militia Debate: A Neglected Aspect of Second Amendment Scholarship" *The William and Mary Quarterly,* Vol. 55, No. 1 (Jan., 1998), pp. 39-58
Shalhope, Robert. "The Second Amendment and the Right to Bear Arms: An Exchange" *The Journal of American History*, Vol. 71, No. 3 (Dec., 1984), pp. 587-593 |
Does the "will to live" among the very ill create biochemical changes in the body that helps keep them alive? | There are a number of articles and research papers indicating that a positive mental attitude towards an illness such as cancer can have a profound effect on the rate of recovery. The reasons for this are not particularly well known. It's potentially an extension or application of the placebo effect in that a person can effectively will themselves back to better health.
It's true not only of physical ailments but also of mental disorders such as chronic depression. Oddly in placebo testing, even being made aware of the fact that a placebo is being administered doesn't change the effect of such a treatment as much as would be expected. In fact in most testing the participants with the placebo have a significantly higher rate of improvement than those receiving nothing at all.
Went a little off topic there but in a nutshell, the will to live does have a profound effect on recovery rates but as yet there is not a great deal know as to why this happens as far as I have read. Bearing in mind that I'm just graduating from a psychology bachelors I may be wrong/not as well read as some so I may have missed some more recent or appropriate literature that might give a little more insight but I hope I've helped a little.
Edit: I posted some related articles lower down for some further reading so I thought I'd add them here.
Ok, so here's a little article about placebos acting even when they are known to be placebos. _URL_0_ - Well worth a read.
_URL_4_ - Much more in depth journal article on placebo (specific to sudden loss of hearing) in which there seems a much smaller gap than you would imagine between placebo and medical treatment. (this is full of stats and jargon but if you can bear with it, it's very interesting).
_URL_1_ - An article describing how the placebo effect can alter brain function.
_URL_5_ - another article describing how the placebo effect works in certain cases. This one is well worth a read. It shows that in some cases placebos are not the magic bullet they are sometimes painted as in journal articles.
Would do more but I have to get back to revision. I get the feeling I'll be back to have a look at this topic soon enough though.
Edit: I've seen a few posts citing that I didn't back up the information regarding cancer sufferers specifically so I found a couple of articles that would hopefully shed some light on this. I can't cite the peer reviewed journals as the library account at my University doesn't allow direct links so I did my best to find some informed yet admittedly not peer reviewed articles on the subject.
Ok, so specifically to cancer sufferers, _URL_6_ - This article shows that people without the stresses of a distressed relationship show a much quicker state of recovery than those who do not.
_URL_2_ - This is more a Q & A for those suffering from breast cancer but shows that good mental health can increase the level your body heals or responds to the negative sides of the treatment itself.
_URL_3_ - A further article explaining the links between good psychological health and cancer survival rates explaining the positives of good mental health on the stresses of being diagnosed with cancer.
Sorry I didn't cite these earlier. Didn't have much time on my hands but I hope this goes some way to explaining and backing the claims I made regarding cancer in the original post. |
Is it possible to determine the location at which a photo was taken based on the moon's position in the sky? | No, it won't tell you the location from which the photo was taken. What you'd actually need would be an image of the stars in the night sky, but even that would only narrow it down to a latitude, unless you knew the UTC time the photo was taken. |
How historically accurate is the quote: "The war wasn’t only about abolishing fascism, but to conquer sales markets. We could have, if we had intended so, prevented this war from breaking out without doing one shot, but we didn’t want to."? | > verify the quote
There's zero evidence that this was ever said by Churchill, Truman, or anyone else involved in WWII. If one is to presume that the premise of the quote is accurate (that is to say, the war was fought by the allies to "conquer sales markets," why would they admit that after years of propaganda stating that the war was a war for freedom?
It's hard to source a negative, of course (aka, come up with a source saying that someone *didn't* say this particular line). The fact that there are no reputable sources that point towards Churchill or Truman actually uttering this line, however, should dispel its credibility.
> explain the context in which it was made, and
Presumably by some Neo-Nazi, though I can't say who first created this statement. It fits in well with the Nazi idea that the Germans were the target of an international Jewish financier conspiracy.
> also explain how historically true it was.
Completely false. It makes no sense - if Britain and France keen to "conquer" the sales market that was Germany, why would they follow a policy of appeasement throughout the 30s? Why wouldn't they have just conquered Germany in the 20s, when they were weak - say, just extend the [occupation of the Ruhr](_URL_0_) to the entirety of the German nation?
The notion of one nation conquering another for economic gain is not absurd. After all, economic exploitation is one of the key features of imperialism. To portray Nazi Germany as a victim of imperialism, however, is absurd. The British and French were highly reluctant to go to war with Germany, but ended up doing so to prevent Germany from establishing hegemony over Europe. They couldn't have just pulled some strings and prevented Hitler from invading Poland without firing "one shot."
Your skepticism is well justified, and the fact that the quote only appears on site that are apologetic to the Nazis or based on attention-grabbing headlines is telling. It's not history, it's fiction. |
why do you burn fat better at a lower heart rate than your cardio zone? | You don't. You burn a larger *percentage* of fat calories in that heart rate zone than in a higher zone. But, because you're burning more calories in total, you actually burn more fat calories in total at higher heart rates.
See _URL_0_ |
when having diarrhea, why is it i can sit there for 20-30 minutes after going and nothing comes out. but when i get up, i immediately have to go again? | You can get the sensation of excrement entering your anus without it actually being there. You technically feel like you have to go even while sitting down but that's only because you're actually contracting your "poo muscles." When your body doesn't feel itself trying to "go" any more, it tells your brain "hey, dude there's something big coming down" and then you instinctively contract again, repeat until you actually poo. |
Adult adoption seems to have been very common by the late Roman Republic; was this a political development, driven by social forces, or interpersonal ones (or something else)? Was it particular to the aristocratic class or common in general? Do we know how it developed? | On his 62nd birthday, the emperor Hadrian - tormented by an illness that had crippled him and left him subject to bouts of murderous rage - convened a council of advisers at his bedside. Painfully shifting his dropsy-stiffened limbs, he delivered a short address about his succession plans. The historian Cassius Dio (who wrote nearly a century later) gives this version:
"I, my friends, have not been permitted by nature to have a son, but you have made it possible by legal enactment. Now there is this difference between the two methods — that a begotten son turns out to be whatever sort of person Heaven pleases, whereas one that is adopted a man takes to himself as the result of a deliberate selection. Thus by the process of nature a maimed and witless child is often given to a parent, but by process of selection one of sound body and sound mind is certain to be chosen. For this reason I formerly selected Lucius before all others...But since Heaven has bereft us of them, I have found as emperor for you in his place the man whom I now give you, one who is noble, mild, tractable, prudent, neither young enough to do anything reckless nor old enough to neglect aught, one who has been brought up according to the laws and one who has exercised authority in accordance with our traditions, so that he is not ignorant of any matters pertaining to the imperial office, but could handle them all effectively..." (69.20)
Thus Hadrian announced his plans to adopt the man we know as Antoninus Pius, who would succeed him a few months later.
Roman adoption might best be conceptualized as an oligarchic society's response to demographic realities. Thanks largely to cripplingly high rates of child mortality, many Roman families failed to produce a male heir. Adoption allowed a childless man to perpetuate his family- a concern to all classes, but most pressing and visible among the aristocracy. There were two legal forms of adoption - one for those who had previously paterfamilias of their own family, another for those who had been under the paternal power of another - but the upshot in each case was to make one man the legal son of another.
Legal adoption seems to have developed fairly early - probably by the fourth century BCE. It was certainly well-established by the middle Republic, when the general and statesman Aemilius Paulus negotiated the adoption of two of his sons into prominent families:
"So then Aemilius, having divorced Papiria, took another wife; and when she had borne him two sons he kept these at home, but the sons of his former wife he introduced into the greatest houses and the most illustrious families, the elder into that of Fabius Maximus, who was five times consul, while the younger was adopted by the son of Scipio Africanus, his cousin, who gave him the name of Scipio." (Plut., *Aem*. 5.5)
The institution of adoption was famously abused / creatively applied by Cicero's nemesis Clodius, who had himself adopted into a plebeian family to make him eligible for the tribunate. We also hear more and more about testamentary adoptions (posthumous adoptions by will) in the late Republic, which (unlike the two legal forms of adoption) entailed only taking the name of one's new "father," not formally joining his family. The most famous instance of this is of course the future Augustus' adoption by his great-uncle Julius Caesar. Adoption continued to evolve in the imperial era, when women were allowed to adopt for the first time. It also became, as we have seen, a principle of imperial succession - though no emperor ever passed over his natural son in favor of an adopted one. |
In the movie Kingdom of Heaven, Saladin is depicted as having a chest full of ice in his tent in the middle of the desert. How would he have gotten ahold of ice and preserved it? | This has been asked a few times before:
like [here ](_URL_1_) with an answer by /u/Eireika
and [another one](_URL_0_) with a nested comment by /u/Valkine adding the the scene was probably a creative freedom, mixing a historical known ice gift from Saladin elsewhere into the movies setting.
tl;dr: ice could be harvested and transported isolated with hay and sawdust and stored in specialized buildings and pits but conditions of practicality and cost apply. |
how is it possible that isp's can see what your up to online? i thought https encrypted your traffic so it can't be read? | Sorta.
The ISP is your mailman. They need to get packages to where they need to go, Reddit for example is sending you a package containing this reply. You pay the mailman monthly for a rate at which they send packages from you and to you.
HTTPS encrypts the package’s contents, however the ISP’s responsibility is still to move the package from A to B, and therefore needs to know what these A and B are. Therefore the postage address cannot be encrypted, and your ISP can track who you are exchanging packages with, be it Reddit or YouTube or Netflix.
So your ISP can’t actually see what you are viewing on Reddit, YouTube, or Netflix, but they can see which sites you are accessing. |
Why did Staten Island remain mostly residential, and not develop more like Manhattan did? | Totally got this one. Native Staten Islander here, who has done research. I'm on my phone, so I cannot provide links at the moment though.
First, one has to realize that Staten Island is the least populous borough--I think the current population is only about 500-600k. Staten Island historically has also been sparsely populated in relationship to the rest of the city. This is very much a result of the geography of the island. While not a problem now, Staten Island had difficult terrain to live: rocky hills (made of Serpentine rock) and wetland/marshland further south. This made it very difficult for many people to have farms, and the surroubdi by waterways (Arthur Kill and Kill van Kull) would have been too narrow and shallow for large scale exporting.
Staten Island, therefore, remained as a sparsely populated farmland for a long time. Similarly, it's distance from Brooklyn and Manhattan made it difficult for regular travel and inter-county trade. There were ferries (such as Cornelius Vanderbilt's, which started him on to his fortune and later evolved into the Staten Island Ferry), but they were not as many as would have been needed for large scale trade.
That being said, Staten Island was always integrated with New York rather than New Jersey. Fort Wadsworth was paired with Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn to protect the harbor. Staten Island served as a quarantine for sick immigrants. It's proximity to the harbor allowed it to profit from New Yorks trade as well.
When New York became a city, Staten Island was the last to join in 1898. Many Staten Islanders were not happy (and many are still not to this day).
The first easy access to the borough came in 1963, when the Verrazano Narrows bridge was completed. That started Staten Islands population growth. New Yorkers saw the free land and the proximity to the city (now with bridge access) and began to move there for residential purposes, while working in the rest of the city. |
I know that in the middle ages many towns were rather small (often the largest still only consisting of tens of thousands of people). How vital to the national economy were towns? What sort of professions were people practising there and were there any that weren't as common in more rural locations? | "How important were towns" is kind of a tough question to answer, because the existence/increase of towns is both a sign and a cause of overall exonomic restructuring over the later Middle Ages. Towns were essential to the economic system they were a part of/helped create. You can say something like by 1300, about 65% of England's economic production was shipped overseas, which meant it came through market towns, but obviously this was heavily agricultural/pastoral commodity. And of the 35% or so internal trade, that would be intimately bound up in a market/rural/urban web.
As Christopher Dyer neatly sums it up, by the late Middle Ages, tow key developments had happened. First, lords were thinking about economic productivity and how to get *more* out of their land. (But at the same time, we are in the days of the moral economy as well--fixing bread prices to make sure everyone can afford at least A Loaf of bread each day, even if it was a smaller load when grain prices rose). Second, the transition from crop to cash rents, which would be accelerated by the Great Famine in1315-1322, was already underway.
Thus, lords expected income in cash from their peasants, paid it in tax, and sold their share of crops on their land for cash. Day laborers in the countryside were paid in cash and needed somewhere to buy the necessary goods to stay alive. Conversion of crops to cash meant longer distance trade, which meant traders--and the people to support them. Who, in turn, produced more refined goods and services for each other, and maybe for rural dwellers who might spend more time gearing up for production of what brought them cash (either their own crops or as mill workers, harvest laborers, miners).Talking about towns is inseparable from talking about long-distance economies overall. (Since "national" can be a questionable term still at this time. Centralized/royal authority isn't even always an aspiration of rulers, much less a fact.)
But there are a couple of things we can look at to get a bit deeper. First, towns enabled specialization of profession--the ability to make a living from a very narrowly focused line of work which, overall, meant a greater variety of goods being produced in abundance. Secondly, towns were vital to economic *growth*.
Towns were signs and causes of specialization in profession. And medieval people could be very, very specific about what constituted a "profession." In Rouen, for example, the guilds for women (yes, women!) who made clothes out of new fabric versus those who made clothes out of secondhand fabric were not only separate but often at war in the courts for encroaching on each other's territory. Nuremberg had a dedicated craft (Nuremberg's formal guild system was abolished around 1348) of *gingerbread baking.*
The Nuremberg *Hausbücher* are a great example of how specialized professions could be. You can navigate around the site--I've sorted it by "profession" for you--and click through to see illustrations of the different jobs or people who did them in late medieval/early modern Germany.
_URL_0_
Probably the most important urban profession was not unique to towns, but it illustrates well the central role that towns played in economic development. In northwest Europe, it was increasingly popular for teenage men but *especially* women to move to cities and work as servants for a period of time, saving up money for marriage or to start a singlewoman's household. (The medieval demographic imbalance between women and men was heightened by the fact that a higher proportion of women moved to cities and stayed; a higher proportion of men stayed in or went back to the countryside.)
What Hajnal originally identified as the "European marriage pattern," of women and men both marrying later in northwest Europe connected to which countries' economies grew relatively stronger in the early modern era, isn't quite a *marriage* pattern. Women in Eastern Europe show a wide variety of ages at first marriage; even in Italy many women married later than we are often given to assume. Instead, it seems to be a *women's wages* pattern. Places with towns where women worked--acquiring cash income, spending cash income--generally speaking saw more economic growth from the late Middle Ages on.
I'm still struggling to say "how important were towns" because without them, the late medieval economy would have had to look completely different. This would have been true at the local level, the regional level, the "national" level, and the international level. But within the system that existed, specialized professions and their products would seem to be a good illustration of the economic contributions of cities to local life rather than just long-distance trade. |
How do anti-diarrheals work? Is a bowel movement is coming from the colon/rectum how does something like Imodium of pepto bismal work so quickly when digestion of food takes hours? | There are four different ways:
Anti-motility: they relax muscles in the digestive system to make sure more water is absorbed from the stool and it's less liquid.
Absorbents: these bind up excess water and toxins in the stomach and make the stools firmer.
Bismuth based: which nobody knows how they would work, if they did - they've never been clinically proven to work. Most brands actually contain aspirin too which may reduce inflammation.
Antibiotics: these treat the illness, not the symptom, and it's pretty clear how that works. |
Why did China recieve Veto-power at the creation of the SC of the UN? | They were 'granted' this at the Conference of Cairo in 1943 by FDR and Churchill. The Americans needed the Chinese to continue the fight against the Japanese on the mainland, since most of the Japanese armed forces were occupied fighting the Chinese United Front (Both the Kwomingtang and the Communists). At Cairo FDR also was already preparing his 'New Order' by trying to get all allied powers to sign off on the United Nations Idea, and by giving China the seat they also participated in the United Nations.
It's also important to note that FDR and Churchill negotiated with Chiang Kai Shek, and as such the veto power in the Security Council went to the Kwomingtang, even after they were forced in exile to Taiwan. Only after the thaw in the '70s did the Pernament seat at the Security council and veto-right go to the Peoples Republic of China, instead of the Republic of China (Taiwan).
Source:
KERREMANS, B. and LAENEN R., International Politics since 1945, Leuven, 1999.
Edit: Spelling Errors |
How do we know the age of the universe, specifically with a margin of error of 59 million years? | By measuring it. There are so many contributing measurements that it is difficult to list them all in a reddit comment. [Wikipedia has an article](_URL_0_).
The small uncertainty is simply a result of very precise measurements. |
How did Michelin, a tire company, become the creators of the definitive guide to fine dining? | As it should be when connecting tire companies with restaurant reviews, the Michelin Guide's popularity started to rise with the innovation of the "motor tourist," the vehicle-toting traveler. The Michelin Tyre company made its first *Guide Michelin France* in 1900. The first Michelin Guides were just driver's handbooks, with tips for vehicle maintenance and nearby petrol stations. These pocket Michelin Guides were given out freely for "l'instruction sur l'emploi des pneus Michelin pour voitures et automobile" (instructions for the use of Michelin tires on cars and automobiles). The ultimate goal was to reassure new drivers that, even if they left town in their new motor vehicles, they could still find petrol stations, mechanics, and even post offices. As Kory Olston points out in her study of *Michelin* maps, the guide's popularity was indebted to the rise of motor tourism in turn-of-the-century France. The *Michelin* maps were designed differently than standard travel guides; town plans were relatively sparse and two-tone, with major roadways taking the focus instead of urban landmarks. The guide catered to bourgeois drivers, offering a "more restrained number of tourist venues" with a "clarity of display to make it easier for their readers to traverse unfamiliar municipalities easily."
In 1926, these "tourist venues" finally included restaurants for motor tourists to frequent on their holidays in the countryside. The *Guide* of 1926 included a "restaurant star," or a single star to denote a particularly special dining experience. A decade later, the second and third stars showed up, along with a criteria: one star for "Une très bonne table dans sa catégorie" (a good site in its category), two for "Table excellente, mérite un détour" (an excellent site worth a detour), and three for "Une des meilleures tables, vaut le voyage" (one of the best sites, worthy of a trip). Within three decades, the *Guide* had gone from a mechanic's handbook to a special purchase for rich motor tourists looking to get the best out of their journeys.
The three-star feat is more difficult to explain. One possible reason for its "impossibility" may come from the fact that the third star didn't exist during the WWII era. During the War, the *Guide* was simply reprinted from its 1939 edition, and then post-war shortages forced Michelin to put a halt on three-star ratings until 1950. *Guide* critics are anonymous, so there's not much testimony on the elusive three-star review--but we can guess that the restaurants that *do* have three stars have supreme quality of ingredients, consistency between visits, and head chefs with dedicated personalities.
Sources:
Kory Olson, *Maps for a New Kind of Tourist: The First Guides Michelin France (1900–1913)*. Available [here](_URL_2_).
*Michelin Guide History*. Provence and Beyond. [Here](_URL_1_).
*The Michelin Guide: Over 100 Editions and a Century of History*. ViaMichelin. [Here](_URL_0_). |
why do opera singers put so much vibrato on everything? is it the only way to get the volume they need? | Voice major here...
Vibrato ensures a continuous airstream from your diaphragm. It's an easy way to keep your muscles from gumming things up in the throat/jaw area, which can change the sound. Having your muscles truly loose and relaxed while singing makes for a truer more beautiful sound, and vibrato ensures that the muscles don't mess up the airstream. It's a healthy way to sing that will preserve stamina, something opera singers need to get through 4 hours of Wagner.
True ELI5?
Vibrating their voice like that forces them to keep their muscles loosey goosey, which makes singing easier and more beautiful. |
AskScience Cosmos Q & A thread. Episode 1: Standing Up in the Milky Way | Is it just me, or is that asteroid belt way too dense? Not to mention the Kuiper belt. On a related note, how dense are the rings of Saturn? Would you see a thicket of iceballs whizzing past you if you actually flew a spacecraft through them? |
What rank would a soldier have to be to avoid going 'over the top' in WWI? | That's a very interesting question, and relates a lot to a common perception that, once a certain level of authority is reached, the individual is less likely to participate in combat.
That is a very generalised view, of course, and as such not entirely correct. An army is a very rigid organization and must be tightly controlled and led. The closer that leadership is to the fighting, the more effective it can be. The balance, of course is to not expose high ranking leadership to the dangers of the front unnecessarily. Also, the larger formation one commands would dictate having to be further removed from the front on the basis of the scale of numbers a Division, Corps or Army commander would be dealing with.
There also lies a difference in the role of particular persons-what is known as "the Divisional Wedge"- which describes the ratio of those engaged in combat to those supporting combat operations. A Lt Col as a battalion commander would very likely advance with his men, while a Lieutenant assigned to General Headquarters might not ever hear a shot fired in anger. Likewise for NCO's. A farrier Corporal would be well removed from fighting, performing his job of shoeing horses, whilst a Sergeant in an infantry platoon would certainly see his fair share of the war.
Maj Gordon Corrigan illustrates that even high rank did not exempt one from the dangers of the war: "Altogether four British lieutenant generals, twelve major generals and eighty-one brigadier generals died or were killed between 1914-1918. A further 146 were wounded or taken prisoner. Whatever else the generals were doing, they were certainly not sitting in comfortable chateaux." *Mud, Blood and Poppycock* Cassell Press, 2003. |
what it that feeling of horrible burning when water goes up your nose when diving into a pool or just taking a shower and reaching down for something? | The main reason why water burns when it goes up your nose is because the salinity of the water does not match the salinity of the cells in your body. The salinity of freshwater is much lower than your body, so when water gets into your nose and into your sinuses, some of the cells that line the sinus and nasal cavities burst open and die because they rapidly suck in water - like overfilling a water balloon. Your body responds by rapidly secreting mucus to coat the remaining cells and protect them from the water.
This whole thing involves three steps: (1) osmosis of water into the nasal cells; (2) many cells burst (cell lysis), and (3) the responds by releasing mucus.
[Link](_URL_0_) |
I stumbled across an image of the inside of the Hagia Sophia, it appears Christian imagery was not removed by the ottomans, why was this? | These mosaics were painted over but not removed when the city was taken by Mehmed II. Minarets, minbar, and mihrab were added and it became a functional mosque. After the fall of the empire and the transformation of the Hagia Sophia from mosque into museum in the 1920s, restorationists removed some of the plaster and whitewash to reveal the mosaics underneath. |
What's the difference between a tribe and an organized government in the medieval period? Why do we talk about the "Kingdom of Lombardy" or the "Duchy of Normandy", but at the same time we talk about the "Avars" or the "Aboriginal australians"? | I'm going to give two very short, simple answers and then one somewhat more complex (but still pretty short) answer. First short answer is that we say "Kingdom of Lombardy" and "Ducky or Normandy" because that is what they called themselves. Nine times out of ten the best term to use for a particular state or social group is the one they use to refer to themselves. If we use a term like "Germanic tribe" it is because we don't actually know that term.
Second short and simple answer isn't actually short and simple for you but is for me because it is just a [link to some discussion about the term "tribe"](_URL_1_) which has a pretty fraught history of usage.
The third answer relates to an old but still somewhat useful concept in anthropology of sociopolitical typology, which essentially posits that political configurations can, broadly speaking, be categorized into four types: bands, tribes, chiefdoms and states. I was trying to think of an easy way to explain the difference but to be honest I am a bit at a loss, so I will just link [this handy chart](_URL_0_) (in my defense, this is generally how intro anthro textbooks do it also)[EDIT: changed to an imgur link. The original citation was "based on the typology in Elman R. Service's (1962) Primitive Social Organization: An Evolutionary Perspective" but to be perfectly honest I like most people learned the typology from introductory materials,specifically the excellent lecture series "Peoples and Cultures of the World" by Edward Fischer]. This typology is somewhat out of favor, for reasons that I think motivated your question: how on earth do you classify the Holy Roman Empire? It also implicitly promotes a linear view of human society in which people progress through different "stages" ending in the modern nation-state--actual history is rather more complex. Furthermore, actual political affiliation is often much more complex and multiple, for example one of my favorite groups n history are the Isuarians, who firmly existed within the Roman Empire but also maintained an internal political configuration that can best be described as somewhere between "tribe" and "chiefdom" on that chart. All the terms have a bit of difficulty coming down to the level of the individual. |
Confederacy fetishists often point to Lincoln not being on the ballot in 1860 as the "principal" cause of the Civil War, but *why* wasn't he on the ballot in southern states? Did they just refuse to put him on there, or was there some complications w/r/t the newly formed party and the dem split? | It's absurd to say that Lincoln not being on the ballot in 1860 is the principal cause of the Civil War. The only way that even makes minimal sense as a southern grievance is if southern state governments and a large portion of the white populace in the slave states wanted Lincoln on the ballot. They didn't and *that was the whole point.* The simple threat of an antislavery president was enough to trigger an existential crisis for the section. One actually winning pushed the most enslaving states over the edge because they believed he was coming for their human property, whether directly or indirectly. That's the cause of the Civil War and everything else that gets tossed up either as secondary causes or as a distraction, to the degree they have any historical basis at all, flows from it.
But you asked about the why and that requires going into how elections worked at the time. Today, we go into the booth and there's a ballot paper printed by the state with all the candidates on it that qualify under whatever eligibility requirements the state has. You go into a little booth or otherwise secure your privacy, mark your ballot however your precinct does that, hand it in and go home.
This is not how the middle nineteenth century runs elections at all. Ballots are produced by partisan printers. They will have the full ticket filled in correctly: just the names of the people the printer endorses for each spot. If you want to change that, you've got to scratch out their name and write in the one you prefer. Then you have to actually cast the ballot, which is done in public. Printers usually run off ballots on different colors of paper and/or different sizes too, so everybody around can see who you vote for.
Voting for an "abolitionist" (which Lincoln is not, but white Southerners rarely care for fine distinctions in these things) is a good way to get yourself mobbed in much of the South. Election violence isn't exactly common (though it is more so the further west one goes) but it's regular enough that everyone knows the score. Furthermore, freelance violence against people not deemed sufficiently proslavery is a regular part of southern political life. Simply debating the merits of slavery can risk violence, let alone voting for an antislavery ticket. Even in Kentucky, which is more permissive than most of the South, antislavery speakers can literally get stabbed for the deed.
But that assumes you can get your hands on a GOP ballot, if you even want to. (Most of the white South has been all-in on slavery for decades by the time 1860 rolls around.) Most printers are local, so they're part of and subject to the same community pressures as ordinary voters. Given the expense of a steam press and the ease with which a mob can wreck one, as well as their requirement for the goodwill of the community for their business to continue, they're probably more vulnerable than usual.
It's true that Lincoln isn't on ballots in the South for all those reasons...except that he is in a few slave states. (He loses them.) The thing is that his not being an option for voters is what the South intends from the start. They're not upset that they couldn't vote for him, but rather angry that their proscriptions didn't settle the election in their favor. That suggests to the white South that their regime is unstable to a new degree, particularly as the GOP is keen to expand its reach in the Border South.
There are small Republican parties operating in Maryland and Missouri already. What happens if Lincoln uses the spoils system, as every president did, to seed the rest of the section with antislavery men? They would be the nucleus of new state GOPs that might build the infrastructure that makes slavery debates unavoidable. The two-party system was only tolerable in the slave states so long as both parties competed over who was the most proslavery, which the GOP will not do. Breaking the appearance of white uniformity can underscore its genuine absence (though the GOP was always too optimistic about having hordes of antislavery whites who just needed a vehicle) and will, in the minds of enslavers, embolden the people they enslave. That will, again their estimation, inevitably bring bloody slave revolts which can easily snowball into a genocidal race war. White southerners expect to win that one, because they're white supremacists, but they know it'll be bloody and probably cost them a lot of lives on top of the tremendous profits at stake.
**Sources**
*Liberty & Slavery* by William Cooper
*Road to Disunion* (2 vols) by William Freehling
*The Fiery Trial* by Eric Foner |
why can't we help fight global warming by painting things like cars, roofs, roads, etc. white? wouldn't it reflect sunlight just like the arctic snow does? | It [might not](_URL_0_) be as helpful as we'd like to think.
> Painting roofs white has been—like changing lightbulbs—one of the well-cited easy ways out of climate change. By reflecting more light and heat back to the atmosphere, a white roof should act like a natural anti-warming device, while also reducing your energy costs by keeping your house cool in the summer. Turns out, painting your roof white would be simply a massive waste of white paint.
> As it is, Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford and his colleague, research student John Ten Hoeve, found in a new paper in the Journal of Climate that while white surfaces cooled houses, they also reduced cloudiness, allowing more sunlight to reach the ground. That conclusion complements a recent study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research that found that the positive effect of white roofs in the summer would be offset by a negative effect in the winter.
> "There does not seem to be a benefit from investing in white roofs," says Jacobson. "The most important thing is to reduce emissions of the pollutants that contribute to global warming."
> Solar panels are a better idea than white paint, he says. "The better thing to do is to put a solar panel on the roof because that not only cools the house by absorbing the sunlight to make electricity. It also offsets fossil fuel generation at power plants." |
the difference between uhd 4k, super uhd 4k, dolby vision, hdr. | UHD - means "ultra HD" its a nonsense marketing term for 4K and pretty antiquated.
4K means 4K resolution
Super UHD - is a nonsense term, the "super" doesn't mean anything its just a tv line, like a Toyota "Corolla". These aren't even the top end TVs they make. Complete non-meaning in any way.
HDR: this is an image format. Its somewhat complimentary to 4K. 4K is all about resolution, HDR is saying it has a better way to display colors. HDR makes stuff really pop, and will kinda be a bigger deal than 4K, but adoption is even slower in content as you need an HDR tv to see HDR, and its really just starting to be put into mass market tv sets.
Dolby Vision: There are a few different ways to implement HDR, Dolby vision is the newest one being widely adopted and seems to be becoming an industry standard going forward.
Further, if you're buying a TV now, and can afford it, buying a 4K HDR TV capable of Dolby Vision is pretty much the baseline standard.
Edit: To the people complaining that UHD has technical meaning, thats not wrong, but you're getting sold on what it means for tv. Its specifically written into TV names as marketing jargon (not technical jargon) to confuse consumers. Again, its complete nonsense... the marketing departments at Samsung, etc. are clearing doing their job well to draw such a response. |
If a varying electric field produces magnetism, can a varying gravitational field produce an analogous field? | There is nothing exactly like a magnetic field, but there are analogies between the two. For example, a rotating massive object causes an effect called frame dragging, where spacetime is in effect dragged around the rotating object. In the extreme example, near rotating black holes, there is a region where it is impossible for an object not to rotate, because doing so would require going faster than light relative to the dragged frame.
Gravitational radiation from accelerating masses is analogous to electromagnetic radiation from accelerating charges. |
can fighter aircraft detect when they’ve been “locked on” like in the movies, if they can, how do they know? | Yes, it's absolutely possible for a fighter craft to know it's been locked onto.
In order to home in on something, you have to know where it is, and one way to know where things are is to use *radar* -- that is, send out a beam of radio waves that bounces off of objects and comes back to the transmitter, painting a picture of what's around it. A radar system has to scan the entire sky, so the number of times the radar track hits a target aircraft in a minute is relatively low.
When a radar system sees something it wants, it turns on a different radar that scans much more quickly to provide more accurate tracking data to the missile. Aircraft can determine how quickly they're being painted by radar; if they're being painted very rapidly, that probably means a radar-tracking missile has acquired them.
There are other types of missile guidance that are harder to detect; heat-seeking missiles, for example, don't rely on signals bounced off the target, so an aircraft can't know one's on its tail. |
What happens when a bee or wasp hitches a ride in your car, then gets out of the car a long distance from home? | According to a study by the Australian National University, bees are very good at finding their way home, even over long dustances, and often rely on the position of the sun, the polarisation of light in the sky, the panorama view of the horizon and landmarks including towers, mountains or lakes.
From that article: “In their forage trips, one way that honeybees use to find their way home is by storing distance and directional information when they venture out,” said Professor Zhang. “In other words, they try to go back the way they came."
So bees rely on landmarks, the sky, and a general bearing of what direction they have traveled and can make it back home, even if it takes them multiple days. Though this probably begins to fail the further they go from the hive.
Source: _URL_0_ |
why does putting clear (scotch/packing) tape on a frosted window let you see through it? | Frosted glass is simply glass with a (chemically) roughened surface which causes the light passing through the pane to diffuse in all directions, instead of letting straight through.
(Scotch) tape is essentially a clear plastic surface coated with a thin layer of transparent adhesive. When you stick it to frosted glass the adhesive fills the small cavities on the glass surface which were made by the chemicals used to frost it. The adhesive thus smoothens the surface, counteracting any diffusion.
This also means that the tape trick only works on chemically frosted glass, or mechanically frosted glass with a fine texture, because the thin layer of adhesive can only smoothen out relatively small cavities in the glass.
Edit: thanks for the silver!
Edit 2: and thanks for the double silver and the gold!! |
Why do we freeze for a split second when something startles us or makes us jump? | The freezing response is mediated by a circuit involving the amygdala and a part of the brainstem, the periaqueductal gray. This circuit can coordinate the typical motor output: freezing, jumping, yelping, etc.
Anyone can come up with plausible-sounding evolutionary "explanations," but this can easily spiral into just-so storytelling. **An evolutionary story that sounds good or "makes sense" is not a substitute for data.** The important part is the (comparative) neuroanatomy and behavior.
Edit: there was a removed comment that asked whether "why" questions are even answerable. Here is the response I was typing before it was removed:
> We can answer "little" why: the mechanics of what happens, the steps, the neural substrates, the behavior, etc.
>
> It is much harder to answer the "big" why: what genetic, developmental, and environmental factors triggered the appearance, prevalence, and conservation of a particular neural circuit and behavior in a mammalian ancestor millions of years ago. |
What were Nazi Germany's plans post-WWII in the case of an (unlikely) Axis victory? | Territories in the east were to be governed as something like German colonial provinces called *Reichkommissariaten*, whose inhabitants would be mostly killed off by an engineered famine called the [Hunger Plan](_URL_0_), with the survivors being used as slave labour on German farms or forcibly relocated.
The Nazis planed to kill off a certain percentage of the inhabitants in different areas; 80-85% of Poles were to be exterminated, 50-60% of Russians, 50% of Czechs, 65% of Ukrainians etc. The survivors of some of the more "acceptable" ethnic groups like Czechs, Balts and Ukrainians would be forcibly "Germanized". Around 45 million of surviving Eastern Europeans who were not enslaved or starved to death were to be forcibly relocated into Western Siberia, leaving a "zone of settlement" in European Russia and Ukraine. Around 13 million were to remain as slave labour. The Nazis planned to relocate something like 10 million Germans (whether by force or willingly isn't clear) in this new *Lebensraum*, but this number was simply not feasible, hence the "Germanization" of some of the other ethnic groups. Some writers believe the sterilization experiments done in concentration camps were meant to be implemented on the general population in occupied areas of the east. They planned this all to happen in a timeframe of around 20 years from the 1940s. For more on this topic, look up "Generalplan Ost" - the Nazis kept very meticulous details about their plans.
Nothing like this was planned for the West. IIRC, Hitler wanted some sort of European commonwealth, like a Fascist version of the EU, and his occupation of the west was supposed to be temporary - he seemed to have no problem recruiting collaborators from the various reactionaries of western Europe. There were no plans that I am aware of for the extermination of Frenchmen or Britons. He originally wanted to ally with Britain (for ridiculous 'racialist' reasons) against the USSR, and would have allowed them to maintain their colonial empire in exchange for his European empire. Nazi Germany didn't really want to conquer the world; they wanted a huge empire in eastern Europe purged of its Slavic and Jewish inhabitants, to make way for a huge German settler population that didn't really exist. |
What would it look like if I constructed a cube made of one-way mirrors, so a person could see into the cube but the inner walls were reflective? | The way one-way mirrors works is that the glass reflects part of the light, while transmitting some. This work _both ways_. The reason it _acts_ as a one-way mirror is because the side that looks like a mirror is much brighter than the other side. (For example, the interrogation room is brightly lit, while the observation room is dark. Those inside the interrogation room looks at the glass and see their own reflection.) The bright light means that lots of light is reflected, and the intensity of reflected light is much higher than light transmitted from the dark room.
So, you need to put in a light source inside the box, and look at the box in a dark environment. What you will see is similar to what it looks like if you have a cube made of mirrors, except with one side replaced with plexiglass.
Edit: Something like [this](_URL_0_).
If it is reversed - the outside is brighter than the inside - then the cube will look like it is constructed of mirrors.
Like [this outdoor toilet](_URL_1_). |
What happened to pre-Columbian dog breeds? Did they die off from diseases brought by European dogs? | There are several breeds of domestic dogs that were developed in North America. Some are breeds are still around, while others are extinct.
Among those that are still popular pets today you can find huskies and Malamute and their relatives, which have Old World counterparts in the Eurasian Arctic as well. Chihuahuas trace their origins to the other end of the continent in Mesoamerica, as does the Xolo (aka the Mexican Hairless Dog, although there are variants with hair).
Another breed that's still around, but is rarely seen as a pet, is the Carolina Dog. These dogs resemble dingos, as a lot of dogs will after being feral for many generations. They were rediscovered relatively recently in the 1970s and we're not sure how long they've been around. Dogs like them show up in pre-Columbian art, but they were pets back then or if they were already feral is unknown.
Many of the most famous extinct breeds are from the northwestern part of North America. For example, there are the [Hare Indian Dog](_URL_0_), the [Tahltan Bear Dog](_URL_2_), and most famously, the [Salish Wool Dog](_URL_4_). The first two were bred for different styles of hunting, while the wool dogs, as their name suggests, were breed for wool.
**Sources**
* [Pre-Columbian origins of Native American dog breeds, with only limited replacement by European dogs, confirmed by mtDNA analysis](_URL_1_)
* [Dogs of the American Aborigines](_URL_3_) |
If carbon dioxide was once 20 times as prevalent in the atmosphere as it is now, why should we be concerned. | well, it's not that increasing carbon dioxide levels will destroy all life. If it spikes too quickly, it may cause a mass extinction of sorts. But life will still persist, and evolve into something different.
The threat is that we will turn the earth into an environment where we can't survive. It's a threat to humanity, not the earth. |
How did the people of Imperial Japan view their German allies in WW2 and vice versa? | I can't give a full answer but Imperial Japan was very strict on censorship. I'm pretty sure Mein Kampf was banned. Foreign influence, especially western influence was considered a bad thing. And at the same time Nazi Germany was at war with The USSR, Japan maintained a non aggression pact. This hurt Germany because it allowed for the USSR to move troops off the Manchukuo border to the very important Eastern Front against the Nazis. Moreover the allies had dominance over the oceans in the latter parts of the war making supply exchange difficult if not impossible (sometimes submarines were used to move diplomats, although Im not sure how often). And there were information exchanges on weapons, military supplies, although this was also limited. But for the most part it was just a written alliance and not much else (to my knowledge).
Source: BA in history.
Edit: spelling |
why in 2014 is the ocean still such a mystery. we overcame obstacles to space travel 50+ years ago but can't figure out water. | We actually can do some pretty cool things in water. We get oil from miles below a surface that is miles below the waves, we explore at tremendous depths, and we lay cables that stretch the length of the oceans.
It's true that there's still a lot left to do, and we certainly could do a lot more. But the reason we seem to be behind compared to space has less to do with pressure than with light (or electromagnetic waves more generally).
The reason we know so much about space is that we can see really far, and what we see contains a lot of information in the form of light spectrums, positions, speeds, etc... Also, most of the things we look at are really big, and stand out clearly from the background.
Water, on the other hand, blocks all of that. It scatters light, scatters heat, and makes info gathering a much more personal and in your face endeavour. |
What are the roots of anti-intellectualism in the United States? What is its history? | Awesome question. The classic answer can be found in Richard Hofstadter's 1963 book, *Anti-Intellectualism in American Life*. Hofstadter, who went on to win the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction for the book, wrote:
> "Anti-intellectualism . . . is founded in the democratic institutions and the egalitarian sentiments of this country."
For Hofstadter, who traces anti-intellectualism to broadsheets levied against some of the first American presidential candidates, the roots go to the classic American debate between who governs best. Is it the mob, the vast majority of Americans who have little interest or knowledge in a topic, or is it a smaller and traditionally less representative group of people who have more experience and education on a topic?
As Woodrow Wilson said in 1912: "What I fear is a government of experts. God forbid that in a democratic country we should resign the task and give the government over to experts. What are we for if we are to be scientifically taken care of by a small number of gentlemen who are the only men who understand the job?"
Hofstadter is still quoted frequently on this topic, but there are a lot of things he missed discussing, as Nicholas Lemann points out [in a wonderful 50th anniversary retrospective review](_URL_0_).
Hofstadter (and plenty of people today) think of anti-intellectualism as solely the domain of the political right. But Hofstadter missed people like Donald Kagan, Robert Bork, Jeane Kirkpatrick and Allan Bloom, who wrote *The Closing of the American Mind.*
He also tended to describe business as anti-intellectual, when we know that today, business is one of the most intellectual-friendly branches of American society. America today hosts designers and inventors, innovators and trend-makers, rather than industrialists and manufacturers as it did in 1963, when Hofstadter was writing.
He also missed the rise of the Civil Rights movement for women and minorities in the United States.
That's getting a little off track, however. The bottom line is that there is (and has been) a constant push-pull between appeals to the "mob" and the "elite" in American society.
In *Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic,* Gordon Wood contends that the first 30 years of the United States resulted in a switch from the desires of the nation's founders ─ who were the elite of the nation ─ to the will of the middling people, those involved in commerce and enterprise.
The founders of the United States had envisioned a Congress and President who were already wealthy and thus immune from corruption. The thought went that they would be self-sacrificing and put aside their businesses to serve the national good for a period, then return to their own interests afterward.
Joyce Appleby and Wood contend that the middle classes, who enriched themselves through industry and enterprise, developed a belief that the self-made man was the ideal politician, not someone who had been born wealthy, was educated, and thus theoretically could be trusted to make a decision without being swayed by public opinion.
And so we have a push and pull, dating back to the roots of the United States.
Hofstadter also makes the case that evangelical Protestantism in the United States, particularly in the South, strongly contributed to anti-intellectualism in the latter half of the 19th century and the 20th century. Mark Noll's *The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind* is a more in-depth analysis of this aspect.
Noll has done some excellent work on American religious history (I highly recommend his *The Civil War as a Theological Crisis*) and he explains that a lot of the American evangelical anti-intellectualism can be traced back to the development of a "literalist" interpretation of the Bible as a response to the anti-slavery movement of the 19th century. Before the 19th century, and particularly before the French Revolution, churches and religious organizations tended to be pro-science if they were anything.
In the United States, this began to change as the arguments about slavery intensified. As Noll points out, the Civil War caused many churches to fission into southern and northern branches, based upon their beliefs in slavery. Northern churches tended to favor an interpretation-based view of the Bible, while Southern churches stuck with a much more literal interpretation of the Bible. Forex, since the Bible refers to slavery and the proper treatment of slaves, it must be appropriate to have slavery in the United States, they argued.
This literalist philosophy was later applied to things as varied as racial segregation, abortion, and global warming. Because of its reliance upon scripture as the absolute (literally Gospel) truth, anything that took a different viewpoint was seen in a dim light. |
Why was the Revolutionary War over after the battle of Yorktown? I never understood why the rest of the British forces didn't keep fighting, especially if they still had significant forces based in New York City, and if Cornwallis wasn't even the commander of British forces in the states. | Cornwallis had one of the armies in the South with Alexander Stewart commanding another in South Carolina around Charleston. The lack of a foothold in the states and resilience of the American army helped push the British surrender and evacuation. British forces held New York City, Charleston, Georgia, and other places but could not fully control full regions. Even though the British army held Charleston, they did not have control of the rest of South Carolina. Slowly, the British forces in SC trickled back to the Charleston area after evacuating other posts such as Camden and Ninety-Six, and losing forts such as Fort Motte. The Battle of Eutaw Springs put an end with British forces trying to gain more control of South Carolina as the army would remain there until total evacuation. Even the great victories of Camden and Charleston did not seem to quell the continuing operations of the American armies. In addition, while Henry Clinton commanded the entire British army, he had distanced himself from Cornwallis after May 1780. Clinton had a disagreement with Cornwallis and for a time he would correspond with Cornwallis for updates they became sporadic by mid-1781. Clinton remained the commander in chief until 1782 when Guy Carleton took over, but the war had just about ended by then.
The British army after Saratoga had diminished substantially. Burgoyne's army became part of the Convention army. Not really prisoners of war but could not fight anymore in the war. That surrender took away 6,000 soldiers from the British army - a huge blow. Cornwallis' army numbered to almost 8,000. Clinton had a small force in New York and Stewart's army in Charleston had about 2,500. None of these armies had the capability to go against the larger American force. The British army had spread itself thin with the various theatres that popped up in 1778 including Anglo-French, Anglo-Spanish wars that made them fight not only in the Caribbean but the west including Louisiana and Kentucky (at least, what would become them). The surrender of Cornwallis' army spelled the end of the war effort in America. At that point, the American army had become a well disciplined force that showed no sign of shrinking. With the addition of Spanish and French forces, the British army had a lot to contend with and could not with the decreased amount of soldiers.
Often times, army leaders plan on crushing enemy forces and occupy the capital cities to win the war. The colonies remained decentralized and if one city fell, the rest would remain in resistance. The British army also failed to fully crush enemy combatants after a battle. Most militia units in the South had horses for retreating purposes and could swiftly escape the field. American forces also tended to regroup after battles and gain reinforcements, as well as relying on more guerilla tactics.
The 1781 campaign started with the battle of Cowpens where the British forces lost and began the Race to the Dan. This would in turn force Cornwallis' hand with the need to chase Nathaniel Greene or beat him to the Dan river. The lose of the battle also spelled disaster for the rest of the campaign as the British army had to leave supply wagons behind in order to march at a quick pace through North Carolina. It also halted his plans for controlling the rest of South Carolina. The long chase ended at Guilford Courthouse with Cornwallis battling a renewed American army. After suffering a Pyrrhic victory, Cornwallis decided to head to the coast in order to get reinforcements and supplies at Yorktown. Cornwallis also had some of the most experienced and seasoned regiments with him at the surrender including the 33rd, 71st, 23rd, the Guard infantry, the British Legion, and German battalions.
With morale crushed, Lord North proclaimed the war to be over and the administration switched from war to peace negotiations (and prisoner exchange). Ironically, the naval campaigns in the Caribbean had been quite successful but not enough to continue the war.
Matthew Spring, With Zeal and Bayonets Only.
John Buchanan, The Road to Guilford Courthouse.
Charles Ross (ed.), Correspondence of Charles, First Marquis of Cornwallis. |
Did the USSR suffer from a reverse "Baby Boom", a slump in birth rates after World War II? | So while it isn't 100 percent focused on your question, you may find [this answer](_URL_2_) to be of interest, as it does touch heavily on the pro-natal policies of the Soviet Union during and following the war as they attempted to encourage procreation. Edit: I've gone and reposted it here with some small additions to touch on demographics after quickly checking through to see what my sources noted there, but I would just doubly note that hard numbers are *really* hard to come by for the period, and we only have estimates for some of them!
----------
Looking at natalist policies in the Soviet Union, especially with regards to abortion, we can see a *lot* of policy being driven by concerns about the birthrate, and its rise and fall. Especially at the time of the war, there was very explicit concerns raised about the issue and policies were changed and created with the explicit goal of raising it.
In the Russian Empire, and the first few years of Bolshevik rule in Russia, abortion was illegal. But, as in most places where the procedure is illegal though, the procedure was nevertheless popular, but insanely dangerous. One observer pre-1920 noted:
> Within the past six months, among 100 to 150 young people under age 25, I have seen 15 to 20 percent of them making abortions without a doctor's help. They simply use household products: They drink bleach and other poisonous mixtures.
The decision to legalize the procedure, and make it simple to obtain, was almost entirely a practical decision. In 1920 they became legal if done by a doctor, essentially in acknowledgement that it would happen no matter what, so the state should do its best to make it safe. They were subsidized by the state, so free to the woman. In 1926, the abortion rate was 42.8 per 1000 working women, and 45.2 per 1000 'housewives' (compare to the US today, at [13.2 per 1000 women](_URL_0_). Modern Russia continues to be very high, at [37.4 per 1000 or so](_URL_1_))
But this wasn't to remain. As noted, the change was not because abortion was seen as *good*, but that legalizing it was a necessary evil and that the state would work to eliminate the underlying economic reasons driving women to have them. As it turned out, poor women were no more likely to be using this 'service though'. If anything, it was the better off women who were getting more abortions. Even worse, the birthrate in the USSR was falling precipitously, from 42.2 per 1000 in 1928 to 31.0 in 1932, according to a government study released in 1934. Thus the law changed in 1936 when policies started to return to pushing more 'traditional' gender roles for women, and included restricting abortion again - it required a medical reason now. As before though, just because it is illegal doesn't mean women don't seek them. After 1936, "back-alley" abortions were on the rise, and they certainly carried additional risks with them, and penalties for obtaining one meant injured women would only be further harmed by not seeking treatment:
> Women who became infected during these procedures or who sought assistance for heavy bleeding were often interrogated at the hospital before they were treated, as the authorities attempted to learn the names of underground abortionists. Abortionists were punished with one or two years’ imprisonment if they were physicians and at least three if they were not. The woman herself received a reprimand for her first offense and a fine if caught again.
Abortion statistics aren't readily available for this period, but my book notes that as the birth rate didn't seem to change much - rising briefly through 1937 when it reached 39.6 per 1000 but again beginning to decline until leveling out at 33.6 per 1000 in 1940, the same rate as 1936 when the law went into effect - as the laws became restrictive again, this would imply women weren't especially deterred by the law and continued to seek them at the same rate as before (see 1926 numbers), if not higher. There was no ready access to, nor education regarding, other means of birth control (Aside from abortion as birth control, by far most common being 'coitus interruptus'), so it was really the only means of family planning available to women.
The massive population losses that occurred in the early 1940s further increased pro-natal policy planning, but with both carrots and sticks. Laws to assist so called "war widows" (referring not simply to women who lost husbands, but women who lost the *potential* for a husband due to the decline in the male population) both in raising their children as single mothers as well as having children in the first place.
Soviet propaganda campaigns to encourage motherhood predated the war even, but the massive calamity of course kicked it into overdrive. During the war, there was a definite decline in the birthrate due to "general decline in the reproductive health of mothers, as reflected in the high rate of premature births", as characterized by the People’s Commissar of Public Health G.A. Miterev, and Soviet leadership worked hard to try to turn that around, with their clear awareness that to see further decline would imperil the ability of the USSR to bounce back in the long term.
Programs and incentives to encourage motherhood existed, such as awards for bearing a certain number of children and various state assistance programs for both married single mothers, while legal penalties were either added or increased, most especially with the Family Law of 1944, which further penalized abortion and increasingly penalized divorce as well. The shortage of men also meant a very important shift, in which the Soviets worked to try and both destigmatize single-motherhood by increasing state benefits they could receive and featuring mothers of ambiguous marital status in propaganda, while also tacitly encourage even *married* men to sleep around by preventing the single mothers from suing the father for child support, and making it harder for their irate wives to divorce them. The result being that many men would have numerous affairs, and even unmarried men would often bounce from relationship to relationship.
Now as to your question, which is basically whether or not the Soviets were successful in reversing the trend during the war years? Well, not terribly. There *was* a definite boost in the fertility rate immediately after the war years, but it was rather short lived, and quickly began to decline again. Here is a table of the fertility rates of the US and USSR, which allows for a comparison of the 'Baby Boom' in America, for the period in question:
Year | USA Total Fertility | USSR Total Fertility | - | Year | USA Total Fertility | USSR Total Fertility
---|---|----|---|---|----|----|
1926| 2,909| 5,566 | - |1944| 2,567| 1,942
1927| 2,827| 5,418 | - |1945| 2,491| 1,762
1928| 2,656| 5,318 | - |1946| 2,942| 2,868
1929| 2,524| 4,985 | - |1947| 3,273| 3,232
1930| 2,508| 4,826 | - | 1948| 3,108| 3,079
1931| 2,376| 4,255 | - | 1949| 3,110| 3,007
1932| 2,288| 3,573 | - | 1950| 3,090| 2,851
1933| 2,147| 3,621 | - | 1951| 3,268| 2,914
1934| 2,204| 2,904 | - | 1952| 3,357| 2,898
1935| 2,163| 3,263 | - | 1954| 3,541| 2,974
1936| 2,119| 3,652 | - | 1955| 3,578| 2,909
1937| 2,147| 4,308 | - | 1956| 3,688| 2,899
1938| 2,199| 4,351 | - | 1957| 3,767| 2,903
1939| 2,154| 3,964 | - | 1958| 3,703| 2,940
1940| 2,301| 3,752 | - | 1959| 3,712| 2,903
1941| 2,399| 3,742 | - | 1960| 3,653| 2,940
1942| 2,628| 2,933 | - | 1961| 3,627| 2,879
1943| 2,718| 2,366 | - | 1962| 3,471| 2,755
So as you can see, they did bounce, with a sharp - and important - increase in 1946 and 1947, but certainly didn't regain pre-war levels like we see in the US, and even bigger, while they had been far higher than the US before the war, the total fertility rate is now noticeably lower (with a minor exception being, when broken into age cohorts, a higher rate in the USSR for women over 30) and stabilized much quicker within a few years of the war (stabilized being a relative term. there would be later drops). So all in all, yes, there was a brief boom that we can see, and it likely was quite important as far as the stability of Soviet population numbers go, but it wasn't as long lasting as we see in the US, puttering out somewhat quickly.
Edit: Fixed the table to it is easier to see without having to scroll |
Why does your computer screen look 'liquidy' when you apply pressure to it (i.e. pressing your fingernail against your pc monitor)? | Because it *is* liquidy. The screen uses something called a "liquid crystal", which is a layer of a special liquid sandwiched between two pieces of glass or plastic (or one piece of glass and one piece of plastic).
This liquid is what forms the image, by changing how it interacts with polarized light depending on the electric field applied. |
What are the consequences of missing a full night of sleep, if you make up for it by sleeping more the next night? | It's going to be difficult to tell you the exact consequences because we just don't know. Everyone is different, but there have been studies done about sleep debt and the adverse effects it has on our health. The negative effects of sleep deprivation are *not* simply cognitive. I think your argument is solely about not messing up your circadian rhythm, which can be a valid concern. But basically skipping an entire night of sleep is not good for you and you should avoid doing it whenever possible. |
What were the Germanic "Tribes" really like? Were they nomads without cities? Or were they more sedentary like Rome? | Romans wrote a lot of BS about 'the Germanic tribes', mostly because they defined 'Germans' as 'those who are not like us and who live outside the borders of the empire'. This definition lumps quite a lot of people together, while still throwing in loads of cultural bias as well.
It is much more interesting to look at 'people who lived outside the Empire' outside of their classification as 'Germanics'. We then see that settlements change over this time period. In the centuries BC (and up to 200 or so), the regular person would live on his own farmstead, within viewing distance (or walking distance) of his neighbours. A farmstead would have its own fences, wells, and outbuildings and would generally be mostly self-sufficient, though some regional specialisation (some areas focused on cattle raising, some on cereal cultivation etc.) did take place. Some areas that were particularly suitable for resource exploitation (close to forest for suitable timber, or close to iron ores for iron mining, or near the sea for salt extraction, or near a peat bog for peat digging) did have this 'industry' as a household activity 'on the side', but this is secondary to the main function of the household as a farm.
Around the 2nd century or so, the village (collection of farmsteads) becomes more popular. While villages did exist in the earlier period as well (but were not the norm), the village of the late roman period becomes more common and more formalised. We now see a collection of these farmsteads. Archaeologists have tried to make statements about elite dominance within these farms on the basis of the size of the stable (and hence the capacity for cattle, and hence wealth), but this is very difficult. Generally, it seems that farms within a village were 'equal'. This does not mean that everyone within the village was equal, just that everyone lived in the same kind of house. It is also later, in the Migration period, that the size differences between households within a village gets more expression, and the larger farmstead collects also more small outbuildings, including a temple and more craft workshops. The first of these is Gudme in Denmark around the year 200, but by 400 these kind of places exist in many regions.
Parallel to this, you should also keep in mind that in the south of 'Germania', in modern Southern Germany and Austria, village organisation had already taken place in much earlier periods, including task differentiation between households.
We can see no traces of nomadism in Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark in this period. They did travel to cattle grazing grounds in the summer, but this type of seasonal movement, called transhumance, is restricted to cattle herders, and not common within society in general. It is also highly regulated and occurs within fixed 'grazing areas', relatively close to the stationary 'home base', and not at all 'migratory'.
Farms (and hamlets) also did move around within a landscape, so a field that in one decade might have been used for grain, might become a building plot a decade later, and grazing lands 30 years after. However, this cycle of rebuilding the farm (related to pest control) also happens within a local area. |
Why are camera lenses the size they are, and why can't they be scaled down to phone-size? | Miniaturizing the fancy lenses on SLR cameras would be a lot of work—they require extremely precise optical glasswork and tons of fiddly mechanical gizmos for focusing and such.
The really insurmountable difference between big cameras and small ones, though, is sensor size. The sensors used in digital cameras have tiny electronic "photosites" which convert photons into electrons. Making these smaller has a serious adverse effect on the quality of the images you can produce, for physics reasons.
There's nothing magical about the 35mm size, of course. That just happens to be the size of the imaging region of standard photographic film, so lots of equipment was made to that standard for a very long time. When digital SLR cameras hit the scene, photographers and manufacturers wanted to keep using their old lenses, so they kept the same physical layout and just replaced the film with a digital sensor of comparable size. |
why is white pride racist, when no other "colour" pride is considered racist? | In general, the issue here is that when people say they have "white" pride, they are saying "I am proud that I am not black." as opposed to people having pride in their specific heritage. No one has a problem with people having pride in being Irish, German, Italian, Polish. Those get celebrated.
But "white" just means that you are of European descent. In practice, it gets used by white supremacists.
Now, you're going, "Yes, but black people have black pride!" And that's because their heritage and history were destroyed by slavery. They can't trace their ancestry back to a specific culture or country. So all they have is the common background of being of African-descent. They use "Black pride" to show solidarity in the face of adversity.
No one uses "white pride" in a positive manner. It is used to show superiority over black people, not a celebration of a rich cultural history. |
Why has Country Music remained so white? What cultural and industry forces kept the genre that so willingly borrowed from blues, gospel, norteño, and mariachi so completely dominated by white artists and tied to white identity? | Hey y'all,
If you are a first time visitor, welcome! This thread is trending high right now and getting a lot of attention, but it is important to remember those upvotes represent interest in the question itself, and [it can often take time for a good answer to be written](_URL_4_). The mission of /r/AskHistorians is to provide users with **in-depth and comprehensive responses**, and our [rules](_URL_1_) are intended to facilitate that purpose. *We remove comments which don't follow them for reasons including unfounded speculation, shallowness, and of course, inaccuracy*. Making comments asking about the removed comments simply compounds this issue.
So please, before you try your hand at posting, check out the [rules](_URL_1_), as it would [break our hearts](_URL_6_) to have to ban you.
It is very rare that a decent answer doesn't result in due time, so please do come check back on this thread in a few hours. If you think you might forget, send a [Private Message](_URL_3_!) to the [Remind-Me bot](_URL_0_), and it will ensure you don't!
Finally, while we always appreciate feedback, it is unfair to the OP to further derail this thread with META conversation, so if anyone has further questions or concerns, I would ask that they be directed to [modmail](_URL_2_), or a [META thread](_URL_5_[META]).
Thank you! |
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