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1mi3x3 | How is it that two of history's greatest civilizations' most notable feats of engineering were pyramids if they were seemingly unaware of each other's existence? | The Mayans and the ancient Egyptians both constructed huge pyramids in completely different parts of the world and at different times. Is it simply coincidence that their largest structures had the same geometric shape, or was there a logistic reason for the design?
Finally, is it possible that the two civilizations had contact at any point? I heard the theory about Egyptian mummies having [coca and tobacco](_URL_0_) in their systems being an indication that they may have traveled to the Americas at some point. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1mi3x3/how_is_it_that_two_of_historys_greatest/ | {
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"Pyramids are easy to build. Big slabs go on the bottom, smaller ones go on the top. Just because the designs are recurrent across the world doesn't in itself infer contact and 'design exchange'.\nThe cocaine mummies are likely just mummies contaminated by archaeologists or others after excavation, or some other error. \n\nEDIT: I talked about [cocaine mummies](_URL_0_) a while ago.",
"Pyramid structures happened pretty much everywhere. E.g., [**Greek pyramids**](_URL_2_), [**Chinese pyramids**](_URL_3_), pyramids in [**Mesopotamia**](_URL_5_), [**North America**](_URL_0_), [**India**](_URL_4_), [**Spain**](_URL_1_), etc.\n\nThey're common because of physics. Look at mountains; it's roughly pyramid shaped, right? That's the most stable shape for something very large; a huge base supporting a mass that tapers to a small point. Until the invention of modern building materials and architectural methods, any very large building pretty much had to be a pyramid or it would collapse under its own weight."
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans-oceanic_contact#Egyptian_coca_and_tobacco"
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramids_of_G%C3%BC%C3%ADmar",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_pyramids",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_pyramids",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brihadisvara_Temple",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat"
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79wcvd | - how do baggage scanners at the airport work? what do the different colors on the x-ray mean? | The x-ray I get from my doctor is only black and white whereas the x-ray scanners at the airport show different colors. Also, what do the colors mean? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/79wcvd/eli5_how_do_baggage_scanners_at_the_airport_work/ | {
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"The x-ray devices in luggage scanners are a bit more complicated than the x-ray medical imaging devices. In particular, they're set up to identify and distinguish between different *kinds* of objects, whereas medical x-rays are pretty much only interested in one: bones.\n\nThe trick is that not all x-rays are created equal. The x-ray source will send out x-rays in a *range* of energy levels. Organic objects block low-energy x-rays some, but not higher-energy x-rays. Plastics block low-energy x-rays better than organic objects, but not as effectively as metal objects, which pretty much block everything. \n\nThe device is set up so that the x-rays pass through your luggage and then hit the first detector, which sends an image to the computer. But the x-rays then pass through a filter that blocks out all low-energy x-rays before hitting a *second* detector. That sends another image to the computer, this time only showing those objects that block high-energy x-rays. By combining these two images, the software can distinguish between organics, inorganics (e.g., plastics), and metals. It then assigns different colors to each. \n\nI think most manufacturers use black for metal and orange for organics, but I'm not sure about that. Could vary from machine to machine. ",
"The main idea behind baggage x-rays is that a bag has to be scanned thoroughly in a short period of time, and that different items are to be scanned. To help with that, they use colours since we are more prone to notice colour difference.\n\nThe colours vary with density- increasing tends to blue so the dense metals and alloys are shades of blue (think laptops, guns, mallets).\n\nDecreasing density tends to red, so the redder it is means the item is lighter like a thin fabric or just a linen sheet. \n\nGreen is always plastic, so they tend to look for laptops and parts with the green colour.\n\nA particular example is green rectangle with blue screws, that'd be a laptop. Hope this helps!"
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18u9ad | What happens if you mix all the elements together on the periodic table? | This was inspired by an /r/shittyaskscience post.
It would be nice to be walked through the first few reactions that would occur or the final result.
I'm an engineer, not a chemist, but I'll try to establish some constraints:
* in a 1 litre, enclosed container, ultra-high vacuum (10^-7 Pa)
* 1mol of each element
* added in atomic number order, with adequate time to complete reactions
* 25ºC
I'm unsure of what material should be used for the container, but let's assume it's a very thick material with adequate cooling to extract heat down to 25ºC quickly. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/18u9ad/what_happens_if_you_mix_all_the_elements_together/ | {
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" > It would be nice to be walked through the first few reactions that would occur or the final result.\n\nOK, I'll try to go up to sodium, how's that? But realize that we have to make a lot of guesses and assumptions along the way...\n\nOur tour begins with our enclosed container that holds 1 L in volume. Its walls are made of stainless steel just like most vacuum systems used in making computer chips and solar panels. The container starts off filled with air at atmospheric pressure. So that we have nice and round numbers, we'll just pretend that pressure starts off at 100000 Pascals (Pa).\n\nNow, OP wants to do the experiment at 10^-7 Pa. The quality of this vacuum is so good, it is equivalent to spreading the air originally in that 1 L volume equally into 1 trillion equivalent empty containers! We'll do even better and aim for 10^-8 Pa. This is equivalent to spreading that air into 10 trillion containers.\n\nTo remove all this air, we'll choose to use some [sorption pumps](_URL_8_) to bring the pressure down to 1 pascal. A sorption pump contains a bunch of beads that have very high surface area. They are cooled to liquid nitrogen temperatures which is nearly -200ºC or -320ºF. It is so cold that gas molecules whizzing about will land on the sorption beads and stick to them. With this clever trick, we have brought the pressure down from 100000 Pa to 1 Pa. It is no easy feat! This quality of this vacuum is already about 100 times better than what you can do with a typical house vacuum.\n\nSkipping over many details, next, we open our chamber up to a [turbomolecular pump](_URL_2_). This piece of technology can bring down the pressure to 10^-8 Pa. The remaining gas molecules inside the container fly around and hit the blades of this pump. The blades are angled in such a way that the molecules are directed away from the container and evacuated away. At these very low pressures, some molecules like water still linger around. That water is driven away by heating the chamber, usually above the boiling point of water. Once most of the water is pumped away, the chamber is brought back down to room temperature.\n\nSo now we have achieved (and exceeded) the OP's pressure requirements, we'll make an assumption about the substrate. Let's pick a clean metal surface. They're usually prepared by many cycles of sputtering and annealing (skipping over some crucial details of course). The first step involves accelerating ionized inert atoms towards it. They kick off surface contaminants, but also introduce many defects of tiny atomically sized craters. The second annealing step involves heating the surface to a very high temperature so the smoothness is restored. Many cycles are required to properly prepare these samples.\n\nIn any case, our tour continues, and we'll assume we've got our cleaned substrate. OP wants to expose 1 mol of each element to this target at room temperature. This temperature is hot enough to make the hydrogen fall apart on some metal surfaces. The hydrogen flies into the chamber as H*_2_* molecules. We'll assume they fall apart on this metal surface. Each molecule of hydrogen will leave behind two H atoms. We'll also assume that the surface is small enough that [1 mol](_URL_1_) is more than enough to saturate it with hydrogen. Not all hydrogen atoms will stick to this surface, so those that bounce away will be removed by our turbomolecular pump. We will now have 1 layer of hydrogen atoms. They don't pile up on top of one another, unlike other atoms that we'll encounter later.\n\nSo, at this point, we've got a metal surface that's decorated with hydrogen. Next, we bring in helium, the next element on the [periodic table](_URL_6_). Now, the OP didn't specify enough detail about *how* these elements should be introduced to the target. So I am free to describe an interesting possibility.\n\nHelium atoms are inert, so they won't do much chemistry. However, I can direct them towards the target in a particular way, if I use [molecular beams](_URL_5_). A molecular beam is a very focused beam of molecules and you can do all sorts of tricks to make them have particular translational energies. Skipping over some very crucial details, I'm going to configure the molecular beam so that the helium atoms coming out can be used to do [helium atom scattering experiments](_URL_0_). Basically, we'll use the helium as a freebie to establish that the hydrogen on our metal surface is well ordered, just for the sake of it.\n\nNext, we expose this surface to lithium. At this point, it is probably [anyone's guess what happens](_URL_7_). The lithium atoms might be jiggling around with enough energy that they nudge away the hydrogen atoms and stick onto the metal surface below. Or, they might just stay on top of the hydrogen atoms. If the temperature is hot enough, the lithium atoms might burrow into the metal substrate. Or it might happen to stay just at the surface and not move anywhere at all. The possibilities are endless. If you pile on more lithium, perhaps they grow into tiny islands that eventually merge and form layers of lithium atoms. It will depend on things such as the temperature and the method of deposition. Whole careers have been made by understanding and making use of the large diversity of surface growth mechanisms. Depending on how the surface is structured you can tune it to have particular electrical, mechanical, chemical, and optical properties. You could make novel miniaturized sensors with these ideas, for example.\n\nLet's assume that after deposition of 1 mol of lithium the sample is entirely covered with the metal. So now, you've got the metal substrate, and 1 layer of hydrogen atoms sandwiched underneath many layers of lithium atoms. Beryllium vapour is too toxic to deal with, so we'll skip over to boron. I have a feeling that room temperature is too low for the lithium and boron to really intermix at the deposition interface to make anything interesting, but it's possible some lithium borides would be present. Same thing with carbon. We'll now have a very fine layer of soot on top. If you heat this mixture you might end up with some very interesting materials like [lithium boride carbides](_URL_4_). I don't know the fate of the hydrogen if you did this.\n\nNitrogen gas is essentially inert, it won't do anything when you expose it to this element sandwich. Now, oxygen is also very funny. I don't think it will do much either. Remember, the soot is now the very top layer, and soot does not spontaneously burn when it sits in the atmosphere. It certainly won't do this at 10^-8 Pa. I think it has something to do with the fact that the ground state of oxygen is [a triplet state](_URL_3_). It won't want to form bonds which require putting the electrons into a singlet state. But our tour is getting off track. We expose to fluorine, and I think it will convert the soot into carbon tetrafluoride, which will be pumped away as a gas. It will probably eat away at the carbon and convert the boron into boron trifluoride too. That vacuum system is not going to enjoy pumping these things away if it was not properly conditioned for it. The fluorine will reach the lithium and bind to it to form solid lithium fluoride, a very stable salt.\n\nSo let's assume that the fluorine eats away at everything, save for the lithium. So, we have a nice thin layer of lithium fluoride sitting on top of a metal substrate, with some buried hydrogen atoms somewhere in there if they didn't get abstracted away by the onslaught of fluorine. Next is neon. Inert gas, not much happens. Then you add sodium. Some of these atoms might fight for the fluorine, and so displace some lithium ions in the process. Probably not to a big extent though -- we are only at room temperature!\n\nSo, this is a guess of what the first 11 elements might do. The take home story is that mixing chemicals together arbitrarily for the most part won't give you anything too interesting. The elements really need to be brought together in a reasoned way, based on chemical principles for anything \"interesting\" to happen. In this story, I've simply picked some aspect of the first 11 elements that might predominate when they are made to interact with each other in this fictitious manner. I think it's very possible to weave in other important chemistry ideas when doing descriptive chemistry."
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mole_%28unit%29",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbomolecular_pump",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triplet_oxygen",
"http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/anie.200502325",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_beams",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranski%E2%80%93Krastanov_growth",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorption_pump"
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37vmik | homeless & unemployed people in first world countries? | My "attitude" may be stupid or ignorant but that's a thing I was always wondering about.
Is it really that hard to find a job as an uneducated person? I was taught that there are more than enough jobs out there that require almost no education/career and that if your willing enough, you will find at least a minimum wage job. I mean isn't a "bad" job better than none? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37vmik/eli5_homeless_unemployed_people_in_first_world/ | {
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"There are more people than jobs. Americans tend to blame the victim, so we effectively punish the poor and refuse to hire them for anything.",
"The person who told you there are enough jobs wasn't telling the whole truth. For one, minimum wage in the US is actually less money than panhandling some places, and homeless people don't have a good way to get to and from a job while being presentable because they are, well, homeless. Buses get expensive after a while. In addition, those jobs have very high turnover and will often stop giving you shifts after a few months to prevent you from getting benefits. If you don't have access to education, you can't pay for more education, and so you are just trapped. The idea that \"anyone can make it in America\" is mostly a myth these days, as the US has the lowest socioeconomic mobility of any developed country, meaning poor people are more likely to stay poor here than anywhere else.",
"It's hard to get a job if you don't have a home (and clean clothes, a place to shower, etc). It's hard to rent a home if you don't have a job. So once you start down the path of homelessness, it's very difficult to recover.\n\nFurther, unless you are single, healthy, and have zero debt and zero kids, you can't actually survive on minimum wage, particularly in a city, unless you work 80 hours/week. And it's extremely hard to work that many hours at minimum wage, because the employers want to cut you off at 30 hours so they don't have to pay you benefits.",
"As others are pointing out, there are many other factors than this, but I just want to show that there are in fact not as many jobs in existence as there are people looking for jobs.\n\nThere are about 8.5 million people unemployed in the USA right now^[\\[1\\]](_URL_0_) . There are 5 million job openings in the USA right now^[\\[2\\]](_URL_1_) . So right away we can see that if every job opening were filled right now there would still be 3.5 million people who want a job and would be completely unable to get one."
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72pyim | when looking for specific street signs, why do we turn down the music to see better? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/72pyim/eli5_when_looking_for_specific_street_signs_why/ | {
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"“Directing attention to listening effectively ‘turns down the volume’ on input to the visual parts of the brain. The evidence we have right now strongly suggests that attention is strictly limited — a zero-sum game. When attention is deployed to one modality (say, talking on a cell phone) it necessarily extracts a cost on another modality (say, the visual task of driving).”\n\nSource: _URL_0_"
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2natj5 | why is baseball considered "the american pastime"? | As a person that isn't American, I'm just curious really. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2natj5/eli5_why_is_baseball_considered_the_american/ | {
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"Because for a long time, it was America's most popular sport. Baseball as a sport developed in the mid-1800's and it wasn't until the late 1950's that football overtook it as America's most popular sport. (the 1958 NFL Championship game is thought of as the seminal moment of the NFL). So for like 100 years, baseball was the sport. And it was a sport playable for a lot of kids growing up. You just needed a ball and a stick and a yard. I mean, now that I think about it, football and soccer are even less equipment intensive (just need a ball and a yard) But, still, it was pretty easy for all kids, from the one growing up in the urban tenements in NYC to the ones playing out in the farmlands of Kansas to play the game and develop.\n\nOne other thing I would say is because of its vast independent and minor league systems, baseball is almost ubiquitous, even today. In America, there is a Major League of 30 teams. But each team also fields 6 or 7 additional minor teams across the country. No other professional sport has that kind of coverage.\n\nI guess lastly, I'll say there is a sort of nostalgic quality of baseball. First off, more than other sports in America, baseball's rules have stayed the same, which lends comparison between generations easier. And because baseball has been around so long, it really drapes itself in its history. I mean, baseball has over 150 years of stories and players to pull from. And its the only league that plays in the summer, when sitting out and enjoying a game with a beer is enjoyable, as opposed to being shivering cold at a football game, or stuffed in a basketball or hockey arena.\n\nFuck man, if you come to the Philly area, I'll take you to a game. "
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a0icrw | Otto von Bismarck famously predicted that the next major European war would be the result of "some damned foolish thing in the Balkans" well before it happened; how was he able to anticipate that this would be the flashpoint? What made it a natural candidate to set off a major conflict? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a0icrw/otto_von_bismarck_famously_predicted_that_the/ | {
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"I'd like to link to a previous thread. Not only because of usual reasons of relevancy, but also because user /u/Aleksx000 also tackles the question of whether Bismarck actually even said the quote:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThere are also links to other previous forms of the question contained in the comments of the thread I linked above.\n\nThis is to take nothing away from any other surviving responses. I just thought the question of whether Bismarck actually said it was an interesting wrinkle to the usual question."
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1st3ii | Historically, how much did martial skill in combat matter between two armies? | How much did the relative difference in martial skill between two armies matter in combat, compared to other factors, such as morale and equipment? As a typical infantryman, how much did it matter how good I was with fighting with a sword or pike, compared to the quality of my equipment or the morale of my comrades? There are often stories about heroic fighters being able to defeat multiple opponents on their own in combat... were skilled fighters like that actually relevant to the outcome of the battle?
In general, what combination of numbers, morale, equipment, or skill factored into the outcome of a battle? (this seems like a really difficult question, but many descriptions of victories get attributed moments of tactical brilliance without going into detail about the preparation/training/composition/skill of the units)
Thank you. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1st3ii/historically_how_much_did_martial_skill_in_combat/ | {
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"Early firearms certainly required a lot of skill. Whoever could shoot faster could pump more lead into the enemy, minimizing their own causalities and making the enemy take more. Loading a musket efficiently while you can't even see your opponent because of the gunpowder smoke and your comrades are getting hit took a lot of practice.",
"If you are referring to Western armies the answer is probably not much. As others have mentioned group tactics and team work were far more important. \n\nThat being said I think you would find the development and spread of kali and various forms of eskrima very interesting in the Philippines. Kali (as an umbrella term) was (and is) a very tribal combat system that was kept close to home. As towns or families fought and feuded the systems spread and evolved. When the Spanish came to the Philippines they had a very difficult time occupying the region because of the various blade systems they encountered and had to adapt to. Much of eskrima was was influenced to some degree by Spanish fencing/sword arts and vice versa. I'm on my phone but I'll link some books when I get home. ",
"Battles were never about martial skill, it was about who ran away first. That could be caused by simple intimidation, actually killing enough of your opponents, or an ambush/flank attack that triggers a panic. Morale was always the most important factor. Poor morale and you could have Allia where the Roman army panicked and routed in the face of the Gallic charge. High morale and you get Telamon where a Gallic army was caught between two Roman ones - they divided the army in two and each faced one of the Roman armies.\n\n\nThe majority of casualties from the loser always came in the pursuit phase when they had started running away in a panic and would be struck down from behind by the victorious side. Look at the deaths on the winning side in pre-gunpowder battles and that gives a rough idea of how many died from the part when both sides were fighting. \n\n\nReferring to the classical period, equipment is very secondary. For much of history, most people in the Mediterranean or the Near East were armed with the same equipment: spear and shield. Few states could afford to equip their soldiers in armour (e.g. late Republican Roman) and often soldiers supplied their own gear (so you'd get a mish-mash of equipment).\n\n\nAs for fighting skill, in a shameless bit of self-promotion, I'll point you to this [post](_URL_0_) I wrote describing how I think ancient battles flowed and it covers fighting skill.",
"In certain regions, sometimes armies would send out a champion to do battle in front of both armies. For instance, during the 3 Kingdoms period of China, while a large amount of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms was basically historical fantasy, it was somewhat common for an army to send out a champion to fight the enemy's champion. If your side's champion was slain, that tended to lower the morale of the rest of your army, making it easier to rout you off the field.\n\nA similar idea was the fourth battle of Kawanakajma, where forces of daimyo Uesugi Kenshin engaged those of Takeda Shingen (for the fourth time at this area). There was one notable bit where Uesugi Kenshin himself charged the main quarters of Takeda Shingen, and Shingen ended up having to defend himself with a war fan (teppan) before one of his guards could drive Kenshin away. If a general was slain, it could have a huge impact on morale, as it did when Oda Nobunaga launched a surprise attack on superior forces of Imagawa Yoshimoto at Okehazama. Here, forces of Nobunaga killed Imagawa Yoshimoto in a lightning raid on his tent, which demoralized his army and caused them to surrender.\n\nFrom a Western perspective, there is the supposed Norwegian axeman that single-handedly held off the English on Stamford Bridge for some time, giving time for the other Norwegian troops to form a shieldwall. That may be more fictional though.\n\nOn the whole, though, martial skill was mostly a means to buffet or destroy morale. In of itself, it wasn't a huge factor compared to the condition of the troops, supply, positioning, tactics, technology, etc.",
"One of the biggest reasons why Hannibal won every major fight against the Romans in Italy was because his [Numidian Cavalry](_URL_0_) were far superior to the Roman cavalry of the time, and even though they were lightly armed, drove off the Romans in every battle and then would swing around behind the Romans and rout them.\n\nHannibal's only major loss came after Scipio seduced (literally) the Numidians away from Hannibal and they did the same to the Carthaginians at Zama.",
"Elite skilled units often would play pivotal roles in battle plans. However those same units often had the best equipment and discipline as well, so it's hard to attribute their successes solely to \"skill\".\n\nAn example that pops into my head would be Alexander's Companions.\n\nIn battles \"where the king is cause\", the rulers often surround themselves with elite units and one side could route the other by capturing and/or killing the other army's king.\n\nDarius fled from Alexander's Companions at Issus and Gaugamela, and you could argue that if Darius' royal guard or Darius himself was more \"skilled\" in combat then he could have easily defeated Alexander's invasion.\n\nThe reason Alexander's \"tactics\" won the battle were that he believed his personal unit to be superior to Darius' and routed the Persians by leveraging that.\n\nI guess my point is that generals would often rely on the \"elite\" units to fulfill certain parts of a battle plan, but what makes those units elite would be a combination of individual skill, unit discipline, morale, and unit equipment.\n\nHowever, even at this level we're talking about groups of a few hundred highly trained men and not \"individual skill\", though I'd venture to guess that each one of those men had a pretty high level of skill to even be drafted into such an elite unit.",
"Shelby Foote wrote that CSA Major-Gen. Patrick Cleburne's Division was known for special speed-reloading drills that Cleburne himself came up with, firing rate being a critical metric before the invention of breech-loading rifles. Cleburne's command was a consistently successful one, but I'm not aware of any work that attempts to isolate firing rate as a variable (ie just how much of his success was a result of the drilling).",
"My reference point for all of this is 'The Face of Battle', by John Keegan, which focuses on three battles, Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme. I will also be referencing the lectures I have received on the matter, and books such as With Bayonets and Zeal Only, by Matthew H. Spring.\n\nFrom what I've been able to gather, having martial skill was rather important almost in any time period, but it was just as important to be accustomed to the style of warfare, the men around you, and the terrain. From FoB, John Keegan noted that though the English/Welsh (mostly English as the majority of Henry V's army was drawn from the SW and NE of England) archers were highly skilled, their arrows were only capable of consistently penetrating heavy plate at between 1-75 yards. However, the fact that the archers and men-at-arms were extremely experienced soldiers, and the initiative of the flanking archers to move in and quickly assault the often heavily fatigued and encumbered French men-at-arms allowed the English to form a Cannae-like killing ground. Man for man, a French Man-at-Arms would utterly massacre an archer, but working in groups and moving quickly through the mud allowed three or four archers to target and pick out individual knights and butcher them.\n\nIn this, as Keegan iterates, the martial skill of the French Chevaliers were obviously superior - but the experience, speed and tactics of the archers allowed them to butcher large quantities of ostensibly superior foes while their English Men-at-Arms held and pinned the French.\n\nIn contrast, the British regulars of the Revolutionary War were consistently superior in experience, martial skill and often size (a record of captured artillerymen by the Continental Army showed most of the men being between 5'10\" and 6' edit: though the Royal Artillery preferred to recruit large men to help pull the guns). However, Spring notes that despite this, the small size of the British forces, the constant harassment in the wilderness, the swift movements of the Colonial irregulars, and their stretched supply lines meant that while the British could almost always win a straight fight, the Continental Army completely denied them that; Washington would provide inspiration for Wellington in his ability to draw back from superior forces and only engage them when he was confident of victory (this comparison is made by Robert Harvey in The War of All Wars, which is a fantastic general guide of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars). In this, martial skill and experience were completely subservient to supply, numbers and operational decisions. After Battles like Camden and Bunker Hill, very, very few American commanders were willing to face redcoats in open field.\n\nA third example might best illustrate my point; a more ancient example. At the Battle of Leuctra, in 371 BC, the elite Spartan Hoplite Phalanx was completely and brutally overwhelmed and broken by Epaminodas of Thebes's tactical decision to concentrate his Sacred Band and the very best of his troops on his left, in order to essentially smash through an over-extended line. These Spartan hoplites had been through the Agogi system, and it is highly likely that they were superior soldiers (though we can't known for sure; it was 2400 years ago) but the choice by Epaminodas to smash through one point in their line and then roll up the rest of the line overcame this difference.\n\nSo. To answer your question; martial skill tended to mean highly trained and experienced troops, but it tended to count for little when outnumbered, outmanoeuvred, and overstretched. As such, 'experience' of campaigning, of conflict and a certain ruthlessness in the soldiery seems to have been far more important, and this being on a par with appropriate operational decisions by the commander to insure his men were well-fed and in a tactically superior situation.\n\nI think the best analogy is putting a boxer up against a soldier. While the boxer would easily destroy the soldier in a straight fight, the soldier will thereby insure that a straight fight *never occurs*. \n\nEdit; a clarification - I'm a student, not a lecturer - and a very warm thank you for the Gold!",
"In Brazil, escaped slaves used capoeira in their attempts for independence from their Portuguese masters. They failed to fight off the mechanized weapons (read:guns), but picture an MMA fighter going against someone with formal fight training. Because of its use by escaped slaves in battle, capoeira is referred to as the \"dance of war\". Often times, criminals would possess a knife and use Capoeira together--though one would not see that anymore (a good read would be O Cortiço (translated: The Slum) where someone stabs someone else with a knife leading in with capoeira). \n\nEscaped slaves joined *quilombos*, communities for slaves seeking abolition. The most famous/biggest was the Palmares Quilombo, lead by a man named Rei Zumbi, who transcended the power of capoeira as more than just a tool for fighting, but as a tool for revolution--allowing natives to identify with a culture symbol that opposed their colonizers proper nature. As a black man with great political and physical power, the elite’s struggled to dispel Rei Zumbi’s symbolic power and retain the control of slaves during their revolts. Consider the martial art a symbol of the counter-culture of colonial (1600-1800s) Brazil.\n\n\nTo make a long story short, Capoeira was considered dangerous enough at the hands (and feet) of slaves that the martial art was decreed illegal in the 1890s until the 1920s.\n\nAdditional material if you're interested: \n\n_URL_2_ (checked and it's right, if I recall my previous studies correctly)\n\n_URL_0_ -- > the book \n\n[The Criminalization of Capoeira in Nineteenth-Century Brazil by Maya Talmon Chvaicer](_URL_1_) --- > A wonderful read regarding the history and politics of Capoeira.\n\n\n\n\n",
"Well, in the Genpei war, there were numerous acts of martial valor (if we are to believe the *Heikei Monogatari*, but that's pretty much all we got). One instance that I haver previously written about was when Tomoegozen, probably the most famous Onna Bugeisha (female warrior), decapitated an enemy soldier with her bare hands as a parting gift of loyalty to her lord. \n\nI would say that these acts, while not effecting the overall battle in and of themselves, can be a huge morale boost to their respective sides. \n\nMost of the warriors of the Heian era would have been trained in archery, swordsmanship, and the use of a pike like naginata. \n\nSo, while almost all of the warriors were indeed martial artists (though not to the fetisizing levels of the Tokugawa era), it was still a numbers and tactics game."
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Corti%C3%A7o",
"http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/hispanic_american_historical_review/v082/82.3chvaicer.html",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumbi"
],
[]
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|
1pzu15 | How did the end of slavery affect agriculture in the American south? Did the major plantations collapse? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1pzu15/how_did_the_end_of_slavery_affect_agriculture_in/ | {
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"The American south still used a system called share-cropping. This system allowed wealthy white farmers to keep the poorer black farmers constantly in debt and farming land that they did not own. This means that large plantations were still able to stay open even if the slaves were freed.",
"Slavery and agriculture are not necessarily my area of expertise, so I'm hoping that someone can expand on this. From what I have read, these large plantations (which only made up a small fraction of slave-based labor) were able to continue in similar forms through share-cropping. Essentially, free blacks were given a shack to live in and a small portion of land to grow their own crops. They worked a bigger portion of the land and had to give a certain percentage of crops to the land owner for \"rent.\" Many could barely survive on the rations they could grow because they could only work their own land after having worked on the plantation all day. Some argue that this was, in itself, a form of slavery that continued in the South for about a century. Anne Moody's \"Coming of Age in Mississippi\" discusses her childhood growing up in a share-cropping family in the 1940s and 1950s. It's a great read if you're interested in how share-cropping affected blacks in the South until the Civil Rights movement."
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2rsfrw | Did the Nazis learn other languages prior to invading countries or did they employ translators? For example, did a few soldiers get made to learn Czech before they annexed Czechoslovakia? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2rsfrw/did_the_nazis_learn_other_languages_prior_to/ | {
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"Czechoslovakia actually has cohabited by Germans Czechs Slovaks Hungarians Ukranians Polish etc for a very long time. After World War I and the sudden decline of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the newly found Czechoslovakia had more germanspeaking inhabitants than slovak ones. When Germany invaded there, Prague, Brno and the some other areas were still mainly german, but obviously people also spoke czech, the same goes for some parts of Poland. Unfortunately I don't know about the other countries invaded.\n"
]
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1rcvso | Why does it matter to have both Big and Little Endian? | Wouldn't it be easier if everyone agreed on using one over the other? Or are their cases where byte significance matters? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1rcvso/why_does_it_matter_to_have_both_big_and_little/ | {
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"The original computer architectures used different circuitry for retrieving bytes assembling into word sizes matching the register size in the CPU. When you were looking at the memory sequentially, independent from the CPU, you needed to know which way the CPU assembled the data into register values to understand why your calculations where coming out wrong"
]
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3xy81l | how does one become a musical conductor? at the job interview do they just say "here, wave this stick to the tune of this music, that the band already thoroughly know"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xy81l/eli5_how_does_one_become_a_musical_conductor_at/ | {
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"Speaking as a lifetime musician who's been playing in brass bands, wind bands and orchestras since I was ten years old, if that's all you think a conductor does, then you're spectacularly unqualified for the position.\n\nA conductor's role is threefold:\n\n* 1: direct the music. Just like a movie director will guide and direct actors who already thoroughly know their parts, so too does the conductor direct the orchestra to get the best effect for the audience. Among other things, the players in the chairs can't actually hear what the finished product sounds like. They can hear their own instrument very well, those of their neighbors quite clearly, and any prominent instruments just fine, but they aren't in the right place to hear what the band as a whole sounds like. As such they might play too loudly or quietly not because they don't know what volume the music directs them to play, but because they can't properly hear how that volume sounds relative to everybody else.\n\n* 2: Keep time. This is actually remarkably difficult. Each individual musician might keep time perfectly well, but for twenty, thirty or even more than a hundred people to remain synchronized with one another? That requires a neutral guide, or an agreed arbiter of the time. The conductor isn't waving that stick in time to the beat - they're using the stick to tell the band where the beat *is*. This can get especially tricky in some of the more technical pieces where the time signature can change five times in seven bars, between odd signatures like 13/8 and 7/4. (*I'm thinking of you, Land of the Long White Cloud. You bastard.*)\n\n* 3: Guide the musicians. Even professionals sometimes have lapses of concentration, or are distracted by something, or screw up. By making eye contact, a conductor can let a section know when they're supposed to begin playing a certain bit, help them re-find where they are in the score should they come adrift. Obviously this is less of a problem with professional orchestras, but it's still a necessary role. \n\nBeing a conductor is an involved and demanding role requiring sustained concentration, a clear vision of what the music should sound like, excellent timing, a musical ear to spot when people are making mistakes - and who made it - leadership skills to keep people who might not always get along working together as a team, not to mention organising the concert schedule, the timetable, tour dates...\n\nIt is emphatically ***not*** just \"waving a stick\"."
]
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z2ib5 | what sort of chance does gary johnson really have of winning the presidential election? | I haven't seen an ad for him or any media coverage or even a discussion here, on reddit. It seems to even know he exists I had to look for him. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/z2ib5/eli5_what_sort_of_chance_does_gary_johnson_really/ | {
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"None. Realistically the American political system will only sustain two parties. Historically very few third party candidates (i.e. not a Democrat or Republican) have ever had any real success in elections. Most of the time, when a third party candidate does get a good portion of the vote, they're splitting the votes of one of the two major parties. \n\nAn example of this is when Teddy Roosevelt decided that Taft wasn't progressive enough for his tastes and created a third party called the Bull Moose Party. Republicans ended up splitting their votes between Taft and Roosevelt and Wilson ended up winning the election. By the next election cycle the Bull Moose Party was basically non-existent.\n\nEdit: There is a notable exception in that the Republican Party was at one point a third party, but they ended up replacing the Whig Party in pretty short order.",
"He isn't running to win, he is running to get a message out and allow people to case a protest vote.\n\nPractically speaking, he has zero chance. Maybe if Obama and Romney simultaneously withdrew at midnight the day before the election, he'd have a chance, but even then it would be unlikely."
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2im8r6 | why do the fog lights on my car turn off when i turn on my highbeams? why can they not be on at the same time? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2im8r6/eli5_why_do_the_fog_lights_on_my_car_turn_off/ | {
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"The for lights try to shine underneath the fog. If you turn on your highways, the light reflects off of the for or snow back to your face, blinding you. \n\n\nDisclaimer, apologies if I don't make sense, I'm baked. "
]
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19dhwm | An atom hits you! | Would you feel a single atom hitting you at an extremely fast speed such as 100000mph? lets say something as heavy or heavier than 30amu. It's always puzzled me. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/19dhwm/an_atom_hits_you/ | {
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"No. Such an atom would have 5e-17 Joules of energy, which is about the energy of 150 green photons.",
"Nope. But that's not very fast, nor heavy. \n\nBut even if we were to take lead, and have it move at 99.999% of the speed of light, it's impact would have an energy of [less than .007 J](_URL_0_).",
"That is actually an extremely slow speed when asking the things that you are. As such we can be free to use Newtonian physics and find that you would definitely not feel it.\n\nThat being said if you asked about faster particles, then we need to dive right into the field of gauge theory applied at relativistic speeds, and that problem no one has been able to (prove) solve yet.",
"Actually if I recall there was a story of a guy who stuck his head in a particle accelerator when it was on.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThough of course this wouldn't be the same result for a single atom, but you can gather some things from the article. Including how it said he felt no pain. "
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2aowdm | where did the phrase "used to" come from? | Example: *I used to be a pilot.* | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2aowdm/eli5_where_did_the_phrase_used_to_come_from/ | {
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"Obviously not my own words but I found this \n & gt;According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest text using \"used to\" in the context you ask about is Robert Mannyngs \"Handlyng Synne 1303.\" The quote cited is \"For ryche men vse comunly Sweryn grete othys grysly.\" Translated: \"For rich men used to commonly swear great, grisley oaths.\"\n\n & gt; It was in \"very common use\" from around 1400 onward, but today only appears in the past form of \"used to.\" \"wont to do\" is another archaic expression that carried the meaning of \"used to\" in reference to habitual activity in the past. \n \nSo apparently it just has been around for quite some time, and is nothing new.",
"Found it!\n\nTo be used to \"accustomed, familiar\" is recorded by late 14c. Verbal phrase used to \"formerly did or was\" (as in I used to love her) represents a construction attested from c.1300, and common from c.1400, from use (intransitive) \"be accustomed, practice customarily,\" but now surviving only in past tense form. The pronunciation is affected by the t- of to. Used-to-be (n.) \"one who has outlived his fame\" is from 1853.\n\n[Source here](_URL_0_)"
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5znavs | why do we shed tears because of certain emotions? why not other body fluids, or sort. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5znavs/eli5eli5_why_do_we_shed_tears_because_of_certain/ | {
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"Look I know you want to ejaculate when you cry, but it just isn't normal m'kay?"
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1xchnu | What was the nature of the relationship between Richard I and Phillip II? | I'm not sure if there is a definite answer to this. Sometimes they are portrayed as friends and allies; other times they are portrayed as having a homosexual relationship. Is there any truth to the second theory? What do we know about their relationship? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1xchnu/what_was_the_nature_of_the_relationship_between/ | {
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"It was in-tents.\n\nBecause they once slept together in the same tent.\n\nMan I am on a dad joke roll today.\n\nAnyway, that time they slept together in the same tent is the root of the myth - and let's re-emphasize this word **myth** - that Richard and Philip were lovers. While it is true that Richard seems to have a tendency to try to hump everything that moved, there is no evidence of any such relationship between the two men. The \"tent incident\" was a sign of truce and peace between the two.\n\nThe broader relationship between the two was not great. Richard wasn't that great a king, and while he was out of his kingdom on crusade (for which he is primarily remembered), Philip wasted no time savaging his territorial holdings on the continent, even though it was explicitly forbidden to take territory from someone on crusade. \n\nSo, not great friends."
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q0qtw | Why are some people flat-footed and what are the known disadvantages/advantages of this trait? | I asked this before, but after no response, decided to delete and rephrase my question. I know the US military will not accept flat-footed soldiers. They mentioned increased fatigue over long distance, but their research was inconclusive. Considering me and most of my living relatives have this condition, I'm interested to hear from any evolutionary biologists, medical specialists, genetic researchers, and any other qualified individuals about the prevailing theories surrounding the possible reason for the selection of this gene and the potential physical ramifications of this condition. I hope I've been more concise this time around and I appreciate any info. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/q0qtw/why_are_some_people_flatfooted_and_what_are_the/ | {
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"Not sure about the genetics behind it, all I know is flat-footed people have a tendency to over-pronante (Rolling on the inside of the foot after the heel strike and while rolling to the midfoot) Without proper support you can sustain any number of small injuries such as shin splints, heel pain, etc. A type of running shoe called a motion control shoe has a large amount of support to well, support those with flat feet. Those with flat feet also have a slightly higher chance of developing plantar fasciitis (The inflammation of the plantar fascia on the bottom of the foot)\n\nFlat footed myself and have worked in a specialty running store for the past 7 years. Hope this somewhat helps!\n\nEDIT: I meant without proper support. Changed \"with\"",
"Orthotist here: We naturally pronate our foot during gait as it helps to absorb shock and helps us to balance as our other foot leaves the ground. Babies pronate more due their bones being a little nubby. this allows for better shock absorption protects the developing hips and it gives better balance. Most spontaneously develop a longitudinal arch at around 10 years. Some though, develop ligament laxity or do not develop the muscles inside the feet adequately from learning to walk this way, and continue to pronate all the way through foot development. OR you have twisted tibias... The unusual loading of the joints (sub talar, talocrural joint) can cause osteoarthritis in due time. People with flat feet often get lower back pain too, as the foot is not as good as shock absorption as a higher arched foot....I tried to weed out a lot of the jargon, hope that answers everything!\n",
"Lots of answers about flat feet, but no talk of why this trait has not been lost through natural selection. Back pain, etc. and the inability to run/walk for long distances should be gone pronto due to their effect on fitness. Why is it still here?\n\nDo tribal peoples have flat feet or is this a recent development?",
"All this discussion and no mention of barefoot shoes like the Vibram FiveFingers? The science is still fairly new, but one theory suggests that flat-footedness isn't genetic but is a consequence of your foot losing the muscle tone it needs to support itself. This is progressed by wearing shoes that are TOO supportive, weakening the musculature of the foot. There certainly are genetic malformaties of the foot, but those are fairly rare.\n\nRunning barefoot/minimalist also promotes midfoot/forefoot striking and prevents heel striking. Heel striking may be a cause of knee, hip, and back pain.\n\nMost of my experience has been anecdotal, but everyone I've spoken to who runs barefoot has promoted its use and has praised the lack of pain that used to keep them from running. Personally, I only wear minimalist footwear and have nothing but good things to say about it.\n\nDisclaimer: I am not a orthopedist, or medical doctor of any kind. I probably shouldn't be on the internet, even.\n\nsources: \n_URL_0_\ninjury rates in forefoot v. heel striking: _URL_1_",
"[The Foot Book: A Complete Guide to Healthy Feet (A Johns Hopkins Press Health Book)](_URL_0_)"
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5e35hy | why raising ones arms behind the head is a sign of relaxation? | I was wondering as I was [sitting 'kicking back' on my chair I raised my arms behind my head](_URL_0_). Doesn't this actually use extra power to lift the arms rather than putting them on the sides or the lap? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5e35hy/eli5_why_raising_ones_arms_behind_the_head_is_a/ | {
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"To my understanding, crossed arms means insecure or defensive. So open raised/arms kinda shows that someone's comfortable with being somewhat vulnerable.",
"Well, first things first, try it yourself, it doesn't actually require much energy.\n\nBut why it is a sign of relaxation? Because it is a very vulnerable position, implying you have nothing to fear or worry about.",
"Well first off that picture is a really forced and poor example of \"relaxed\".\n\nBut go find a nice reclining couch or leather chair or whatever, large enough that you aren't supporting your arms like that but rather resting them on the back of said chair. \n\nNot only is it comfy, but you get a nice subtle stretch that you don't normally get.\n\nAside from the actual experience, a position like that clearly shows you don't need to be using your hands at that point. Basically not working, so relaxing.",
"Putting your arms behind your head allows for deeper breaths. It's the same reason that you will see runners cooling down with their hands on the back of their heads. "
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mx2sv | what is creativity? | Why do humans have it? What part of the brain is responsible for it?
edit: Too broad originally | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mx2sv/eli5_what_is_creativity/ | {
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"A bold turnip, his red scarf flapping in the wind, barely maintains control of an ever accelerating sportscar while we reflect on the events that made him the man he is today, accompanied by a musical score that is at once intense and delicate.",
"Creativity is the ability to come up with new ideas that have some value.\n\nIt's how we solve engineering problems or create revolutionary art. The medial prefrontal cortex is used for self-expression. Typically, most abstract thinking is done in the right hemisphere, but there are other parts of the brain that play into creativity as well.",
"A bold turnip, his red scarf flapping in the wind, barely maintains control of an ever accelerating sportscar while we reflect on the events that made him the man he is today, accompanied by a musical score that is at once intense and delicate.",
"Creativity is the ability to come up with new ideas that have some value.\n\nIt's how we solve engineering problems or create revolutionary art. The medial prefrontal cortex is used for self-expression. Typically, most abstract thinking is done in the right hemisphere, but there are other parts of the brain that play into creativity as well."
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2dn4kg | which part of the brain helps us focus? | I have wondered if focusing is something that overlaps the 'thinking' part of the brain. Since even during the times when the brain is hyper-activated and trying to think about a a lot of things at the same time (like when on strong medication and under the influence of drugs), one needs to focus to follow and stay on a certain train of thought. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dn4kg/eli5which_part_of_the_brain_helps_us_focus/ | {
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"Your brain is broken down into different parts:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe cortex (all the colored parts that can be seen on the surface of the brain) is made up of the frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital lobe. Each of these lobes is thought to be associated more with a certain function.\n\nThe frontal lobe of the cortex is associated with problem solving skills and concentration, although the ENTIRE brain is involved in those processes. The frontal lobe just happens to be one of the first distinct parts of the brain that was discovered that is associated with it.\n\nThis is the answer you will get from basic textbooks. \n\nThe deeper you go into neuroscience, the more complicated things get, so the real answer from LabKitty is correct - \"we don't know\" because concentration involves WAY too many different pathways that we don't fully understand.\n\nI'd also like to add that when people go into a coma, it's often the cortex that no longer functions, but I wouldn't feel comfortable saying that consciousness comes from the cortex."
]
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1hvy1a | Did the Hindenburg Disaster discourage any further research into airship/balloon powered travel, or were we already moving towards planes for air travel? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1hvy1a/did_the_hindenburg_disaster_discourage_any/ | {
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"Airships had reached the limits of their possibilities in the 1930's, while planes were making rapid advances in speed, range, ceiling and rough-weather capacities. The Nazi's weren't very interested in airships, and a number of other disasters before 1940 (USS Akron, USS Macon and British R 101) has shown the weaknesses of airships. "
]
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||
i3a4w | If I shine a flashlight or laser pointer into the night sky, does emission of stimulation radiation continue on infinitely? | Or does the energy deplete via the earth's atmosphere (or something)? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/i3a4w/if_i_shine_a_flashlight_or_laser_pointer_into_the/ | {
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"Unless it hits something, it is ever so slowly absorbed by interstellar gas and dust.",
"[This](_URL_0_) is a common model for laser beams, and it contains a term for divergence angle. I *think* all real lasers have a finite (non-zero) divergence angle. The point is, if the light could continue infinitely without being absorbed by anything, it would still diverge, and the energy, or brightness, per unit area, would decrease."
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1nff9c | How did european infantry tactics change between 1860 and 1910? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1nff9c/how_did_european_infantry_tactics_change_between/ | {
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"*Please note the following applies to when two mainland European armies faced each other. Tactics differed when engaged in colonial conflicts.*\n\nThe long and short of it are as follows. The tactics of pre 1860 Europe (generalizing here, using the Prussians as an example) involved battalion columns preceded by skirmishers who softened up the enemy before the main force deployed into close-order line to fire volleys and then charged with the bayonet. \n\nDuring the 1860s, technology forced conservative officers reluctantly to change their tactics. \n\nAs rifling got better more accurate artillery and wider use of rifled skirmishers made long columns and wide lines easy targets for skirmishers and artillery to devastate the lines before the mass volley and bayonet charge could take place. \n\nOfficers started to break into two camp, those who wanted to maintain the old tactics, and those who believed that smaller company (as opposed to battalion) columns supported by more skirmishers in loose order needed to be applied (the French school was particularly fond of this route, the Prussian not so much). By 1905 even the Prussians had taken to company columns but still kept their close order drills, presenting slightly smaller but still big dense juicy targets to the enemy, and the enemy did the same, accounting for regional variation. \n\nThis led to a sort of arms race, who could fire farther, faster, and more accurately. This is why we see so many different rifle innovations in this era. The Ross, Schmidt-Rubin, Steyr-Mannlicher M1895, Krag-Jørgensen, Winchester Model Lee 1895, French Mle 1874 Gras rifle, Fusil modèle 1866, Mle 1886 Lebel rifle, Lee-Metford, Lee-Enfield, Mauser 1898, M1903 Springfield, the list goes on and on. \n\nAs old tactics met new weapons...sadly little changed. It would take WWI, machine guns, tanks, airplanes, to change these massed infantry tactics into the trench line, static defensive positions, and mass charges you are probably familiar with from 1914-1918. \n\n\"Infantry Weapons, Infantry Tactics, and the \nArmies of Germany, 1849-64,\" European Studies Review 4 (1974): 119-40. \n\nAntulio Echevarria, After Clausewitz: German Military Thinkers Before the Great War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000)\n\nFor examples of close order and \"old Prussian drill\" from 1914 battles, see \nKurt Heydemann, Die Schlacht bei St. Quentin, 1914: Die rechte Fluegel der \ndeutschen 2. Armee am 29 and 30 August (Berlin: Verlag von Gerhard Stalling, \n1922), 98-99, 124; and Thilo von Bose, Das Marnedrama 1914: Die Kaempfe des \nGardekorps und des rechten Fluegels der 3 Armee vom 5 bis 8 September (Berlin: \nVerlag von Gerhard Stalling, 1928), 47, 81, 110-11. For Wentzel's quote, see Major \nvon Wentzel, Richtlinien fuer die Ausbildung des Kriegsersatzes, 1915 (Berlin: \nEisenschmidt, 1915), 9-10. For the importance of drill to World War I German offi- \ncers, see G. von Gleich, Die alte Armee und ihre Verirrungen: Eine kritische Studie \n(Leipzig: Verlag von K. F. Kohler, 1919), 14-16; and Freytag-Loringhoven, Folgerun- \ngen aus dem Weltkriege (Berlin: Mittler, 1917), 71-73. For evidence that the 1918 \noffensives occurred mainly with old tactics, see Martin Middlebrook, The Kaiser's Bat- \ntle, 21 March 1918: The First Day of the German Spring Offensive (London: Allen \nLane, 1978). \n\nEdit: to add caveat in beginning of post.\n",
"For the Prussian, and then German, Army one of the defining characteristics of their way of war was *Auftragstaktik*, loosely translated into modern English as Mission Command. This is a philosophy whereby you give your soldiers the freedom to decide how best to achieve their mission. You give them your intent, specify their resources and put it into context, they work out what to do. In short you tell them *why*, they decide *how*.\n\nThe philosophy was developed in response to the twin battles of Jena and Aurstedt, where the Prussians were comprehensively beaten by the French, and turned into a workable doctrine by Helmut von Moltke the Elder. He was influenced heavily by the theorist Carl von Clausewitz, who was present at Jena-Aurstedt and whose 10 volume work *On War* was published in 1832, 2 years after Clausewitz's death.\n\nAmongst many other ideas, Clausewitz described war in mechanical terms:\n\n > In war everything is simple, but even the simplest things are difficult. These difficulties accumulate to produce a kind of friction which is inconceivable to those who have not experienced war.\n\nThis concept of friction underpins the enduring idea that war is chaos and is essentially uncontrollable. In the 18^th Century the Prussian army had come to prominence under the command of Frederick the Great, a military genius in every sense of the word. The army had, therefore, come to depend on him and developed a strict, hierarchical system with no room for interpretation of orders or for initiative. This system remained for 20 years after Frederick’s death, despite being utterly obsolete. Napoleon knew this and at Jena-Aurstedt his army out-thought, out-manoeuvred and out-paced the Prussians driving a wedge between the commanders, who were too far back to influence the battle, and the soldiers, who were not trained to use their initiative. The French induced chaos into the Prussian army to achieve victory and in watching this, Clausewitz was inspired to realise that a successful army *embraces* chaos and uses it to their advantage.\n\nSo by 1860, von Moltke had started to develop an army of free-thinking, imaginative, educated, well trained officers supported by a non-commissioned cadre (NCOs) who were taught to think on their feet. Senior officers had to accept that once battle was joined their ability to influence the battle was severely diminished. One of von Moltke’s most famous utterances sums this up:\n\n > No pan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force.\n\nOr, more prosaically, “no plan survives contact with the enemy”. Prussian NCOs and Junior Officers understood that once battle was joined it was their responsibility to think on their feet, observe the situation in front of them and then dictate the tempo of the battle in whichever way they saw fit. For his part, von Moltke not only tolerated disobedience, but almost encouraged it writing:\n\n > Obedience is the principle, but the man stands above the principle.\n\nSo in the new Prussian Army no-one would be disciplined for making a reasoned decision in the circumstances, even if they had disobeyed an order. This approach was inculcated at every level and, with the establishment of the General Staff, the very best Prussian officers were taught the art of war and the techniques of command in this modern army. Orders were to be as short as possible and written in deliberate, unequivocal language. The higher the rank, the shorter the orders were to be.\n\nAll of this contributed to make the Prussian Army the best in Western Europe and victories in the Second Schleswig War, the Austro-Prussian War and most famously the Franco-Prussian War laid the table for the formation of Imperial Germany in 1871. The Prussian Army formed the blueprint for the new Imperial German Army, but the imperial Army faced a new problem – that of size.\n\n*Auftragstaktik* was increasingly applied to every element of the German Army’s business and as European tensions grew so did the size of the Army and, by necessity, there was a dilution of genius. The very best and brightest officers were still selected for the General Staff, but many junior commanders lacked the imagination or the intellect of their superiors and started to adopt archaic methods. Applied to training, *Auftragstaktik* gave these commanders freedom to train their men in whatever manner they saw fit and many of them chose the lazy option. Unwilling, or unable, to appreciate the subtleties of *Auftragstaktik* and unrestrained by the General Staff many started to slide down the slippery slope to *Befehlstaktik* or Commander Control where the battle was planned, directed and controlled on a minute by minute basis by the commander and the men were taught rigid, predictable tactical methods. This was not helped by a tendency on the part of armies of the Four Kingdoms (Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony and Wurttemburg) to continue to see themselves as distinct entities and to maintain there own administrative and command arrangements.\n\nSo by 1910 the German Army was a shadow of its former Prussian self. Whilst many of its units could claim to be the best in Europe, the majority were distinctly mediocre and this dilution of expertise would continue with increased conscription in the lead up to the Great War. The lofty aims of the Schlieffen plan were based on a German Army which no longer existed in terms of capability.\n\n**References**\n\nBungay, S. (2012), *The Art of Action: How Leaders Close the Gaps Between Plans, Actions and Results*.\n\nClausewitz, C. von (1832), *On War*.\n\n[Joint Doctrine Publication 0-01, *British Defence Doctrine*, 4^th Edition.]( _URL_0_)\n\nShamir, E. (2011), *Transforming Command: The Pursuit of Mission Command in the US, British and Israeli Armies*."
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1uwicx | why does orange juice with pulp have the same fiber content as pulp-free? | Comparing two MinuteMaid bottles yesterday. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uwicx/eli5_why_does_orange_juice_with_pulp_have_the/ | {
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"text": [
"Fiber is soluble in water (try it with some Metamucil!) and the actual pulp adds an insignificant amount of fiber to that already in the OJ."
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eogqxn | Why is paramagnetism seemingly stronger than diamagnetism? | Studying I just learned that there’s things that magnets exclusively repel called diamagnets, but I’ve never seen on in real life, not even in college labs when studying magnetism. From what I’ve seen online diamagnetic materials are barely repelled in comparison to strong magnets attracting paramagnetic material which can crush fingers, why is this the case? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/eogqxn/why_is_paramagnetism_seemingly_stronger_than/ | {
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"Your example of \"crushing fingers\" probably involves a ferromagnet, not a paramagnet, but you are right that paramagnetism tends to be stronger than diamagnetism.\n\nUsually, paramagnetism comes from the spins of unpaired electrons, whereas diamagnetism comes from the orbital motion of electrons.\n\nIn metals, you can have so-called Landau diamagnetism, which can be of similar strength as paramagnetism. This is because electrons in a metal are very mobile, so they can have a large diamagnetic response to an applied field.\n\nThere are even materials which are perfect diamagnets (i.e. expel all magnetic field) at low temperatures, they are called superconductors."
]
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3l287g | Can someone explain to me the Fetch Decode Execute cycle? | After reading up on the subject and watching several videos I still find the whole process rather complicated. Would it be possible for someone to explain it to me in a more simple manor. I know quite a few basics about the subject I would just like a concise order of events. Thank you for your time. | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3l287g/can_someone_explain_to_me_the_fetch_decode/ | {
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" 1. Fetch: copy an instruction from memory to CPU\n 2. Decode: look at the instruction and, based on what type of instruction it is (for example, \"store value in memory\" vs \"add two values\", decide what to do next\n 3. Execute: Do that",
"/u/airbornemint is correct, but here's some extra detail...\n\nThis sequence is based on the LC3 ISA, which is part of the [Introduction to Computing Systems](_URL_0_) book, and was made to teach computer systems and basic CPU architecture. Here's the LC3 [datapath diagram](_URL_3_) and [instruction list](_URL_2_), which you'll probably want to reference. Obviously exact details vary heavily depending on the CPU architecture and are typically much more complex in the real world.\n\n1. Fetch:\n * Using the value of the program counter (PC) as an address, read an instruction from memory.\n * Store the instruction in the instruction register (IR).\n * Increment the PC.\n2. Decode (this is all encapsulated under \"Control\" in the diagram):\n * Send the value in the IR through a set of logic gates that examine the first 4 bits of the instruction (the opcode).\n * Depending on the value of the opcode, use additional logic gates to pull more information out of the instruction. For example, an add instruction will contain three 3 bit register identifiers: source 1, source 2, destination.\n * Depending on the opcode and the additional parameters in the instruction, activate circuitry to fetch the operands needed by the instruction and to activate components for execution. For example, the add instruction causes the ALU to be activated, causes the register file to output the values of the two source registers, and causes the ALU source 2 multiplexer to select the value from the register file.\n3. Execute:\n * The circuitry that actual executes the current instruction performs its operation. For example, with the add instruction the ALU adds its two input values and produces the result as its output value.\n * If a result is produced, store it. In the case of the add instruction, the result is stored back in the register file in the register specified by the control/decode logic.\n\nNote that I'm fudging this just a bit, because the LC3 actually uses a more detailed 6 stage execution cycle shown [here](_URL_1_)."
]
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2xwklj | What would have happened if the Apollo astronauts were stranded on the Moon? | I've read the ['In Event of Moon Disaster'](_URL_0_) transcript, to be delivered by President Nixon in the event of Armstrong and Aldrin being stranded on the Moon, but have a few further questions:
* Was this speech to be delivered whilst the astronauts were still alive?
* Would NASA have ended communications with the astronauts while they were still alive?
* How would the astronauts have died? Would they have waited for the the oxygen to run out? Would they have "vented" the oxygen out of the lander?
* I assume there weren't any plans to recover the bodies on a later mission, due to the logistics and having two dead bodies in the capsule on the way back to Earth. Am I correct? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2xwklj/what_would_have_happened_if_the_apollo_astronauts/ | {
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"I don't have the book on front of me at the moment (posting from phone), but Jim Lovell (of Apollo 13) and Jeffrey Kluger actually addressed the suicide issue in \"Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13\"\n\nLong story short: the astronauts would not take suicide pills. The quickest, easiest, most painless way would be to simply open the hatch and vent the atmosphere into space. You'd pass out in a matter of seconds, after which you're done. ",
"William Safire was one of Nixon's speech writers, and wrote the famous speech you cite. In his autobiography *Before the Fall: An Inside View of the Pre-Watergate White House,* Safire states that death would either come from eventual starvation or dehydration or \"deliberately 'closed down communications,' the euphemism for suicide.\" The method of how is not detailed, likely such a personal choice would be left to each astronaut. ",
"The plan was, once it was obvious the astronauts were beyond rescue, for NASA to allow the astronauts to record a final statement for their families and posterity. NASA would then end communications and allow them privacy in their final minutes or hours. \n\nThe astronauts would have been allowed to decide what happened next. The method of death would be their decision. They likely would have shut off the flow of oxygen - that would have been relatively peaceful. I don't want to speculate too much on that. \n\nThere were no plans to recover the bodies. I think it would be very unlikely that any such plans would ever be devised. \n\nSource is [William Safire](_URL_0_), the White House writer who devised the contingency plan and wrote the speech. ",
"To provide a historical context that such a disaster was a very real and well known possibility below is a link to a radio play broadcast on a science fiction series in 1956 with a similar story - it's an orbital mission, not a lunar, but covers the same ground:\n\nhttps://ia802608.us._URL_1_/15/items/OTRR_X_Minus_One_Singles/XMinusOne56-02-01036TheCaveOfNight.mp3\n\nMany more episodes of that and other old time radio series are available on _URL_1_ if you enjoyed it:\n\n_URL_0_\n"
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ueccw | Do dyslexic people read Arabic/Hebrew backwards or is dyslexia not a problem for languages read right to left? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/ueccw/do_dyslexic_people_read_arabichebrew_backwards_or/ | {
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"_URL_0_\n\nDyslexia is a broad term... "
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||
s1y2d | When I happen to get shot or stabbed in a dream, I wake up with "pins and needles" in that spot. Why is this, and which one causes the other? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/s1y2d/when_i_happen_to_get_shot_or_stabbed_in_a_dream_i/ | {
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" > Research has been able to show that pain is rare but perceptible in dreams. Three explanations for pain dreams are postulated: incorporation of pain during sleep, memories of self-experienced pain (first-person memories), and pain seen in others (third-person memories).\n[Complete Abstract](_URL_0_)\n\nExternal stimuli have an affect on dreams. The \"pins and needles\" may have caused the pain within the dream, rather than the other way around."
]
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"http://www.mendeley.com/research/physical-pain-mental-pain-malaise-dreams/"
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2q9b8b | why does the vending machine not take my dollar until it feels like it? | Every time I try inserting a dollar bill into a vending machine, the damn machine just spits it out until it finally decides its done having me as its bitch and accepts it like nothing happened. Why does this happen?? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2q9b8b/eli5_why_does_the_vending_machine_not_take_my/ | {
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"Well, the machine checks the dollar for being genuine. Being it a machine and not a human there are multiple kinds of tests. Magnetic, optical and some others I do not know about. Based on an algorithm and looking at the defects, it determined that the dollar is genuine or not. \n\nThe point of the test is 100% rejection of a fake note. However less than 100% acceptance is OK from a federal reserve point of view."
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6bs7i7 | why do people want to live on mars? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6bs7i7/eli5_why_do_people_want_to_live_on_mars/ | {
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"To prove it can be done. To make history. To be one of the chosen. To build something new. To go boldly.",
"Its more like your Lamborghini is reaching 300k miles and you need to prove that you know how to buy a car so you stop by a used car dealer real quick before you order your new Lamborghini. Humanity will not be able to live on earth for ever. Global warming, Resource depletion, Overpopulation are all happening its just a matter of which one hits first. At some point we have to find a new long term solution and mars is a perfect temporary solution to prove that our methods will work for more distant planets. "
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2rlv8v | ounces; measuring liquids and measuring weight? | I am confused about this. So apparently ounces can be used as two different measurements just as metres and litres? Why? How did this come about? Murica pls | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rlv8v/eli5_ounces_measuring_liquids_and_measuring_weight/ | {
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"There are two unrelated units:\n\nOunces are a measure of mass.\n\n[Fluid ounces](_URL_0_) are a measure of volume. They are not the same thing as ounces, although sometimes when the context makes it clear that it's talking about volume, it's common to see \"fluid ounce\" abbreviated to \"ounce\"."
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766w23 | How are we able to sense roughness / smoothness of a surface by touch? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/766w23/how_are_we_able_to_sense_roughness_smoothness_of/ | {
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"Dermal papilla, aka fingerprints may help you detect this. You have mechanosensitive nerves that detect pressure and deformation of your fingertips, and the grooves on your fingers can get caught on small bumps on a surface, enhancing your sensation of the bumpiness of said surface. There is also likely a learning aspect where you learn that substances that feel rough are rough."
]
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7chi2a | why do home dishwashers need to take 3 hours? i know it’s for energy star requirements, but commercial machines get the job done in 90 seconds. why the massive difference? wouldn’t even a more powerful motor take less electricity for such a big time difference? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7chi2a/eli5_why_do_home_dishwashers_need_to_take_3_hours/ | {
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"More complex chemicals, which are surprisingly expensive. Significantly higher temperatures and pressures. Higher voltage.\n\nThey basically turn your dishtank into a loud sauna too, you probably wouldn't want your kitchen like that.",
"They run on very hot water, use dangerous chemicals, and are far too forceful for normal dishes. That's part of why restaurant dishes and mugs are so thick. ",
"Along with everything else is dry time. Commercial dishwashers you a drying chemical and air drip dry. Your dishwasher turns into an oven and baked the moisture away. It needs to do this because your not there to open the door and create air flow as soon as it finishes. If you didn't open your dishwasher for a day or two those dishes would not be clean any more, mold would have started to form",
"Commercial dishwashers take 45 mins to heat up when you turn them on, then keep the water hot all day, which saves a massive amount of time in the wash cycle but uses a lot of power. domestic dishwashers heat the water every time.",
"also, it's important to note commercial restaurant washers don't have to deal with stuck-on, dried food. The plate comes back from the table, gets pre-scrapped, then rinsed with a high-pressure manual spray, with hot water. The plate is essentially clean now, save for a few random bits. Food never had a chance to dry, thus it is very easy to wash quickly. Silverware soaks in hot water up until the dishwasher has enough to do a full load, so they don't dry out either. The same plate might serve ten people in one weekend dinner service, it comes down to just how FAST plates move through a busy restaurant.\n\nHomes don't work like this. People let food dry out on the counter, or in the machine itself waiting on a full load. A longer cycle is necessary to re-hydrate the stuck-on food before it can be carried away.\n\nTake an average load of dried dishes from home, I guarantee most of them would not come out clean in a commercial dishwasher, and would require many, many cycles. The restaurant machine exists only to finish plates that are basically 99% clean already. The detergent just takes away remaining oil/butter, and the rinse cycle gets the plates to a high enough temperature to sanitize, with the help of a little bleach. Rinse aide makes them dry quickly. Within ten minutes it's heading back to a table. An average \"round trip\" is under an hour. Any plates or equipment with real stuck-on bits must be manually scrubbed.\n\nIt's comparing apples to oranges.",
"The commercial dishwasher has a tank with pre-heated water, i.e. in the very moment you close the cover, a wet hot hell with chemicals goes down on the dishes, and everything is done when your dishwasher at home is still thinking how much water to take in and heat.",
"The dish machines in kitchens are SUPPOSED to be sanitizers, not dish washers. The poor sucker getting paid barely enough money to survive is the dishwasher. All the machine is for is removing whatever small bits are left over after the dishwasher has already mostly cleaned them off. Long story short: If you want clean dishes quickly, you're gonna have to get your hands dirty.\n\nSource: Am Chef",
"Additional Eli5: why does my household dishwasher from '05 take 88 minutes per load and my girlfriend's 2017 washer take 180 minutes?",
"Oh, finally... My time to shine! I didn't read through all the comments so others may have mentioned all of this already.\n\nI work for a major appliance manufacturer and this comes up quite often. One main reason is the fact that they are using so much less water - we're talking just a few gallons. That water is run through the wash arms at different times, so not all of the dishes are being sprayed and cleaned at once.\n\nAnother reason is due to the sensors inside that tell the dishwasher how dirty the water is. So many people think they are supposed to essentially wash the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher - STOP THIS! It needs to sense the food/drink particles in order to clean properly.\n\nAnd as mentioned in other comments, heated dry. While it adds to the time, heated dry, along with rinse aid, is essential to getting your dishes (and the inside tub) dry. If you don't do these things and your dishes aren't dry, don't call the manufacturer. Read the manual that gives with it. Any other fancy options you may add on, say sanitize, are going to add to the time as well.\n\nMind you all of this applies to the brands I work with, but I'm sure there is some crossover to others as well.\n\nEdit: my first ever gold! Thanks, my fellow Redditor! I'm so glad this random knowledge has finally paid off.",
"You do not have the pressure and the temperatures that a commercial system has. Those things are monsters and the water is at boiling temperature. \n\nHere is a video.\n\n_URL_0_",
"So many comments from people who have never used a commercial washer or were terribly misinformed\n\nThere is no preheated water tank. We turned it on and ran a couple empty cycles to get it up to temp which usually took < 10 minutes\n\nThe \"chemicals\" are not super deadly and powerful. They're basic sanitizers. We got ours in a box of little packets that you just rip open and sprinkle all over the dishes. I wouldn't eat them like pixie sticks but they were fine on your skin\n\nThe high temps make a difference but honestly, it's not that much higher and only runs for a fraction of the time. What's 150 for 3 hours vs 180 for 2 minutes going to do?\n\nThe biggest factor is, like others have said, that the dishes are already cleaned, by hand, before they go in the machine. The machine then sanitizes them with a blast of hot water and sanitizers. \n\nIf you don't clean a dish that's been sitting out for any reasonable amount of time before you put it in an industrial washer it's just going to be gross when you take it out.",
"Commercial dishwashers have a plug at the bottom, like a sink. At the start of the day/night you run a 'fill' cycle to fill the basin of the dishwasher with water. The is also a ring (or the like) element in the basin that keeps the water super hot for as long as necessary. This water is then used over and over through the spray things to rinse the plates, etc. This is why it's so important to wash the dishes so thoroughly before loading them into the machine. A commercial machine does not pump in new, fresh water each cycle, like a home machine. My guess is that it takes a lot longer with home machines because they need to gather and heat new water each time. \n\nSource: I wash dishes in a commercial kitchen while I'm at uni. People shit me to tears, so this job is heaven for me. Also, I nearly blew up the dishwasher on my first day because I didn't understand any of the plug/ fill/ scalding hot element stuff.",
"You hit it on the head. Residential dishwashers are bound by EPA regulations. Lower water/electric consumption. Commercial dishwashers do not follow these. \n\nSinners circle explains how proper balance of chemicals, mechanical power, time and temperature need to be balanced for cleaning. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nIf you reduce temperature/mechanical power (to save energy) you must increase time to balance sinners circle. This is where commercial dishwashers can clean in 15 minutes or less. Extremely high water temperature and pressure = low time. ",
"Rest assured, most dishwashers pay the same amount of attention to the dirty cookie sheets as they do to each spoon and fork. All the silverware is tossed onto the rack, it all gets washed and sanitized at once, and it's all put back out at once. Plus, in most kitchens they ask you to wash all the silverware twice, once on the rack and once in designated cups. Most restaurants go out of their way to make sure they don't touch your silverware from the second it leaves the dish machine to the second you use it.",
"I used to be a dishwasher. The plates we used were heavy, tough and expensive. We would scrub the plates with steel pads. Then we would spray them with a high powered hose. Finally, they would be put into a hot and high pressured dishwasher. The dishwashers used a lot of water and generated a lot of heat. The machines also did not fit very many dishes in at one time. Dish washing at a restaurant is quick and produces clean dishes, but also creates a lot of noise, heat, and mess that most people wouldn't want in their homes. ",
"Since no one seems to answer the obvious answer, I'll say it. Commercial dishwasher **are not** energy efficient. You can either have quiet and energy efficient, or loud and quick. Commercial dishwashers take the latter and residential dishwashers take the former. ",
"Several reasons: commercial machines are not dish washer. Some are, but then they take more time, use very high pressure, steam, make lots of noise and cost a fortune, and may still not clean the dried up food. It may require an high amperage circuit breaker (read: more than your stove). It will also use strong chemicals that may stinks and be an health issue if not proprelly vented. It may also require a hot water tank with a dangerously high temperature that would give you a second degree burn instantly.\n\nHome dishwasher are make to clean even the dried food, be inexpensive, work with plain hot water, and work on 120V, safe to use and use inexpensive and relativelly safe soap. And also relativelly silent.",
"I didn't see anyone else mentioning efficiencies of scale, so I figured I would throw two cents out.\n\n\nIndustrial scale dishwashers are purpose built for extreme washing (high pressures, high temperatures, high chemicals) and they cost a lot more than consumer level ones because of this. So one of the ways to keep costs lower in consumer level washers is to have lower pressure, heat, and chemicals which allows for cheaper materials but ends up taking longer.\n\n\nThe other important thing to note, which has been mentioned, is energy efficiency and water efficiency. These are things that consumers want, so companies have sacrificed time to make the equipment more efficient. This is especially true for households which run the machine < = 1 time a day.",
"It may be the case that the home dishwasher was improperly installed. If so, it will waste a ton of time and electricity. \n\nDishwashers must be installed and connected to the *hot* water service under the kitchen sink. If they are improperly installed and connected to the *cold* water service every cycle will take much longer. This is because the dishwasher must heat up the water coming in to a certain temperature before it will proceed with each cycle.\n\nIt's usually very easy to check this. The next time you run your dishwasher just find the water line going into the dishwasher and touch it to see if the water running through is warm or cold.",
"Residential dishwashers don't need to take 3 hrs, as many have \"quick\" or 1hr cycles. But if you want to use less water(and electricity to meet Energuide or energy star guidelines) a residential dishwasher will utilize sensors to measure the turbididy of the water(which can eat up a portion of the cycle time and uses a fraction of a penny for each use and some dishwashers will reactivate the sensor portion up to 3 times per load at anywhere from 5-10 mins approx per sense).\n\nThe filling process will also take time and others have pointed out that heating water through an element will also add time(if you have a 'high heat' option it will add more time as to heat the water up even further, in most cases surpassing what your hot water tank heats to).\n\n Then filtering the water. Most \"newer\" dishwashers can filter and reuse up to 75% of the water, some like KitchenAid, in some models, after filtering and reusing water only use about 2.25 gal per load(compared to the average 5-7 gal per load of most other models).The filtering process can also eat up some of the overall cycle time. \n\nAlso drying. Condensation drying, which is used by most brands can take a long time. Having heated dry option uses more electricity but has a shorter run time(and \"newer\" options like adding fan assisted heated dry help reduce overall times as well).\n\nAlso unlike commercial applications where you can have a person target a powerful sprayer at baked on foods, at home the machine will operate the bottom sprayer for a time then utilize the middle and top sprayer and cycle back and forth(some machines like Maytag use all the arms at once as the motors on those machines are more powerful but won't reduce cycle times by doing this) hoping to get all the food off(as some have mentioned the need to \"rehydrate\" soils to help get them off is factored in the programming/cycle choices which also plays a part in the overall timing).\n\n\nSource: I work for an appliance manufacturer and spend time with the engineers who build/design/program them. \n\n\nTL; DR: residential dishwashers don't need to take so long but to enjoy resource efficiency(and get dishes clean without you assisting them)they need to do stuff that adds more time. \n\nEdit: formatting",
"Like so much of modern life, the reason home dishwashers take so long is... Government regulation. \n\nBefore the government thought we needed their meddling with our dishwashers, they used about 6.5 gallons of water. Is that a lot? Consider that the government itself estimates that most people use almost 40 gallons of water to wash dishes by hand.\n\nThen the Eco-warriors got involved and tried to squeeze even more water from the already efficient rock and lowered the standard to 5 gallons in 2012 and 3.1 gallons in 2015. \n\nThe result? More expensive dishwashers and poor cleaning of dishes that takes 3 - 4 times as long. \n\nBut it saves money from increased efficiency! *Does it?* It only takes 20 years to re-coup the savings (small print: that is twice the estimated life of new dishwashers)! Progress!\n\n[Dishwashers Soak Consumers] (_URL_0_ )\n\n[DOE’s Dishwasher Regulations Mandate Dishwashers that Don’t Wash Well](_URL_1_)\n",
"Temperature, chemicals and manual labor is the difference. \n\nFor the commercial dishwashers: You need to scrub debris off the items you want to wash as much as you can (someone said something about sanitizing plates... this is what is happening.. just at a faster rate of speed due to the temperature and chemicals)\n\nTemperature: wash temperature is about 160F(very hot) in most commercial dishwashers. Home dishwashers could get there but only if your water heater is up to it... most water heaters at home do not have a booster heater like the commercial dishwashers (they are powerful) and they are installed in the machine IN the water tank.\n\nThe rinse cycle comes right about the end of the trip and the temperature of the water gets to about 180-190F(Extremely hot1!)... the chemical evaporates over 200 degrees and it is worthless then. Most newer machines have a computer that monitors the temperature and keep it at that level. they also let you know when the chemicals are low or at zero level. \nChemicals: soap is present at wash cycle. most machines have nozzles that spray the plates/hardware you are washing. All this is pressurized but it wont take all the heavy debris (hence the manual step) then the rinse chemical allows for a faster drying time. Usually all the items that go thru the cycle come out clean, sanitized and dry after the cycle(about 2 min tops). Rinse chemicals allows for a faster dry time. \nThe home dishwasher does not have the chemicals, temperature of the commercial machine. Which translates in longer time to clean the dishes. \n\nSo, the difference is the temperature and the chemicals. \n\nIf restaurants do not follow these procedures or skip part of it... they will go the way of the Dodo. Washing dishes one of the most important part of the restaurant business. \n\nSource: I have been in the restaurant business for about 30 years. I started as a dishwasher. Yes, I still help wash dishes and check they are being washed properly. Clean plates saves the business. I check daily that my machine has proper temperatures, chemicals and the water gets changed at least every two hours(that also affects how clean the plates come out)\n",
"When I was younger and worked in commercial kitchens the dishwasher wasn't s washer at all.\n\nIt was just a hood you pulled down that sprayed boiling hot water and rinse aid on the contents to sanitize the dishes and make them sparkle!",
"Professional dishwashers only have to remove \"fresh\" remains that are still moist and relatively easy to wash off. They use pretty aggressive detergents that should only be handled by professionals. They are great for greasy stuff but are not that great washing off starch and proteins (eggs in particular).\n\nYour dishwasher at home on the other hand may have to wash of dried stuff from two days ago and uses milder detergents that are safe for home use. Also, they have different components that are good at decomposing starch and proteins that may take a little longer to be effective.\n\nA good part of the home dishwasher cycle is soaking/rinsing. Most modern dishwashers have a quick cycle that skips this step mostly and only takes about 30 minutes and it's useful if you have to wash a full load right after a meal.\n\nThe professional dishwasher skips it completely and just goes at it with high water pressure and agressive detergent.",
"Also commercial dishwashers are like having a kettle on constantly...it about £1 an hour to have them on",
"Your kitchen dishwasher machine takes 3 hours?! I'd buy a new one. Ours is less than 4 years old and the longest program we use (70 degree C for cutting boards, knives etc) takes 170 minutes.",
"What home dishwasher do you use that takes longer than an hour?",
"I run my dishwasher on \"express 60\" all the time. Occasionally, I'll add an extra hour of drying cycle if I have a lot of plastic containers on the top rack. No issues. ",
"Did dishes in a big old age home when I was a teenager. The dishwashers operate at such high temps that even if you end up with something left on the dish, it's sterile.\n\nRecently helped at a soup kitchen.... naturally, with my experience from many years ago I helped with the dishes. They had a small unit that washed the dishes after initial hand rinse and it worked really well. Guy who did it all the time said he wished he had that unit at home. But I imagine it would be quite expensive. Plus it was designed for a single rack of dishes at one time. Home units are designed with practicality in mind. You load it up over a few hours then run it. Not very convenient if you have to fill a single rack then run it, then dry your stuff by hand. \n\nThe old Hobart unit we used at the old ago home was a beast. Dishes came out so hot you'd practically burn your hands when taking them out of the racks. \n\nEverybody slags dishwashing as a job but I didn't mind it. We had union pay and it was OK. Certainly had a lot worse jobs that that when I was young. Washing dishes we just worked fast and you're like on an assembly line. It's mindless work but you still have to do it right and you have to do it fast. Besides, most work becomes brain stem function after a while. People just don't like to admit this about their work so they say things like, \"Yeah, every day is different\". Honestly....if every day was so different you wouldn't be happy because you wouldn't become any good at your job. \n\n\n\n",
"Commercial grade machines get the job done quicker due to a few factors - chemical, agitation and temperature. CG machines use a detergent (solid or liquid) which is highly alkali, breaks through fats and soils. As others have mentioned - a good 60% of the work is pre-scraping - Detergent will do the rest.\n\nRinse aids increase surface tension to help water sheet off quicker. Sanitizers are either chlorine, quat or iodine based - these kill germs. If the machine is 180f or hotter, sanitizer isn't needed. \n\nTo answer your question briefly if you haven't fallen asleep - commercial machines have powerful chemicals and heat compressed into 90 seconds to do a short, sharp job but cost significantly more.\n\nSource : i sell, calibrate, install and train hotels/restaurants here in Bermuda on dish machines and laundry washers ",
"Restaurant machines cost anywhere from $5k-25k. The one in your home is significantly cheaper.",
"From all of the answers i'm seeing about the dishwasher, this raises a new ELI5: \n\n**Why am I pre-washing all of my household dishes?**\n\nAfter meeting/moving-in-with/marrying my wife, she has insisted (and I've covertly tested and confirmed that she's not wrong) that dishes need to be cleaned before going in the dishwasher. I remember as a kid, dishes going into the diswasher covered in gross food bits and the dishwasher doing all of the work. Today's home diswashers don't seem to do the job. What am I doing wrong?",
"I worked for a small restaurant, sometimes did dishes as we never had a dedicated dish person. Most of the time I was put back there because I requested it (didn't want to be up front) or people weren't doing a good job so I got pulled back. Everything was cleaned by hand, the machine was used for sanitizing and getting any small spots that could have been missed. It did not clean them very well if there was stuck on food.\n\n(Breakfast dishes and lipstick stained coffee mugs were the worst.)"
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3scai1 | How accurate is the relationship between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton as depicted in the musical "Hamilton"? | In the musical (which is fantastic for those who haven't listened to it), their relationship is depicted in a very dramatic arc, so much that I can't really believe it reflects reality. Here are the basic strokes of he musical for those who don't know:
Hamilton looks up to Burr starting in the early 1770s, who always advises him to never show his opinions. Hamilton pushes back and always is very forthright and thereby becomes a leader in the revolution while Burr is more circumspect. They remain friends despite this, even though the musical makes it seem like *everyone* dislikes Burr, except for Hamilton. They practice law together after the revolution.
Burr is shown as being calculating and without any true beliefs, doing anything solely for political gain and with no regards for principle. He refuses to help write he Federalist Papers. He then defeats Hamiltons father in law for a Senate seat, harming their relationship.
Their relationship degrades when Burr uses the Reynolds affair to threaten Hamilton, threatening exposure of the affair if Hamilton crosses him.
Finally, Hamilton endorses Jefferson in 1800 over Burr, causing Burr to challenge Hamilton to a duel.
So how accurate is all this? What big picture info is missing that is really important for someone interested in the story to understand? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3scai1/how_accurate_is_the_relationship_between_aaron/ | {
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"In the musical they have Burr and Hamilton as seconds at the duel between Charles Lee and John Laurens.\n\nWhich is excellent foreshadowing.\n\nBut in reality Charles Lee's second was not Burr, it was Evan Edwards.",
"Thanks for the question about *Hamilton*! I've been obsessed with this musical and would love to see it discussed by our historians. If I may contribute a follow-up-ish question, I am curious to hear opinions on Ron Chernow's biography which the musical is based on, if anyone has happened to read it. I am assuming that the facts in the book are pretty close to reality, esp since Lin-Manuel was very concerned with being as historically accurate as possible, but i don't know. Is this question allowed? ",
"It's pretty unlikely that Burr and Hamilton were friends as young men. Burr, a descendant of Jonathan Edwards and as close to an aristocrat as early Americans came, went to the College of New Jersey (later Princeton). Hamilton was an illegitimate child born on the West Indies island of Nevis. He was eventually sent to America by the man rumored to be is biological father where he attended King's College in New York (later Columbia).\n\nIt's likely that they met during the war, specifically during the British campaign to capture New York. They both served under General Putnam in the rear-guard left to defend the city itself while the main army retreated. They only narrowly avoided capture themselves, and in fact witnesses later recalled that Burr led the artillery men (including Hamilton) away from the British just in the nick of time.\n\nI'm drawing from Michael Newton's book on Alexander Hamilton and Robert Middlekauff's book on the Revolution call *The Glorious Cause.*",
"I also love the musical, and recently finished Ron Chernow's biography which the musical is based on.\n\nWhile it's possible Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton had run ins during the war and the immediate aftermath, they weren't notable acquaintances. \n\nBurr was in Hamilton's sphere due to his intervention and diplomacy when Hamilton and Monroe came close to dueling over the Reynolds affair. Unlike the musical, the reveal over the affair likely came from Monroe, who was privy to Hamilton's confession (not Burr, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison). Monroe agreed to destroy evidence and instead passed it along. Also interesting, Burr represented Maria Reynolds in her divorce from James Reynolds.\n\nBurr was also involved in a duel with John Baker Church, who married Hamilton's sister-in-law Angelica. He was cavalier during this duel and not intent on killing Church, which possibly lead to Hamilton under-estimating his intent in their duel.\n\nWhile the musical takes some liberty with their relationship, the spirit of it is largely on point. "
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8msq6h | Why do storms develop after a hot day? And why do these storms sometimes get forecast but then seem to get pushed back later and never end up developing? | Self-explanatory title, but I just wondered because we have had a few hot days in the UK, and each day a storm has been forecast for early-mid afternoon. Then by the time it gets to midday it is pushed back later, and later.. what makes it so difficult to predict when/if a storm will develop after a hot day? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8msq6h/why_do_storms_develop_after_a_hot_day_and_why_do/ | {
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"Storms develop on hot days because the sun causes hot spots on the earths surface to form. Air above these hot spots rises up quickly. Now there is a lower pressure at the hot spot which causes air to move in from the side \\(also known as wind\\). As the air rises up it cools down and the water starts to condense on the dust particles in the air forming clouds. When the air gets very hot it rises very quickly \\(and far into the sky\\), causing these towering clouds, which are called cumulus clouds. The quick rising air also causes particles to become electrically charged with respect to the ground \\(this later causes lightning\\). At a certain time in the day the earth and the sky begins to cool, thus causing more condensation, until the point where the condensation is so heavy it falls down to earth. Many things can stop rain, too much dust in the air for example allows the condensation to spread out over many different dust particles, thus distributing the weight of the water, as a result rain becomes less likely. My work has nothing to do with weather though, so maybe somebody else can tell you why predictions have not been accurate lately."
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2i6kcd | I don't get vernacular Jewish languages. | How did Yiddish, Ladino, etc develop? It seems like regional Jewish vernaculars developed through contact with the local culture (obviously) but then how did the languages not assimilate? Why do local Jewish vernaculars pop up so regularly rather than the community being bi lingual? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2i6kcd/i_dont_get_vernacular_jewish_languages/ | {
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"The development story of each of those languages is different, so I'm going to confine this post to broad strokes and specifically Yiddish.\n\nFirst, the broad strokes. There are two terms usually used for \"mixtures\" of language: pidgin and a creole. A pidgin is developed when two different language speakers need a means to communicate. What that generally entails is a borrowing of words from each other and cobbling together a grammar that facilitates communication. Anything that's difficult in either language is stripped away (e.g. clausal phrases, verb inflection, etc.). Additionally, a pidgin is not stable and continues to develop over time, usually in the same haphazard way it developed in the first place.\n\nA creole is, to put it simply, a pidgin that children are raised to speak natively. That means the language is going to be more stable and feature all the simplified structures of the pidgin. But, because there are now native speakers of our impromptu language, that means they're going to start playing with it and necessarily adding in deeper structures that we, the parents trying to communicate, could not use. These structures will develop naturally, just like the recent developments in English with \"because\" being used as a conjunction (e.g. \"because science,\" \"because reasons\"). The children will use their native language in hip new ways that make the parents cry *ai-yi-yi*, just like they do today. \n\nSo, many of these languages developed out of necessity to communicate with the locals. Jews are stereotyped as business owners, so they would have enough prestige in many communities to donate some words to a pidgin instead of just adopting the local language. (Look at how few words an oppressor's language adopts compared to how many words the oppressed's language adopts, e.g. English and French.) That's only part of the (generalized, broad-strokes) story.\n\nJews also take their language and religion with them wherever they go. They necessarily need Hebrew or Aramaic, or some form of it, to read their scriptures and worship Yahweh. This is a big factor in getting Hebrew mixed up with other languages - a cultural necessity. (Remember, this is broad strokes.)\n\nYiddish, in particular, is *theorized* to have been a High German language that borrowed copiously from Hebrew and Aramaic (this is the mainstream view) and later borrowed Slavic too, but for whatever it's worth, Max Weinreich (History of Yiddish, 1980) argues that it developed from French Jews picking up German while relegating Hebrew/ Aramaic to religious contexts, and only later did the Slavic get slipped in and the Hebrew/ Aramaic slip out of religious contexts and into everyday life. I wasn't convinced by his arguments, but I also don't have the credentials to dispute them intelligently. We have evidence of Yiddish tracing back to the 12th century, so we never saw it as a creole (rarely do those get written down), but we know that it (\"the mother tongue\") was referred to differently than Hebrew (\"the holy tongue\") and that German was also referred to differently (*taytsh* Yiddish vs. *tiutsch* Middle High German).\n\nLastly, I want to mention that whether a language is defined as a pidgin, creole, etc. *depends on who you talk to*. Some will liberally apply the term creole so that it include languages such as English after the Norman invasion, others won't. A pidgin is also hard to define exactly what it is. How many words do we have to borrow from each other before it's a pidgin of these two languages instead of German with a couple bits of Hebrew? If you think biologists have it hard defining a species, get a group of linguists to argue about what borders define a language! Even my professors in my graduate work had different views on the limits of pidgin and creole.",
"By coincidence, a [past episode of the AskHistorians Podcast](_URL_0_) covers this very subject. I've PM'd /u/gingerkid1234 to see if he would like to chime in.",
"So, a few ways. First, jewish languages tend to borrow heavily from Hebrew and other jewish languages. This happens because jewish languages are well know in jewish communities, and because for some terminology there's no native word in the local language. This happens in Jewish english, too. \n\nAlso, there's gradual divergence that took place. Regular sound change is pretty common. Segregation and/or geographic separation from non-jewish speakers could facilitate this, but there it does observably happen in American English spoken by Jews, too. \n\nA third bit is geographic separation causing new loans. One way Yiddish is different from standard German is its inventory of Slavic loans. The same happened with ladino in the Ottoman Empire. \n\nSo, these languages tend to be differentiated with loans from other jewish languages, and by divergence and loans that grows over time. "
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22jnxq | Is it theoretically possible for dark matter to form bodies (similar to asteroids and rogue planets) that could travel through the galaxy and destabilize a solar system? | Read some stuff online, wasn't satisfied with the answers. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/22jnxq/is_it_theoretically_possible_for_dark_matter_to/ | {
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"Not really, as far as we know, dark matter isn't \"lumpy\". It doesn't form clumps because it just passes through itself. ",
"the reason it's called \"dark\" isn't just to make it sound spooky or mysterious, it happens to be literally dark. dark matter is matter that is not electromagetically reactive. since light is electromagnetic radiation it is invisible. but it's not just light that is electromagnetic. almost every way that we interact with the universe is electromagnetic. stuff binding to other stuff is electromagnetic. electromagnetic repulsion is what keeps you from falling through the floor into the center of the earth, it's what keeps the earth from compressing to the size of a marble.\n\nif it's not electromagnetic it doesn't bind to or bump against anything especially other dark matter, it just passes through."
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d5wii4 | light is a form of energy, where does the energy go when it's absorbed into blackness? | The colour black barely reflects light, if light is a form of energy where does this energy go and what does it convert to? I know black things get hot, is this it transferring into heat energy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d5wii4/eli5_light_is_a_form_of_energy_where_does_the/ | {
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"Photons get absorbed by electrons which in term transfer photons to the nucleus. Essentially a photons energy gets converted into kinetic energy of electrons and nucleons. It’s not really heat energy because heat doesn’t make sense in the quantum scale where this is happening.",
"Black doesn't reflect *visible* light. The energy is converted into light of lower energy levels outside the visible spectrum (such as infrared).",
"Essentially, yes.\n\nBlack, gray and white things have those colors because they reflect all wavelengths of visible light equally. White things reflect a lot of light, gray things less, and black things the least. A \"truly\" black surface would reflect 0 visible light. However, our eyes only have a limited range of sensitivity. They adjust to the light conditions around them to give you the best possible vision, but some light hitting your retina might still be too bright and some too dark. Anything that is darker than the range your eyes are adjusted too, you will see as black.\n\nThis is why when you watch an image projected on a white screen, you can still see colors on that screen that are (nearly) black. Even though the screen looks white in normal room lighting, and the projector can only add light, not subtract it. The black pixels look black not because the projector can make the white screen darker, but because it makes the other pixels bright enough that, to your adjusted eyes, the darkest color on the screen looks (nearly) black.\n\nThis is all just to point out that brightness is relative. Basically nothing in the world is \"truly\" black, in the sense that it reflects no visible light at all. But some things reflect relatively little light. The photons they don't reflect are absorbed and this makes the atoms in the dark thing jiggle faster. This jiggling is what we call heat.",
"To add on to other explanations, when it gets absorbed by a material, the excited electron states can be converted into other forms of energy, like molecular vibrations and motions. As more of the material’s molecules are in motion, the temperature of the material increases."
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51nvxk | why did most ancient cultures associate their gods with animals? | I may be mistaken, but it would appear that all polytheistic cultures had specific animals associated with specific deities. Is this mostly a coincidence, or is there a reason that this convention was so consistent? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/51nvxk/eli5_why_did_most_ancient_cultures_associate/ | {
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"What else is there? People, animals, natural forces... and most cultures associated gods with all of those at once.",
"Most ancient cultures had gods that related to elements of nature or of society - animals are a natural part of that. Praying to a god of cats when your cat was sick made as much sense as praying to the god of the sea for a safe voyage, or to the god of harvest for a fruitful crop.\n\nAnd of course, those animals could also be tied in to other natural forces. Bastet was a cat goddess in Ancient Egypt, and that tied into her nature as a war goddess and protection goddess, due to the fierce and protective nature of cats.",
"Animals are the only visible objects that behave with human-like traits (seeing, learning, moving around, mating, being born, dying, ...) so if you're looking for something to symbolize a non-human creature, they're the obvious go-to choice.",
"Because animals were a vital component of their life. They provided food, money(exchange), services(pack animals). We now are more distanced from these processes. \n\nIt depends how far you go back. The neolithic revolution and the domestication of livestock.... or ... nomadic hunter gatherers following animal migration. Also, climate/country in asia, for example the calendar based on certain animals. "
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1vu6g7 | shell (computing) | Also, how could knowing shell commands be useful for someone. What would it be practical for exactly?? examples would be appreciated. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vu6g7/eli5_shell_computing/ | {
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"A shell or command shell is a program which has a special purpose: it reads keystrokes from the keyboard and interprets the \"commands\" that it receives in this way. The general idea is to have a human user interact with the command shell in order to accomplish system or computer maintenance related tasks, such as manipulating files or altering the configuration settings for various subsystems.\n\nOne particular task of a command shell is to locate and start up other applications which have a specific task. For instance, you can start a web browser or a word processor program by typing in the appropriate name.\n\nShells also typically are able to execute \"batch files\" or \"shell scripts\" which are text files that contain a series of commands that you would otherwise type in one after another. In this way you can automate repetitive tasks such as making a backup of a particular directory, or checking that the amount of disk space left is adequate.\n\nKnowing shell commands (both the built in commands and the utility programs) comes in handy when you are a system administrator. In my own experience (I have been my own linux system administrator for almost fifteen years) I can accomplish certain tasks way more efficiently using the keyboard issuing commands than firing up an application and shoving the mouse around.\n\nLinux in particular has several sophisticated command shell programs, of which my personal preference is *bash*. Windows traditionally has not given much attention to being able to perform tasks using a command shell. An MS-DOS like solution has always been the default. OS/2 had a pretty nifty command shell, but no one is using that anymore (where is the other half? - guffaw). But these last few years I hear Windows has a command shell solution that aims to be at least as good at what linux has to offer. I have never worked with it, so I have no opinion to offer.",
"Minor addition to what /u/diMario wrote: \"Shell\" is the software that provides an interface between the user and the operating system. The shell can be either textual (like the command line interface) or graphical (like the Windows UI)."
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2m59z8 | when _url_0_ reports that my internet speed is 900 mb/s and the test runs for several seconds, is it downloading several gigs worth of stuff? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2m59z8/eli5_when_speedtestnet_reports_that_my_internet/ | {
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"Speedtest measures in Megabits per second or kilobytes per second depending on the display setting. Megabits are not the same thing as megabytes. Thats about 112 megabytes, not a few gigs. Your computer downloads some small temporary files that are deleted after the test is done. The speed is calculated based on the average speed they download at."
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cbw8v7 | why are hairs over old wounds thicker and darker? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cbw8v7/eli5_why_are_hairs_over_old_wounds_thicker_and/ | {
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"I'm guessing that they grow thicker because it's a targeted area of your body where copious about of healing resources (blood, nutrients, etc) were sent and thus the hair there is overdeveloped and beefier. My guess for deeper color would be since the hair is thicker it doesn't let light through as well so the genetically determined color deepens. Kind of like when cellophane. You can't see through the whole roll very well but if you pull a sheet the image clears up."
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2de948 | why do websites more frequently have you scroll through multiple pages for the rest of the article or to see the subsequent photo in a long list? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2de948/eli5_why_do_websites_more_frequently_have_you/ | {
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"More pages = more ads = more revenue"
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8ig12g | why does xbox and ps4 charge for multiplayer but pc does not? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ig12g/eli5_why_does_xbox_and_ps4_charge_for_multiplayer/ | {
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"Xbox and Playstation are closed ecosystems -- the manufacturers control what can and can't connect to it, so they are in a position to charge for multiplayer access.\n\nA PC is an open system -- there's no one company that controls your access to other systems. So, while you may pay for multiplayer games, you'd be paying the company that makes the software and maintains the servers and not a single company that controls access to everything.",
"Several reasons,\nFirst off its because they can. Where theres money to make they will be raking it.\nSecondly, any time that you have several clients together playing a game or doing an online activity, a server is required. Depending on the game it could be small or large, but servers cost money.\nThird, pcs run on a 3rd party platform, anyone can make a game and create a cheap server. With most pc games the servers are 3rd party and free, while other large ones (ie. WoW) have large servers that you subscribe to. \n\nHaving a singular large server that everyone connects on is expensive, with all the voice, text, and games... They would lose a large chunk of change without chaeging you a subscription."
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1uwedd | how do you clean up the water in a situation like west virginia? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uwedd/eli5_how_do_you_clean_up_the_water_in_a_situation/ | {
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"Clean up the spill.\n\nLet the river clean itself for a while, or dredge the muck that is contaminated off the bottom and dump it in a chemical landfill.\n\nClean the water treatment plants if needed, or run water through them until no more hazardous level of contaminant remains. \n\nRun the taps, the fire hydrants, the hoses, etc. until the water lines are purged of chemical contaminant. Run a cleaning fluid through them if necessary to remove the contaminant. Rinse, repeat.\n\nGood to use water is now coming out of the taps, OK to drink.\n\nTest over the next (long time period) to make sure the cleanup actually removed the contaminant."
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1onhy0 | What is the earliest known instance of a type of weapon/warfare being "banned" by both sides of an armed conflict? | I'm currently studying weapons banned by the UN (Chemicals, atomic etc.) and was wondering if there were any early cases of two or more sides banning a specific type of weaponry? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1onhy0/what_is_the_earliest_known_instance_of_a_type_of/ | {
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"Chemical weapons were actually banned before the UN came about. The 1929 Geneva Protocol to the Hague Convention banned their use in international warfare, but in theory they had been already banned by the 1899 Hague Convention.\n\nAs for Nukes, my understanding is that there is no treaty that explicitly bans their use but that at the request of the UN, the ICJ has stated that they are effectively banned by other laws concerning conduct in war, but this isn't a total given.\n\nAnyways though, the Hague Conventions was the first major codification of the laws of modern war. Among other things, it banned the use of dum-dums and other ammunition designed to expand when striking soft tissue, and as I said, they banned gas warfare... that wasn't really listened too... There were attempts to ban the use of aerial warfare, but it didn't work out all that well. 1899 had a short term ban which didn't get renewed at the 1907 Convention.\n\nThe Hague wasn't the first example of weapon bans in war. The Pope banned the use of crossbows in war - only against other Christians though - in the 12th Century at the Second Lateran Council. Just how often that prohibition was followed though, I am unsure.\n\nHague wasn't the first in terms of modern warfare either. Preceding it, at the very least I know of the 1868 St. Petersberg agreement which banned exploding bullets to be used. Artillery was fine, but projectiles under a certain weight couldn't be exploding. The first Geneva Convention dates to 1864, but I don't believe it dealt with weapons, just with dealing with the wounded.\n\nSo to filter out all the extra babble I had there, a short incomplete list would include:\n\nCrossbows - 12th Century\n\nExploding bullets - 1868\n\nDum-dums - 1899\n\nGas Warfare - 1899/1929\n",
"This is a very difficult question to answer, as the concept of an international community of nations with the authority to actually enact \"bans,\" so to speak, is largely a product of the 19th and 20th century. /u/Georgy_K_Zhukov has given a good rundown of how, even in the modern era, bans should really be listed in scare-quotes. That said, his example of crossbows is probably your best bet, and it carries some very interesting historical baggage surrounding it.\n\nFirst, it's important to not that the crossbow ban was notable, even at the time, for it's complete ineffectiveness. It was enacted by Pope Innocentus III, and re-emphasized by Pope Urban II, as an abortive means of \"civilizing\" the combat between fellow Christians. Importantly, this ban did not apply to wars against Muslims. There are also interesting elements of classism involved, but that's another discussion.\n\nIn terms of your question, while it did nothing to stem the use of the weapon itself, it was one of the most concrete examples of the contemporary concept known as *Christendom*. Essentially, the Catholic church, and the leaders of the Catholic world, viewed all Christians as belonging to a single \"nation\" in a sense. While clearly not as politically coherent and unified as the Islamic Caliphate, the concept of *Christendom* was absolutely and important element in conflicts between Christian, and especially Catholic, rulers (the Pope would routinely attempt to make *Christendom* into a more concrete and temporal concept).\n\nIn any event, *Christendom* as a concept descends in part from the late Roman Empire. It was essentially the idea that, while there may be independent political entities within, it is still a unified group at the most fundamental level. It was this idea that allowed diverse and heterogeneous military forces from across Europe to engage in the enormously complicated invasions of the Crusades (here, also, is an example of the hazily defined relationship of non-Catholics within *Christendom*. Early on, Byzantium and the Russians were elements of *Christendom*, but as time wore on the distance between Catholics and Eastern Orthodoxy grew). \n\nBack to the topic at hand, the *reason* that even the idea of a ban on crossbows was even considered was because of this idea of *Christendom*. While relations between Christians and Non-Christians were viewed in zero-sum, civilization between civilization conflicts, there was a sense that war between Christians should have *rules*.\n\nThe modern state system owes a lot of it's structure to this concept. Over time, the religious element of this idea of an overarching \"community\" between political elements disappeared. By the 17th century, the Ottomans were firmly within this structure of international community, and were accorded all of the niceties of a \"civilized\" country.\n\nThat said, while the concept of an \"international community\" developed out of the idea of *Christendom*, it was really until the early 19th Century that most of the world was under the control of Political Entities who were considered members of this community. Therefore, it wasn't really until the mid-19th Century that a truly global \"ban\" was within the realm of possibility.",
"Were Trench Knives ever formally banned during with WW?\n",
"Are we talking about a legal ban here, by international law, or just an agreement? Because the first war in which only certain weapons were allowed to be used is, to my knowledge is the Lelantine War (if we assume that it did in fact take place). According to Herodotus an Thucydides the tradition is that the combatants on either side agreed to exclude bows, slings, and javelin (i.e. missile weapons) from their forces and settle the matter by sword and spear. \n\nThat being said, we don't know for certain if the Lelantine War actually took place, and there's a lot that suggests that it really didn't go much like the tradition says it did, provided that it did occur. However, what we do know is that the battles of the Archaic Period almost always had certain provisions in them, drawn up before battle. We actually have fragments of some of these agreements (you could call them treaties) which prohibit the use of missile weapons or cavalry and where both sides swear oaths not to pursue defeated enemies. At some point these formal agreements were no longer written down, since it was unnecessary in light of the fact that battles followed those formulas (decision by heavy infantry with little or no cavalry or missile support, no pursuit, respect for heralds, protection of the loser's right to remove their dead from the field)."
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1jtae3 | Was the middle east on a path to secularism in the early twentieth century? If so, what changed? | I've seen disparate sources claim that many middle eastern countries were on a track towards liberalization and secularization in the first half of the twentieth century, only to shift gears at some point and begin to focus on Islamic radicalism and/or incorporate more elements of Islam into governmental structures. Is this true? And if so, what caused the shift? I'm aware of the [coup in Iran](_URL_0_), but surely that can't account for the same trend in other middle eastern countries. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1jtae3/was_the_middle_east_on_a_path_to_secularism_in/ | {
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"Sort of. The Middle East had brief periods of secularization in the years after the Ottoman Empire was [partitioned](_URL_0_) in the post-WWI years; as the British and French seized control over most of the region, bringing secular governing practices with them. Meanwhile, the Turks got done fighting a war of independence against occupying allied forces in 1923, and established a Republic of Turkey that is a, [\"democratic, secular and social state governed by the rule of law.](_URL_1_) This was seen as unique since Turkey was considered the most European of all Muslim majority states. After the French and British gave up their colonial holdings in the Middle East, most of the states they created went through periods of significant unrest and revolutions. Religious leaders took advantage of these situations, and moved in and either took power like in Iran or forever cemented themselves in countries like Iraq. Subsequently, the majority of countries today have Islam as the state religion, with the exceptions of Turkey, Lebanon, and Syria.",
"The short answer to your question is that the leaders of those secular movements (Hafez al-Assad, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddhafi, others) tended to be mind-blowingly iron-fisted and corrupt, even as they educated women, provided greater social services, etc.--so, since about the late 1970s, Islamists have successfully drawn a connection between secularism and the abuses and excesses of secular Arab regimes.\n\nThe rise of secular authoritarian regimes in the Arab world failed to deliver the economic revitalization that its leaders promised, and coincided with a series of devastating foreign-policy failures (the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War, pretty much every other interaction with Israel since the 1960s).\n\nThen, when Islamists took over in Iran and Afghanistan, they suddenly seemed to be dictating terms to the West (Iran-Contra, Soviet-Afghan War, etc.) Since then, the most successful blows that have been struck against Israel and her Western allies have been struck by Islamists, while secular authoritarians like Saddam Hussein and Gaddhafi were always on the defensive. Many Arabs concluded that the economic and diplomatic failures of their leaders were rooted in spiritual and moral bankruptcy--so Islamism started to look pretty good to many Arabs.\n\nRemember, though, that secularism is hardly dead in the Middle East. Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Algeria, Libya, Tunis, and Sudan are all run by secular regimes who are generally quite threatened by Islamism, and have made concessions to Islamic law only grudgingly.",
"Islamism is the only *native* ideology this geography produced. Other world views are easily criticized as being alien.\n\nNationalism has a history connected with French Revolution and seen as the dividing force of *ummah.* \n\nSocialism (as most of the older Arab regimes claim to be) was seen as related with *Godless Communists*.\n\nCapitalism/Liberalism is associated with imperialism and moral decadence.\n\nAlso there wasn't a successful secular regime in any of these states, partly from the West's *interests over principles* politics, and partly from the incompetence of local secular elites. In most of these states, West's policy was to promote a small elite that controls the major political, military and economic power and masses recognized this elite with their opposition to Islam. \n\nAlso Islamism was oppressed and was able remained politically clean. They didn't have to find real solutions to real problems, instead was able to create a rhetoric about an utopian Islamic future. \n\nOther commenters counted Turkey as one of the few secular states, which is true if we consider secularism as *not employing secular texts in legislation.* However in Turkey, the state had a monopoly over Islam with *Presidency of Religious Affairs*, which replaced *Ministry of Sharia and Foundations* (Evkaf) after the abolition of the Caliphate. Through this institution, the state promoted a *clean* Sunni version of Islam. \n\nAlso, there are deep differences between Shia and Sunni Islam. In Shia, via [*Velayet-i Faqih* doctrine](_URL_1_), it's possible to legislate in the name of God by scholars. The word of the Grand Ayatollahs are considered almost similar to the word of God and Khomeini was able to mold this power into political power. In Sunni Islam, there is no such power wielding mechanism. The role of scholars are actually at the level of advisers. Their legislative power was limited by the state in Ottomans, and for example, they weren't able come against *Killing of Brothers* (Kardeş Katli) rule which allowed enthroned Sultan to kill his siblings. This was clearly against Islamic law, but if your Sultan is Mehmed II, then it's better to find some interpretation to make it religious. \n\nAfter the collapse of Ottoman rule and abolition of Caliphate, this mechanism to steer religion according to politics was lost. ([The last Caliph](_URL_0_) was a painter, it may show how Caliphate would steer Muslims today.) Islamists was able to break free from historical load and able to come up with *Islam as solution to every problem* idea. If you like I can detail how Turkish Islamists developed their *Islamism* into a European Union tended Democratic Conservatism. It shows how *Islamists* had to evolve when they have to cope with real problems.",
"This question is discussed explicitly when reading about Lawrence of Arabia. One thing that I think is very important to keep in mind when discussing the Middle East is that, even today when things are broken into countries, is that the region is extremely sectarian. For the majority of us, we live in neatly, and clearly, defined countries, with strong borders between Country A and Country B. The Middle East is not like that now, nor was it ever. We tend to look at the Middle East through \"Westernized\" (though I hate that word) lenses, which I think does more to complicate the issues than to resolve it, as sometimes the equation is blurry.\n\nWhile many claim that the idea of Islamic \"radicalization\" is a very new trend, I can tell you that the idea of an Islamic Jihadist movement was something very prevalent among various tribes/civilizations living in the Middle East in the early 1900s. The Ottomans actually declared a Jihad against the allies in 1914, seeking to gain support from the Muslims under allied control. \n\nDuring WWI, Lawrence of Arabia sought to unite the Arabs to fight the Turks in what is called \"The Arab Revolt\", and while many tribes bought into this, there were still tribes that sided with the Ottomans because the British/allies were viewed as infidels, and the Ottomans, though massively oppressive, were still viewed more favorably by the Arabs since they shared an Islamic bond. \n\nThat said, around the same time, you had the likes of Al-Afghani, who, by today's standards, would probably be viewed as a Muslim who was open to the ideas of modernization, and was a key figure in the Islamic Modernization movement that gained steam in the late 1800s and early 1900s. \n\nSo, while you had rumblings of \"radical\" Islam in the early 1900s, along with the Ottomans trying to capitalize on their Islamic bond to uproot the British-ruled Muslims, that majority of the Muslims in the Middle East at this time would probably be considered to be on a path to \"moderateism\", though I think secularism is probably a misnomer here. Islam was still the major pillar without a doubt. \n\nHowever, after the allies won in WWI and the British and French divvied up the Middle East under the Sykes-Piccot agreement, the Arabs who had helped Lawrence and the Allies became extremely jaded. They were promised self-governance in the Hejaz and elsewhere, and it very quickly became apparent that the British and French higher ups were merely using them as a pawn to fight the Turks.\n\nOnce that occurred, it opened the door to full blown skepticism and distrust towards the British and French. In 1928, Hassan Al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which was a response to the perceived failure of things like Islamic Modernism, which was deemed to be corrupted by Western influences. \n\nAs u/dolan0 stated, the fact that other leadership initiatives that were supposed to unite the region have been abject failures, such as Pan Arabism under Nasser, whereas the Islamist regimes in Afghanistan and Iran have been relatively successful in repelling the West, lead to a huge rise in what we might consider \"extremist\", or if nothing else \"Islamist\" regimes.\n\nI highly, highly recommend reading about Lawrence of Arabia if you haven't done so already. Many of the books about, or by him, provide great detail of individual tribal allegiances and theology, many of which ended up playing a founding role in the post-colonial Middle East. "
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23ibi5 | i like very spicy food, but how come sometimes my sissy friends can easily eat food i would consider "quite spicy"? | It seems to happene every so often; I'll be like "This is quite spicy!" and people who have no tolerance for spice will comment "Really? I don't think it's very spicy at all..." which is backed up by the fact they are able to eat it comfortably | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23ibi5/eli5_i_like_very_spicy_food_but_how_come/ | {
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"The feeling of heat you experience when you consume spicy food is probably Capsaicin, the chemical found in chilli peppers that stimulates the same receptors used to detect actual heat. It doesn't actually damage your cells at all it just makes you feel like it is.\n\nAnyway, while cells in your mouth are all pretty much identical I would posit a guess that the reason you are more sensitive to spicy food at times is reliant on a number of different factors - have you recently eaten actually hot food? This could have damaged a portion of the cells lining your mouth/throat and result in less reaction to the content of the food you're eating. \n\nIf you have a blocked nose, even if only partially and you don't notice it, this could interfere with the number of cells reacting to the spicy food so the overall magnitude of the \"this burns!\" sensation is much less. \n\nIt's also possible that the cells lining your mouth and throat are more resistant this time around to stimulation as not every cell is identical - we tend to only notice when cell division is detrimental when things like cancers arise, but other things within the cell could have broken too such as capsaicin receptors. This change would likely only be temporary as you'd grow new cells eventually that might be more sensitive.\n\nWithout detailed knowledge of the receptor types this is the best I could explain to you! If this doesn't satisfy your curiosity, I would recommend askscience. "
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1x5d90 | Why aren't spheres used instead of wheels in cars? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1x5d90/why_arent_spheres_used_instead_of_wheels_in_cars/ | {
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"You don't want it to be easy for the car to slip and slide sideways. A sphere makes that a much harder problem to overcome than a wheel. You'd need to add a texture. But if you add a texture, you're essentially just adding a tire, and most of texture doesn't contact the ground and is essentially wasted. There's no way to have the textured sphere rotate in all directions using any current technology without significant losses in energy, so you'd have to maintain the sphere's rotation in one direction. But, if you've added a tire/texture and kept it rotating only in one direction, then you've basically just made a wheel with extra wasted materials. The sphere, containing more materials than the wheel, would be heavier and more expensive for little gain. "
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1raftj | If you continued to grind sand into finer and finer particles, would it ever begin behaving like a like a liquid? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1raftj/if_you_continued_to_grind_sand_into_finer_and/ | {
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"Powders with a spherical morphology that can slide past one another will behave like a liquid even with a rather large particle size. I have some spray dried silicon nitride powders at work that are ~30-40 um spherical agglomerates and you would think I was pouring liquid if you saw it come out of the bottle.\n\nThe problem when you grind is that you get coarse/angular particles that do not flow well, in addition as the particles get smaller and smaller the surface interaction become so strong that they start to stick together and agglomerate really badly. This agglomeration and self attraction is a big hurdle for commercial nanotechnology. In addition powder flow behavior is a very big deal for ceramic processing, if you are dry pressing parts you want the powder to flow into your mold well but not fall apart when you press it so some balance is needed when engineering your powder system.",
"Generally, no. \"Sand\" is primarily considered to be a polymeric mass of silicon dioxide chains, essentially chemically same as common glass. If you reduced the particle size enough, it would turn from sand into a very fine powder.\n\nTo see what happens when you reduce the particle size further, you have to turn to chemistry. Side note: you can't just grind solids straight into a liquid; the two are different phases of matter which occur at distinct temperatures and pressures, and so you usually have to go through a phase transition...unless you're doing a thought experiment like we are.\n\nWhat you might imagine you'd end up at the end of your size reduction is [silicic acid](_URL_0_), which is a single unit of what forms the silica glass which makes up sand. I believe this might act as a proper liquid, but this material quickly polymerizes into a solid through condensation reactions, so in a normal environment you wouldn't be able to simply reach a state where you have liquid sand. Even with very small pieces of silicon dioxide, the material will still act as a solid (c.f. fumed silica size 50-500A).\n\nI sense that your question might be more about what makes a substance form a liquid versus a solid, but that's all I have for now.",
"Lots of people are saying now and that is true if you are just grinding up the solid. However, just by adding air current you can 'fluidize' a particle bed and basically make it appear to have 'fluid'-like properties. Look up fluidized bed. I think the problem is that the solid particles themselves would have too much friction between them, but with just a little space added, which is easy if the particles are small and with a little gas blowing through it, the solid would spread out and start acting much like a fluid. ",
"One way to explore this is to use a rigid body dynamics model applied to a large number of particles then observe the system's behavior. For this video I was more interested in simulating with forces between the grains of sand. Adding slight attractive force between grains (with no friction) behaved like a viscous liquid:\n_URL_0_",
"Chemically, sand particles will not act as a liquid, but mechanically they can. There is an entire field of modeling for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for granular materials. Basically if your domain is very large as compared to your particle size, you can model granular material as a liquid with cohesion and frictional properties.\n\n_URL_0_",
"This is already done with sand ground for glass. They call the product \"flour\" and a bucket of it flows and jiggles like a liquid when you shake it. \n\nYou must wear special breathing protection when you handle it, because of the silicosis hazard. It is both fine and, under a microscope, sharp. It gets around your body's particle protection(cilia in your bronchial tubes) because it's so tiny, and/or cuts its way through. When it gets into your lungs, it starts cutting the sacs in your lungs, and you eventually die either of hypoxia or exhaustion from struggling so hard to catch your breath.\n\nEDIT: You can go to a waterproofing supply place and buy a bag of Quick-Gel brand bentonite, which is a mix of ground Fuller's Earth and fine silica, and see the behavior for yourself. Just wear good breathing protection. Those flimsy surgical masks or rubber-band white masks that they sell for construction will not suffice. You need the kind that gets a good seal on your face, the kind that usually offers organic vapor protection. They either have particle protection by default, in addition to the vapor protection, or you can slip a little pad into the filter chamber. \n\nDon't take it lightly. My brother-in-law works at a plant where they make this stuff, and, over the years, he has known a dozen or so people who have died this way, by going into a room full of the dust without their protection. Sometimes it kills in hours, sometimes months of agony. Nothing short of a full lung transplant can save you once you get a lungful in you.\n\nEDIT2: udser=under, king=kind",
"I didn't see this posted in here, but sand DOES behave like a fluid under certain conditions. Notably, during a seismic event. This is an effect known as liquifaction and can be devastating to any structures built on top of or above areas where liquifaction occurs. This is a major component of structural engineering and foundation design, especially for tall or heavy structures and in high seismic zones.",
"The weirdest solid I know of is glass microballoons used as epoxy filler. They're literally microscopic glass balloons. I have a clear plastic gallon tub of them and the container feels empty. \n\nShake the tub and the contents not only forms waves that \"ripple\", once you stop shaking, it takes about an extra sec or so for the waves to stop rippling back and forth and it all comes to a stop. \n\nThey do have friction against one another and that makes it lossy and limits how minor a motion can be before it can't push the pieces out of place. So it \"freezes\" in place and a ripple stops abruptly once it's too small, rather that displaying seemingly infinitely smaller ripple motions like water.\n\n\n",
"Finer particles flow more poorly due to surface electrostatic and Van Der Walls forces. Powder flow is a significant issue for consideration for making tablets for medicinal purposes. Generally the more finely you grind a medicine, the more rapidly it will release, but the more difficult it becomes to compress into tablets since the flow properties and compression properties become worse. The best flowing powders will typically be spherical, and about 200 to 300 microns in size. ",
"isn't one of the fundamental principles of something being liquid that its particles follow a random walk even when free of external force.\n\nLots of folks here are saying it is possible, but I've never heard of a solid being so finely ground that its particles do random walks. Convection would be almost nonexistant as well which is pretty important for liquids.",
"The way a substance, or in this case a fluid behaves, is due to intermolecular forces. Water molecules tend to like stick together under a certain range of conditions, which is why only a tiny portion of them volatilizes and goes zinging off at room temperature and pressure.\n\nSand becomes silt and then becomes clay. Clay has interesting properties owing to its crystalline structure. If you poured some of each of those differentiated silicates into water, the sand would settle out first, followed by the clay. The middle group, silt, would actually stay in suspension for longer.\n\nThe reason for this is charged surfaces. The silicate materials form in sheets. The sheet as a whole tend to have a charge, especially as components of the repeating structure are often displaced by differently charged metal ions. Consequently, the tiny fragments of sheets tend to stick together due to opposing charges. \n\nOrdinarily, the charges are too weak between larger particles. The surface area to mass ratio isn't favorable. As the surface area ratio shifts, surface charge starts to be more significant, whether as an aggregate, or a solution. Additionally, as the material is ground down, the rate of disintegration slows down exponentially. You would think this was odd or inverted, given that surface area ratio seems to approach infinity as particle size becomes vanishingly small. The force of mass available for collisions changes in a non-linear fashion with the diameter of the particle. ",
"This is youtube video with a university professor explaining such an experiment. (they used very fine glass beads to represent sand)\n\n[Granular Jets (slow motion)](_URL_0_)\n\nas you can see it behaves as a liquid to an extend. However due to lack of surface tension it will not have fluid like properties.\n\nI hope this helps, because the comments here are making me cringe.",
"Assuming the particles that make up the substance are sphere, the short answer is it depends on the mass, volume, and number of particles in the substance. \n\nSo how do you determine if it's valid to disregard the discrete particles that make up the fluid and model a substance as if it's infinitely divisible? \n\nThis is referred to as the **continuum approximation** and there are mathematical ways to determine if it's a valid assumption.\n\nThe whole idea behind this is that we can average the random thermal motion of the molecules if the number of molecules are large and close enough. There's a lot that goes into this, but here's the gist.\n\nIf we have a fluid and we take a small enough volume of that fluid (say ⌂V_l for lower bound), we'll notice that at that volume of the substance, the statistical average or any property is meaningless because there is an insufficient number of particles contained in that substance at any given time. see: \n\n_URL_0_\n\nsimilarly, there is an upper bound (⌂V_u) due to non trivial spatial variation in the fluid properties. In other words, the density will increase non-linearly.\n\nAssuming ⌂V_l < < ⌂V_u, we can define the continuum limit of the mass density at a point in a fluid is defined as,\n\nrho = lim (as ⌂V - > ⌂V_l) [⌂m/⌂V_l]\n\nThis is a good place to say that the density of a fluid can also be modeled as\n\nrho = m*n\n\nwere m is the mass of the molecule and n is the number of molecules for a given volume.\n\nThe interesting thing here is that it's pretty much meaningless until you look at it's geometric context. Are these particles inside of a pipe, flowing past a wing, or doing something else?\n\nThe reason this is important is because fluids might or might not behave differently when a property or two are changed. For example, it might be turbulent or laminar. It might be very efficient on imparting and transferring energy to it's surroundings, or it might act as a damping mechanism. \n\nThis is getting way too long, so I'll just try to finish up here.\n\nSince we can't know how a particles behaves at all times and under all conditions, we have to determine whether the statistical mean is significant or not. A dust particle 200 miles above the earth can't be treated as if it's in a fluid, where as a baseball in a wind tunnel can."
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fifri | When should scientists not use excel? | This is sort of a meta askscience question, so sorry if this is in the wrong subreddit.
My school pushes excel for dealing with data, and sometimes I question if that is the best choice. I'm not very familiar with excel so I know I can't judge it accurately. However, I have a bit of a computer science background and it seems really painful for all my variables to be named A1, A3, B2, etc. Sometimes it seems like it would be faster to write a few lines of python, than to mess with excel, but this could be due to my lack of knowledge.
So what is excel really good at, and when are there better choices? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/fifri/when_should_scientists_not_use_excel/ | {
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"When OriginsPro is available.",
"excel is on basically every computer out there. Most people know how to use it, and when you have to give data to the non-scientists, they undrestand it much better. \r\n",
"For actual science, most scientists don't use Excel for anything, as far as I've seen. Except, perhaps, to throw together a crappy-looking spreadsheet or deal with class grades or something.\n\nBut most people tend to know how to use the basics of Excel, so for an intro science course, your school would probably rather have you using Excel than spending time learning how to use something better. Also, Excel is probably available on all the library computers, whereas something better that's not free would have to be specially purchased.",
"You should use excel if you want all your formulas to be hidden off-screen most of the time so you will make a lot of mistakes and it will be hard to review your formulas.",
"If you can use python, or something else, do it. If you have a professor forcing you to use excel, then use it to make them happy. But for analyzing data, using excel instead of python+numpy+matplotlib is like pissing into a cup on your kitchen floor instead of using the toilet.\n\nTo avoid the arguments that will spring up about the various numerical tools (Matlab, Maple, SciLab, etc): I just mention python because the OP did, and it's also what I prefer. They're all mostly equivalent, and all better than excel.\n\nAnd lastly, to address the people saying excel is good when you need to pass data to non-scientists: it's trivial to write data to a file as csv in python. I imagine it is in all the other tools as well. ",
"Spreadsheets are great for simple finance related stuff, such as keeping a budget. But most people use them for all of the wrong reasons:\n\nMATLAB or SciLab (free version) is useful if you've got lots of numerical data, and need to plot/write functions/manipulate/regression analysis or do numerical approximations.\n\nOrigin is particularly noteworthy for its graphical capabilities.\n\nMathematica or Maple are useful for plotting analytical functions.\n\nMinitab or R (free version) are great for statistical analysis (R is better).\n\nMSAccess or MySQL (free version) are database programs that organize and relate sets of data to one another. If you've ever used Excel just to hold lists of things, then you should probably be using a database instead.\n\nSo as you can see, most of the stuff people use Excel for should be done in other programs which are significantly better suited. Most of this software is free or has free versions of it. Excel is bloated and simplistic.",
"If all you are doing is some rudimentary statistics excel is fine. The minute you have to do actual calculations with large arrays, programming languages or software such as MATLAB or Mathematica will be much better to use. Less clicking, and you can repeat previous steps. \n\nActually my first lab class in university explicitly said to us \"don't use anything microsoft\". In any case we all learned LaTeX for writing reports(if you like programming over writing you should too) , and MATLAB for calculations. MATLAB costs the same as Office, and LaTeX is free. Haven't opened Word in 2 years now, and the same for Excel. ",
"When they've finished learning MATLAB :)",
"Excel is a great resource for organizing datasets. I have had dataset that exceed 100,000 individual data points but I didn't necessarily want to run an analysis on every data field because some of the measures were currently irrelevant. By writing a quick 5 minute VB macro you can get all of this data organized, and then by using the pivot table/chart function in excel you can prep it for statistical analyses. \n\nOf course it would most certainly be easier to write a python script if you were always dealing within measures that are similar and required similar tests. When in these situation I have used python, but in most cases this isn't so. It really only takes an hour or so to prep data in excel for analyses. Writing a good python script to handle this would take much longer in most cases. "
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1080e2 | Can a person get sick from getting "chilled"? | Grandma's, my mother and other people's mothers, my girlfriend, have at some point or another warned me of catching a cold literally from being cold. Going outside with wet hair at night? Surefire way to get a cold according to my grandma.
Any truth to this old wives tale? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1080e2/can_a_person_get_sick_from_getting_chilled/ | {
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"The 'common cold' is usually caused by a rhinovirus. Cold temperature itself does not cause illness. [However, temperature effects may facilitate viral infection:](_URL_0_)\n > Although not all studies agree, most of the available evidence from laboratory and clinical studies suggests that inhaled cold air, cooling of the body surface and cold stress induced by lowering the core body temperature cause pathophysiological responses such as vasoconstriction in the respiratory tract mucosa and suppression of immune responses, which are responsible for increased susceptibility to infections. \n\nThis is further confounded by the fact that people may stay indoors during the cold months, further allowing spread of the virus."
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spb21 | How do genetics effect muscle strength/growth? | I was just curious if the whole "that guy is buff because he has great genes" stuff is well..bull.
| askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/spb21/how_do_genetics_effect_muscle_strengthgrowth/ | {
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"Yes! However as most things it is an interplay of nature and nurture. Nature is responsible for supplying the genes we need to build the structures and molecules and cells associated, the will also be the basis for metabolism and body \"shape\". But these genes interact with our environment or our nurture. We need proper nutrition from our environment to build these systems of muscle.\n\nThere are \"switches\" in our genes which can turn on or off depending on our environmental influences (teratogens, poor nutrition etc.) which could make someone whose genetic makeup is generally set up for a more muscular build have a not so muscular build.\n\nHope that helps!"
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2lmlid | when commercials say "call within the next 5 minutes" do they really mean it? | You know when you're watching commercials and they tell you to call within a certain time allotment to get the best deal, or say the next 20 callers get a certain deal, etc. Are they being serious? Do they actually have a way to track every time the commercial airs on a specific network and from there are able to track the time someone took to call in and order the product? Or is it just another marketing ploy to make you think you're getting the best deal?? I'm gonna jump out on a limb and say it's the latter. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lmlid/eli5_when_commercials_say_call_within_the_next_5/ | {
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"No, I'm pretty sure it's to get a person to make a snap decision, as a technique to lure more buyers. That's my understanding of it ",
"Never. It's just a technique to motivate you to act.",
"it's just a ploy to get you to call without taking the time to think it through. even if you called an hour later and asked for the same offer you would still get it. also, they will use the value of the free gifts to overcome any objections to price you may have.",
"Think about it logically for a second. \n\nHow would they know you called within 5 minutes? The commercial is on a bunch of channels at a bunch of random times. \n\nIt's a ploy. They are playing on the fact that people make decisions when pushed. \"Oh crap, this is a limited time offer! I better hurry up and order!\"",
"In the world of sales this is referred to as a 'call to action'. The central notion being that you will never sell anything if you don't ask a customer for the sale. This is paired with a sense of urgency. If I feel like I may miss out on something by not acting, chances are I will make a decision to act."
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470j02 | what is it that can make us so indecisive about which way to move when someone walks towards us? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/470j02/eli5_what_is_it_that_can_make_us_so_indecisive/ | {
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"Without established system for which way to move, which has been agreed upon earlier, this problem doesn't have a definite answer. You might never get past the other person. For computers this types of problems are more severe, actually leading to eternal deadlocks. Humans can act in a way to make prolonged clash pretty unlikely by various heuristics and communication.\n\nLike, you approach person. You try to go by them from right, they try to dodge same direction. You stop, they happen to also stop. You try to go the same way, and they do the same. You're about to say \"i'll just go here\", but they begin talking the same moment as you, etc. Without prior agreement, there is no guarantee this clashing ever stops.\n\nHumans coordinate this by doing plenty of hints towards various directions, estimate where other guy signals they are walking towards, what social status they signal(submissive, dominant), and hoping there will be some pretty obvious path choice that doesn't lead to clash. However, as stated earlier, there is no guarantee this works, but more effort you put on this, more likely you can find free path.",
"Indifference. It's hard to make decisions when faced with two arbitrary equally attractive options?"
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57ep0q | how the great barrier reef is now considered "dead" and what factors lead to it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/57ep0q/eli5_how_the_great_barrier_reef_is_now_considered/ | {
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"It's not dead. That's click bait. The great barrier reef is absolutely massive. A significant portion of it is in serious decline, but other parts of it are doing just fine. \n\n\nSo far. ",
"With unusually warm water, corals expel their zooxanthellae, the symbiotic algae that provide the plant with food. If the water stays too hot for too long, the algae die, and the coral will starve. When this happens, you're just left with the dead coral which is mostly built from calcium and looks bone white. Essentially this is why it's called coral bleaching, the vibrant colourful coral is gone and all that's left is the skeleton so to speak. \n\nBecause of the sensitivity of coral to changes in climate, it's usually seen as a precursor to the effects of climate change. El Nino events are usually the cause of mass coral bleaching but these weather events occur infrequently and the coral often recovers. This time, with climate change, the changes we are seeing will be permanent and as such, the Great Barrier Reef as we know it will possibly never be the same. ",
"The news about it is claiming a portion of portions (the middle and north) are dead. This due to bleaching. The coral in many areas will recover slowly, others it may not. many fish still remain, some however have left.",
"I just saw this [YouTube clip of coral \"belching\"](_URL_1_) and it explains it very simply. \nThis [article which also has another video of the event](_URL_0_) will help too, but to spit out some of the key points:\nCoral relies on a type of algae to convert sunlight into a sugar that is the energy (photosynthesis) for the coral and this also gives it the vibrant colour.\nWhen the water temperature rises above 30 degrees Celsius the algae cannot convert the energy and instead the energy becomes a reactive form of oxygen, the article describes it as like peroxide in bleach.\nThe coral then rejects the algae as the friend it depended on for food is now poisoning it. No longer receiving this sugar the coral bleaches, weakens and is now open to be infected by external bacteria and microbes that can cause infections. \n\nCoral can recover but it is not an easy task for it, particularly if the temperature of the surrounding waters stays that high.",
"Everyone we have a huge problem. This article was shared on facebook.\nThe issue is everyone is BUYING IT. Its fucked. \n\nI looked into it for 5 minutes and found out the \"scientists\" who declared its death is a reporter named Rowan Jacobsen, who writes culinary articles and sometimes environmental articles. He is not a scientist and in no way has the authority to declare something dead.\n\nEdit: Sorry for being dumb, shouldn't have posted the clickbait \n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_...\n\n_URL_2_\n\n\n\n",
"sounds like clickbait. a bit dramatic claiming that it's \"dead\"\n\nthis says something different only a few weeks ago.\n_URL_0_",
"what needs to be better explained is if coral is dying due to temperature or water level change, new coral has the ability to survive in a different location that was similar to what the depth/temp was. \n",
"The Ocean is absorbing the massive amounts of CO2 we put in the air, which changes the pH to be more acidic. Acidic oceans mean coral cannot create there shells. Ending CO2 production will not reverse this in our lifetimes. \n\nBleaching is caused by some kind of stress on the coral. It was hypothesized to be temperature, acidity is now becoming the favored stressor. It does not matter what causes bleaching, acidity is approaching a level that all calcium-carbonate shell creatures will die, coral included.",
"Don't any of you people watch the magic schoolbus? Ms Frizzle explains all this stuff so well, give her a chance.",
"Why is there suddenly a lot of stuff going around about coral bleaching? I live right next to the GBR and while this has been an issue for years, I don't get what would suddenly cause everyone to pay attention to it now.",
"Conventional agriculture methods including plowing, fertilizers, and biocides are the most destructive actions. These can be reversed by installing gabions and on contour swales. ",
"Users here are suggesting the coral bleaching isn't really *that* big a problem. i heard it could result in the death of 25% (i'm probably under-representing that figure) of our aquatic life in a dangerously short period of time if it goes unchecked. \n\ni'm guessing the truth is somewhere in the middle?",
"Ocean acidification is a huge problem. Corals (and other marine life) are very sensitive to change, especially to heat and pH level change. Basically there was a huge increase in carbon dioxide usage causing the ocean to absorb more carbon than it can handle (22million tons a day). When carbon mixes with water it creates carbonic acid which is not so acidic compared to your stomach acid (hydrochloric acid) or car battery acid (sulfuric acid) but is still damaging. When carbonic acid forms, it releases a hydrogen atom which gets combined with carbonate that is naturally found in the ocean. Carbonate is extremely useful because it can also bind with calcium and forms calcium carbonate which is a building block for shells in shellfish and corals However, carbonate has a more natural attraction to the hydrogen released by carbonic acid than calcium causing less calcium carbonate to form and less shells and corals to form. ",
"Meat demand caused farmers to raise enormous numbers of cattle. That movement created a huge shortage of greenery. Cattle produce vast amounts of methane, that would be converted, biologically, to oxygen if the greenery were not displaced by cattle farms. The excess methane raises the acidity of rain. That rain bleaches the reefs.\n\n---\n\nWatch \"Racing Extinction\" if my answer leaves you wondering.",
"[Over 70% of the reef is still healthy](_URL_0_;) but is at risk from bleaching. The damage is significant, but not fatal and likely recoverable.",
"Alot of people here aren't accounting for the massive pesticides being leached into the water. Diurin accounts for 80% of the pesticides found in the great barrier reef and is persistant and toxic. Costa Rica had a huge decline (98% in its Golfo dulce (Sweet gulf) reef on the south pacific coast) in its coral prescense from the pesticides and silt being leaked off primarily the bannana and sugar cane plants.\n\nAlso nitrogen (in the form of nitrification) is affecting these waters. This and the fact that most of the Co2 we produce gets absorbed straight into the ocean is causing deadly algae blooms, which causes for less oxygen in the water. \n\nsources:\nHeres a source from 2012 about pesticides reaching the great barrier reef: _URL_0_\n\n98% gone by the cahuita coast: \n_URL_1_\n",
"Basically, it's made up of thousands of organisms. Each absorb some chemicals and release some others. Pollution has changed the saturation of chemicals, killing some organism and making others thrive waaaay to much. Also, global warming makes (in particular) enzymes inside of bacteria not work correctly. Which means, bacteria can't eat properly. Also global warming hasn't lead to more uv radiation, which is bad.\nTl;dr, pollution",
"It's pretty much dead. Although not technically dead, I would argue it's been written off as an inevitability. One would have to rehabilitate the environment and conditions for coral to thrive. Good luck with that. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-11/coral-belches-algae-as-water-temperature-rises-bleaching/7917754?pfmredir=sm",
"http://youtu.be/19T8SNZH1lc"
],
[
"www.cnn.com/2016/10/14/us/barrier-reef-obit-trnd/",
"https://thinkprogress.org/great-barrier-reef-closer-to",
"https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/03/agencies-say-22-of-barrier-reef-coral-is-dead-correcting-misinterpretation"
],
[
"http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/some-relief-great-barrier-reef"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/scientists-take-on-great-barrier-reef-obituary_us_57fff8f1e4b0162c043b068f?section=&"
],
[
"https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/mar/27/great-barrier-reef-australia-pesticides",
"https://books.google.com/books?id=7aiC1k0XubgC&pg=PA541&dq=pesticide+costa+rica+coral+reef+destroyed&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjEsovX2trPAhVF0FQKHVYoAPEQ6AEIUDAI#v=onepage&q=pesticide%20costa%20rica%20coral%20reef%20destroyed&f=false"
],
[],
[]
] |
||
jl663 | why does it matter to my bank if i use my bank card as a debit card or a credit card? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jl663/eli5_why_does_it_matter_to_my_bank_if_i_use_my/ | {
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"text": [
"Your bank makes more money from the merchant if you use your debit card as a credit card. It's all about the money.",
"When you use your bank card as a debit card, you're essentially doing a bank/ATM withdrawl through the merchant for that exact amount. It draws money from your existing funds.\n\nWhen you use it as a credit card, it actually goes through the credit channels, where the bank/credit card company takes a percentage of the sale from the vendor.\n\nAnother side effect is how points/miles are calculated. You don't get points when using your card as debit, since you could get cash back and redeposit it.",
"Your bank makes more money from the merchant if you use your debit card as a credit card. It's all about the money.",
"When you use your bank card as a debit card, you're essentially doing a bank/ATM withdrawl through the merchant for that exact amount. It draws money from your existing funds.\n\nWhen you use it as a credit card, it actually goes through the credit channels, where the bank/credit card company takes a percentage of the sale from the vendor.\n\nAnother side effect is how points/miles are calculated. You don't get points when using your card as debit, since you could get cash back and redeposit it."
]
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[],
[],
[],
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||
2n6oz1 | If a ball bounces 50ft when dropped from 100ft, will it bounce 100ft when dropped from 200ft? | In other words, is the ratio between the bounce height and the drop height always the same, given that it's the same ball hitting the same ground? If so, why? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2n6oz1/if_a_ball_bounces_50ft_when_dropped_from_100ft/ | {
"a_id": [
"cmaua74"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"In the real world? No. \n\n- Air drag will affect the speed of the ball on the way down. \n- The [coefficient of restitution](_URL_0_) is not constant. \n- Material deformation is not elastic (see #2)\n\nIn a contrived physics problem? \n\n(Big edit, I screwed up earlier -- the answer is yes, in the ideal case, the bounce height is linearly related to the coefficient of restitution.)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_restitution"
]
] |
|
z8kj1 | Will your body use alcohol or store it as fat, or does it all just get filtered out by the liver? Similarly, where do the calories in beer come from? | I've always heard that both hard alcohol and beer have a nontrivial amount of "calories," and lots of people claim to have lost weight while cutting back on their drinking.
I can't find any good information online about where these calories come from. Whatever sugar that was in the wart was fermented into alcohol, and there's no fat. I'm sure that, at least in beer, there are some non-fermentable carbohydrates that get left behind and provide flavoring and color, and maybe your body can use the alcohol itself as energy.
Or maybe there's very little in beer or hard alcohol that your body can use for energy or convert into fat, and the reason that people lose weight when they stop drinking is because they're less likely to go to Taco Bell at two in the morning.
Thoughts? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/z8kj1/will_your_body_use_alcohol_or_store_it_as_fat_or/ | {
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"text": [
"Your body can use alcohol for energy. One gram has about 7 calories. \n\n\nI'm not aware of any way the body can turn alcohol into fat directly, but it will burn alcohol for energy over fat which means you can still get fat from it ",
"The liver does not \"filter\" alcohol. It metabolizes alcohol, via a two-step pathway (Ethanol- > acetyl aldehyde- > acetic acid). Acetic acid is then used to regenerate acetyl-coenzyme A, which is an energy currency in the citric acid cycle. Alcohol has caloric energy in it, and your body has the enzymatic machinery to access that energy. Alcoholic beverages have other energy sources in them (sugar, carbohydrates), but ethanol has the highest energy density in the glass (7kcal/gram) unless you're drinking a white russian (fat = 9kcal/gram).\n\n[Full reaction](_URL_0_ )\n",
"On a side note, ethanol is basically lactic acid minus a molecule of CO2. When yeast is fermenting sugar, it can't just break it down into lactic acid like our bodies do, because that would quickly make the environment too acidic. So it splits each lactic acid molecule into one molecule of CO2 and one molecule of ethanol. The CO2 bubbles away, and the ethanol stays behind. Yeast can use this trick to break down a lot more sugar before the byproducts make the environment uninhabitable.\n\nYour liver oxidizes ethanol to acetate, which it can use to create glycogen. It can then convert glycogen into fat, if it needs to."
]
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[],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_metabolism"
],
[]
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|
rldcq | What would cause a drinking glass to break right after pouring liquid in it? | I'll post pictures when I get back home.
I simply took the glass out of the cupboard(it was room temp) and poured myself a glass of orange juice. When I turned around to put the OJ back in the fridge I heard some glass break and turned to see the glass split almost exactly down the center. My roommates and I have been using these glasses for several months now and have never seen anything like this before.
What would cause this to happen? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/rldcq/what_would_cause_a_drinking_glass_to_break_right/ | {
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"text": [
"Typically when glass breaks without being struck, thermal shock is to blame -- if hot glass is cooled too quickly, different regions will contract at different rates, developing stresses too quickly for flow to be able to dissipate them. At a certain point, if the stress is too great, the glass may fracture. If it doesn't, however, it can solidify with stresses permanently incorporated into its structure. In this condition, it can take very little additional stress -- impact or thermal -- to push the material past the breaking point. In the case of your glass, a residually-stressed material was weakened over time with regular aging, until it reached a point where the temperature difference of refrigerator OJ was enough to push it over the edge.\n\nTypically, glass-makers cool their pieces slowly over many hours, to allow residual stresses to dissipate -- but keeping an oven at many hundreds of degrees for hours is expensive, and your glass-maker may have decided it wasn't worth it.\n\nThere is a curiosity called a [Prince Rupert's Drop](_URL_0_) which showcases high residual stress in glass. When struck on one end, it is incredibly resilient -- but if the other end is even slightly damaged, it will explode violently.",
"If the glass was old, there may have been tiny cracks all over its surface. These cracks can cause failure to occur at a lower fracture strength then the bulk material usually exhibits. So, when new and the glass could withstand the normal thermal stress, but over the years tiny surface imperfections were created and the fracture strength of the glass was overcome by the thermal stresses. \n\nIm not very pleased with this summary of Griffiths Criterion but here it is: _URL_0_\n\nand anyone, please correct any mistakes i have made :)\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Rupert%27s_Drop"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracture_mechanics#Griffith.27s_criterion"
]
] |
|
1ixzb7 | who owns ancient roman artifacts? if i privately sponsored an archaeological dig, could i keep any ancient artifacts i found, or do countries have laws against that? if i wanted to purchase an ancient roman artifact, could i do so online? how much would it cost? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ixzb7/eli5_who_owns_ancient_roman_artifacts_if_i/ | {
"a_id": [
"cb97b7u"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"The laws vary from country to country, and the question would need to be more specific."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
6olac4 | why is staring at the sun painful? what happens if you stare too long? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6olac4/eli5_why_is_staring_at_the_sun_painful_what/ | {
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"text": [
"Your eyes have a focusing lens in front of them somewhat similar to a magnifying glass lens. Just like a magnifying glass, the lens will focus the sunlight tightly and begin to rapidly heat up whatever the light is focused on: in this case, onto the back of your eye, which is a very fragile tissue called the Retina. If you have ever watched someone burn a hole in paper or fry an ant with a magnifying glass, you will see how fast focused sunlight can cause damage.",
"Have you ever been badly sunburned? Well imagine that happening to the back of your eyeball. Your retina is a very sensitive organ that captures light and sends the image to your brain. When you sunburn your retina, you will absolutely damage your vision at best, or go permanently blind at worst.\n\nThere is a lot more energy in sunlight than just what you can see. The most damaging colors of light are actually invisible to us. Ultra-Violet is a name for one of these invisible yet damaging colors.\n\nThese invisible light rays do not reflect well and are usually absorbed by something else such as a tree, ground, or whatever before they reach your eyeball. But if you stare directly at the sun you are catching the full load directly."
]
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[],
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] |
||
5o2bid | why is taiwan valuable to china under the "one china" policy? they've been ruled separately for so long, what would the real benefit to controlling it again be? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5o2bid/eli5_why_is_taiwan_valuable_to_china_under_the/ | {
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"text": [
"Taiwan is the legitimate government of China that fled when the communist revolution occurred. Allowing them full autonomy erodes their own legitimacy. ",
"Contrary to the other responses, I think economic reasons are pretty much secondary to geopolitics and nationalism. China already has a massive economy. The addition of Taiwan, particularly after the trauma and disruption of a hostile takeover, would not be a decisive boost to the Chinese economy.\n\nNationalism is really big in China, Chinese leaders and media have long emphasized that Taiwan is a rogue province. They have also tended to emphasize national pride and territorial integrity. So the reclamation of Taiwan would be a major propaganda coup for the CCP.\n\nTaiwan is also important because it lies right off the Chinese mainland, and is a western ally. Consider why the US were so alarmed when Cuba drew closer to the USSR during the Cold War.\n\nBut really nationalist chest-thumping is the bigger reason here. This is also why they are so obsessed with those tiny islands in the South Sea, not physical resources."
]
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[],
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] |
||
9reg8c | the 'rail-gun' and why it's such a big deal? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9reg8c/eli5_the_railgun_and_why_its_such_a_big_deal/ | {
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"text": [
"A rail gun uses electromagnetism to accelerate a piece of metal to extremely high speeds. It can make that chunk of metal go much, much faster than any gunpowder-propelled projectile, which means it can shoot farther and potentially do more damage. ",
"Imagine you have a long metal rod. One day you go to a local abandoned train track and decide to perform an experiment. You take the metal rod and lay it across the top of the tracks so that it touches both rails, making a sort of H. Then, you get some car batteries (please don't ever actually try this) and you connect the positive sides of the batteries to one rail, and the negative sides to the other. When you do this you notice that your rod starts moving along the rails. You also notice that the more car batteries you hook up to the rails, the faster the rod moves. Somehow, you manage to get your hands on some huuuuuuuge batteries that run out extremely fast, but have enough energy to power your whole house for a day. When you connect these batteries to the rails (again, don't eeeeever try anything even remotely like this) the rod shoots off very quickly in one direction, but the batteries are pretty much instantly empty, so you can't do it again without recharging them.\n\nThe short description is this: the electricity flowing through the rails generates a magnetic field. Because the rod connects the rails, electricity also flows through it. The interaction between the magnetic field around the rails, and the electric current in the rod, makes the rod feel a force parallel to the rails.\n\nThat is the basic idea behind railguns. It works because of the way that electric currents interact with and generate magnetic fields, which I unfortunately don't know how to compress into an ELI5 type description -- for a full description I recommend [the wikipedia page](_URL_0_). But I will say that the main sort of catch with railguns is the way you use the electricity. Take a house, for example. A house uses approximately 30 kWh per day (what that means isn't important, but it's for comparison). But railguns don't need a lot of time. In fact, they need power for only a few milliseconds at most, but they still need the same amount of power, so extremely roughly we're talking about 30 kWh per millisecond. It's the same amount of power, but discharged at different rates. That's what makes railguns so complicated, because we are good at using electricity slowly over a long time, but we aren't yet very good at using it extremely quickly for a short time.\n\nLast I heard, the US Navy has a prototype railgun that they have successfully tested and might have installed on a prototype nuclear powered ship. At the time I heard about this, the ship had to turn off it's engines every time it wanted to use the railgun, because of the amount of electricity required to charge up the railgun. (It's also possible that this ship wasn't actually built, but a planned next step forward after the successful prototype gun testing, which is real).",
"BAE Systems has made a 32 megajoule rail gun that can launch a 7lb projectile up to about Mach 7, range of about 110 nautical miles. Destroys it's target with pure kinetic energy. No explosives. All by magnetic acceleration. Think of a modern roller coaster launch... But at 7 times the speed of sound.",
"As to why it's such a big deal...\n\nShip ammo is an extremely dangerous thing. If a ship is hit and the magazine is reached, then a very possible result is the entire ship exploding. One hole in the wrong place, and the whole ship goes [kablooey](_URL_0_). You can't armor a ship enough these days to survive hits, so carrying a crapload of explosives around is a very big problem.\n\nA railgun would allow to launch solid chunks of metal. This is both more efficient (no need to store propellant, just the bullet), and much safer for the ship since now it can get hit without exploding."
]
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[],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun"
],
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMs4IJQVRYM"
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||
31ckgj | If a person is falling at a speed faster than terminal velocity, will he slow down to reach terminal velocity? | The person would be falling let's say because he was flying straight down in a jet and ejected at a speed faster than terminal velocity for him would be. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/31ckgj/if_a_person_is_falling_at_a_speed_faster_than/ | {
"a_id": [
"cq165t9"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Yes, if you move faster than terminal velocity, aerodynamic drag will slow you down until you reach terminal velocity, which is the velocity at which the aerodynamic forces (that slow you down) and the gravitational forces (that accelerate you) cancel out."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
2rx1y3 | why do we experience a movie's plot as exciting when we know the good guys will win? | Take the James Bond movies for example. We know from the beginning that he's gonna be successful in his mission, so why is it still interesting to watch? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rx1y3/eli5_why_do_we_experience_a_movies_plot_as/ | {
"a_id": [
"cnk2q6e",
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3,
2
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"text": [
"It's the journey not the destination. Plus we may still want to know how the plot will resolve itself, or the fate of secondary characters we may care about, both of which are independent to whether the main character dies or not. \n\nOr we may just enjoy the style of storytelling or watch for the fancy effects. Or we just like the ride. \n\nEdit: typo",
"They may lose and completely take everyone by surprise its rare but happens. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
2mo13p | if it is a myth that skinny people have higher metabolism, how is it that we all have a non-active friend who can eat truckloads of junk yet be skinny or, more alarmingly, fit? | Everyone always talks to these people about how "jealous of your metabolism" when in fact differing metabolisms are apparently a myth. So how is it we all know someone who can eat 1000000g of carbohydrates per day and yet stays skinny, or more alarmingly, fit without any regular or intense exercise? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mo13p/eli5if_it_is_a_myth_that_skinny_people_have/ | {
"a_id": [
"cm5yuji",
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"text": [
"Sometimes their day is more active then yours. \n\nFor example, I walk to the grocery store every 2 days. Its part of my routine to pick up small filler groceries between larger box store trips. I don't consider it exercise but its actually a 2 mile walk in total.",
"Metabolism can account for swings of roughly 300 kcal/day, in most of the population. That's really not a lot of food, all told. [This is what 300 kcal of French fries looks like](_URL_0_).\n\nWhat you are seeing when one guy eats \"truckloads of junk\" is a snapshot. You are not seeing their tiny breakfast, or nonexistent dinner, their lack of liquid calories throughout the day, etc. Metabolism is a marginal effect. Somebody who stays super skinny while \"eating whatever they want\" likely just wants to eat way less than other people, on average.",
"I can't explain you like you're five because many factor come in.\n\nFact is, not all carbs are equal in quality, non-refined sugars are best. Because the more they are refined, the more you digest it quickly, your sugar level rise more quickly, then more insulin, and ultimately you starve because your body secreted so much insulin that you are very low in blood sugar and begin to eat again and again.\n\nInsulin turn sugar in fat, the more insulin, the more fat. Avoid refined sugar like plague (as well as \"diet\" products because they contain sweetener and even if they are not technically carbs, you still secrete insulin)\n\nNot all peoples burn the same amount of kcal. And not all people secrete the same amount of insulin and other hormones. (this is what metabolism is)\n\nBe aware that 100g of sugar will make you more fat than 100g of fat.\n\nThere is also intestinal microflora and so on...\n\nBut in the end, if they continue to eat truckload of junk, they will have as many problems as others (like diabetus)\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://www.healthassist.net/food/300kcal/small-img/french-fries-s.jpg"
],
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|
2ap25v | How would a citizen of Rome experience the fall of its Empire? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2ap25v/how_would_a_citizen_of_rome_experience_the_fall/ | {
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"Hi there, there's always room for more here, but while you wait for an answer you might find a fair amount to interest you in the [Rome section of our FAQ](_URL_1_).\n\nThese might be of some use: \n\n[How did the decline and fall of Ancient Rome affect the average citizens of the Empire?](_URL_0_)\n\n[During the 300s-400s CE, did any figures write about the decline of Rome or predict that Rome was going to fall soon?](_URL_2_)\n\n[What happened to far flung Roman provinces when the city itself fell?](_URL_3_)\n\nOne thing that I would say (and then I will exit quickly stage left because this is not my area) is that it's important to understand that the \"fall of Rome\" was not a singular event; the sacking of the city of Rome is an event that happened multiple times, but Rome had not been the capital of the western Empire for several decades when it was sacked and \"fell.\" A rather popular historiographical debate is whether and to what extent \"Rome\" actually fell, considering that the eastern (later called Byzantine) empire endured into the 1400s. ",
"Depends on when you date the fall of the Empire actually. \n\nBut you can bookend one's experiences as a resident of the city of Rome on the basis of whether they witnessed/survived one or both sacks of Rome in 410 and 455, and whether they had to live through the 20 year long Gothic War in 535-554 and the multiple sieges/sacks/famines/massacres of varying elements of the city's populace, both elite and commoner. \n\nBecause feasibly, you can construct an arguably non-destructive 70 year life for a Roman city dweller if they were born after 460 and died before 535. \n\nAlthough with that said, 460-493 and 526-535 weren't exactly cakewalks either, as one would have persistent political instability. It's more that it hadn't devolved into outright total war rendering your likelihood of surviving unscathed close to nil. \n\nI would equate living in those bookend years akin to living in Germany just before WW2. There was still a lot of violence and insecurity. It just wasn't the meat grinder of death that came afterward."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/172866/how_did_the_decline_and_fall_of_ancient_rome/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/darkages#wiki_rome_and_the_barbarians",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1zy2yl/during_the_300s400s_ce_did_any_figures_write/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1f71ay/what_happened_to_far_flung_roman_provinces_when/"
],
[]
] |
||
hfw6v | Nature vs. Nurture | My friend and I were having a slight disagreement and were hoping the reddit community could help us settle our little dispute. There is a kid (who will remain nameless for obvious reasons) in one of our classes, who is a junior in high school, has been accepted into RPI with a 15k scholarship already, is on the junior olympic gymnastics team, and is pretty much good at everything and anything he tries. I thought that also nurture obviously played a role, that his genetics were far more important, because without them no matter how hard he worked he couldn't be as good as he is at stuff. My friend, however, claims that this kid works hard (even though we both know he smokes weed all of the time) and that although genetics played a role, the bigger role is in nurture. Anyway, does reddit have anything to say about this?
TL;DR there is a kid who is amazing at everything that he does and my friend and I disagreed as to whether it was nature or nurture. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/hfw6v/nature_vs_nurture/ | {
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"text": [
"nature. some people are just built better. nurture goes a long way, but you can't nurture a 5', 150lbs person into a decent linebacker. ",
"The best explanation I've heard:\n\nNature dictates the limits, and nurture defines where you fall within the boundaries.",
"It's both. There is no such thing as \"vs\". It's an old silly argument.",
"It's both. To quote my old genetics prof, \"A good environment can overcome bad genes, and the variations of that statement are equally true.\" He gave a great example of this:\n\n\nTake two strains of corn, A and B. A is known to be a high grower and high producer, B is known to grow shorter and produce less. This represents \"nature\", the genetics of the situation.\n\nNow take two fields, 1 and 2. Field 1 has nutrient rich soil, field 2 has been over-farmed and is nutrient depleted. This represents \"nuture\", the environment. \n\nPlant seeds from A and B in both fields. You get 4 groups of plants:\n\nA1 - good genes, good soil\n\nA2 - good genes, bad soil\n\nB1 - bad genes, good soil\n\nB2 - bad genes, bad soil.\n\nComparing field to field, it's easy to sort them out. A and B will have obvious differences. \n\nBut what if you take all four resulting plant types and randomly mix them up? A1 and B2 will still be obvious, but it will be hard to tell the difference between A2 (good genes, bad soil) and B1 (bad genes, good soil).\n\nOf course, the degree of this will vary depending on the complexity of the situation, and since you are essentially talking about human intelligence here, the situation is very, very complex.\n\nOne exceptionally oversimplified way to look at it is as factors. Take someones innate ability; their genes. Rank it on a scale of 1-10. Now take their environment, and rank it 1-10. Multiply the two together and get a product, the total ability. \n\nSomeone with a skill of 1 and an environment of 10 is just as \"good\" as someone with a skill of 10 and an environment of 1; it's just that the first person had a good environment, the second had a good setup. \n\n"
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t8nj6 | How do the gulf stream and the jet stream and other large scale streaming effects stay together? | Been wondering this for a while.
Why don't the gulf stream in the Atlantic, the Jet stream in the atmosphere, and other similar things dissipate? What exactly is going on here? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/t8nj6/how_do_the_gulf_stream_and_the_jet_stream_and/ | {
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"The jet sreams are created and 'maintained' because of the [Coriolis Effect](_URL_0_).",
"It's a bit unclear from your question. Do you mean A) why don't these features slowly die away? or B) why do they exist as narrow jets rather than broader flow? I'll try to tackle to ocean case. \n\nThe Gulf Stream exists because of the large-scale winds blowing across the Atlantic. The pattern of the large-scale wind fields pushes the water at the latitude of the Gulf Stream towards the south. For steady-state continuity, this broad southward flow of water across the Atlantic basin must return north somewhere. The ocean works this out by creating a counter-flowing boundary current along the western edge of the ocean basin: The Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic, Kuroshio Current in the North Pacific, The Brazil Current in the South Atlantic. The entire system of southward flow across most of the basin with a narrow northward jet results in lop-sided gyre. A map for the North Atlantic subtropical gyre is [here](_URL_0_). Being a component of the wind-driven subtropical gyre, the Gulf Stream ultimately exists and doesn't dissipate because of the continual input of energy from the winds. \n\nAs to the narrowness of the jet, that is really a testament to the slipperiness of water (and air) at geophysical scales. Boundary layers are the places in fluid flow where the normal balance of forces breaks down and higher order physics are needed in the momentum balance. The fluid flow works to make these regions as small (narrow) as possible. The Gulf Stream jet is only about 100 km wide. There is a limit to how narrow the flow can be, in this case it scales with the [Rossby radius of deformation,](_URL_2_) which depends on the effects of rotation and stratification. A narrower jet couldn't transport the required amount of water while also maintaining [geostrophic balance.](_URL_1_)"
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ehxgkl | how come so many canned goods like soups and vegetables have really high sodium content but do not taste that salty. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ehxgkl/eli5_how_come_so_many_canned_goods_like_soups_and/ | {
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"Because soups have alot of water. Water makes it not taste salty even if there is alot of salt in it. It's same with home made soup too. You have to put alot of salt in soup to be able to taste it.",
"Because the sodium content is often in the form of monosodium glutamate which doesn't actually taste particularly salty. It just enhances the taste - particularly the umami (savouriness) taste.",
"Lots of things have a high sodium content but don't taste salty because of the presence of other chemicals that overwhelm the salt. Also, it's pretty critical to consider what a serving size is when you evaluate the overall sodium concentration. \n\nFor example, I just went to my pantry and looked at a few food items. One serving of Miss Vickie's salt and vinegar chips has 170 mg of sodium for every 28 grams of chips. No one in their right mind would argue salt and vinegar chips aren't salty, but the only real flavor the salt has to compete with is the vinegar and whatever subtle flavors a potato might have. \n\nA can of Del Monte green beans however has 380 mg of sodium, which sure sounds like twice the amount of salt, but that's per 121 grams of green beans. \n\nInterestingly, 17 grams of Whataburger ketchup will net you 240 mg of sodium, which sounds like it should be too salty to eat with a straight face, but that salt is competing with primary ingredients like tomato concentrate and high fructose corn syrup, which are sweet enough to mask the saltiness.",
"Sodium =/= table salt, which is sodium chloride. There are several other sources of sodium in foods. There are also quite a few nutrients that are added to foods as sodium salts instead of just the straight nutrient to improve solubility or to not throw the acidity of a product out of balance."
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7zq0y8 | why is being flat-footed a hindrance? | As a child, I was flat-footed - my father insisted I needed orthopedic insoles at a young age, so as to be able to serve in the armed forces if my grades didn't come good. Lo and behold, I shit-talked my way into a decent paying desk job as a young adult that did not require a protractor to get me hired. So, what advantage does an arched foot have? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7zq0y8/eli5_why_is_being_flatfooted_a_hindrance/ | {
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"Zombie apocalypse?\n\nBut in all seriousness there are situations in life where you may need to run/move quickly, and being flat footed can be a major problem during those crisis. ",
"You run better because of force placement. Faster, longer, with more control and less pain.",
"The problems and issues with flat feet have generally been overstated there is possibly a slight risk of over stressing other parts of the leg, but it isn't normally an issue. ",
"Feet are supposed to have an arch, and the bones/muscle in them require it for proper function.\n\nIt's a bit like a bridge. If you look at large bridges that support a lot of weight, you see those giant cables that 'curve' up and to a point in the middle. So when you put a lot of weight on the bridge, it's not just the actual bridge, road, and columns underneath that support that weight. It's all anchored to a particularly strong 'tower' and then redistributed across the weight of the whole bridge. This allows the bridge to sustain itself, and significant weight, without fear of collapse in any one part. \n\nThe arch of your foot is basically like that. The bones in the middle connect all the muscles to an anchor point. So when you walk, and you roll your foot, the muscles have an anchor point that they can pull on. That anchor point then redistributes the force across the entire bone structure of the foot. It means that any individual spot on the foot can share the load of walking on other parts. \n\nWhen the arch collapses, there's less work-sharing going on, it means each piece has to work harder, and it can't 'flex' as well with other pieces. As a result, flat feet tend to get sore faster, have a varying limit to their range of 'motion', and are prone to pain under high workload, such as marathon running (or sprinting from zombies). \n\nIt's notable, as well, that arched feet typically have a 'resting' position where the feet are not strictly pointing forward, but not pointing 'too out' either. This causes the foot to rest, or work, at a certain angle. The legs, hips, and back, all work together to keep you upright. When the feet are overpronation (tilted 'inwards') or supination (tilted 'outwards'), it forces the leg muscles and bones off kilter. This forces the hips out of alignment, and can even throw the back muscles off to some extent. \n\nIt can cause various alignment issues all the way from the feet, up to the shoulders, in severe cases! This can be very uncomfortable. \n\n***The benefit of the arch, then, is that it helps the foot to spread the workload across a wider area. This, in turn, supports healthy muscle tissue, and reduces inflammation and stress on individual muscles. So an arched foot works less to do more, while keeping your body properly aligned!***\n",
"I’m very flat footed. The bottoms of my feet and front of my shins hurt when I run fast for a lengthy amount of time, I still did track when I was a kid, but those insoles helped. \n\nNow I swim instead. Flat feet help when swimming :)",
"Flat feet can mess with the structure of your body leading to bad posture, and in the long term, aches in your joints. \n\nAn arched foot forms the foundation in keeping knees, hips, spine, and neck in ideal positions. It lets the body absorb the shock of stepping into the ground throughout the body with minimal damage. \nA flat foot usually throws a wrench in the alignment of all the joints. It caves the foot in, leading to the knees or hips twisting inward to compensate for the inward shift of the ankle. That places more pressure on these joints in all activities, usually leading to faster deterioration of cartilage. It doesn’t stop there, since changes in the hips affect the spine, then the neck. So flat feet can potentially lead to problems up there as well. \n\nOverall a condition that can lead to pain in the long run.",
"I am a flat-footer. My mom used to work for prosthetic legs and stuff and someone from her workplace me me some shoe soles that had built in elevated stuffs to force arch on my feet but shit was painful to wear and they made me do some exercise to improve it but I didn't do it either. Haven't ran any marathon or played intense sports in year except online :p But yeah it does hurt if I had to stand or sprint for a long period of time. I don't think I am being drafted into nfl or there is a possibility of a zombie apocalypse so I am good. But hey, thanks for the info Altyrmadiken.",
"people with flat feet (particularly overweight people) often wind up with knock knees and lower back problems because of the chain reaction of poor arch muscle support in your feet leading to overstretching of inner knee ligaments and collapsing of outter ones, causing lower back muscles to do work the hips are supposed to be responsible for. eventually, your gait suffers due to poor alignment and flexibility of muscles and ligaments in your hips, knees, and hamstrings, and you wind up shambling around like an obese mongoloid, even though these problems can occur entirely without being overweight in certain cases.\n\nwear your insoles, dude."
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5i2y5y | Is it possible to cool water down past 0C without it turning into ice? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/5i2y5y/is_it_possible_to_cool_water_down_past_0c_without/ | {
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"Yes, it's called [supercooling](_URL_0_). When the supercooled liquid is finally disturbed, it freezes rapidly, usually in [spectacular fashion](_URL_1_). Look around the 1 min mark.",
"Yes, raise the pressure on water and you can cool it below 0C. Unlike pretty much everything else where raising pressure makes it a solid, raising the pressure on a container of water will allow you to chill it further than 0. This is because water expands when it freezes. There is a thermodynamic explanation because of energy barriers to freezing, but it's a little more than this question needs."
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imexc | Why are white people white and black people black? | Evolutionarily, I don't see the benefit. I would actually expect the opposite, as black people tend to come from warmer climates and white skin would reflect more sun. Perhaps I'm not understanding the mechanics there, though. Does black skin, in fact, keep a person cooler? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/imexc/why_are_white_people_white_and_black_people_black/ | {
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"Not every difference has an evolutionary benefit. It's possible that differences in skin colors are due to random drift and/or sexual selection.\n\nBut if there is a benefit, it may be that dark skin is better at protecting from sunburn and skin cancer, and light skin is better at producing vitamin D at high latitudes where sunlight is less intense. Melanin absorbs UV before it can penetrate far into the skin.",
"It has to do with the amount [Eumelanin](_URL_0_) found in our skins. Eumelanin helps protect us from UV rays. So it makes sense that people closer to the equator would need darker skin (and thus more melanin) to combat the higher rates of skin cancer you would see there. People farther from the equator would have to worry less about the UV rays and thus wouldn't need as much (making their skin lighter).",
"(this is just a layman's answer- if an evolutionary biologist would like to point out if and where I'm wrong I'll edit asap) EDIT: apparently there's another explanation- JoeLiar's response below.\n\nI would think its a matter of melanin (the chemical responsible for dark tones) in the skin providing better protection against certain types of UV rays. \n\nThus dark skin was (and is to a lesser extent today) selected for in evolution during the period humanity was still restricted to Africe (the darker people were more successful at surviving to adulthood, and thus were more successful breeding partners allowing their genes for more melanin to be more successful in the larger scheme of things).\n\nAs humanity spread out of Africa, several of them encountered cooler climates up north with less UV radiation, at this point those with lighter skin began to survive more and more into adulthood; this meant a larger portion of the next generation had lighter skin than their parents (average over the total population). Through time this effect allowed skins to get lighter and lighter in Northern climes. \n\nI am not sure if there was a positive selection bias that came into existence via random mutation along the way? Someone else with more expertise will have to chime in."
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2nbjpu | Why is it impossible to be (or at least perceive to be) sucked into a black hole? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2nbjpu/why_is_it_impossible_to_be_or_at_least_perceive/ | {
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"I think your question is misworded. If you fall into a black hole, you will experience it! (I mean, if you could survive getting TO the black hole in the first place). \n\nWhat you may be referring to is the fact that an outside observer will not be able to watch you cross the event horizon of the black hole. This is because of the effects of time dilation by general relativity. If you're watching me fall into a black hole, as I get closer and closer to the event horizon you'll see time slow down for me, so much so that I'll never reach the event horizon -- to YOUR eyes. You'll see my image slow down and red-shift until the light is no longer visible. \n\nCheck out this write-up for more information: _URL_0_"
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2vcnbk | Why are holy religious cities not their own city states, the way the Vatican is for Catholics? | Jerusalem, Mecca and Constantinople are thought to be holy cities of religions. However, they are still part of another country. Why is the Vatican the only one that is a city state? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2vcnbk/why_are_holy_religious_cities_not_their_own_city/ | {
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"There is actually at least one other \"sacred city-state\", although it is not a major city per se-the penninsula of Mt. Athos, a sort of monastic state composed of a collection of monasteries. Although part of Greek territory, Athos is self-governing and autonomous; for instance it is exempt from free movement regulations and a special passport from the leadership of the monastic community is required to visit.",
" > Why is the Vatican the only one that is a city state?\n\nBecause what we know today as Vatican City used to be the much larger **Papal States**, which ruled much of Central Italy... long story short, by 1860 it had lost a great deal of its lands to the upheavals in favour of an unitary Italian nation - and its fate was sealed by the defeat at the hands of the Piedmontese during the battle of Castelfidardo. \n\nThe territory of the Papal States was then limited to Rome, as well as part of what is today's Latium; its independence was guaranteed by France and it was exactly in order to avoid a war with that country that Garibaldi's 1867 expedition was stopped short at Mentana! But what was left of the P.S. was now a shell of its former self, and the Italian government had begun expressing its interest in moving the capital to Rome more than once - so, in order to put pressure on both the Pope and the international community, it saw fit to relocate the capital to Florence in 1865. Five years later - with France too busy fighting in the Franco-Prussian War - the Italians took the opportunity to finally **capture Rome** (20 September, 1870) and proclaim it as the new capital of the Kingdom... however, the Pope did *not* recognise the new state of affairs and declared himself a \"prisoner in the Vatican\", forbidding Italian Catholics from participating in the new country's political life. \n\nDespite the Italian Parliament having already passed the so-called *Legge delle Guarentigie* (which affirmed the sanctity and inviolability of the Pontiff's person, granted him the right to receive foreign ambassadors and established a public fund for his expenses) relations among the two parties remained strained until the early 1900s, with the election of the more liberal Pope Benedict XV; such tensions were evident in the markedly anticlerical stance the Italian governments had adopted up to that time, as well as the urban fabric of the \"new\" Rome - whose first Town Planning Scheme (*piano regolatore*) of 1873 was a veritable monument to such aspirations. In short:\n\n* Among the new districts built after 1870 (Savoia, the Esquiline, etc...) Prati had its road layout designed in such a way that a pedestrian could not see St. Peter's dome from its streets despite it being right next to it.\n\n* Many religious orders were suppressed and their properties torn down, sold for redevelopment or otherwise used for new purposes (e.g., Rome's oldest jail - the *Regina Coeli* - was originally a Carmelitan convent). \n\n* Roads, statues and other monuments were dedicated to famous people the Church had been in contrast with throughout history - a *lungotevere* was dedicated to the proto-patriot Arnaldo da Brescia; a monument to Giordano Bruno unveiled in piazza Campo de' Fiori; the main thoroughfare leading to the Vatican (via Cola di Rienzo) dedicated to a 14th-century Roman who had revolted against Papal authority; the Janiculum hill dotted with busts of all those people who had died defending the Second Roman Republic of 1849; a new monument to Garibaldi (whose horse's buttocks faced St. Peter's!) placed on top of that hill; a grandiose ossuary containing the bones of the patriots who had died in 1849 placed nearby, and so on and on and on...\n\nAnyway - the whole matter, known as the \"Roman Question\", was a source of nuisance and slight embarrasment for the Italian government: it would only be settled on 11 February 1929 when Benito Mussolini, in a cunning political move aimed at pleasing the more religious strata of the population, signed the **Lateran Treaty** which established the modern, independent Vatican city-state as we know it today. \n\n"
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6i309o | how are tv commercials played with correct timing during live television events? | I was just wondering how commercials were played at the correct time during a sporting event, and how everything is coordinated, like the length of the commercials, and also how nothing in the live show gets cut off. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6i309o/eli5_how_are_tv_commercials_played_with_correct/ | {
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"Producers/directors in the control room have everything timed out. They know exactly when to cut for commercials. It may be live but everything is planned ahead. Also, some live programs usually have a bit of a delay. I used to do graphics for a 24/7 news channel-type, and there were screens in the CR showing a timer, like for example 23 seconds to commercial, or 30 seconds to be back on air, etc.",
"The commercials are inserted during pauses in game play. The length is predetermined by agreement with the league. There is a network coordinator who signals the game officials when the break is over. A friend who did it said it was the best day's work he ever had. Paid to stand on the sidelines at the Super Bowl and do very little.\n\nEdit: _URL_0_"
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g34bug | when the tide is high and the water is pushed to the edges, does the middle of the ocean become shallower to some degree? | So obviously water isn't added to the ocean during every tide and water isn't taken out every low tide, so the tides must be from displacement of water. When the water is pushed to the edges, does the middle of the ocean become less deep? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/g34bug/eli5_when_the_tide_is_high_and_the_water_is/ | {
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"So a good way to think of this, I think, is if you fill a deep square pan (maybe a roasting pan) with a little bit of water, and slide it steadily back and fourth on the counter top to get a steady waving - that’s pretty much how tides work, but instead of the earth (pan) getting slid around, it’s the moon pulling the water. \n\nSo while the water in the middle clearly will change level, it isn’t by too much - the volume of water is shifting from the low tide area to the high tide area, and the middle would be a relatively constant level. \n\nTo note, though, this two-dimensional model makes sense for a snapshot type of look, but I don’t think it would really apply to the earth because what is the “middle” at one point will be both the “high” and “low” ends at other times, as well as everywhere in between.",
"There is a bulge of water on each side of the earth that rotates around the earth under the influence of the sun and moon, predominantly the moon. If the earth was only water you could think of it as two big waves with troughs between them moving around the planet. \n\n\nhowever the land masses get in the way water piles up against them. East to west structures like the Bay of Fundy near Nova Scotia CA actually amplfy the effect significantly. Water can flow out of the Bay as the bulge moves past at the normal rate but at the east end of the bay the next bulge is blocked by the land so the water keeps flowing out to the west until the bulge has moved far enough west to pass all of nova scotia. This results in tides in the eastern bay of fundy that are 25X normal, up to 53 foot change. \n\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)"
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7xldvd | since aids is no longer considered a “homosexual disease” why do blood banks still ask if a man has had sexual contact with another man, on the questionnaire? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7xldvd/eli5_since_aids_is_no_longer_considered_a/ | {
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"It's not disease found exclusively found in homosexuals, but homosexual behavior is an indication of a much greater chance of having contracted the disease, which is why there is often a restriction. \n\nIn addition, tests for the HIV virus are not perfect at detecting the virus in small numbers, such as if it was recently acquired. As such, any behavior that is associated with a high risk warrants a temporary defferal.",
"If someone has recently seroconverted, it will not show up in their tests for HIV. It restricts gay men because they will have a higher risk but it doesn’t restrict gay women to give blood. ",
"They ask if you've had sexual contact with a man for the same reason they ask if you've used IV drugs which weren't prescribed by a doctor or if you've been exposed to someone else's blood. Those activities put you at a higher risk of contracting multiple diseases including HIV, and it's safer to make those people wait before donating. ",
"The reason anal sex increases risk is because there's increased risk of tearing and fluid exchange in that way. So a much much higher chance of transmission.",
"Homosexuals have a much higher rate of having the disease. \n\nBeing from Denmark doesn't mean you have mad cow disease. But it means you have a higher risk for having mad cow disease. Which is why it's another red flag on those forms. ",
"It's not exclusively a \"homosexual disease\", but certain activity puts someone at a much higher risk of contracting the disease -- and male/male anal sex is the riskiest type of behavior. Without getting too graphic, the nature of the activity can lead to small ruptures in the skin that can allow the disease to flow from one person to another.\n\nAs a result, men that have engaged in anal sex with other men have, as a group, higher rates of infection than other groups.\n\nSince a blood donation from someone who falls in this group is much more likely to be unusable than other groups, it's more cost-effective for blood banks to just reject those donors and spend their limited collection cost budgets on groups that have a lower risk of infection.",
"Just because it’s not exclusive to homosexuals doesn’t mean it’s not extremely common among homosexuals, far more so than amongst heterosexuals.",
"Doctor here\nIt’s a standard procedure question because historically the homosexual community has a higher prevalence of having the disease. Specially when you have unprotected sex, whether you’re homosexual or not. \nFun fact: In Mexico, the transgender community has the highest prevalence of an HIV infection \n*flies away*",
"its the \"even once?\" at the end of the question that makes me chuckle every time I give blood.",
"All of the statistics I'm about to cite are specific to the USA.\n\nGay and bisexual men make up, very roughly, [2% of the whole population](_URL_3_) but accounted for [67% of new HIV infections](_URL_2_) in 2016. About 0.3% of the general population has HIV but [10%](_URL_4_) of men who have sex with men (MSM) do.\n\nIn 2015, [the FDA revised its guidelines](_URL_1_) so that MSM could donate blood as long as they had not had any homosexual contact within the past year; previously, MSM were deferred permanently. Is this softened policy still homophobic? Yeah, I think so. That being said, it's arguable that the social damage of homophobic policy—*in this specific case*—is less than the social damage of increased HIV transmission risk. Further, I feel the HIV epidemic continues to do more harm to the gay and bisexual male community than this policy does. We have a social responsibility to reduce HIV's impact. Improved sex education in schools could help, but we should also push for increased testing among at-risk groups. The majority of people who know they have HIV take steps to protect their partners but it's estimated that [44% of HIV carriers](_URL_0_) aged 13-24 don't even know they have it.",
"I'm not sure why you say \"AIDS is no longer considered a homosexual disease\". In its purest definition you are correct (in the sense there are more ways to transmit it), but homosexual male-to-male contact is still by far has the highest risk for transmitting it [according to the CDC](_URL_0_)\n\nThere are plenty of occasions a male donor who might be involved in homosexual activities is unaware of his HIV status, and since HIV can also be transmitted by blood transfusions, the banks really want to eliminate all potential chances of \"accidentally\" infecting a blood recipient with HIV",
"While it's not still considered a \"homosexual disease\" HIV/AIDS is still very prevalent in the homosexual community. Gay and bisexual men make up 70% of all new cases of HIV, despite them being less than 1.7% of the population (assuming 50% of homosexuals and bisexuals are male). \n\nThis is partly because of behavioral tendencies of gay/bisexual men who tend to have more anonymous partners and have unprotected sex. Also, anal sex is more traumatic to tissues than vaginal sex. The rectum is not built to accommodate sexual intercourse like the vagina is, so there is a higher chance of the HIV virus entering the bloodstream via anal sex than vaginal sex.\n\nSo the question for blood donation is, \"Are you a male who has had anal sex, even once, with another man?\" Saying yes may disqualify your donation as this behavior has a significantly higher chance of having HIV than other donor types. Yes, they do test blood for HIV and Hepatitis, but these tests are reliant on antibodies. If you were infected within the previous month, you could still be infected but it wouldn't show up on a test.",
"Because homosexual and bisexual males *still* lead new HIV infections by a huge margin (in the Western world). It's like they haven't learned anything since the early 80s. Why take the blood of highly suspect individuals, when you don't have to?"
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"https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/basics/statistics.html",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States",
"https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/docs/factsheets/cdc-msm-508.pdf"
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ai82qs | from how far away could an extraterrestrial alien observe us? | Prompted by [a recent post](_URL_0_) of a comic strip where ETs are observing our planet from 65million light years away, and see dinosaurs through their telescope: How many [photons](_URL_1_) would one need to be able to make out a dinosaur. Given that the photons bouncing off the dinosaur will spread by the [inverse-square law](_URL_2_), how far away *could* a dinosaur be meaningfully distinguishable? How big a telescope would the alien need? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ai82qs/eli5_from_how_far_away_could_an_extraterrestrial/ | {
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"Diffraction's your biggest enemy here. Literally. Light spreads out, so you need a massively wide telescope to differentiate between two nearby points. If your telescope is any smaller, those two points will blur into one, and it becomes physically impossible to tell them apart. \n\nLord Rayleigh proved that the diameter of a telescope limited solely by diffraction is roughly the distance to the object, multiplied by the wavelength of light, divided by the radius of the object. \n \nLet's plug in some numbers, and give a rough idea. Visible light has a wavelength of 400 to 700 nanometers, so let's call it 500 nanometers. The largest dinosaur is roughly 40m wide, but Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to Earth, is 4.25 light years away. \n\nAnd so, our hypothetically perfect telescope needs to be more than 610,000km in diameter to pick out the rough outline of a dinosaur. That's bigger than the distance between Earth and the Moon. ",
"One of the concepts to understand here is that of [angular resolution](_URL_0_) and the Rayleigh limit of diffraction. When light passes through any aperture, such as a lens, it undergoes diffraction, which means it spreads out a bit. (The reasons why it does this are a bit beyond ELI5 level, but it's because light isn't really a bunch of straight lines pointing from an object to the observer.)\n\nThis isn't something that technology can overcome. It's a fundamental property of all waves, including light. We can imagine aliens with perfectly curved, smooth telescope lenses, but if they want to view things a very long way away with very good resolution, the lenses don't just have to be perfect, they have to be *big*.\n\nHow big? Well, the formula is roughly: Resolution x Lens Diameter = Distance x Wavelength of light. Let's say that the alien wants to see dinosaurs with a resolution of half a metre, plenty for the big ones, and they want to use visible light with a wavelength of about half a micrometre. Then we get Diameter = Distance / 1 million.\n\nTo look at the dinosaurs that were on Earth 65 million years ago, the aliens would need to be 65 million light years away from Earth. So the telescope would need to be 65 light years across. That's... um. I don't want to say \"impossible\", but we're talking about a solid lens that would stretch from Earth to Aldebaran, which is by no means one of the closest stars to us. It's difficult to imagine such a thing existing without collapsing under its own gravity and becoming a star or a black hole, and I don't know if there's enough sand in the universe to make that much glass!\n\nLet's be more reasonable, and say that the aliens have a telescope the size of the Earth itself, about 13,000 km across. That would let them sit 13 billion km away, which is about 12 light hours. The best they could do is sit out past Pluto and watch last night's football game.",
"I know OP mentioned inverse-square law, but bigger factors would be the atmosphere, clouds, and rotation and orbit of the Earth. And noise of other light from the Sun. The aliens would be trying to observe a moving object (essentially) obscured by intervening atmosphere, clouds, rain, and through lots of noise from the Sun.",
"What if they use something other than light to observe us?"
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1654ef | How do we know what we should expect for the angular sizes of spots in the CMB under different geometries of the universe? | According to this [nasa page](_URL_0_):
> If the universe were flat, the brightest microwave background fluctuations (or "spots") would be about one degree across. If the universe were open, the spots would be less than one degree across. If the universe were closed, the brightest spots would be greater than one degree across.
First off, how would even know what sizes of spots to expect under a flat geometry? What method do we use to predict how big they should be? And on top of that, how do we know what sizes to expect under different geometries? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1654ef/how_do_we_know_what_we_should_expect_for_the/ | {
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"It comes down to trigonometry. In the early Universe, before the CMB was emitted, matter particles (baryons) and light particles (photons) were interacting with each other so frequently that they could be considered a single fluid, a baryon-photon plasma. Because the early Universe wasn't perfectly uniform (why it wasn't is a different story, but we know it wasn't because our planet exists!), it had ripple-like waves of different sizes propagating through it. Those ripples corresponded to different densities and hence to different temperatures, so it's those ripples which we observe as the hot and cold fluctuations in the CMB.\n\nNow, which waves would produce the most common hot and cold spots? It turns out that it's the waves which just had time to go through one compression cycle before the CMB was emitted and the baryons and photons decoupled (and this plasma separated into its two components). These are the waves whose wavelengths were just enough to fit within the observable Universe (the \"horizon\") at the time. Waves with smaller wavelengths had gone through more oscillations and thus were damped somewhat relative to these horizon-sized waves, and larger wavelengths were unable to causally communicate and so there were essentially no oscillations on those scales. Hence, these horizon-sized waves were the least-damped waves in the baryon-photon plasma that gave rise to the CMB.\n\nSo the size of the brightest spots is directly related to the size of the cosmic horizon at the time of the emission of the CMB. Since we know the contents of the Universe at the time, we know how to calculate the size of the horizon. How do we relate that to an angle on our sky? This is where trigonometry comes in. If the Universe is flat, you can set up a simple triangle - two sides are the distance to the CMB, the third side is the horizon size - and calculate the angle using the sines and cosines you learned in high school. If the geometry of the Universe is not flat, that angle is going to be smaller or larger, because the interior angles of a triangle no longer add up to 180 degrees."
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q0p4h | the difference between the processor and memory of a computer? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/q0p4h/eli5_the_difference_between_the_processor_and/ | {
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"The processor is basically a very powerful calculator. It takes data out of the computer's memory (the RAM), does a bunch of math to it, an then writes the data back to the computer's memory. \n\nOne easy way to think about this is \"the processor calculates, the memory stores\". ",
"**Like you're 5**:\n\nProcessor - does the sums.\n\nMemory - is the paper on which the sums are written.",
"there are two types of memory. the first is long term memory called a hard drive. this stores information for a very long time and you can always save information to look it up later. the second type of memory is short term memory, or RAM (random access memory). it is temporary memory and will be erased shortly after it is used.\n\nfor example, you probably have your telephone number memorized. that is saved on your hard drive. but if somebody told you a telephone number you didn't know, and had to repeat it back in 30 seconds, that would be RAM, or temporary memory. 30 seconds isn't long enough to remember all 7 digits, but you can remember it long enough to repeat it back and you probably have no reason or desire to want to remember it.\n\n both memory are important. hard drives allow you to save a lot of information, but the bad side is it is slow to retrieve, or get back. RAM allows you to copy important parts of information from the hard drive for fast use so you aren't waiting super long for the processor to ask the hard drive for the info. \n\nthe processor is the brain of the computer. it is very smart, very fast, and the actual size of the chip is small compared to the rest of the computer (just like your brain is to your body). it 'talks' (not with words, but a language called \"binary\" which is a bunch of 0's meaning off and 1's meaning on, all acting like a switch) to all the other parts of the computer, asking for and sending information. It's like the crossing guard at your school, directing traffic everywhere, but at the same time its also in charge of all the bus routes, knows every kid on the bus and knows what every kid on the bus is thinking.\n\nI don't know if I could have ELI5'd that any more.",
"The processor processes data, the memory memorizes data.\n\nRonald is the RAM. He can't calculate to save his life but he's got an amazing memory. We can tell him stuff, like numbers, and he'll keep them in mind. Later when we ask him what the numbers are, he'll be able to tell us.\n\nCharlotte is the CPU. She can do calculations. She can also ask Ronald for numbers to do the calculations.\n\nFor example, if we want to add 25 and 10, the first thing to do is to ask Ronald to remember the two numbers. Then we ask Charlotte to make an addition with the two numbers. She will ask Ronald for the numbers, perform the calculation, and tell Ronald to remember the answer.\n\nWhy don't we directly tell Charlotte the numbers to add? Because Charlotte's memory is not as good as Ronald's. She can't remember a lot of numbers. She will only remembers the ones she's currently using. If we ask another calculation with other numbers, she'll forget the first numbers. Also, she can only do calculations based on a couple of numbers. If you want to add 20 different numbers, she can't remember them all. so what we do is tell Ronald all the numbers, and Charlotte will get them from Ronald one at a time and do the addition.\n",
"If you were a computer...\n\nProcessor - thinking ability. Figures out math problems, things like that.\n\n\nMemory (RAM) - Short term memory. All the pieces of information you are keeping track of right now. If you fall asleep (turn the computer off) this is wiped clean and starts getting used again when you wake up.\n\n\nStorage (Hard Drive) - Long term memory. This is permanent and semi-permanent storage of information. Things you aren't actively thinking of at this moment, but you will still remember if you try. Being asked to recall this information is like opening a document/file on your computer... a copy is put into RAM temporarily so you can read it or make changes... when it is saved, it's saved back to the hard drive.",
"When a person does mathematics he needs two things: his/her brain to solve equations and a piece of paper to remember them.\n\nComputer does a lot of calculations with its processor and writes it down in its memory for later use. \nHow these calculations turn into Reddit and Call of Duty is another story."
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9iymg2 | "Oh God!" How long has shouting a deity's name been seen as a way to express sexual satisfaction? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9iymg2/oh_god_how_long_has_shouting_a_deitys_name_been/ | {
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"Roman plays and in particular Plaute's plays abound with profanity as would have been used in the late republican period. Some of the most common words used are \"Hercle\" (by Hercule !) or \"Pol/Edepol\" (corrupted forms of \"Polluce\", by Pollux).\n\nA good example is the *Asinaria* around verse 842 : Argyrippe managed to buy a sex slave / courtesan with the tacit help of his father Déménète -- who now wants for his share of the deal : a night with the courtesan. Argyrippe swears \"Atque ego quidem *hercle*, ut verum tibi dicam, pater, ea res me male habet\"\n\nThis is interesting as this kind of comedies would give us a good indication of the kind of profanity that would have been used in street Latin of that era. As you can see a swearword like *hercle* is used pretty much like modern US english would say \"oh God\" or \"f*ck this\".\n\nUnfortunately we do not have recordings of what a Roman would have said and I do not know of any play where sexual intercourse would take place onstage (Roman comedies are not really prudish as you can see from above but it would have been somewhat improper).In any case it is quite easy to picture a character like Argyrippe saying \"Hercle\" after some fun.\n\nWe do know from Catullus how Romans would say they were exhausted by sexual activity : in Catullus 6, the author speaks of \"latera ecfutūta\", funds exhausted, literally \"f*cked away\" (notice that it is the same construction as when modern Russian says выпить свои денги -- not a native but it means to drink away one's money). In Catullus 29 he similarly speaks of a \"mentula diffutūta\", i.e. a male appendage similarly \"f*cked out\". Surely a Roman could have said \"diffututus sum\" or something in that vicinity."
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1y5w66 | Would it be possible to establish an orbit within a gas planet? | It's nearly 5am here in Sydney and this came unbidden to my mind: ignoring the corrosive or other qualities of the gasses that make up gas giants like Jupiter, would it be possible to establish an orbit within the layers?
I assume not as I assume the 'outer limit' of planet would operate the same as earth's atmosphere making orbit unsustainable but figured you guys would know. :) | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1y5w66/would_it_be_possible_to_establish_an_orbit_within/ | {
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"The atmosphere on a gas planet is too thick to allow for an orbiting spacecraft, as the orbit would quickly decay. Just make an aircraft.",
"If you're moving through an atmosphere at all, you're going to be encountering atmospheric drag. Atmospheric drag eventually slows down a spacecraft to the point where it can no longer hold the incredibly fast speeds required to maintain an orbit. Even craft in low earth orbit, such as the international space station, encounter enough drag from the trace amounts of atmosphere present that they need to be periodically boosted to a higher speed.\n\nA craft *within* a gas giant would encounter so much drag it wouldn't be able to maintain orbital speed at all without constant thrust.",
"As other people have pointed out, the atmospheric drag would make an orbit very difficult to sustain. But an interesting fact is that the International Space Station, which is in a low Earth orbit, is actually just within the outer reaches of Earth's atmosphere and so does experience a slight drag, causing it's orbit to decay over time. To keep it from falling, it's necessary to regularly apply thrust to bring it's orbit back up. This is one of the limiting factors determining how often the ISS needs to be visited by spacecraft."
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9yvfg6 | why did north america never “settle” like europe? | Peoples lived in North America for tens of thousand of years, but North America - specifically southern Canada, coastal and Great Plains United States - never had cities like Europe did.
Why did Europe “settle” by c. 1000BCE while North America, didn’t “settle” until c. 1500CE when Europeans arrived?
(I am excluding Mexico from geographic North America for this question; I know/am under the assumption and educated guess that the Mayans, etc. didn’t move north largely because of the vast expanse of desert from Central Mexico, north.) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9yvfg6/eli5_why_did_north_america_never_settle_like/ | {
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"They did.\n\n1. A native American city Cahokia existed in what is now Illinios, estimates place the population as high as 40,000 people.\n\n2. Pueblo(s), not one but multiple cities scattered throughout the southwest.\n\nThis has been posted before also. And the answers are better here.\n\n_URL_0_\n",
"There is a huge amount of debate about this subject particularly surrounding the works of Jared Diamond (there is even a cautionary bot that pops up when you mention his book). One opinion is that as natural resources (food specifically) were so abundant in north america (buffalo and before that the now extinct megafauna) for example that there wasnt as great a need or motivation to transition out of a hunter gatherer way of life into an agricultural one. Cities and so called \"advanced\" culture are a spinoff of agriculture that you get when a portion of the populations time and effort is freed up from food production. Thats the basic idea I'm going with but I'm more of an amateur anthropologist so there are probably some holes in this theory",
"There were cities and localized civilizations of a rather Western sort in certain parts of the Americas (Incan and Aztec societies, as well as some in what is now southwestern u.s.). There are a couple reasons for civilizations of this sort being less than ubiquitous. Mentioned above are things like high death rates from disease or warfare. But a couple other items played a huge role. \n\n1) there was very little need to develop agriculture. The land was bountiful and the population sparse by comparison. The main reason Europe and the near East developed the way they did was domestication of plants and animals to develop large agricultural societies. This was necessary in that part of the world due to increasingly large groupings of hunter-gatherer societies.\n\n2) very few native animals lend themselves to domestication in the Americas. The alpaca, and dogs are basically all of them I believe (there may be a couple I'm forgetting). Without domestication of animals, agricultural development is highly stunted. Compare this to the aurochs of the Mediterranean (eventually evolved through artificial selection into the cow), the water buffalo of Southeast Asia, horses, goats, sheep, chickens, etc.",
"Add \"1491\" by Charles Mann to that reading list. The sentiment is they did, which is one of the reasons diseases where so successful in spreading across the Americas. If Europeans would have delayed colonization for a couple generations the native populations would have recovered enough and societies would have stabilized enough to expel the Europeans."
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2p6c54 | Why will there always be more of herbivores than predators? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2p6c54/why_will_there_always_be_more_of_herbivores_than/ | {
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"Awesome question! In short, because the [Second Law of Thermodynamics](_URL_1_) necessitates that energy transformations are not 100% efficient.\n\nThink of it this way: living organisms are all part of an ecological system within which matter cycles and through which energy flows. We eat because we need the energy stored in chemical bonds in order to maintain our bodies, grow, and reproduce. Our food acquired that energy from another food source or from the sun.\n\nEvery time that energy is transformed (e.g., sunlight- > primary producers- > primary consumers- > secondary consumers), some of that energy is lost simply because energy transformations have some degree of inefficiency. Beyond that, predation is made less efficient because not all of the food material is consumed and not all is digested. In general, only about 10% of energy is passed from one [trophic level](_URL_0_) to the next.\n\nI'm happy to explain in greater detail or answer other questions!",
"If we're concerned with herbivores and their predators exclusively, perhaps. I'm not aware of any exhaustive survey of predator/prey abundance in that context, however the idea that there are fewer carnivores than herbivores seems correct for many of the usual systems we think about in biology.\n\nIf you generalize the question somewhat to \"Will there always be more prey than predators\", I think the answer is a firm no. Notwithstanding /u/ecopoesis's comment about the second law of thermodynamics, it is perfectly reasonable to have predators that are smaller than their prey (e.g. humans and mammoths, wolves and moose, most parasitoids [and hyper-parasitoids] and their prey) so even if energy transformations up the food chain are inefficient, a single prey could support many predators**.\n\n** At least in the short-term. There might be population dynamical reasons why this might not lead to long-term coexistence. "
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6q0f77 | Is there any particular reason why most question-starting adverbs in English start with the letter w-? | e.g.
* What
* Who/Whom
* Why
* Where
| AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6q0f77/is_there_any_particular_reason_why_most/ | {
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"Yes. It comes from Proto-Indo European _kwo-_ root of interrogative pronouns.\n\nYou'll see the same pattern in other Germanic languages (e.g. Norwegian _hvad_, _hvem_, _hvor_, _hvordan_) and similar things in other branches of the Indo-European family (e.g. Latin _quod_, _quis_, _quid_, _quo_)"
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4qmdys | why are cough suppressants added to medications with guaifenesin such as mucinex? | It would seem that the two are working against each other. Guaifenesin helps thin the mucus to make it easier to cough up, but the cough suppressant makes you stop coughing. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4qmdys/eli5_why_are_cough_suppressants_added_to/ | {
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"So guaifensesin, as you said thins your mucus, allowing it to more easily be removed. It is often given with dextromethorphan, a cough suppressant. It does seem counter intuitive to mix expectorants and cough suppressants. But cough suppressants don't stop you from cough per say, so much as they decrease the irritation in the throat that leads to chronic coughing during illness. If phlegm or mucus gets dislodged due to the expectorant, and enters your throat, you will still cough it up when on the cough suppressant. The cough suppressant just makes that 'tickle' in your throat stop making you cough so much."
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142jfv | How does U.S. federal government raise its revenue before adoption of income tax? | I'm mostly thinking of before 1900s. Where did the federal government get its money?
edit: grammar and clarity. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/142jfv/how_does_us_federal_government_raise_its_revenue/ | {
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"Almost entirely from tariffs (customs duties) on imported goods. Excise taxes (direct taxes on the production and sale of specific goods within the US) were tried, but they were very unpopular, and in one case actually lead to [a rebellion.](_URL_1_) It wasn't until the massive expenditures of the Civil War that the government found an income tax to be necessary, and the rest (as they say) is history.\n\n[edit] And just in case you're curious, customs duties and excise taxes apparently amount to [about 4 percent](_URL_0_) of revenues these days.",
"Import duties and sale of western lands. An income tax appears during the civil war.",
"Tariffs were the primary source of income, although excise and property taxes also were a revenue source. The [1789 Hamilton Tariff](_URL_0_) was one of the first pieces of legislation passed by the US Congress, mainly to pay off war debts. Excise and direct taxes tended to be relied upon more when military conflicts or a reduction of imports required them. Not all of these were especially popular, with events like the Whiskey Rebellion occurring in direct response to an excise tax. Tariffs led to regional conflicts between the North and South exemplified by the Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 and the subsequent Nullification Crisis. \n\nThe first federal income tax appeared during the Civil War as a temporary measure. In 1894, the Wilson–Gorman Tariff included an income tax to balance out reduced tariffs. The Supreme Court later ruled in *Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Company* that this was an unconstitutional direct tax, as it was not apportioned based on representation. The 1913 ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment (Income Tax) would supersede this ruling, and income tax revenue would soon surpass tariff revenue."
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7p06sf | why and how do some animals (i.e. birds) move their heads in a quick way, almost as if snapping to an angle? | Edit: Thanks for all the answers! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7p06sf/eli5_why_and_how_do_some_animals_ie_birds_move/ | {
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"Birds can't move their eyes around like other animals, so their head does to make up for it. Birds also have one less bone in the back of their skull that makes it possible for their head to move in greater angles than ours can.",
"So I want you to hold both thumbs out in front of you, holding your hands apart. Look at one thumb, then look at the other. Chances are your eyes snapped from one to the other quickly.\nEyes in general don't focus well when an image is moving too much, so tend to try to keep things stable by \"snapping\" from image to image. Even when you're trying to read or looks slowly across something your eyes are really making lots of small jumps instead of truly moving smoothly most of the time (the only exception is really when your eye is tracking something in motion)\nBirds don't have muscles to move their eyes around, so their whole head snaps around to do the same job as our eye muscles do. They don't always do this, birds will sometimes move their heads slowly, but just like with our eyes and watching something that's moving, they'll move their whole head to follow a moving object they're tracking.",
"Birds have a single occipital condyle. This means they have one less bone in their neck so it’s easier for them to swivel back to almost 180 degrees. It’s like sticking a toothpick into a ball. If you hold it between your fingers you can swivel it back and forth with relative ease. Humans have a dual occipital condyle meaning we have two bones. Like two toothpicks in the ball, the movement is much more limited which is why we can’t swivel our necks to the same degree as birds. (Idk if the toothpick example makes sense but this is the best way i can explain it) ",
"A good rule of thumb is that predators usually have forward facing eyes, and grazing/gatherers have eyes spread further to give them a wider angle of what is going on around them.\n\nWith that physical difference in eye placement, sometimes it's necessary to whip the ole noggin' around to to get a better bead on things...with tiny, beady little eyes.\n\n*Note: Some predators, like dolphins, don't have forward facing eyes. Instead, they developed their brains (by staying in school...or pods...let's stick with school...stay in school, kids!). Little known dolphin fact: When they sleep, they shut off half their brain and literally sleep \"[with one eye open](_URL_0_)\"."
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4102z7 | how does the transmission of electricity work? | Funnily enough the settlement creation in Fallout 4 got me realizing I have no I idea how electricity is transmitted from place to place. So it's created in a generator of some kind, and then some sort of conduit? Why does it travel through wires like it does? When it reaches a power plant does it distribute from there? Are there ways to wirelessly transmit electricity? I have a lot of questions but this has been bugging me and I don't understand a lot of the technical terminology Wikipedia pages yield. Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4102z7/eli5_how_does_the_transmission_of_electricity_work/ | {
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"First thing first, electrons flow through metal wires because metal atoms share electrons with their neighbors, which means they're not really locked on to a particular atom. As long as there are enough electrons around the atom, it doesn't care where they're from or where they're going. That means they can flow, like water in a pipe.\n\nNext, if you push on an electron and force it close to another electron, the other electron will get pushed away. Same thing as pushing the wrong ends of a magnet together. You can push one magnet along with the other magnet. In fact, magnets are literally what generators use to push electrons through wires. You stick a magnet on the shaft of an engine, and run a wire near it. As the magnet whips past the wire, it pushes some electrons down the wire.\n\nNow the tricky bit. To transmit power, you don't need to wait for the electrons from the generator to reach you. The easiest way to explain that is with a stick. Hold the end of a stick. Use the stick to push something. See how fast the force of your hand reaches the thing you're pushing? You push on the end of the stick, and each bit of stick pushes on the next bit of stick until the force gets to the other end. The actual part of the stick you're holding doesn't move very fast, but the force moves *extremely* fast. \n\nFinally, in the same way that running a magnet past a wire will push electrons through it, moving electrons through a wire past a magnet will push on the magnet. So you put some wire near a magnet on the other end and you get? A motor. Now you've got a generator (the first engine + magnet), some wire, and a motor. The generator is running the motor via the wires."
]
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69bax2 | How did the Italian nationalists justify the annexation of the Papacy to themselves during the unification of Italy? | As the title says, I'm kinda curious as to how a group that was majority catholic justified going to war with the pope. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/69bax2/how_did_the_italian_nationalists_justify_the/ | {
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"The main driver of the Italian unification process was a peculiar union of certain segments of the Italian nobility and the urban bourgeoisie, and both were aggressively secular. \n\nIt's important to note that it was the French Emperor Napoleon, through his conquest of the ten 18th century successors of the medieval Italian city-states (including the Papal States) who lay the definitive foundation for what would become modern Italy. In spite of the three-way administrative division, Italy under Napoleon was united for the first time nearly a thousand years, and devoid of economic/customs barriers: After Napoleon’s conquest of the peninsula, Northwestern Italy was integrated with the French Empire, while the northeast was proclaimed \"The Kingdom of Italy,\" with Napoleon crowned king. The south remained the Kingdom of Naples, ruled by Napoleon’s brother-in-law; Joachim Murat. In all three polities, Napoleon abolished old ecclesiastical and aristocratic privileges and imposed uniform legal, administrative, and fiscal laws and institutions. All three polities were administered by a large and meritocratic governmental bureaucracy. What's more, Napoleon was also a very aggressive secularizer: many museums in Italy have their roots in the art and treasure seized from churches and clergymen in the Napoleonic era (not to mention about half the items in the Louvre).\n\nAfter Napoleon restoration, intellectuals from all over Italy migrated to the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia. Although initially repressive, the government in Turin soon cautiously acknowledged their value. Previously one of the more marginal states in Italian history, the Piedmontese already had a precedent for acknowledging and adopting the practices of their more powerful neighbors; welcoming prominent exiles wasn’t too much of a stretch. These intellectuals would not only supply the Turinese government with a full roster of capable public administrators who fueled its economic and intellectual life, but they also shaped public opinion enticed Piedmont it to take action bringing about the unification of Italy. Many of these intellectuals were middle class and had been rewarded by Napoleon's meritocratic military, education system, and state bureaucracy, which had opened career paths previously only open to upper-class twats. Similarly, many intellectuals had no qualms reducing the role of the clergy or dismantling the Papal States, not in the least because they were not particularly sympathetic to the conservative clergy.\n\nSo thanks to of the Napoleonic roots of the Italian Unification movement, the members of the Piedmontese (and later Italian) Parliament had very few misgivings about taking Rome; indeed, it was seen as the vital last step in creating an Italian State. However, the conquest of Rome opened up a whole bunch of cans of worms. The Pope excommunicated the House of Savoy, and in much of Italy (especially in the south) lack of cooperation from the clergy was one of many obstacles in establishing an effectively run state. Although there were a number of complex factors at work, the Papacy's unwillingness to recognize the new Italy certainly contributed to the small but protracted insurgency in Southern Italy. Further, a whole contingent of the Roman Nobility followed the Pope in his refusal to acknowledge the Italian State; they would come to be called, \"The Black Nobility.\" Until the Lateran Pacts of 1929, the continued Papal refusal to recognize the Italian state would be a thorn in the side of the Kingdom of Italy and a small but not insignificant contributor to instability and delegitimization of unified rule in the Peninsula.\n\nI had gone into detail on the characteristics [of restoration-era Italian states here.](_URL_0_)\n\nIf you're interested in 19th century Italy, these are great resources: \n\nDavis, John A., *Italy in the Nineteenth Century, 1796-1900.* Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.\n\nAnd these Italian-language sources: \n\nRomani, Mario. *Storia Economica d’Italia nel secolo XIX.* Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino. 1983. \n\nNegri-Zamagni, Vera. *La situazione economica e sociale nel meridione negli anni dell’unificazione:\nUna rivisitazione.”* Meridiana. 73.74 (2012). Print."
]
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4401ms | intel cpus | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4401ms/eli5_intel_cpus/ | {
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"Terms like Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge are related to the processor's microarchitecture. This is essentially the unique way a processor is built, but I'll explain it in a bit. To understand this better, you need to know Intel's Tick-Tock model.\n\nIntel switches its focus for a new processor's goals like a grandfather clock swinging back and forth. When Intel is in the Tock-phase, it develops a new microarchitecture, in other words a new, more efficient type of processor. When Intel is in the Tick-phase it makes a type of processor that has the same microarchitecture as before, but does it even faster and more efficiently. Then it switches back to \"Tock\"-phase and begins anew. \n\nFor example, Intel released the Haswell-microarchitecture in 2013, after which it went into a Tick-phase. The next year it released the Broadwell-microarchitecture, which was similar to Haswell, but more efficient. In the next Tock-phase, Intel made Skylake, which is their current microarchitecure. So they're currently working on Cannonlake to improve it again, etc.\n\nNow I wanna explain microarchitecture real quick. As you probably know, a CPU is responsible for calculating everything a computer has to calculate. To do this, it of course needs to know how to do it. For this, every CPU includes an Instruction Set, which is a set of instructions for how to deal with all the information that gets thrown at the CPU. The microarchitecture is simply the way in which this instruction set is implemented in the CPU. \n\nAs for the whole Core, Pentium, etc., I'll explain now. So you have your microarchitecture, but now you gotta put it in a CPU. There's many CPU's that can be made with one microarchitecture, therefore there are many CPU's to choose from. Intel categorize their CPU's according to performance and target demographic. The generations are simply what iteration of the same CPU family it is, so that's easy. Pentiums are an older family of CPU's that are generally weaker than the rest, best suited for less tech savvy people who just need a working computer. Core i3 is also for lower end users, with Core i5 being for casual gamers and slightly more demanding users. Core i7 is for HD gamers and people who use demanding software, such as video editing. Then there's the Atom for portables, Xeon for servers, etc."
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14tbgg | Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door. He wasn't the first to disagree with the Roman Catholic Church...why did his request for a dispute turn into a religious revolution? | The long title says it all. I'm not opposed to historical texts that investigate the effect that the Germanic leaders had on Luther's reformation, and particularly the extra-church reasons. Luther's theological points weren't new, so I'm wondering why he had such an impact. In other words, what made him such a perfect storm? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/14tbgg/martin_luther_nailed_95_theses_to_the_door_he/ | {
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"The printing press had been invented. That made it much easier for ideas to disseminate, which allowed Luther's revolt against the Catholic Church to spread in ways the previous ones simply couldn't.",
"I did a paper on Pope Leo X a few years back, actually. Leo didn't want to deal with it much, at first, and basically sent attack dogs after Luther. This pushed Luther to be more aggressive and extreme (he was *incredibly* stubborn, and *hated* the sort of visually indulgent Catholicism of Southern Europe, amongst other things about it), and the attack dogs got more aggressive and extreme, and Leo basically refused to even consider any of the sorts of reforms suggested in the Theses--going so far as to issue bulls telling Luther to shove it & *requiring* Catholics to agree that the Pope could sell as many indulgences as he damn well pleased. The Pope was also increasingly preoccupied with Italian politics--Leo X was a Medici, after all--and basically hated having to deal with frumpy theological disputes from grumpy Northerners. Leo and Luther pushed and pushed at each other, directly and through proxies, to the point where the whole situation was so toxic that it's hard to see it ending in anything *but* a serious schism.\n\nBut! I actually consider Leo X one of the best popes, because he was so bad that he rescued the Church. The underlying issues of corruption and excess weren't created by Leo X, but he sure partook in them, and became a sort of symbol for clerical decadence. If it had been handled more mildly, without a big blow-up that eventually encouraged the poorly-named \"Counter-Reformation,\" it's easy to see the Church simply crumbling away in a series of schisms, or the hierarchy imploding completely, if not for the pressure release afforded by the Reformation.\n\nThat's the short-term explanation, at least. As I said, corruption & c. were long-standing issues, and there had been many fiery would-be reformers in the years preceding Luther--the tensions brought about by people like Jan Hus, for example--and there were many small flare-ups and head-buttings, usually ended when the fiery would-be reformer died/was killed. Luther lived, and, as you said, there was a perfect storm of underlying tension, charisma from Luther, incompetence from Leo, political infighting and opportunism...you name it. The Reformation was a real mess.",
"There are literally dozens of ideas why Luther was successful at that particular time, but I'll try to briefly explain a few of the key ones:\n\nLike many events in history, it has, I think, more to do with context than with the article or individual. Criticism of the established church had been going on for literally hundreds of years, as you've observed - Chaucer, for example, was criticising the sale of indulgences in popular English literature a full 200 hundred years prior to the publication and dissemination of Luther's theses. See Chaucer's 'pardoner' in the Canterbury Tales.\n\nPublication may well be the key to explaining Luther's success, in fact. Print was beginning to be utilised to a greater extent than ever before, meaning that copies (or selections) of the theses could be reproduced far quicker than was possible with scribal production, which was undoubtedly maddeningly time consuming. To oversimplify - with greater dissemination comes greater impact. See, for example, Mark Edwards, *Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther.*, as well as pretty much any 'reformation' book - the press is something scholars have focussed on massively when discussing Luther's success.\n\nAnd, of course, Luther's text not only reached out to people to a greater physical extent than ever before, but perhaps a greater spiritual extent too. The messages he espoused - ideas regarding purgatory, scripture, ritual, and religion in the vernacular - had all been circulating long before his discussions. The difference was that Luther's theses collated the criticism in a legible, relatively-concise manner, at a particularly opportune time. His was an argument that resonated regardless of class - for the elite, continental princes were considering the ideas of the reformation (which, taking power away from the papacy, brought greater secular authority and decreased financial exportation), meaning that it made political sense to side with the popular change. For the lower orders, Lutheranism placed emphasis on the spiritual relationship with God - indulgences, which they could never afford, had no worth or meaning, as far as the 'new' interpretation was concerned.\n\nAs an aside, it's interesting that a lot of debate has focussed on whether Luther even nailed the 95 theses to the church door in the first place. I think that current criticism suggests that he probably did (see Kurt Aland, *Martin Luther’s 95 Theses*).",
"Back in the late 1980's I was able to participate in the six player SPI wargame \"A Mighty Fortress\" at the Strategic Games Society at M.I.T. The game pitted the Hapsburgs, the Pope, the Ottomans, the French, English and a collection of small northern German principalities that were lumped together as the Lutherans against each other on a hexagon grid map of Europe. \n\nThe players had to manage their nation's economy, raise armies and try to achieve certain objectives, but armies could hide out in their mighty fortresses. The combat was rather static, but the real action in this game was in the diplomatic and theological areas. It was the only war game I've ever seen that had a theological debate table, where a die roll determined the results of any particular debate. The die roll was modified by individual theologans. Martin Luther was a +3 theologian, the best in the game, and one who was imune to being \"burned at the stake\". \n\nRudolph Heinze designed this game, and this link will let you take a peek at it. _URL_0_ \n\n",
"For further reading, I recommend *Reformation Thought: An Introduction* by Alister McGrath, and *The Long Reformation* by Jeffery Watt. ",
"What exactly made Martin Luthor's efforts so different and successful from the Lollards? They seemed to have similar goals. Does it really come down to the printing press and an extra century or two of resentment?",
"The printing press and the lack of copyright (enforcement). It was like, some treatise gets printed somewhere, a merchant takes it to the next town, sells it to the local printer simply as a profit motive, the local printer copies it and sells the copies again simply as a profit motive. Widespread for-profit \"piracy\", so to speak. Source: Arthur Koestler - The Sleepwalkers. If I remember that book right, it took about a week to get a new treatise in about every major town of Europe.",
"I don't see mentioned here that Bartolomeu Dias had rounded the Cape of Good Hope some 20 to 30 years earlier, cutting the Mediterranean out of trade with the Orient. It could be argued that the declining economic fortunes of Italy reflected themselves in the cultural superstructure."
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1jxtz9 | stephen colbert's character | Being from Australia, I don't often watch the Colbert Report, only some of the clips that surface on Reddit.
I understand that on the show Colbert performs as his own character, can anyone explain what the character is and how it differs from Colbert's real persona. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jxtz9/eli5_stephen_colberts_character/ | {
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"Colbert in real life is very liberal/Democratic. He's a comedian playing a part. The part he plays, based on Bill O'Reilly, is an over the top patriot Republican that bleeds red white and blue and worships at the altar of Ronnie Reagan. He's complete satire of Fox News egomaniacs.",
"Stephen Colbert is a political satirist and comedian who plays [Stephen Colbert](_URL_0_), who is a right-wing pundit. He is \"egomaniacal, xenophobic and fiercely anti-intellectual\". He plays your stereotypical Republican idiot. He often asks his guests \"George Bush: Great president, or the greatest president?\".\n\nStephen Colbert (the real person) is a Democrat and a practicing Roman Catholic. His character on the show is a much more devout Roman Catholic (stating that he once went to exorcism camp as a child).\n\nYou may have also seen a TV show called The Daily Show (with Jon Stewart). Stephen Colbert started his political satire career on The Daily Show as a correspondent. TDS is a satire show as well, but Jon Stewart doesn't really play a right-wing character.",
"The Colbert Report is based on Poe's Law. *Any well-executed parody of extremism is indistinguishable from actual extremism.* Stephen Colbert is a liberal who makes fun of conservatives by pretending to be one."
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1909i5 | if jesus's ministry overruled the old testament laws then how do christians use leviticus to demonize homosexuality? | I believe the big anti-gay passage is Leviticus 18:22, but since Christians do not keep Kosher or utilize most of the other Old Testament practices outlined in Leviticus, how do they justify this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1909i5/eli5_if_jesuss_ministry_overruled_the_old/ | {
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"They cannot in a logical fashion. Most Christians are not biblical scholars and only repeat what they are taught. The bible is so big and contradictory that you can use it to teach anything. So what you are seeing if people teaching their personal beliefs to others, using the Bible as evidence, who in turn use teach their personal beliefs to others using the Bible as evidence. It is a issue of people's perception of what their religion says, shaping their understanding of reality of what their holy book says.\n\nUltimately, living 100% in accordance with the Bible is impossible in the modern world and even Christians have ridiculed people for trying. Two recent and public attempts at this were _URL_0_ a christian woman, and _URL_1_ an agnostic man.\n",
"The Christian reason for ignoring kosher is \"What goes into a man’s mouth does not make him ‘unclean,’ but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him ‘unclean.’” (Matthew 15:11)\n\nThis is a \"direct\" quote from Jesus, which Christians take as gospel.\n\nHomosexuality is sort of unclear. There are a lot of Christians that are totally okay with homosexuality, but many are opposed to it. Homosexuality is considered \"shameful\" (Romans 1:26) by both the New and Old Testaments, so anyone who tells you \"it's only in the Old Testament\" is wrong.\n\nThe reasons why Christians oppose gay marriage are complicated because there are countless sects that are okay with gay marriage, but the strict Biblical reading is anti-gay, even if you just read the [New Tesetament](_URL_0_).",
"OP, that Jesus came to \"edit\" the Old Testament is debatable in the first place.\n\nMatthew 5:17-20 - \"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.\"\n\nI think it's just a case of people choosing what to follow. Many of the same people who choose to be anti-gay because of Leviticus 18:22 don't have a problem with wearing clothing woven of two kinds of materials, as forbidden a chapter later in Leviticus 19:19.\n\n\n\n"
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jfo6j | Why are humans in a better mood when the skies are blue and the sun shining, compared to wet, grey overcast skies? | When ironically if it continued to never rain, we would be in serious trouble in the long term. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/jfo6j/why_are_humans_in_a_better_mood_when_the_skies/ | {
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"Layman here.\n\nI'd more put the terms as why are people in a worse mood when it's wet/sky is overcast.\n\nMost people don't like to get wet, or deal with adverse weather, hence it dampens their mood. ",
"I'm the opposite. I love rain.",
"It has to do with hormone release from the pineal gland. It reacts to light stimulus.\n_URL_0_",
"i live in the desert. clear sunny days day after day after day *do* get depressing. i tend to go outside when it rains if i can (i.e. not working)- i think it has a lot to do with what is a change from the ordinary.",
"I love the rain, I love grey skies. My favourite weather is a thunderstorm during the summer.",
"Layman here.\n\nI'd more put the terms as why are people in a worse mood when it's wet/sky is overcast.\n\nMost people don't like to get wet, or deal with adverse weather, hence it dampens their mood. ",
"I'm the opposite. I love rain.",
"It has to do with hormone release from the pineal gland. It reacts to light stimulus.\n_URL_0_",
"i live in the desert. clear sunny days day after day after day *do* get depressing. i tend to go outside when it rains if i can (i.e. not working)- i think it has a lot to do with what is a change from the ordinary.",
"I love the rain, I love grey skies. My favourite weather is a thunderstorm during the summer."
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