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952o9h | how hookworms can penetrate the skin to infect a human host? | So this particularly nasty parasite can infect a human host by penetrating the skin of the feet and entering the body. I don’t understand how this is possible when skin is reasonably tough, comes in layers and is packed with pain receptors. I would think that the amount of force needed to penetrate it to enter the body would be *painfully* obvious. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/952o9h/eli5_how_hookworms_can_penetrate_the_skin_to/ | {
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"If you're small enough, you can burrow *around* the neurons and get in undetected. Nerve cells are relatively large and have a \"web\" of sensory lobes. If you don't irritate enough of those lobes quickly enough, it won't signal.\n\nHookworm larve are so small that they can usually wriggle past the sensors without tripping them en masse and alerting the brain. Even when they do, it's not like there's much you can do beyond scratch the minor itch on your foot.\n\nRemember that mosquitoes manage to land on you and plunge hypodermic needles into you undetected all the time."
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6y1egw | if there is a correlation between more weight and heart disease why is it, seemingly, only considered detrimental if you increase your weight due to fat but considered healthy if you increase your weight due to muscle? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6y1egw/eli5_if_there_is_a_correlation_between_more/ | {
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"The correlation between heart disease and weight is specific to being fat and therefore weighing more not being very muscular and weighing more due to that. Also, it is relatively easy to gain 100 pound of fat as opposed to 100 pounds of muscles which is nearly impossible.\n\nThe stress on the heart isn't really due to weight but because the resistance of the blood vessels rises as they become clogged with fat (to put it ELI5, not technically). People who are athletic and muscular tend to have healthy blood vessels and the heart actually works less because exercise strengthens the heart. Of course, there are the extreme cases where athletes hearts become abnormally large and they have sudden heart attacks but that is relatively rare and happens with extreme athletes."
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2pmv8p | why do drums sound so much louder through cars and walls, even if it is the same volume as the rest of the music? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pmv8p/eli5_why_do_drums_sound_so_much_louder_through/ | {
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"Low frequency sound (such as drums/bass) is attenuated less by solid structure (or even plain old air) and thus can travel more efficiently (or further), making it sound louder through a barrier/at a distance. \n\nFun fact, elephants communicate over vast distances using very [low frequency sound for just this reason.](_URL_0_)\n"
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1qw712 | What exactly is the difference between nuclear fuel used for power generation vs bombs and why does fission cause only heat generation in one but an explosion in the other? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1qw712/what_exactly_is_the_difference_between_nuclear/ | {
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"The differences are in the way they are designed, and the enrichment of the fuel.\n\nLets talk about bombs first. Nuclear bombs utilize very high enrichment fuel ( > 90%). Nuclear bombs are designed such that when they are assembled into a critical mass, the goal is for them to go prompt critical, then release as much energy as possible before the bomb blows itself apart. Nuclear bombs have no control systems, and all feedback mechanisms are designed to try and make the bomb as effective/efficient at releasing energy as possible.\n\nNuclear reactors are very different. They generally utilize low enerichment fuel ( < 5%), (exception: naval reactors). Nuclear power plants are designed and operated such that they cannot maintain full core criticality on prompt neutrons alone, they rely on delayed neutrons. Prompt neutrons are generated in about 10^-4 to 10^-7 seconds, while delayed neutrons take several seconds to be generated. Because power reactors rely on delayed neutrons, their power changes take several seconds to occur, and this allows time for active control systems or passive feedback mechanisms to control reactor power. (Passive feedback mechanisms include the Doppler effect, voids/boiling, temperature effects, liquid density effects, etc) In a worst case scenario, it buys enough time for reactor protection system to automatically scram the reactor on high flux signals. Nuclear reactors utilize sufficient negative reactivity coefficients that they cannot undergo rapid out of control power loops (some exceptions, like when Chernoby's RBMK reactor was operated inappropriately. Part of this was the particular design of this plant, part of it was the way it was inappropriately operated). \n\nBoth \"reactors\" (bomb and power) generate heat. The difference is how fast you get to that peak power output. Bombs get there in moments, while nuclear reactors take quite a while. A nuclear bomb will go from completely subcritical to an explosion (several orders of magnitude) in moments. The worst a nuclear power reactor can do, is about a 2-3 times power increase, before negative reactivity coefficients pull this down, and/or a reactor scram terminates the power increase.\n\nJust an interesting anecdotal data point, the worst case reactivity increase that I've seen in a commercial BWR happened when a reactor cooling valve opened at the maximum possible rate due to a control system error during plant startup testing, which caused the valve open signal to bypass the valve motion limiter. The sudden increase in cooling reduced the steam voids in the reactor, which led to a prompt neutron reactivity spike of just over 300% neutron flux, which was terminated by a reactor scram in about 1.1 seconds. No fuel damage occurred because 2 seconds of a flux spike does not allow enough time for heat to transfer to the fuel cladding and cause damage. The plant was a ~3000 MWth BWR."
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4nk2ei | Before cars were in invented, was "Horse-riding Under the Influence" a thing? | Did police ticket people for that? Did the newspapers have stories about "HRUI" arrests? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4nk2ei/before_cars_were_in_invented_was_horseriding/ | {
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"**Yes on all three counts.**\n\nFor an example, allow me to present you [with this short item](_URL_1_) from the April 30, 1887 issue of the *New York Times.*\n\n > CHICAGO, April 29.--James Howard, a muscular young man, was sent out yesterday afternoon to break a young saddle horse for a Mr. Davis, of Wells-street. Howard was drunk, and encouraged the young animal to some marvelous feats. He made a dash up La Salle-avenue so fast \"that you could hardly see anything but a streak,\" as the officer declares, and at the corner of Division-street urged the horse upon a passing milk wagon. There were three witnesses to swear that the horse \"took\" the wagon, and cleared it at one jump, but in striking the ground on the other side it dashed out its brains. Howard went headlong several feet over the asphalt pavement, and arose with no worse damage than that of a skinned nose. Justice Kersten fined him $10 for fast driving this morning, and held him pending further action by the owner of the horse.\n\nNow, in this case, Howard was fined for \"fast driving.\" Yes, you could be fined for speeding on a horse. City streets in the era of the horse-and-buggy could be just as crowded as they are today, and even more so in places like New York City's Lower East Side, which was notorious for its tenements.\n\nSpeeding through crowded areas could injure or kill someone, and both police and the public took a dim view of reckless behavior that endangered people. Nevertheless, the antics of drunks were just as enticing to the general public as they are today.\n\n[As the *Milwaukee Wisconsin* declared on Oct. 1, 1880](_URL_3_):\n\n > \"The freaks of drunken men take turns that surprise everybody, themselves included. The newspapers chronicle many of these insane freaks, but none more sensational than the performance of James Streden, an employe of the Bay View Rolling Mills.\"\n\nYou see, Mr. Streden managed to drive his horse and buggy onto a railroad trestle, and if you know railroad trestles, you know they don't have solid decks. They're just ribbons of iron suspended with wooden beams. They're absolutely *not* intended to carry a buggy with narrow wheels, nor does it seem possible for a horse to step from railroad tie to railroad tie, minding the gaps.\n\n > \"The bridge has for a bottom only ties placed about 22 inches apart, and the task of walking across on a dark night like that of yesterday is quite a ticklish one, even for a sober man. For a horse, and especially for a horse controlled by a drunken driver, the task is well nigh impossible.\"\n\nNeedless to say, Mr. Streden's horse and buggy made it halfway across before they plunged into the river below. Man and horse swam out unharmed, but the buggy became lodged in the trestle. It was removed before the next train came by.\n\nThere's also a story from the *Kansas City Times* of Feb. 28, 1878, [that describes how a drunken man managed to swim his horse across the Missouri River](_URL_2_) at a spot where the river was nearly half a mile across, wracked with eddies and (because of the season) full of ice chunks. Man and beast were eventually pulled up a bluff with the help of ropes.\n\nBut all this doesn't answer your question. Did people get ticketed *specifically* for drunken driving on a horse? Yes. Turn to the July 29, 1929 issue of the *New York Times*, which includes this piece:\n\n > EATONTOWN, N. J., July 28.--Arthur Berry, 53 years old, of Pine Brook was arrested today for driving a horse while intoxicated. Berry, in a light surrey, was pursuing an uncertain course up the State highway toward New York when he made a sharp left turn at Lewis Street and Johnson Avenue. The horse crashed head on into an automobile operated by Wallace Chase of Eatontown. Chase and his wife and young daughter were painfully cut when the windshield was smashed. The horse's legs were cut.\"\n\nYou can find even find drunken-horse-riding cases in the modern record, particularly out west. In the historical record, there's the Sept. 14, 1946 issue of the New York Times, which carries a United Press wire service account of a 56-year-old man in Detroit arrested and sentenced to 15 days in jail for \"drunken driving of a horse and wagon.\"\n\nIf you're interested in the way horse culture was used in the United States, you might try [*The Horse and Buggy Age in New England*](_URL_0_) by Edwin Valentine Mitchell. It was published in 1937 as a reminiscence of how things operated \"when stables and blacksmiths flourished\" and was targeted at an audience that grew up after the automobile replaced the horse and never experienced what life was life with the horse.",
"Still is a thing in Queensland.\n(7) Any person who, while under the influence of liquor or a drug, drives or is in charge of any horse or other animal on a road, or drives or is in charge of any vehicle (other than a motor vehicle) on a road, or attempts to put in motion any vehicle (other than a motor vehicle) on a road, is guilty of an offence.\n\nMaximum penalty—40 penalty units or 9 months imprisonment.\n_URL_0_\n_URL_1_ "
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"http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9903E2DE143EE73BBC4B53DFB5668383669FDE",
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1i63am | principal & interest (car loans) | I haven't set anything up so that any portion of my payments goes directly to the principal or anything. I'm just confused as to where the part of my payment that doesn't go towards my principal goes. Does that go towards the interest or is there something else that gets paid with it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1i63am/eli5_principal_interest_car_loans/ | {
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"It all goes toward interest. The only things rolled into most personal loans are principal and interest.\n\nTechnically, the bank applies your payments to the interest first and anything left over is applied toward your principal. This is why paying extra (if you can) is almost always a good idea; every extra dollar you pay will go directly to the principal, so you end up paying less interest."
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eckfyd | how does not washing your hands cause more mold to grow on bread? | There is a viral twitter post from a Minnesota school teacher showing the importance of washing your hands by having students handle bread without washing hands, using hand soap, using alcohol, and some other control groups.
Does the mold grow less on the bread because mold itself is removed or killed by hand sanitizing methods?
Or does the hand sanitizing destroy bacteria that would otherwise create an environment for growing mold? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eckfyd/eli5_how_does_not_washing_your_hands_cause_more/ | {
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"Bread is good food that bad stuff likes. Bad stuff is all over the place, including on your hands. The inside of the bread bag, and the bread, start out clean without any bad stuff. Washing your hands before opening and reaching into the bread bag reduces the amount of bad stuff that you leave behind in the bag. The more bad stuff in the bag, the higher the chance of the bread growing mold.",
"Soap is really cool. It reduces the surface tension of water. Surface tension in water is essentially what makes water molecules stick to other water molecules. When you reduce the surface tension, water becomes \"more fluid\", and can get into tighter areas, smaller cracks, etc. Think high surface tension = cold jiggily jello, low surface tension = warm liquid jello.\n\nWhen you put soap on your hands, then scrub them together, the lowered surface tension of the water makes it easy for the molecules of water to get under dirt, bacteria, fungal spores, dead skin, and any other unwanted particles on your skin while the scrubbing motion knocks those particles loose. Then a rinse washes it all away.\n\nSkin is dirty. All day, bacteria and fungal spores are floating around in the air, landing on you.\n\nWhen you remove them from your skin, there are less left to be deposited on bread, food, kitchen counters, or door handles when you touch them.\n\nBread is very near bacteria and mold spore free when packaged. When you put your hand in the bag, you deposit any of those spores and bacteria that may have been in your skin. Then the spores begin to grow and eat the bread.\n\nWashing your hands helps prevent the spread of those particles in the first place.",
"Bread is good food for lots of greeblies.\n\nEvery square inch of every living thing you can imagine is covered in bajillions of pathogens/spores/bacteria/fungus/greeblies.\n\nHandling bread with those hands transfers bajillions of greeblies onto the bread where they eat and multiply happily.\n\nWashing hands removes/kills a big majority of those greeblies, thus handling bread with 'clean' hands results in less growth.\n\nOur hands (generally) don't grow mold because our immune systems are in a constant battle fighting them off...thus our hands are NOT good food for greeblies.\n\nEdit: Washing your hands most of the time doesn't transfer any pathogen-killing stuff to the hands and then on to the bread. It's been shown in many studies that antibacterial additives in soap are virtually useless in the prevention of disease for the vast majority of people. Yes, I want a surgeon's skin to be scrubbed within an inch of its life with aggressive cleaners because open wounds are very dangerous places to add infection. Everyone else with an immune system: no antibacterial needed."
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lsqku | Is there a biological/cognitive reason that people will ignore advice of experts? | I find that people will often completely disregard information or arguments from someone who is very learned in a topic and instead choose their own opinion or belief for no legitimate reason. Of course, this sounds like I'm insisting on religious believers but its not just them. Some people do it for parenting, medical issues, studying habits, a lot of crap. Is there some defense mechanism responsible for this? Or perhaps it's a "fitness" in knowledge issue? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/lsqku/is_there_a_biologicalcognitive_reason_that_people/ | {
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"you might want to look into the Kruger-Dunning effect, whereby ignorant people underestimate their ineptitude and lack the tools to realise how inept theyr are.",
"you might want to look into the Kruger-Dunning effect, whereby ignorant people underestimate their ineptitude and lack the tools to realise how inept theyr are."
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4h17ez | when and why did it become normal for the us to mock the french, considering that france is america's oldest ally? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4h17ez/eli5_when_and_why_did_it_become_normal_for_the_us/ | {
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"It seems to have come from the fact they got invaded and occupied during WW2. A lot of the French military was out of the country and continued to fight against the Axis but France itself was forced to surrender. \n\nIt's a pretty unfair stereotype as nobody was really prepared for just how dangerous Germany was and the French Resistance were hard bastards. And at least the French turned up on time for WW2. ",
"Americans and Frenchmen have been teasing and mocking each other since the beginning. The British and French have been rivals of varying bitterness for a millenium, and the USA largely adopted British culture, language, and customs, and many of their prejudices.\n\nWhat mostly shaped the current back and forth was the US intervening in three separate French conflicts: WW1, WW2, and in Vietnam. The simpleton view of it is that they surrendered easily and left the Americans to clean up their mess. ",
"They were the first ally, not the oldest. Relations soured considerably during the 19th century due to France's ridiculous military adventures in Mexico.",
"There is a saying, the French copy no one and no one copies the French.\n\nThey have a culture of doing their own thing, sometime just to do their own thing. I think much of this comes form being runner up to the tag team of the UK and US in the war for Western culture.\n\nWhile this can lead to some cultural triumphs, sometimes it causes them to fall flat on their face. It has been link to their dismal performance in the World Wars, leading to a caricature of stubborn arrogance and Independence that leads to their downfall. \n\nAnd it is not just the US, either.\n\nAlso, the US's oldest ally is actually Morocco.",
"I'm American and it pisses me off when some of my countrymen make ignorant \"jokes\" about French military courage or lack of it. In 1914, August to year's end, the French Army suffered casualties of 754,000 _URL_0_ 1915 it was 1,549,000 men. In the first 10 months of 1916 it was 861,000 men. Figures from \"Dare Call it Treason\". In the Iraq War, our media was going crazy with their \"Grim Milestone\" meme with every increase in a 1,000 KIA. I kinda think the US Army of 1940 would been a minor speed bump to the Wehrmacht Blitz. Nobody accuses the British of being cowardly for Dunkirk, nor the Russians for surrendering in their millions in the encirclement battles of 1941, nor should they. All I can conclude is that there are a lot of ignoramuses completely in the dark about the realities of combat.",
"It really began during the de Gaulle era in France. While the rest of Europe (well, England) was charting a very pro-American course, Gaullist France resisted the notion of a unified West. As a result, Americans started mocking the French.\n\nEvery time the French pop up with some new view inconsistent with America's vision, the mocking picks up where it left off.\n\nThere's also the basic proclivity of Americans towards being 'bourgeois' while the French view themselves as more 'cultured'. You can see the same sort of process with how New York/LA tend to mock flyover country and how flyover country mocks New York/LA.",
"Since we were founded. We inherited the animosity from the British, and it was not eliminated by France being an ally. Most of the Modern Jokes are from WW2 though. ",
"There are several incidents in our recent past that have been taken into common culture that makes it cool to bash the French. Primarily it is tied to the French surrender in WWII. When ever we disagree on foreign policy, Americans like to trot out the WWII surrender thing. \n\nIn 1986 the United States bombed Libya from England. This was in retaliation for a terrorist act in Germany, among other things. The French refused to let our bombers use their airspace. This pissed a lot of Americans off. \n\nThen there's Paris. The Parisians are seen to be generally intolerant if not hostile to non-French speaking tourists. But, 'Mericans think that since we rescued Paris in WWII that the Parisians should be a touch more grateful. \n\n. \n\n\n\n"
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abu04l | Does the body prioritize healing larger injuries first over smaller injuries like scrapes or cuts? | Like if you have knee surgery does your body focus more on healing that over a small scrape on your arm? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/abu04l/does_the_body_prioritize_healing_larger_injuries/ | {
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"No. Your body can't tell. \n\nThe cells and tissues around your knee will detect the damage nearby and will start their healing process. The cells and tissues of the skin on your arm will do the same. To some extent they will affect each other, for example by both activating similar parts of the immune system, but that is really just coincidental. \n\nThere is no central control mechanism that knows how to prioritize. "
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1vkfdj | I have noticed that when alcohol is mixed into soda, the carbonation is retained longer than by soda alone, with more lacing/foam on the sides of the glass. Why is this? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1vkfdj/i_have_noticed_that_when_alcohol_is_mixed_into/ | {
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"It might just be observer bias but..,\n\nThere have been studies (which unfortunately are not free access unless you're in a university campus) which show that carbon dioxide is much more soluble in ethanol (drinking alcohol) than in water and in mixtures they form an intermediate solubility.\nIt might be that bubbles are smaller but last longer because they are less prone to escape but I can't say for certain. (Mind that solubility of gas in liquids is low to begin with) "
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6cb2mo | Did Mart Luther King hate black culture and ebonics? | I heard on a podcast recently that MLK despised Ebonics and black culture, and wished for black people to integrate into white culture, rather than having their own subset. Is this true? Can anyone provide sources - I couldn't find much in google. | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6cb2mo/did_mart_luther_king_hate_black_culture_and/ | {
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"What podcast is this exactly? I'd like to listen to the context."
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clad8z | how codecs interact with video players or other programs | I understand that surface stuff that codecs are the way video/audio are encoded and decoded. What I don't understand is how it works for me as an user. If I install codec pack, does every video player or even eg a game playing a video use that codec? Or does each codec pack always have it's own video player?
MPC-HC comes with codecs for example. Are they only used when using MPC-HC? Or do they work on all stuff I watch that needs codecs? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/clad8z/eli5_how_codecs_interact_with_video_players_or/ | {
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"Your player only uses the codecs that are needed to decode the audio/video. If your player gets a file and says \"Ah, this file is encoded using H264 video and Mpeg 3 audio, it looks at the codecs registered and checks to see if one of them will handle one or both of those needs. If so, then the player plays using the computer code inside those codec files to play back your audio/video. If not, your player then says, \"Hey, I can't play this file. You need to load some codecs\"."
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2cba6d | Is there Arab historian who explains the history regarding creation of Israel and affairs of surrounding Arab nations? | Yes its another question regarding history of modern Israel, but what Im asking for is any bibliography (or reddit historians/reddit post?) which is written by Arabic historian, not Jewish or European/American, inclusively explaining the history surrounding state of Israel, from Jewish immigration, declaration of independence, eventually to 4 times Mid-East war.
We know tayaravaknin had made a remarkable post here _URL_0_ and it was extremely helpful to understand behind the scenes, but most of his source was Jewish historians', and if Im not mistaken he is Jewish (?) American and what boggled me was that among so many of historians explaining this topic are Jewish, other than European or American, but not Arabs, the 1 of main factions of the conflict (if Im not mistaken. Im new to this subreddit).
Its an honest question and hopefully there's an answer. Please be keen to understand Im not asking for Arabic/Palestinian perspective nor Arab point of view / opinion at all; I know where Im at and I want to read historic material. (also Im not native and sorry for English mistakes); Thank you. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2cba6d/is_there_arab_historian_who_explains_the_history/ | {
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"Quick note: Most of those sources are not the only ones I use, and are not the only ones I have access to. They're really just ones I chose to quote from. I have books upon books from all over the spectrum. To answer your question, yes, there are Arab historians who write on the conflict. They tend to be further from the academic norm, but you have to keep in mind when studying the conflict that almost *all* authors differ only on opinion of interpreting facts, not the archival evidence itself. And almost all of that evidence comes from Israeli and other Western archives, because Arab archives and Soviet archives (to some extent) remain closed as far as I've understood. Even Israeli archives are not fully declassified on the subject. However, Arab historians and Israeli historians are often at odds over interpreting the causes of actions because of the difficulties of parsing the evidence, and their respective political beliefs. Some Israeli historians remain at odds.\n\nSome Arab historians (I'm including Arab-Americans/Europeans as an ethnic group, I know that's not necessarily politically correct but it works here IMO) you may like to look into are:\n\n*Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness* by Rashid Khalidi. Largely considered his masterpiece, by the way.\n\n*The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood* by Rashid Khalidi.\n\n*The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem* by Nur Masalha.\n\n*The Palestine Nakba: Decolonising History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory* by Nur Masalha.\n\n*The Question of Palestine* by Edward Said - Dated, but a fantastic Arab insight.\n\n*The Arabs and the Holocaust* by Gilbert Achcar - One of my favorite books, if only for its approach to communication. Sent him an email thank-you before for a quote that particularly sticks with me even today, and he responded very promptly and politely to boot!\n\n*From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem Until 1948* by Walid Khalidi.\n\nThese are some of the books I've come across. They're good, but not necessarily all-encompassing of the conflict, and some are dated. Many provide the same basic facts, but leave out others, as historians tend to do when their political interests are not suited or they err on one side or the other over a fact's interpretation (things as small as crossed out letters in a postcard are sources of disagreement, for example). My post remains, even with my increasing list of books under my belt and in my library, as accurate (if not as encompassing) as I'd like it to be, but if you'd like to read Arab authors specifically on the conflict (unfortunately, many of the books *are* political, moreso than for example Smith's *Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict* or Tessler's *A History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict*) then those are places to start :). Feel free to ask if you have more requests."
]
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"http://bit.ly/1kpG47m"
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|
747tp0 | What is considered the "point of no return" for the Byzantine empire? | Is there any moment in the Byzantine empire's history after which most scholars agree that the empire lost all hope or chances of ever recovering, or was it more of a progressive situation where a singular defeat, victory or decision wouldn't have really changed its end, or the date of that end? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/747tp0/what_is_considered_the_point_of_no_return_for_the/ | {
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"While it was a progressive fall, there were a few moments that could be considered the 'point of no return'. But considering each of these is spread hundreds of years apart, it just goes to show the Byzantines died a very slow death. \n\nFirst of all, the [Battle of Manzikert](_URL_1_) between the Seljuk Turks and the Byzantine Empire, which resulted in Roman defeat and the capture of the Roman Emperor, [Romanus IV Diogenes](_URL_0_). Although it's not considered a disastrous defeat for the Byzantines, it's still considered a huge step back. The Byzantine defeat at the Battle of Manzikert signaled the moment the Turks knew the Byzantines no longer had true authority over Armenia and Anatolia. And the Byzantines would never reclaim all of the land they lost as a result of this battle. \n\nI think most historians agree that the [sacking of Constantinople during the fourth crusade](_URL_2_) was the final nail in the coffin for the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines were never able to fully recover from this, and never reclaimed all the territory they had before the sacking. They were left smaller, poorer, and their weakening power increased the influence of Anatolian Turks, most notably the Sultanate of Rum. And subsequently, the Ottoman Empire. By the time the Ottomans had conquered Constantinople in 1453, the Byzantine Empire had never really recovered from the Fourth Crusade. "
]
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanos_IV_Diogenes",
"http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/imperialism/notes/manzikert.html",
"http://www.roman-empire.net/constant/1203-1204.html"
]
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|
21zee8 | What happens in an aftershock of an earthquake? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/21zee8/what_happens_in_an_aftershock_of_an_earthquake/ | {
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"In terms of the effect of an aftershock, it is exactly the same as the main shock or any other earthquake. That is to say, there is nothing about what we measure on a seismometer that distinguishes it from any other earthquake. An aftershock is an aftershock if it is smaller than the main shock and occurs within a specific distance (usually related to the rupture length of the main shock) and a specific time after the main shock (which is essentially determined by a decay equation called Omori's law).\n\nIn terms of what causes aftershocks, there are two main ideas, referred to as \"static stress\" or \"dynamic stress\". In simple terms, the static stress idea is that the movement along a fault plane that happens during the main shock loads (or adds stress to) other faults nearby or parts of the main fault that did not rupture. This added stress then causes some of these faults to fail in the time following the main shock. Alternatively, the dynamic stress idea is that the main shock does not necessarily load all faults nearby (so no stress is added), but that the shaking from the main shock actually weakens the fault, which will cause it to fail. This weakening can persist well after the shaking has stopped. The distinction is important because the static stress case predicts a more constricted zone of potential aftershocks, whereas the dynamic stress scenario predicts a wider zone of faults that may fail and produce an aftershock.\n\nIf any seismologists stumble upon this answer, my apologies if I did a poor job explaining. I'm just a humble geologist who studies the effects of faults on timescales way beyond the seismic cycle."
]
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||
50x5eo | Do rainbows look different depending on the time of the day? | Do rainbows look different depending on the time of the day / position of the sun?
Also, are they always in the same color order?
(Google won't help me)
Edit: Do some color blind people see a gap in the rainbow? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/50x5eo/do_rainbows_look_different_depending_on_the_time/ | {
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"They are at different angles (they always circle the sun and the spot opposite it) and I suppose if the sun is lower in the sky so the atmosphere filters out more of the higher frequency light so it will be dimmer towards the blue side, but other than that time of day doesn't matter. The rainbow and double rainbow have their color orders reversed. But green is always going to be between red and blue. Colorblind people generally can't distinguish red from green (although it depends on what kind of color blindness it is) but they can still see green. I suppose the green part would be dimmer, but they'd still see a whole rainbow. It's just that it would by red purple blue instead of red yellow green cyan blue.\n\nEdit: If you can't see red I imagine the reddish end would be missing, and likewise if you can't see blue, but that wouldn't really be a gap. Although I guess if you can't see blue you'd still see the bit of red from the violet, so there would be a gap before a very dim red."
]
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[]
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|
6uqe48 | What was the hygiene and self-grooming habits of Ancient Egyptians like? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6uqe48/what_was_the_hygiene_and_selfgrooming_habits_of/ | {
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"The *Tale of Sinuhe* provides a very helpful description of bathing and grooming in ancient Egypt. At this point in the story, Sinuhe, a high-ranking Egyptian official, has just returned to Egypt from self-imposed exile in Canaan, and the king has welcomed him with open arms. Translation from Lichtheim's *Ancient Egyptian Literature*, Volume I (pp. 232-233):\n\n > I left the audience-hall (of the king), the princesses giving me their hands. We went through the great doors, and I was put in the house of a prince. In it were luxuries: a bathroom and mirrors. In it were riches from the treasury: clothes of royal linen, myrrh, and the choice perfume of the king and of his favorite courtiers were in every room. Every servant was at his task. Years were removed from my body. I was shaved, and my hair was combed. Thus was my squalor returned to the foreign land, my dress to the sand-farers. I was clothed in fine linen; I was anointed with fine oil. I slept on a bed. I had returned the sand to those who dwell in it and the tree-oil to those who grease themselves with it. \n\nTo begin with bathing, the Egyptians were unfamiliar with bathtubs, which appeared in [the Aegean](_URL_4_) and elsewhere during the Bronze Age. Instead, most Egyptians bathed in the Nile or canals. The wealthiest Egyptians, like Sinuhe in the tale above, had bathrooms consisting of stone slabs coated with plaster. The bather stood in the bathroom as his servant(s) poured water over him. Once used, the water ran along the floor into a receptacle that was emptied regularly by household servants. Water for houses had to be carried from the river or the nearest well. Wealthy Egyptians used donkeys to transport water from the river to their homes, but poorer Egyptians were forced to rent donkeys; the interest rates were high, and this could drive people into debt quickly. For \"soap,\" the Egyptians used mixtures with lime and/or natron to clean themselves. \n\nEgyptian men were typically clean-shaven, and many examples of bronze razors have been found, such as the wonderful [18th Dynasty razor of Hatnefer](_URL_10_) in the Met Museum. The Egyptians used tweezers for plucking and the removal of lice; the Egyptian museum at Swansea University has an [18th Dynasty example](_URL_11_). Men and women alike kept their hair shaved closed to the scalp and wore [wigs](_URL_8_) over their natural hair. Combs, typically carved out of wood or ivory, are some of the earliest artifacts surviving from ancient Egypt; they were often topped with an incised panel or carved animals, like these [Predynastic combs](_URL_9_). \n\nIn Sinuhe's description of his new home, he mentions mirrors. The Egyptians typically used handheld bronze mirrors, and a popular style of mirror [incorporated the bovine form of Hathor](_URL_1_), a goddess of love and beauty. Both men and women used mirrors, but mirrors became an important symbol of femininity in Egyptian art, and elite women of the Old Kingdom through Middle Kingdom in particular were very often shown holding mirrors or with mirrors in a basket beneath their chairs, as in the Middle Kingdom [stela of Amenemhat](_URL_5_) and the [sarcophagus of Queen Kawit](_URL_3_).\n\nThe Egyptians were fond of makeup. They used [cosmetic palettes](_URL_0_) to grind minerals for eye-paint; malachite was favored in the Old Kingdom (Egyptian *wDw*), but this was gradually replaced by a galena-based mixture (Egyptian *msdmt*). The ground minerals were mixed with oil or fat and water and applied to the eyes using a [kohl pencil](_URL_2_), stored in a faience or glass tube. Eye-paint served a practical function; it was antibacterial, repelled flies, and reduced glare from the sun. \n\nThe ancient Egyptians depicted perfume in art as [triangular cones](_URL_6_) perched in people's hair. It has been proposed that these \"perfume cones\" were mixtures of fats and perfume that ran down over the head as the cone melted, but the general consensus is that the cones were simply an artistic convention to depict the smell of perfume. The Egyptians developed a variety of perfumes consisting of oil and the essence of plants such as myrtle, roses, and marjoram. \n\nEgyptians washed their clothes in the Nile with natron. This was typically a job for the mistress of the house, but if you were wealthy, you could hire people to do your laundry for you. Since these launderers were typically illiterate, some receipts for laundry transactions depicted [drawings of the clothes](_URL_7_) rather than written descriptions.\n\n**Further reading:**\n\nFor an excellent overview of perfumes and scent in ancient Egypt, see Lise Manniche's *Sacred Luxuries: Fragrance, Aromatherapy, and Cosmetics in Ancient Egypt*. For an overview of daily life in Egypt, *Daily Life in Ancient Egypt: Recreating Lahun* by Kasia Szpakowska is quite good. For a technical look at ancient Egyptian textiles, wigs and hair, and oil and fat, see *Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology* edited by Paul T. Nicholson and Ian Shaw.\n\n"
]
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"http://www.kafkaesqueblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Ancient-Egyptians-Perfume-Cones.jpg",
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"http://www.egypt.swan.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/AB58.jpg"
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2rb1g7 | Why do old fashioned projectors show 1 whole image? | The frames are just images on a moving strip of film. Why might we not as well see two parts of two different frames on the screen? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2rb1g7/why_do_old_fashioned_projectors_show_1_whole_image/ | {
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"There's a shutter inside the projector. If the film wasn't aligned properly you occasionally *would* have a situation where you'd see the bottom of 1 frame projected onto the top half of the screen and then the top half of the next frame on the bottom half of the screen. \n\n[Here's a page that has a bunch of information about how early projectors worked, there's a gif of how the shutter worked about halfway down.](_URL_0_)",
"The frames are simply images on a moving strip of film, but the image isn't projected continuously. \n\nThe projector has a [shutter](_URL_1_) and [intermittent mechanism](_URL_0_), so you don't actually see anything while the frames are transitioning. The actual process for the frame would be\n\n1) Advance frame\n2) Open Shutter\n3) Close Shutter\n4) Repeat\n\nAll of this happens in 1/24th of a second, which is fast enough you can't detect the light continuously flashing. If you didn't combine these mechanisms, you would just see a mess of combined frames on the screen. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.graumanschinese.org/projection-1.html"
],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movie_projector#Intermittent_mechanism",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movie_projector#Shutter"
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] |
|
3a3ile | why do the middle east and the indian subcontinent have such a high diversity for religions? | I notice that the Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent are home to: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Yazidism, Zoroastrianism, Bahai'ism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism. Why such a huge diversity of religions in this relatively small area, compared to Africa, Europe, East Asia, Oceania, and the New World ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3a3ile/eli5_why_do_the_middle_east_and_the_indian/ | {
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"A better question is why does Europe and the Americas have a single dominant religion? Christians have been (historically) much less tolerant of minority religions. Up until modern times, the middle east and India were very tolerant of others. Minorities were certainly discriminated against, don't get me wrong, but christians used \"convert or die\" a lot more than any other religion. Essentially, minority religions were exterminated from Christian lands. \n\n(This is speculation now) Most regions consolidated religious and civil authority. The Caliph acted as both religious head and political head. But in Europe the Pope and various kings were always competing for power. Since the pope had no control over non-christians, he would encourage people to convert others so he could control them as well. A Caliph wouldn't give two shits about what religion you were; he can tax you regardless. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
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|
cjbuqh | how hong kong could leave china? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cjbuqh/eli5_how_hong_kong_could_leave_china/ | {
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"War china will attack if they attempt to leave already stated they haven't ruled out forcing Taiwan to submit by force.",
"Outside of some type of armed conflict, there is little reason to believe China would willingly give Hong Kong independence. There certainly remains a possibility that HK remains in a type of state within a state situation that it is now, past the date its supposed to, but even then, China does not seem interested in continuing that solution past the point it has to.\n\nAs a bit more history. When the British turned HK back over to the Chinese, the reason they did it wasn't that the lease was expiring. The Brits could not give two shits about that. China literally threatened to go to war with the UK over it. The UK wasn't interested in a war with China, so instead the UK negotiated a fairly reasonable to them gradual changeover of HK to Chinese rule. Since then, its been a complicated situation as the changes occur and China is being less than nice with regards to HK and its people's demands.\n\nAs of now, there seems to be no interest from the international community to get involved in the HK-China relationship, as that would be direct rebuff to China and everyone wants to keep peace with China to keep trading.",
" > how can Hong Kong leave china?\n\nSame way the US left the Britain; armed revolution.\n\n > But what about the world? Of course, there are some nations like the USA or the U.K that will stand up for Hong Kong and its people but if they do that's a 100% chance they will have to go to war with China.\n\nThe US and UK will do absolutely nothing. Hong Kong isn't worth the trouble.\n\n > Is there a way that Hong Kong could be its own nation peacefully or will it just end up being a diplomatic nightmare that could end with China doing whatever they want.\n\nNo, because China just doesn't work that way. Geopolitically, it **can't**.\n\nChina, historically, has only two states that it ever exists in; a strong nation with a centrally government that *dictates* control to individual areas, or complete anarchy where China is broken up into pieces. China cannot allow Hong Kong to leave, because then other parts (particularly the other cities in Southern China like Macau) will *also* leave. That region has always, historically, been the first part to secede from China in the event of trouble.\n\nGranted, there *are* things that the outside world can do to push things in a favorable direction, but they would likely lead to the breakup of China as a nation-state. Which would be very chaotic in the interim (particularly bad because China has 400 or so nuclear devices that someone would need to secure)."
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8cn6qy | what happens to a human inside a nuclear explosion? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8cn6qy/eli5_what_happens_to_a_human_inside_a_nuclear/ | {
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"If you are within the blast radius and unsheltered then you vaporize. It is an enormous amount of heat and pressure. To be fair this can happen with any sufficiently strong bomb, the danger of a nuclear explosion (other than size of the bomb) is the radiation that follows it. That is a much slower process.\n\nBut yes if you are within the blast radius and have line of sight with the bomb you will be hit with a massive pressure and heat wave that will likely vaporize you where you stand."
]
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[]
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||
2kfu4d | is music in film/tv was actually made for it specifically? what process is followed for composing it? | I have a hard time phrasing exactly what I mean here, but let me try a different way.
Take any lyrics-free song from a TV or movie (say, Star Wars theme or Netflix House of Cards intro theme). Did the composer actually make it for that specific project? Does it require that they learn the actual content of that show? Or do they just pull from some pre-written library of "longing-themed melodies" and say "meh, haven't used this one anywhere, try it out"?
What's the actual process for composing for a project like that, and does it require the artist to know anything about it whatsoever? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kfu4d/eli5_is_music_in_filmtv_was_actually_made_for_it/ | {
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"text": [
"The answer is: both. Many (maybe even most?) productions have original music composed for them. However, lots of shows/films also license specific pre-existing songs for their work if they want to include them."
]
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|
7vj4cz | why do sports video games lag so much more than video games such as gta5 or first person shooters? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7vj4cz/eli5_why_do_sports_video_games_lag_so_much_more/ | {
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"The term \"lag\" has a couple of meanings.\n\n- Network (latency) Lag: This is the original meaning of the phrase. This is caused when it takes a long time for the client (your computer or console) to communicate with the server (the game service or host). Games usually lag here because either the main server is slow (if it connects to a dedicated server); because of an issue in your internet connection (if you live far away from the server it will increase the communication time [your ping] and make the game lag); or because it uses peer-to-peer hosting, where you connect (either directly or through a centralized server) to another player who is hosting the game. This third reason is probably the main reason why you'd experience lag in a modern game when it uses such a system - it will try to connect you to players in the area who have sufficient internet speed, but that is not always the case. Upload speeds (required for the host, who needs to send the game data to the other players) are usually slower than download speeds (required for the other players to get the data from the host), and so if the person has a slower connection, or just slower upload speeds, it will reflect on your latency and cause lag.\n\n- \"Graphical Lag\": This is caused by your system trying to run the game at higher settings than it can support. You'll typically encounter this more on PCs (where you can buy games that are too demanding for what your computer supports) than on consoles (where everyone has a similar configuration and the game is built to support that configuration). This can also be caused by the fact that some games just aren't optimized - ie, they went through a very poor quality control process and have a lot of bugs or inefficiencies in things like how textures load or how graphical settings process, which can cause \"lag\" (performance issues)."
]
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||
36i2xn | What language did Victorian European rulers speak when together? | Learned last night that George V, Wilhelm II, and Nicolas II were all first cousins whose families would often vacation together and come together for events. What language did they speak? German? Or did they have interpreters? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/36i2xn/what_language_did_victorian_european_rulers_speak/ | {
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"I'm not sure about which language was used all the time, but since you mentioned George, Wilhelm and Nickolas, I believe this is relevant:\n\nBefore the outbreak of WWI, Wilhelm of Germany and Nikolas of Russia sent eachother a series of very polite telegrams basically trying to talk eachother out of this whole war business. These were known as the Willy-Nicky correspondence, because that's how the emperors referred to themselves in them. According to [this](_URL_0_), these conversations were in English, which was the two's \"common language\". ",
"Wilhelm and Nicolas sent each other a number of letters and telegrams, the most notable (and in some ways quite chilling) being the telegrams sent during the political maelstrom before the Great War. You can find a scan of an original text [here](_URL_1_) and read the pertinent telegrams [here](_URL_0_).\n\nThese letters seem to have been sent exclusively in English, indeed, Nicolas spoke English at home with his German wife. Whilst I'm not sure of any specific evidence, it's a reasonable assumption that their preferred informal, shared language was English. They certainly wouldn't have needed interpreters.",
"I recently read 'from cradle to crown' by Charlotte Zeepvat which is all about British (and Irish) nannies and governesses who worked in Royal Courts throughout Europe, Russia, Asia, the Middle-East, the Far-East and even South America from the 18th c. to the 20th c. \n\nWhich I recommend for anyone who's interested in the inner workings of Royal Courts, Royal childhoods or the changing role of women and how typically female roles such as child-care became professionalised. \n\nAnyway, I was surprised by the extent to which English was the dominant second, often even first, language of many of these Royal families prior to Queen Victoria's reign. As well as during and after it. \n\nThe Russian Royal family employed British (or Irish) nannies in the late 18th c. and that set a 'keeping up with the Jones' ' fashion for having Royal children educated in English by a native speaker, so they're often learning English as their 'mother' tongue (because they are essentially being raised by nanny) but not their national language until they start formal schooling (or the private equivalent, since they are usually educated at home). These nannies were usually part of a network so the same women would move around different Courts as children grew up and new ones appeared. \n\nAs these careers became professionalised in Britain that created a feedback loop which increased demand from foreign Courts. \n\nThere is a stereotype which emerges, I know not whence, but it is sometimes mentioned in private correspondence when Royal parents and staff are choosing nannies, that British, particularly English, women have a greater maternal instinct and therefore make better teachers and child-minders. I suspect this idea comes from people who were themselves raised by British nannies. \n\nThe process of English being the Lingua Franca of Royalty is accelerated by the growth of the British Empire and by Queen Victoria's fecundity later, but it doesn't start there. It starts in the nursery much earlier. \n\nBy the late 19th. c. the British (or Irish) nanny is an expected fixture in Royal Courts, especially in Europe, but further afield as well. \n\nWilhelm II and Nicolas II both had British nannies and both could write English fluently, so there would not have been any translation issues. I'm not sure if George V could speak German or Russian, but it's mostly likely they would have used English amongst themselves. \n\nJust to be clear, English isn't the language of *court*, that's usually French or the national language. English is the language that's being used when they are interacting with each other as private family members, or with their closest members of staff, as opposed to their public or Royal roles. "
]
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1ljsws | What was pagan (500-600 AD) Arabic society like? Besides the incense and spice trade. | Besides the Red Sea and Persian Gulf trade, what was pagan Arabic society like?
How many people were nobles? Pastoralists? Farmers? Slaves?
Rituals, ceremonies, family structure? (What were some things forbidden after the rise of the Muslims?)
How often did the tribes go to war?
What areas were arable back then? How did herders feed their animals in such a barren area? Was any fishing happening? Honestly, how did people survive?
How many foreigners were there? (since there were Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians all present along the polytheists). | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ljsws/what_was_pagan_500600_ad_arabic_society_like/ | {
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"I like this question and want to add one. To what extent did pagan beliefs persist after Islam was spreading and what happened to those who resisted?",
"The [Nabataeans](_URL_0_) predate your timeframe by about 400 years, but it could at least give you a place to start if you wanted context. And their culture was pretty cool; these are the guys who built Petra.",
"Traditionally, Arabia Felix (Yemen) the area you are referring to was considered to be a lush area. Even today you can find places in Yemen that are not desert. In fact one of the origins of the name means fertile, and the Roman name (Arabia Felix) means \"Happy (lucky/fortunate) Arabia\" noting their spices and agriculture. Most people don't think the desert can be fruitful, but with irrigation desert soil can be very productive. I've seen a lush garden in the Sahara with olives, watermelon, cabbage, and carrots just to name a few. Camels are hardy animals and people today still eat them, and so are goats which are more common. Both animals provide leather, wool, and milk. Fishing is rich around the Arabian peninsula and people have been exploiting this commodity since civilization sprouted in the region, and people still fish. \n\nAlcohol was very popular in the Middle East, which was one of the things that was given up in a large scale with Islam. Although many people in the region still drink. When alcohol is hard to find \"moonshining\" operations pop up making the loved Arak beverage (it's like Greek Ouzo).\n\nA little on paganism and traditional faiths in the current Arab World:\n\nThe Ka'ba in Mecca (~~the black rock that pilgrim encircle during the Hajj~~ it's the building which hold the black rock) has pagan origins. The rock, which many speculate is a meteorite, and the building that houses it contained images and icons of local deities including Christian images. People would make the pilgrimage to pray for their gods, until Muhammad took down pagan icons but kept the tradition of making a pilgrimage (Hajj).\n\nIn addition, Islam in northern African counties such as Morocco contains some \"local flavors\" of the indigenous Berbers. They have \"saints\" ( I'm blanking on the Arabic word for them) which in traditional Sunni Islam is considered to be heretical because mainstream Sunni Islam bans the worship of man or thing besides Allah. \n\nMany mosques hold the relics of these holy men and people make pilgrimages to them, sometimes annually. They will offer objects such as candles. One of the most impressive mosques in the country is in the small mountain town of Moulay Idriss Zerhoun which holds the tomb of Moulay Idriss I who solidified Islam in Morocco. The mosque has the only circular minaret in Africa and offers an alternative to the traditional Hajj to Mecca. Making six trips to the mosque is considered to be one of the traditional Hajj to Mecca, which makes sense when you consider the distance and cost a Hajj would take both in historical times and modern.\n\nAs a side note, if you do visit Fes make a day trip to Moulay Idriss Zerhoun and the wonderful Roman ruins of Volubilis. You will not be disappointed. ",
"I really wish I could cite my sources here, but I've done a lot of reading on the subject of Islam over the years and things get a bit fuzzy but I will do my best to clarify.\n\nI can't attest for it's perfect historical accuracy, but my favorite book on the subject was Destiny Disrupted by Tamim Ansary. He covers a chapter and a bit on what predated Islam.\n\n- One of the more significant aspects of pagan Arabic society was the place of women, in that they had very little place. Widows were often reduced to beggars, as their husband's wealth would be inherited by the brothers and sons and leaving the wife with nothing. Muhammad, growing up around that, did a fair bit to improve the lot of impoverished widows.\n\n- I don't feel confident commenting on the subject of rituals, ceremonies, and family structure as I feel there is a lot to learn and much unpublished in English at this time.\n\n- One of the things to remember is that Arabia at the time was made of of two distinct factions: The merchant 'princes' who were fairly settled and 'civilized', the desert tribes (of which there were dozens if not hundreds) who would find many commonalities with the Bedouin today, and a third power group being Rome who watched and manipulated from the West. The settled princes of Mecca weren't really concerned about the wild tribes, because they were seen as the cost of doing business. You could buy off a tribe or two and sometimes you'd loose a caravan, but ultimately it wasn't enough to affect daily life. Well, until later.\n\n- If Muhammad's life in Medina is any example as to war amongst tribes, they might have gotten into skirmishes quite frequently. Blood feuds were a big deal back then, so if you killed someone from another tribe even if it was for a good reason, it could mean decades of tense standoffs and battles.\n\n- I can't speak with confidence on the area as to farm and livestock, but keep in mind that trade was incredibly prevalent in Arabia during and after the fall of the Roman empire. Sure there were many subsistence level villages and farmsteads on the peninsula, but trade has been going on since the time of Christ almost undisrupted. You need wheat in Medina? Good thing folk from Egypt had a good crop this year. Rich textiles? Persia has been pumping them out for years. And of course the Arabian peninsula is uniquely positioned to trade with China and India, far far before Europe ever made 'contact'.\n\n- Christianity, up until that point, was a very new religion. It had only been around for 300 years before Muhammad started in on Islam, and the idea of evangelizing and converting 'pagans' wasn't that keen in the middle east (better luck amongst the Northmen). Now, a good solid Christian community flourished in Egypt and Syria around that time, but didn't penetrate the peninsula that far. The Jewish faith had been hanging around for hundreds of years at that point, and many Jews were prominent members of the community in and around Medina (at least). Zoroastrians are an interesting bunch, and alas I don't know much as to their history. But unless I'm mistaken they didn't have a whole lot to do with the Arabs until Caliph Omar came in and conquered the Sassanids in 642 CE. As to other foreigners, I can tell you very few from Europe would have had cause or reason to penetrate far past the Mediterranean, as there are few Roman accounts (that I know of) going quite that far.",
"A similar question, \"What was the religion in the Arab world before Islam?\", is in the [FAQ](_URL_0_) and has a few links that shed some good light on the area.\n\nYou might like [this](_URL_1_) particular reply by Daeres.",
"I've always wondered this myself. Another related question I'd like to add is: How did Islam pick up so much from Abrahamic monotheism despite emerging in a traditionally Arabic pagan environment? This has always confused me.",
"There were families, that belongs to clans, that belonged to a greater tribe. Each tribe would have a \"body\" or center city state area. These city areas would have arms and legs, that would be areas where they migrated to and from, to trade, find oasises...oasi...whatever...or to do battle. Some clans and families were constantly nomadic, going up and down the \"legs\" and \"arms\" of their territory year round. Some were completely sedentary.\n\nMost of the trade came up from Yemen. So for 6 months of the year, the clans would live in those city-states along Western Saudi Arabia (The hijaz), and the other six months, they'd travel north with trade goods from India and live in the Levant (which was Roman/Byzantine).\n\nNobility usually rested with the chief of a tribe, or with wealthy traders. Wealth was wealth, and gender did not matter, but it was much harder for a woman to attain wealth, obviously. In terms of sedentary tribesman, cities formed around an oasis, which would water the farm. slaves existed, usually prisoners of war. They were treated extremely badly before the advent of Islam.\n\nIn terms of rituals, there was the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca, that Christians, Jews, and Pagans all visited, but it was dominated by pagans. There were also a yearly event that took place for a month, where all Arab tribes would cease war, and have poetry contests, talking about their victories over other tribes, or the history of their tribes, heroes, or deities. Arab pagans had at least 200 known gods and goddesses, with the moon god being the dominant one. The moon god went by different names between each tribe, but in Mecca, it was call \"The god\" (in Arabic, that is Allah, where the word for the monotheist God comes from, used by Arabic speaking Christians, Muslims, and Jews). The moon god was important, but not as important as his 3 daughter gods, which I can't remember off the top of my head.\n\ninstances of raids by Arab tribes varied. nomadic ones raided more often, since they did not have a stable food source through farms.\n\nBattles done by Arab tribes were relatively civilized. Since living in the Arabian desert was harsh and brutal, and people died for natural causes all the time, war was something everyone wanted to prevent, all the time. When war happened, often times, they'd have the 3 best warriors of 1 tribe face the 3 best of another. The survivors won the war, without a large scale battle having to take place. Large battles did occur in more dire situations, or simply when one side was angry enough to go to war.\n\nThe middle of the Arabian peninsula and the area close to the southern border was were completely barren. The coasts had some land, but it was mostly rocky, and hard to farm. Oasis farming was the best option.\n\nYou ask how people survive? barely, basically. If it wasn't for trade with the Persians, Romans, and Indians, they probably wouldn't have survived. Additionally, women were so valuable, they were protected at all costs. Even during war, women taken by the other side would simply be taken as wives for soldiers. They weren't raped or killed (children usually weren't, either) because the need for children was extremely important. polygamy was common because women outnumbered men, since men were traveling and dying in the desert, or in battle.\n\nIn the Peninsula, there were Jewish and Christian tribes. They were completely Arabic, belonging to the Arab tribes and speaking Arabic. They were not foreigners. Greeks, Copts (Egyptians) and Persians were the foreigners, and none of those people wanted to go into that desert unless they had to for trade."
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49teem | how can pulling one smalle piece of skin out from beside the nail hurt for so long? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49teem/eli5_how_can_pulling_one_smalle_piece_of_skin_out/ | {
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"Think about all of the touching and feeling we do with our fingertips- you can sense hot and cold, pick up a tiny pin or gently touch a baby bird- we have extensive nerve endings in our finger tips. \nThese abundant nerve endings are why injuries in the same area are so painful. \nBe aware that picking at hangnails is not a good idea- an infection in this area is exceedingly close to the bones of your fingers and can get out of hand quickly.",
"To expand on what /u/gooberfaced said about infections, you currently have one in your wound. That is because the area beneath your nails is *filthy*. Of course, if you open a wound connected to that area, the bacteria think \"oh, look, there's food and warmth and shelter, let's to there!\". Those bacteria then hinder wound healing which is why the wound is still open and in pretty much the same (or actually *worse*) state than when you opened it.\n\nSo wash and desinfect it (only do this for small surface wounds) and if you can't keep your hands clean put a bandaid on it for a day."
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wiw4o | obama's fiscal record | I found two deeply contrasting articles ([1](_URL_0_) [2](_URL_1_) but I don't have the necessary background knowledge to sift out which is the unbiased article. Can someone set me straight? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/wiw4o/eli5_obamas_fiscal_record/ | {
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"There isn't an unbiased article. Determining how good Obama's fiscal record is requires determining what counts as a fiscal record and what counts as *his* fiscal record; both of those are political questions with no unbiased answer.",
"The problem is definition. Does everything that happen after January 20 2009 count as Obama no matter when the law was passed? Or does only new spending only count if it was passed by congress after January 20th? Does automatic increases in spending on social programs count as \"expanding government\" or is it simply that a down economy means more people qualify for social assistance programs?\n\nThere is no objective answer like Amarkov said simply because there is no universal definition. If you don't count automatic increases, then yes Obama has grown government at the slowest rate since Eisenhower. If you count everything government does he has had more people on food stamps since the early days of the program. If you look at government nominally, it has grown very little. If you look at government as a percentage of GDP it has grown tremendously (same with the debt). \n\nAnd it's further complicated by the fact that Obama is not really \"in charge\" of the government spending, since Congress has more power in spending then he does. If Obama tried to do what Nixon did and withhold money he would be in violation of the constitution, he must spend every cent Congress tells him he must spend, it's not his choice. Does Obama get penalized for extending the Bush tax cuts without offsetting their cost or is that growth in debt Congress's fault? Budgets must be written and passed by Congress (though the president is required to submit a proposed budget), does that free Obama from responsibility of anything?\n\nWithout clear definitions there are many answers to that one question."
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1k9xa7 | fans blowing cold air. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1k9xa7/eli5_fans_blowing_cold_air/ | {
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"This is a pretty common question, though you did a good job phrasing it. Try using the search function first next time. I personally think that the best answers are in [this thread](_URL_0_), just make sure you scroll past my comment because I was being overly simple."
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3cfovo | Did the American Civil War have any impact on European military theory? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3cfovo/did_the_american_civil_war_have_any_impact_on/ | {
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"Not to discourage other responses, but [this thread](_URL_1_) discusses whether Europeans were brought over to help command American troops, and [this thread](_URL_0_) discusses what, if any, impact the war had on military leadership in WWI.",
"According to C.J. Chivers' *The Gun*, it was the first time a rapid fire gun was used in combat situations. The Gatling Gun did not have a significant tactical or strategic impact on the outcome of the American Civil War, but it was a subtle hint to European powers that war was changing.\n\nWhile Europeans were certainly watching the American Civil War, there were plenty of contemporary European Continental wars that were having a much more immediate impact on European war-making. The hugely influential Franco-Prussian War took place five years after the American Civil War, from 1870-1871, and in my humble opinion, was far more influential in bringing about modern warfare than the American Civil War.",
"The secopnd thread /u/Tsaihi links provides a pretty concrete answer. It didn't. At least not in any meaningful way. \n\n A very good source is JFC Fuller's Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant. It covers some of the tactics and technology used in the Civil war. \n\nThere are a multitude of reasons why, but at the end of the day, there were very few lessons from the American Civil war that European generals either (a) hadn't already learned, or (b) didn't think were worth learning. Some of this was old world snobbery. Remember, at the beginning of the civil war America had only been independent 85 years and had only been organized as a country about 70 years, it was mostly agricultural, and was seen as a backwater to much of Europe. The American military was largely amateur, compared to professional Armies in Europe, and its armies were dwarfed by those of the continental European powers. \n\nOn the other hand, the Crimean War of 1853-56, involved many of the same lessons for England and Russia that the Union and Confederacy learned about troop movement by railroad and the power of new artillery pieces with rifled barrels and explosive shells. See Royle, Trevor (2000). Crimea: The Great Crimean War, 1854–1856\n\nIn the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, railroads were again key to mobilization on both sides, and the [dryse needle gun](_URL_1_) and the French Chassepot Rifles were among the first \"repeating rifles\" used en masse by armies. (it was bolt action compared to the the lever action Spencer repeating rifle and Henry Repeating used in the US, but had the same fundamental impact of drastically increasing the rate of fire that could be put out by a given number of soldiers). \n\n\nTypically when people talk about the bloody-ness of the civil war, they are often echoing General James Longstreet, who wrote in his diary that the new way of war necessitated defensive tactics, believing that men in fortifications with modern weapons could not be easily displaced by traditional massed infantry assaults of the Napoleonic era. It was this belief that led Longstreet to argue with Lee about Lee's planned assault on the Union Center during the third day of the battle of Gettysburg (what would become known as Pickett's charge). \n\nA Equivalent european lesson might be the [Battle of Gravelotte](_URL_0_) in 1870 in the Franco Prussian war. A Prussian army of 188,000 men intercepted a retreating french army of about 112,000. The french dug in along a ridge line and the prussians assaulted en masse supported by artillery bombardment, not all that differently from Confederate actions on the third day of the battle of gettysburg. In a single day of battle more than 12,000 prussian soldiers were ~~killed~~ Casualties and 8000 french soldiers were ~~killed~~ Casualties That's roughly half of what the battle of Gettysburg was over three days. ",
"I can't speak to tactics in general, but I can speak to the standard infantry small arm; in that realm, the American Civil War did not affect European military thinking.\n\nThe standard weapon of the Union was the 1861 Springfield. The Springfield was a muzzle-loading rifle that fired a .58 caliber, round nose, hollow-based conical bullet, and it used percussion caps to ignite the main powder charge. \n\nIt was, in every way, technologically equal to the service rifles that had become standard throughout Europe about a decade earlier. A few European countries, most notably Prussia, had already taken the next technological step: adapting a breech-loading rifle as their standard arm. \n\nThere was, however, one area where the American Civil War saw a major technological advance: the usage of a not-insignificant number of *repeating* rifles that could hold multiple self-contained metallic cartridges within an internal magazine, specifically, the [Spencer](_URL_1_) and [Henry](_URL_0_) lever action rifles. \n\nBoth rifles offered a vastly increased rate of fire compared to muzzle-loaders, and yet they still remained reliable for battlefield usage. Their ammunition also had a massive advantage over previous ammunition, as the self-contained metallic cartridge is vastly more reliable in damp conditions than a paper cartridge (or loose gunpowder). Though they suffered a decrease in range compared to a muzzle loading rifle, they were vastly more effective at short range. \n\nIn the years immediately after the Civil War, the armies of the world were looking to replace their muzzle-loading rifles. However, no major country adopted a magazine fed rifle for the standard arm, instead choosing to adopt single-shot breech-loaders. France, in fact, in 1866 adopted a new breech-loading rifle (the Chassepot) and did not even bother to use metallic cartridges. It would not be until the 1880's that magazine-fed rifles became the standard arm across the world.",
"One thing that I think a lot of people discount when trying to argue that the Civil War had little to no impact on the mentality of European military thinking, is that the Civil War *solidified* many already drawn conclusions.\n\nIf one looks at [this map](_URL_1_), you can see that France is roughly the size of the state of Texas. What does this have to do with anything you might ask?\n\nThe absolute importance of railroad and telegraph communication. For example, the Vicksburg Campaign of 1863, took up an operational area the size of all of the West Coast of France below Brittany. That's roughly 32,000 square miles. \n\nThe logistics of this theater were largely based around the main rail lines running North to South and East to West in the state, and were the largest means of rapidly moving reinforcements up to fifty miles in a day. In [this map](_URL_0_), you can see that the area of the Crimea Campaign barely comprises the center of the State of Mississippi, but also almost the entire Northern Virginia theater of the Civil War. \n\nDuring the Civil War, Lincoln was daily apprised of events as far away as the Indian Territory, Missouri, and Mississippi, on an hourly scale, giving him overview of military operations hundreds of miles away in the space of time, where if he so chose, he could give real time orders to influence a battle in progress.\n\nWhile the Europeans relied upon telegraphs and railroads in their wars of the 1840's and 50s, the Civil War demonstrated conclusively that they had become indispensable tools of war as the scale of distance and size of operational theaters dwarfed entire countries of Europe. Entire armies could be moved, resupplied, and remain in communication on a scale unheard of in history thanks to the extensive rail and telegraph system.",
"Can I piggyback on this question and ask whether European military events in the earlier half of the 19th century, like the revolutions of 1848, have any influence on the lead up to the American Civil War?",
"One thing I heard in class, is that it had an impact on railroad construction...\nIt is said that this is the first war with quick redeployment of troops (thanks to the trains)\nEuropean countries soon realized that different sizes of rails would prevent quick foreign invasions.",
"Yes, significantly. The introduction of a bored cannon for accuracy and affect (30-pdr Parrott Rifled Cannon) on Fort Pulaski during the Civil War proved that there was no safe fortress of fortification in Europe. _URL_0_ _URL_1_ ",
"I went back and revisited the applicable chapter of McElwee's *The Art of War: Waterloo to Mons* (entitled nicely \"War Conducted by Amateurs: The American Civil War.\" McElwee taught at Sandhurst in the '60s.) McElwee makes three points not here-to-fore made and/or rebutted. The first:\n > Of the technical observers it was the Engineers who came back with the most useful information. This was, after all, a sphere in which the the amateur was the more professional and could comfortably outmatch the military specialist; and it was a war in which the smashing up of railways, bridges, tunnels, and their repair bulked particularly large in tactics. They brought back, therefore, especially from watching the Construction Corps of the Northern army, some remarkable accounts of bridges of record length rebuilt in record time, and much valuable information on the techniques of railway demolition and repair, though none of the European armies save the Russian made much use of it in their subsequent campaigns. They also learnt a lot about the hasty construction of gun emplacements and field fortifications for both infantry and calvary, all of which might have been of great value in the immediate future if the General Staffs had cared to make use of it.\n\nSecond, McElwee is of unstinting high regard for Sherman:\n > It was not until *1928* that Sherman's strategy of the 'Indirect Approach' was thoroughly analysed and reduced to its first principles by Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, and they were not put into practice with ruthless clarity and success until the battle of Alamein.\n\nAnd third:\n > Forrest and Morgan were the only two generals who right from the start adopted the tactic of using their horses for movement only and fighting on foot. ... Simultaneously with this development of the use of exclusively mounted forces for long-distance raids, the American generals evolved an entirely new technique for using large masses of cavalry as a component of a lightly equipped force of all arms to operate independently of a main army against an enemy's flank or rear."
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n45l0 | Why don't we have Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors? | From what I gathered from the first 20 minutes of [this video](_URL_0_), I don't see any reason for why these aren't built immediately. What are the drawbacks? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/n45l0/why_dont_we_have_liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactors/ | {
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"**On the video**\n\nThat video is a promotional ad for the company \"Flibe Energy\". They are looking for investment funding – of course they're trying to make it look like a guaranteed winning technology.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nSorensen is talking about all these ideas like he can demonstrate them in practice but his company is at least 5 years away from getting their first prototypes to criticality. There's a *lot* of work before any of this will be commercialised. I'm not saying it can't happen but you need to balance the promise with the potential that it will fail for any number of technical or commercial reasons that have dead-ended numerous molten salt reactor research and engineering projects in the past.\n\n**On liquid fluoride thorium reactors**\n\nThe advantage of molten salt thorium reactors is supposed to be that you load them with fuel and they safely provide energy for a long period without intervention.\n\nUnfortunately, it hasn't worked in practice.\n\nContaining molten fluoride for long periods with neither leaks nor corrosion is so extremely difficult that it makes the reactors extremely expensive due to very expensive materials and manufacturing requirements and it still requires extensive maintenance.\n\nThe potential beryllium and hydrogen fluoride byproducts are both really toxic, in addition to the standard radioactive concerns of nuclear power.\n\nThe high neutron fluxes and high temperatures also destroy the moderator elements, presenting additional challenges (they need to be replaceable, which is very difficult).\n\ntl;dr despite seeming simple, cheap and low maintenance (especially when considering that they avoid the disadvantages of typical nuclear reactors), liquid fluoride thorium reactors have many unique design difficulties that make them complicated, expensive and require extensive maintenance.",
"[Here is an answer](_URL_0_) from our resident Molten Salt Reactor expert!\n\nEDIT: I've attached their response here. Please follow the link above and upvote ZeroCool1 for their effort!\n\n----\n**ZeroCool1**\n\nFirst of all, I suggest everyone read this: [_URL_1_](_URL_1_)\n\nFour problems with the MSR\n\n-Uses ultra expensive Hastelloy-N Alloy to house the salts. Its not even made anymore, but can be made.\n\n-Fluoride salt corrodes cheaper metals, such as 316 SS.\n\n-The vast expertise of MSRE is only on paper now (a lot of dudes are dead, a few remain), so we are literally duplicating all the experiments done from 1950-1960. Right now my thesis project is designing a batch purifier, which will make 52 kg of salt at a time. Alternative purification gases such as nitrogen trifluoride are being tested.\n\n-Was designed under the premise that uranium was scarce, so that thorium breeding had to be done. That turned out not to be the case.\n\nMore minor problems\n\n-Beryllium fluoride is not produced in batches high enough for a reactor. Took me 5+ months of search and back and forth with Materion to gain 100 kg of it. Its also some of the nastiest crap in hell.\n\n-Seals are the biggest hassle ever with molten salt. Everything needs to be welded shut. Pipe connects have to be done with VCR, which still leak.\n\n----",
"I'll take any questions you have. Someone posted my comment from before. I might add a few things here.",
"**On the video**\n\nThat video is a promotional ad for the company \"Flibe Energy\". They are looking for investment funding – of course they're trying to make it look like a guaranteed winning technology.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nSorensen is talking about all these ideas like he can demonstrate them in practice but his company is at least 5 years away from getting their first prototypes to criticality. There's a *lot* of work before any of this will be commercialised. I'm not saying it can't happen but you need to balance the promise with the potential that it will fail for any number of technical or commercial reasons that have dead-ended numerous molten salt reactor research and engineering projects in the past.\n\n**On liquid fluoride thorium reactors**\n\nThe advantage of molten salt thorium reactors is supposed to be that you load them with fuel and they safely provide energy for a long period without intervention.\n\nUnfortunately, it hasn't worked in practice.\n\nContaining molten fluoride for long periods with neither leaks nor corrosion is so extremely difficult that it makes the reactors extremely expensive due to very expensive materials and manufacturing requirements and it still requires extensive maintenance.\n\nThe potential beryllium and hydrogen fluoride byproducts are both really toxic, in addition to the standard radioactive concerns of nuclear power.\n\nThe high neutron fluxes and high temperatures also destroy the moderator elements, presenting additional challenges (they need to be replaceable, which is very difficult).\n\ntl;dr despite seeming simple, cheap and low maintenance (especially when considering that they avoid the disadvantages of typical nuclear reactors), liquid fluoride thorium reactors have many unique design difficulties that make them complicated, expensive and require extensive maintenance.",
"[Here is an answer](_URL_0_) from our resident Molten Salt Reactor expert!\n\nEDIT: I've attached their response here. Please follow the link above and upvote ZeroCool1 for their effort!\n\n----\n**ZeroCool1**\n\nFirst of all, I suggest everyone read this: [_URL_1_](_URL_1_)\n\nFour problems with the MSR\n\n-Uses ultra expensive Hastelloy-N Alloy to house the salts. Its not even made anymore, but can be made.\n\n-Fluoride salt corrodes cheaper metals, such as 316 SS.\n\n-The vast expertise of MSRE is only on paper now (a lot of dudes are dead, a few remain), so we are literally duplicating all the experiments done from 1950-1960. Right now my thesis project is designing a batch purifier, which will make 52 kg of salt at a time. Alternative purification gases such as nitrogen trifluoride are being tested.\n\n-Was designed under the premise that uranium was scarce, so that thorium breeding had to be done. That turned out not to be the case.\n\nMore minor problems\n\n-Beryllium fluoride is not produced in batches high enough for a reactor. Took me 5+ months of search and back and forth with Materion to gain 100 kg of it. Its also some of the nastiest crap in hell.\n\n-Seals are the biggest hassle ever with molten salt. Everything needs to be welded shut. Pipe connects have to be done with VCR, which still leak.\n\n----",
"I'll take any questions you have. Someone posted my comment from before. I might add a few things here."
]
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"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4"
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"http://energyfromthorium.com/pdf/MSadventure.pdf"
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"http://energyfromthorium.com/pdf/MSadventure.pdf"
],
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|
1qiv81 | Do tree rings always correspond to a year? | I don't know why - but that just doesn't seem right to me.
I've been taught that each ring corresponds to a year, but is it true? Are there variations? What's so special about a year? How would seasons affect it? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1qiv81/do_tree_rings_always_correspond_to_a_year/ | {
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"No. They correspond to periods of rapid and slow growth, which is usually caused by the yearly changes in light and rain availability.\n\nFor this reason, trees which live in deserts or areas with rapidly changing availability of resources often do not give accurate tree ring counts (over or under-producing them). \n\nWhich is not to say that we don't USE them, but just that our error bars might be a little wider in certain environments. ",
"Forest ecology PhD student here. Only tree species found in temperate regions with extreme annual fluctuations in climate have rings that reliably correspond to a year. This is because trees grow rapidly in warm weather and very little in cold. Tropical species largely do not have rings at all due to the relatively consistent climate throughout the year, and even if they do, they certainly do not reliably represent yearly growth (the age of a tropical tree cannot be determined by its rings). Even within temperate zones that have climates perfectly suitable for 'ring-counting', certain species are more reliable than others. Ring-porous species such as oaks are particularly good for dendrochronology work. White oak is probably considered the 'model' species for doing dendro- work. Black-cherry on the other hand is particularly difficult to work with. "
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21lm3o | How were various countries able to stay neutral during WWII? | I am currently in a class that is discussing America from 1929 to 1960 and obviously our involvement in WWII has been a discussion. During class my professor put a slide up that showed some of the neutral countries during the war. He did not have time to discuss their neutrality because it is a class focusing on the U.S. specifically. It would appear that some of these countries eventually got involved with troops and help(Turkey declared war in 1945, Sweden and Portugal sent troops). I am most intrigued by Switzerland's neutrality. I understand that their geography and mass amounts of soldiers helped keep Hitler and Nazi Germany out, where there any other factors like financial, political, social that kept them out? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/21lm3o/how_were_various_countries_able_to_stay_neutral/ | {
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"Switzerland's survival came down almost entirely to the fact that Hitler felt other things were more important. Terrain and troop numbers played a minimal role in the decision not to invade Switzerland. \n\nSome Background:\n\nHitler hated Swtizerland, even though they were German, they had been corrupted by democracy and he despised the country for its strict neutrality. He lovingly referred to Switzerland as the \"Pimple\" on the face of Europe. After the invasion of France and the Low Countries, Switzerland was to be next on the list. Field Marshal Leeb was set to head the invasion and he began studying the terrain and planning the invasion. However, other things came up and the operation was put on hold (no one is quite sure what events caused the postponement, most likely Britain's stout resistance, but its open to debate) until Germany could defeat its other more threatening enemies. Since this never happened Switzerland survived. \n\nSource:\n\nA World At Arms by Gerhard Weinberg.",
"What? Sweden did not send troops.\n\nAll neutral countries that were invaded were invaded by the Germans (Norway only narrowly though, as the Allied invasion force already was on its way when the Germans invaded) because the Germans had strategic aims that required them to invade said countries.\n\nLet's go through the minor nations of Europe and why they were involved.\n\n**Neutrals invaded**\n\nPoland: Invaded by the Germans 1st of September 1939 since the Germans wanted to reclaim Danzig, the Polish corridor and other territory lost to Poland 1919.\n\nDenmark: Invaded by the Germans 9th of April 1940 as it was required as a springboard for the invasion of Norway. The Danish government and army were allowed to continue to exist until 1943, when they was dissolved amongst strikes and sabotage against German interests in Denmark.\n\nNorway: Invaded by the Germans 9th of April 1940. Wanting to secure submarine bases, the ore trade from Sweden and believing that the British might be on their way, the Germans invaded Norway.\n\nBelgium: Invaded by the Germans 10th of May 1940 as a stepping stone towards France.\n\nLuxembourg: Invaded by the Germans 10th of May 1940 as a stepping stone towards France.\n\nThe Netherlands: Invaded by the Germans 10th of May 1940 to secure the flank and supply lines of the invasion of France.\n\nGreece: Invaded by the Italians 28th of October 1940, mostly because Mussolini wanted to increase his influence on the Balkans and the Germans had stationed troops in Romania without informing Italy.\n\nYugoslavia: Invaded by the Germans, Italians, Hungarians and Bulgarians 6th of April 1941 after a British-sponsored (and widely popular) coup had replaced the government that had signed a transit agreement to allow German troops to attack Greece.\n\n**German allies**\n\nFinland had been attacked by the Soviet Union on the 30th of November 1939, and had been provoced by the Soviets for a re-match during Spring and Summer 1940. Talks of a state union with Sweden failed, and the Germans offered arms and German troops to help protect Finland. The Finns accepted. When the Germans attacked the Soviets from Finnish soil in Operation Barbarossa on the 22nd of June 1941, the Soviets attacked Finnish troops on the 25th of June 1941, and Finland joined the war against the Soviet Union.\n\nSlovakia: A German client-state since the dissolution of Czechoslovakia 15th of March 1939.\n\nRomania: Joined the axis powers on the 23rd of November 1940, after a coup which placed authoritarian rightwingers in the government after the previous government had given away Dobrudja to Bulgaria, Moldavia to the Soviets and parts of Transylvania to Hungary (all of which was supported by the Germans).\n\nHungary: Fought Slovakia for the southern part of the country and Ruthenia 23rd of March 1939, then joined Germany as an axis power 20th of November 1940, to get support for their territorial claims. Then partook in the invasion of the Soviet Union.\n\nBulgaria: Joined the axis powers to partake in the invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece in 1941.\n\nCroatia: Was created as a German puppet state after the invasion of Yugoslavia 1941. Send a reinforced volunteer regiment to the Eastern Front (which fought at Stalingrad) and fought Tito's partisans and the Chetnicks (Yugoslav royalist partisans who eventually switched sides).\n\n**Neutrals not invaded**\n\nSpain and Germany held talks about a Spanish entry into the war. However, Spain was devastated after the Civil War and Franco knew Spain quickly would lose its remaining colonies to the British in case of an entrance into the war. Thus he demanded huge amounts of supplies, food, raw materials and weapons for Spain to join the war. Spain sent a volunteer division to the Eastern Front (which was a convenient way for Franco to get rid of some of the most fervent fascists in Spain) and exported vital raw materials such as tungsten to Germany, and covertly allowed German submarines to use their ports. Spain did sell the Germans all they needed from Spain, and still had a decently large army, and was a friendly if stingy country, so it was never invaded.\n\nPortugal was under the rule of a right-wing autocratic government under Salazar, but showed no interest at partaking in the war. The Japanese actually invaded Portuguese Timor, but the meagre Portuguese garrison did not offer resistance. Portugal was also a supplier of vital tungsten to Germany, and an economic war was conducted in which the allies tried to buy as much tungsten as possible to deny it to the Germans, and the Germans of course doing the same thing. Portugal saw which way things were leaning and gave the British and Americans basing rights on the Azores (which was important for anti-submarine warfare) in exchange for modern arms. Without control of Spain, it was not possible for the Germans to invade Portugal.\n\nTurkey was under a dictatorship, and benefitted from all powers trying to woo her to their side. France, Britain, the Soviet Union and Germany all sold arms to Turkey at reduced prices. Turkey did sell vital chrome (needed to produce armour plate) to Germany, but did declare war in 1945, without comitting any troops. Turkey had a decently large army, arms and promises of support from many nations and was placed far off. As the Germans mostly got what they needed from Turkey, there was no reason to invade.\n\nSweden was a democracy dominated by the social democratic party. Sweden sold wood pulp, paper, lumber, ball bearings and above all iron ore to Germany. Sweden was dependent on German coal. Sweden provided massive aid to Finland during the winter war, including a reinforced brigade of 8 250 men of volunteers, entirely equipped and supplied by Sweden. The Swedish army was weak 1940 when Norway and Denmark fell to the Germans, and Sweden had to agree to several degrading concessions to the Germans, including the right for non-armed German troops to travel on Swedish railroads to and from Norway for their leave. A one-time transport of a fully armed German division from Norway to Finland was also allowed. As the war progressed and turned in allied favour, Sweden reduced and eliminated these concessions and stopped selling iron ore to Germany. Sweden also trained Norwegian and Danish refugees as \"Police\" (in reality regular infantry with HMGs, LMGs, SMGs, rifles, AA guns, mortars etc) and these units were allowed to return to their home countries when the Germans in Norway and Denmark surrendered. Sweden had plans to attack the Germans in Norway and Denmark should they not have surrendered. The Germans did throw their weight around with Sweden quite a bit, but got more dependent on Swedish ball bearings as the war progressed. As the Swedish army got stronger and the Germans had more and more problems, the likelyhood that the Germans would be able to drag men and weapons from the Eastern Front to invade Sweden became smaller and smaller. Early war, the Germans got all they wanted from Sweden, late war, they would have had to weaken a front more than they wanted to invade.\n\nSwitzerland supplied the Germans with arms and a banking establishment. The Swiss themselves were not too impressed with the German claim that all German-speakers should be united under one nation, as their confederation worked quite well. The unwillingness of the German-speaking Swiss to be Germans annoyed the nazis a lot. The Swiss army was strong, as were their defence plans and fortifications, while the strategic resources available were small to non-existent. Invading Switzerland would most likely have been too costly to be worth the effort.\n\nIreland: While there were some resentment towards the British, many Irish joined the British army or worked in British factories and British mines during the war. While the Germans made some secret attempts at negotiating with the Irish, they knew they would not stand a chance against the British and that any German support would be blocked by the Royal Navy.\n\n",
"I've written about Spain in the past, [so you may find this piece interesting.](_URL_0_)\n\nIn a nutshell though, Spain was devastated by its Civil War still. Franco knew he owed the Axis powers big-time for their assistance, but was always looking out for Spain's interests first and foremost. Although the Blue Division volunteers were allowed to go serve in the East, he made sure to avoid antagonism of the Western Allies, and the Blue Division withdrew once pressure - both allied and domestic - became to much.\n\nIn dealing with Germany, Franco did make an offer to help Germany in 1940, but it was rejected, as he asked for huge concessions to join the Axis powers. Germany didn't think they needed the help. Later, when things weren't looking so good for the Axis, Franco rejected essentially the same offer he himself had made in 1940."
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1bcjo5 | How is it the chain across Constantinople's harbour was so effective? | It clearly must've been if Mehmet decided to go around it, but it just feels to me that a ship going sufficiently fast enough would've had enough momentum to tear the chain from whatever it was anchored to. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1bcjo5/how_is_it_the_chain_across_constantinoples/ | {
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"The chain was anchored to specially designed towers on both sides of the horn the [tower of Christ](_URL_0_) was the anchor point on the northern shore during the siege of 1453, I've never seen a direct reference to the other anchor point so I do not know what that one was (not to be confused with the older tower on the northern shore that was destroyed during the 4th crusade)\n\n The chain was also not free standing during the siege of 1453, it was floated on wooden supports (barrels according to some, barges to others), This gave the chain support and made it difficult to simply snap or tear out from it's anchor point, the water would also act to absorb some of the impact from an attempt at ramming.\n\nThe area was also well known for strong currents that could smash your ships into the shores if you where not careful. So you could not just linger around and keep batting at the chain, you would need to keep your ships somewhere out of firing range and anchored.\n\nIt's not just about how fast something moves, but the weight and momentum behind it. A thick chain, floated on barrels and given some slack, would be highly resistant to a ramming attack.\n\nThe only handy source I have for this (I confirmed a few details from it) [the fall of Constantinople: the Ottoman conquest of Byzantium](_URL_1_) It briefly mentions the tower, floats and currents on page 118 and 119."
]
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"http://books.google.ca/books?id=BDtiMmArKaAC&dq=constantinople+chain+anchor+points&source=gbs_navlinks_s"
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|
f9iwjx | why is it that drinking ice cold water doesn’t feel like as much of a shock than if you were to pour ice cold water over your head? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f9iwjx/eli5_why_is_it_that_drinking_ice_cold_water/ | {
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"Mouth is inside of your body and more desensitized to temperature extremes. For example, you may be able to drink a hot coffee that would feel too hot to put your hand in. \n\nAlso, your head and feet are responsible for regulating the majority of your body temperature. This is why you can become quickly overheated in a hat and socks+shoes with activity and/or warm weather, and why exposing your feet from underneath a blanket can help you feel cooler at night. \n\nIt’s surely a part of survival instinct, since drinking ice cold water is a fairly modern novelty. If our ancestors heads felt such a freezing cold temperature on their heads, it would be from the weather, then that means their limbs are at risk from the cold temperatures. But drinking cool water is rewarding as in nature it would come from a glacier or spring, and less likely to have nasty bacterial growths like a puddle of warm, stagnant water."
]
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3rg2cb | why do we think media coverage of mass shootings encourage more mass shootings, but violent movies and video games have no effect or even discourage it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3rg2cb/eli5_why_do_we_think_media_coverage_of_mass/ | {
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"The theory is that a person would do something terrible, knowing that even though they will die, they will always be remembered, because the news will make them famous.\n\nMovies and video games don't make regular people famous, unless it's a documentary.",
"\"Hey he got his name publicized and everybody found out who he was because he did that. I bet if I do it they'll make me famous too!\" < real life coverage\n\n\"Oh hey an animated video game, movie, song, ect, neat art, and enjoyable.\" < entertainment\n\nVideo games desensitize quickly to anything happening in that world, but it's quick to see that you're not going to fly or have a jet pack or be able to get shot and keep going in real life. Media coverage of mass shootings promotes the idea that the shooter will be come (in)famous.",
"Disclaimer: When you say \"mass shootings\" when put in comparison to violent video games, I assume you are talking about school shootings and crimes done by children.\n\nMy reasoning, it isn't real. \n\nWhen I say that, I don't mean that because kids have a strong understanding of real and fake. I mean it just isn't spoken about the same way.\n\nWhile games are just written off as tasteless or unhealthy; mass shootings are basically glorified as the 'unspeakable tragedy' that it is.\n\nWhat that does is basically tell violent children that they have the option to be remembered in history forever as a killer and get some attention in their probably attention starved life."
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3s7xum | why is heathrow's expansion such a controversial issue? | Heathrow is basically is at its capacity and they want to expand the airport. The plans are for a new runway and terminal. What I'm curious about is why the London or even the British public is so against the idea? I feel like it would only help them economically and being an island nation, there's not many options on how to go inside and out of the country.
We just expanded the airport where I live (new runway and expanded terminal) and there weren't any issues there. So again, why are Londoners so against Heathrow's expansion when they don't have other options? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3s7xum/eli5_why_is_heathrows_expansion_such_a/ | {
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"I think this video series ([part one](_URL_0_) and [part two](_URL_1_)) will answer your question! The guy is entertaining too. He starts with the history of London's airports and goes into potential future plans, including talk about how Heathrow compares to other 'hub' airports around Europe."
]
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avp2n2 | Did Lawyers from the Middle Ages existed in places such as England, France and HRE? | I recall reading they existed but i have no idea what they were like, also are there roles any different from today? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/avp2n2/did_lawyers_from_the_middle_ages_existed_in/ | {
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"So law. It is a fundamental feature of the modern world in so many ways. Particularly in the western world we have an idea of \"The Law\" as a somewhat rigid and omnipresent substratum to society. We have an expectation that the law will be applied equally to members of society, even if in practice this is never the case, and that our law based off of a tradition of legal history and not simply concocted on the fly by the presiding official. We expect that the lawyers and judges who engage in the practice of law are experts who have devoted their life, or at least career, to the understanding of law and its practice. \n\nNow what is the defining characteristic of law as we experience it today? According to ~~my probable thesis advisor~~ Wolfgang Mueller, one of the defining characteristics of law, as we and the Romans (from which most Western European law is ultimately derived on some level) have defined it, is the presence of lawyers in the practice and exercise of law. Whether this is Roman civil law, Canon law, or Common Law there is a relatively set course of study and mastery of this esoteric knowledge that would be practitioners are expected to have mastery over in order to practice law. In other words, we have an idea that law is not created or practiced arbitrarily.\n\nBut there is also a flip side of this, can we have law in the absence of lawyers? Western Europe after the fall of Rome was after all not exactly churning out large numbers of legal scholars. There were still of course codified bodies of \"law\" like the Salic Law of the Franks or the numerous law codes seen in England under Anglo-Saxon rulers, but the actual use of these documents as a legal guide is ambiguous at best. Indeed in the case of Anglo-Saxon law, figures such as Patrick Wormald have posited that the promulgation of law codes were not intended to actually be used in a court room setting, but instead as an ideological exercise demonstrating the king's ability to act as a Mosaic figure for his people as well as setting forth some of the guiding aims of the monarch's reign. Anglo-Saxon law for example was not practiced and exercised by lawyers as we understand them, and this holds true on the continent as well, though I am not as familiar with the historiography of the continent as I am England. \n\nOur expectations of law were not necessarily the expectations of law that people had in the early Middle Ages. Indeed the execution and practice of law was quite fuzzy and nebulous compared to our modern notions of singular, unified, and non-contradictory. Anglo-Saxon law for example was not so much a single collection of legal codes, despite efforts such as Canute's Winchester Code, as it was a hodgepodge of different legal traditions, the Danelaw claimed one legal tradition, various cities and regions might claim another, the king is sitting there trying to get everyone on board with his newest law code, and then there's the Ecclesiastical courts and system which are totally different. It was in short, a bit of a mess. \n\nBut the Middle Ages did not lack lawyers throughout its time frame. Later in the Middle Ages we see lawyers stage a remarkable comeback alongside the emergence of Gratian's *Decretum* as the more or less end all be all of Canon law. His effort was not the first at creating a singular collection of \"Law\", but it was the most widely promulgated and broadly accepted collection of canon law. Earlier attempts at compiling one \"law\" were often contradictory, but not in a negative sense. For example the decretum of Ivo of Chartres made no attempt to eliminate contradictions between laws or canons, often collected from disparate sources such as Roman law, the Bible, and the writings of Church fathers. Indeed Ivo of Chartres reveled in these contradictions as options for the presiding official to choose from in application. \n\nWe see the emergence of law schools and universities in the 12th century, most famously at Bologna, and for the first time since the collapse of Roman power in the west we see lawyers in places like Italy, France, England, Iberia, and Germany. Now law for these lawyers was not the laws of their country or courts. Law here meant specifically canon law, not Common Law as in the Anglo-Saxon tradition or the specifically Roman law of say Justinian's code. \n\nSo did these lawyers do more or less what we associate with lawyers today? Well yes and no. I don't imagine that many Europeans or Americans would expect their system of law to be ultimately derived from the writings of Church fathers harmonized with the Justinian code for example, but lawyers in the Middle Ages were at the same time crafting traditions that we are very familiar with today such as jurisprudence. Our idea of lawyers though bear far more similarities with the lawyers of the psot-Gratian period of legal history than they do with the pre-Gratian era. In the early Middle Ages though there were no lawyers who decided law or brought cases and so on. Law in the early Middle Ages was a far less familiar process of accusation, reconciliation, threat of ordeal, differing jurisdictions, unclear application of rulings, and so on.\n\nOur modern notion of law and lawyers have their roots in the Middle Ages and particularly the creation of dedicated law schools that were created in order to study canon law and Gratian's *Decretum* particularly. Before this time the practice and exercise of law was significantly less clear cut with contradictions, overlapping authorities, and so on all abounding across Europe, and it it worth pointing out that all contradictions and legal questions were not answered overnight after the Decretum was published."
]
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|
d1jsl2 | what happens to the civilians of a town or city during a foreign invasion? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d1jsl2/eli5_what_happens_to_the_civilians_of_a_town_or/ | {
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"It's illegal under the Geneva Conventions to kill civilians unless they are combatants. Most will seek refuge somewhere else, but the invading army usually tries to make the transfer of power as quickly as possible. The less disruptive the war is to their daily lives the less likely they are to revolt."
]
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||
4l5tcp | Is there any evidence that the "Carrots improve night vision" story was taken seriously by the Luftwaffe? | It's often put forward that the RAF tricked the Luftwaffe by offering this story as an explanation for their high night kills which were actually scored by means of a new secret radar system. Although many believed the carrots propaganda, were the Luftwaffe among them? If not, were they aware of the radar system? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4l5tcp/is_there_any_evidence_that_the_carrots_improve/ | {
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"The story about carrots, in particular connected with \"Cat's Eyes\" Cunningham, was more aimed at a domestic audience that as a serious disinformation campaign. The World Carrot Museum has [some correspondence from the RAF museum] (_URL_0_):\n\n > \"Whether or not the Ministry of Food were responsible for the original story, they certainly made use of it getting Cunningham to endorse carrots to the population. The lack of any follow on from the RAF, and no effort to really get the Germans to believe it was carrots rather than radar that allowed our night fighters to be as successful as they were, leads me to believe that the Air Ministry were just happy to “go with the flow”, as it were, and follow the lead set by the MoI.\"\n\nBritish night fighters only really started becoming effective from early 1941 with the combination of Ground Controlled Intercept (GCI) radar to get a fighter into the general area of a bomber and Airborne Intercept (AI) radar mounted on the fighter itself for the final interception. The system was just getting into its swing as the Luftwaffe were scaling back their efforts in preparation for the invasion of Russia.\n\nAround the same time German night defences under Kammhuber were developing into the *Himmelbelt*, a series of boxes using a pair of Würzburg GCI radars, one tracking an attacking bomber, the other a defending fighter. German development of airborne radar lagged behind, Telefunken had started work on what became the Lichtenstein AI radar in December 1940 but it was not in service until 1942. I can't find a reference to when the Luftwaffe became aware of the specifics of the AI Mk IV that gave Cunningham his early successes, but they were certainly aware of the general principles.\n\n(*Night Fighters: A Development and Combat History*, Bill Gunston)"
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3bnxua | why batteries placed next to each other need to have their ends swapped. | It's a hard thing to write out in a title, but everyone knows what I mean. I'll draw an example as best I can.
___
When you put batteries in something, they always seem to have to go like this:
**-** --------- **+**
**+** -------- **-**
___
As opposed to this:
**-** --------- **+**
**-** --------- **+**
____
I would like to know why that is. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bnxua/eli5_why_batteries_placed_next_to_each_other_need/ | {
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"When using multiple batteries, you're generally going to use them in series (with the positive terminal of one battery connected to the negative terminal of the next battery), rather than in parallel.\n\nHaving batteries in series adds their voltages together, whereas having them in parallel allows for more current draw at the same voltage as a single battery.\n\nAnyway, since you're connecting the batteries in series, having adjacent batteries flipped just uses less wire.",
"They don't need to have their ends swapped, it's due to something else. \n\nBatteries usually deliver 1.5V and many devices need more, usually 3 or 6. So you need to put the batteries in series, this means stacking them over each other, negative to positive, so this way 4 1.5V batteries create one bit 6V battery. \nThis would mean having a 4-battery long compartment for them, and for many devices it's easier to put them next to each other, to the positive on one battery has to connect to eh negative of the other. It's much easier to put them reversed to the positive and negative are close to each other and then just bridge that small gap. \n\nThink of it as a long battery in series folded in 1/2, 1/3 or 1/4\n"
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dl2duq | serotonin is the hormone what makes us happy, so why aren't we just injecting it into our body/taking it as tablets to get out of misery on command? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dl2duq/eli5_serotonin_is_the_hormone_what_makes_us_happy/ | {
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"Too much serotonin is a very, very bad thing. Serotonin syndrome has a ton of very nasty symptoms, and allowing people to take the stuff whenever they feel a little down would end in massive tragedy.",
"What goes up must come down. It is not healthy or physically sustainable to keep high levels of anything. You would need a constant supply that over comes any tolerance. You are on to a lost battle from the outset. Then if you stop consuming something like serotonin, you would feel a huge loss and probably end up totally depressed and end up chasing the happiness you once felt",
"Your brain is surrounded by a barrier that is very selective about what can pass through it. Serotonin is manufactured by your body inside this barrier. Injecting or ingesting sarotonin won't do anything because it cannot cross that barrier.\n\nHowever, the chemicals from which serotonin is manufactured (such as tryptophan) *can* pass through that barrier and, indeed, you can purchase purified tryptophan for this purpose. But, as with most things, it has side effects.",
"Hormones like serotonin are like ingredients in a recipe. You need them to be in the right balance for a dish to work.\n\nImagine serotonin as sugar, if used sparingly, you would enjoy it as a glaze or sauce in your entrees and finish your meal with a sweeter dessert. If you dumped a container of sugar on every dish of your meal, none of it would be enjoyable. \n\nPeople's bodies, like their tastes, differ as well. Some people like their dishes sweeter while others do not. Therefore a set sweetness for one person would not be enjoyable for others. This is why it is difficult to find the right medicine to treat neurological diseases like depression because every person is different.\n\nThe body also has limited tools to communicate with other organs. Serotonin affects mood in the brain but also appetite and digestion in your digestive system. Some of the side effects from drugs increasing or decreasing one hormone is due to the body reusing the hormone for many functions.\n\nLastly, the body is naturally ~~lazy~~ efficient. If it's getting a hormone from an injection or pill, it is less likely to make it. Therefore, when a person stops taking the injections or pills the body goes into withdrawal because it stopped making that hormone, causing other symptoms. This can cause a dependence on the substance, otherwise known as an addiction.",
"One thing to add that others haven't mentioned yet it's that hormones like seratonin have multiple roles, this is why depression and antidepressant meds have such a wide range of symptoms and side effects. Seratonin is also involved in aggression and hunger as well. Adding extra to or bodies could meet with these other functions just as easily as happiness.",
"First, serotonin doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier, so no matter how much you put into your body, none of it will reach your brain, which is where it needs to be to affect brain processes like mood.\n\nSecond, our bodies are pretty finely tuned machines. They want everything to operate in a pretty narrow window. Having more of something than there's supposed to be completely throws off this balance and would wreak havoc. Too much serotonin can literally kill you. Too much of *anything,* even things we need to live, like oxygen and water, will kill you. Messing around with the chemical balance of our bodies beyond that narrow window is very bad.\n\nThird, and this ties in with the above point, is that serotonin does a bunch of other stuff in the body besides regulating mood. It's involve in sleep, digestion, immune response, tissue regeneration, and more. Messing around with serotonin would not just throw your brain into chaos but the entire rest of your body as well.",
"Most psychedelics fit into serotonin receptors... with the exception of DMT which also fits into dopamine receptors... so we kind of are!",
"My son had a rare neurotransmitter disease where his body didn't make seratonin or dopamine. This affected everything from sleep to his moods and more importantly, his ability to walk or talk. He couldn't even lift his head. Nothing we could give him helped that because there isn't a drug that has been developed that passes the blood brain barrier. He later got gene therapy surgery that greatly improved his quality of life when he started making dopamine on his own. But the blood brain barrier was the main issue with the drugs currently available",
"Because your body is always trying to reach equilibrium and if you start injection serotonin your body will stop making it and possibly reuptake it faster and you'll need more and more.",
"Neither injecting nor swallowing serotonin allows your brain to use it because it won't cross from the blood to the brain. \n\nSome drugs effectively increase the level of serotonin you experience by reducing how much of it your brain clears (eg Prozac) or forcing your brain to dump the serotonin it already has stored (eg MDMA).",
"Long history of various kinds of anti depressants here.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nI've taken sertraline (something to do with serotonin, don't know the details) and during that time, I have never, ever felt worse in my life before or after. I was at an all time low, I was utterly miserable. Maybe it was too much, maybe just a little tipped the scales too far. My opinion of it is that if we're a little 'off-balance', that's just how it is, how we are born. It's not something you can change or rebalance. Note this is just my personal opinion after years of taking the meds, not based on science.",
"The simple reason is that we actually have no fucking idea of what cause us to be happy on a regular basis.\n\nThe neurotrasmitters-imbalance theory of depression is getting smashed a bit more every day.\n\nTake for example serotonin. We cannot simply drink it, because as other said it cannot pass the blood-brain barrier. \nSo we use drugs that *can* pass that barrier, and cause your brain to re-absorb less serotonin. By reabsorbing less of it, you have more serotonin available in your brain.\n\nThe problem is that you won't feel better quickly. You will feel better after months of taking the drug.\n\nBut the drug is acting every single day! You have more serotonine in your brain every single day!\n\nSo why the effect doesn't start on day 1?\n\nWe don't know. We have some hypotesis, but we don't know.\n\nThis is why having a lot of serotonine in your brain will not make you Happy on a bad day.",
"Serotonin is a neurotransmitter; it is one of several messengers in our brains. It does not just carry happy messages. All of the neurotransmitters pull double, triple, quadruple, etc. duty.\n\nWhen we say it's the 'Happy Messenger' we're being very simple to the point of being wrong. It also carries the messages for: rewards, learning, eating, temperature, pooping, and many others. We're still learning more and more about Serotonin.\n\nBecause it does over a dozen different things we do not take Serotonin pills. It would not go to the right place and deliver the right message. It might make you accidentally very hungry or make your temperature very hot.\n\nWe take medicine that targets the sad house in our brain, the house that keeps its doors closed to the happy messenger. With the right medicine the sad house keeps their doors open long enough for the right amount (hopefully) of happy messages to get through.",
"Lots of reasons:\n\n- Serotonin cannot cross the blood-brain barrier. Ingesting or injecting it would have no effect.\n\n- The correct serotonin levels can vary a lot from person to person, and too much can cause some *very* bad effects.\n\n- Presuming you could somehow get serotonin into the brain, your brain would see all this excess serotonin floating around and stop producing it on its own. You then become wholly dependent on the external serotonin.\n\n- Low serotonin levels are not always the cause of depression. Personally, SSRIs (drugs that slow *removal* of serotonin) don't work for me. I have to take drugs which act on *dopamine* (welbutrin)."
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upsxe | Did Native Americans ever come across washed-up junk and artifacts from across the ocean? | This was posted on /r/askhistory but that sub does not have the community does, so I wanted the answer so I figured I'd post it here.
Here was his post...
---
In the news I read that junk from the recent Japan tsunami has floated across the ocean and is now showing up in the United States. Did Native Americans ever encounter washed-up junk from Europe or Asia? If so, what did they think of it? Or did it ever happen the other way around? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/upsxe/did_native_americans_ever_come_across_washedup/ | {
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"No. Not nearly as much \"junk\" back then, and what stuff did make its way into the ocean was all organic material, so it decomposed quickly.\n\nNo one was using steel shipping containers, fiberglass, or plastic back then.",
"IIRC there were odd occasional reports of odd seed pods, etc washing up on shore in europe and africa that were obviously not \"old world\"",
"This needs verification. There is a famous photo of [Frieda Kahlo](_URL_0_) in a traditional tehuana head huipil. The story goes that a lace European child's coat washed up on shore. Not knowing what to do with it, the natives wrapped it around their heads, leading to a new fashion. It is thought that it came from a boat though vs. Europe.",
"I can't think of any examples of this happening on the west coast, but on the east coast of the New World there are a few examples of Viking artefacts. These may have come from trade further south, though. _URL_0_",
"How would we know? The only coastal peoples who had writing we can decipher were in Mesoamerica, and even they didn't exactly leave logs of what their beachcombers stumbled upon. ",
"Yes, in Alaska. Aleut carvers depended upon driftwood to supply their wood needs. Glass and other small found items were incorporated into jewelry in historical times.",
"This subject has always really intrigued me. There was an American \"treasure hunter\" by the name of [Robert Marx who claimed to have found a Roman shipwreck off Rio de Janeiro](_URL_0_) back in the early 1980's. The alleged wreck contained dozens of amphorae, many of which were salvaged by Marx and other local divers. The theory was that the ship in question was a salt trading vessel that got blown off the west coast of Africa in a storm. Apparently this sort of thing happened somewhat frequently to other European sailing vessels much later on in history.\n\nAllegedly, the Brazilian government and others were not happy with the idea that any Europeans would have preceded the Portuguese in discovering Brazil, [so they buried the wreck under debris and banned Marx from returning to the country](_URL_2_). The whole story is really bizarre and borderline conspiracy theory, but still fascinating nonetheless.\n\nSince we have our tinfoil hats on, here is a [Wikipedia article](_URL_1_) detailing this and some other similar finds. ",
"According to my anthropology professor, yes. Pieces of wood with nails did float in from Asia. The west coast people did use the metal to make tools. She showed us a slide of an artifact from Ozette, on the Olympic Peninsula, which featured a nail that had been beaten to form a blade. \n\nAs it happens, I visited Ozette many times after that. One time we were exploring the old archaeological site. I dug at a cliff on the shore revealing some old debris. I found a piece of brass that had turned green. It looked like it had been pounded into something, but I was not sure what. I put it back but it has always intrigued me. Without all of the knowledge of the site I would be unable to determine what it was or when it had been embedded there. ",
"In the UBC museum of anthropology there are a few daggers and the like that washed up on the BC coast from japan over 500 years ago. Remarkably the Haida (not sure but fairly certain it was the Haida) actually reshaped the items into their present forms (it is unknown what actually washed up from Japan besides that it was made of iron).",
"I think some occasional boats from Easter island would go adrift and end up in Chile.",
"yes, even entire ships have run aground at cape flattery, the sailors became slaves of the makah people and were later taken to fort vancouver\n\n[source](_URL_0_)",
"In a semi-related subject, I've always wondered what the natives of the California coast must have thought when the Spanish galleons from Manila showed up each year, on their way back to Mexico... ",
"This clearly is not related to Native Americans in any way but I've always found it interesting: New World Monkey species are generally believed to have arrived in South America via floating raft of plant material and debris from Africa, probably washed away in a river flood. If it can happen to monkeys, it can happen to boats, people, and artifacts.",
"If you ever read the book, \"The conquest of New Spain,\" written by Bernal Diaz, the Aztecs talk to the Europeans, claiming how years ago they once found bodies upon their shores that were similar to the Europeans. They actually bring out the femur or hip bone I believe, and compare it to the Europeans to see if the size and stature matches up, and it did. Therefore, it was quite possible that french or portuguese or spanish explorers were on the shores way before Columbus"
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b8icwr | Do flowers produce pollen when they're not planted, i.e. if they're in water in a vase? | Someone at work whose mum is a florist was saying she bitches about people in her shop complaining of hayfever-like symptoms, as apparently flowers not planted don't produce pollen. I have a feeling that this is bullshit but I can't find anything online in my own searching.
Thanks | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/b8icwr/do_flowers_produce_pollen_when_theyre_not_planted/ | {
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"All species of angiosperms (flowering plants) have reproductive capabilities, and therefore have pollen. This is true of all cut flowers, as well. If the flower is present, the plant is ready for reproduction. The thing is, there are a wide variety of mechanisms for plants to reproduce. Many angiosperms are anemophilic, and therefore require wind to pick up that pollen and spread it to compatible flowers of the same species (e.g., grasses). Other angiosperms have co-evolved with insects such as bees to pollinate (e.g., roses). These types of angiosperms are called entomophilic (a.k.a. bug-lovers). Entomophilic angiosperms get to conserve energy by producing less pollen, as they have highly efficient transporters to do the heavy lifting. In comparison, anemophilic angiosperms produce far more pollen because so much of their pollen is literally lost in the wind before reaching their destination. As a result of this quantitative difference, those people that are allergic to pollen (such as me) are likely reacting to anemophilic angiosperms such as grasses and ragweed. The big, colorful flowers that produce nectar for insect pollinators such as orchids and roses surely produce pollen, but do not release as much into the air. "
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20xto2 | Has the human gestation period always been approx. 9 months through history? | as per the request of /u/cyberspacecowboy I will bring attention to an additional question that I find interesting as well: What would happen if it was 3 months longer (apart from mechanical issues like the baby being too big for the pelvis to exit safely)? Would a baby that gestated for 12 months be 'on par' with a 3 month old baby? further along development?
as per the request of /u/happy_go_lucky : What causes the child to be born after 40 weeks? I know it's hormonal changes. But what causes the hormonal changes? A preset clock that just goes 40 weeks? The size of the fetus? External influences? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/20xto2/has_the_human_gestation_period_always_been_approx/ | {
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"It depends on how far back you want to go. Compared to ~~mammals~~ other primates, human gestation time is ~~considerably shorter~~ roughly comparable, but our young are born more immature than our counterparts. One theory for there's trade off between hip changes due to humans walking upward with the size of human skulls/brains at birth, forcing human babies to be born \"earlier\" in their development. \n\nRead more here:_URL_1_ \n\nThere's also a more recent suggestion that the limitation had more to do with maternal metabolism than hip/brain size: _URL_2_\n\nThere's some loose thoughts that caring for our \"immature\" children has had a huge effect on our social behavior and evolution (see something like the [Grandmother Hypothesis](_URL_3_)). \n\nSo over evolutionary time, it certainly hasn't always been 9 months...or at least, fetal maturity after ~9 months has shifted. \n\nA comment by /u/chiropter with some more accurate stats on gestation time: _URL_0_\n\nEdited for accuracy. \n\n",
"Follow up: isn't 40 weeks the average? I was told by a nurse that anytime between 38 and 42 was normal. Is this accurate?",
"Looks like human, chimpanzee and gorilla gestation periods are all close together 230-260 days.\n\nChimps are about 5 million years separated from us. Gorillas about 10 million years separated. Human races are only 40-60,000 years separated from each other.\n\n_URL_0_\n",
"Follow up question:\n\nWhat causes the child to be born after 40 weeks? I know it's hormonal changes. But what causes the hormonal changes? A preset clock that just goes 40 weeks? The size of the fetus? External influences?",
"Can I tag on a hypothetical related question? What would happen if it was 3 months longer (apart from mechanical issues like the baby being too big for the pelvis to exit safely)? Would a baby that gestated for 12 months be 'on par' with a 3 month old baby? further along development?",
" > Would a baby that gestated for 12 months be 'on par' with a 3 month old baby? further along development?\n\nTo address that specifically, you might look into Karp's [Happiest Baby on the Block](_URL_0_). Something he discusses at length is the \"fourth trimester\" and how underdeveloped our infants are because of when we birth them. He specifically focuses on self-soothing mechanisms and sleep, but the research is pretty interesting and does a lot to suggest the difference those 3 months would make.",
"40 weeks is the *average*. I'm not sure why people find it so difficult to grasp the concept, but an average of 40 weeks does not mean that if you pass the 40-week mark you're suddenly abnormal and in terrible danger. The average only makes sense when you're talking about a (pretty sizable) population. You can't apply statistical averages to single cases to draw conclusions. Each case needs to be considered for the particular circumstances of the parents and the baby.\n\nAlso, what I've seen cited as the main driver for a 'clock' is the placenta health. Placentas are not designed to last forever, and they do get old. They can calcify/harden, and they become less efficient at delivering nutrients to the fetus, and also present dangers of improper detachment from the uterine walls. The former is a concern for the baby's health, the latter is a concern for the mother's health.",
"Mature fetal lungs emit a chemical that the mother's brain receives and then the brain starts the hormonal trigger for labor to begin. Longer in first time mothers because this is the first time their brains have done this hormonal trigger. "
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"http://www.uri.edu/news/releases/?id=6358",
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3rgcf7 | why does comcast give out great offers to those who do not use their service/ left them; but does not give benefit to those staying with them? | So recently my family have switched from Comcast to Frontier. Not because of bad experience or anything, we just don't watch that much TV so we switch to frontier to just internet and phone.
and now, Comcast suddenly sends us a great deal for using their service, not that we are going back to Comcast or anything. I say suddenly because in the past couple of years we been using Comcast, they didn't sent anything. And now that we switch from Comcast to Frontier, they are offering deals for us to go back again.
So why does Comcast ignore their current customer base and only hand out offers to those who haven't use or left their service? Isn't it better to just treat current customer nicer, hand out benefit to those who are staying with them so that the word can spread on its own.
And if someone does decide to switch back, they don't have to have people go there again to reinstall w.e has been taken out?
(or is it simply because handing out occasional discount to new comer just saves them more money compare to giving benefit to those who stay with them...?) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3rgcf7/eli5_why_does_comcast_give_out_great_offers_to/ | {
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"You essentially answered the question. If you are with Comcast, paying Comcast, they have no reason to give you anything. What could they get from it? They instead use resources to try to get new customers and win back old ones, as those represent new sources of income."
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1rjryk | Why does SiO2 form a giant covalent structure, while CO2 forms a non-polar linear molecule? | Carbon and Silicon are both group 14, why do they behave differently while compounds like HF and HCl are similar? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1rjryk/why_does_sio2_form_a_giant_covalent_structure/ | {
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"Because it's in the next period, silicon has larger and more diffuse valence orbitals. The overlap between its p orbitals and those of the oxygen atom is less than in carbon, and so it forms a weaker pi (double) bond. The lower energy state for it then is to form four single bonds to oxygen atoms, and create this network rather than have double bonds to two oxygen atoms as in CO2. \n\n"
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a51azt | can animals be left or right side preferred (or similar)? or due to their frequent and more relied upon mouths or beaks, are they typically ambidextrous? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a51azt/eli5_can_animals_be_left_or_right_side_preferred/ | {
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"“Sidedness has been found in all vertebrate groups in which it’s been studied—horses, cats, rodents, reptiles, different fish species, to name a few—just to different extents,” says Ruth Byrne, a biologist from the University of Vienna, Austria. \n\nBehavioral Lateralization is quite common in nature. Many frogs are right-footed; many parrots are left-clawed; lizards often lean left; many walruses are right-flippered; grey whales and bottlenose dolphins are right-jawed. Humpbacks will feed by skimming the ocean floor with their mouths open and researchers have found abrasions on either their right or left cheeks from the scraping, but never on both cheeks. Even invertebrates display preferences - 90% of common octopi used a particular tentacle when inspecting or handling objects - the tentacle aligned with its preferred eye (90% of octopi studied showed a preference for one eye or the other). "
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114utj | If you released a globe of a carbonated liquid in a weightless environment, would the bubbles stay inside it? | This came up in a discussion I had with a 12 year old boy at dinner tonight. We couldn't figure it out. Help, science! | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/114utj/if_you_released_a_globe_of_a_carbonated_liquid_in/ | {
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"Maybe [this](_URL_0_) will help. Basically there is no buoyancy so bubbles have no reason to go anywhere in particular. When you get enough bubbles (end of the video) they might push each other to the surface and pop."
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17e3no | why is sexism regularly upvoted to the front page, while racism is prohibited and looked down upon? what's the difference? | Obviously racism is a terrible thing, and is a universally huge social faux-pas, as it should be; yet, if you go into any comment page on the front page of Reddit, no matter what the post is about, there is always some kind of blatant misogyny being upvoted and encouraged. Why is one kind of hate speech not okay, but another is totally fine? I'm really having trouble seeing what the difference is.
EDIT - Thanks, everyone! I got some really good objective explanations, and even some of the defensive comments inadvertently answered my question, hah. Apparently this is a much more deep-seated social issue than I thought, eh?
/answered | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17e3no/eli5_why_is_sexism_regularly_upvoted_to_the_front/ | {
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"There's really no meaningful difference between black people and white people. We have plenty of clear evidence that, if they're put into the same cultural setting, they act basically identically. So racism is wrong just on a factual basis.\n\nThere *are* meaningful differences between women and men. It's hard to say whether a particular difference comes from culture or biology, but the differences still exist either way. So you can't argue against sexism because men and women are not different; you can only argue against it by saying men and women should not be *treated* differently.\n\nProblem is, that's a really nuanced argument. For instance, few people would claim that it's sexist to have women's colleges, and basically nobody would claim that it's sexist to only have sexual interest in men. So there *are* some ways that you can and should treat women differently, making the problem a lot harder to explain.",
"I can safely say the majority of users on this site are men (who find sexist jokes against women funny), hence the jokes being upvoted more often",
"It's not okay, but it mostly just boils down to ignorance, not hate. Reddit has this thing where many people think they are Bill Hicks or George Carlin. They think they are at the forefront of comedy and free speech, and they've gotten this idea in their mind where they claim jokes are \"harmless\" and \"in the name of comedy\" and they're \"free speech activists\". Then they point to women who do mean things to them, or women who agree that they can make those jokes, or comedians that make similar jokes, or the 1st amendment, or anti-male sensitivities such as \"all men are pedophiles\", as a reason they can make these jokes. \"Don't be so sensitive\" or \"don't tell me what's funny\" is a line you'll hear often from these people.\n\nWhat they don't realize is it hurts people. I think they don't realize the structural oppression of women in all cultures and societies even today. They see their mom and their sister and grandma and they don't see the oppression, they don't live through it. And in fact, the women they surround themselves with are likely freer than ever. \n\nI think the jokes reddit should look to eliminate are rape jokes, victim blaming, and \"she's a slut\" jokes. These ways of thinking are seriously harmful. Women in many places still cannot go out alone at night without fear of being hurt. They don't have full autonomy because of men. And so, until rape and sexual oppression are a thing of the past, redditors should attempt to be more sensitive.",
"This is such a terrible question for this subreddit. Do you really want someone to explain this to you like you're five or do you just want to argue about sexism?",
"I hate to say it but casual racism here is accepted.\n\nIt's a bit silly but ageism, sexism, and racism are accepted because the average redditor is a young white male adult. It's pretty obvious why ... You see the world through your lens. It's strange because I'm male, but I'm Chinese. I see the difference in-between the European world and my own. I see the differences and challenges and have to deal with the fact that I'm never seen as an equal racially. However, I rarely see the difficulties women have had to deal with. Up until after I went to university with some really strong women. After I finished and went to the real world. I saw how some women were treated and it made me sick. These are some of my best friends. I would try to bring up a discussion about how I read an article about how women are better at multi-tasking. Then they'd say in a complete dead-pan way: \"maybe in the kitchen.\" I saw their sister in ear-shot and I was like ... do you have any idea how fucking bad that is? I was so pissed off because casual remarks like that can affect people. I know it has for me.\n\nAnyways, I guess it's like Dick Cheney .. he's a conservative on most issues. Up until gay marriage. Why? Because he has a daughter that's gay. I guess some people don't stop and think until it hits them.",
"There are more men here than women. Men (or women) who make racist comments will be confronted by others (men or women).\n\nMen who make sexist comments will rarely be confronted by others because there are far fewer women here. Men will respond, but I imagine it's a number that is quite a bit smaller than those who would jump at racism. \n\nIt's not that one is more okay than the other, it's that the demographics of the site don't allow for treating them in the same manner. I'd even say that non-white men outnumber women of any race or nationality.\n\n",
"Sexism is more socially acceptable, really. Issues pertaining to gender are not seen as legitimate. Racial issues are because men fought for civil liberties for minorities. Gender issues are seen as just a bunch of measly women complaining about unfair treatment because men cannot relate to these issues. ",
"This is not true and you're only trying to look cool and ask for attention.\n\nRacism is everywhere as well here. Or at least, jokes with racial basis. It's only racism once you withhold benefit from the recipient of the judging.",
"Because, generally speaking, African Americans (let's face it, racial discrimination practically _always_ refers to racial discrimination against African Americans) have more politically correct clout than women or other ethnic groups. Sometimes women's rights or gay rights trump African Americans' rights to be free from offensive language but only rarely. For example, when Perez Hilton called Miss California a \"dumb bitch\" no feminist came to her defense. Not because it wasn't offensive but because she was percieved as being \"conservative\" and therefore not worth defending. (Also, Perez Hilton is gay and therefore above critcism). Also, African Americans who are percieved as conservative are not afforded the same level of protection as other African Americans. That's why Clarence Thomas was chastised for being a \"whiner\" and Herman Cain was compared to Aunt Jemima by Jeanne Garofolo.\n\nAs you can see, it's a complex minefield to negotiate, however, keep in mind that if you critisize _anyone_ who is percieved as conservative (regardless of sex or ethnicity) you can count on getting a free pass from the pc police.\n\nI'm sure the overwhelmingly liberal reddit hivemind will vote this post down to oblivion immediately but nobody will bother to actually refute anything I've written because they won't be able to. Let the downboats begin!\n\nEdit: Speeling"
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26wli4 | Are there solar systems of stars, where a supermassive star has a group of smaller stars revolving around it? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/26wli4/are_there_solar_systems_of_stars_where_a/ | {
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"Even large stars don't have ridiculous masses, so all of the stars end up orbiting each other, so it won't be quite like a solar system with one in the middle. One of the largest and heaviest stars is UY Scuti, its about 1,700x as large as the sun, but only about 32x heavier so if you put it and the the sun in a system together they would both orbit the common center of mass which would be outside both stars, in our solar system the center of mass is within the sun so it seems we orbit the sun.\n\nThere are larger multi star systems, Alpha Centauri is a triple system made of Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B, and Proxima Centauri. The biggest multistar systems i can find reference to is Nu Scorpii which is at least a 5 star system but believed to be a 7 star system, and AR Cassiopea which is known to be 7, this is about as close to a solar system of stars as you will find!",
"Yes, they are called binary stars. They make up roughly 1/3 the number of stars in our galaxy. Although you if you mean more than 2 stars that's rare but there are a few potentials. If you are willing to be loose with the definition of a star, the current theory is that every galaxy has a super massive black hole at the center. A black hole being a remnant of a star, it could loosely fit the question. ",
"Sort of. \n\nMulti-star systems account for something like 1/3 of all star systems in the Milky Way galaxy. Besides having companion stars, some systems also orbit with a black holes or white dwarfs or other stellar companions.\n\nThe reason I say 'sort of' and 'orbit with' rather than yes and 'having orbit around' is because I think what you're describing is relatively uncommon and/or unlikely. In orbital mechanics, two bodies orbit around a common center of mass (Think of it like two people pulling on a rope in opposite directions; somewhere in the middle, the tension is equal in both directions)--but this point isn't always in the middle of one of the two bodies. \n\nThis includes the sun; for the sun, the center of mass that the planets and itself orbit around is somewhere under the surface of the sun's surface, but not (unless I'm misremembering) in the middle. This is important because you have to realize that, Jupiter, the biggest planet, is something like a mere 0.09% of the sun's own mass. In order to be a star, you have to be so massive, or else fusion won't take place. What I'm getting at is, if you want stars orbiting stars, the mass of the two bodies is going to have to be closer than it is with the sun and the planets, or the other, smaller stars, just won't start up fusing. \n\nYou might get a supermassive star with a single or two smaller stars orbiting a common center of mass close to the center of the supermassive star, but... I'm not sure if you'd end up a group of stars, as numerous as planets are in our system.\n\nIt's much more likely (I think) you'd find a number of stars, mostly of the same mass, orbiting around a common center that's outside all of the star's surfaces. ",
"There are plenty of systems with multiple stars. The trick with orbits is that one body (ie the Earth) doesn't really revolve around a second body (ie the Sun). What really happens is that both bodies orbit at a point between the two masses relative to the size of those masses. So if you had one two objects (A and B) orbiting and the mass of A was twice the size of B then the point they would both be orbiting would be twice as close to A then to B.\n\nBack to the Earth - Sun system: The reason it looks like Earth is orbiting a stationary Sun is that the Sun's mass is so many times larger than the mass of the Earth that the point at which they both orbit is inside the surface of the sun. From a physics standpoint, in high school anyway, this effect is so small it is ignored.\n\nHere are some great animations: _URL_1_\n\nNow onto your real question when you have binary stars the point at which they orbit (the center of mass of the system) is generally in free space, not within the bounds of a star. That being said there are some mighty huge stars in the universe which could look like a Sun-Earth system if they had other stars nearby.\n\nHere is a video which shows the sizes of some stars in our universe: _URL_0_\n\nOn another fun note our galaxy is similar to a solar system but the stars are orbiting a super massive black hole in the galactic center."
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dhr6bx | what exactly is the process of leather tanning? why is it necessary? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dhr6bx/eli5_what_exactly_is_the_process_of_leather/ | {
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"Tanning is a process that alters the protein structure of the skin using specific acids. It makes the material tougher and less susceptible to decomposing. That’s why we can have leather products without it rotting like regular skin.",
"Tanning involves several steps that include removing all non-skin elements from the hide, and then treating it with an acid to make the skin more durable and less prone to rot. There are a lot of ways of doing this. \n\nThe reason we do this is that if you don't, the skin will probably rot away to nothing. By tanning, you are basically pickling/preserving the leather so it will last a very long time.",
"Tanning skin is often done with tannin, which can be found in many plants. [Acorns](_URL_0_) are one source that can be used for tanning."
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86mob6 | how do you count beats and bars? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/86mob6/eli5_how_do_you_count_beats_and_bars/ | {
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"Think of it as mathematics - the time signature tells you how many of what notes you can have in a bar. For instance, a 4/4 signature means this section or piece of music should have 4 quarter notes in a bar, whereas a 6/8 signature means 6 eighth notes in a bar.\n\nJust in case it wasn't clear, notes have values, so 2 quarter notes count for a half note, 2 eighth notes count for a quarter note etc.. And you can mix these notes in any combination - this means that in 6/8, you could have 2 eighth notes and 2 quarter notes (since a quarter note counts for 2 eighth notes) to make the full 6 eighth notes in a bar. Alternatively, in 4/4, you could have a half note and 2 quarter notes to make the full 4 quarter notes in a bar."
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657xgm | What is the defining difference between moons and planets when in a Co-orbital configuration? | If two bodies share the same centre of mass and orbit around each other but are both the same size, are they defined as planets or moons? Is there a size point when they become one or the other? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/657xgm/what_is_the_defining_difference_between_moons_and/ | {
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"There's no strict definition, but one of the more popular ones is whether the barycentre (centre of mass) falls above or below the surface of the larger object. Said differently, whether the two bodies orbit a point within the planet or a point in the space between them."
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1da5jq | I'm an heir to the throne/lands/titles in Medieval Europe, but I've been in exile for 10 years presumed dead. How would I attempt to prove my lineage? | Rephrased this question to fit in the subs rules.
Say for example during an invasion similar to William the Conquerers' one of the current King's sons escaped the region and goes into exile; i.e this person could have been king someday, but is now hiding out in a foreign land as a peasant somewhere.
The invading rulers are extremely unpopular, but no one has enough support to oppose them; they would only unite under the true heir to the throne, but that line is considered dead. 10 years later our man in exile decides that he wants to return home and claims what is his.
How would he prove he is who he is?
Is their no hope for him?
Are there any examples in this period of people crawling out of the woodwork and raising a rebellion?
Better yet are there any examples in this period of leaders that could have been impostors? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1da5jq/im_an_heir_to_the_thronelandstitles_in_medieval/ | {
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"I'll give you the closest example I can think of from Norwegian (and norse) history, though the person I'll be talking about, Olav II / Olav den Hellige, was not presumed dead and had not been in exile for 10 years.\n\nOlav den Hellige (Olav the Holy) had for many years worked to unite Norway and change the religion in Norway to christianity. After succesfully uniting large parts of Norway and making the general population christian by force he had made himself many enemies amongst the other viking \"nobles\".Knut den Mektige (Knut the Powerful), king of Denmark and England decided to invade Norway in 1028, and did so with about 50 war-ships. Allies of Olav den Hellige were bribed and promised land if they supported Knut, which many of them did, and Olav (and the remains of his loyal supporters and army) had to flee from Norway and went to present-day Russia.\n\nKnut den Mektige made Håkon Eirikson jarl (governor) over Norway, but only a year later, in 1029, Håkon Eirkson' ship sunk while crossing from England to Norway. Olav den Hellige saw this as a moment to return and try to claim the crown of Norway once again.\n\nOlav den Hellige marched with his army of about 3-3500 men from Sweden into Norway. At Stikklestad he met an army of about 7000 men, whom many had been former supporters of Olav. Although the opposing army consisted of peasants, Olav den Hellige lost the battle and were killed in combat, ending his uprising.\n(The numbers are not very accurate, but according to Snorre, a historian whom we take much of our knowledge about norse culture and mythology from, these were the stats)\n\nAfter his death, Olav was pronouced a saint for making Norway a christian country. His hair and fingernails were supposedly growing long after his death. Nidarosdomen, a cathedral in Norway, was built at the supposed place of his burial, and Nidarosdomen became a pillar of christianity in Scandinavia and was a popular location to visit for pilegrims.\n\nMuch of Norwegian history was written by Snorre Sturlason in Heimskringla, a saga about the kings of Norway. Snorre also wrote Den Eldre Edda (The older Edda).",
"This question is a bit too hypothetical for me to answer, so I will only point out that there are numerous examples of kings or king's sons who did actually go into exile but I can't think of a single one in which they had to \"hide out\" and so were unknown. People in these positions were well known, they themselves traveled throughout Europe or met with ambassadors and other travelers to their courts. When they were forced to leave their kingdoms, they took refuge in foreign courts where they were received with honor, and often met with other family members who lived there (i.e., perhaps a sister or aunt who had been married off earlier).\n\nThere are however literary examples that might be of interest. The [Lay of Havelok](_URL_0_) is about Havelok whose father the king of Denmark dies when he is a baby and he is taken to England and raised as a peasant, but he is so much bigger, stronger and better than everyone that his innate nobility shines through and he is recognized as royal. He eventually regains his kingdom. On the other side, you could read the very short surviving fragment of the Old High German poem [Hildebrandslied](_URL_1_). Hildebrand (though not a king) went into exile and ends up about to fight against his son. They do not recognize each other and are about to fight when the poem breaks off.",
"A good example during the 11th century would be Edward Aetheling. His father was Edmund Ironside, King of England, who died during the Danish conquest of England. The Danish king Canute (now ruling England by right of conquest) then sent Edward and his brother off to Europe to an ally and then to be murdered, to secure his claim to the throne. Edward was not murdered for some reason and ended up wandering around Europe, ending up in Hungary and marrying a German or Hungarian princess.\n\nMeanwhile in England, the Danish royal house was overthrown and a new English king was acclaimed, but not Edward. Edmund Ironside's brother, Edward, had fled to Normandy after the Danes won (because he had relatives there and thus a powerful ally/protector in the person of the Duke). After a fair bit of dynastic infighting, the last Danish king of England was Harthacnut, who was this Edward (and Ironside's) half-brother, because Canute wisely decided to marry their mother to cement his control over England. Harthacnut was thus fairly well-disposed towards his half-brother, Edward, and so made him co-ruler. When Harthacnut died, Edward became sole ruler, even when he is definitely not the heir of the House of Wessex. This is mainly because succession in Anglo-Saxon England was by no means set, primogeniture was a good rule of thumb, but not an absolute one.\n\nAfter a while, Edward Aetheling's survival was reported in England and King Edward, now known as the Confessor, invited him back to England. The prince died as soon as he got back home but his son, Edgar Aetheling, effectively carried the claim and was considered (by some) to be the heir to Edward the Confessor. At the time, this didn't matter very much because Edgar was very young and most power was concentrated under the hands of Harold Godwinson, who easily became king once the Confessor died. Edgar was very briefly acclaimed king just before the Normans reached the London after the defeat of Harold at the Battle of Hastings, but the local magnates quickly realised that Edgar was a lost cause militarily and abandoned him. So all in all, despite being the rightful heir, Edward and Edgar were not successful at all for a variety of reasons (lack of power, youth, wrong place at wrong time). They were overshadowed by men who were closer at hand (Edward the Confessor) and later by other claimants with actual military power, Harold Godwinson, Harald Hardrada and of course William the Conqueror.\n\nHowever, their claim had symbolic value. Edgar eventually became the figurehead for several rebellions in England after the Norman Conquest and his sister Margaret's marriage to King Malcolm Canmore of the Scots gave further legitimacy to the Scottish Crown (they accepted a lot of Anglo-Saxon refugees at the same time and invaded England a few times too, so having English royal blood on their side definitely helped).\n\nThe explanation of the context took way too long (even with the omission of god knows how much backstabbing/plots), but that's the state of Anglo-Saxon royalty at the time, very messy. "
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2fgavx | the coming cavendish banana extinction | I keep hearing that the standard "Cavendish" banana species is infected with a virus that will wipe them all out within the next few years. How is this possible? Pollination spreading the disease? I thought all Cavendish bananas were genetically modified clones...can't scientists just create a new breed that won't fall prey? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fgavx/eli5_the_coming_cavendish_banana_extinction/ | {
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"Sorry i can't explain it, but this may help \n_URL_0_",
"First: they are not going extinct. That is an embellishment. However, they are in trouble.\n\nIt is called \"Panama Disease,\" and it is caused by a hearty fungus that cannot be treated, spreads rapidly, and can lay dormant in soil. Even soil on a boot can transmit it to a new area. In the 1950's and 1960's it destroyed the economic viability of Gros Michel bananas (the preferred at the time), though it did not cause them to go extinct either.\n\nThe thing is, modern bananas are indeed clones. This means if one example of a type is susceptible, they are all susceptible. The reason it is difficult to make a new strain is because modern bananas do not sexually reproduce. They are reproduced through taking their shoots and replanting them. So, you can't easily cross strains and try to get disease resistance while maintaining flavor, seedlessness, ability to be stored, and other things required for them to be an economically viable banana.\n\nOf course, people are working on it. You aren't going to suddenly see bananas disappear from the shelves. However, you might find that a new breed becomes dominant, and the resulting fruit is a bit different than what we normally have now.",
" > can't scientists just create a new breed that won't fall prey?\n\nIt is that breeding part that is the problem.\n\nThe Cavendish banana, and the Gros Michel before them, are the result of a freak mutation resulting seedlessness. No seeds, no breeding. "
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2m7rqb | When you boil water to make it safe to drink, is it the act of boiling or the temperature that makes it safe? | (Excuse any mistakes english is not my first language)
As most people know boiling water is a suggested way to make it safe to drink, but as you go higher in elevation because of a lower pressure the water boils at lower temperatures. So what is it that makes the water safe to drink, temperature at which you have it or the actual boiling effect?
Thank you | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2m7rqb/when_you_boil_water_to_make_it_safe_to_drink_is/ | {
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"The high temperature is what kills the bacteria (such as bacteria that will make us sick) in the water, making it safe to drink. So boiling at higher elevations may not get the temperature high enough to kill the bacteria.",
"The boiling has little/nothing to do with it. What matters is maintaining a high temperature for long enough to kill any microbes in the water.\n\nLet's break this down a bit. What is boiling? It's the transitioning of liquid H2O into gas, which occurs when the water hits its boiling point. The \"boiling\" is when small pockets of gaseous H2O rise up to the top of the liquid H2O. The temperature at which this occurs, as you point out, changes with altitude. This is because the boiling point changes with the pressure the water is under, and at higher atmospheres there is lower pressure, which lowers the boiling point. However the actual \"boiling\" (or bubbling of gases out of the water) wouldn't damage any microbes present in the water.\n\nBack to your question: while the temperature the water boils at does lower some, the temperatures are still plenty high to kill off any microbes. There's no evidence that it takes any longer at altitude to make the water safe to drink by boiling than at sea level.\n\nSo boiling the water should make it safe after 5-10mins (to be safe) at altitude, just like at sea level. I hope that helps!",
"Once you reached the boiling point you know you've reached the maximum temperature you can at a given elevation. In most cases (barring high altitudes) this temperature is hot enough to denature/kill any organisms/parasites that would be in it, except for endospores."
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7k5ahu | how does a pharmaceutical company come up with new drugs? do they just try various chemicals on animals until something shows promise, or is there an approach that's more "targeted" than that? | Like let's say I want to develop a better antidepressant. Where do I start with that, if I'm the R & D department? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7k5ahu/eli5how_does_a_pharmaceutical_company_come_up/ | {
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"Yo ho ho! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [ELI5: How do pharmaceutical companies create new drugs? ](_URL_7_) ^(_5 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: How are new Pharmaceutical drugs \"designed\"? ](_URL_4_) ^(_2 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: How do pharmaceutical companies develop drugs without knowing the chemicals function on the body? ](_URL_6_) ^(_4 comments_)\n1. [Reddit - explainlikeimfive - ELI5](_URL_5_) ^(_._)\n1. [ELI5: How do we produce and synthesize new drugs? ](_URL_3_) ^(_1 comment_)\n1. [ELI5: How are new drugs synthesized/discovered? ](_URL_2_) ^(_3 comments_)\n1. [ELI5 How do scientists create artificial drugs/chemicals ](_URL_1_) ^(_12 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: How we know what a medicine will do when we create and test it. ](_URL_0_) ^(_8 comments_)\n",
"\nThere are generally 2 main methods of drug discovery. In the first, you figure out a way to test new chemicals in a chemical method (like does compound X kill bacteria at very loe concentrations and not kill human cells at all). There is a large amount of testing done, and then it is moved to an animal model (usually mice). Tons more testing in several different animals and lots of human cell lines. Much later it will be tested on super low doses in humans and follow the rest of the FDA drug approval process. \n\nThe other takes a slightly more informed view. If we know that a disease is caused by some sort of chemical marker or protein in the body, we can use computers to calculate if the chemical will affect that chemistry in the body. If it passes the computer test, it can move on the the chemical tests and then through the rest of the cycle. \n\n\nBasically, yes, we throw a bunch of chemicals at a problem until one looks good, but we do a lot of testing before we ever move to animal studies. A drug discovery person could (theoretically) work their entire life and never have a compound move from chemical tests (assay) to animal model. This is why it is so expensive.....IT IS FREAKING DIFFICULT! ",
"Many drugs start with a known 'skeleton'. Take the classic opioids/opiates as an example (morphine, heroin, codeine, thebaine, etc). They all have a core structure that is the same. \n\nSo you take that structure and 'join things' to it (or maybe remove things). A methyl group here, a hydroxyl group, there (aka - functional groups). Now you have something that is likely to behave in a similar fashion, but you don't know how strong/effective/toxic it may be. So you do a huge amount of testing to find out, well before you ever give it to a human.\n\nThat's a really simplistic explanation, but you get the idea.",
"They know the general receptor structure they're trying to effect, analogues will have varying levels of effectiveness once broken down by the body.\n\nHeroin is converted to morphine for example",
"Another method is to learn from indigenous 'medicine men'/herbalists and take inspiration from plants secondary metabolites. ",
"Fundamental research is very important. New discoveries in how diseases work, such as molecular pathways are the starting point of new drugs. If you understand diseases you have at least some hope of developing effective treatment. Otherwise it s just a blind game of hit and miss",
"Sometimes already made drugs can be found to have more purposes than originally thought, too. An anti-seizure drug being used specifically for the mood stabilizing properties it also has would be an example of this. If you’ve heard the term of a medicine being used “off-label” that’s what it’s referring to. \n\nOr, an already made drug could be found to have somewhat of an unexpected effect, and then research takes place for a way to take advantage of that effect. I’m sure there’s more examples but the one that’s coming to my mind right now is Botox. It works cosmetically by relaxing the muscle which in turn smooths the skin above it. Some patients reported that afterwards, they got fewer migraines. So of course this was studied, and now if you suffer from chronic migraine and fit some certain criteria a treatment option is Botox all over your head and neck, though admittedly at a much higher dose than used cosmetically. Nobody is completely sure how migraines work, but tight muscles apparently play a part. \n\nAnyway sorry, my point is that I thought you may have been interested in how medicine can continue to evolve after they’ve left the pharmacy too. If I have made any mistakes in this comment, someone please correct me. ",
"In true ELI5 mode: some chemicals that occur naturally in the body but are known to be too low in a sick person, can be mimicked with an artificial version created by chemists. An example would insulin for people with diabetes. \nOn the opposite side, some sick people have too much of a chemical and artificial agents can be created which reduce or nullify some of the excess chemical to bring the concentration closer to the range expected in a healthy person. ",
"It's not quite that random. There is much \"basic\" research that goes on at universites well before pharmaceutical companies are involved. That provides a good understanding of which molecular pathways can be targeted and with what kind of results.",
"You're probably asking about computational drug discovery. Though you can concoct umpteen different drugs and throw them at animals and see what sticks, a cheaper and more effective method is to try to narrow the field first.\n\nOne method is protein-ligand docking. You want to find a chemical that will sit nicely in the \"keyhole\" of a particular biological structure. Fitting in this keyhole will either start a chemical reaction that otherwise wasn't working, or block another chemical from fitting in that keyhole and causing problems.\n\nThe trick is to find the shape of the keyhole through something like x-ray crystallography and then once you've got the 3D shape of that, start computationally trying to build chemicals that'll fit that shape. The latter's the hard part. If you can produce software where you can take a 1D protein sequence and predict the 3D structure it folds up into, then the Nobel Prize is in the post, no questions asked.\n\nThe computational part will try to narrow down which chemicals produce something more or less the right shape, but with all the best computation in the world, we still need to actually produce the drugs and test them before we know if they a) work and b) don't also cause side-effects.",
"SO\n\nI KNOW THIS ONE\n\n...SORT OF\n\n\nFirst, you have a disease or condition you are trying to find a drug for. Take.... for example, non-small cell lung carcinoma. After a lot of wet lab analysis and genomic analysis, it's found that certain receptors in a cell that control certain functions (for example, something called epidermal growth factor) has a lot of mutations in it for people who have NSCLC. \n\nSome dudes in a lab will then test to see what kind of compounds will block the receptor for epidermal growth factor, to stop the overproduction of it, because that is what mutations typically do. Either too much stuff is made by these cell receptors or too little is made. In the case of NSCLC, too much is made. So a compound that can lessen the amount of epidermal growth factor being made by the cell is called an inhibitor. \n\n\nSo they run some structures of the part of the epidermal growth factor receptor that controls switching it \"on\" or \"off\" through a database, usually the Protein Database (which also happens to be housed at my alma mater, heyo, go Rutgers University-New Brunswick!), and find compounds that are similar in structure to the receptor, but will turn it \"off.\" Then they try to find analogous structures in drugbank which is another database. \n\nThen they do a lot of in-silico analysis (on the computer) through simulations and programs like Chimera, or Argus Lab, to isolate what kind of compound is needed. It's kind of complicated, so I won't go into all of that. \n\nThen they have to create the drug, and put it through pre-clinical trials, so on mice, typically. So the toxicity is measured in mice, and the efficacy of the drug (does it help turn this receptor thingy off or nah??). After it's safe and effective in mice, we crank it up to phase I clinical trials, so that's usually just testing the half life of the drug and most importantly, the safety of it in humans, but in small doses. Then there's a few more phases to see what the safest-highest dose can be. And then extensive testing in what we call PK/PD or, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics -how a drug affects an organism, and how an organism affects the drug- (I should add, this is also done in the mice model testing too). And then, if a lot of people can tolerate this drug and benefit from it, it has to go through an FDA approval (lots of paperwork... and time), and then it needs to go through a lot of marketing stuff to get it into the global market. \n\nIt can take up to 12 years for a drug to be taken from discovery all the way to development, and finally to marketing. It's a process. But a necessary one, I guess. ",
"Here is an interesting method that I don't believe has been mentioned yet. Not necessarily related to the manufacture of medicine, but it's something that's usually needed for today's new stuff. Check out X-ray Crystallography Single Crystal Diffraction when you have spare time.\n\nBasically works like this: Is there a specific protein you want to address with a medicine? Well, you should get an atomic model of it to aid in your medicine design. To do that, you crystallize the material (very hard) and fire x-rays at it. The crystal structure allows most x-rays to pass through it except a few. Those few will get diffracted into different directions because of electron impact. What you end up getting as a result is basically a subatomic map of your protein. From there you can construct a model of it and make medicine based on that map. Pretty neat stuff",
"You may find this post interesting regarding how much it costs to research and develop a drug _URL_0_\n\nEdit: copy/paste from /u/MyPenisIsaWMD post in 2016\n\nHi, I make drugs for a living.\n\nDrug development is the most high risk/high reward industry possible. It costs roughly 2 billion USD to take a drug from conception to market. The vast majority of drugs never make it to market. Each of those failures costs some fraction of 2 billion USD. Many of those failures are weeded out only at the end when all of that investment has already been made. For those failures, the company makes back 0 of it's investment. It's not like a phone that doesn't sell as spectacularly well as hoped. It's no product at all. You can't even learn much from those failures. It's years of people lives (sometimes 10 or more) and huge amounts of money that just evaporate. It's crushing.\n\nThis is why the drugs that work have to be expensive. They have to pay the company back and more for all the failures. Interestingly, most companies making drugs aren't huge. Most are quite small:\n\nHere's an anecdote that represents a typical trajectory of a drug in development. It's an entirely true story but the numbers are best approximations:\n\nSmall company starts with idea, raises 10 million from venture capital, hires 5 people. 99 of 100 of those investments go nowhere, so the investors want a HUGE stake to make it worthwhile. At least 51%. You'd be reckless to ask for less. But hey, you now have a company doing innovative science where before you had nothing. So anywho, they lease lab space and equipment and develop the idea and it shows promise. Round 2 of financing comes in, another 50 million at the cost of another 30% stake, they hire 30 more people, lease a larger space and buy more necessary equipment. It's getting to be an expensive company to run and it so far has nothing to sell. It starts to 'burn' money at a rate that means the doors can only stay open for maybe another year. The idea continues to show promise. It works in cells, it works in mice, it works in primates, it's time for clinic. Round 3 of funding comes in with 100 million, and that costs 15% of the remaining stake. Company hires 20 more people, this time mostly bureaucrats to set up a proposal for an 'Investigational New Drug' application. This is what you need to convince the FDA to allow you to start clinical trials on humans. Right now, the original owners retain only 4% of the original stake.\n\nSo, time for clinical trials. Phase 1 begins with 30 healthy adults. This is just to show that the drug is safe. It costs 10 million USD. The company has zero profits so far and has been paying 60 people for years, so it has to pay for this cost by leveraging 3% of the final stake. Eventually, the 'burn' rate means that it has to fire 90% of their scientists as they can't afford salaries anymore. That's OK though, because this startup has succeeded. You see, Phase 1 clinical trial pass (the drug is safe) and it's onto phase 2 (which asks 'is it effective?). This costs 40 million USD more but no more money is left. What to do? Only one option. The investors who now control 99% of the company decide to sell everything to a company like Novartis/Merck/GSK, etc. The company sells for 500 million USD on the expected promise of the new drug. Original founders walk away with 5 million USD due to having a 1% stake. Everyone else is out on their ass looking for a new startup. This is considered a HUGE success in the startup world. It's what everyone hoped for.\n\nNow, Merck or whoever takes over development of drug X. Drug passes Phase 2 but fails in Phase 3 Trials.\n\nAnd that's how you lose 1 billion USD over 10 years with 100s of cumulative years of human work down the drain.\n\nTHIS is why developing drugs is expensive and THIS is why the drugs that work are expensive.\n\nTo anyone saying that Universities should make drugs instead of industry: There are very, very few universities that could afford this. Harvard maybe. Most universities would spend their entire endowment on a 9 to 1 shot. Universities like bonds for a reason. You don't play roulette with your endowment. This is a job for people willing to risk billions. And this, my friends is why drug development is so centralized in the US. Fucking cowboy investors are the best route forward here.\n\nAnd for those who think this is cynical, please recall that for the actual people who founded this company and for the scientists doing the research, they are most often driven by a desire to cure horrific diseases and change the world. The money aspect is a necessary evil that good people need to navigate. Consider that a typical PhD scientist makes about 1/4 as much as a physician and spends a similar amount of time in education (13 years for me from BS to end of postdoc). The people actually researching new drugs are doing it because they are passionate about human health. Not because they are 'shills'.",
"There are many ways but a couple ones\n\n1) Find a protein target and design a compound that'll bind to it at high affinity\n\n2) Use blind approach and throw different compounds in each well with the purified target protein and see what binds to it the best\n\nThis is the most simplest way I can explain",
"A lot of good answers here have addressed how drug developers choose disease targets and develop compounds into approved drugs, perhaps another dimension to the question is \"why don't drug developers just test things on animals (or people) until they work?\" In theory, the best way to determine if a drug works is to give it to people and observe the results. However, chemists can go through thousands of variations on compounds before they find one that is both safe and effective, which would mean you would need tens-of-thousands of people willing to be likely poisoned until a viable candidate was discovered. Not going to happen. So how about animals?\n\nThere are a lot of animal models for human diseases, which researchers use for testing drugs. These models are not always precise, and mouse physiology has obvious differences from humans', so you need to experiment on a lot of animals in order to generate results that you can say are reasonably accurate and predictive of what a compound would do in humans. This takes time and can be quite expensive. The quicker and cheaper option is to experiment on cell lines or even use computational models to predict compound activity.\n\nTypically, a drug program will take years of working through hundreds or thousands of compound variations before they are ever used on a whole living organism. Tests will start with methods that are quick, cheap, yet inaccurate and slowly work up to tests that are more accurate, expensive, and time-consuming. Even with all of this work, most compounds that make it to clinical trials fail because the drug is either too toxic or show any significant benefit.",
"Do people still wander around the jungle after talking to the local shaman for potential cancer drugs like that one movie?"
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1luer2/eli5_how_we_know_what_a_medicine_will_do_when_we/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4d6njh/eli5_how_do_scientists_create_artificial/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ehqv5/eli5_how_are_new_drugs_synthesizeddiscovered/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jlneg/eli5_how_do_we_produce_and_synthesize_new_drugs/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7dhmd1/eli5_how_are_new_pharmaceutical_drugs_designed/",
"https://amp.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1j6zih/eli5_how_does_one_invent_a_new_drug/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/146efq/eli5_how_do_pharmaceutical_companies_develop/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33tmy1/eli5_how_do_pharmaceutical_companies_create_new/"
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1kiyxz | Can all mathematical operations be chalked up as complex systems of addition operations? | Is there a known proof for or against this assertion?
Or more broadly: What does operator theory say about the uniqueness or the necessary and sufficient condition of operators? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1kiyxz/can_all_mathematical_operations_be_chalked_up_as/ | {
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"Not really, no. As the 'easiest' idea, I can come up with off the top of my head, note that multiplication of non-rational numbers doesn't have an easy interpretation in terms of + without invoking limits. Exponentiation is even worse.",
"No!\n\nAs an example of a valid mathematical operation that can't be chalked up as a complex system of addition consider the operation the takes a number between 1 and 26 and returns the letter whose place in the alphabet corresponds to that number. \n\nAs another example. Consider the operation that take an positive integer and returns the first letter of the integers name. (operating on 2 returns t). Both of these are perfectly valid mathematical operations than can't be chalked up as some complex system of addition.",
"No, but interestingly, all mathematical operations - anything that is computable - can be performed with some combination of [NAND gates](_URL_0_).",
"Disproof by counterexample: finding the derivative of a function has very little to do with addition, and very much to do with manipulation of symbols.",
"What do you mean by an operation \"chalked up as complex systems of addition operations\"? Do you mean that there is a formula for the operation that only involves the variables, maybe some constants and addition? Then the answer is obviously no: any such formula returns a positive number when feed large enough positive numbers. (For example, x+y+(-10) is positive whenever x,y > 5.) So such a formula could never express the operation -x, which gives negative answers for all positive x.\n\nI guess you might want to allow the number of additions performed to vary depending on the values of the inputs to the operation. You could define your \"complex systems of addition operations\" to mean programs in a very limited programming language. Say a program is a list of numbered instructions each of which is of one of the following types:\n\n1. Variable < - constant. (It would be enough to allow the constants 1 and -1.)\n2. Variable < - variable + variable.\n3. If variable is not zero then goto instruction number n.\n\n(Here variables and constants are integer valued ---and this means they can store integers of any size at all, even those that wouldn't fit in the memory of a real computer.)\n\nThat programming language can actually compute any computable function at all (for appropriate encodings of the input and output as integers, and assuming of course that -1 is allowed as a constant). So maybe in some sense the answer to your question is yes, for computable functions (not all functions are computable, of course).\n\nAs an example program, here is how you compute y=-x for an integer x, which I assume is stored in the variable x before the program is run.\n\n1. a < - -1\n2. b. < - a+a. (So b is -2)\n3. y < - x\n4. x < - x + a\n5. y < - y + b\n6. If x is not zero then goto instruction 4\n\n(Basically, x counts down by ones while simultaneously y counts down by twos. When x reaches 0, y will be minus the original value of x.)\n\nThis program only works if x starts out positive, you might want to fix it so it works for positive and negative integers values as an exercise. You could then choose an encoding for rational numbers and write a program to compute -x for rational x. (This will probably explain why people prefer less minimalistic programming languages.)"
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8x2h7n | how do they “freeze off fat”? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8x2h7n/eli5_how_do_they_freeze_off_fat/ | {
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"A device is applied directly to the fat deposit and intense cold is used to kill the fat cells. The dead fat cells are processed like other body wastes and pass out through the digestive tract. Note that this is not the same way that fat is processed when you exercise."
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j48kn | Overall, would it be more efficient to compost all eligible paper waste than to recycle it? | I am wondering if there is a greater overall system savings to composting all eligible paper sources, ie not glossy or colored papers which have potential heavy metals. Than to try and recycle all of it. Most paper sources in America run in a way that they replant any trees they harvest in order to continue their business. I would also think that composting paper waste would produce useful or profitable soil which could create a self sustainable free system of compost paper waste removal. | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/j48kn/overall_would_it_be_more_efficient_to_compost_all/ | {
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" > I would also think that composting paper waste would produce useful or profitable soil.\n\nNot profitable, only marginally useful. Paper is extremely low in plant nutrients, it is basically cellulose. While fungi break down paper, they need an external source of nitrogen and phosphrous, which are two of the three plant macronutrients. \n\nIf there was to be a large scale program of soil improvement (which would be a great idea), paper would be one of the least beneficial ingredients; manure would be much better, as it supplies both nutrients and broken down cellulose.\n\nUnless you propose to improve soil in the back yards of homes and offices, it will take significant fuel to transport it back to forests or farms, and paper offers minimal benefit in exchange. It is probably better to recycle it and prevent trees from being cut down."
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5nz5i5 | how does a law on paper become enforced? | For example, the government regulates certain things like food/consumables, employment, safety, money etc. How can signing a law into effect on a piece of paper actually translate into being enforced on people? In other words, how is the government able to control what people can and can't do based off something a piece of paper says? What is the transition from signing a law to everyone following it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5nz5i5/eli5_how_does_a_law_on_paper_become_enforced/ | {
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"People are employed to make sure others are complying with relevant laws. These people are known as law enforcement."
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3hep82 | what causes that horrible screeching feedback sound when a microphone gets too close to a speaker? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hep82/eli5_what_causes_that_horrible_screeching/ | {
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"It's an audio loop. A tiny sound from the microphone comes out of the speaker just a bit louder and gets picked up by the microphone, which sends it back to the speaker. ",
"Feedback loop. Basically the Amp causes it. \nThe noise from the speaker enters the mic, which sends the signal to the amp (or mixer then amp or w/e). The amp increases the signal and sends it to the speaker, which then makes a louder noise, which then enters the mic and so on.... which repeats until /shrug ...\n\nThe mic doesn't have to \"get too close to\" the speaker either, it just has to pick up the sound from the speaker and send it back again... so just having the speaker output too loud (but far from mic) will cause it too. \n\nObviously this isn't a comprehensive answer. I'm sure there are lots of technical aspects I don't know, but I did take A/V class in high school for 3 months and the first time we got to play with mic/amp/speaker I intentionally put the mic close to the speaker because I was curious and it made that noise and I quickly moved it away and looked at the teacher who looked right back at me with eyes that say \"WTF IS WRONG WITH You?!\"...",
"The mic picks up the hum from the amp..then sends it back to the amp..which amplifies it and the mic picks it up again, then sends it to the amp ad inf. \n\nWith each pass it gets louder and the effect is exponential. First it will annoy, then cause pain, then blow the amp. "
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3bfpx1 | how do trees know which way is up? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bfpx1/eli5how_do_trees_know_which_way_is_up/ | {
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"Is your name Gavin? ",
"I'm pretty sure trees know which way is up because it's the direction the sun is in (to the extent that trees can grow into odd shapes if the ground they're growing on is permanently partially shaded), but now that I come to think about it: how the hell do *seeds* know which way is up?",
"1) Geotropism, They feel the pull of gravity and send shoots the other way while their roots grow towards the pull of gravity.\n\n2) Phototropism, The tree senses sunlight and grows towards it. There's a fascinating system in plants where a specific hormone is produced in the presence of direct sunlight that causes plant cells to grow shorter on the side of a branch/stem that the sunlight is on so that the tip points towards the light source. It's been a year since I studied that so I can't remember all the scientific words."
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7f7pwy | Why aren't savoury pies a thing in America. | I feel like pies are an English thing that America got from us. It seems crazy to me though that they took on desert pies (and probably in truth eat more sweet pies than we do, there's not many things more American than apple pie) but why not savoury pies? I'm sure you can get a good steak pie in America but they're no where near as prevalent. If I had to guess maybe it's something to do with the way America butchers animals (I know in England we used to butcher more based on getting the most out of the animal whereas America is more about time efficiency). | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7f7pwy/why_arent_savoury_pies_a_thing_in_america/ | {
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"I can't really give a good \"why\" answer to this, but I can give a \"when\" answer. In the early Federal period in United States, common cookery as fundamentally similar to the English foods of the late 18th and very earliest 19th century -- savory pies, lots of pottages, breads, and meats are mostly roasted or boiled.\n\nIndeed the rich mince pie, made with not only suet but actually ground beef and sometimes venision, remained a common banquet or holiday meal in the United States right up into the 1940s. There was a great article in the *Chicago Reader* a few years back on this very subject: _URL_0_\n\nThe short answer is that at this time nobody quite seems sure exactly *why* mince pie and other fatty savory meat pies declined greatly in popularity in the United States, but it was definitely some time in the first half of the 20th century that that the change took place. In newpapers and magazines of the early 1900s, mince pie and other savory pies are very much still popular, but by 1940 they are increasingly rare. It's not exactly clear yet why this change took place, but I'm hoping some intrepid researcher will investigate this mystery."
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5vjdcn | why are house in america built so hollow with drywall and light wood, whereas homes in other countries like india, houses tend to be built with cement and brick? which is stronger? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5vjdcn/eli5_why_are_house_in_america_built_so_hollow/ | {
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"cement and brick is certainly stronger... but also much more expensive, and less user friendly for electric, plumbing, and not very aesthetically pleasing.\n\nWood is plenty strong.",
"Of course a house made of stone and concrete is going to last longer than a house made of wood. Stone houses from over 800 years ago are still standing. But wood and drywall work well enough, and they are less expensive, and most people arent building a house because they want something to span the centuries...its just a house.",
"It also depends on what area. I know down in Florida houses need to withstand hurricane force winds and new constructions are made from cinder block and stucco. ",
"Not really sure as I'm not in construction but I would assume that it's a cost/time of construction issue.\n\nIn India labor is cheap and materials are more expensive, where it's the other way around in the U.S. \n(concrete requires a large number of people to put up the molds, pour, etc.etc.).\n\n\nOne would say concrete and brick would be much stronger... but then, earthquake. Wood and such can be flexible to a certain degree, but concrete will just break.\n\nAll the layers of wood and drywall and insulation help with heating costs in the cold snowy winters in the northern parts of the U.S. and in Canada. It also helps with sound insulation. One would think Concrete would keep a house much cooler in the hot summers in India. \n\nBlah blah blah. Lol. Hope some of those helped!",
"In states like California, the wooden homes can withstand earthquakes (and is cheaper than the other earthquake code approved material, steel reinforced concrete) because they're flexible and can bend a bit.\n\nSo what homes are made of is going to depend on where you are.\n\nAre you on Long Island in New York? The houses will mostly be brick or cinder block with aluminum siding. ",
"1. Cost of raw materials\n2. Cost of labor\n3. Skill of labor\n4. Technology level and organization in using those raw materials\n\nConcrete is labor-intensive, resource-intensive, and requires little technology and little skill to build something sturdy.\n\nBuilding good wood houses out of drywall uses less resources, and less labor -- so why doesn't India do it? Their labor doesn't have the trained skill, and they don't have the technological infrastructure to be producing and distributing drywall and related building systems in an efficient and standardized way that will be sturdy and functional.",
"Cost and adaptability. \n\nImagine you wanted to add an electrical outlet to your kitchen. If the house was made of stone you're going to spend most of the time chipping away at the wall, hoping not to do too much damage. \n\nWhile stone is great for longevity, it really adds to the cost of a house. Framing systems can be bought pre-fabricated from a host of manufacturers and erected in a couple of days. There's a local developer near me that can go from foundations to drywall in about 5 days if they're really trying. That's not including a wholly pre-fabricated house that is just dropped onto a concrete pad by tractor-trailer. \n\nSo it's not a question of \"stronger\" it's \"strong enough\". If the house is rated for a 50 year lifespan, what's the value in shooting for 500? For most, 25 is good enough. ",
"Wood and drywall is more than strong enough to withstand standard weather, those things it will not withstand are storms like hurricanes and tornadoes that will destroy cement and brick nearly as easily as they destroy wood. You have to build a 4 foot thick wall with steel reinforcement that has no windows and only a single steel door to make an above ground tornado bunker. \n\nWood is more vulnerable to fire, but it is far better at withstanding earthquakes. So that is a bit of a toss up. \n\nSo we are down to price. Wood and drywall are much much cheaper than cement and brick. As much as 1/10 the cost of a cement or brick home. \n\nWood homes are also much more user friendly. It is easier to make modifications, put in electric/plumbing/internet/phone etc, and do all kinds of things. ",
"Imagine if everyone in India build wood homes? They'd literally not have a single tree left in the entire country. ",
"First, the foundations for US homes are generally made out of concrete slabs with re bar emerging from the concrete to form the basis of attaching the rest of the frame to the slab. The base of the home is the most critical aspect in terms of stability and durability. Second, in tropical areas, it is much more common to build with cinder block and mortar. Most homes in Hawaii are built out of cinder block (not brick) because termites and the humidity/salt water/rain make wood a poor building material, prone to rotting and being eaten. It is more expensive to build with cinder block, however, because there is more labor involved and in the US labor is expensive. Building with bricks requires even more labor because the progress is slower, so it is fairly uncommon in new construction (most \"brick\" you see in new construction is ornamental and not structural). Most homes in other coastal areas have some sort of cement siding, such as stucco, to add stability and insulation, and to withstand the harsh sea air. As for the standard wood with drywall construction, as long as water, humidity and temperature are controlled (which almost every modern home does through HVAC systems, insulation, and proper drainage/roofing), the wood frame structure can last indefinitely. Many wood framed homes from the 1600s are still standing. Those home used much thicker wood, but they were also less protected/insulated than modern homes. Also, with a wood frame, you can remodel pretty much every part of the home if necessary relatively easily, including the wood framing (if necessary). Just take some scaffolding. ",
"Japan's oldest wood house is the 122ft high pagoda at the Horyu-Ji Temple. It was built in 607AD and has survived 46 earthquakes of 7.0 or more. So wooden buildings can be built to last.\n\nBut also keep in mind that technology, style changes, and most importantly appreciating land value can and does make a house obsolete in a few decades. If you built a $50,000 house on a $25,000 piece of land 50 years ago, and now that plot of land is worth $250,000, then your house is a teardown, not because its falling apart - it may be doing just fine with a little maintenance - but because people aren't going to want to spend that kind of money to live in an older smaller house.\n",
"Cement and brick isn't the greatest in Cali. The rigidity doesn't play well with earth quakes. \n\nDrywall and wood can bend. ",
"I think one part of the answer is certainly that America still has a great deal of forest so wood products are probably significantly cheaper here than in India and some other parts of the world, like the middle east. Our wood products/timber industry has powerful influence in government too and it's in their interest to keep people building houses from wood. Concrete does a good job of staying (relatively) cool and temperature stable in hotter climates which along with cost, adds to its popularity in certain parts of the world. As was mentioned, Americans often do a modifications to their homes, i.e. open up walls to add power outlets or knock down walls and add rooms to a house. A wood framed house makes that much easier to do. Part of it is also tradition. Historically most homes in America have been built from wood. \n\nAs someone who has traveled a fair amount around the world, I definitely see the benefits of concrete construction. If I were to build my own house from the ground up I would prefer it be concrete than wood. "
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b2lzdl | what caused the iconic old dial up internet tone from the 90s? did someone design that sound digitally or is that some sort of analog tone generated from hardware? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b2lzdl/eli5_what_caused_the_iconic_old_dial_up_internet/ | {
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"If you've ever gotten a call from a fax machine, it'll sound familiar. \n\nThat's the actual audio being send through the phone lines, being used to encode the data that on each end, gets turned back into a digital signal. ",
"dial up uses sound to transfer data. that's just the sound of your hardware talking to the server. that sound continues for as long as you're connected, it's just that your modem mutes it after the initial connection. it's the same way touch tone phones can recognize what numbers you input, when you press a number it creates a different tone based on what you pressed. so while someone did design the sound of the various logic values, what happens afterwards just depends on what data is being transfered. ",
"It is not a designed sound, when you are listening to the dial up sound you are literally listening to what the modem sends though the phone line.\n\nIf at the other end some human picked up the phone instead of a computer that is what they would hear.\n\nEarly modems simply worked by turning the signals they were sending into sounds with a speaker that you put a telephone handset ontop of. The modem would send data in the form of beeps via the telephone and listen to the phone making noises with a microphone to turn those into received data. The modulation/demodulation of data into sounds is what the modem is named for.\n\nIn later models the step of turning data into sounds to have those picked up by a regular phone was skipped and instead the modem was connected directly to a phone line and just made the electrical signals that a telephone would make from the noises.\n\nHowever to make it easier for a person to follow along with what was going on the beginning of the whole sequence was still played of the loudspeaker.\n\nWhat was that sequence? Mostly modems talking to each other to figure out each others capabilities. It wouldn't do if one side started sending data at a higher rate than the other side could receive it for example.\n\nAn expert could listen to this exchange and figure out how well it was going. If something went wrong you sometimes could tell at which step things had gone wrong just by the sound of the negotiation alone. That is a useful diagnostic tool.\n\nOf course you could turn of the sound if you knew the right command.\n\nUnfortunately the overlap between those who didn't knew enough to find the audible sound useful and the ones who knew enough to know hoe to turn it of wasn't quite that big, so most people kept it on.\n\nAs more and more people used the internet more and more of them simply assumed that the sound was part of the whole internet experience rather than an incidental, slightly annyoing diagnostic tool.\n\nBy the time different, cheaper types of modem came out that no longer had that sort of speaker output, some of the makers of these winmodems actually made the computer play a soundfile of a generic dial-up event via the computer's speakers, just so people got what they were expecting.\n\nThis was rather like a motorcycle maker deliberately designing their bikes to make really loud and full noise because customers have come to associate that originally unwanted by-product with how a bike is supposed to sound. "
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2rng6x | What brought an end to the Christian on Christian violence in Europe that started with the reformation | Thinking about the violence spawned by radical Islam I've been reflecting on the time in history when Christianity was equally violent against those with differing beliefs. What eventually brought an end to the prior Christian religious conflicts? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2rng6x/what_brought_an_end_to_the_christian_on_christian/ | {
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"Basically, an unmatched glut of violence brought an end to the (explicitly) internecine violence. Something to consider is that Christian-on-Christian violence did not begin with the Reformation—the Albigensian Crusade of the early 13th century and the Hussite Wars of the 15th are examples of serious military exercises before the Reformation split the Catholic Church permanently. It's also worth noting that, even after the formal end of explicit violence over religious matters (with the end of the Thirty Years' War), confessional identity was still part of the underlying political milieu that drove diplomacy. A final note: in pre-modern times, distinguishing between religious and political considerations is a fairly impossible task. As a result, I'll just be focusing primarily on conflict explicitly founded over different branches of Christianity.\n\nBack on track: as you note, in the wake of the Reformation, violence between Christians over matters of religion hit an all-time high. This peaked with the Thirty Years' War, which all but destroyed Germany (by some estimates, a third of its population was killed, died via disease or starvation, or forced to flee). Before this, there were a number of smaller wars that can be pinned strongly on religious conflict: on the Continent, mainly the Schmalkaldic War, the Cologne War, and the French Wars of Religion.\n\nSo, for roughly a century (1546-1648), the Continent was either prepared for war over religion or at war over religion. The first bout of armed conflict was ended with the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, which established *cuius regio, eius religio* (who rules, his religion), that legally allowed princes of the Holy Roman Empire to determine the state religion—only Lutheranism and Catholicism were included in this decision, as Calvinists were still a relatively small minority. Moreover, the Peace of Augsburg gave no protection for worshipers of the \"wrong\" faith within a prince's territory.\n\nThe Thirty Years' War began largely as a result of that lack of protection: Protestantism, which had taken root among the nobility in the Catholic Habsburg lands (the Habsburg dynasty were Holy Roman Emperors), was being snuffed out from these places by the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Once the war began, Emperor Ferdinand II made it his goal after swift major successes to move to cleanse the entire Empire of Protestantism. This conflict first broke the power of the Protestant princes, who were then supported by the Protestant Danish King, and then the Protestant Swedish King (the famed Gustavus Adolphus). When these two ultimately failed to defeat the Catholic forces of the Habsburgs and their allies, the Catholic French (under Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin) would enter against the Habsburgs and finally break their power on the Continent.\n\nThe horrors of the Thirty Years' War, and the religious conflicts in this period generally, are hard to overstate. Nearly the entire city of Magdeburg was put to the sword in 1630, the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in France led to the death of many thousands of Huguenots, and the simple prosecution of the wars themselves led to vast destruction on a scale not seen until the Second World War. All told, the Wars of Religion during this period claimed well over 10 million lives when the whole population of Europe was under 100 million.\n\nSo, when time came to discuss peace, all parties had a strong interest in making a lasting settlement to the \"religious question\". Armed conflict had proven wholly incapable of answering the question, and delegates of the involved powers met in Münster and Osnabruck, in the region of Westphalia, to discuss such a peace. The Peace of Westphalia, as the treaties the powers signed are known, re-established the principle of *cuius regio, eius religio*. However, it added two equally important ideas: states were declared sovereign and religious minorities within a state (including Calvinism) were to be allowed to practice their religion within certain bounds.\n\nThe Peace of Westphalia was successful in its goal of ending explicit religious conflict: ultimately, maintaining the \"balance of power\" between states became a larger motivation for conflict than religious ties, and religious toleration, by which, contrary to the modern definition, I mean that the different sects merely put up with one another, became the norm across Europe. The doctrine of state sovereignty implied that the threat to one prince's right to self-determination was a serious matter *regardless* of his religious beliefs. While alliances still tended to fall along confessional lines, military force was no longer a legitimate tool to achieve internecine aims."
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33knmj | why is it that when you go for a run you don't feel hungry for ages afterwards? even if you were hungry prior to exercise. | I mean, if you go say for a run at 6:30 pm or so it's not that rare at all to literally not feel like eating anything. Even if you were hungry before you went for a run. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33knmj/eli5_why_is_it_that_when_you_go_for_a_run_you/ | {
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"It is a process your body undergoes called vascular shunting. While you are running, you release adrenaline, which causes your body to 'focus' on its aerobic processes. Digestion is quite energy intensive so blood that would go to digesting food, is diverted to other places of greater need, e.g legs to break down lactic acid. Even when you stop running, it takes a while to get it started again, so the blood still isn't fueling those nerves that were telling you prior that you were hungry"
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1ivu0w | How was the U.S. army supplied when it traveled through U.S. territories or wilderness in the days before railroads? | When General Andrew Jackson led troops through the American South, between New Orleans and Florida, what kind of equipment would they carry and how would they maintain supplies? Did they plunder Native American villages or commandeer supplies from American settlements? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ivu0w/how_was_the_us_army_supplied_when_it_traveled/ | {
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"I don't know about Jacksons travels, but during the Indian Campaigns they would often have supplies sent from large forts with established supply routes.\nThese wagon trains were often protected by the Calvary and Regular Army, in order to keep the Native Americans and bandits from stealing supplies. This is also the way frontier forts were supplied with ammunition and weapons when they were needed. These caravans had especially heavy protection to prevent the weapons and ammunition from falling in the hands of the Natives, and being used against the US Army and civilians. \nI also remember reading that sometimes smaller supply shipments were contracted out to thir party groups. I cannot remember if they were provided Army escorts as well though."
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a338zg | Why did Scottish Highlander settlers in North Carolina stay loyal to Great Britain during the American Revolution? | Reading the [Wikipedia page on Fayetteville, North Carolina](_URL_0_), the article mentions that many of the early settlers in the area were Gaelic-speaking Highlander Scots. It also claims that they primarily remained loyal to Great Britain and the King during the American Revolution, referencing how "Flora MacDonald (1722–1790), a Scots Highland woman known for aiding Bonnie Prince Charlie after his Highlander army's defeat at Culloden in 1746, lived in North Carolina for about five years. She was a staunch Loyalist and aided her husband to raise the local Scots to fight for the King against the Revolution." If I'm not mistaken, many Highlanders back in Scotland were experiencing oppression from and dissatisfaction with the royal government, which had brutally put down the 1745 rising and had begun the Highland Clearances. Why were Highlanders settled in this part of North Carolina (and perhaps in the colonies in general) so supportive of the loyalist cause? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a338zg/why_did_scottish_highlander_settlers_in_north/ | {
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"Hi u/Kintpuash-of-Kush! In case you're still interesting in knowing more about this topic, I'm going to link a question I recently answered: [\"Can historians link the American Revolution to the battle of Culloden?\"](_URL_0_) , where I discuss the loyalty of the Scottish colonists and their motivations. Here are some highlights that might answer your question: \n\n > Why fight for the very government that obliterated your estate, destroyed your towns, banned your culture, and killed your family? Literature of the time, especially Gaelic poetry, indicates military service on behalf of the crown as an atonement for previous sins, namely the support of the Pretender, and a way to regain esteem within society. A song celebrating the return of Frasers Highlanders affirm a desire to get the king's favor through service. (bolded are translations that were originally in Scottish Gaelic) \n > \n > **We will wish the King who is on the Throne a long life,** \n**He is of the royal stock of MacAlpine who was in Scotland of old.** \n**He has shown great favor to the Highland warriors** \n**As a result of the victory on the slaughter-field of Quebec.** \n > \n > A similar ode composed in honor of the Black Watch while they prepared for battle in the F & I exalts Highland soldiers for their sense of tradition, and pushes them to \"prove\" themselves to King George in the fight. \n > \n > **The King’s reward and the gratitude of the land,** \n**And fame will be yours forever,** \n**For protecting your land from the despoiler’s greed** \n**And proving the Gael’s great worthiness;** \n**Your excellent conduct will convince King George to return our uniform,** \n**The cheerful ancient uniform** \n**Since the age of Adam and Eve;** \n**And if he gives to us our prestige, weapons, and clothing now, as was our custom,** \n**We will be the best arrows in his quiver,** \n**We will be Scotland’s payment to him.** \n > \n > The survivors of Culloden saw the necessity of giving up on Charles and learning to love George if it meant getting back to being treated humanely. This sentiment is repeated over and over in Gaelic poetry of the time and in 1774 Simon Fraser is granted a return of his family estate nearly *a decade before* other forfeited estates were returned. A poem celebrating the return of the estate mentions the respect he won from King George through military service after the horrors of Culloden. \n > \n > Because Simon and his Highlanders were just one regiment that fought the King faithfully in the years between the '45 and the Revolution. Many soldiers who fought in the F & I were given land grants following their service and a significant landbridge of Highland immigrants was formed. Immigrants that were hard pressed to be convinced to fight against the crown now and risk losing land and opportunity they had earned through decades of loyal military service and sacrifice. As the Revolution began more poetry celebrating what they thought was an impending victory over American rebels. Duncan Lothian penned a premature celebration of British victory in 1777 specifically mentioning the Scottish role in British success. The rally cry of Highland regiments at the Battle of Moore's Creek in 1776 was said to be \"King George and Broadswords\". Loyalist Iain mac Mhurchaidh composed a song in 1780 trying to warn his fellow countrymen of the error he feared they were making and spoke of the aftermath of Culloden as a sure example of the punishment that would be meted out if the Americans lost. \n > \n > Is it any wonder why these prisoners, shipped from their home and stuck in a new land, would be wary of trying to fight the British crown again after fighting so hard for any respect? The success of the American Revolution was a longshot to begin with and a risk not work taking, assuming the punishment for losing would be the same as it was in 1745. \n > \n > So was the military service, massive social transformation, and being on the losing side of another revolution worth it? Probably. Loyalists didn't have it easy in the colonies. But the reputation and image of Scots in Britain radically changed in the final years of the American Revolution and immediately after. The Act of Proscription was repealed in 1782 and estates were given back to Jacobite families starting in 1784, two of the largest victories for the Scottish.\n\n & #x200B;"
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9ex942 | all the steps a washing machine uses to wash clothes | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ex942/eli5_all_the_steps_a_washing_machine_uses_to_wash/ | {
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"Let's not get carried away with the different rotations, even though they are chosen to agitate the clothes depending on their durability and wear profiles.\n\nMost cycles vary the heat applied. This matters. The temperature is usually governed by either drawing already heated water, or cold water that must be heated. In both cases there is an energy cost that tends to be high, and I assume, higher than that of the motor run time. \n\nSo use a detergent that is OK with low or no heat, adjust the cycle profile to turn off using heated water in most of your washes, to both save energy and reduce pollution. Only use heat if the clothes are very dirty, and have an oil/grease component that you think won't be addressed by the enzymes etc. in the powder/liquid.\n\nBeyond this, if it's sunny or dry and you have time, reduce the spin cycle to a slower setting, again, in the interests of conserving energy and reducing pollution.\n\nLastly, water is precious, tap water is commonly processed to be drinkable, so reduce the number of wash/rinse cycles. just push buttons for this, or get a new machine that allows you to do. Refer to the manual to determine how many wash/rinse cycles each different setting has. \n\nOnce you work it all out, simplify it by teaching your family members to select one combination of settings for a normal full load (clothes that are mostly clean, work for < 8 hours by people who don't sweat/work), and a different combination for a very dirty/oily load.\n\nImagine you are on a spaceship... spaceship earth. (research BFI and Mr. Fuller) \n\nWash, without going overboard, as if your spaceship had limited resources, and the true cost was 10x that which you had to pay for.\n\nFinally,\n\n & #x200B;\n\nConsider your poor clothes. If they are smashed against a brick 1000 times, they will last 1/5th the time as if they are smashed against a brick only 200 times. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nI've not made clothes, because I can't, so I respect them. I try not smash them more times than I have to during cleaning, even if it's a machine smashing them and not my mum using a rock in a river. :)"
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yfkpd | schizophrenia | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yfkpd/eli5_schizophrenia/ | {
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"You're probably better off in anyone of the better suited subs like r/askscience or r/psychology but I can give a general LY5\n\nBasically the brain has a bunch of little messengers called neurotransmitters. These are like the UPS guy only less sexy. In schizophrenia and many other mental disorders, these messengers get lost, find the delivery address is wrong, or just don't go on their routes. This can cause all manner of things to go wrong in the brain including hallucinations (sensing something that isn't really there), trouble regulating emotions, \"word salad\" like the rambling nonsensical chatter you see in tv depictions. \n\nI should also add it's not the same as a split personality or dissociative identity disorder.",
"Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by false perceptions, delusions, inappropriate actions/emotions, disorganized thinking, and auditory/visual hallucinations.\n\nThere are actually five main subcategories of schizophrenia: paranoid, catatonic, undifferentiated, disorganized, and residual. These types are all different, and when somebody says \"schizophrenia\", they are most likely referring to paranoid schizophrenia, which is the classic example of schizophrenia used in the media.\n\nSchizophrenia is mainly caused by an overabundance of the neurotransmitter dopamine, as far as we know. There may be (and there probably are) many other causes.\n\nBy the way, schizophrenia is NOT Dissociative Identity disorder, nor is it Multiple Personality Disorder. They are not the same thing, and are commonly confused.\n\nYou can probably get more information in /r/psychology.",
"r/psychology probably knows better than I do, but here goes:\n\nIn your head, you have chemicals- neurotransmitters- called dopamine, glutamate and serotonin. All three have different effects on your body's nervous system, your thoughts, memory, behavior and function. When someone has schizophrenia, they produce the wrong amount of these chemicals, and that causes things like hallucinations, delusions, hearing voices, or in other cases, catatonic states, trances, or loss of control. Anti-psychotic medicines can be used as treatment because they curb the dopamine, glutamate and serotonin producers in your head to produce the proper amount of each chemical (At least, that's how they're supposed to work, but they aren't perfect). Counseling can also be helpful.",
"The best I can do is a description from my best bud's younger brother who is schizophrenic: \n\n\"You know how when you're dreaming, and stuff seems perfectly normal, but it's actually wacked out shit like whispering doorknobs and smoke that tastes like ink, and strawberry chickens, and all the books want you to read them, but they're full of mirrors and teeth, but then you wake up and think damn, that was a crazy dream? I don't wake up.\"\n",
"This has always been my favorite explanation. \n\n~~www._URL_0_~~\n\n_URL_0_",
"I think this video is really cool. It gives a first-person experience of what it would be like to live a day with schizophrenia. \n_URL_0_",
"Frog Doug lunch aftershave smell nothing weigh. It's picky marry caution not Doug then why is late? Bye. Wow, how very child-sided. Let them dress sexy. It's ruined. ",
"Schizophrenia is the name people have given to a condition where someone is able to see and interact with quantum multiple universes, Since no one else can see them, they assume these people are insane, and therefore fear and hate them and try to drug them into losing their abilities.\n \n See, this explanation would not seem crazy to someone suffering from schizophrenia. Does that help?\n",
"Not useful, but \"schizophrenia\" comes from the old greek \"schizo\" wich means \"to split\", and \"phrein\" which eans \"the spirit\", because something is \"split\" between the reality and what you feel of reality (hallucinations...) ",
"Since I don't really see it being said elsewhere, there are a variation of schizophrenic symptoms. It is not all the same.\n\nSome schizophrenics believe themselves to be someone they are not -- such as a king. This feels exactly as it sounds. You honestly believe you are someone that you are not. A king, the target of a government conspiracy because you know too much, whatever. It's usually someone very important.\n\nSome schizophrenics hear or see things that are not there -- as adequately described by kindredflame.\n\nSome schizophrenics believes weird situations -- like conspiracy theorists or aliens.\n\nTo add a little more to what kindredflame said, it feels horrible. Different types of schizophrenia feel differently, I imagine; but one type is the good/bad voices. It's a surprisingly common type of schizophrenia where there are two or more voices in your head. They are almost always dichotomous in that one is telling you good things (\"You're a great person,\" \"You're going to achieve great things,\" \"You should be proud of yourself.\") and the other is telling you horrible things (\"Life isn't worth living,\" \"You are nothing,\" \"You should just kill yourself,\" \"Nobody loves you.\"). Have you ever been in a room where everyone was talking too loud, and you had to go outside for some quiet? It's like that, except you can't go outside. Ever. Not even at night. You are just constantly in that room. And not only is everyone talking really loudly, they are talking about _you_, and they are talking in extremes. Not realistically. They are talking about how you are either the greatest person on the planet or the worst person on the planet, and they mean it. They aren't joking. This is what they think about you, really loudly, 24/7, and you have to listen to it, and you can't make them stop.\n\nOftentimes, you cannot tell they are fake. You may believe someone is nearby talking, or that they are some sorts of messengers from god. The notion of an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other is almost exactly like this, and I wouldn't be surprised if that meme didn't start from a person with schizophrenia.\n\nYou'll believe an angel and a demon are arguing over you, and ultimately deciding whether you'll go to heaven or hell.\n\nYou'll start believing what they say, which is the worst part, because you can't settle your opinion. \"He's right. I am horrible, and I should kill myself,\" is immediately followed by \"He's right. I am a great person, and I have a lot to live for.\"\n\nThey aren't just words. These are your thoughts, and they are influential, and they are annoying, and they are constant, and they are contradictory, and they are extremes, and they are confusing, and you can't tell if they are you or divine.\n\nHow does it feel? Fucking horrible. ",
"Can you have a 'light' case of Schizophrenia? I don't have any visual hallucinations, but damn going through the list of symptoms I fit in like a thong in a bum. \n\nThen again, maybe I'm just experiencing medical student's disease. Or maybe they're trying to kill me.",
"I am diagnosed with schizophrenia and I feel I'm pretty qualified to describe my version of it. Knowing Reddit I'm sure there will be skeptics so anyones free to believe what they want, this is not an iama so I don't need proof as far as I know. I swear it is real though.\n\nMy experiences are a lot more subtle than the video and other descriptions going around I think. When I was younger (around 17) I had many experiences of thinking I had special powers, and i often thought I was able to make it rain on command. There was an underlying feeling that I was special, that the world was special just for me, that I saw some secret that nobody else did. I supposed in retrospect it was a way to cope with my feeling of hopelessness and my lack of power socially and physically. I had several similar general ideas that were always with me growing up, and I remember feeling very distanced to everyone else, like they had no clue who I was, and they were my enemies. This feeling of distance is very hard to describe, but I was angry at everyone and I had no capacity to put myself in their feelings or minds.\n\nAs I grew into my 20s, my life was starting to fall apart. I was not able to get a job, meet friends or do much in general. I had massive social anxiety and lots of paranoia. As best as I can tell my paranoia manifested in 3 broad ways. One was the social way where I thought others knew what I was thinking and everything I felt and thought. It's a very penetrative feeling where all privacy is lost. I did everything I could to act strange and say strange and out of place things so as to distance the others (who ironically were already distanced). I felt like my family and friends were playing mindfuck games with me like for example that my mother would wash my clothes in such a way that they would become smaller in a way that was annoying to me. I also thought she would spit in my food so I had to watch when she cooked eggs for me, and I always felt bad when eating food she had cooked, to the point where I didn't want to eat it. \n\nI had real trouble showering at my worst as well because I felt I was being watched even when I was alone in a locked room. I didn't know if they had cameras in there or if it was something deeper like the whole world being an illusion or game, and they stood 'outside' in some other dimension type thing, which also spawned many philosophy questions regarding what I could know about reality etc. I also thought people on IRC and MSN (people from other countries who I had never met) knew what I was thinking and would say things that I had just thought about on purpose, to fuck with me. Like if I had just watched 'Independence Day' the movie, someone I knew on MSN would message me a few minutes later asking questions about the movie, and I would wonder how the fuck he would know. I automatically thought he knew I had seen it. This is an example cause I can't remember exact episodes right now.\n\nAt some point I also thought a spider had settled in my ear because when I would move my jaw I would hear crackling sounds, and it fucking terrified me. I also often wondered about my body, like I was convinced I didn't have a normal brain, and maybe even no brain at all so that when I would take an EEG there would be no activity on it. I contemplated many times to put a recording device in my parents kitchen to hear what they were planning when I wasn't there, but then I figured they would already know if I had put it there and pretend when I was recording, so I could never really have proof. \n\nAnother major social problem was I was incapable of understanding situations. I would think people were angry at me, even people who I hadn't seen in years or months, and that most people disliked me. This made it really difficult for me to meet people and I spent years avoiding everyone I could from family and friends I used to have. The general feeling of all of this was a sense of not knowing, and a hollow feeling of being fucked with in secret. I thought if I killed someone I would reveal the secret because they would never allow me to do it, and so a clear sign would show to stop me. But then I thought, if they control everything couldn't they just pretend the person was dead? I would go to jail and whatnot and they would have even more reason to fuck with me. I had an extreme anger and wanted to show power and exert just violence and vengeance over those who oppressed me (basically everyone). I hated that they could just fuck with me like this and get away with it, and every time I thought about hurting them I would feel a sense of urgency and motivation. \n\nNear the latter part of my worst period I would also invent characters and personas who I thought were my friends. Not sure who they were but there was a man, and a girl, and they were the ones I could talk to and feel like they were on my side always. I talked to myself A LOT like it was my main way to deal with everything. I talked to the man and girl (who I had a mental image of but never saw or heard as hallucinations) and to myself. i could sit for hours on end it felt like debating everything I cared about from movies to philosophy to troublesome real life situations to plans for revenge etc.\n\nI was also really afraid of illness so I felt like I thought I had contracted some terminal disease all the time. Basically I had cancer, diabetes and I thought I could become paralyzed forever from sleeping (because I had sleep paralysis once in 2002 and it scared the shit out of me I was afraid it would be permanent) so this fucked up my ability to sleep for a while, no matter how much I read that it wasn't possible. But basically if my brain latched onto an idea of illness, it would terrorize me for a long time until I was able to get over it naturally. \n\nIt took me many years of therapy and mental maturing / work to get over it and I can say today that I am a lot better. The anger is gone, and I have much more sensible view of the world and other people. Ironically I went from a kind of inner totalitarianism to an external nihilism. I realized that we're all people and there's a lot of fucked up stuff happening, but we're capable of a lot of love and caring, and good times. It all became a kind of random physical process with us at the center I guess. Sometimes I still get notions and feelings of paranoia and anxiety but I try my best to control them and usually it passes on its own or when I change my environment or get positive feedback from people. I still find it pretty hard to just be normal in my mind, I can't help but stray onto weird association paths and making decisions is hard, but yeah.",
"Here is a good video that tries to, to the best of its ability, to simulate schizophrenia. It shows how scary it can be for somebody suffering from it, and also makes it pretty clear why somebody would act the way they do... if you were experiencing the same things they were experiencing you probably would act the same way.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\nThe majority of people suffering from schizophrenia suffer from audio hallucinations (I will get into delusions in a little bit). A small percentage suffer from visual hallucinations, and an even smaller percentage suffer from tactile (physically feeling) hallucinations.\n\nEverybody has had a psychotic episode at some point in their life. You ever hear the phone ringing but then when you go to answer it you realize you just thought you heard it? Ever heard somebody you were talking to say something and then when you asked them what they said they said they didn't say anything? Ever thought you saw a friend and then when you looked back over it was somebody else? Those are all examples of normal psychosis that everybody experiences.\n\nNow what is different about those examples and people with schizophrenia is they really can't tell the difference between the two. While you hear the phone ringing for a moment and realize \"oh, it was just a thought\", they hear the phone ringing and can't tell whether it is actually ringing or not.\n\nThe voices that they \"hear\" are also similar to something people do every day, talking inside their head. You ever do something embarrassing and just say to yourself, \"ugh that was stupid of you.\"? Well people with schizophrenia can't differentiate between that self talk and somebody else talking to them. So they say that in their head and suddenly they go, \"what? who said that?!\" followed by, \"I did.\" to which they say, \"what?! who are you?!\" and so on and so forth. So you can imagine how disconcerting it could be to hear your own thoughts like it is from somebody around you. It is also why you will see people with schizophrenia talking to themselves. While to you it looks like the person is just talking back and forth randomly, they are actually having a conversation where they are saying each part like they are hearing somebody else say it.\n\nNow for the delusions... it isn't too much of a leap to understand how if you thought there was somebody responding to your own thoughts would start to make you paranoid, or believe strange things. If suddenly I heard somebody talking to me about my own thoughts, I would get a bit scared too and start coming up with reasons why that is happening.",
"my boss is a bipolar schizophrenic and if she doesn't take her medicine she says she hears voices that tell her she's a terrible person and she's ugly and stuff like that. never anything violent, just mean things that makes her feel bad about herself.",
"My younger brother has the paranoid subtype of schizophrenia. He first displayed symptoms when he was 18, which is the usual age at which the disease manifests.\n\nSimply put, he is paranoid about people trying to poison him and kill him. He believes in bizarre delusions, such as our family sprinkling poison in his food, embedding video cameras into our vents, and implanting voice recorders in our walls. He believes the world is out to get him because of strange voices he hears and things he sees (which aren't really there).\n\nThe strangest fact I learned about the disease is the fact that they cannot \"forget\" things. For instance, when most healthy people are working while construction workers use a jackhammer outside the window, after a while their mind will desensitize itself to the noise of the jackhammer and will ignore the sounds. This allows normal people to continue working and focusing on whatever task they may be doing. Patients with schizophrenia cannot \"ignore\" these stimuli and they get startled everytime they hear a noise or see something strange, because their brain cannot turn off the \"watch out for that!\" option. I think that this has a lot to do with the reason why my brother cannot forget simple mundane acts, and thinks everything is some sort of \"sign from god\" or \"indication\" that people are trying to kill him.",
"This was my experience:\n\nI could still control my own train of thought and internal dialogue, but there were other voices that communicated with me inside head. I could have entire (unpleasant) conversations with entities I logically knew weren't real without opening my mouth. That shit gets old fast.",
"I thought this was an interesting take on it. A Schizophrenia simulation.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nKind of creepy for us sane folk.",
"Schizophrenia runs in my family, i have long feared i would develop it myself. The main people that have it bad is my Dad, sister, and my late uncle. One thing to realize is these \"imaginings\" are as real to them as you reading these words. \n\nDad - Mainly paranoia. He imagines conversations and situations that just doesn't exist. If he see someone taking a picture he will be seriously convinced they are watching him. Random meaningless sentences to him can devolve into you plotting on him. He doesnt have any hallucinations that i have ever heard of. \n\nSister - She recently developed it. Symptoms tend to show in your 20s, she just started last year at 24. I believe it was greatly aggravated by her abusing Meth since she was 17 or so. She imagines people talking to her and giving her advice and trying to convince her to do stuff. Most of these people are dead friends or family. Pretty much only auditory hallucinations. \n\nUncle - His was the worst. He had a combination of the two above along with very overt visual hallucinations. He was also firmly convinced that God did this to him for his troubled youth and that this was the beginning of Armageddon. He was very fire and brimstone religious. One of the most common things i always heard was he couldn't be around any pictures of people, they would always talk to him. Books would open and start reading themselves, pages turning and all. \n\nSo yea, thats my schitzo family. My sister and uncle are on medication and when they took the meds they were ok. However they both said life on the meds just wasnt worth living (no emotions or passion), and both have went off and on episodes multiple times. My sister just got out of the hospital last week actually, she totaled her car on a telephone pole and when the cops got there she was telling them she was just waiting on her (dead) friend to get done tanning. My uncle passed away on Mothers day this year, but it had been quite a few years since he had any episodes. My dad was never on any medication and i havent had anything to do with him since i was 18 so i dont know how he has handled it. ",
"Just a warning to everyone making a comparison between tripping and schizophrenia: they are similar, but different. The warning is that tripping and really any psychoactive drug (including pot) can cause temporary psychosis, or trigger permanent schizophrenia. This happened to me (temporary) and a friend of mine (permanent). It took me 2 years + to find my way back. It took my friend heavy medication that made him a zombie, and then a self-fired bullet through his head to end it.\n\nThere is some value to be gained by tripping and I think most people should do it once or up to three times. Just understand that you're fucking with the chemistry in your brain and things can and do go permanently wrong. Not to scare anyone, most people I know tripped a bunch and are fine, just respect it and realize it is not a recreational drug. It is for mental and spiritual growth. Use it for that purpose. If, after 3 times you still want more, learn to meditate in one of the many ways that can get you to the same place.\n\nDon't take chances with your reality. You don't wanna go where I went. You definetly don't want to end up like my friend.",
"My schizophrenia is not like this. Just audio based delusions for myself, not as bad I suppose, although the difference between real and fake can be hard to determine.",
"This might be the wrong place to ask this but I've not been on reddit for too long. But it seems like this thread has some people that could aswer this question for me. \n\nMy cousin has just been diagnosed as bi polar and schizophrenic. His mother has moved in with him to look after him because he didn't take his meds and is having delusions. I'm one of the only people he trusts and when I talk to him he keeps on telling me that the doctor is trying to poison him and the medications are too strong and he thinks he will accidentally overdose. Is there a good way to explain that he needs to take them to him? He seems to just say Yeah and then I have to have the same conversation a few days later again.\n\n\n\n",
"As an internal medicine physician, I see many schizophrenics in the hospital for other reasons (they tend to have lots of comorbidities). The most impressive sight is an intelligent schizophrenic (they usually are) who has full use of rational thought and reasoning but who gears them towards illusory ends. These are the most confusing and deceiving of patients. You can talk with them for a while at a very high level before they drop a bomb on you...like the Croation Mafia is after them or that they are Angelus Silesius. Crazy shit.",
"I'd suggest watching the movie A Beautiful Mind. It explains paranoid schizophrenia pretty well, plus it's a great movie.",
"IAMA psychologist in charge of mental health services for an agency that serve about 500 individuals with mental health problems in the community. About 10% of my clients have some flavor of psychosis -- including schizophrenia -- and each person manifests symptoms in a different way. One interesting observation is that schizophrenics are most frequently disorganized thinkers, often paranoid and rarely violent. Unlike how media often portrays such persons. ",
"I have been diagnosed Schizoaffective and for me my psychotic/manic/altered states of consciousness were mostly very positive. Felt more like a spiritual awakening. Leading up to my first episode I had a gradual increased feeling of sense of self. I was becoming more comfortable, confident and accepting of who I was. I was challenging myself and consciously trying to work on myself to be a better person. I now identify the start of the manic period as when I was lying in bed one night and started to have racing thoughts. Thoughts about my future rushed into my head and everything became clear and exciting. I wanted to make positive changes like move house, change career etc. Great zest for life. I soon met a girl and fell in love. This increased my manicness/elevated mood I'm sure. \n\nThe first hallucination I had was seeing her aura above her face. Then I saw stars move and collect around me in the night sky. At the time of that occurring my heart was very open and I felt amazing. Like a higher state of consciousness. All the times that I had delusion/hallucination my mind and heart were in a very open and loving place. I don't think anything out of the ordinary would have ever been perceived by me if that were not the case. After seeing the stars things became much more intense. I started noticing synchronicities in music, felt like God was controlling my shuffle. As that week went on I got researching spiritual awakening on the internet and began to get beliefs that the world was soon to change in some way. During this time I was very active and always on the go. I would see my family and perceived my mother as evil in some way. Her mannerisms were often devilish. I felt I had found heaven within and felt all knowing; very emotionally intuitive. \n\nOne morning I woke up and the girl I had fallen in love with texted me to pick her up from somewhere. I said I would be there as fast as I could. I drove to her in quite a dangerous fashion, skipping red lights and driving down the hard shoulder of motorway. At the time I just felt totally capable to do so and felt I was doing so for a higher good: for true love. When I arrived there and spent some time with her I gradually felt like we were destined to be celebrities and were about to go to some initiation event of some kind in Los Angeles. For weeks now the sun had felt the brightest it had ever been in my life. We got in my car and as we drove off I heard the soundtrack to the end of Greece play in my head and sensed the car lifting into the sky and flying off. Anyway, I got her to her destination and she just wanted to be friends etc. She maybe could sense something was a bit odd with me and said I should go see my mum. \n\nBefore going to see my mum I first went to my flat and this is where I really felt my ego totally dissolve. I felt overwhelmed with love and vitality but at the same time felt a bit vulnerable, I felt I would do anything for anyone at that point. I sent the girl a really long dramatic text ending, 'we are too young to die', and then drove to my mum's. There I got the real sensation that the world was about to change in some distinct way and that older people would not survive. My mum was suffering with a form of shizoaffective disorder herself but of the depressive kind at this point. Her eyes seemed dead and void of love to me whilst I was beaming with love from my eyes and crown chakra. I had to leave. I kissed her goodbye thinking it may really be the last time I see her and got in my car. As driving off I got this real sensation that just nothing was real anymore, that I was in a different dimension and nothing really mattered. I just wanted to drive however the hell I wanted. I felt super alert and very capable. I drove down the road like I was invincible, speeding close past cars for a good mile or two until I got to a corner/sliproad to enter the motorway. By this time I was amazed at how I had driven and questioned If I had been respnsible for driving so fast without crashing myself or whether God had my car on stabilisers so to speak. I needed to check if God was protecting me and my car for future reference (if he was then I could use this in the future in this new dimension) I spun the wheel dramatically during the turn and ended up skidding head on into a post. Slammed my head on the airbag but not injured at all. Jumped out of my car feeling even more euphoric. It was like a Near Death Experience and now I almost felt immortal. \n\nA truck driver pulled up beside me immediately and I got in, no questions asked. I later got out as had forgot phone in car. Went to walk back to car but got lost and ended up on a hill where I telepathically spoke to a Spirit/Angel via a spider. I stood there for hours. This was my first experience with thought insertion/telepathy. She asked me to remember some of my past with my mum and then onto my experiences with this girl. The thought insertion eventually went on to talk about unconditional love. I spent that night sleeping in a garden on the hill. Walked back to my mum in the morning where everyone was really worried what had happened to me. I rang the police myself to get my phone back (they had obviously attended the abandoned car that night). They came to take me away for psychological evaluation in hand cuffs. I went with no resistance, felt like a sacrifice. \n\nI explained everything very honestly to the Drs and ended up spending about 6 weeks in hospital under a Section 3. This was my first of 2 hospital sections I have had. The 2nd time occurred a few months later after 7 months of what I would call altered state of conciousness. That time was more about trying to lose my ego again. To get back to a sense of self and it contained visual, auditory and tactile hallucinations but again, all mostly positive, spiritual experiences apart from near the end where I started to sense the devil spitting in my ear like a serpent.\n\nI really identify with and recommend the series of youtube videos by Sean Blackwell 'BipolarOrWakingUp'. Really captures the essence of what I went through and gives you the argument for the spiritual aspect of bipolar/schizo psychotic mania. First video in series [here](_URL_0_)",
"with my sister it swings to either side of rationality and is flavoured by paranoia, for example, she has issues with our dad (who is a bit of a dick, borderline verbal abusive but ONLY verbal) and on her six monthly visits she will either crucify him and say there is no excuse for ANY of his behaviour and that he is beyond reprieve OR she will say she is forgiving him OVER and OVER and that no one has the right to be critical, never can she be anywhere in between and see that yes, he is abrasive,dismissive , ignorant and self absorbed but that it actually stems from his own upbringing.\n\nalso she is worried she isnt covering all bases so basically every statement has a negating counterstatement after it in each email or SMS she writes.\ne.g. \" Its been a hard week, but in many ways it came naturally and was full of gifts.\" \n\nanother thing that is habitual now is peppering conversations with sentences to try to show she is grasping what you are saying but that do the opposite because they are right before the point being made in your sentence and slightly off topic."
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3tj8yc | i get that computers perform calculations in binary using transistors for ones and zeros. but, how does it translate from my keystrokes, to calculations, to visible things on my screen? | Ok so, if you ask anyone how a processor/computer works they say the whole 1s and 0s and how transistors work. I have a loose grasp on how binary arithmetic works. One part (probably many parts) that just blows my mind is some how these 1's and 0's ends up with me playing GTAV, or streaming netflix, or typing a word document. How my keystrokes get calculaed, and then translated to something put on my display.
I am sure this all happens in multiple processes, probably some done in the GPU or.... something. ..
Is there any way for an explanation of where and/or how this all happens? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tj8yc/eli5_i_get_that_computers_perform_calculations_in/ | {
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"Every key on your keyboard has switch behind it. Your keyboard translates these mechanical signals into a code wich your computer understands. Mostly these are ASCII codes which are used",
"Let's take a first-person shooter game as an example. The program keeps track of the player's position in 3D space inside the game world, which might be something like (2.348762, 7.7146, -3.79465). 60 times a second, the computer calculates a snapshot of what the camera sees, which produces a sequence of images that your eyes can interpret as a moving view of the world. This snapshot of course depends on where the camera is in the game world, as well as the positions of all the things the camera can see. \n\nWhen you press \"W\" to walk forward, the game checks that there is no object to block you from moving forward, then it increases the Z value of your position by a little bit (many games use the Z axis for the forward direction). When your position changes, the camera tied to the head of your character also moves, and the snapshot is made using this new position. There is a lot of math in here to figure out exactly what the world looks like from the camera's perspective, but as you might expect, the computer is good at number crunching problems like this. This is where the GPU comes in, because calculating the color of millions of pixels is best done by thousands of independent processors instead of just one. \n\nThen let's say you press the \"fire\" button. The computer is constantly checking for any new key presses (pressing a key will change the electrical properties of wires in the keyboard, and the computer knows how to check these repeatedly). It sees that you clicked the mouse, and because of that it creates a new set of data to describe the bullet, such as where it starts, and what velocity it moves with. These can be calculated from the player's position and the type of gun they are using, etc. As the game continues to run it can now calculate the motion of the bullet (modifying the (x,y,z) position of the bullet), and check if it enters an enemy or hits a wall. \n\nThe key idea here is that the computer holds data to describe every object that it can show you, and has rules to tell it what to do to those objects when you hit a certain key or move the mouse. It also has rules to tell it how to draw an object on the screen, which usually involves remembering a huge set of triangles that cover the surface of the object and then doing math to move those triangles to where they should be on the screen and filling in the right colors. Each object has a \"texture\" which is a set of data that says what color each part of the triangle should be. [this video series](_URL_0_) describes how this triangle drawing process works. ",
"Okay so your issue is a disconnect between 1/0 on a processor level and high level stuff like videogames and the internet?\n\nI'll try to break down how software in general works, though this is really hard to do in a really easy to understand fashion. I hope I'm given some leeway by the experts for some oversimplification and omissions. Also not quite ELI5\n\n1. **The first step up from the 1s and 0s** is probably assembler. Assembler is a set of instructions that your processor understands intrinsically. A program that a software developer writes ends up in a very similar form. Now the operation a CPU will support are on one side logical and arithmetically but it can also talk to I/O devices (your hard disk, GPU, RAM and so on)\n_URL_0_\nThis picture is an opCode table. See how there are 1s and 0s in the column and row headers? this is how 1s and 0s end up doing things. A regular CPU has things called registers, basically a bunch of slots that those low level operations will operate on.\nSo the ADD instruction will take two registers, add them together and write it back into a register. MOV will allow you loading things from RAM or writing it there, IN and OUT allows us to talk to our IO Devices.\n\n2. **Okay so now our CPU can do things** with data, move it from/to RAM and talk to our IO devices. Now a program is basically nothing but a list of those instructions. In an oversimplified PC we can already draw on the screen. Lets assume our GPU is just a memoryblock with 1920*1080 bit. each bit switches the corresponding pixel on your screen between white and black. So writing from your CPU to your GPU-memory an alternating series of 1s and 0s would result in a chessboard pattern. Obviously you could also display text with the right patterns of 1s and 0s. (In reality a GPU does much more than that but let's omit that for now). But working with such limited instructions is reaaaaaaally bothersome. Even adding 2 values from ram and writing it back is 4 operations. \n\n3. **Enter Higher-level Languages and compilers.** I'll keep this really brief because this is getting fairly long. A compiler takes a much more sophisticated language (allowing for things like a = 3 +2, or draw(\"C:\\picture.png\") ) and breaks it down to the instructions defined by the opCode table (with some more stuff because there is also the OS .... while on the topic)\n\n4. **Putting everyone on equal footing and making differences more managable**. When writing software it would be an incredible pain in the ass to write variations for all the different hardware configurations and variations a PC can have. Also we'd always have to see what other programs would like to run currently and figure out whose turn to use the CPU it is. Which is why we need some sort of common ground. That'd be the OS, it abstracts hardware to a common \"talking language\" with drivers (which is why you need those), allocates resources to programs (memory, CPU time and permissions) and generally makes things more unified and tidy.\n\nOkay now from the other side. So you have your neat game.exe somewhere on your hard drive and would like to play it. So you boot your PC at which point a bunch of code gets loaded from your special boot-sector from your hard disk, that's your OS. \n\nYou navigate to your game.exe and doubleclick it. your OS moves it from the hard drive to ram and gives it some CPU time to run, periodically switching to all your other software you have running (including the OS itself) so you can still watch the youtube clip on your other screen. \n\nYou start playing and your game code is happily talking to all your I/O devices via the OS. Telling your graphics card what to draw, listening to the mouse where you're pointing, putting a savefile on your drive and tons of other things. \n\nYeah running software down to 1s and 0s is kinda involved. And this was pretty much the shortest explanation I could come up with"
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awoqr9 | Mardi Gras: How did the bared breasts for beads tradition get started? | It never made sense to me why so many women would reveal themselves for novelty jewelry? Were the beads once worth something at the end of the party? Or is this just part of the general debauchery of the celebration? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/awoqr9/mardi_gras_how_did_the_bared_breasts_for_beads/ | {
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"This tradition is newer than you might think, probably dating to the 1970s.\n\nNew Orleans's Mardi Gras celebrations centered on the French Quarter, the city's historic district, in the early twentieth century. The area had become unfashionable, as the wealthy old families moved out to get away from the immigrants moving in. The krewes, social groups that created/paid for the creation of floats for the parade, had held many of their Carnival balls in the French Opera House there, but it burned down in 1919, giving the old New Orleans families one less reason to stick around. Prostitution was made illegal in New Orleans in 1917 due to pressure from the US Navy, and the licit brothels of the regulated \"Storyville\" red light district were shut down; new ones were set up in the now-affordable French Quarter, giving it an even more unsavory reputation. While the Carnival balls were no longer being held there, the parades still were, so people continued to attend, but the speakeasies on Bourbon Street in the 1920s (regular bars in the 1930s) helped to bring in rowdier tourists.\n\nBut the French Quarter float parade, the huge spectacle that brought people to the area, was shut down in 1973. With bigger hotels being built and the \"super-krewe\" Bacchus making bigger floats and bringing in big celebrities in the 1960s, more people had been flooding the narrow, eighteenth-century streets, and the authorities were concerned that if any accidents were to occur, fire trucks and ambulance would not be able to get through. Instead, the parades moved to St. Charles Avenue, leaving a French Quarter festival that was just centered on being in a crowd - in a period that was seeing an increased frankness about and interest in sexuality and nudity, especially public nudity (like streaking).\n\nIt first started around the time that the parade was canceled with incidents of men flashing their penises at the intersection of Bourbon and St. Ann, and from the balconies of some of those newer hotels - at this point, women only made up about 25% of Mardi Gras participants. In 1975, there is said to have been a party of nudists on the second floor of a hotel that came out on the balcony and urged people on the street to reciprocate by showing their own genitalia or breasts - and threw out beads, connecting the exposure with necklaces. When the police went on strike for Mardi Gras in 1979 and *all* parades were canceled, there was even more riotous activity as participants had nothing to do but revel. By the 1980s, the tradition of exhibitionism being paid for with beaded necklaces was pretty well set in stone. Krewes had been tossing beads to the crowds since China's cheap plastic exports made it possible to do so, but that was random: having the opportunity to \"earn\" necklaces seems to have generated enthusiasm and given the beads more value. \n\nThe erasure of men being involved by showing their penises has come about in part from more women being present than in the early 1970s, when the Bourbon Street scene was largely gay men, but also from the commodification of women's public nudity through the *Girls Gone Wild* franchise, which only shows the women who take part, and also then caused more emphasis on getting women to disrobe - but now we are creeping into twenty-year-rule territory.\n\nSources:\n\n*Reason in the City of Difference: Pragmatism, Communicative Action and Contemporary Urbanism*, by Gary Bridge (Psychology Press, 2005)\n\n*Bourbon Street: A History*, by Richard Campanella (LSU Press, 2014)\n\n\"Contrasts of Carnival: Mardi Gras Between the Modern and Post-Modern\", by Kevin Fox Gotham, from *Illuminating Social Life: Classical and Contemporary Theory Revisited*, edited by Peter Kivisto (SAGE Publications, 2013)\n\n*Beads, Bodies, and Trash: Public Sex, Global Labor, and the Disposability of Mardi Gras*, by David Redmon (Routledge, 2014)"
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1d6sdo | What was the atmosphere like in 1945 Berlin? | Also, as a secondary question, how accurate was the movie "Downfall" in its depiction of the events? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1d6sdo/what_was_the_atmosphere_like_in_1945_berlin/ | {
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"The Soviet advance into German territory as retribution for war of extermination that Germany had waged on its people. Eric Dorn Brose in his book 'A History of Europe in the Twentieth Century' frames both sides aggression as attempts to emasculate or neuter the other. As a result, the Soviet troops committed massive amounts of rape, often forcing the husband to watch, any attempt to intervene would result in death, though quite often both man and woman were killed afterwards anyway. Fleeing civilians were fired upon, towns and villages destroyed; in short It was a pretty awful time to be German. \n\nWord of these atrocities at the hands of Soviet troops comes with fleeing refugees, often the reports are heavily exaggerated, regardless the fear and hysteria grew to fever pitch. People fled the city in huge numbers. \n\nThere was a picture on the front pages of /r/historyporn a month or so ago which showed two woman in Vienna who had committed suicide to avoid the atrocities that they believed they would be subjected to. If you can picture that in your mind, people were willing to kill themselves to escape the Soviet advance, it should sum up the level of fear present in a citizen of Berlin come war's end. ",
"If you want a good visual representation of post-war 1945 Berlin - and, just as well, if you can understand German - check out the film *Die Mörder sind unter uns* (The Murderers are Among Us). Cool flick, had to watch it for my German History through Film class. It was actually filmed in 1946 amongst the ruins of Berlin, so aesthetically you get a pretty good idea of what was going on at the time. Just as well, the plot and characters of the film echo the sentiment found in contemporary Berlin; one of the two protagonists, Dr Mertens, returns to rubble where his home once stood and fights his inner demons with creeping alcoholism. This is pretty representative not only of the conditions of the average German at the time (complete loss of the \"home\", and thus, self-identification), but also of the collective conscious coming to terms with its grievous actions. The antogonist, Hauptmann Brückner, successfully returns to civilian life after conveniently tucking away the war crimes he ordered as Dr Mertens' commander. Together, the two characters represent the zeitgeist of the time, particularly the question of culpability. Additionally, it questions how, immediately following the war, the existence of Nazis and those who enabled them seemed to practically vanish into thin air. Strangely enough, my professor remarked that when growing up in West Germany, nobody really admitted to either being or knowing any Nazi supporters. Likewise, the East Germans asserted that all the Nazis had fled into West Germany; ergo, there were none there. It really took a generation (my professor's) for German society to transition from Hauptmann Brückner to Dr Mertens in the introspective sense. ",
"I can strongly recommend Anthony Beevor's [Berlin: The Downfall 1945](_URL_1_). The general atmosphere was basically hopeless. There were about [7,000 suicides](_URL_0_) in Berlin in the last year of the war. There were also cases of manic, end-of-the-world bacchanalia.\n\nFrom what I've read, the movie is fairly accurate in its depiction of key events in Hitler's bunker. (The disappearance of Fegelein, news of Himmler's betrayal, the Steiner offensive) There are varying accounts of the Goebbels' suicide, but otherwise the movie was made together with the help of historians and is reasonably accurate. "
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4wub7l | why, in the english language, is it incorrect to say "me, my dad, and my sister" and correct to say "my dad, my sister, and i"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4wub7l/eli5_why_in_the_english_language_is_it_incorrect/ | {
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"You use \"me\" when you're the object of the sentence.\n\nYou use \"I\" when you're the subject of the sentence.\n\n\"I ran to Bob.\"\n\n\"Bob ran to me.\"\n\nThe subject of the sentence is what's acting. The object is what's having something done to it.",
"Break them apart. You wouldn't say \"Me went to the store.\" You WOULD, however, say \"That happened to me, my dad and my sister.\"",
"It isn't incorrect to say \"me, my dad, and my sister\" when you're all the objects of a sentence.\n\nFor example:\n\n\"This house belongs to me, my dad, and my sister.\" is more correct than \"This house belongs to my dad, my sister, and I\". You wouldn't say \"This house belongs to I\".\n\nHowever, it is even *more* correct to say: \"This house belongs to my dad, my sister, and me.\" It is polite to put yourself last in a list of people.",
"Put it in a sentence and remove the other pronouns except the personal \"I\" or \"me\".\n\nIt makes more sense (in most cases).\n",
"There are a few misconceptions here.\n\nIn standard English, \"I\" is used for the subject of a sentence, and \"me\" as the object, and this remains true when there are multiple people referred to in the subject or object. So it's \"my dad, my sister and I\" if that's the subject (\"My dad, my sister and I went to the park\"), but \"my dad, my sister and me\" if that's the object (\"My aunt came to visit my dad, my sister and me\"). So \"my dad, my sister and me\" is not wrong at all when it's used as the object of a sentence.\n\nNow, note that we're talking about standard English here. In some dialects of English, \"my dad, my sister and me\" can be used as the subject, and that is correct in that dialect.\n\nFinally, it's conventional to put oneself last, as I have done in the examples above. This is a question of style or etiquette, not of grammar. So \"me, my dad and my sister\" is conventionally written as \"my dad, my sister and me\" (or \"...and I\", as appropriate). There is nothing wrong with \"My aunt came to visit me, my dad and my sister\" grammatically, but this is considered bad style.\n\nEDIT: missing brackets"
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11gje2 | Can anyone explain "spooky action at a distance" to me? | I guess I "get" quantum entanglement at a layman's level, but I don't understand how making a measurement at one place affects the other of the pair in another location. I get that once we know the spin of one particle (entity, whatever), we can deduce the spin of the other, but it's just our knowledge that has changed, and perhaps the knowledge of the other entities probability wave, but the entity itself or it's behavior haven't changed, right?
I'm interested in QM at a "pop science" level, but I've never gotten into the math behind it. Do I need to get into that to understand this? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/11gje2/can_anyone_explain_spooky_action_at_a_distance_to/ | {
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"Edit: The following is a basic experiment that demonstrates entanglement going beyond classical plausibility and apparently necessitating some kind of spooky action at a distance. To be clear, there is of course more to entanglement than this and some aspects are glossed over.\n\nLets take a basic entanglement experiment. You take a pair of electrons with entangled spin, and fire them in opposite directions. They're entangled such that either they both have spin up, or both have spin down.\n\nNow, at each end of the room, you have a detector that pushes the electron upwards if it's spin up, or downwards if it's spin down. Because of the entanglement, they'll either both go up or both go down. But as you say, at this level that could just mean that their spins were predetermined when they were fired, there's no need for them to decide later.\n\nHowever, there's something more we can do that gives classically impossible results. Instead of measuring the spin in the up/down direction you instead measure it in the left/right direction. Now, because of the way QM decisions work, if the spin is already predetermined to be up or down then it will randomly (50% chance) go left or right. That means each individual electron has a 50% chance of going in each direction, and they don't have to go the same way.\n\n*But*, if we apply this mathematics to an entangled state, we still get an entangled state! Both electrons will always be measured to have the same left/right spin direction. That's simply impossible (well, statistically after many runs) under the 'they're already decided' model. Not only this, but they *don't know* which direction their spin will be measured on until they get to the detector. But they still somehow both have the same state...as if they have spookily interacted instantly to decide which one. Thus, spooky action at a distance. You can even be very careful to do this experiment such that the electrons can't decide on their state without 'communicating' faster than the speed of light, though we have to be careful with words like communicate as this isn't necessarily forbidden unless it can be used to send information in the physical sense.",
"Your question is still hotly debated in science even today. \n\nAs you correctly imply, a measurement \"collapses\" (a somewhat outdated notion nowadays) the joint wavefunction of your entangled particles. \n\nSo what you're asking is essentially whether the wavefunction is a real physical object, or rather just represents our knowledge of an object. In a nutshell, we don't know quite yet, even though very recently there have been [new attempts to answer this question](_URL_0_).\n\n"
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1c18iz | Which Communist government that rose up in Europe after WW2 was the most "successful" or was popular with the people for the longest? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1c18iz/which_communist_government_that_rose_up_in_europe/ | {
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"It might be my personal or professional bias, but I'd say Yugoslavia. There are few things that can back up that assertion. First, Yugoslav communist party was not installed by the Soviets, but came to power through successful national liberation struggle. While first post-war elections at the end of 1945 were not democratic, it does seem that it could have won even in the fair and free elections. Second, its independence was asserted again with the Tito-Stalin split. Finally, more liberal approach to socialism enabled both greater availability of consumer goods and more freedom of speech than most communist governments. Self-management was also important, even though it was never fully implemented, it did give workers some power and some sense of ownership.\n\nYugoslavia stated with what we might call a lot of \"good credit\" with people. Those that were not really communist, but neither anti-communists, had a variety of reasons for supporting CPY. Its record and efforts to stop ethnic conflicts during the war being most important, but also later due to Yugoslav economy, independence, etc. That support and enthusiasm was massively used in reconstruction, but also largely squandered through (anti-Stalinist, but with Stalinist methods) repression at the end of 1940s. Still, even in the 80s, with nationalism becoming more prominent and soon dominant public ideology, pro-Yugoslav and communist, reform or otherwise, sentiment remained a major opposing factor."
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qv2cs | the controversy over the ending of mass effect 3 | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qv2cs/eli5_the_controversy_over_the_ending_of_mass/ | {
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"from a comment thread: \n > _URL_0_\n\nJohn Curtin · Georgetown University\nI didn't understand what the big deal was either. I thought people were just whining about not being given what they wanted.\n\nThen I experienced the ending for myself.\n\nNow, I've been with Mass Effect for 5 years, since the beginning. It took me 40 hours to beat ME3. And I can say, without equivocation, that for the first 39 hours and 50 minutes of ME3, it was the best game I had ever played. Period, bar none. Gaming nirvana.\n\nThe last ten minutes ended all that, and NOT because *spoiler* Shepard dies in nearly every case.\n\nThere was no closure offered. None. All the places and people I had come to care about over my 5 year with the series? Brushed over. What's more, the ending defied the basic pillar of the ME universe: choice. This series was all about CHOOSING. Choosing how you played your game and influenced your world. The endings took all that away.\n\nAnd enough of this about there being 16 different endings. That is total BS. There are 3 endings. And even that's being generous, because each one is really just a sort of variant on the others.\n\nI love Mass Effect. If I didn't this wouldn't be a big deal. I'm NOT asking for the ending that I want. I'm not a spoiled child, I don't need to get my way all the time. But man, we the fans deserved an ending that we could RESPECT.\n\nAnd, frankly, Bioware deserved that too, because other than the last 10 minutes, they had achieved brilliance. And they let it get away.\n",
"This is the main reason why people are upset. **Fair warning thar be spoilers ahead.**\n\n.\n\n.\n\n.\n \nIn a series like Mass Effect, the choices you made in previous installments are emphasized because they affect the outcome of the events in newer games. In Mass Effect 2, characters mention missions and outcomes from Mass Effect 1 and there are branches of dialogue and characters that may or may not appear based on your decisions in the 1st game. In the third game, that is present to an extent, but it's pretty trivial.\n\nFor example, there is a queen of an insect-like race that you can choose to destroy (dooming her race to extinction) or set free in the first game. This queen, or a carbon copy of the queen will appear no matter your choice from the first game. So instead of writing a mission based on the fact that you destroyed the queen, you play the exact same mission with her copy instead even though it was established in the first game that she is the very last queen. She tells you this herself.\n\nThis wouldn't be so offensive to people if the idea that the choices the player made throughout the last two games *really* mattered according to Bioware. Now this example would probably be forgivable if it wasn't for the ending. According to Bioware, there are 16 possible outcomes in the game. These are conditionally based on characters you recruit and missions you complete as well as a part of the game where you search for \"War Assets\" that are supposed to help (in the background) against your enemy.\n\nDuring the final battle, the main enemy from Mass Effect 2, a giant robot spaceship named Harbinger reappears and you're told over the radio that it is on its way. There is no interaction at all between you and it, it just shoots at you. Harbinger was a pain in your ass during the last game and many players expected there to be at least some sort of showdown between you and it **OR** at least give Harbinger some dialogue.\n\nAs a player, you're under the illusion that all these things you've done over the course of playing for 20-30 hours do matter until you get to the last 10-15 minutes of the game. Here you are presented with a choice that comes completely out of left field. You're presented with a *deus ex machina* which is Latin for \"god out of the machine\". Wikipedia defines it best:\n\n > a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object.\n\nThroughout the game you are lead to believe that you're helping build a superweapon that will destroy your enemies. In the last act, you are on board the superweapon and it doesn't activate. You pass out because you're mortally wounded and right after you pass out, a platform raises from the floor and takes you to a spot on the weapon that you haven't seen before, which given its size, should have been noticed.\n\nThe *deus ex machina* is the character that appears next. You've never met this character and his omnipotence hasn't been seen in any way during the entirety of the series up until this point. This character is called the Catalyst. The Catalyst is basically a god, who explains that the enemy you're fighting is his solution to the problem where artificially created beings (synthetic life) are destined to destroy their creators. He gives you three choices: One is to destroy all synthetic life in the galaxy, another is to take over your synthetic enemies in order to control them, the final one is to merge all synthetic life with organic life. This, again, wouldn't be an issue except for when there was a mission specifically to solve the problem of synthetic life destroying their organic creators earlier in the game. Your character made peace between a race of organics and a race of synthetics. This is not brought up in the conversation with the Catalyst.\n\nSo then you have to make your decision, Control the enemy, Destroy the enemy (and a race of synthetics that, most likely has been helping you) or create new life by merging synthetics and organics. A cinematic is played that shows a ball of energy coming out of the ship that you're on and spreading throughout the galaxy through the Mass Relays (the main method of long-distance travel throughout the galaxy). The Mass Relays are destroyed after transferring this energy. Some scenes are shown on Earth of soldiers fighting the enemy and winning, then your ship, the Normandy, is shown trying to outrun the energy travelling through the Mass Relay and eventually failing. They're shown later crash landing on a jungle planet with no way off of it because the Normandy has been damaged too badly. \n\nThis all happens **regardless of your choice** after talking to the Catalyst. The only substantial difference between the cinematics is the color of the ball of energy that moves through the galaxy. So all the choice you thought you had up until this point leads to this ending, no matter what.\n\nThen there are plot holes in this cinematic you're shown. First, the Normandy is shown leading the battle above Earth with the combined fleets of everyone you've recruited to help throughout the game. There is no explanation why they are travelling through the Mass Relay which is located along the orbit of Pluto. When the Normandy crash lands, a few of your crew step off of her onto the planet, many people are reporting that the party members that they selected to help them in the final battle on Earth step off of the Normandy. Again, no explanation as to *how* they got back onboard the Normandy and how they got to the Mass Relay in time for all of this to happen; they still use shuttles to travel to and from the surface of a planet and the amount of time between being by yourself and the choice with the Catalyst is far too short.\n\nSome of these crew members *will* starve on the planet, there are different races that require different types of food in Mass Effect and it's impossible for one planet to provide for everyone.\n\nFinally, and this is the biggest problem that I personally have with the ending, the Mass Relays are destroyed no matter what you choose. Now, like I said before, the Mass Relays are the main way that the galaxy travels around in Mass Effect. There is regular old faster than light travel, but it is far too slow for someone to cross the galaxy; most civilizations have developed very close to a Mass Relay. Furthermore, there was DLC for Mass Effect 2 where you have to destroy a relay by smashing an asteroid into it. In that DLC, you're told that the explosion from a Mass Relay is comparable to a supernova; i.e. the star system and its planets will be destroyed. This either doesn't happen or is completely glossed over at the end, so either the writers completely ignored the DLC, which is canon for the series, they didn't explain how this destruction of the Mass Relays was different or there was another *deus ex machina* that conveniently solved obliterating every star system that contained civilized life in the galaxy. Setting aside the solution to that problem, galactic civilization was destroyed anyway (the thing you were fighting the entire game to save) because no one is able to conveniently/safely travel long distances anymore.\n\nTL;DR: Their ending is bad and they should feel bad.",
"The series is quite story and choice driven. The ending of MF3 is pretty much the same cutscene no matter your choices and I've heard the game as a whole lacks climax and closure (ir lots of unresolved threads at the end). ",
"A quick summery:\n\nThe ending provided no closure, did not take into consideration any choices made in all 3 games, and while there where 3 \"final\" options given to you they don't change the ending in any way whatsoever. ",
"ekvq explained the major problems quite well.\n\nHere's some additional information:\n\n-**BioWare is notorious for attention to detail and for inserting extremely minor, trivial dialog/scenes and so on that are plot-relevant.**\n\n-**The Mass Effect series allows you to import save files from the previous games, and the amount of choice provided to the player basically creates a unique gaming experience.**\n\n-**The backstories for most characters are so well-done that by the end of the game, you will probably know more about the character's history, personality, behavior, etc. than you will people in real life.**\n\n**So, here's the issue:**\n\nThe storyline of ME3 is fantastic and well done. Choices you made in ME1/ME2 can and will have damning results in ME3.\n\nExample: (SPOILER ALERT!)\n\nIn the beginning of ME1, you will run across a Quarian by the name of Tali who will join you on your missions through ME1 and ME2. She is a romantic interest in ME2 and ME3. Her backstory is amazing and she's got the damsel in distress element that makes her a lovable character. In ME2, you run across a Geth by the name of Legion. The Geth are a synthetic race created by the Quarians who rebelled and exiled the Quarian people from their homelands. The Quarians now live on a flotilla of thousands of ships and are forced to live inside clean suits to survive. The Geth Legion is Tali's enemy. Depending on your choices throughout ME2, you can choose to assist Tali, Legion, or stay in the middle and keep them from killing each other. The choices you made in ME2 affect a choice you must make in ME3. The Quarians sense a moment of weakness in the Geth and go on a full-out offensive to take back their homeworld. In the process of assisting them, you find Legion and assist him in breaking free of the hold of a Reaper who is assisting the Geth. Depending on your choices, the final mission in this story arc will have the Geth Legion attempting to upload code that will give his people individuality. The Quarians are pushing an offensive. The code has the side effect of making his people much more intelligent and efficient. You must convince the Quarians to withdraw, as they will be utterly obliterated when the code is completely uploaded and are fully committed to the war. Depending on your choices between Tali and Legion throughout the ME2 and ME3 games, you may or may not be able to save the Quarian flotilla. If you do not, Tali commits suicide. Also, Legion dies no matter what. This is an example of a powerful side story that exists in the game and is what makes the game so fantastic.\n\n**So, with that being said, it comes as a shock that in the final minutes of the game, you are only presented with 3 options: Control the Reapers (and remove them from the system); Merge together all organic and synthetic life (to remove the need for the Reapers); or Destroy all Synthetic life (including the Geth). No choice that you have made throughout the entire series matters or affects the decision. That is the primary concern of the whole ending and the source of most of the controversy.**\n\n**The secondary source of the controversy is the lack of epilogue or any indication of what happens to your team, your love, and so on.**\n\n**HOWEVER, here's a popular opinion (that I have come to believe):**\n\n**(SPOILERS!)**\n\nAs ekvq stated, Harbinger attacks you while you are on your way to enter the Citadel. Harbinger is a Reaper. Reapers possess an ability to Indoctrinate those whom they come in contact with. It is an extremely slow process and basically psychologically attacks and torments the person into becoming extremely suggestible, and are then fed information and instructions by the Reaper.\n\nThe leading theory is that throughout the trilogy, the main character and his team are in constant contact with Reaper technology and have slowly become indoctrinated. This is supported by the following evidence:\n\n**-A new crew member (Lt. James Vega) states numerous times that he hears a humming noise coming from the ship. It was stated in ME1 by Tali that the Normandy (your ship) does not make any noise (she has problems sleeping because of it). A humming noise is a symptom of the first levels of indoctrination. Since this crew member is new, he would not be as heavily indoctrinated as the other crew members.**\n\n**-Shadowy figures and random people move through various cutscenes in the background. This is a symptom of long-term indoctrination.**\n\n**-The main character has constant visions/nightmares which involve tormented whispers of the dead or dying and the sight of a little boy dying horribly. This is a symptom of long-term indoctrination.**\n\n**-The main character experiences a moment towards the beginning of the game where he interacts with the little boy who later appears in his nightmares/visions. The little boy refuses to be assisted by him despite the fact that he is a heavily armed military officer and the planet is under attack by alien robots. The other character in this scene does not seem to see or hear the little boy. Furthermore, when the other character gains the attention of the main character over the little boy, a loud metallic humming sound is heard, which is a symptom of indoctrination.**\n\n**-The final three choices of the game represent the following:**\n\n--Control the Reapers (do not destroy them)\n\n--Synthesize synthetic/organic life (do not destroy them)\n\n--Destory the Reapers\n\n**Throughout the trilogy, your single utmost goal is to destroy the Reapers and save the galaxy. Of the three choices, only one choice actually involves you fulfilling your goal and your desires. The other two choices compromise with the Reapers.**\n\n**-There is a secret ending in the game that is only available if you gain enough fleet support AND if you stick by your major goal and actually destroy the Reapers instead of compromising. This ending shows Shepard alive, under rubble that is very similar to the rubble at the location where he was shot with the beam, and does not look similar to the unique rubble that would have been generated from the destruction of a major starbase (the Citadel). It is theorized that because this ending only appears if you destroy the Reapers, that the fact that you overcame the \"suggestion\" to compromise with the Reapers proves that you were indoctrinated and your will to fight the Reapers has allowed you to overcome the indoctrination and break out of the hallucination that is gripping you.**\n\nSo, in a nutshell, the reason that the ending is so controversial is that there are many different ways to interpret the ending and it seems as though the ending was left open intentionally. ME3 is known to be the final chapter of the Shepard and crew story, so fans who have put in hundreds upon hundreds of hours would like clarity and closure for a group of characters that they know and identify with more than actual real-life people.\n\n**TL;DR:**\n\nThe ending was left open to interpretation and did not provide clarity/closure as expected for the end of Shepard and Team's storyline. Fans are upset because they spent hundreds of hours getting to know these consistent, well written characters for the storyline to end without closure.",
"The ending is completely at odds with the rest of the game:\n\n* The first act is about correcting the mistakes of a species who used science to \"play God\" with races not as advanced as them.\n\n* In the second act you negotiate peace between a race of sentient machines and their creators.\n\n* During the whole game you fight two enemies: the reapers, a race of machine/organic hybrids; and Cerberus, a group that wants to control the Reapers.\n\n* The trilogy had set the expectation that Shepard can argue any subject in the game, and that with enough points he can convince people to his way of thinking.\n\nThen in the last 5 minutes of the trilogy, out of nowhere a new character appears and tells you that he created the Reapers to bring order (playing God), that peace between organics and machines is impossible (even though you just achieved that a little while ago), and that your only options are to Destroy all machines, make everyone in the galaxy a Machine/Organic hybrid (like the Reapers), or Control the Reapers (which is what the leader of Cerberus was trying the achieve the whole time). Shepard just accepts this.\n\nThen you die, no one can travel in space anymore, and all of you friends become stranded in a planet in the middle of nowhere, where they starve or die in terrible pain.\n\n\n\n**tl;dr the ending is lame**",
"This [video](_URL_0_) should prove enlightening.\n"
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494qeo | in monopoly why does it feel like people hit certain places more than others? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/494qeo/eli5in_monopoly_why_does_it_feel_like_people_hit/ | {
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"Because that is in fact what's happening. How far you move in Monopoly is determined by rolling dice, and rolling dice do not evenly distribute every possible number. For example, by rolling two die, you cannot ever move 1 space, and there is only one way for you to move 2 spaces, but there are 5 ways for you to move 6 spaces. By nature of the probability of dice outcomes, any game that uses standard die to play will have some squares visited more than others.",
"Because you do. Take for example the number of ways you can go to jail. Roll three doubles, draw a card, land on the 'Go to Jail' square.\nThen remember that the average roll on two die is seven. So seven squares from jail is the most landed on square (theoretically).\nThen there are cards which send you to specific squares, thus bypassing most of the 'bottom' row. So allowing for the 'Go to Jail' square immediately before this row (and the aforementioned ways of getting sent to jail) and the 'Go to x Square' cards, the bottom row is the least landed on.\n\nSo yeah, some places are visited more often.",
"Certain places are more likely to get visited. The best strategy is to buy all the properties between jail and free parking because there's a lot more occurances to be sent to jail, meaning you're more likely to land on a property between jail and free parking. \n \nOn the opposite, it actually better to shy away from the final row between go to jail and Go. Those properties have bank breaking rent but the odds of landing on them are lower. \n \n[Here's a video detailing great general strategies to use](_URL_0_)"
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n866l | vowel sounds | Okay, this may *sound* weird, but really, how do we tell vowel sounds apart? I can say "Ah" and "Ee" on the same pitch and volume, and yet they sound different.
What's going on? I thought that sounds were just waves with amplitude and frequency! How can two vowels sound different and yet the same? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/n866l/eli5_vowel_sounds/ | {
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"Great question! And you chose two great sounds to play with!\n\nWhat I'd like you to do is pay attention to your tongue. Can you feel it in your mouth? How would you describe your tongue while making an \"Ah\" sounds (as in father or palm)? Low? Back? Down? Now try \"eeeee\" (as in fleece) and tell me how you would describe your tongue. Arched? Forward? Go back and forth between the two sounds very slowly, and pay attention to how your tongue feels in each shape.\n\nMost likely, you will feel that your tongue goes from a high frontal place to a low back place.\n\nIn phonetics, we call these sounds \"phonemes\". The vowel sounds are called \"phtongs\". We describe these sounds using the actions of the tongue. An \"eeeee\" sound is a close front unrounded. An \"ah\" sound is an open back unrounded (the terms can be a bit more technical, but that's the gist) Unrounded refers to the lips. Feel how your lips kind of make a circle when you say \"ooooohh\"? And how they don't do that when you say \"eeeeee\"? \n\n(let me interject some cultural bias and assume that I'm talking to an English speaking American).\n\nThe position of your tongue changes the shape of the vocal tract. An ah sound produces a more open tract, and therefore a very different sound than an eee sound.\n\nAll sounds work on this principle, including obstruants (consonants). Notice where your tongue is when you make a \"t\" sound. Now how about a \"d\" sound? Now how about an \"n\" sound? What about \"l\"?\n\nEach of those different shapes produces recognizable patterns in the air that our ears translate into meaning. Ever notice how all high pitches noises (i mean like PAINFULLY high pitched sounds, like dog whistles) sound like an \"eeeee\" sound?\n\nI can explain like you're 25 if you like, but this is my best ELI5 attempt for 12:20 AM.",
"Ah. Sounds are just waves, indeed, but it's not really so simple.\n\nSuppose you have a sine wave, with an amplitude and frequency. If you play that, it will make a very clear, very pure \"oo\" sound. But you know what a sine wave looks like, right?\n\n[Sine wave pictures from Google!](_URL_1_)\n\nWhat if, instead of it being a smooth curve going up and down, it had a more interesting pattern? Maybe a sawtooth pattern, or a square pattern? If you look at the bottom of [this page](_URL_0_), you'll see a bunch of different wave patterns. THAT is what distinguishes different vowel sounds. The pattern is different. If it has a particular pitch, then the pattern will repeat with a particular frequency, and if it has a particular volume, then the pattern will have a particular amplitude. The shape of the wave is what allows us to distinguish between \"aah\" and \"ee\", clarinet and oboe, trumpet and flügelhorn.\n\nNow, what is also important here is that the consonant -- the sound at the very beginning -- is determined by the shape of the wave at the start. While a note with a pitch has a particular frequency, a consonant -- like a percussive sound -- doesn't, really. It's too short. So you have some shape at the beginning, but instead of it repeating over and over like a sung \"aah\" or \"ee\", it's just there once, and it goes by fast. Drums are like this, too. If the pattern doesn't repeat, there's no pitch, and you can't even talk about frequency. So you see, not all waves have a well-defined frequency and amplitude.\n\nWhat makes the patterns happen? This is a little bit more advanced, but the page I linked above has a picture. When you play or sing a note, you don't actually make *just* the frequency of the note. You also make twice the frequency, three times the frequency, four times the frequency, and so on, in whole number multiples. Those combine to form the wave patterns you see with different timbres (that's what you call the different sounds on the same note). If you make a loud fundamental (that's the basic frequency of the note), don't make a sound at twice the frequency, make a soft sound at three times, don't make one at four times, make a softer sound at five times, and so on, you get a fairly pure sound like the clarinet, which has only odd harmonics (that's what you call the sounds at the multiple frequencies). If instead you make a loud fundamental, a softer sound at twice the frequency, slightly softer at three times, slightly softer at four times, and so on, you might make a very rough sound like the oboe.\n\nSo hopefully that explains it... If you have any questions on this, I'd be happy to try to answer!",
"I'm by no means an expert -- just a linguistics undergrad who happens to be procrastinating on writing her acoustic phonetics term paper -- but I'll try. \n\nVowel sounds (in fact, any sounds coming from the vocal tract) don't just have just one frequency. They contain a wide range of frequencies all mixed up, but the energy is concentrated at certain frequencies according to the length and shape of the vocal tract, which we constantly change and modulate during speech. While the source of the sound -- the vibration of the vocal folds, the rate of which determines the pitch or *fundamental frequency* -- stays the same, the shape of the vocal tract during the production of any given vowel changes which frequencies resonate. The frequencies where energy is concentrated during vowel production are called *formant frequencies*. It is the frequencies of the formants in relation to each other that makes vowels sound different from one another.\n\nIn fact, the F1 (or lowest formant frequency) corresponds roughly to the vowel \"height\" (that is, whether it is articulated higher in the mouth like \"ee\" or lower in the mouth like \"ah\") and the F2 corresponds roughly to the vowel \"backness\" (that is, whether it is produced up front like \"ee\" or towards the back like \"ooh\"). This way, you can use the formant frequencies of the vowels you produce to \"map\" where in the mouth you produce your vowels. I did mine for a project: [check it out.](_URL_0_) It's not marked, but the x-axis is F2 and the y-axis is F1.\n\nI realize a 5 year old definitely wouldn't understand this... sorry. Let me know if I can clear anything up.",
"You're right that sounds are just waves with amplitude and frequency. However, it's very rare to hear just a single sound wave with a constant frequency and constant amplitude. An example of this would be a tuning fork.\n\nRather, most sounds that we hear are a complex mix of many many different waves each with their own frequency and amplitude. People who want to study sound waves will use something called a \"Fourier transform\" to help them. The Fourier transform lets them see which frequencies a sound is made up of, and how loud each of them are.\n\nThat's what's going on with vowel sounds: you're creating a whole bunch of different frequencies at the same time. Different vowel sounds have different sets of frequencies. \n\nFor example when you say the 'ee' in 'teeth', most of your sounds are concentrated around the frequencies of 280, 2250, and 2890 (Hz). When you say \"aaaah\", it's 710, 1100, and 2450. [This website](_URL_0_) might be an interesting read for you.",
"Your question can be explained with musical instruments playing the same notes. A violin sounds different than a flute, even if they're playing the same note with the same pitch. You can tell them apart because they have different *timbre*. Timbre is like different colors or flavors of sound, and your ear can pick up on the differences.\n\nEL20: Different vowels have different harmonic profiles. Like the instruments, they have a fundamental frequency that is the strongest. Then you have the harmonic notes which are multiples of the fundamental. By varying the strengths of the harmonics, you get different timbres. Your mouth changes the harmonic mixture when you make different vowels.\n\nEdit: typos.",
"Music physics to the rescue!!\n\nVowels are made up not of one but of multiple different different frequencies, independent of the note/pitch it's spoken on. Check out [this](_URL_0_) graph for more.\n\nSo what that ultimately means is that the shape of your mouth (all the stuff parkervoice said) determines the frequencies of 3 formants, called the first, second, and third formants (logical, eh?). Each vowel is really just different arrangements of those three formants. When we're young, part of making baby sounds is training our ears to hear those particular formants.\n\nSo while people are talking about the harmonic overtone series and other things with musical instrument analogies, vowels themselves are actually a very distinct issue.\n\nGood question! I don't get to bust out my formant knowledge hardly ever.",
"[Here's what I think is exactly what you're looking for.](_URL_0_)",
"OK, first look at [the different vowels arranged on the international phonetic alphabet](_URL_6_). You can hear a sound recording of each vowel. This chart shows you that there are two main ways that vowels can change: up-down on the chart corresponds to [vowel height](_URL_0_), and right-left corresponds to [vowel backness](_URL_3_). I'll explain what height and backness are in a minute.\n\nNow look at the [vowel charts here](_URL_1_). Don't read the text, just notice how those charts bear a very striking resemblance to the chart you saw earlier. These charts reflect actual measurements of vowels in speech. Specifically, they measure the first and second [formants](_URL_9_) of the vowel -- the formants are the dark bands on the charts in that article.\n\nThe formants are caused by [the position of your tongue in the mouth](_URL_5_) - when your tongue is placed high in the mouth, you get high vowels, like eeeee or uuuuuu, compared to low vowels, like aahhh, where the tongue is placed low. Similarly, front and back vowels (eh or o) are made by the top of the tongue being positioned either near the front or near the back. Stick your finger in your mouth while you make these sounds, and you can see! [This chart](_URL_2_) shows how formal vowel space fits in the mouth.\n\nSo a vowel isn't [a single sound frequency](_URL_4_), but neither is [the sound a musical instrument makes](_URL_8_). So why does a musical instrument vary mostly based on pitch, but vowels vary based on height and backness? Musical instruments don't have tongues, so they don't make sounds with distinguishable first and second formants (well sometimes they do, and in those times they sound a little like human voices). But [some human languages](_URL_7_) do distinguish vowels based on pitch! Chinese and Thai are some of the most common languages that do this, but there are plenty of others.\n\nAnother common distinguishing feature among vowels is [roundedness](_URL_10_), which is whether the lips are open or closed.\n\nSo in conclusion, a sound is not just a single wave with amplitude and frequency, it is many such ways mashed together. We can look at which frequencies are loudest and identify some distinguishing characteristics which mark different vowels. \n\n[Proceed to part 2](_URL_11_)",
"Everyone's talking about Phonetics to answer your question, which is awesome (I took linguistics in undergrad too! hooray!), but I don't think they're getting to the root of the issue where you describe amplitude and frequency.\n\nELI10: It's true that sound waves can be described using amplitude and frequency; usually the picture that comes along with that is of a simple sine wave. However, it's rare to find a sound wave in the real world that looks like that. Instead, most sounds are composed of *many* sine waves on top of each other. \n\nWhen 2 sine waves happen at the same time from the same place, they add to each other wherever they're the same, and subtract from each other where they're different. The curve that results is something that looks a little like a sine curve from far away, but it's all bumpy and wiggly close up. Overall, that sound with have a certain amplitude (volume) and frequency (pitch), but those bumps and wiggles cause it to sound different from a similar sound with different bumps and wiggles. These differences are called *timbre*. As noted in other comments, it's the difference between musical instruments playing the same note, or, the different sounds you can make with the position of your tongue.\n\nSo basically, sound really has 3 parts: *Amplitude* (volume), *Frequency* (pitch), and *Timbre* (complexity/quality). As a more advanced aside, you can actually take a complex waveform and figure out what simple sine waves originally combined to form the complex wave. This method is a mathematical process called *Fourier Analysis*.",
"Great question! And you chose two great sounds to play with!\n\nWhat I'd like you to do is pay attention to your tongue. Can you feel it in your mouth? How would you describe your tongue while making an \"Ah\" sounds (as in father or palm)? Low? Back? Down? Now try \"eeeee\" (as in fleece) and tell me how you would describe your tongue. Arched? Forward? Go back and forth between the two sounds very slowly, and pay attention to how your tongue feels in each shape.\n\nMost likely, you will feel that your tongue goes from a high frontal place to a low back place.\n\nIn phonetics, we call these sounds \"phonemes\". The vowel sounds are called \"phtongs\". We describe these sounds using the actions of the tongue. An \"eeeee\" sound is a close front unrounded. An \"ah\" sound is an open back unrounded (the terms can be a bit more technical, but that's the gist) Unrounded refers to the lips. Feel how your lips kind of make a circle when you say \"ooooohh\"? And how they don't do that when you say \"eeeeee\"? \n\n(let me interject some cultural bias and assume that I'm talking to an English speaking American).\n\nThe position of your tongue changes the shape of the vocal tract. An ah sound produces a more open tract, and therefore a very different sound than an eee sound.\n\nAll sounds work on this principle, including obstruants (consonants). Notice where your tongue is when you make a \"t\" sound. Now how about a \"d\" sound? Now how about an \"n\" sound? What about \"l\"?\n\nEach of those different shapes produces recognizable patterns in the air that our ears translate into meaning. Ever notice how all high pitches noises (i mean like PAINFULLY high pitched sounds, like dog whistles) sound like an \"eeeee\" sound?\n\nI can explain like you're 25 if you like, but this is my best ELI5 attempt for 12:20 AM.",
"Ah. Sounds are just waves, indeed, but it's not really so simple.\n\nSuppose you have a sine wave, with an amplitude and frequency. If you play that, it will make a very clear, very pure \"oo\" sound. But you know what a sine wave looks like, right?\n\n[Sine wave pictures from Google!](_URL_1_)\n\nWhat if, instead of it being a smooth curve going up and down, it had a more interesting pattern? Maybe a sawtooth pattern, or a square pattern? If you look at the bottom of [this page](_URL_0_), you'll see a bunch of different wave patterns. THAT is what distinguishes different vowel sounds. The pattern is different. If it has a particular pitch, then the pattern will repeat with a particular frequency, and if it has a particular volume, then the pattern will have a particular amplitude. The shape of the wave is what allows us to distinguish between \"aah\" and \"ee\", clarinet and oboe, trumpet and flügelhorn.\n\nNow, what is also important here is that the consonant -- the sound at the very beginning -- is determined by the shape of the wave at the start. While a note with a pitch has a particular frequency, a consonant -- like a percussive sound -- doesn't, really. It's too short. So you have some shape at the beginning, but instead of it repeating over and over like a sung \"aah\" or \"ee\", it's just there once, and it goes by fast. Drums are like this, too. If the pattern doesn't repeat, there's no pitch, and you can't even talk about frequency. So you see, not all waves have a well-defined frequency and amplitude.\n\nWhat makes the patterns happen? This is a little bit more advanced, but the page I linked above has a picture. When you play or sing a note, you don't actually make *just* the frequency of the note. You also make twice the frequency, three times the frequency, four times the frequency, and so on, in whole number multiples. Those combine to form the wave patterns you see with different timbres (that's what you call the different sounds on the same note). If you make a loud fundamental (that's the basic frequency of the note), don't make a sound at twice the frequency, make a soft sound at three times, don't make one at four times, make a softer sound at five times, and so on, you get a fairly pure sound like the clarinet, which has only odd harmonics (that's what you call the sounds at the multiple frequencies). If instead you make a loud fundamental, a softer sound at twice the frequency, slightly softer at three times, slightly softer at four times, and so on, you might make a very rough sound like the oboe.\n\nSo hopefully that explains it... If you have any questions on this, I'd be happy to try to answer!",
"I'm by no means an expert -- just a linguistics undergrad who happens to be procrastinating on writing her acoustic phonetics term paper -- but I'll try. \n\nVowel sounds (in fact, any sounds coming from the vocal tract) don't just have just one frequency. They contain a wide range of frequencies all mixed up, but the energy is concentrated at certain frequencies according to the length and shape of the vocal tract, which we constantly change and modulate during speech. While the source of the sound -- the vibration of the vocal folds, the rate of which determines the pitch or *fundamental frequency* -- stays the same, the shape of the vocal tract during the production of any given vowel changes which frequencies resonate. The frequencies where energy is concentrated during vowel production are called *formant frequencies*. It is the frequencies of the formants in relation to each other that makes vowels sound different from one another.\n\nIn fact, the F1 (or lowest formant frequency) corresponds roughly to the vowel \"height\" (that is, whether it is articulated higher in the mouth like \"ee\" or lower in the mouth like \"ah\") and the F2 corresponds roughly to the vowel \"backness\" (that is, whether it is produced up front like \"ee\" or towards the back like \"ooh\"). This way, you can use the formant frequencies of the vowels you produce to \"map\" where in the mouth you produce your vowels. I did mine for a project: [check it out.](_URL_0_) It's not marked, but the x-axis is F2 and the y-axis is F1.\n\nI realize a 5 year old definitely wouldn't understand this... sorry. Let me know if I can clear anything up.",
"You're right that sounds are just waves with amplitude and frequency. However, it's very rare to hear just a single sound wave with a constant frequency and constant amplitude. An example of this would be a tuning fork.\n\nRather, most sounds that we hear are a complex mix of many many different waves each with their own frequency and amplitude. People who want to study sound waves will use something called a \"Fourier transform\" to help them. The Fourier transform lets them see which frequencies a sound is made up of, and how loud each of them are.\n\nThat's what's going on with vowel sounds: you're creating a whole bunch of different frequencies at the same time. Different vowel sounds have different sets of frequencies. \n\nFor example when you say the 'ee' in 'teeth', most of your sounds are concentrated around the frequencies of 280, 2250, and 2890 (Hz). When you say \"aaaah\", it's 710, 1100, and 2450. [This website](_URL_0_) might be an interesting read for you.",
"Your question can be explained with musical instruments playing the same notes. A violin sounds different than a flute, even if they're playing the same note with the same pitch. You can tell them apart because they have different *timbre*. Timbre is like different colors or flavors of sound, and your ear can pick up on the differences.\n\nEL20: Different vowels have different harmonic profiles. Like the instruments, they have a fundamental frequency that is the strongest. Then you have the harmonic notes which are multiples of the fundamental. By varying the strengths of the harmonics, you get different timbres. Your mouth changes the harmonic mixture when you make different vowels.\n\nEdit: typos.",
"Music physics to the rescue!!\n\nVowels are made up not of one but of multiple different different frequencies, independent of the note/pitch it's spoken on. Check out [this](_URL_0_) graph for more.\n\nSo what that ultimately means is that the shape of your mouth (all the stuff parkervoice said) determines the frequencies of 3 formants, called the first, second, and third formants (logical, eh?). Each vowel is really just different arrangements of those three formants. When we're young, part of making baby sounds is training our ears to hear those particular formants.\n\nSo while people are talking about the harmonic overtone series and other things with musical instrument analogies, vowels themselves are actually a very distinct issue.\n\nGood question! I don't get to bust out my formant knowledge hardly ever.",
"[Here's what I think is exactly what you're looking for.](_URL_0_)",
"OK, first look at [the different vowels arranged on the international phonetic alphabet](_URL_6_). You can hear a sound recording of each vowel. This chart shows you that there are two main ways that vowels can change: up-down on the chart corresponds to [vowel height](_URL_0_), and right-left corresponds to [vowel backness](_URL_3_). I'll explain what height and backness are in a minute.\n\nNow look at the [vowel charts here](_URL_1_). Don't read the text, just notice how those charts bear a very striking resemblance to the chart you saw earlier. These charts reflect actual measurements of vowels in speech. Specifically, they measure the first and second [formants](_URL_9_) of the vowel -- the formants are the dark bands on the charts in that article.\n\nThe formants are caused by [the position of your tongue in the mouth](_URL_5_) - when your tongue is placed high in the mouth, you get high vowels, like eeeee or uuuuuu, compared to low vowels, like aahhh, where the tongue is placed low. Similarly, front and back vowels (eh or o) are made by the top of the tongue being positioned either near the front or near the back. Stick your finger in your mouth while you make these sounds, and you can see! [This chart](_URL_2_) shows how formal vowel space fits in the mouth.\n\nSo a vowel isn't [a single sound frequency](_URL_4_), but neither is [the sound a musical instrument makes](_URL_8_). So why does a musical instrument vary mostly based on pitch, but vowels vary based on height and backness? Musical instruments don't have tongues, so they don't make sounds with distinguishable first and second formants (well sometimes they do, and in those times they sound a little like human voices). But [some human languages](_URL_7_) do distinguish vowels based on pitch! Chinese and Thai are some of the most common languages that do this, but there are plenty of others.\n\nAnother common distinguishing feature among vowels is [roundedness](_URL_10_), which is whether the lips are open or closed.\n\nSo in conclusion, a sound is not just a single wave with amplitude and frequency, it is many such ways mashed together. We can look at which frequencies are loudest and identify some distinguishing characteristics which mark different vowels. \n\n[Proceed to part 2](_URL_11_)",
"Everyone's talking about Phonetics to answer your question, which is awesome (I took linguistics in undergrad too! hooray!), but I don't think they're getting to the root of the issue where you describe amplitude and frequency.\n\nELI10: It's true that sound waves can be described using amplitude and frequency; usually the picture that comes along with that is of a simple sine wave. However, it's rare to find a sound wave in the real world that looks like that. Instead, most sounds are composed of *many* sine waves on top of each other. \n\nWhen 2 sine waves happen at the same time from the same place, they add to each other wherever they're the same, and subtract from each other where they're different. The curve that results is something that looks a little like a sine curve from far away, but it's all bumpy and wiggly close up. Overall, that sound with have a certain amplitude (volume) and frequency (pitch), but those bumps and wiggles cause it to sound different from a similar sound with different bumps and wiggles. These differences are called *timbre*. As noted in other comments, it's the difference between musical instruments playing the same note, or, the different sounds you can make with the position of your tongue.\n\nSo basically, sound really has 3 parts: *Amplitude* (volume), *Frequency* (pitch), and *Timbre* (complexity/quality). As a more advanced aside, you can actually take a complex waveform and figure out what simple sine waves originally combined to form the complex wave. This method is a mathematical process called *Fourier Analysis*."
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sawtooth_wave",
"https://www.google.com/search?q=sine+wave&hl=en&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=4zvkTvutLuH00gH-o42DBg&ved=0CEgQsAQ&biw=1398&bih=675"
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"http://i.imgur.com/o2KWF.jpg"
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[],
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"https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jmccarty/formant.htm"
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[
"http://www.wimp.com/upnoises/"
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[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_height#Height",
"http://www.helsinki.fi/speechsciences/projects/vowelcharts/",
"http://sail.usc.edu/~lgoldste/General_Phonetics/Vowels/Vowel_Theories.html",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_backness#Backness",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_tone",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cardinal_vowels-Jones_x-ray.jpg",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel#Audio_samples",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonal_languages",
"http://www.drawmusic.com/Transcribing-Music/002-Seeing-Features/",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formant",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundedness",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consonant"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sawtooth_wave",
"https://www.google.com/search?q=sine+wave&hl=en&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=4zvkTvutLuH00gH-o42DBg&ved=0CEgQsAQ&biw=1398&bih=675"
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[
"http://i.imgur.com/o2KWF.jpg"
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"http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/music/vowel.html"
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[],
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"https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jmccarty/formant.htm"
],
[
"http://www.wimp.com/upnoises/"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_height#Height",
"http://www.helsinki.fi/speechsciences/projects/vowelcharts/",
"http://sail.usc.edu/~lgoldste/General_Phonetics/Vowels/Vowel_Theories.html",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_backness#Backness",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_tone",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cardinal_vowels-Jones_x-ray.jpg",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel#Audio_samples",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonal_languages",
"http://www.drawmusic.com/Transcribing-Music/002-Seeing-Features/",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formant",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundedness",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consonant"
],
[]
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85btmq | If the Crab Nebula is 6,523 light years away, how can scientist know it was a supernova that created it only 1,000 years ago? Would we need another 5,523 years for the light to reach us to even know it happened? | I was watching the TV series How The Universe Works, and in episode 8, which is about supernovas, a scientist says that the Crab Nebula was created from a supernova 1,000 years ago. I looked up the distance of the Crab Nebula and it came out to 6,523 light years away. How could scientist possibly know of a supernova at that distance, in this amount of time? Does the light not have to travel to us before we can see any evidence of it? Did this scientist just make an error in what he said on the show and not have it edited out or am I missing something here? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/85btmq/if_the_crab_nebula_is_6523_light_years_away_how/ | {
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"It blew up (6,523 + 1,000) years ago.\n\n1,000 years ago when Chinese astronomers observed it, they observed it as it blew up 6,523 from before then.\n\nWhen we look at the Crab Nebula now we are looking at images 1,000 years after the super nova that have taken 6,523 light years to get here.",
" > Did this scientist just make an error in what he said on the show and not have it edited out or am I missing something here? \n\nWhat you are missing is that (as another comment points out) delay due to the finite speed of light is implicit: the fact that everything that we see happened an amount of time ago equal to the distance in light-years is so well known to cosmologists/astronomers that they don't bother to mention it. \n"
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3hzd5v | why do some new books look like the publisher cut the pages with a weed whacker before gluing and binding them, and shipping them out to stores? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hzd5v/eli5_why_do_some_new_books_look_like_the/ | {
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"I'm not 100% sure if this is the reason, but I always liked this kind of cut sense it made turning pages way easier. None of the pages stick ever.",
"It's an aesthetic choice by the publisher. The cut pages are more pleasant to handle and evoke older printing techniques where we didn't have the ability to precisely cut paper.\n\nIt's just a style thing.\n\n**Edit:** There is some really great info in the replies to my comment which expand on what I said. Very much worth reading.\n",
"A Series of Unfortunate Events anyone? Those pages were as rough as Olaf's smile. ",
"It's called \"deckled pages\" and it's just for style. Some people like them and think it makes the book look good. ",
"Books are made by printing pages in smaller groups called signatures, basically a handful of sheets stacked flat and then folded in half. These signatures are then all stacked on each other and the book is bound along the folded edge. With most books, they'll cut the unbound side of the signatures to give it a clean look but, if not, it'll look ragged like the example, because you're seeing the uneven edge of the stacked signatures. Nice book paper is also thicker and sometimes more fibrous, so it contributes to that appearance. That uneven edge is called a 'deckle' and it gives an old-fashioned feel.",
"The case in point book, is it The Alchemist?",
"Some bookbinders do it for style reasons. Some do it because it make the book cheaper to produce since don't have to trim after binding. All my SciFi book club editions are that way. ",
"Oo I got that book as a gift! How was it??"
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68nux6 | in HBO Rome Lucius Vorenus takes over something called the aventine collegium then all the gangs in the City have to treat him as their leader. what is the aventine collegium? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/68nux6/in_hbo_rome_lucius_vorenus_takes_over_something/ | {
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"As far as I am aware there is no such thing as a *collegium Aventinum*. The moniker does not seem to make much sense. *Collegia*, the voluntary citizen associations (as Bendlin calls them) of the Roman world, frequently had a territorial aspect, but not one such as this. Our information for *collegia* is rather scant, particularly in the Republic, but a few broad classifications can be made about such associations. Most *collegia* were either professional or religious in nature, though the distinction should not be pressed as much of our evidence for *collegia* of either type (often epigraphic) is religious in nature, and festivals like the *Ludi Compitalicii* (which, following Flambard's excellent analysis, I must conclude were organized by professional associations, not some vague, mysterious class of *collegia compitalicia*) were simultaneously religious and professional. There were also of course priestly and minor magisterial colleges (not, generally, of our concern here) and the notoriously mysterious *collegia sodalicia*, which since Mommsen have been understood to be some sort of politically-oriented organizations, an interpretation that I do not fully agree with and which has very little support in the texts. It used to be thought that a class of \"*collegia tenuiorum*\" and *collegia funeraticia* existed for the most impoverished (as the shopkeepers and skilled workers of the professional *collegia* made up the so-called *plebs media*) but Bendlin has recently pretty much totally dismantled that idea--no such sort of *collegium* existed. \n\nLeaving aside the question of how to categorize *collegia* in their entirety and how to dissect them into discernible groups and types (an exercise I increasingly think is impossible, as these associations did not think of themselves so rigidly), this supposed *collegium Aventinum* would be totally unprecedented in what we know of Roman society. *Collegia* with territorial aspects existed, sure, but they did not encompass an entire hill, an area which under Augustus would become its own *regio*. Instead, the case of the *lanii piscinenses* (known from ILS 3682a, one of the few Republican collegiate inscriptions) is much more usual--while smaller Italian settlements might only contain a single *collegium* for all the members of a profession, the city's *collegia* located themselves by *vici* or whatever notable landmarks existed. The Aventine hill is quite out of the question. Moreover, the idea of *collegia* with purely territorial natures is not particularly well-supported by the texts, and we do not have the actual names of any such *collegia* if they existed. Territorial *collegia* were almost always professional, taking their names from the immediate area, almost like a city block, in which their professional members kept shop. What sort of a *collegium* would this *collegium Aventinum* be? It's unlikely it would be a professional or religious one, although that's indicated more by the name (which fails to mention any such connection) than by anything inherent to the nature of such associations--the famous Lanuvium inscription (CIL 14.2112) catalogs the *lex* of a *collegium cultorum Dianae et Antinoi* which otherwise seems to have little actual religious connection. Pretty much no other collegiate types are attested, which is not to say that they did not exist. Probably the purpose here of this invented group is to associate the Aventine in the minds of the audience with popular unrest, and to point out the supposed role of the *collegia* in urban violence. In fact I find pretty much no textual evidence for the direct involvement of *collegia* in urban political violence, though *collegiati* in general were certainly involved. The Aventine, however, is easier to defend. The Aventine was traditionally the location of a number of (especially foreign) cults, and many religious *collegia* in particular had their headquarters there. At the same time the Aventine was traditionally a symbolic location for the *plebs* and allies. It lay outside the *pomerium*, was the location of the Aventine Triad, and was originally settled as an *ager publicus*--Gaius Gracchus sought its safety in 121 and the site held symbolic significance for the urban *plebs*. The dramatic connection of the Aventine with the *collegia* who supposedly terrorized the city under P. Clodius (which I don't think is true and in any case is irrelevant--Clodius died before *Rome* even begins, though much of the series is founded on grosser anachronisms than that) is presumably what is being aimed at here, but there is no evidence for the existence of such a *collegium*"
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473mtb | Do trans people's brains actually resemble the brains of their experienced gender? Where does transexuality come from? | askscience | https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/473mtb/do_trans_peoples_brains_actually_resemble_the/ | {
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"Trans person here, and purveyor of studies in LGBT culture and human rights. While there is some scientific proof to show there may be differences physically in the brain you can use to \"tell\" transgenderism, the simple fact is that there are few of such studies and they are small. Also, the differences in a male and female's brains are not as vast as people would like to believe. Very little is different, actually, to the point of being negligible.\n\nHere's a question to ask, though: If we were able to scientifically say \"Here's the difference\" or \"that's the piece of brain that makes this person transgender\" then I would very much guarantee that many harmless and happy trans people would be found not to have this thing. In seeking for a definitive biological answer, it undermines the trans spectrum as a whole.\n\nHere is another consideration: Sex and gender are separate subjects. yet if a male says that his gender is that of a woman, but is ok with their sex and sex organs, this is in our society considered a non-op transgender individual. Otherwise, there are people who feel their SEX is incorrect as well as their gender, meaning they are unhappy with their physical organs, and not just their role in society. These would be those whom you would think to possibly have such a biological indication, but even if all of such people had this indicator, would the aforementioned not still be perfectly legitimate transgender individuals?\n\nThe transgender spectrum is a vast one. In fact, some people could change their sex via surgery and still present as the same gender, since the two subjects are different. Thus, being transgender has no one definitive source, but is a combination of things like biological factors, developmental factors, and gender structures of a society. The question to be asking is not where it comes from, but why it is a problem to some to be transgender in the first place. Ideally, humans would not be conformed to social roles based on our physical genitalia in a society that has advanced past the ancient hunter/gatherer and nomadic tendencies that make gender a useful distinction in ancient primates as well as other animals. However, even to this point I would say many animals can switch sex or gender role for their personal needs or the needs of their peers, and such a thing is entirely natural.\n\nIn summary, (tl;dr):\nFor some trans people, yea, probably there is a notable biological difference, but it isn't well studied and arguably is insignificant to the larger picture.\n\nedit: too vs to. Come on brain, you're better than this.",
"Ah sticky issue as this would indicate certain behaviors were inherent to a \"male\" brain and some to a \"female\" This is a paradox for most gender studies people, acknowledge inherent differences in brains or that the idea a transgenders confusion is not physical. I have yet to see a good resolution. ",
"I posted [this article](_URL_2_) that was published late last year in a similar thread yesterday. It's a case report of a male with psychosis-induced gender dysphoria. They treated with antipsychotics and resolved the GD.\n\nThe full paper is fascinating. The man was given constant brain scans during treatment. They linked the GD to the same brain region involved with body identity and body dysmorphic disorder. This doesn't mean that all cases of GD involve this region, but as far as I'm aware this is the only set of with GD/without GD brain scans from the same individual.\n\nGrab the full paper from _URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_",
"There are many reasons to think that androgen hormones *can* be involved in transgenderism even if they're not always involved, but there are probably always many factors at work including randomness.\n\nTwo sources of evidence:\n\n1. Genetic boys castrated at birth and brought up as girls (yet more often than not identify as male) _URL_0_\n\n2. Girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (excess androgens in the womb) who have disproportionately-male scores on tests of gender identity. _URL_1_\n\n",
"I have a very short article from Scientific American mind that references two studies as possible indications for there being a different brain structure for transgender individuals.\n\nYou can find the article [here](_URL_0_)",
"I learned about this recently in medical school, so I'll try to explain as best I can. All the info I'll give will be straight from my lecture slides. \n\nFirst off, there are certain parts of the brain in which the size of the structure tends to correlate with gender or sexual orientation. For example, the sexually dimorphic nucleus tends to be larger in male rats than in female rats (my notes don't specify if the same was found in humans). There's also the interstitial nucleus of the anterior hypothalamus number 3 that is correlated with sexual attraction: the INAH-3 tends to be smaller in both homosexual men and heterosexual women. \n\nFor transgender people specifically, it's been found that the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) is similar in size among cis women and trans women (it is usually larger in cis men than cis women due to androgen exposure in utero). This supports the hypothesis that being transgender is related to alterations of hormone exposure in utero. ",
"The most concise answer is this: There is some compelling evidence that the brains of trans people \"resemble\" the sex that they identify with, and it's the leading theory for why transexuality exists, but absolutely more research needs to be done. I'm posting some relevant links below:\n\nScience journalism:\n\nWall Street Journal: [These neurobiological findings suggest that the APA hasn't gone far enough in changing its categories. The issue isn't that sometimes people believe they are of a different gender than they actually are. Remarkably, instead, it's that sometimes people are born with bodies whose gender is different from what they actually are.](_URL_7_) (paywalled)\n\nNew Scientist: [Surprisingly, in each transsexual person’s brain the structure of the white matter in the four regions was halfway between that of the males and females (Journal of Psychiatric Research, DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2010.11.007). “Their brains are not completely masculinised and not completely feminised, but they still feel female,” says Guillamon.](_URL_6_)\n\nNew York Times: [Researchers in the Netherlands have discovered that a region of the hypothalamus, located at the floor of the brain, is about 50 percent larger in men than in women, and almost 60 percent larger in men than in male-to-female transsexuals. If smallness of this brain structure is at all correlated with the feeling of being a woman, the results raise tantalizing possibilities that transsexuals may in a sense be more female than females.](_URL_4_) (This is from 1995, it was a preliminary study)\n\nResearch papers (most probably paywalled):\n\n_URL_3_\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_8_\n\n_URL_5_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n",
"There are studies exploring differences in transgender peoples brains in the [limbic nucleus](_URL_3_), [hypothalamic uncinate nucleus](_URL_0_), [corpus callosum](_URL_1_), [grey matter](_URL_2_) and [white matter](_URL_4_)",
"Hi, I'm a graduate student of neurobiology, my mom is a social worker who is heavily involved in LGBTQ groups. This is discussed thoroughly at the dinner table :)\nWhile in the womb, sometime in the second half of pregnancy, boys normally experience a sharp peak in testosterone, while girls typically don't, though they also produce small amounts of testosterone. This peak has been implicated in the development of the Bed Nucleus of the Stria Terminalis. This is the part of the brain believed to be associated with sex identity. In straight men this is twice the size of in straight women. In transgender and a number of gay individuals, the exact opposite is observed. There are also implications of the hypothalamus of undergoing abnormal development in trans individuals. \nAlso noteworthy, brain scans (fMRI) of homosexual men and women show structures implicated in mood, emotion, anxiety and aggression tend to resemble those of their heterosexual counterpart. Heterosexual men tend to have asymmetric highlights in these brain scans, identical to homosexual women, while symmetric activity is observed in straight women, identically to homosexual men. \nIt's important to acknowledge that much research remains to be done regarding the young, taboo science of sexuality and gender dysphoria.\nOn the behavioral side of things, it's well documented that trans children who are raised in regions without the social pressures associated with sex identity, show desire to dress, speak and develop the same mannerisms as their straight counterparts.",
"To date, no *structural* differences between the brains of different genders have been identified. (Some relative size differences related to hormone exposure have, but I mean no differences in how the cells function or how it's \"wired\".) Brain scans have revealed somewhat gender-specific *activity*, but at this point it is unclear if anything inherent in the brain hardware is fundamentally involved, or if gender is more of a perspective or \"software\" thing.\n\nIn theory, there certainly may be structural differences betweeen genetically XY vs XX brains. But if so such differences have not been found yet. And even if they are there, whether they significantly influence gender is another question entirely.\n\nSo, at this point it seems the brain may not be hard-wired, and gender is mostly a result of hormone exposure, culture, and psychology.\n\nBut as with any science, we should remain open minded and continue to investigate. In matters such as these it is easy to latch on to a gratifying interpretation and close the mind to any contrary data. Scientifically, this is known as a \"no-no\". :)",
"{*This is Part 1 of a two-part post.*}\n\nFascinating discussion with some great contributions--thanks y'all! :O)\n\nSome points others have made in one way or another, but bear repeating: \n\n1) It is important to understand research on sex differences in the human brain *in general*, so that one interprets research on trans* folks within that highly relevant context.\n\n2) IMHO, it is prudent to remain vigilant against over-emphasizing neuroscience explanations, while minimizing psychological, cultural, sociological, and political perspectives. I am not saying this thread has engaged in such over-emphasis, I am simply offering this caution as something to keep in mind whenever one discusses neuroscience research and its implications. (I think most neuroscientists would say something similar.)\n\n3) Much of the popular media tends to sensationalize, distort, exaggerate, or misinterpret neuroscience findings. Therefore, as this subreddit emphasizes, it is always best to read the original research and not rely on media summaries. (There are of course exceptions, e.g., the *NY Times* and the *Wall Street Journal* offer usually good science reporting.)\n\n4) There is a tendency, and a deliberate intention by some, to conclude that if genetics or [early environmental factors](_URL_2_) cause a human difference, then that differences is, by definition, deviant, abnormal, and undesirable. This assumption has led societies (governments) over the years to engage in horrific practices such as eugenics. Consequently, one should guard against reflexively assuming that human differences caused by 'nature' (as opposed to 'nurture') are 'bad'. \n\nBackground reading: \n \n- [What Is Nature Versus Nurture?](_URL_4_) on _URL_6_ {*Note: _URL_6_ unfortunately has a lot of intrusive advertising, including those annoying videos that start on their own, but the site usually has good info.*} \n\n- [Nature versus nurture](_URL_8_) - Fairly good Wikipedia article.\n\nWith those provisos in place, here are some representative scholarly articles to supplement the excellent references others have shared. These are good articles to start with because of their scope, their (brief) introductions to the topic, and, especially, for their references to the wider literature on the topic. Whenever possible, the links will take you to the article on **PubMed Central** (PMC). {*Note: PubMed Central® (PMC) is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM).*}\n\n-----\n\n**Research on Sex Differences in the Brain** (in general)\n\nCITATION\n > Cosgrove, K. P., Mazure, C. M., & Staley, J. K. (2007). [Evolving knowledge of sex differences in brain structure, function, and chemistry.](_URL_3_) *Biological Psychiatry, 62*(8), 847–855. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2007.03.001\n\nABSTRACT\n > Clinical and epidemiologic evidence demonstrates sex differences in the prevalence and course of various psychiatric disorders. Understanding sex-specific brain differences in healthy individuals is a critical first step toward understanding sex-specific expression of psychiatric disorders. Here, we evaluate evidence on sex differences in brain structure, chemistry, and function using imaging methodologies, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), positron emission tomography (PET), single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), and structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in mentally healthy individuals. MEDLINE searches of English-language literature (1980–November 2006) using the terms sex, gender, PET, SPECT, MRI, fMRI, morphometry, neurochemistry, and neurotransmission were performed to extract relevant sources. The literature suggests that while there are many similarities in brain structure, function, and neurotransmission in healthy men and women, there are important differences that distinguish the male from the female brain. Overall, brain volume is greater in men than women; yet, when controlling for total volume, women have a higher percentage of gray matter and men a higher percentage of white matter. Regional volume differences are less consistent. Global cerebral blood flow is higher in women than in men. Sex-specific differences in dopaminergic, serotonergic, and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)ergic markers indicate that male and female brains are neurochemically distinct. Insight into the etiology of sex differences in the normal living human brain provides an important foundation to delineate the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying sex differences in neuropsychiatric disorders and to guide the development of sex-specific treatments for these devastating brain disorders.\n\n\nCITATION\n > Joel, D., & Yankelevitch-Yahav, R. (2014). [Reconceptualizing sex, brain and psychopathology: interaction, interaction, interaction.](_URL_7_) *British Journal of Pharmacology, 171*(20), 4620–4635. doi:10.1111/bph.12732\n\nABSTRACT\n > In recent years there has been a growing recognition of the influence of sex on brain structure and function, and in relation, on the susceptibility, prevalence and response to treatment of psychiatric disorders. Most theories and descriptions of the effects of sex on the brain are dominated by an analogy to the current interpretation of the effects of sex on the reproductive system, according to which sex is a divergence system that exerts a unitary, overriding and serial effect on the form of other systems. We shortly summarize different lines of evidence that contradict aspects of this analogy. The new view that emerges from these data is of sex as a complex system whose different components interact with one another and with other systems to affect body and brain. The paradigm shift that this understanding calls for is from thinking of sex in terms of sexual dimorphism and sex differences, to thinking of sex in terms of its interactions with other factors and processes. Our review of data obtained from animal models of psychopathology clearly reveals the need for such a paradigmatic shift, because in the field of animal behaviour whether a sex difference exists and its direction depend on the interaction of many factors including, species, strain, age, specific test employed and a multitude of environmental factors. We conclude by explaining how the new conceptualization can account for sex differences in psychopathology.\n\n\n**=== > ** Just three days ago, [The Royal Society](_URL_5_) published a special theme issue, *Multifaceted origins of sex differences in the brain*, which was compiled and edited by Margaret M. McCarthy, and published in *Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B*, [volume 371, issue 1688](_URL_0_).\n\nThere are several great articles in that issue. Here are a couple of them to give you a taste:\n\nCITATION\n > McCarthy, M. M. (2016). [Multifaceted origins of sex differences in the brain.](_URL_0_/20150106) *Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 371*(1688), 20150106. doi:10.1098/rstb.2015.0106\n\nABSTRACT\n > Studies of sex differences in the brain range from reductionistic cell and molecular analyses in animal models to functional imaging in awake human subjects, with many other levels in between. Interpretations and conclusions about the importance of particular differences often vary with differing levels of analyses and can lead to discord and dissent. In the past two decades, the range of neurobiological, psychological and psychiatric endpoints found to differ between males and females has expanded beyond reproduction into every aspect of the healthy and diseased brain, and thereby demands our attention. A greater understanding of all aspects of neural functioning will only be achieved by incorporating sex as a biological variable. The goal of this review is to highlight the current state of the art of the discipline of sex differences research with an emphasis on the brain and to contextualize the articles appearing in the accompanying special issue.\n\n{*continued in Part 2...*}\n",
"{*This is Part 2 of a two-part post.*}\n\nCITATION\n > Joel, D., & Fausto-Sterling, A. (2016). [Beyond sex differences: new approaches for thinking about variation in brain structure and function.](_URL_1_) *Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 371*(1688), 20150451. doi:10.1098/rstb.2015.0451\n\nABSTRACT\n > In the study of variation in brain structure and function that might relate to sex and gender, language matters because it frames our research questions and methods. In this article, we offer an approach to thinking about variation in brain structure and function that pulls us outside the sex differences formulation. We argue that the existence of differences between the brains of males and females does not unravel the relations between sex and the brain nor is it sufficient to characterize a population of brains. Such characterization is necessary for studying sex effects on the brain as well as for studying brain structure and function in general. Animal studies show that sex interacts with environmental, developmental and genetic factors to affect the brain. Studies of humans further suggest that human brains are better described as belonging to a single heterogeneous population rather than two distinct populations. We discuss the implications of these observations for studies of brain and behaviour in humans and in laboratory animals. We believe that studying sex effects in context and developing or adopting analytical methods that take into account the heterogeneity of the brain are crucial for the advancement of human health and well-being.\n\n\n~~ Fun Fact ~~\n\n > The Royal Society was founded in 1660 to promote the new experimental philosophy of that time, embodying the principles of Sir Francis Bacon. Henry Oldenburg was appointed as the first secretary to the Society and he was also the first editor of the Society's journal *Philosophical Transactions*. The first issue of *Philosophical Transactions* appeared in **March 1665** and featured Oldenburg's correspondence with leading European scientists. In its formative years **Isaac Newton had seventeen papers published in the journal** including his first paper - New Theory about Light and Colours - which effectively served to launch his scientific career in 1672. In the same year his new reflecting telescope was described and the original drawing was also published in the journal. *Philosophical Transactions* has also published the work of Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, William Herschel and many more celebrated names in science. In 1887 the journal expanded to become two separate publications, one serving the biological sciences ('B') and the other serving the physical sciences ('A'). *Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society* has the prestige of being the world's longest running science journal. {*emphasis added*}\n\nAlso see: [The history of the Royal Society.](_URL_2_)\n\n**Trans*-Specific Research**\n\nCITATION\n > Hahn, A., Kranz, G. S., Küblböck, M., Kaufmann, U., Ganger, S., Hummer, A., … Lanzenberger, R. (2015). [Structural connectivity networks of transgender people.](\n_URL_0_) *Cerebral Cortex, 25*(10), 3527–3534. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhu194\n\nABSTRACT\n > Although previous investigations of transsexual people have focused on regional brain alterations, evaluations on a network level, especially those structural in nature, are largely missing. Therefore, we investigated the structural connectome of 23 female-to-male (FtM) and 21 male-to-female (MtF) transgender patients before hormone therapy as compared with 25 female and 25 male healthy controls. Graph theoretical analysis of whole-brain probabilistic tractography networks (adjusted for differences in intracranial volume) showed decreased hemispheric connectivity ratios of subcortical/limbic areas for both transgender groups. Subsequent analysis revealed that this finding was driven by increased interhemispheric lobar connectivity weights (LCWs) in MtF transsexuals and decreased intrahemispheric LCWs in FtM patients. This was further reflected on a regional level, where the MtF group showed mostly increased local efficiencies and FtM patients decreased values. Importantly, these parameters separated each patient group from the remaining subjects for the majority of significant findings. This work complements previously established regional alterations with important findings of structural connectivity. Specifically, our data suggest that network parameters may reflect unique characteristics of transgender patients, whereas local physiological aspects have been shown to represent the transition from the biological sex to the actual gender identity.\n\nQUOTE (explains one of the key hypotheses in this area of research)\n > This divergence between gender identity and biological sex has been proposed to emerge from the temporal difference between sexual differentiation of the genitals and the brain. Specifically, the biological effect or lack of testosterone during 6–12 weeks of pregnancy leads to the formation of male or female sexual organs, respectively. In contrast, sexual differentiation of the brain occurs in the second half of pregnancy by organizing effects of sexual hormones. Hence, these developmental processes are independent and chronologically separated, so that masculinization of the genitals may not necessarily reflect that of the brain. {*citations omitted*}\n\n\nCITATION\n > Kranz, G. S., Hahn, A., Kaufmann, U., Küblböck, M., Hummer, A., Ganger, S., … Lanzenberger, R. (2014). White matter microstructure in transsexuals and controls investigated by diffusion tensor imaging. *The Journal of Neuroscience : The Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 34*(46), 15466–15475. _URL_3_\n\nABSTRACT\n > Biological causes underpinning the well known gender dimorphisms in human behavior, cognition, and emotion have received increased attention in recent years. The advent of diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging has permitted the investigation of the white matter microstructure in unprecedented detail. Here, we aimed to study the potential influences of biological sex, gender identity, sex hormones, and sexual orientation on white matter microstructure by investigating transsexuals and healthy controls using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Twenty-three female-to-male (FtM) and 21 male-to-female (MtF) transsexuals, as well as 23 female (FC) and 22 male (MC) controls underwent DTI at 3 tesla. Fractional anisotropy, axial, radial, and mean diffusivity were calculated using tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) and fiber tractography. Results showed widespread significant differences in mean diffusivity between groups in almost all white matter tracts. FCs had highest mean diffusivities, followed by FtM transsexuals with lower values, MtF transsexuals with further reduced values, and MCs with lowest values. Investigating axial and radial diffusivities showed that a transition in axial diffusivity accounted for mean diffusivity results. No significant differences in fractional anisotropy maps were found between groups. Plasma testosterone levels were strongly correlated with mean, axial, and radial diffusivities. However, controlling for individual estradiol, testosterone, or progesterone plasma levels or for subjects’ sexual orientation did not change group differences. Our data harmonize with the hypothesis that fiber tract development is influenced by the hormonal environment during late prenatal and early postnatal brain development."
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"https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20032-transsexual-differences-caught-on-brain-scan/",
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1xr493 | Should genocide before modern times be considered genocide? Isn't that presentism? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1xr493/should_genocide_before_modern_times_be_considered/ | {
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"How we label certain social, political, or cultural phenomena matters a great deal; labeling gives meaning and understanding, and it also gives power. We can see this very clearly in my area of expertise—terrorism—where almost all state definitions of the subject do not consider any terroristic acts committed by states as formal acts of terrorism. The state’s label of what constitutes terrorism carries a great deal of ideological baggage, asserting the state’s sovereignty and its monopolization on the legitimate use of political violence. Genocide studies face a dilemma similar to that of terrorism studies. The term “genocide,” surprisingly, can often be too restrictive. No one really knows what genocide means, which explains the popular use by government officials of the less provocative term “acts of genocide” when dealing with instances of mass violence. Christian Gerlach has argued that the contemporary use of the term “genocide” carries too much emphasis on the political—in other words, genocide occurs primarily from certain structures or ideologies within a state’s institutions. For example, the Holocaust took place because of the German state’s racist policies and its propaganda that rationalized to the German people mass violence against Jews. Genocide is therefore seen as something distinctly political, led foremost by the state. Most importantly, the use of the term genocide, much like that of terrorism, is to cast blame and moral condemnation. Gerlach ditches the genocide label for this reason in favor of the term “incredibly violent societies.” In doing so, he’s able to more accurately account for many other groups, like non-state actors, that affect the turn toward or against genocide.\n\nIn other words, I think using the term genocide is more an issue of political and social power dynamics rather than presentism. While I'm sure this is obvious, people can only label things after they've experienced them. An analogy might help clarify why I don’t think it’s an issue of presentism: Hippocrates coined the term “cancer” around 400 BCE. Before the term was coined, however, people still suffered from a disease that occurs due to the over-production of white blood cells that in many cases leads to death. Just because the term “cancer” had not been coined yet didn't mean there was no cancer before that time. Applying the word “genocide” to events that occurred before the term was coined works much the same way. Ben Kiernan, a historian of genocide, makes a similar argument. Sticking to a clear and consistent definition of genocide gets at the essence of the subject—why it arises, how it is carried out, and how societies respond to it. Many historians argue that the genocides of the 20th century are much different than those of previous centuries. A consistent definition of genocide applied throughout all of history allows historians to trace the continuities between these two eras of genocide, and to ultimately see both how the phenomena has changed but also what is constant throughout time.\n\nI'm not sure if this is entirely clear since I typed it up pretty quick. Ultimately, I think that there are definitely benefits to applying the word genocide to instances of mass violence, even if the term had yet to be coined in the period being analyzed. But we also need to recognize that the term genocide carries with it a great deal of ideological baggage and that the term can easily slip into dangerous normativism that is meant primarily to cast blame rather than give clarity.\n"
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35vjxk | Genetic Predisposition to types of music/culture? | I was on another sub when someone had made a statement that people of certain ancestries wouldn't be in the tenants of this particular religion because their ancestors were not of this religion. They were saying that there wasn't much research into how this works, but they used music as an example. They said that people from, say, East Asia will genetically like East Asian music, and the same would go for a religious/cultural bias as well.
I always would have thought that it would be more based on early exposure rather than an actual genetic predispostion. How true are their claims? Is that a real thing or is it more based on something like early exposure to certain musics or culture?
Thanks | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/35vjxk/genetic_predisposition_to_types_of_musicculture/ | {
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"Well, it is true that people are genetically predisposed to prefer certain types of music, according to [this study of twins.](_URL_0_) \n\nI am highly dubious that this can explain why East Asians like East Asian music. There is simply not very much genetic variation between human populations. The variation within populations is much greater. "
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m5rlr | Could I get mitochondrial cancer? | I was recently reading about the origin of mitochrondria, and was intrigued by the finding that they are capable of replicating themselves in human cells. Given that, is there any known condition where their replication-control systems fail and they start replicating out of control within the cytoplasm of the cell? And if not, why? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/m5rlr/could_i_get_mitochondrial_cancer/ | {
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"Just to be clear, cancer would be the result of the faulty mitochondria (organelles) causing abnormal growth or division of cells they are in. Specifically, I only found one source ([\"Mitochondrial dysfunction in cancer cells due to aberrant mitochondrial replication\"](_URL_0_)) regarding abnormal mitochondrial division being linked to cancer; moreover, it seems that [mitochondrial dysfunction is a fairly common trait in many cancer cells](_URL_1_).",
"Uncontrolled mitochondrial proliferation can and does occur. It is not cancer as mentioned below, because it only affects specific cells and those cells do not replicate. Myoclonic Epilepsy with Ragged Red Fibers is depicted in the first examples on this page:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nAlso, disease states that result in [overexpression of PGC-1alpha in cardiac myocytes result in uncontrolled mitochondrial proliferation and dilated cardiomyopathy.](_URL_1_)",
"Just to be clear, cancer would be the result of the faulty mitochondria (organelles) causing abnormal growth or division of cells they are in. Specifically, I only found one source ([\"Mitochondrial dysfunction in cancer cells due to aberrant mitochondrial replication\"](_URL_0_)) regarding abnormal mitochondrial division being linked to cancer; moreover, it seems that [mitochondrial dysfunction is a fairly common trait in many cancer cells](_URL_1_).",
"Uncontrolled mitochondrial proliferation can and does occur. It is not cancer as mentioned below, because it only affects specific cells and those cells do not replicate. Myoclonic Epilepsy with Ragged Red Fibers is depicted in the first examples on this page:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nAlso, disease states that result in [overexpression of PGC-1alpha in cardiac myocytes result in uncontrolled mitochondrial proliferation and dilated cardiomyopathy.](_URL_1_)"
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2fnyt6 | With so many history books on the market, what are some ways an amateur historian can distinguish between which ones are credible or not? | Are there also any explicit markers that indicate a book is a viable academic text over just any book?
I checked the AskHistorians wiki, and I am aware of the recommended booklist, however this is more of a general question so that amateur historians may be able to sort through the over-saturated history book market. | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2fnyt6/with_so_many_history_books_on_the_market_what_are/ | {
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"Your best bet would be first to make sure that the book comes from an academic publisher (Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, or any other university press, along with other non-university academic publishers like Palgrave MacMillman and Routledge). Looking only for academic presses can be limiting, though. There are many, many good history books that are published by non-academic presses. Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux normally publishes very good history books, as does Penguin, W.W. Norton, and many others. Besides that, look at the author information in the back flap or the very beginning of the book. Does this person have a PhD (or *maybe* a Master's) in history or some other advanced degree related to the topic of the book. Or does the author have some practical experience (government job, non-profit work, etc.) with the topic being written? If so, there's a good chance the book will be fairly reliable.\n\nMoreover, read book reviews. See who is writing these reviews, and make sure they are actual experts in the field. For amateur historians without access to academic journals, *The New York Review of Books*, *London Review of Books*, *The New Republic*, and _URL_0_, among others, are great places to read book reviews by academics. \n\nOf course, these are just general rules of thumb, not ideal markers of what makes a book reputable or not. There are many good history books by people with very little professional training in history, and there are also bad books that are published by academic presses. Really the only way to ensure you are reading a credible history book is to be very fluent in the topic you are reading about and knowing who the major authors are. This can only come with *a lot* of time and experience, something most amateur historians don't want or need. With that being the case, the above suggestions should by and large protect you from most of the bad history books.\n\nEdit: I'll expand with some examples from books that I've pulled from my own bookshelves. These books will be related to my specialty, but the general process of seeing if a book is reputable still applies. As you'll see, it's a pretty simple process.\n\n* Westad, Odd Arne. *The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times*. Cambridge University Press, 2007.\n\nThis one is pretty straightforward. It's from an academic publisher, and I can see from the author description that he is a professor of history at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Furthermore, the book won the Bancroft Prize, an award decided upon by academic historians from Columbia University. This can easily be considered a reputable book.\n\n* Leffler, Melvyn. *For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War*. Hill and Wang, 2007.\n\nThis one might be a little bit harder to gauge, but still, it'll be pretty easy to determine that this is a reputable book. The publisher is not an academic press, but I can see from the author bio that he is a professor of history at the University of Virginia who has published extensively on U.S. Cold War foreign policy. Another good, if sometimes superficial, way to gauge a book's credibility is through the blurbs written on the back. All of the blurbs praising this book are from noted historians from top-tier universities. We can easily see that this book is reputable.\n\n* Labunski, Richard. *James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights*. Oxford University Press, 2006. \n\nThis book's a little bit different. It's published by an academic press, but as the author bio says, the author is a professor of *journalism and telecommunications*, and has a PhD in political science and a J.D. from Seattle University School of Law. This author, as we can tell, doesn't have a professional background in history. His background in law, though, seems to show that he likely knows what he's talking about in regards to the Bill of Rights. That it is published by an academic press gives it greater reputability. Again, this book will likely follow at least the basic tenets of what makes a good history book.\n\n* Van Linschoten, Alex Strick and Felix Kuehn. *An Enemy We Created: The Myth of the Taliban-Al Qaeda Merger in Afghanistan*. Oxford University Press, 2013.\n\nThis one is also more difficult to gauge, but should still be pretty easy to see that it's reputable as a historical work. The authors are not historians, but have worked as journalists and non-profit workers within Afghanistan for the previous 40 years. It's published by an academic press, and, within the acknowledgements section, we can see that the authors sent drafts to noted academics in the field they are writing about. Again, this book is easily going to be reputable.\n\n* Mann, James. *The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War*. Viking, 2009.\n\nThis one will honestly be difficult to determine if you're unfamiliar with the field, and you will need to dig a little deeper to see if this book is reputable. The author is a journalist, not a professional historian, and the book is not published by an academic press. The blurbs from the back are all from other journalists or government officials. If you're unfamiliar with the author, this is when to look for book reviews for both the book you're looking at and any previous books the author has written. If I were to search for reviews of previous books, I would see that this author has written a couple of history books that are highly praised by professional historians. This book is *most likely* going to be reputable.\n\n* O'Reilly, Bill. *Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever*. Henry Holt and Co., 2011. (An extreme example, I know).\n\nThis book is neither written by a professional historian nor published by an academic press. The blurbs for the book are written by prominent authors of fiction (particularly spy thrillers), and the only thing that the other blurbs from *Newsweek* and *The Christian Science Monitor* say is that the book reads like a fiction spy thriller. Certainly not a very ringing endorsement for anything relating to the veracity of the author's ability to adequately apply historical methodology and analysis. To be sure, I can go to some book reviews. I'll see that the book is widely panned by historians and that it was pulled from the shelves of the Lincoln museum due to too many historical inaccuracies. Obviously, a book that should be avoided.\n\nI've tried to give you examples that can account for most of the different types of history books and authors. These are the exact things that I question any time I'm looking for a new book or am thinking of buying a particular book. While these books are mainly from my area of expertise, I hope this gave you a general idea of what questions to ask when looking for new history books.",
"In addition to checking formalities like the author's credentials, I would read a few paragraphs and think about the style of argument. \n\nDoes the author make unsubstantiated broad claims? Is the main reasoning mode \"because I say so\"? Does the author insinuate lots of stuff rather than saying it outright? Does he contradict basic facts in passing? Does he jump around between disciplines (e.g., mix up arguments from history, anthropology and literature)? -- All of those are signs of quacks. \n\nNot as bad as quacks but still to be mistrusted are popular history authors who are bad about distinguishing fact from fiction. If a biography reads like the plot of a Hollywood movie, it's probably not accurate. If a history book reads like a novel (characterization of people that is based on their private thoughts rather than their actions, descriptions of details that are unlikely to be recorded in historical sources -- what specific people did in their spare time, what they wore and ate, etc.) then it probably is a novel, i.e., fiction. If the author has a mission, e.g. proving that so-and-so was the greatest statesman ever, the book should be mistrusted as well.\n\nGood signs are: the author names his sources, the reasoning is logical and straightforward, the author distinguishes between basic, undisputed facts and controversial theories, the author refers to other authors in the area, the author acknowledges that there are open questions.\n\n"
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1onqz8 | What are the main differences between Byzantium and Western Europe? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1onqz8/what_are_the_main_differences_between_byzantium/ | {
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"Especially in the later Byzantine period, this question simply cannot be answered without reference to Greek Orthodox Christianity. After the official split in 1054, most of the following four centuries were rife with abortive attempts to piece the church back together.\n\nEven as Constantinople was on the brink of destruction in the mid-1400s, there were those in the city who supposedly said \"better the sultan's turban in Constantinople than the pope's mitre.\"\n\nEven in western Europe, there was concerted effort to repair the churches. The first crusade was called to retake lands lost by Christendom to the various Turks, but the understanding of Alexios I was that lands retaken would be immediately put back under Byzantine rule. Manuel II, John VIII, and Constantine XI all made a habit of appeals for western aid, and the former two emperors even went on \"hat-in-hand\" tours of western Europe begging for help. The council at Ferrara-Florence was a major 15th century drama, involving political-religious leaders all over western Europe, some of the first manifestations of what we might call Protestantism (the Hussites), and ultimately success in name only.\n\nSir Edwin Pears said of John VIII's attitude toward unionism: \"If the city of Paris were worth a mass, the empire was worth a tenfold acknowledgement of the pope's supremacy.\" As we know, of course, no aid was forthcoming save for maritime Italians who were probably mainly interested in protecting their commercial concessions. The city fell, the empire died, and the churches remain split."
]
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[]
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||
3oenx0 | does math exist in nature like other sciences such as chemistry and biology? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3oenx0/eli5_does_math_exist_in_nature_like_other/ | {
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"Sure. A circle is Pi. There is a difference between 1 sheep, 2 sheep, and 3 sheep. Linear and exponential growth are both commonly seen in nature. ",
"Your question presumes that chemistry and biology \"exist in nature\". They don't. \n\nChemistry and biology and the other sciences are our human method for understanding nature. They are basically just are math applied to a specific area. For example, chemistry is just the shape, charge, etc of molecules, described in numbers and equations.\n\nThere is a curious thing though, which is that mathematicians come up with all kinds of crazy pattern games often without any regard for the \"real world\". And yet, it often turns out that those games almost perfectly describe a real-world phenomena. \n\nSome have hypothesized that the universe IS just the instantiation of all mathematics (or to put it simply, the world is made out of math). However, it is probably more likely that math is our way of describing the universe and - just like your verbal description of a steak dinner is never as good as the dinner itself - math and science are useful tools but not actually reality. ",
"[Here is a good video](_URL_0_)\n\nThis is really a philosophical question... And like pretty much everything in philosophy there isn't one *right* answer, but many differing ways to look at it with varying degrees of correctness-- depending on who you ask. This video breaks it down into three schools of thought, though there are infinatly more these three are just the more generally accepted within the spheres of maths and philosophy.\n\n1. Platonism: numbers are objects, they exist like anything else within the real world. The are abstract objects in the same way that emotions are abstract objects: anger exists even though if it isn't something you can clearly define or interact with like a spoon. \n\n\n2. Nominalism: numbers are placeholders for things that actually exist, they are symbols that represent something that really can exist in time and space. Much like words, what is *dog*, well gee that is just a gutteral noise we create and markings we make to represent something real-- in this case a dog. In a similar vein 1+1=2 exists.. If I have 1 stick and add another stick to it I now have 2 sticks. This starts to breakdown once you get into high level or abstract maths.\n\n3. Fictionalism: pretty straight forward, maths don't really exist they are just constructs of the human condition.. They probably believe we are all just brains in a vat as well, again nit wrong, just not a lot more you can say about it.These people are probably really fun at dinner parties /s\n\nEdit: still learning Reddit sync. Fixed video link. here is another good one with more memes.[ here is another good one with more memes ](_URL_1_)"
]
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ctatlf | Why are Greeks not predominantly Muslim today considering how long they were ruled by the Ottoman Empire? | If you look at other areas in Europe, like Albania and Bosnia, which were also under Ottoman rule, the majority of the population is Islamic. Even if we use Spain as an example, most of the population there was converted by the Moors.
But Greece today is almost completely Christian, despite being under Ottoman rule for hundreds of years. Why is there not a big Islamic presence in Greece, like there is in the Balkans? | AskHistorians | https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ctatlf/why_are_greeks_not_predominantly_muslim_today/ | {
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"The simple answer is that the Republic of Turkey and the Kingdom of Greece decided in 1923 to proceed to a mutual ethnic cleansing through the Laussane Treaty which 1,5 million Greek Christians were expelled from Turkey and 0,5million Muslim Turks from Greece. This explains why Greece _today_ is fully Christian with the exception of a sizeable community in eastern Thrace which was excluded from the exchange so that, a then equal, greek population in Istanbul together with the Patriarchate would remain. I don't think we can get more thorough than this, the source is the Treaty itself.\n\nAnd that's also why the \"constant attacks on the Muslim population\" mentioned on the other comment is wildly wrong. During the War of Independence the Greeks and the Turks proceeded to mass murders after successful operations, example include the total annihilation of Chios by the Turks with 30k dead and 40k slaves or the slaughter of Tripolitsa by the Greeks. This rendered 1830 Greece virtually Muslim-free. Subsequently Muslims who came under Greek rule as Greece expanded its borders remained at their lands and that's how Greece had 0,5million Muslims to exchange with Turkey. This was because it was greek policy not to give reasons to Turkey to mistreat its Christian minority, plus it gave legitimacy to greek claims of being a responsible european power able to take care of the european possessions of the Ottoman Empire. Lena Divani's book on Greece and it's Minorities sums up the official greek policy pretty well.\n\nThat is also a nice source for one more small muslim community: the Chams which were a branch of Albanian muslims and had escaped the forced exchange of populations. Greecd tried initially to include them in the Treaty and when that failed implemented policies aimed to forcing them to migrate. Their collaboration, to a certain extent that one can debate, with the Italian/Germans during WW2 sealed their fate and Greece forced them into exile to Albania. \n\nA small trivia: Greece came into the possession of another muslim community, a tiny one at the Dodecanese islands after they were ceded by Italy as part of the war reparations. \n\nIf you mean why all of Greek Christians didn't convert to Islam by 1823, the answer is that there was no concentrated effort by the Ottoman Empire for various reasons including fiscal ones. The same thing goes for Serbia. Bulgaria or any other country which was conquered by the Ottomans; what I am basically saying is that the premise of your question is wrong. Suffice to say that the Jews of the Ottoman Empire also did not convert and actually fled to the Ottoman Empire to avoid forced conversion from Spain or other Christian nations."
]
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[]
] |
|
1xzn8d | why do timers tell you to turn past a certain time and then back to the time you want? | It says this on my toaster oven and I was wondering why. It says, "Rotate knob past 20 then set to desired time" | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xzn8d/eli5_why_do_timers_tell_you_to_turn_past_a/ | {
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"Some dials, especially on older machine are not fully aligned and/or loose, such that you you may not be completely turning the dial to the required time. For instance, turning it to 20 may in fact only put it at 16 if it's loose. (the first bit of the turn would be only tightening the handle back up). By turning further than needed and back you effectively negates this offset. ensuring you get the desired time!"
]
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|
28pfry | why do coal, iron and other minerals always form in seams rather than being evenly distributed throughout the rock? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28pfry/eli5_why_do_coal_iron_and_other_minerals_always/ | {
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"For coal, the explanation is fairly simple: coal is compressed organic matter (wood and ferns, really), and it can only form where, in the past, there were large areas of forest which a) lasted for a long time, b) had the right climate conditions to preserve the wood (this usually means swamps, which are cold and wet and low in oxygen - more oxygen, and the wood would rot away; more heat, and forest fires would destroy the material before it could be transformed) and c) has the right sort of plate tectonics to bury the material and press it. This means that it only forms in a few places, but where it does form, you get thick layers of it.\n\nFor metals like iron and gold, it's a bit more complicated. Plate tectonics play a role, by bring metals up from the molten parts of the earth, and so does the flow of water. The water will dissolve some minerals (like limestone), erode other minerals, and leave the rest in place. This tends to cause them to become concentrated in different places, depending on how far the water carries them. [New Scientist has a cool piece](_URL_0_) about how earthquakes cause seams of gold to form by sucking water into the earth and then rapidly boiling it away.\n\nIt's also worth noting that there are trace amounts of all sorts of elements scattered over the earth (a handful of soil contains quite a bit of iron, aluminium and silicon, for example), but because it's all mixed together, we don't really notice it and it's usually unmineable."
]
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"http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23284-gold-seams-form-in-an-earthquakepowered-flash.html"
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||
33jk6v | Were Gauls, Picts, Goths, Lombards, all tribes/nations considered to be barbarians to Greeks and Romans, really unorganized rabbles in battler like is claimed? | AskHistorians | http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/33jk6v/were_gauls_picts_goths_lombards_all_tribesnations/ | {
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"Claimed by whom? Ancient writers? Modern pop culture? The Gauls certainly were not, and pretty much no writer who actually knew anything about them described them as such. Caesar praises various Gallic armies for their discipline and order--the wildness and disorder of the Britons is brought up as a contrast with the Gauls. The Helvetii fought arrayed in close order--Caesar describes it as a phalanx, which just means they were in close ranks with good order--and marched at a slow, deliberate pace. Indeed, the Helvetii's infantry phalanx put Caesar's cavalry to flight, and Caesar notes that their shields were overlapping, which allowed his infantry to fasten several shields together with a single javelin--Caesar notes that this was the only way he could break up their infantry line. Caesar describes the Belgae as using the familiar Roman testudo to assault city walls, which requires good discipline. The Veneti of course were brilliant sailors, which is not exactly something you'd expect from a poorly-disciplined horde. And Caesar has only good things to say about the army under Vercingetorix--a mob would be hardly capable of any of the rather impressive maneuvers Vercingetorix conducted"
]
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||
d8lbja | the suspension of uk parliament my prime minister boris johnson has been ruled unlawful by the supreme court. what’s going to happen now? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d8lbja/eli5_the_suspension_of_uk_parliament_my_prime/ | {
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"According to the Supreme Justice ruling, the advice given to the Queen, and therefore the order that was given based on said advice are null and void, and did not take effect. The Royal Commissioners, when they walked into the houses of Lords and Commons with the orders from the Queen, were effectively carrying blank pieces of paper.\n\nIn effect, NOTHING happened. The members of parliament are able to return to the house of lords/commons and resume the parliament as if nothing happened. The Commons speaker Mr Bercow has already announced that he is in talks with the members of parliament in regards to them returning to sit at the Commons at the first opportunity.\n\nUnless something new happens, it is expected the Commons will resume tomorrow."
]
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[]
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||
cmibkc | u.s. treasury designates china as a currency manipulator —- what it mean? how does it mean regular americans, or other countries? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cmibkc/eli5_us_treasury_designates_china_as_a_currency/ | {
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"In simple terms - the Chinese are using policies that make their currency \"weaker\" than it should be. This makes their exports cheaper to the outside world while making imports more expensive on a relative scale. In other words, Chinese companies have an easy time selling to the US while US companies find it hard to compete in China.\n\nThis is possible because Chinese tightly controls their currency's exchange rate rather than letting it \"float\" via supply and demand like most currencies including the US dollar. Basically, China is cheating and the US is calling them on it."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
15lvbt | when making security questions for password recovery, why don't they let you write your own question? wouldn't that be significantly safer? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15lvbt/when_making_security_questions_for_password/ | {
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"Some place do, other places are just lazy. Simple as that.\n\nThere is no reason besides time and storage that prevents them from doing it.\n\nTime, you could spent between 30 seconds and 30 hours figuring out how to set up a way to let you make your own and record them on servers.\n\nStorage, the servers for the website must record each unique question and distribute it accordingly to the correct person. But that would be a < 50 Kilobyte file at most, and today that is not that much. So it is generally the first.\n\n",
"Not really.\n\nImagine your average user - their password is probably \"12345\" or \"password,\" and they probably have the same password everywhere.\n\nNow, imagine if that guy could write his own question. \"What is 123?\" Or \"MY PASSWORD IS PASSWORD?\"\n\nThere is very little the site could do to protect people from simply giving away their password due to sheer stupidity. Not letting the user write the question prevents them from sending themselves a clue.\n\nMy trick is that I have only a few answers. Whether it asks my mother's maiden name, my first pet or the name of the street I live on, the answer is always \"Sasquatch.\" (Not really). ",
"It could be safer...if someone understood the security implications and created an appropriate question.\n\nBut people who don't understand might come up with a stupid question, like \"What is Garfield's favorite food?\".\n\nThese are the people who security experts are most worried about, much better to force everyone to use good questions rather than let them become security holes."
]
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||
qspt7 | What are some of the consequences of human skull elongation? | Looking at [this image!](_URL_0_) it just looks so unnatural. Will the brain of a person with an elongated skull function normally, or will there be any specific negative consequences? | askscience | http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/qspt7/what_are_some_of_the_consequences_of_human_skull/ | {
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"I don't know how to phrase this tactifully or intelligently so I'll just come out and ask: WTF happened to those people's heads?",
"If the brain case is not filled completely with brain matter there will be a much higher possibility of mechanical damage. I've really no idea as to wether or not the brain would fill these spaces if the there is an artificial increase from normal volume. I'd need an MRI/CT with a brain inside to give an idea. Assuming there is an increase in overall volume, you'd most likely see an increased rate of cervical spinal injury due to increased weight of the skull. \n\nI've had a look through PUBMED and there is some information in regards to the mechanics of how it is done but I was unable to find any specifics regarding physoliogical effects of it. Probably due to the scarcity of people exhibiting this sort of deformation in modern times.",
"As several other people here have noted, varying levels of artificial cranial deformation have, in some parts of the world in the past, been practiced. This seems to have been most commonly accomplished using bindings, sometimes on their own and sometimes in tandem with cradleboards.\n\nAnd we also see what we think is unintentional deformation from the use of cradleboards.\n\nAs far as we known, there are no negative cognitive or anatomical/physical consequences to this. The brain is a developmentally plastic organ and grows / expands in the shape it's given. We do see sometimes what have been called wormian or \"Inca bones\" (from the Inca skulls where this practice has been observed), small additional bones and sutures in the cranial vault, but these are not dangerous and as the skull's sutures close during life, these bones / sutures fuse with the rest just as any of the cranial bones do.",
"The archaeological record shows no evidence of any cultural indicators (different burial practices, grave goods) that would suggest that they were considered to be any different from individuals with non-modified crania. In spite of this suggestion of cognitive comparability, archaeologists and osteologists are generally of the opinion that this would have almost certainly led to significant changes in the brain. \n\n**TL;DR: Without modern examples it is hard to know for certain whether or not it led to abnormal brain functioning, but it almost certainly would have.**\n\nSources: [Anton 1989](_URL_1_), [Ortner 1981](_URL_0_), and me, because it's what I study.\n\nEdit: Sources and formatting",
"Please everyone: If you make a top level comment, do not make jokes and make sure to cite your material. No more alien jokes please, they will just get deleted as soon as they are made. ",
"Here is an [article](_URL_0_) on the subject you may find interesting. \n\nAlso, you may find more discussion on the topic over on r/Anthropology. \n\n**Abstract**\n\n*Building upon recent studies of settlement patterns and material cultural, this paper focuses on human body modification\npreserved in human bone as a complementary means of studying diversity in ancient societies. A review of ethnohistorical\nsources in conjunction with a human osteological study of cranial shape modification offers original data\nregarding diversity in Tiwanaku society, which was situated in the southern Andes from ca.AD500–1100. The study sample\nincludes 412 individuals from the site of Tiwanaku, surrounding sites in the Tiwanaku and Katari valleys, and Tiwanaku-\naffiliated sites in the Moquegua valley of southern Peru. Adistinct regional pattern is clear in the ways in which head\nform was modified. In the Moquegua valley, solely fronto-occipital modification was employed, while in the Katari valley\na distinctly different, annular modification was practiced. In contrast, individuals interred in the capital city of Tiwanaku\ndisplayed both head form styles. These results suggest that diverse groups of people from neighboring areas were drawn to\nthe Tiwanaku capital in the highlands, and cranial shape modification was involved in symbolic boundary maintenance at\nthe juncture of two distinct environmental niches, the precise location of the capital site of Tiwanaku.*\n\n",
"Question, not response:\n\nWhat would the consequences of the elongation be in terms of cranial trauma? Were these people especially prone to fractures? Assuming that the brain may or may not grow to fill the augmented space, would the distortion seem to leave certain lobes especially unprotected against blunt force?",
"Not as pronounced as your image but perhaps my story has some relevance:\n\nWhen my son was three days old he was diagnosed with saggital craniosynostosis. Basically, part of his skull was fused tight and would not grow normally to accomodate his developing brain. What you end up with is a very elongated head as the brain grows, finding the paths of least resistance. My son had some tests to determine if there would be any impairment to his eyes (they were fine) and we were assured that there would be no negatives as far as cognitive development. Correcting the craniosynostosis was classified as a cosmetic surgery. And everything went perfectly and my boy's head looks the same as any other for his age.\n\nHere's an example of a sag baby: _URL_0_\n\nTL;DR: the brain adapts to its own skull's shape and usually does just fine."
]
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"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/ParacasSkullsIcaMuseum.jpg"
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[],
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"http://books.google.ca/books?id=k4WnC6U2YfoC&lpg=PP2&ots=LU3z5-tubN&dq=ortner%20putschar%201981%20&lr&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false",
"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.1330790213/abstract"
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"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278416504000510"
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"http://www.gentryvisualization.com/C-E4.html"
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